Civ IV or Civ V; which is more complex?

[The Silent CivVer]

Hey guys, would be interested in your opinion on this. I think Civ V is more complex. Here are my reasons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IFcPEG8hP0&feature=youtu.be

Would like to hear any rebuttals/counterarguments.

Cheers

[ghpstage]

Originally posted by hellkn:

Meh, the real problem with 1UPT is making a so tiny map a world. Maps on civ 5 should be 100 times or so bigger, and with 100 times or so turns, to make sense put one unit per tile, and cities should be divided into districts, each one with only one building, and even some of them with a road and thus without any building, so even at 1UPT you would have maneuverability and make civ 5/6 concept shines. Sadly graphics should be nerfed even for a gamer computer if you wish that done.
1UPT is a better idea than stack of death in theory, but hardware and software coding limitations make 1UPT questionable. Stack of death may suck a lot in terms of realism but is easier to code and find hardware that runs, and also to make it more plausible than 1UPT, since because 1UPT needs a lot of care with scaling so units aren't that much big. For stack of death the big problem is about one of physics law being broken, 'Two bodies cannot occupy same space'.

1 UPT is a mechanic, stack of doom is a phenomenon resulting rom a mechanic, two different things.

The idea that uncapped stacking allows for 'infinite' stacks is a total misread. The number of units you can own depends entirely on your production, the number you can keep on your gold. Unless you are expecting to see infinite production capacity in your games, Pauli has no place here!

The only issues I have with stack warfare in 4 are from a gameplay perspective such as there being nothing that makes controlling tiles other than cities important. The way culture pretends to do this makes things worse.
The older civs had zone of control mechanics were units would block or even get a free shot at units trying to move through its ZoC, I nevert understood why they didn't keep this. Even some moddders added mechanics were you could claim tiles by holding them with units, or through combat on the tile....

The new sprawling cities in Civ 6 is an interesting new take in this direction, but its limited to the cities themselves, and as the demo didn't impress I won't be picking it up anytime soon.

[hellkn]

As we know, both 1UPT restriction from civ 5 and 6 and not 1UPT restriction from civ 4, 3, 2 and 1 have unrealistic flaws.
To have 1UPT restriction we need that units and cities does not occupy too much square quilometers on a single tile, what is unpractical for hardware, except perhaps with graphics of civ 2 or 3.
To not have 1UPT restriction this isn't a problem anymore as cities and units can share same much square quilometers as happens on real life, the only problem is about players going scenario editor and placing 100 tanks on single tile, as even modern era gamethrough production doesn't allow too much as game ends before that, although in real world isn't a problem produce all those tanks in just one year (assuming you're talking about military potencies).

[The Silent CivVer]

1) Flanking is an important part of warfare (especially modern warfare). Civ IV encourages 1 tile deathstacks...and no flanking bonuses are awarded. Civ V does a better job of plausible abstraction with regards to this.

2) You are stretching the plausible abstraction to breaking point here. Attrition has swung a war in favour of the other state (Grande Armee in Russia, Wehrmacht in Russia, Hannibal in Italy are just a few examples). These invasions failed primarily because of attrition...your abstraction of attrition being a derivative of combat fails to reflect this.

3) I am sorry, but free starting units are more powerful than the growth modifiers! I am a mathematician.

Having a free settler is equivalent to approximately 100% growth and a smaller percentage increase in production after 3 turns or so!

This, as we say in mathematics, compounds very quickly compared to slightly more generous growth rates.

Rush strategies would become incredibly effective without the free starting units.

What would be the point of the AI starting with huge growth bonuses only for players to snuff them out before they could take advantage of them?

Sorry, you are 100% incorrect here...

4) I find that most people commenting on the difficulty of Civ V have not evaluated or have hardly played the game themselves.

Rather they take comments from other people who have played the game and run with it.

This is called 'confirmation bias'

It seems you have hardly played the game and compared Civ IV complete the vanilla Civ V...this is an unfair comparison. Why not play the game and complete a game on immortal/deity?

I am not one of those who claims 'you must experience something in order to analyse it.' Your analyse of Civ V is better than other people on the thread who claim they have played it (Red). However, it may give you a better insight into the game mechanics and how they compare to Civ IV.

I have read Sulla's criticism...sorry, I feel it is very poor waffle/guff.

5) You unfortunately lack a sound understanding of what the definition of theoretically infinite means. Hence you are straw manning the argument put forward. The mathematical definition of theoretically infinite is when something is unbounded. As the number of units you can have on one tile is unbounded; this is accurate.

It is not possible to have an infinite number of units on tile because infinite is a concept and not an actual number. Hence I would never say 'you can have an actual infinite number of units on one tile.'

However, if we consider that the number of units allowed on one tile is unbounded, this seems to run contrary to your plausible abstraction idea.

It is simply not plausible to have an unbounded number of units in a geographical area.

You acknowledged this in an earlier post and suggested the number of units should be bounded. Hence I think you have conceded the point I am trying to make.

6) There are other elements to the game that you have not even touched upon. Such as:

1)Culture/Social Policies
2)Religion
3)Trade
4)World Congress/Diplomatc Victory.

I mean...doesn't the diplomatic victory in Civ IV seem ridiculously stupid to you? You talk about the Civ V AI being poor...but in Civ IV your AI opponents actually vote to lose the game to you...

[hellkn]

The problems lives on details.
Civ 4: Okay have no 1UPT limit since because game is designed based on scale on how much square kilometres per tile. On other hand, battle is based on odds, only air units and missiles are ranged, and we have no zone of control neither presence block.
Civ 5: 1 UPT brings zone of control back, some other units are ranged, now we have presence block, and combat isn't based on odds anymore. On other hand, scale is exagerated on how much an unit occupy in terms of square kilometres in one tile, a problem that would require tech tree overhaul, plus increasing of number of turns, extra gigantic maps, and all of this would require a lot of hardware, a lot more than it already requires.
My pick: Civ 5 has better combat mechanics, better graphics, better economy, and no Stack of Doom. Civ 4 has much less hardware required to run, better mods that overhaul entire game and you have more realistic scale, although Stacks of Doom plagues civ 4 more than civs 1/2/3. Both sounds equal in preferences.

[ghpstage]

1) Flanking has been important, but overwhelmingly at the tactical scale.
Civ is a game set at the strategic scale, it doesn't really need it. It doesn't harm the game nor really add anything that felt like it was missing.

2) Its always going to be subjective.
What matters to me however is that a mechanic exists that will cause some of my units to be lost regardless of a difference in strength, meaning I have to think about supply lines at some point.

3) You may be a mathematician, but that doesn't mean much when you ignore pretty much every variable in play, even the values of the bonuses given.

I don't know why you are focusing on growth bonuses, perhaps you misunderstood what I wrote, the production and growth bonuses for Civ 5 Deity weren't limited to growth, and they weren't +50%, they were -50% to costs so they do infact double output compared to the base difficulty. Civ 4 increase productions by 2/3rds and growth by less again, but then theres the the other bonuses and in both games and most of all of them get larger as the game goes on.
Beyond that you have not considered any other facotor,

• The full benefits of the production boost (they are doubled in Civ 5 if you looked) are applied upon settling the first city, the first turn usually. The second city has to travel.
  
• The second city is usually made weaker by the spawn normaliser (especially in Civ 4)
  
• Both games have effects that apply only to the capital. The palace gives most of your early output in Civ 4 while tradition
  
• As cities get bigger they increasingly bcome more than the sum of their parts. For example the ridiculously large AI cities you see in Civ 5 Deity are the reason that wonders are so hard to get. Having two cities does nothing of the sort, the wonders they grab then compound ths effect.
  
• Space/worthwhile sites runs out eventually, at that point bonuses increase outputs beyond what would be possible with more cities. Space goes quite quickly in Civ 4 in particular
  
• Both games have mechanics that apply costs to additional cities.
  
• If you have 3 identical cities, 1 with doubled output (as they get in Civ 5), against two without then the lone city wins hands down as while both get 100% of the value at the end, the bonus city gets 50% of the value in half the time.

The free workers have a significant impact, but if the AI didn't come with free techs to start then they would end up sitting on their hands for quite some time before they could do anything. The AI tends to be poor at worker management anyway, Deity workers in Civ 4 for example will look to improve resources first, which is reasonable, but almost inevitably spend several turns roading to it from their spawn location first.....
The bring their own issues in presenting a tempting, juicy target to players however, in both games. Never could understand why Deity AIs are so happy to make peace for free after you do do this, not when they have an army many times more powerful than yours.

The only part of your claim that has any merit is the defensive units part.
In Civ 4 the Earth maps removing the archers and archery techs from the Deity AIs, which, due to the extremely close proximity this map spawns civs in means warrior rushes become possible. Under normal circumstances if you replaced the added units with a standard warrior the AI will start building an archer immediately, you won't have long to amass a few Warriors for a rush before its finished.
Civ 5s city defense are overwhelmingly driven by the cities themselves, faster growth drives up their ability to fend for themselves rapidly and walls being cheap means it goes up faster (and they wastecless time on them)
After the start however, those starter units aren't going to protect a noble AI from an Axe or Chariot rush, not by a long shot.
The free workers come with a huge disadvantage in being such a juicy, defenceless target for humans in both games. Even on Deity and also in both game they bizarrely tend to make peace without counterattacking, despite the overwhelming difference in power.

It stops applying after the very short term however. A Noble level AI even with the full free unit circus will simply fold under an axe, chariot or catapult rush.

It is very easy to try all this out. Mod the XML to give noble/prince AIs the Deity unit
groups and the Deity AI to remove them. Then see how it plays.
In fact go ahead and try giving them 3 settlers and workers each. Should be a laugh.

4) Truth be told I want to like the game, thats why I come back to it every so often. I just inevitably lose interest fairly quickly. Here's one i've been playing during the last few days for example,
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1384370885
I'm at parity with the tech leader.
So yes, I do have quite a lot of experience with AI antics and most of the game mechanics (though I haven't even touched the great works and UN stuff)
Its still a far cry from my Civ 4 experience, I know that game down to many of the nuts and bolts both from playing and reading/editing some of the code.

Games I have played like the pic above do strongly suggest to me of truth in talk of lower difficulty however. I've after all gotten this far by winging it and ignoring areas I do know how to use, I know that if I did that in Civ 4 i'd be long out of sight.
Ultimately so few people play civ games at these levels though that it is odd that difficulty comparisons are so often made.

5) I understand the concept fine, it had just been misused in a way to strawman stacks so I replied in a manner that would be understood.
It is however not infinite at all. The boundaries are there, they just vary due to so many factors that they are more or less indeterminate and the hard caps are much larger than are practical or reasonable.
Do you have the same complaints about city ouptuts by any chance?

If anything should be changed it would be with the addition of soft caps, penalties for overstacking, or a cap that moves linked to techs/cities/roads/whatevers, though that too would prboably be bad for the AI.


6) Trade,
I'd prefer a combination, with additional changes

From Civ 5 I like that trade routes can be attacked, and that the routes have a definite location is an improvement in that it helps allow this. The way resources and tech disparity have been added to valuation is a nice toch too.
I don't like how the glorious leader has to pick where these routes exist (we shoud decide where they *can* exist instead, by infrastructure building or diplomatic agreements for instance), the micromanagement involved nor the ridiculously small number of available routes.


From 4 I like how all of your cities will have routes, how foreign routes are limited to allow 1 route to each of their cities (pushes you for more foreign agreements and keeps domestic routes relevant) while domestics don't, the impact of overseas trade, that foreign trade can be unidirectional under some circumstances (though i'd rather it be massively lopsided than unidirectional).

What I don't like is how land routes can't be stopped, even passing through lands belonging to someone your at war with doesn't seem to block them, and how if t is disrupted it still carries on along *any* of the many valid paths available.
The last part devalues the blockade mechanic as if you blockade the cities of some great island trading nation provided they have a road to a fort or any random little city somewhere on the coast that isn't blocked every route from every city will be re-routed straight through it.

If pushed I would favour 4s method, but they both work well despite being a little, weird.


Diplo victores,

Your specific AI hangup is something I don't share. The AI isn't there to try and win, its there to be a civ in the gameworld regardless of what Firaxis said about AI in 5.
So my big issue with it isn't that rival civs vote for someone else to win, but lies in how manipulative the whole process is.
The most extreme example I alluded to in another post, it involves the Apostolic Palace, where numberof votes is tied to religions in cities. If you build the wonder to become host in an obscure religion (and the tech comes with one!) all you have to do is selectively spread the religion to give you friends lots of votes and eveybody else a token vote and you win. Even works as a loophole to beat Deity if you can ride out the early game and bulb the tech.
Very silly.

I've not got to the UN in Civ 5 so I can't form an opinion, but the tie between city states and votes does ring alarm bells. I quite expect to see shades of Civ 4s issues through certain leader traits and banking gold.
My limited experience with the general voting suggests its improved in general, but I don't see why we can no longer give them the middle finger.


I'll post about the other two another time.

[Maddin]

Originally posted by Ordinary JOE:

Originally posted by Scathe:

if it was possible to spawn infinite units in civ 4 then you might have a point, but it is not, you are limited to roughly 1unit per city per turn, and there is not infinite turns, nor is there infinite tiles for cities.

Hence why I used the term theoretically infinite...it is not possible to spawn infinite units, as infinite is a concept and not an actual number.

It is thoretically infinite because there is no hard coding in the game that prevents you putting all units on one tile.

Which is still more realistic than 1 unit per tile. A unit of Rifleman is said to be around 15,000-20,000 Soldiers. A single tile is said to be 100km*100km. Do you know how many soldiers I can fit at 10,000km²?
With absolute ease 2,000,000. If I take into consideration how much money that amount of soldiers eat, if I were to stack them all, I could essentially put them together like in a city. In a city of relatively strong density I can get 4,000 people per kilometer. I can thus without all that much of a trouble fit 40,000,000 Soldiers on a single tile.

Just because you could theoretically fit more of them on a tile inside the game, it makes more sense to have it like this instead of a single unit per tile. Because I have yet to see a single non cheated game that had more than 2,000 units placed on a single tile.

I believe the biggest unit you can build in Civ IV in terms of soldiers is a Tank unit that contains 40,000 soldiers btw. So I could still fit 1,000 Tank units on a tile and there is simply no reason to put a hardcap on something that is so big that it will never be reached. Hell if you move 2,000 Units on a single field most likely the game will crash.

Thus a more realistic point on tiles would be to instead increase the amount of tiles a world has in Civ V. As in not make one tile 10,000km² but instead make a tile to 10km² and thus increase the amount of tiles by a hundredfold. Of course it would thus also need to change how many units are produced each turn as instead of creating one warrior you would from a gameplay and realism perspective need to create serveral batallions at once to realistically get your borders save.

[Maddin]

Originally posted by ghpstage:

1) Room for disagreement is the point of this. Everyone is going to see the symbolism differently, and everyone will have different limits to suspension of disbelief. Nobody wins but it allows area for interesting discussion.

I will add that the archers boat issue is worse the other way around as ancient archery boats are likely to attack further into land.
2) Its perhaps a bit nitpicky to disregard an idea because it covers some but not all of an area, thats what game abstraction almost invariably means. Besides the mechanic mentioned about has a good effect on gameplay.
However the odds based combat can actually be thought of as patly covering your missing attirtion area, afterall there aren't many ways that Warriors are going to beat helicopters that don't involve something like mechanical faults, piloting errors or bird strikes

I have btw. only ever seen warriors beat helicopters after the helicopters have had some serious amount of fights behind them. So you could argue, after a batallion of helicopters killed like 80,000 Warriors in a row, they will most likely be barely able to fly anymore and thus can be taken on because they had to land.

[Scathe]

Originally posted by Maddin:

Originally posted by Ordinary JOE:

Hence why I used the term theoretically infinite...it is not possible to spawn infinite units, as infinite is a concept and not an actual number.

It is thoretically infinite because there is no hard coding in the game that prevents you putting all units on one tile.

Which is still more realistic than 1 unit per tile. A unit of Rifleman is said to be around 15,000-20,000 Soldiers. A single tile is said to be 100km*100km. Do you know how many soldiers I can fit at 10,000km²?
With absolute ease 2,000,000. If I take into consideration how much money that amount of soldiers eat, if I were to stack them all, I could essentially put them together like in a city. In a city of relatively strong density I can get 4,000 people per kilometer. I can thus without all that much of a trouble fit 40,000,000 Soldiers on a single tile.

Just because you could theoretically fit more of them on a tile inside the game, it makes more sense to have it like this instead of a single unit per tile. Because I have yet to see a single non cheated game that had more than 2,000 units placed on a single tile.

I believe the biggest unit you can build in Civ IV in terms of soldiers is a Tank unit that contains 40,000 soldiers btw. So I could still fit 1,000 Tank units on a tile and there is simply no reason to put a hardcap on something that is so big that it will never be reached. Hell if you move 2,000 Units on a single field most likely the game will crash.

Thus a more realistic point on tiles would be to instead increase the amount of tiles a world has in Civ V. As in not make one tile 10,000km² but instead make a tile to 10km² and thus increase the amount of tiles by a hundredfold. Of course it would thus also need to change how many units are produced each turn as instead of creating one warrior you would from a gameplay and realism perspective need to create serveral batallions at once to realistically get your borders save.

in the info screen, in demographics, you can see a category for soldiers, and a value, and while the modern armor unit's value is 40,000 and all other units are less, I don't believe this should be taken as a sign that there are 40,000 individuals in that modern armor unit, it is a reflection of the units strength. your point about how many units can fit in one tile is good, but the numbers you use only give him more ammo, because tank units dont have twice the number of soldiers as riflemen units in reality.

edit - and Ordinary Joe btw, ghpstage just made a bunch of good points, don't let mine and maddin's posts bury his, I especialy agree with him about diplomatic victories.

[The Silent CivVer]

3) The point about compounding still stands...a free settler translates into approximately +100% growth and/or a significant increase in hammers, as it is dependent on what tiles you work.

You are also ignorant of the differing tile yields in Civ IV vs V and differing building effects that make the differences you have stated above understandable.

Civ IV tile yields are significantly more generous than Civ V. For example, I just started a game and found 2 wheat, 1 pig and 2 clam within my city borders.

I improved the wheat immediately after building a worker (with a farm) and it gave me 6 food!!! The most food you can get from any tile in Civ V is 5 (except NW) and it takes much longer to acquire this 5 food (tech/granary etc).

Furthermore, granaries give you +50% food in your food basket after having grown...this is insane! In Civ V aqueducts (that come much later and require a large production cost gives you +40% food in your basket.

Additionally, the food growth costs for the next population point are differing.

It costs 196 food for a city to grow to size 8 in Civ IV...

In Civ V it costs 293 food!!!

This gap will only increase as the size of the city increases!

Forges give you +25% hammers in Civ IV.

A workshop only gives you +10% hammers and +2 hammers in Civ V.

Tile yields seem to be insane on Civ IV

A mined grassland hill gives you 1 food and 3 hammers, the same yields only 3 hammers on Civ V.

In light of these differences it seems completely understandable that the AI is given greater percentage advantages to growth and production in Civ V.

Pop 3 city with granary and worker having improved 3 bonus resources:

Civ IV - 18 food (wheat lake, wheat and pig) +13 needed food for pop4 and 12 surplus

Civ V - 16 food (wheat x 3 and granary) +30 needed for pop 4 and 10 surplus

Pop 4 city with granary and worker having improved 3 bonus resources and other 2 food tile:

Civ IV - 20 food (as above + 2 food tile) +14 needed food for pop5 and 12 surplus

Civ V - 18 food (as above + 2 food tile) + 40 food needed for pop5 and 10 surplus

Pop 5 city with granary and worker having improved 3 bonus resources and 2 other 2 food tile:

Civ IV - 22 food (wheat lake, wheat and pig) +15 needed food for pop6 and 12 surplus

Civ V - 16 food (wheat x 3 and granary) +51 needed for pop 6 and 10 surplus

You get the idea...growth in Civ IV is much faster if you don't factor in the advantages the Civ V AI gets.

Civ IV - growth in 2, 2 and 2 turns

Civ V - growth in 3, 4 and 6 turns!

The fact that the AI starts with a free settler and workers means it compounds these advantages over the human player.

As Civ IV has better tile yields and the yields from improvements are also better (and food for growth is lower), it allows the AI to gain a better advantage over the player vs the AI in Civ V.

Hence why the AI in Civ V has bonuses greater than that compared to Civ IV; to make up for the better ability of the Civ IV AI to compound an advantage over human players.

Hopefully this nonsense about the Civ IV AI being better is finally debunked.

The mathamatics are simply more obfuscated and difficult when it comes to Civ IV.

[red255]

the AI doesn't start with a free worker and settler unless you play on difficulties toward the top of the slider. Noble difficulty is balanced for AI and player.

a warrior in Civ 4 costs 15 and Civ 5 cost 40. with the one unit per tile thing one warrior is also useless.

not sure how this relates to complexity.

[OranguZen]

Civ 4 is sooo much better than civ5 much more potential complexity. Civ5 acts more as a boardgame/GS while civ4 has been hailed by many as revolutionary

[The Silent CivVer]

Originally posted by Orphano the Savior:

Civ 4 is sooo much better than civ5 much more potential complexity. Civ5 acts more as a boardgame/GS while civ4 has been hailed by many as revolutionary

Wow, 'hailed as revolutionary'

Who needs arguments when you can engage in mindless oratory hey?

If you would just like to make an argument how the culture mechanics/social policies/civics is more complicated in Civ IV compared to 5, that would be grand...

[The Silent CivVer]

Originally posted by red255:

the AI doesn't start with a free worker and settler unless you play on difficulties toward the top of the slider. Noble difficulty is balanced for AI and player.

a warrior in Civ 4 costs 15 and Civ 5 cost 40. with the one unit per tile thing one warrior is also useless.

not sure how this relates to complexity.

You believe 'Noble' difficulty level is challenging? The Civ V Prince AI gets very small boosts over the player...

You can only start to compare when you up the difficulty.

Just saw:

THE AI STARTS WITH A FREE WORKER ON MONARCH IN CIV IV!!! THIS IS THE LEVEL ABOVE 'NORMAL'

The AI only starts with a free worker on Immortal (2nd hardest difficulty level) in Civ V

Stop trolling and actually address the mathematical calculations I have made above.

'The Civ IV AI is better than the Civ V AI'

Such lolz based on ignorance of the maths behind the two games.

[hellkn]

Originally posted by Ordinary JOE:

3) The point about compounding still stands...a free settler translates into approximately +100% growth and/or a significant increase in hammers, as it is dependent on what tiles you work.

You are also ignorant of the differing tile yields in Civ IV vs V and differing building effects that make the differences you have stated above understandable.

Civ IV tile yields are significantly more generous than Civ V. For example, I just started a game and found 2 wheat, 1 pig and 2 clam within my city borders.

I improved the wheat immediately after building a worker (with a farm) and it gave me 6 food!!! The most food you can get from any tile in Civ V is 5 (except NW) and it takes much longer to acquire this 5 food (tech/granary etc).

Furthermore, granaries give you +50% food in your food basket after having grown...this is insane! In Civ V aqueducts (that come much later and require a large production cost gives you +40% food in your basket.

Additionally, the food growth costs for the next population point are differing.

It costs 196 food for a city to grow to size 8 in Civ IV...

In Civ V it costs 293 food!!!

This gap will only increase as the size of the city increases!

Forges give you +25% hammers in Civ IV.

A workshop only gives you +10% hammers and +2 hammers in Civ V.

Tile yields seem to be insane on Civ IV

A mined grassland hill gives you 1 food and 3 hammers, the same yields only 3 hammers on Civ V.

In light of these differences it seems completely understandable that the AI is given greater percentage advantages to growth and production in Civ V.

Pop 3 city with granary and worker having improved 3 bonus resources:

Civ IV - 18 food (wheat lake, wheat and pig) +13 needed food for pop4 and 12 surplus

Civ V - 16 food (wheat x 3 and granary) +30 needed for pop 4 and 10 surplus

Pop 4 city with granary and worker having improved 3 bonus resources and other 2 food tile:

Civ IV - 20 food (as above + 2 food tile) +14 needed food for pop5 and 12 surplus

Civ V - 18 food (as above + 2 food tile) + 40 food needed for pop5 and 10 surplus

Pop 5 city with granary and worker having improved 3 bonus resources and 2 other 2 food tile:

Civ IV - 22 food (wheat lake, wheat and pig) +15 needed food for pop6 and 12 surplus

Civ V - 16 food (wheat x 3 and granary) +51 needed for pop 6 and 10 surplus

You get the idea...growth in Civ IV is much faster if you don't factor in the advantages the Civ V AI gets.

Civ IV - growth in 2, 2 and 2 turns

Civ V - growth in 3, 4 and 6 turns!

The fact that the AI starts with a free settler and workers means it compounds these advantages over the human player.

As Civ IV has better tile yields and the yields from improvements are also better (and food for growth is lower), it allows the AI to gain a better advantage over the player vs the AI in Civ V.

Hence why the AI in Civ V has bonuses greater than that compared to Civ IV; to make up for the better ability of the Civ IV AI to compound an advantage over human players.

Hopefully this nonsense about the Civ IV AI being better is finally debunked.

The mathamatics are simply more obfuscated and difficult when it comes to Civ IV.

Fun fact: Civ IV has slavery and nationhood, civics that allow ppl to whip their pop for production or for army. Civ V hasn't civics that way anymore, and bonuses from policies are more persistent, as is the pop when you can't sacrifice them for production or for army. So this is the main reason why so much more food required on Civ V, and so much more offered on Civ IV, because most of time ppl at Civ IV will be ocasionally whipping their pop and so they will need to grow even more pop to replace those are sacrificed for production or for army.
On time, Civ V allow you to purchase army or buildings with gold from start, while Civ IV requires you to run Democracy civic to do it, not to mention those Trading Posts on Civ V not requiring turns to grow but instead techs like Economics, while on Civ IV those Cottages requires turns to grow, and there are some civics that buff them even more, plus Printing Press tech to buff more, but again, how permanent is to buy all those buildings or armies with gold when enemy can raze any city including capital, just need to capture it? At least in Civ V capitals and some Indonesian cities cannot be razed AND its not instant raze but 1 pop per turn, except those 2 pop per turn that Huns can.

[Vuyek]

I can't believe this, errr, not a smart person, is arguing that Civ V is better in any way than Civ IV.