Lots of things are enormous chores in running an empire. They took out the tax allocation system too and I have never heard anyone complain about that, and yet budgeting priority is supposed to be an enormous chore.
Moving armies across the ocean is a fairly significant risk in Civ V because of the vulnerability of embarked armies; your fancy tank is going straight to the bottom if it has the misfortune of running into a warship. Transport ships in Civ I-IV were not very strong, but they were reasonably mobile and could zip from safe point to safe point if you used them right. In Civ V you needn’t build transport ships but your embarked armies are much slower and more vulnerable. So in effect, the “chore” aspect is that more emphasis is placed on establishing naval superiority in the contested area - which is quite consistent with the history of amphibious operations, actually.
It also makes warships, which are very expensive to build, more valuable in that they present an extant peril to countries that risk embarking troops - especially destroyers, which can cross huge swaths of ocean in one turn to sink an embarked unit. Unopposed a couple of destroyers can basically shut down a country’s ability to move units across water, even short distances. In broad strokes that’s quite correct in application; it’s impossible to imagine the Allies effectively launching amphibious operations like Operations Torch or Overlord if the Germans could offer comparable naval strength in resistance.
Playing Civ 5, I find oceans ARE a pretty secure border simply because I know the mechanic of naval units is such that if I have a few I can wipe out an enemy army and inflict a huge cost on them more or less without any loss to myself, except for the initial construction cost of the warships (or later airplanes.) If I don’t have the ability to defend my coastline, well, that’s how it rolls; the American Indians couldn’t stop the Europeans from landing so things went poorly from there. If I choose not to defend my coastline with a navy despite knowing a belligerent power with embarking abilities is there, well, I’m a doofus and I get what I deserve.
they got rid of espionage or changed it so ya couldn’t buy a city …oh they nerfed some of the great wonders …3 had mini wonders you could build in every town
Civ V naval transport is more realistic than the SoD from Civ IV. In V, you have to fight your way onshore if your enemy is defending their coast line. In IV they won’t have units on the coast so you can just land and assemble your army.
I hope they make some tweaks to the National Borders mechanic too - I love the idea, but you end up with bizarre situations where you’ve got a tiny gap between City A’s borders and City B’s borders, and suddenly you’ve got foreign units wandering around there (even if you don’t have a military access treaty with them), so you have to maintain a couple of military units to “keep out” foreign units from what is, realistically, part of your country.
Civ 3 had a solution to that: If a tile wasn’t otherwise claimed, and it had two tiles of the same nation on opposite sides, then the borders of that nation expanded to include it.
I remember that, but I’ve had issues in IV & V with distances of maybe two tiles, or unclaimed territory that’s in the middle of an area which is claimed by someone.
It’s not game-ruining stuff, just something I’d like to see sorted out at some point.
I’ve picked up Civ V BNW again recently and by playing that I’m concerned about the changes to the cities. In BNW, the AI is just awful at choosing city locations. Now, they have to pick the city location and locations for the districts within it? I don’t have much confidence that they will be able to get that right.