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I should get around to upgrading to civ 3 one of these days. Seems like most of these long running game series peaked at 2 (age of empires, star control) or 3 (homm, arguably, although I still like 2 better)
I also vote for 4 as the pinnacle of the older style of Civ (stacking units, quadratic tiles), especially with various mods, many of both overhaul and rebalancing ones are great.
5 imo worth trying out as well for the newer style (non-stacking units, hexagonal tiles), again there are lots of (but much less than 4) nice mods. There is also a very well made fully free(!, no ads, nothing!) mobile version called unciv.
Props to 5 for Venice, which is just catnip for people who love building tall.
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The NQ Mod and balance stuff from the community patch has Civ5 in a good place for multiplayer.
I am the resident Civ 5 multiplayer expert, so if people are interested the links to the most recent multiplayer map/mod versions are always here.
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Having played all of them, 4 is the absolute pinnacle of the series, especially with the “beyond the sword” expansion pack. I fire up a marathon campaign on a huge terra map (which has all the civs on one Eurasia style continent but leaves at least one continent unoccupied except for Barbarians) every single year, and it’s usually a 40hr investment or so. Been playing it basically since it came out in ‘05
Yeah I also play biggest map/marathon and find it sad that so little theory has been written on that playstyle. It's the only thing that even remotely captures the vibe of Civ2 which I loved so well.
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There is (or was in the past) a BetterAI mod who made the AI a bit more capable. In CIV 5 and 6 war is a snorefest, as moving many units with the new one-unit-per-tile is cumbersome, and the AI doesn't understand tactics. Multiplayer is okayish in CIV 6 though.
There is a fan overhaul mod called Vox Populi, that for my money, makes Civ5 the best in the series. I started with Civ way back in Civ 2 and have played them all, including Civ6. I highly recommend it. Its main focus is improved AI play and i think they accomplished their goal and made it much more replay friendly. Once you "solve" civ on Diety the game gets quite boring.
I've never played above King, mostly because I value my time, but also because I'm not the best player and would be cheating and reloading every other turn. What do you mean by "solve" at Deity? what's the trick?
Pick bablyon / korea / poland. The strat is tall + science. Get 3 to 4 cities ASAP. Trade resources to get gold per turn to buy settlers. Get a few workers out, then library in each city. You should have national college in your capital before turn 100. Your early game army should be compound bow. Tech tree wise you are basically just going for the science techs (library, university, public schools), and secondarily growth techs (for more pops and therefore science). You should overtake the AI in tech around the industrial age.
The problem is that this is very boring, there is basically only one way to win. All games on Diety start out the same way, see above. There is no building wonders, no early aggression (unless cheesing), no culture or religion. All game mechanics are ignored except for science maxing. There is an optimal way to play, and its also the only way you can win on Diety. So its boring, there is no player choice, even they tech tree path and order you take is more or less decided before the game starts. Same with army: you will go archer -> compound bow -> xbow -> gatling gun and then bombers. If you don't, you will die. It also relies on the AI being dumb and the player easily cheesing them (trading early res for gold, predictable diplomacy, total inability to fight on water).
Also some starts are mega OP and can decide the game for you - salt + plains is OP, jungle + luxury a restart.
To be pedantic it’s ‘deity’.
‘Diety’ is when the difficulty is so high you’re losing weight from stress :P
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