Was it great or was it the worst thing you ever bought?

Was it great or was it the worst thing you ever bought?

I don't know if its great, but its practically free! I just had a friend I went to school with asking me if I wanted it. Why, I said? "@^**)*$", he said. I allowed I'd take it in exchange for one of my older games.

Not that I have a computer that it will run on, but one day I will and we all know it will be six months till they finish patching.

So folks, tip! If you don't have it, check with your friends cause a lot of them are going to be disgusted and willing to let their's go for next to nothing.

Well, I've only had it for one day, and took most of yesterday off, so I got 12+ hours in.

So far I like it a lot and I only have a few extremely minor and trivial things I dislike, and I'm not even sure that those aren't just my lack of knowledge as there is a lot of stuff to learn, including how the interfaces work.

I haven't had any technical issues at all - game runs smooth silk.

I won't be able to fully judge the game til I've played it for many days, but so far I'm loving it.

what do you mean how WAS civ??? it IS fun!!! :)

At the risk of sounding like a McDonald's ad: I'm Loving It.

It's perfect. Bump the thread in my sig.

Loving it. I like that you have to customize your city according to the surrounding land / resources to be successful. It's no longer a matter of improving everytile with irr or mines. The religion and civics will take some getting used to but thats why I'm playing everychance I get.

I have to say that I'm not liking it too much. The graphics and soundrack quality in the Civ games keeps going up, yet the gameplay keeps sliding down.

Example: I've been playing a Frederick/Germany game on Noble, with six other civs. I built my first city in a grassland square on a river, with lots of little animals around me, some hills, and plenty of forests. It takes me 15 turns to build my first warrior, then 18 turns (without city growth) to get a worker, 27 turns to get a Granary, then 23 turns (without city growth) to get a settler. Four turns later, I have my second city.

By this point, I have essentially built nothing beyond the absolute basics, assigned my worker to improve trade, then to build a mine on one of the hills, and explored the map with my scout. I play a little bit more, build an archer, a barracks, and a second settler in my capital, while my second city is only able to build a warrior and a worker. It's now about 300 BC, and I have three cities, three military units plus a scout, and two buildings. That's it.

Where's the early game? What about those poor civs that have early custom units? I spent all my time building a granary and a second city, when back in the days of Civ2, I could have had 3-4 cities with a couple of militia/phalanxes each, a trireme, granaries in every city, and maybe even a wonder. I'm in the time of Ancient Greece, just before the Rise of Rome and the Unification of China, after the glory days of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Harappans. And all I could do is build a few units, a granary, and a barracks.

I intend to take full advantage of the customization option that comes with the game, and drastically cut the production time of every early unit in the game. At least I've kept up with technology pretty well (when default research is at 90%, that's inevitable), but I haven't been able to build much of anything. I am playing on Epic Mode, but I had heard that that was designed for players who want a long game, which I interpreted as "more time to build things and wage war". Civ2 gave you plenty of time. Civ3 gave you a little time, assuming you didn't start in the middle of the desert. So far, Civ4 is 60% scouting and 30% research. I couldn't have waged an early war if I had tried!

Very disappointed, I hate to say (I'm a Civ fanatic going back to its initial SNES release). If the customization works out, then that's great, but it reveals a huge flaw in how the game was initially released - you need an early game too! Too much of Civ3 was racing to Knights, then to Cavalry, then to Armor, then to Modern Armor. That was war, unfortunately. The Ancient World, and the first 50-100 turns of gameplay have been shafted even more in this one. And I'm not pleased to say that.

I'm not going to swear off Sid and his games forever, but the Civ series has lost an awful lot in the last decade. I could go on, but I think this post is long enough already.