Anybody else thought so? I understand that must of you who hang out here play the game, so you must have liked it enough to play it, but there must be things about the game that annoy you?

Ive heard from more than a few fans that they dont like the new game (on the Off Topic section of this forum), now I know what they meant.

And I had such high hopes for this game... :(
I think the combat system is a joke, also there are too many choices for troops (never thought id say that) and way too many choices for city buildings and wonders.

why too many is a bad thing, well for one it might scare off someone who is new to the game, having to read about all those diffrent buildings and then figuring out which one is the best for this particular city, isnt exactly fun.

1 thing I did like about the game was the promotion thing.

PS. I have no interest in having a flame war with people who like this game, If you like Civ 4, then great, thats your opinion.

I think the variety in units and buildings leads to the potential to specialize, which adds character to the game.

Also, what did you think about it forcing you to choose which National Wonders to combine? I thought this added another dimension of thought and planning. Add to that the fact that specialists are (unlike Civ III) actually useful this time, cities have much more potential to be specialized. You've posted almost 5000 times... you know what you're talking about. What did you think of these additions?

One thing I didn't like was the lack of a throne room/palace to build... I mean that would take all of a week for one person to put together... what gives there? Also, I was a little disappointed at the recurring lack of "flavour units" a la Rise and Rule, but I guess that would have driven costs up.

Yes, there are people who think that Civ4 was a disappointment, although the vast majority doesn't think that way. Still, that doesn't invalidate your own, personal disappointment.

I'm a bit surprised by the reasons you gave though. They are ...

1. "combat system is a joke". Not much I can say about that as you don't give any reason why you think so.

2. "too many choices for troops". That's honestly the first time that I ever heard that complaint. Actually, those people that were disappointed often named a *lack* of troop choices as a reason. For example, some people miss paratroopers or alpines from Civ2. So your complaint actually runs contrary not only to the opinion of the people who like the game, but even more so to the opinion of many people who were disappointed. Which is a bit strange. But to each his own, I guess. :)

3. "too many choices for buildings and wonders" - again, I never heard that complaint before. For me, the game would feel bland if I had to do the same building routine in every city.

To me, it seems that you just got overwhelmed by Cv4's feature richness. I suggest to keep playing, the better you learn the game (which may take a while), the more you can appreciate the many possibilities instead of feeling overwhelmed. That is, unless your opinion is already so fixed that you'd only focus on bad points in further playing, in that case it'd probably be best to just let the game rest a while and try it again later.

Another possibility might be to look for a "Civ light" mod, but I doubt that something like this exists ... there hasn't been much need for it, or interest in such an endeavour, at least not to my knowledge.

Honestly those are some strange complaints, all the things you've listed I view as strong points of the game or things we need more of. Civ does a great job trying to make the game "new user" friendly, if you find the diversity too overwhelming, use the governers, automate your workers and build what they recommend. It won't get you by on noble and above most likely, but on lower difficulty levels you can just cruise along and focus on whatever you feel is more fun for you, leaving the complexity for later when you feel ready to play around with it.

From what you've said though I'm not certain your problem is so much with Civ as it is with the genre itself, in which case I'd suggest playing something else entirely. I'm not a big fan of sports games, but I'd never complain about them because I know the reason I don't like them is because... they're sports games, no fixing that. :p

And I had such high hopes for this game... :(
I think the combat system is a joke, also there are too many choices for troops (never thought id say that) and way too many choices for city buildings and wonders.

This is not true compared to other Civ games, which pretty much had an equal number or more. If anything, Civ is short on different kinds of troops. If there were only 1 or 2 types, then the game would get boring fast, and wouldn't be competitive.

why too many is a bad thing, well for one it might scare off someone who is new to the game, having to read about all those diffrent buildings and then figuring out which one is the best for this particular city, isnt exactly fun.

If you are the type who hates the boring building stuff, then have you tried world buildering all of the buildings in before playing. That way, they're already there, and you can concentrate on conquering everybody else.
1 thing I did like about the game was the promotion thing.

Civ IV is all about learning every last detail that could give you an advantage to out tech and whoop your enemy. Buildings give the feel of needing to walk before you can crawl. Basically, without an infrastructure, your civ is doomed.

PS. I have no interest in having a flame war with people who like this game, If you like Civ 4, then great, thats your opinion.


Most people here will be civil. It is my opinion, however, that Civ IV is probably not the game for you. It requires a certain playing style that turns many people off, while many others love it. It's a love-hate sort of thing. I'm sorry to hear that you were dissappointed, but did you perhaps try to settle into the game more? If that doesn't work, then you will know that it's time to play something else.

PS. I have no interest in having a flame war with people who like this game, If you like Civ 4, then great, thats your opinion.



So, what then is the point behind your posting?

The city specialization is a huge learning curve for me. I am still trying to get the hang of creating a cottage powerhouse, hammer production center and great person farm. Choosing the city site followed by the World and National wonders to place in each. Then which buildings to prioritize to maximize efficiency and output.

I agree that the new choices from CIV are daunting but nothing that cant be over come with trial and error.

i like this game i see where your coming from.but i think warlords was more of dissapointment then civ4.ive never played any other civ

Combat system really is a joke. It's the 21st century now and Civ IV still uses that archaic system from Civ I.

Why is the rest of the game really intricate and complicated, but the combat system is simple and abstract? Are the developers afraid of changing it? Are they anti-war and would rather focus on intricate civics? Do they think the AI wouldn't be able to handle an intricate combat system?

It can't be because players don't want the game to get complicated. Civ is already one of the most complicated games there is. It can't be because it will scare away new players. In fact I think it will draw more players if the combat system was intricate. I think potential players are scared away because combat is too simple, yet the rest of the game is complicated. Look at the huge fan base the Total War series has!

War has shaped history like no other event has. Yet in Civ IV it's STILL an afterthought. By now the developers could have developed a nice intricate combat system that would let us use real strategy and tactics, to coincide with our strategies in city planning and civics.

City planning and civilization-management is intricate and keeps getting more intricate (and better). And it works beautifully. Why can't they develop a combat system that's just as intricate? It's like they're moving forward and yet purposely staying behind. It's like they want to deny the importance of war in human history and make players focus on history's civics and management. I personally think they can accomplish both an intricate civ management system and an intricate combat sytem , and it would make for the single greatest game ever made. I just hope they aren't afraid to "break the mold" started by Civ I and create an all-new mold. It's 2007; it's time for the Civ series to reach it's full potential.

I'd say definitely sift through some mods before you give up on the game, if nothing else, this game outshines any of the previous civ games by far in its moddability. Heck, they even gave us the ability to rewrite the game engine itself as we see fit.

Fall from Heaven II completely revitalized the game in my opinion. Of course, if you play because you're a history buff and like that aspect of Civ, it's not for you. But FfH adds magic, increasing the complexity of the combat system (I assume the loss of a separate offense/defense number is what you consider a joke), has an awesome selection of units that is not overwhelming in that you only have to chose between two choices at almost any given upgrade oportunity, and while it has plenty of buildings to satisfy the builders out there, they don't suffer from the "replacement building every age" syndrome that civ4 seems to have in many lines.

However, in response to your original complaints about "vanilla civ":

1. combat system - yes, the new combat system is simpler, but promotions allow for far more customization than the old static combat system did.

2. troop and building choices - civ 4, more than any of the previous games in the series, is about strategy. In the same way that chess is more strategic than checkers, civ 4 is more strategic than its predecessors. This would be impossible without a wider variety of units and buildings to cause more strategic decision points throughout the game. This causes higher level gamers to have to be even more focused from the beginning in how they plan to win the game, with many options for adaptation if a given game requires it. However, the game also allows more automization than any of the previous games, meaning that on lower levels you can automate those choices and play more with the parts you enjoy.

These are really odd complaints. I'm going to have to agree with most people's responses and opine that perhaps this type of game isn't your cup of tea.

So, what then is the point behind your posting?

its fairly straight forward, read my original post. Im asking others if theyre as disappointed with the game as I am. and if not, is there anything about the game they dont like.

well, I have been playing civilization since my little brother showed me civilization (the first game) cant remember exactly when, probably in the mid 90s, it was a few years before the second one came out.

I spent all night tonight playing civ 2, which i think still is the best game in the series, and civ 3 is a close second.

I think there was nothing wrong with the combat system at all, and totally abandoning the old system for this new game of Rock, Paper, Scissors that is the current system was a big misstake. also I liked the civ3 artillery system alot.

there was nothing wrong with the old system, so why fix it if its not broken?

and yeah I would learn all the new stuff, the many many new city and terrain improvements, all the new wonders etc if I played the game more than 2 days but I dont see myself getting over the new combat system.

but its still not a good idea to make any game to complicated, I shouldnt have to study for hours to play a game good.

I am very dissapointed of promoting system. In fact it is simply the same as it was in Civ3, cause you rarely select other promotion than Combat. The only interesting promotion is Comando. City Raider, City Garisson and Medic are useful, but the whole thing could be better resolved.

P.S. Have I ever mentioned that Drill is just crab. Combat I gives better results than Drill 1 + Drill2. The last ones are efficient only when units are wounded, but these are rare cases
And please remove Woodsman ... it is only valuable for scouts

Isn't the advantage to drill that if you do win, you are more likely to be uninjured, like less chance of winning overall but better chance of winning unscathed (meaning perhaps a better chance of winning two combats in a row).

Don't flame with statistics, but this may be the rationale behind Drill, and they work very nicely on the defence when terrain bonuses are involved.

I am very dissapointed of promoting system. In fact it is simply the same as it was in Civ3, cause you rarely select other promotion than Combat. The only interesting promotion is Comando. City Raider, City Garisson and Medic are useful, but the whole thing could be better resolved.

P.S. Have I ever mentioned that Drill is just crab. Combat I gives better results than Drill 1 + Drill2. The last ones are efficient only when units are wounded, but these are rare cases
And please remove Woodsman ... it is only valuable for scouts

Well, you may rarely pick things other than Combat, but I've gotten use out of things like Shock, Cover, March, Blitz, Amphibious, Drill, Accuracy (or whatever the +10% city bombard is), Woodsman, and the hill defense one as well. Yeah, Combat's going to help more all the time, but that specialized 25-50% bonus is going to help you when you can use that bonus, and then it's 15-40% better than straight Combat. And I find it highly doubtful that either you or I speak for everyone, but I bet there will be people chiming in to say that they use specialized upgrades as well.

I admit I've never selected the 25% bonus against siege weapons -- wait, no, I have, because unless my brain stopped working that works against Machine Guns. Does it work against Machine Guns? I haven't played to the Modern Age in my current game, and I only play about twice a week with a friend.

I spent all night tonight playing civ 2, which i think still is the best game in the series, and civ 3 is a close second.

I don't understand how you can combine a) favouring Civ2 over the other games and b) claiming that Civ4 has too many units to choose from. Don't you see a contradiction there? Where are the Alpines, AEGIS, Cruise Missiles, Crusaders, Dragoons, Fanatics, Partisans, Paratroopers, Diplomats, or Caravans in Civ4? I honestly don't see your point.

I think there was nothing wrong with the combat system at all, and totally abandoning the old system for this new game of Rock, Paper, Scissors that is the current system was a big misstake. also I liked the civ3 artillery system alot.

Personally, I disliked the Civ3 artillery system a lot. It made the game too easy. There was little challenge left once you figured out how to use artillery efficiently. Of course, if you liked it that way, then Civ4 artillery won't be your cup of tea.

there was nothing wrong with the old system, so why fix it if its not broken?

If that was the modus operandi of Firaxis / Sid Meier, then Civ2 (the game that you prefer) wouldn't ever have been designed the way it was- There ws nothing wrong with the top-down display of Civ1, why change it? There was nothing wrong with the way wonders were announced, why change it into playing movies? There was nothing wrong with attacks from sea being difficult, why introduce marines?

Personally, I'm glad that Firaxis tries to improve even those aspects of the game that are *not* broken.

and yeah I would learn all the new stuff, the many many new city and terrain improvements, all the new wonders etc if I played the game more than 2 days but I dont see myself getting over the new combat system.

Let me put it this way ... if 2 days of playing were enough for you to determine that you can never enjoy this game, then it's probably better to just sell it and return to the games you know.

I think you've fallen into the "It's not the same as the game I love" trap and aren't able to climb out. In this situation, it might actually be better to just give up and return to the games you know. Or perhaps shelf it for the time being and return when you're a bit more open-minded with regards to changes.

but its still not a good idea to make any game to complicated, I shouldnt have to study for hours to play a game good.

Well, so I guess games like chess and Go shouldn't have been made then? Actually, the same is true for Civ1. The amount of new things to learn in Civ1 was *far* greater than for any other game of the seires, provided you already knew Civ1. Civ1 required a *lot* of time to get it right. It just had a really lousy AI, so that players could play the game without understanding it well, and still beat the higher difficulty levels. If Firaxis followed your supposed standards, then Civ1 should have never been made.

Btw, on which difficulty level did you play Civ4?

Personally, I appreciate the complexity of Civ4. I've played this game for months now and there are still things that I have never done, and still strategies that I have yet to learn (specialist exonomy for example). This is what keeps the game fresh. I wouldn't *want* it dumbed down to a level of simplicity that I can grasp the whole game on the first two days. Such a game would become boring pretty fast. Civ4 hasn't become boring for me yet, because of its complexity.

But as I said, complexity isn't everyone's cup of tea. It doesn't seem to be yours, so you're probably actually better off playing other games.

P.S. Have I ever mentioned that Drill is just crab. Combat I gives better results than Drill 1 + Drill2. The last ones are efficient only when units are wounded, but these are rare cases
And please remove Woodsman ... it is only valuable for scouts

Drill is extremely powerful when you're in the tech lead. It will allow you to win battle after battle without having to pause to heal your units. If you're the military tech leader and want to blitzkrieg a neighbor or two, nothing beats Drill IV. As with many of Civ4's options, the key is to know when to use it.

"Combat" is actually the weakest promotion, it's the one i choose when I don't have a clear concept of my further strategy yet. Once I know what I want to do, other promotions are always more effective.

I agree with you that woodsman is weak. I wouldn't remove it, but I'd like to have it tweaked to make it more useful.

I found woodsman to be a one out of a stack of ten kind of promotin... in case your stack gets attacked while in the woods! In that case, you are going to absorb 2-4 of anything with one musketman. If he survives, he'll be even more lethal (although woodsman II is probably overkill... my medics sometimes pick this one up).

I am very dissapointed of promoting system. In fact it is simply the same as it was in Civ3, cause you rarely select other promotion than Combat. The only interesting promotion is Comando. City Raider, City Garisson and Medic are useful, but the whole thing could be better resolved.As with many things about this game, once you learn how to use something, you stop seeing them as "useless." While some promotions are more specialized than others, I can't think of a single promotion that I haven't found useful from time to time.

P.S. Have I ever mentioned that Drill is just crab. Combat I gives better results than Drill 1 + Drill2. The last ones are efficient only when units are wounded, but these are rare cases.Drill promotions work best when you have an advantage over your enemy, such as when you have a tech lead over your opponent, or if they're wounded. They allow your unit to attack without being attacked in turn, which means you take less damage... which in turn means that you need to heal less often... which in turn means you can press the attack faster.

A City Raider III, Drill IV trebuchet is a truly beautiful thing to watch...

And please remove Woodsman ... it is only valuable for scoutsTwo Woodsmen II archers and a medic warrior once kept Louis from overrunning my empire while I was paying through the nose to Elizabeth for iron to upgrade a few warriors, and desperately researching construction to take the war to him. They reached level 7 (Getting Guerrilla II and Drill II in the process) in Louis' attempts to dislodge them from the wooded hill right beside his southern most city, which was just inside my cultural borders. (My western-most city was in a culture war with that city over the only horse resource nearby, and I'd been winning.)

Woodsman and Guerrilla may not be useful all the time, but they do shine when they can be used. If I had gone with Combat promotions, then they probably would've died when Louis' assault was at it's fiercest. +20% is nowhere near as strong as +50%, and +40% isn't as good as +100%, after all.

Shock, Cover, Formation, Pinch are useful but work very similar to Combat.

Example: Pinch vs Gun,Gun,Archery,Melee,Mounted,Gun.

... it's only improved Combat

Example 2: Pikeman (C 2 + Formation) vs Knight (Combat 2)
I don't know the exact formula, but you can check it manually.
Pikeman attacking knight is not the same as knight attacking pikeman. In the second case Formation gives similar effect to Combat. This odd thing was observed in Civ4 Vanilla with 1.61 I think.

Flanking (especially improved in expansion) are useful and very interesting, but these units work similar to siege weapons ... they weaken the defenders. Furthermore when I see the stack of units (my units) f.e. (cavalry):

F 2, F 2, C 1 + Pinch, F 2, F 2, C 1 + Pinch

then I see only 4 units, cause any F 2 unit is for me half an ordinary unit, cause the whole stack inflicts less damage.

My general point is that there are to few interesting promotions (like comando).

For example I would add promotion that allows you to choose the defending unit from enemy stack. I figured this out in 5 minutes, so I really don't understand why the creators are so lazy.

P.S. Medic is useless. It only spoils valuable units. Let's simply increase the healing effect on the whole map.

its fairly straight forward, read my original post. Im asking others if theyre as disappointed with the game as I am. and if not, is there anything about the game they dont like.

well, I have been playing civilization since my little brother showed me civilization (the first game) cant remember exactly when, probably in the mid 90s, it was a few years before the second one came out.

I spent all night tonight playing civ 2, which i think still is the best game in the series, and civ 3 is a close second.

I think there was nothing wrong with the combat system at all, and totally abandoning the old system for this new game of Rock, Paper, Scissors that is the current system was a big misstake. also I liked the civ3 artillery system alot.

there was nothing wrong with the old system, so why fix it if its not broken?

and yeah I would learn all the new stuff, the many many new city and terrain improvements, all the new wonders etc if I played the game more than 2 days but I dont see myself getting over the new combat system.

but its still not a good idea to make any game to complicated, I shouldnt have to study for hours to play a game good.

All I can do is shake my head at the OP and wonder along with some of the other people here, "Why come here and post this negative crap?"

You only played the game for two days - you don't think there's any chance that two days isn't long enough for a fair evaluation, do you? And you don't feel you should 'have to study for hours to play a game good'? You DO have to study for hours to 'write English good'. Perhaps your free time would be better spent in that area.

You don't like the game and you come to a fansite to tell us that? And let me get this straight, you're NOT trying to start a flame fest? Oh OK, sure, I believe that.

For your reference:

# 1 - We don't care. You don't like it? Don't play it. You know, you can still play Civ I, II, or III. Have a nice life.

Warned - flaming.

# 2 - See # 1.

In case you hadn't noticed, he's been at this particular fan site a lot longer than you have...

If the OP wants opinions of drawbacks and such I'll give him these

Amazon

Yahoo



There ya go dig in!

I glanced through some of these before and its about 6 out of ten who have some nasty bit to say about Civ4. Id say out of these 200 or so the majority liked the early versions better. Most clamoured for the ways of CIv3 to return. Many say the mechanics are a hassle, slowdowns were inevitablend so on .

ANyway theres plenty of complaints there so you won't have to go hammering here looking for critism from people who are here cuz they love this game fanaticly(majorty) :)

I like this game very much, and have poured many hours of blood, sweat, and tears into it. So shoot me, I'm a rabid fan of Civ IV and will jump to it's defense.

relax man I just shot out some links. Im happy you support the franchise. Ive felt your way about Civ3 sometimes. Im always willing to go out on a limb in its defence. If the modders wern't so good Id have ran out of ammo by now. Later

I don't understand how you can combine a) favouring Civ2 over the other games and b) claiming that Civ4 has too many units to choose from. Don't you see a contradiction there? Where are the Alpines, AEGIS, Cruise Missiles, Crusaders, Dragoons, Fanatics, Partisans, Paratroopers, Diplomats, or Caravans in Civ4? I honestly don't see your point.

the difference is alpines, aegis, Cruise Missiles, Crusaders, Fanatics, Partisans, Paratroopers, Diplomats and Caravans each do something that no other unit can do. in civ 4 i had to choose between a good 20 different units or so in the pre-gun powder era (I have warlords expansion too), and they all did the same thing, except for cavalry units that had the 2 movement.




Personally, I disliked the Civ3 artillery system a lot. It made the game too easy. There was little challenge left once you figured out how to use artillery efficiently. Of course, if you liked it that way, then Civ4 artillery won't be your cup of tea.

really? what difficulty did you play civ 3 on?



If that was the modus operandi of Firaxis / Sid Meier, then Civ2 (the game that you prefer) wouldn't ever have been designed the way it was- There ws nothing wrong with the top-down display of Civ1, why change it? There was nothing wrong with the way wonders were announced, why change it into playing movies? There was nothing wrong with attacks from sea being difficult, why introduce marines?

Personally, I'm glad that Firaxis tries to improve even those aspects of the game that are *not* broken.

the only change was in the way the display looked, there was no change in how the map worked, all they did was to doll it up and im all for it.

the wonders being announced? again very superficial change.



Let me put it this way ... if 2 days of playing were enough for you to determine that you can never enjoy this game, then it's probably better to just sell it and return to the games you know.

I think you've fallen into the "It's not the same as the game I love" trap and aren't able to climb out. In this situation, it might actually be better to just give up and return to the games you know. Or perhaps shelf it for the time being and return when you're a bit more open-minded with regards to changes.

you think? thank you for the advice. :lol:



Well, so I guess games like chess and Go shouldn't have been made then? Actually, the same is true for Civ1. The amount of new things to learn in Civ1 was *far* greater than for any other game of the seires, provided you already knew Civ1. Civ1 required a *lot* of time to get it right. It just had a really lousy AI, so that players could play the game without understanding it well, and still beat the higher difficulty levels. If Firaxis followed your supposed standards, then Civ1 should have never been made.

Btw, on which difficulty level did you play Civ4?

chess, really easy to learn how to play, not comparable with civ 4 (chess, 7 types of units, no terrain, no production i could go on, civ 4 around 80 types of units). as they say, it takes a few minutes to learn but a life time to master. you cant say the same thing for CIV4. which was my point to begin with actually. :goodjob:

go, never played it. if civ1 is really easy, and my "supposed standards" is not to over complicate games, then how do you exactly come to the conclusion that "then Civ1 should have never been made" exactly?

never mind, dont really wanna know.

Personally, I appreciate the complexity of Civ4. I've played this game for months now and there are still things that I have never done, and still strategies that I have yet to learn (specialist exonomy for example). This is what keeps the game fresh. I wouldn't *want* it dumbed down to a level of simplicity that I can grasp the whole game on the first two days. Such a game would become boring pretty fast. Civ4 hasn't become boring for me yet, because of its complexity.

But as I said, complexity isn't everyone's cup of tea. It doesn't seem to be yours, so you're probably actually better off playing other games.

im not saying they should "dumb it down" as you put it, it dosent really take a genius to study all the different kinds of new units and city/terrain improvements, dose it? it just takes someone with more time than i have.

Im sure with this many units, there are many of them nobody ever uses (besides maybe building 1 or 2 of each just for the heck of it)

which difficulty level, I think prince or something, one of the easier ones, I wanted mostly to check the game out and learn it properly first.
I killed 2 neighbouring civs before i stopped playing, I think I had just discovered whatever it is that enables the making of grenadiers.



I have obviously stirred up all kinds of emotions with this thread, but hey its just a game fellas. go easy on the thinly veiled "youre a dumbass cause you dont like the game i like" insults.

I know many of you didnt go that route, Im talking to the ones that did. or were done talking.

If the OP wants opinions of drawbacks and such I'll give him these

Amazon

Yahoo



There ya go dig in!

I glanced through some of these before and its about 6 out of ten who have some nasty bit to say about Civ4. Id say out of these 200 or so the majority liked the early versions better. Most clamoured for the ways of CIv3 to return. Many say the mechanics are a hassle, slowdowns were inevitablend so on .

ANyway theres plenty of complaints there so you won't have to go hammering here looking for critism from people who are here cuz they love this game fanaticly(majorty) :)

thanks for that link.

I think I should have started this thread in the off topic section, I might ask a mod to move it there, cause its pretty obvious that most people here are the ones that play the game so theyre the ones that liked it.

Last post on this thread. You obviously came here with the intention of stirring up trouble. And I'm sure you're now wallowing happily in it. Common theme in and among your 4000+ posts? Or just a slow day at work?

Enjoy, I'm out.

All I can do is shake my head at the OP and wonder along with some of the other people here, "Why come here and post this negative crap?"

You only played the game for two days - you don't think there's any chance that two days isn't long enough for a fair evaluation, do you? And you don't feel you should 'have to study for hours to play a game good'? You DO have to study for hours to 'write English good'. Perhaps your free time would be better spent in that area.

You don't like the game and you come to a fansite to tell us that? And let me get this straight, you're NOT trying to start a flame fest? Oh OK, sure, I believe that.

For your reference:

# 1 - We don't care. You don't like it? Don't play it. You know, you can still play Civ I, II, or III. Have a nice life.

# 2 - See # 1.

Reported for trolling. :)

If the OP wants opinions of drawbacks and such I'll give him these

Amazon

Yahoo

Most of these kind of reviews are on the extremes; either 1 star or 5 star. I notice this same thing about books especially those about hot topics. I find most of them completely useless.

I like this game very much, and have poured many hours of blood, sweat, and tears into it. So shoot me, I'm a rabid fan of Civ IV and will jump to it's defense.



just saw this post.

Gee weez that sounds painful... :lol:

blood, sweat, and tears huh? thats usually what uber athletes say was the price of their achivements. to think that you couldve been the new Mike Tyson instead of "really good at Civ 4"!



Games are supposed to be fun, thats why most people play them. Its not supposed to make you rabid or to cost you "blood, sweat, and tears".
I can kinda relate, I have played many many hours of civ 2, of course Im not rabid about it, I realize its a game and thats all it is.

theres a real world outside of the world of computer games, and I would never insult anyone in it over any game.

Combat system really is a joke. It's the 21st century now and Civ IV still uses that archaic system from Civ I.......

...............
War has shaped history like no other event has. Yet in Civ IV it's STILL an afterthought. By now the developers could have developed a nice intricate combat system that would let us use real strategy and tactics, to coincide with our strategies in city planning and civics............
..........
I just hope they aren't afraid to "break the mold" started by Civ I and create an all-new mold. It's 2007; it's time for the Civ series to reach it's full potential.

I agree with your opinions about the lack of strategy and tactics. In Civ 4 Warlords, that is left up to the "Great Generals" who do our thinking for us.
It would add a new dimension to this great game to include a combat system which allows "micro-management" for those who wish it while accomodating those who wish to have their combat automated as an alternative.

Interesting thread....

I use combat promotions only as needed to unlock other promotions. I think the promotion system is fine, and end up specializing a number of units to different tasks using it. And yes, Drill is useful. Very useful.

As with many things about this game, once you learn how to use something, you stop seeing them as "useless." While some promotions are more specialized than others, I can't think of a single promotion that I haven't found useful from time to time...........

..........
Woodsman and Guerrilla may not be useful all the time, but they do shine when they can be used..........

As I play Civ 4 more and more, currently at "Noble" level, I find different situations that "suggest" using a variety of the promotion options. I am a big fan of the Civ series. I spent way too many hours playing Civ 2 and had my most memorable game of Civ playing Civ 2 until just yesterday when a series of Civ 4 events led up to a very addicting and exciting game which included all aspects of diplomacy, trade, military, espionage, manipulation of my allies, etc. etc. I ended up winning a Time victory against opponents who were well on their way to a Space Race victory. I look forward to many more games as exciting as this one was.

I also look forward to learning more about the intricacies within this many faceted game.
I do agree though, that the combat system could be made a bit more intricate for fans of intricacy while leaving an option open to automate combat to "paper-scissors-rock" for those who wish to focus on other aspects of the game.

Interesting thread...

my gripe has nothing to do with combat systems but with the overall soul of the game. The game would have been better if it brought back a more complex version of the throne room/palace and even the advisors who gave you advice/warnings every couple of turns.....it really made me feel like I was ruling an empire back then....now it just feels like a bunch of cities.

one more thing...i have gotten flamed for this before, but i really despise the fact that you can't right of passage abuse the AI...in my opinion they could have improved it (and not removed it completely) by having the AI warn you to remove your troops once it feels threatened....that would make more sense and be more 'real' than just having your units teleport back to your borders once you have declared war

and also....having the ai civs go for other victories other than space race

I find it odd that soeone thinks that there are too many units in the game. As it is I am finally starting my mod that is adding another handful of units into the first two eras, then plenty more into the later game.

I too find the promotion system entirely fouled up. Once I get through reworking the tech tree I plan on revitalizing the promotion tree. Anyone notice that the classical era may as well not even exist? You can skip an ENTIRE era if you research Theology after Priesthood. You should never be able to skip an era. That really bugs me personally. The promotions really need to be reworked and I am actually shocked that so many units are excluded from woodsman and Geurrilla. I don't see why a axeman or any other unit should be excluded from these promotions. It is tactical field combat! Terrain is a very important part of strategic planning and should play a bigger role IMO.

I too think that there are too many things to build in the cities that don't matter as well. I honestly think war was skimped in this version. Even warlords offered nothing new except trebuchets and GGs. And really, considering GP were in the original the GG should have been brought in then. I plan on removing some things from my mod like the Obelisk. I don't even get why they put that thing in. I have also considering amplifying it to +2 :culture: instead of the measly +1. Maybe then it will be worth building. But honestly I am considering just removing it and changing the value of Stonehenge to something a bit more useful.

I too miss the artillery in 3 and I thought I saw a mod a few months back of someone that was reintroducing the civ 3 system into 4. But I may be wrong, I don't remember the mod name. I also find that air and navy were actually left out of the combat system. Anyways, I would check out the mods section if I was you Jaws. There are some really good mods that have been made to actually give the game a dash of real flavor. I am honestly somewhat surprised Warlords didn't add that much flavor to the game. I figured with the title they would release more units and play with the navy and air everyone has been complaining about since the game came out. But it seems warlords offers very little IMO. Even vassal states seem broken to me. I am just going to mod in more diplomatic options then one day when I find warlords for 10 bucks I will probably either mod out vassals or completely rework the values to work more like real vassals instead of 'forfeight' vassals.

Anyways, there is some stuff that tick me off about it. :)

and also....having the ai civs go for other victories other than space race

Definatley.

I know I still enjoy Civ. I'm not bashing the game or coming here just to complain. I just think Civ can be so much more than it currently is.

We already have a great, intricate city management and planning system. Why not combat? It would make this great game the greatest game ever.

Civ 4 - Huge Disappointment

What gets me is that you waited over a year to express your opinion.

I like the game and have been playing it ever since it was released in October of 2005.

I am very dissapointed of promoting system. In fact it is simply the same as it was in Civ3, cause you rarely select other promotion than Combat. The only interesting promotion is Comando. City Raider, City Garisson and Medic are useful, but the whole thing could be better resolved.

P.S. Have I ever mentioned that Drill is just crab. Combat I gives better results than Drill 1 + Drill2. The last ones are efficient only when units are wounded, but these are rare cases
And please remove Woodsman ... it is only valuable for scouts

Woodsman is fine early game. Drill IS AWESOME. Especially with barrage. Drill should be used with units that you know HAVE a strength advantage. It's basically a free attack with the possibility of leaving you unscathed.

As for the combat system, Promotions are a let down, I love some of them but some of the promotions have not been well thought out. I enjoy the removal of separate defense and offensive stats. It only makes sense, a weakened enemy will not fight as hard as when he is fresh. You think after a real person takes a few shots he'll fight at the same capability as when he's fully rested? The old combat system didn't take battle fatigue into account.

It could be better this is true, but I would argue it's an improvement nonetheless.

Most of these kind of reviews are on the extremes; either 1 star or 5 star. I notice this same thing about books especially those about hot topics. I find most of them completely useless.

Comon Smiddy for a guy who says he gets 15 minutes waits on a Civ3 game but on the same computer plays Civ4 like a dream, whos posting on a CIv"fanatic' site and never missed a chance to take a stab at someone who tells the truth in their view, on Civ4's lack luster qualitys, don't you think your the one whos got more of the extreme view?

The fact you actually took the time to try an invalidate 200 other's comments cause they didn't agree with you as a whole is a big indicater your more the less credible type when it comes to an un bias opinion.

Take care man

ta jones...as always attacking someone

Me been fun of civ serials, belive that Civ4 is a big step forward in Civ game serials.
Especially compare wth Civ3, which was pretty bad from cronological point of view.Me been fun of Civ serials, believe that Civ4 is a big step forward in Civ game serials.
Especially compare with Civ3, which was pretty bad from chronological point of view.

Civ4 Firaxis manage to achieve a good balance between vertical and horizontal development, balance between Civilizations why still have very good variety and flavor to them.

AI cheating less then in any other Civ games. There are thinks that are not perfect, nothing ever is. But compare to any previous game of Civ or any other somewhat similar strategic games Civ4 is the most intellectually rich one.

ta jones...as always attacking someone

I think you were groping with how to say "Poor T.A, always having to defend what he posts", and it just came out wrong. ;)

I know I still enjoy Civ. I'm not bashing the game or coming here just to complain. I just think Civ can be so much more than it currently is.

We already have a great, intricate city management and planning system. Why not combat? It would make this great game the greatest game ever.

Only you can decide if the game is good or not, no one else. If you feel like complaining, complain to your hearts content.

The reason Im disappointed is that I had such huge hopes, Because I like the civ series so much.
If it was a game Ive never heard of before, Im sure I wouldnt think twice about it.

What gets me is that you waited over a year to express your opinion.

I like the game and have been playing it ever since it was released in October of 2005.

I got the game about a month ago and didnt play until last weekend. So what?

The reason Im disappointed is that I had such huge hopes, Because I like the civ series so much.
If it was a game Ive never heard of before, Im sure I wouldnt think twice about it.
Yeah I was dissappointed too. For me it seemed that 2 was twice as good as 1. Then 3 was twice as good as 2. Then there was 4, about half as good as 3. :( So really only equal to 2 but better than 1. But 1 was DOS so that isnt too hard to beat :p

The moddability of the game really helps... sorta. If you know what you are doing which I don't. :lol: I think threads like this are a good thing. It helps those of us who are frustrated to vent a little bit. :)

More choices in units and buildings = more flexibility. I can actually win the game in several different ways. I dont just spam one single unit like howitzers in civ 2.

The units and buildings arent any more difficult to learn then in previous games. Learning things in this game doesnt take anymore time then a rpg (especially mmo), or a lot of other strategy games (sim city comes to mind). The game concepts has certainly gotten more complex but you dont need to micromanage to do well. We have several younger players that do well and pick up the ideas quicker then some adults. Its dumb of me to say Im proud of them but...I think its pretty cool that our younger friends are grasping concepts such as diplomacy and trade at say...age 12.

You dont like more is better...fine. I think youre missing out on the best civ game of the series, and it sounds like you dont like change and innovation. There are certainly lots of people like you...the most popular console games are often sports sequels that change little more then their rosters for instance. I personally do like change and innovation, thats why I think this game is better then civ 2 and 3...I especially think it took some concepts from civ 3 and defined them much better (culture for instance).

I personally do like change and innovation, thats why I think this game is better then civ 2 and 3...I especially think it took some concepts from civ 3 and defined them much better (culture for instance).you know we all like innovation and new concepts...Civ3 had plenty of them as well...it introduced culture and armies, etc...fun elements
CIV has some nice concepts, but it has extremely unfun elments as well...some of them break the game for many of us...no civic combination for a no WW government...reding out trading...WFYABTA rubbish...very few units...tedious combats...warlords gave us completely broken vassals...

and don't even talk about the slow game just because they need to satisfy the kids with 3D graphics, that are uttely redundant...

maybe the game gives more choices (actually not really) and more candy, but it's less fun to play for quite a few of us

Yeah I was dissappointed too. For me it seemed that 2 was twice as good as 1. Then 3 was twice as good as 2. Then there was 4, about half as good as 3. :( So really only equal to 2 but better than 1. But 1 was DOS so that isnt too hard to beat :p

The moddability of the game really helps... sorta. If you know what you are doing which I don't. :lol: I think threads like this are a good thing. It helps those of us who are frustrated to vent a little bit. :)

Good for you, nothing wrong with venting alittle, after all you paid good money for this game.

If certain fans of the game want to take it as personal attacks on them, thats their problem.

Im actually feeling alittle better about the game now. Im gonna do what someone said earlier, put this game on the shelf for now, but maybe later (maybe in 6 months, I doubt earlier) Ill give it another chance.

We cant just take computer games back to the store and get our money back, or I probably would.

I might talk to you all later, if I start playing Civ 4 again and come back here to talk about it. For now Peace out.

PS. Its just a game. :)

Yeah I was dissappointed too. For me it seemed that 2 was twice as good as 1. Then 3 was twice as good as 2. Then there was 4, about half as good as 3. :( So really only equal to 2 but better than 1. But 1 was DOS so that isnt too hard to beat :p

The moddability of the game really helps... sorta. If you know what you are doing which I don't. :lol: I think threads like this are a good thing. It helps those of us who are frustrated to vent a little bit. :)

Wow, I'm the exact opposite. I got tired of how tedious Civ3 was with worker management, and the lack of built-in stack management. I tried to find ways to win the game quicker just so I wouldn't have to clean up pollution in the modern age (ugh...), and I avoided anything larger than a Standard map like the plague.

But in Civ4, you can stack move workers, so you can create the minimum number of workers in a stack to clean pollution, and just move the stack and click one button. Done! This was a dream come true!

Additional buildings, additional troops...if you are building every building in every city, you might want to stop. My military production cities typically have barracks, stables, and forges but rarely universities or banks (take too long). The cities now are no longer generic locations where you farm or mine around. There are several terrain improvements (although some can only be put on special resources) and buildings to allow you to customize and specialize your settlements.

One thing I miss was the modern age Nuke submarines, tactical nukes, paratroopers...they've been mentioned before, but that's what I want in the game next (please, next expansion pack...dozen civilizations, two dozen leaders, and these units!).

And the implementation of religion--I'm impressed by it. And how the great people work, and the civics...I think this is a case of being overwhelmed. The fact is, I'm trying to figure out how. The game uses a simple point-and-click interface with no goofy menus with special options or weird button combinations to do things. If you don't know what to build, it gives you recommendations while you learn. It gives you worker recommendations. It gives you places to settle, etc. Overall, I found it easy to get into Civ4, and once I stopped trying to play it like Civ3, I enjoyed it even more--less micromanaging, more features that are easy to use because of the simple methods by which they have been implemented. By the way, if you are trying to use your Civ3 strategies in Civ4, I encourage you to take a peak at an article in the War Academy.

There's my $.02. I know the critics of the game probably won't care, but this was a great step for the Civ series--less micro, implementing the good government system from Alpha Centauri (why didn't they do that in 3?), etc.

I think the combat system is better. I think we all remember losing our tanks to phalanx in Civ2, so they brought out the health bar for units in Civ3. So then came out the stacks of Doom, where our large army would just roll over other Civs. So for CIV they introduced the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" theory to balance out the units more effectively.

And I still dont see your point about CIV having more units than Civ2. You say that the Alpine, Caravan, etc had specific purposes. What do you think the ones in CIV do, especially with the new combat system? Or are you referring to the missionaries and great people?

Wow, I'm the exact opposite. I got tired of how tedious Civ3 was with worker management, and the lack of built-in stack management. I tried to find ways to win the game quicker just so I wouldn't have to clean up pollution in the modern age (ugh...), and I avoided anything larger than a Standard map like the plague.

Indeed, I don't miss sweeping up pollution and such tasks from 3. There are some upsides to the new things in 4 as well. Like if 1 citizen is mad they don't all go on strike.


Additional buildings, additional troops...if you are building every building in every city, you might want to stop. My military production cities typically have barracks, stables, and forges but rarely universities or banks (take too long). The cities now are no longer generic locations where you farm or mine around. There are several terrain improvements (although some can only be put on special resources) and buildings to allow you to customize and specialize your settlements.

This may be where new people get off on the wrong start possibly. I know I had a rough time with it for the first few weeks of playing it myself. My military cities usually are setup the same but I always take some spare time when they get it to build markets and banks in them. But never libraries and universities (no science stuff). Honestly, they are lucky if they get any religious buildings past a temple too. So, they stay real low on culture value.

As for improvements, I tend to find that every tile has a best option. For instance a Plains/Hill either gets a lumbermill or a mine. (Depending on if it has a forest on it or not.) I personally prefer the lumbermill alot of times but the mine gives you that 5% chance of finding something in the hill. Grassland by a river is pretty much a garaunteed cottage. Plains are always farms and VERY rarely cottages. Grassland/Hills almost always windmills.
So, generally for me, the topography itself defines my cities. I like the options but I haven't built a watermill for so long they could take them out and I wouldn't even notice. Workshops are also rarely built by me but I have found uses for them here or there.

And the implementation of religion--I'm impressed by it. And how the great people work, and the civics...I think this is a case of being overwhelmed. The fact is, I'm trying to figure out how. The game uses a simple point-and-click interface with no goofy menus with special options or weird button combinations to do things. If you don't know what to build, it gives you recommendations while you learn. It gives you worker recommendations. It gives you places to settle, etc. Overall, I found it easy to get into Civ4, and once I stopped trying to play it like Civ3, I enjoyed it even more--less micromanaging, more features that are easy to use because of the simple methods by which they have been implemented. By the way, if you are trying to use your Civ3 strategies in Civ4, I encourage you to take a peak at an article in the War Academy.

Religion I don't care for. I will just say I actually think the game would be better balanced if they just removed it than leave it as it is now and leave it at that. Great People and civics I do like and was a step in a positive direction. The interface seems bland and unuseful alot to me personally. The advisor screens in all previous versions were more useful than 4's.

The militay advisor is so worthless it is a crying shame. I seriously have no clue who thought that was a good idea. I want the civ3 military advisor back myself.
The domestic advisor is way too simplified and offers no real overview beyond basics of you cities and you cant even select a city from the advisor screen to cut to that city as we used to be able to do.
Then the financial advisor gives you no real record of the budget. It is almost as if the numbers just come out of nowhere and it is the responsibility of the player to track down the budget themselves to see what all of these values are coming from. Inflation gives no warning and just juts out at you unless you are an extreme micromanager and count turns and such. The whole financial advisor screen just seems to sum everything up so basically that there is no real reason to look at it to try and figure out where the money is being lost really. The players had to actually test a bunch of city placement in WB to find out hw the budget defines city maintenance when this could have been included into the financial advisor. I could go into this more but the finacial advisor seems to have went on long enough, hehe. Basically, the financial advisor offers no help. This is probably why so many new people post about a how their games end up forming economic blackholes and they have no clue how to fix it. And no one really knows how to get in and figure out where they messed up because there is no real good way to look at it. The answer is just "build more cottages" or "found a religion". No one ever says "Look at your financial advisor and see where your money is going" because we all know that darn advisor isn't doing squat for the player.

I don't mean any of this as a personal attact on anyone's view on the game... even though I quoted you Antilogic. Alot of people like the new simplified system and that's cool. You just brought up some things I figured I would add to in light of the discussion. I am not a heavy micromanager myself but I think too many things are hidden behind the curtain this time around and I think it hurts the game more than it helps. Anyways, there is some more to add to this little thread. :)

I got the game about a month ago and didnt play until last weekend. So what?

Nothing is wrong with it except that most posts like yours are made shortly after the release of a particular game. Posting over a year after a game's release is somewhat unusual.

However, some gamers are just now playing Civ1 and Civ2, so go figure.

However, some gamers are just now playing Civ1 and Civ2, so go figure.

Thats because it took Windows 3.1 on a 486 to run Civ1, which I still have, and cost me $189 to upgrade the RAM to 4Mb. :)

P.S. Have I ever mentioned that Drill is just crab. Combat I gives better results than Drill 1 + Drill2. The last ones are efficient only when units are wounded, but these are rare cases



Hail Drill 4!

Hail Scout promotions!

PS: Hail City Defend!


And I agree with most people who dont agree with the original post.

its fairly straight forward, read my original post. Im asking others if theyre as disappointed with the game as I am. and if not, is there anything about the game they dont like.

well, I have been playing civilization since my little brother showed me civilization (the first game) cant remember exactly when, probably in the mid 90s, it was a few years before the second one came out.

I spent all night tonight playing civ 2, which i think still is the best game in the series, and civ 3 is a close second.

I think there was nothing wrong with the combat system at all, and totally abandoning the old system for this new game of Rock, Paper, Scissors that is the current system was a big misstake. also I liked the civ3 artillery system alot.

there was nothing wrong with the old system, so why fix it if its not broken?

and yeah I would learn all the new stuff, the many many new city and terrain improvements, all the new wonders etc if I played the game more than 2 days but I dont see myself getting over the new combat system.

but its still not a good idea to make any game to complicated, I shouldnt have to study for hours to play a game good.

There is something with Your words. I also like civ2 the most. It has a soul and was more... I would say epic. Civ4 is more mathematic. Everywhere numbers, and what is worst - even in diplomacy. Is it "epic"? Not enymore.
Implement civic A, take religion B and Montezuma will love you on +6 level - great. Combat system sucks because of lucky losts like in Civ 1 where even nukes sometimes used to lost.

But what sucks most is reguirments of game. How many time can you wait for next turn? You cannot play it on slower comps.
But Civ4 have some advantages too, for example modding - when I bought Warlods I bothered to play it just once then turned to mods.

The militay advisor is so worthless it is a crying shame. I seriously have no clue who thought that was a good idea. I want the civ3 military advisor back myself.
The domestic advisor is way too simplified and offers no real overview beyond basics of you cities and you cant even select a city from the advisor screen to cut to that city as we used to be able to do.
Then the financial advisor gives you no real record of the budget. It is almost as if the numbers just come out of nowhere and it is the responsibility of the player to track down the budget themselves to see what all of these values are coming from. Inflation gives no warning and just juts out at you unless you are an extreme micromanager and count turns and such. The whole financial advisor screen just seems to sum everything up so basically that there is no real reason to look at it to try and figure out where the money is being lost really. The players had to actually test a bunch of city placement in WB to find out hw the budget defines city maintenance when this could have been included into the financial advisor. I could go into this more but the finacial advisor seems to have went on long enough, hehe. Basically, the financial advisor offers no help. This is probably why so many new people post about a how their games end up forming economic blackholes and they have no clue how to fix it. And no one really knows how to get in and figure out where they messed up because there is no real good way to look at it. The answer is just "build more cottages" or "found a religion". No one ever says "Look at your financial advisor and see where your money is going" because we all know that darn advisor isn't doing squat for the player.


Sad true as well. Where my best drunk military advisor from Civ2? hehe
Game should me more epic, and less mathematics or more random factors.

Sad true as well. Where my best drunk military advisor from Civ2? hehe
Game should me more epic, and less mathematics or more random factors.
Random factors? Like what? Plagues and natural disasters...oh, yes, those'd be fun. You're chugging along just fine, and....WHAM! one of those innocent-looking peaks is a volcano dumping lava all over your main production city during a war. Yeah, that's fun. Or even better... a plague wipes out a whole bunch of population in all of your cities, putting your money and beakers into the crapper, and you with it. How fair...

Epic? You've gotta define that. I don't know what's more epic than sitting in my chair with my stomach full of butterflies over sending in that Combat 1/Medic 1 spearman that wasn't supposed to do anything but heal my stack against the last enemy defender with ~70% chance to win, knowing full well the rest of my stack is too beat up for the city to last another turn. What possibly CAN be more epic than leading a civilization through all of time? Yeah, I'm aware Civ2 had nice little bells and whistles, like the advisers and the amazing wonder movies....but, really....you don't mean to tell me those things DEFINED your experience, do you?

Oh, and nitpick for drill promotions. If the strength ratio between the two combatants is within 1.38 or so, drill>combat. Drill is a very powerful promotion, it just doesn't show up on many good units. Try out a Machinery slingshot and get Cho-ko-nus early, and then tell me that drill promotions suck. Drill IV gunpowder units are certainly no laughing matter either...

As for improvements, I tend to find that every tile has a best option. For instance a Plains/Hill either gets a lumbermill or a mine. (Depending on if it has a forest on it or not.) I personally prefer the lumbermill alot of times but the mine gives you that 5% chance of finding something in the hill. Grassland by a river is pretty much a garaunteed cottage. Plains are always farms and VERY rarely cottages. Grassland/Hills almost always windmills.So, generally for me, the topography itself defines my cities.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/81549/JAWSO.JPG

In civ3 it was always a mystery how well a city would turn out in some areas cuz the soil underneth the realistic proportions of forested or jungle area, were scattered with rich minerals you are always unaware to the exact location of.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/81549/D_mo.JPG

I now use Elephant taming Civs as the first jungle clearers thus giving the rest of the Civs a little time to concentrate depleting the forests before they learn how to get down in dirty in the jungle elephantless. I still let the white settler plop down on jungle turf if they feel like it(chances are if there near a jungle smart CIv early in, they get cultured out iof the jungles in not to long a time, the mods also have a few extra early culture buildings!)

All I can locate is my original Civ 3 disc. No Conquests for me atm. :( I may have to go buy Civ 3 complete to get ahold of C3C. I am getting Rise of Nations today for 10 bucks. Then me and a friend are going to check it out online. :)

Thats because it took Windows 3.1 on a 486 to run Civ1, which I still have, and cost me $189 to upgrade the RAM to 4Mb. :)

I can't fathom that unless you did it like in 1987. :lol:
I just upgraded to 2 GB for about that much.

The problem might be to get RAM that old and still working. ^^ And anything that is a problem, tends to be costly.

I was happily playing Civ III until last month, then I went to visit someone who has Civ 4 for a few weeks and played a lot. Unfortunately, Civ IV can't run on my computer, so now that I am home, I can't play it. Even worse, now that I have played Civ IV, I can't bear Civ III, so I have nothing at all to play :)

Religion I don't care for. I will just say I actually think the game would be better balanced if they just removed it than leave it as it is now and leave it at that. Great People and civics I do like and was a step in a positive direction. The interface seems bland and unuseful alot to me personally. The advisor screens in all previous versions were more useful than 4's.

The militay advisor is so worthless it is a crying shame. I seriously have no clue who thought that was a good idea. I want the civ3 military advisor back myself.
The domestic advisor is way too simplified and offers no real overview beyond basics of you cities and you cant even select a city from the advisor screen to cut to that city as we used to be able to do.
Then the financial advisor gives you no real record of the budget. It is almost as if the numbers just come out of nowhere and it is the responsibility of the player to track down the budget themselves to see what all of these values are coming from. Inflation gives no warning and just juts out at you unless you are an extreme micromanager and count turns and such. The whole financial advisor screen just seems to sum everything up so basically that there is no real reason to look at it to try and figure out where the money is being lost really. The players had to actually test a bunch of city placement in WB to find out hw the budget defines city maintenance when this could have been included into the financial advisor. I could go into this more but the finacial advisor seems to have went on long enough, hehe. Basically, the financial advisor offers no help. This is probably why so many new people post about a how their games end up forming economic blackholes and they have no clue how to fix it. And no one really knows how to get in and figure out where they messed up because there is no real good way to look at it. The answer is just "build more cottages" or "found a religion". No one ever says "Look at your financial advisor and see where your money is going" because we all know that darn advisor isn't doing squat for the player.

I don't mean any of this as a personal attact on anyone's view on the game... even though I quoted you Antilogic. Alot of people like the new simplified system and that's cool. You just brought up some things I figured I would add to in light of the discussion. I am not a heavy micromanager myself but I think too many things are hidden behind the curtain this time around and I think it hurts the game more than it helps. Anyways, there is some more to add to this little thread. :)


I'm only quoting a few of your points here...

But I'm surprised about your comments on the religion--I thought that was one of the better new features of Civ4. It adds a little flavor in terms of different cultures and diplomacy--holy wars can be declared for differences in religion, as well as the classic war for territory from a neighbor, irregardless of religion.

I'm not going to fight you on the advisers--I too am somewhat disappointed with how they are implemented, but there are several mods out there that will alter those screens. That strikes me as a minor problem.

Another thing I didn't mention was the AI: it's so nice having an AI that will actually use artillery on the offense. That was a crying shame in the last incarnation of Civ. Also, I enjoy the greater differences in the AI personalities. Until Civ4, I always felt there were two AI phenotypes, essentially: the warmonger, and the builder. All leaders fell somewhere on a spectrum between fighters and builders. But now, we have different kinds of warmongers, like the crazy Montezuma, the crusader Isabella, and the bullies like Alexander. And, there are more varieties amongst the more peaceful players as well. I believe one of the crowning achievements of Civ4 was bringing more varied AI personalities to the board.

Another thing I didn't mention was the AI: it's so nice having an AI that will actually use artillery on the offense. That was a crying shame in the last incarnation of Civ.


Hey what they lose in offensive capabilitys over Civ4 they make up in counter seige abilties. :) - to which CIv4 has no real answer but to kill the old Navel bombardment system aswell-And I liked that part :(

Remeber they group in AI cities in mass or muliple(helps whos modding ;) ) and can hit your stack with a barrage while you can't do a dam thing to em!

Its worse for a unit that dosn't kill the defender and has to run away. The more turns it takes to seize the more You keep on getting shot at from the artilary positions that reamin untouchable till the last man gaurding the town falls dead. Now what happens when thers lots of artillary and lots of defenders cooped up in a Big ass city on a hill, and their all made up with the highest defending class available?... its a bloody awful mess I tell you!.

Still Its a advantage over Civ4 in added realism. I control output of artys(I know Im handcuffing myself--I was told so!) but its really more enjoyable. They have a option for capping Armys (another AI cripler) so you just have to use common sence with the artillary...Even still if you wanna play arty blood fest, the game still requires you to be able to build them in mass, an opps! you decided to raise the sheild cost a lil.(so only real production capitals can build em at any rate).. it encourages the building up of cities and if you limit army production, there is where your challange begins, bringing them all to the front. ;)

I was happily playing Civ III until last month, then I went to visit someone who has Civ 4 for a few weeks and played a lot. Unfortunately, Civ IV can't run on my computer, so now that I am home, I can't play it. Even worse, now that I have played Civ IV, I can't bear Civ III, so I have nothing at all to play :)

The more I play, the more I like Civ 4. I got my copy for Christmas from my brother and Warlords from my mom.

That's pretty harsh though, I think Civ 3 is better than not playing Civ at all. Civ 4 won't play on my laptop, so when I travel, I play Civ 3 while waiting for my delayed flight to take off, (not again.) Time to replace the laptop.

To really play Civ 4 on a laptop, you need a 10 lb monster. I would try and get at least a Go 7600 otherwise your map will be choppy.

Hey what they lose in offensive capabilitys over Civ4 they make up in counter seige abilties. :) - to which CIv4 has no real answer but to kill the old Navel bombardment system aswell-And I liked that part :(

I am in preference of the old bombardment system as well...or at least an option to do either for artillery units. It would make navies more useful for taking coastal cities, to be able to barrage units and soften up the defenses.

Wow, I'm the exact opposite. I got tired of how tedious Civ3 was with worker management, and the lack of built-in stack management. I tried to find ways to win the game quicker just so I wouldn't have to clean up pollution in the modern age (ugh...), and I avoided anything larger than a Standard map like the plague.

I completely agree. In Civ III, the way you had you keep cleaning up pollution in the late game was a nightmare, not to mention the time lags due to micromanagement. And then there was the mad rush to build as many cities as possible, and many of the cities were so far away from the capital that all their shields except one were eaten up by corruption. You had to build airplanes and crash them there to get things built at all. Civ III had a lot of excellent new ideas that were handled badly. Civ IV tweaked things so that they became enjoyable.

However, I still dislike the way you are expected to expand and fill the entire map. It's ridiculous when your competitors land a settler to build a city on an arctic tile which does not have a single neighbouring resource to recommend it. Bring on minor civs! At some point, they should appear, and at some later point they should become impossible to assimilate. You might have an bility to turn them into vassals or minor allies that count towards a domination or conquest victory, or simply exclude them in the computation for domination/conquest victories.

Hail Drill 4!

Hail Scout promotions!

PS: Hail City Defend!


And I agree with most people who dont agree with the original post.

City Defend negates Drill when talking about archery units, so you have to choose: Drill or City Defend, not both.

So basically I understood from previous post, that Drill helps avoiding Damage. Well ... I do this by another way ... I always keep some promotions ... never promote immediately.

P.S. Drill may be useful on lower difficulties, that's my opinion.

The domestic advisor is way too simplified and offers no real overview beyond basics of you cities and you cant even select a city from the advisor screen to cut to that city as we used to be able to do.

I agree. Another thing they should bring back is the function where you can ask where a certain city is. You know, the "Where the heck is...?" If you had seen the city or got a map of its area, then you were automatically brought to that part of the map.
Also, I am annoyed by the way the game automatically cuts to the next active unit when you want to do something additional where you were. In all previous versions of Civ, you weren't suddenly moved somehwere else as soon as you had given one unit its instructions.

I payed $60 for this game, so I think Iv bought the right to speak my mind honestly, Sorry to all you Civ fanatics :)

Iv only played through 4 games, then I had to take a break for a week, actually havent played it since, the game just became totally boreing for me, and multiplayer seems pretty bad

So at this point I have to admit that the game has been quite a dissapointment to me as well, it was much more in my imagination than it turned out to be after playing it.

But I fully intend to get back into it, I payed $60 bucks for this game, so Ill find a way to like it yet, its just hard when so many things get to you. Combat is a boreing game of attrition (I would have atleast given all units "Chance to Withdraw"). War is fun, but only the planning and initial execution, not the combat.
Nukes were a big turn off factor for me, bomb shelters are something peaple dig in their back yard, not something that shields an entire city from a nuclear blast. bomb shelters or no, a nuclear strike on a city should be catastrophic, and a nuclear exchange between nations should be apocalyptic. So ya, watching my nukes kill off only 10 % of a targetted cities populations and barely phase all Units inside, makeing me feel an entire Nuclear arsenal was a waste of time, that was a big killer for me.

I agree. Another thing they should bring back is the function where you can ask where a certain city is. You know, the "Where the heck is...?" If you had seen the city or got a map of its area, then you were automatically brought to that part of the map.
Also, I am annoyed by the way the game automatically cuts to the next active unit when you want to do something additional where you were. In all previous versions of Civ, you weren't suddenly moved somehwere else as soon as you had given one unit its instructions.

you can turn off "auto unit cycling" in options, but it still auto cycles upon "end turn" unfortunatly, but its still a big releif so go take care of that right away (should be default in my opinion)

City Defend negates Drill when talking about archery units, so you have to choose: Drill or City Defend, not both.

So basically I understood from previous post, that Drill helps avoiding Damage. Well ... I do this by another way ... I always keep some promotions ... never promote immediately.

P.S. Drill may be useful on lower difficulties, that's my opinion.



I always get a mix of city garison and drill units to defend ^^ ANd I always have some units non-promoted walking around in case I need a promotion that I normally dont use :p

And you said yourself, you never proote immediatelly..If Combat > others, why not promote to combat imediatelly ?

PS(dotdot): I play on Price-monarch on normal CIV and noble-price on Blake's AI. Prob lower level to most warmonggers ;)

But I'm surprised about your comments on the religion--I thought that was one of the better new features of Civ4. It adds a little flavor in terms of different cultures and diplomacy--holy wars can be declared for differences in religion, as well as the classic war for territory from a neighbor, irregardless of religion.

Yeah, maybe my tastes are out of the ordinary. Alot of people like religion. I personally don't like the religions being tied to the tech tree for one. That makes no sense to me. I am not big on the extra income and free ability to look in enemy territories. There are some Arabs here in Kansas City but doesn't mean they get to have a free pass into the government buildings and army bases here. :p
As for the Holy Wars, I only see these fought by the AI and alot of times I see the AI overlook good potential allies because of religion. The AI overvalues religion too much and it makes them do some very foolish things.

Until Civ4, I always felt there were two AI phenotypes, essentially: the warmonger, and the builder. All leaders fell somewhere on a spectrum between fighters and builders. But now, we have different kinds of warmongers, like the crazy Montezuma, the crusader Isabella, and the bullies like Alexander. And, there are more varieties amongst the more peaceful players as well. I believe one of the crowning achievements of Civ4 was bringing more varied AI personalities to the board.

I somewhat agree with you about the personalities but what I find is you still have 2 groups of personalities. Those that will backstab you, and those that won't. Which could be classified as 'warmonger' and 'builder/peacenik'. I am very happy with the idea of the AI modifiers being shown. I just think a few values are messed up.

Nukes were a big turn off factor for me, bomb shelters are something peaple dig in their back yard, not something that shields an entire city from a nuclear blast. bomb shelters or no, a nuclear strike on a city should be catastrophic, and a nuclear exchange between nations should be apocalyptic. So ya, watching my nukes kill off only 10 % of a targetted cities populations and barely phase all Units inside, makeing me feel an entire Nuclear arsenal was a waste of time, that was a big killer for me.

I feel the same way about nukes. They are so expensive and then they are so very worthless. :(

The AI overvalues religion too much and it makes them do some very foolish things.
At least the developers did a good job in this regard to make AI act like human beings.

This discussion comes up so often.

All I have to say is if you don't give Civ 4 a chance because its not like the other civ games, you're missing out. Play whatever games you like the most, but IMO, Civ 4 is far superior to the others in the series. They're all good games, but they hardly even compare to Civ 4.

I always get a mix of city garison and drill units to defend ^^ ANd I always have some units non-promoted walking around in case I need a promotion that I normally dont use :p

And you said yourself, you never proote immediatelly..If Combat > others, why not promote to combat imediatelly ?

PS(dotdot): I play on Price-monarch on normal CIV and noble-price on Blake's AI. Prob lower level to most warmonggers ;)

For me everything lower than deity means easy. However I found myself a warmonger and when talking bout winning I meant conquest, which is for me the easiest way and most natural way to win.

I often choose Shock, Cover, Pinch, Formation but for me these are only improved Combat. There is to few unique promotions like Comando.

P.S. What's Blake's AI?
P.S.S. Footmen is for me main force and it gains terrain bonuses, so promoting to Combat immediately is not always neccessary. I usually leave 1/3-1/2 units unpromoted

For me everything lower than deity means easy. However I found myself a warmonger and when talking bout winning I meant conquest, which is for me the easiest way and most natural way to win.

I often choose Shock, Cover, Pinch, Formation but for me these are only improved Combat. There is to few unique promotions like Comando.

P.S. What's Blake's AI?
P.S.S. Footmen is for me main force and it gains terrain bonuses, so promoting to Combat immediately is not always neccessary. I usually leave 1/3-1/2 units unpromoted


Huge PS(big dots):


I dont like much warmongging, its kinda dull, I prefer Cultural victories with lots of diplomacy and defensive/sneak wars. So higher levels for me focuses too much in military :)

Do you have Warlords? If yes, go to Warlords section and look for the thread 'Better AI.', kinda hard to dont find, specially because it has almost 100 pages :goodjob:

I completely agree. In Civ III, the way you had you keep cleaning up pollution in the late game was a nightmare, not to mention the time lags due to micromanagement.


Wow if it was such a nightmare Im wondering why you just didn't turn it off
Hey if you never knew the option menu had a little window where you could raise or lower the amount of pollution a improvment gave. All you do is set the facilty to 0. There done!

Well what about Population polution you say? Good question you still got the 'mass trasit station' just add a sewer and a park done. you have won the battle with pollution but don't expect it to be that easy. The parks and sewers should come at high maintenece cost so it will tame you wad o cash a bit .(just a opinion). See Civ3 is flawless all the problems can be fixed to make a more realistic better game then in the beginning!, but heres the thing, Its much easier to play around with small things then CIv4


Oh yes the settler rush. Think of this like the opening ceramony in the game called RISK, but its more complex cauz the first few city locations you plop down help determine how many extra peices you can add on the board over your opponent. Its all very fun my son think of it like draft day and your trying to get the star player whos undervalued on your team.

Same with movin troops...included is City rally point and continental rally point. this distinguishs seprate army forming logistical commands.What I mean is now your Summoning seprate groups at two or more fronts without ever giving a single unit an seprate order.

Once The forces have stacked high enough, name the first unit in the pile 1st Regiment(or something) then move them all along him as leader, and let the next bunch pile up. The continoius flow of the contintal rally point source is contrived from any city pumping units at the time., so you can still build improvemnts at your leisure while a formable army is in the making.

Useing the stack moving button. Now Multi divisions are set up like natinal armys! and one push of the button sends them to war at seprate fronts. Whats so hard. OK why is this so bad and CIv4 better?

In my opinion the only thing to change completely in this game is the combat system. I dont think to be the only one that lost a unit when statistics gave me 99.7 % to win. I always appreciated the combat system used in the game Panzer general, where each units has his peculiarities as in Civ4, but each units has a value of 10. When it faced a battle it can have some casualities but never gone lost if not under particular conditions, for example surprised with an ambush. In this way you can have heavy casualities but you dont lose the whole unit only because a random number decides this turn you have to lose even when you have 75% or more to win. Even the chance to get a leader with some special qualities for a winning unit it would be nice in that game, I would like to see it on Civ4.

In my opinion the only thing to change completely in this game is the combat system. I dont think to be the only one that lost a unit when statistics gave me 99.7 % to win. I always appreciated the combat system used in the game Panzer general, where each units has his peculiarities as in Civ4, but each units has a value of 10. When it faced a battle it can have some casualities but never gone lost if not under particular conditions, for example surprised with an ambush. In this way you can have heavy casualities but you dont lose the whole unit only because a random number decides this turn you have to lose even when you have 75% or more to win. Even the chance to get a leader with some special qualities for a winning unit it would be nice in that game, I would like to see it on Civ4.

In CIV4 vanilla(maybe they fixed in 1.61? Dont remember) there was a bug wehere they didnt compute First Strikes in the right way in the odds, thus making them seem weaker than trully they were. Also a bug that showed 100.1% or 0.00%(Impossible, they all have a chance of win), but this one Im almost sure they fixed in 1.61..

And as far as I know, Warlords doesent have this kind of bug, and so its all about seletive memory.. If you use more suicide units at 50% or less of win chance, you would be surprised..

And hum, the Battle system of the others CIVs were really good and perfect, right ?

This is the first strategy game I've ever played. I like wargames and strategy games, but have never been very good at them. Civ4 seemed indimidating at first, but once I got the hang of it, I loved it. I owe many tired days at work due to long nights taking "just one more turn". I can't compare it to the other Civilization games, as I've never played them. Civ4 is a terrific game, IMHO.

Welcome to the addiction Astaldo711

Do you have Warlords? If yes, go to Warlords section and look for the thread 'Better AI.', kinda hard to dont find, specially because it has almost 100 pages :goodjob:


Or even if you don't have warlords! ;) Blake's BetterAI project is for both Civ4 and Warlords, but its thread is in the Warlords forum.

Or even if you don't have warlords! ;) Balke's BetterAI project is for both Civ4 and Warlords, but its thread is in the Warlords forum.

AH ye! I never play Vanilla anymore, so I forgot this detail, thanks for remembering ;)

Drill is not indeed useless promotion. Just complited monarch domination game.

Drill 1) 0,5 FS
Drill 2) 1,5 FS
Drill 3) 2,5 FS
Drill 4) 4,5 FS

Never promoted before to Drill 3, so I could not calculate properly it's benefits. While you can see there is huge step from Drill3 to Drill4 and it makes a lot of difference. So you were right.

However it was Washington (charismatic) and game played in Warlords where you can get Great Military Instructors, so achieving Drill4 was very easy.

I played CIV 3 for three years and played CIV 4 only 3 weeks. It is not as good or as interesting of a game. It does not stand the test of time. Other games were like this too. For instance, Heroes 3 was much better than Heroes 4 and Heroes 5 stunk. Warlords 2 was great but 3 was not as good and 4 was worse than awful.

I played CIV 3 for three years and played CIV 4 only 3 weeks. It is not as good or as interesting of a game. It does not stand the test of time. Other games were like this too. For instance, Heroes 3 was much better than Heroes 4 and Heroes 5 stunk. Warlords 2 was great but 3 was not as good and 4 was worse than awful.

Stop it! your scarying me!!:cry:.... Cuz I know your right. Heros 3 was my first taste of turn based,(besides civ1)breathtaking, so I was amazed when I went to play the long awaited sequal. It was more pleaseing to the eye but blew chunks in every way compared to 3 in what counts, gameplay.

THen I heard heros 5 went all 3d all on us . It was suppose to blow us all away. It bombed. I want Civ4 to just be a long nightmare n' wake up to a Civ5 that puts every thing back to right.

Its not over man. We have to believe they will listen to the right people this time. they don't have to be reminded what these other guys did to their franchise. Warlords and Civ Chronicles just lost in sales to Desprate Housewives the Game.

I played CIV 3 for three years and played CIV 4 only 3 weeks. It is not as good or as interesting of a game. It does not stand the test of time. Other games were like this too. For instance, Heroes 3 was much better than Heroes 4 and Heroes 5 stunk. Warlords 2 was great but 3 was not as good and 4 was worse than awful.

Aren't you contradicting yourself? If you've only played CIV for 3 weeks, then you can't really state that it "does not stand the test of time" surely?

Personally I hated CIII, CIV has bought back that feeling of excitement to the series.

Personally I cant see how his statement is self contradicting. But anyway

For a more simplified approach to a new combat system, this is what I would like to see, tell me what you think.

You know when you select 4 cannons and tell them to bombard a city, and they do so simultaneously? Well I would like to see combat between units happen simultaneously.

For example, I select 4 units of warriors from my stack, and order them to attack the enemies warriors. If the enemy stack has 4 or more units, then the enemy stack should be forced to defend against all 4 of my warriors at once, each warrior pairing off against another, for a big brawl.

it would look better, it requires much less micro management, it lets you resolve battles faster, and sounds easy to impliment. I personally dont like the 1 unit at a time thing at all.

I never played Civ III. I went straight from SMAC to Civ IV and really enjoy the aspects of SMAC that made it into Civ IV. CIV II really was just too much of a straightforward exercize every game after a while. The thing that I like about Civ IV is that it introduces some more opportunity cost ideas and tough decisions.

I think Civ IV is far and away the best till now.The developers got most of the
features right and there are not much exploits. The only aspect of the game i really don't like is the vassal system but this can be turned off.

I liked Civ I and II much more than Civ III with it's endless research times in the early and middle game and after that the exploitive tech trading being in the tech trade screen for 90% of the time. One aspect of Civ III made me keep playing it, it is a really difficult game on Demigod and Deity (inpossible on sid). Civ II was to easy.

I think Civ IV is far and away the best till now.The developers got most of the
features right and there are not much exploits. The only aspect of the game i really don't like is the vassal system but this can be turned off.

I liked Civ I and II much more than Civ III with it's endless research times in the early and middle game and after that the exploitive tech trading being in the tech trade screen for 90% of the time. One aspect of Civ III made me keep playing it, it is a really difficult game on Demigod and Deity (inpossible on sid). Civ II was to easy.

I actually like the vassal system - kind of like the Mutual Protection Pacts, but not so complex that you can touch off a free-for-all like you could in Civ3.

This is the first time they've simplified the combat system and I liked the result--the unified strength score. I always thought it was kind of lame that a tough-looking spear unit couldn't organize into a phalanx and ATTACK in strength, as they could historically. Even a unit used "defensively" mainly does so by attacking the opponent as they move in... so it made more sense

The specialized modifiers work well too--you can go for combat +1, or get a bigger bonus if you're able to plan ahead enough to decide how to specialize the unit.

I originally wasn't going to get Civ 4 (decided to stick with Civ 3 and get Conquests), but when I got my new GeForce 7800 GS OC, I wanted another thing to make good use of my video card for. Plus I've heard good things about the modability.

For me, Civilization III is harder, yet feels more strategy-ish (and has way more easter eggs and humorous things). Civilization IV feels easier to me, but some things which I can't quite put my finger on make it a good game (though one thing is that they fixed the spearman vs tank problem).

I do miss several elements of Civ3, though. Some of these:
-Leaders seemed to have more varied dialog in Civ 3 (each leader had their own unique sayings too)
-The advisor system seemed better then (and I miss the advisors actually being people, too)
-The multiplayer in Civ 3, although buggy in PTW, seemed to have more variety (game filters and things)
-The modern music in Civ 3 (I'm one of few people who liked it)
-...and various other little bells and whistles.

To me, cIV did exactly the right thing with regards to its predecessors: it changed some of the game dynamics in such a way as to make it a very different playing experience, whilst retaining the general flavour of the series.

I've loved every one of the civ games, but I do tend to get bored with doing the same old thing, over and over (a problem which is easily addressed with mods).

So, I want every new version to throw out a load of old features, throw in a load of new ones, and create a different balance between its various parts, rather than treating it as some kind of 'enhanced graphics plus a few extra features' add-on. Otherwise, I'd just play the unmodded game a handful of times, get bored, and move straight onto the mods. As it is, I've yet to touch any of the mods for cIV, having enjoyed more than six months of almost continual 'just... one... more... turn...'.

I think the combat system is a joke, also there are too many choices for troops (never thought id say that) and way too many choices for city buildings and wonders.

why too many is a bad thing, well for one it might scare off someone who is new to the game, having to read about all those diffrent buildings and then figuring out which one is the best for this particular city, isnt exactly fun.



Figuring things out is what I enjoy about the game. The more control I have and the more options, the better. I like, slow, turn-based strategy. Inductive logic rules!

Figuring things out is what I enjoy about the game. The more control I have and the more options, the better. I like, slow, turn-based strategy. Inductive logic rules!
Indeed. Use your brain. It's not hard. And if it's easy, give Blake's Better AI mod a shot...

I bought it long after it was out, from the comment of most people i was abit disappointed, but still i got the game. I would prefer it to be better of course, CIV 2 was a major improvement over CIV 1, CIV 3 was also an improvement over its predecessor, but imo CIV 4 is not that great an improvement, but diehard fans like me will buy it anyway. I find myself going back to SMACX more often than not, its my favourite game among this genre.

My biggest disappointment with Civ IV far and away is the system requirements. There's something wrong when a TURN-BASED strategy game can't run on the same system that runs World of Warcraft without breaking a sweat.

That's just crappy engineering. Shame on you, Firaxis! :eek:

HOWEVER, once I upgraded my system (fifteen months after buying the game), I've found CIV 4 to be a great game. I wholeheartedly welcome the "less micromanagement" policy in the CIV 4 design. Civil disorder and pollution cleanup were never fun, and the new health/happiness system is IMO much better. Civics are a fantastic addition, as well as Religion, and the Maintenance overhaul was sorely needed.

The "rock/scissors/paper" aspect to combat is fine, if you ask me, since resource and technology requirements may limit your access to different parts of the triangle, and the collateral damage mechanics give a nice counter to "stack of doom" strategies.

I actually love the fact that civs naturallly hit a "dark age" at the end of the Classical era, that requires careful planning to avoid or to escape (my first army strike was a shocker!).

I do think that combat would be served by "zone of control" mechanics. For example, why would you EVER build an Ironclad if you already know that Galleons can sail right through your blockade without penalty?

Also, I'd love to see some "civil war" mechanics, only because I find it disappointing that there always seems to be only 3 or 4 civs left by the time you hit the modern era. Maybe the Vassal State rules in Warlords helps preserve a little flava in the world as time goes by.

In my opinion the only thing to change completely in this game is the combat system. I dont think to be the only one that lost a unit when statistics gave me 99.7 % to win. I always appreciated the combat system used in the game Panzer general, where each units has his peculiarities as in Civ4, but each units has a value of 10. When it faced a battle it can have some casualities but never gone lost if not under particular conditions, for example surprised with an ambush. In this way you can have heavy casualities but you dont lose the whole unit only because a random number decides this turn you have to lose even when you have 75% or more to win. Even the chance to get a leader with some special qualities for a winning unit it would be nice in that game, I would like to see it on Civ4.

Hello,

Actually i lost two time in a row with 99.9 % chance to win... I was very very very unlucky or the combat system have bug.

MoonZar

I have to admit, when I first purchased this game last November and played steady for about 3 weeks, I didn't like it very much either. I didn't hate it but it just didn't tickle my fancy. There were some things that greatly annoyed me. Wild animals was one of them. Since when did herds of ravenous lions prowl forested tundra?(yes, I used the term herds)

So I put Civ4 aside and went back to Civ3, but the Civ4 disc sitting on the back corner of my desk continued to haunt me. Kind of like the bowling ball in those Sundays are for bowling ESPN commercials. So I gave it another go and I've come to love Civ4 over the last month or so. One of the things I think turns some players off is the steep learning curve coupled with the radical difference from Civ3. Civ4 isn't the usual evolutionary step forward from the previous generation game. Its a revolutionary step forward.
It is as if the designers went to the Civ3 War Academy and said "OK, lets make sure none of this stuff works anymore."


So if you still don't like Civ4, don't give up on it. Keep working at it. Once you get the feel for where you need to go in the tech tree, what you need to build, and the many, many different tools you can use to specialize your cities, it is a very rewarding experience.

You know, it's funny, but I had horrible trouble playing Civ III, and really didn't like it, after loving Civ and Civ II. A visit to this forum helped me understand how to play Civ III, but frankly I still didn't care much for it. As a result, I hardly played it, just a few games, and usually didn't bother to finish. Playing "whack a pollution was annoying, and when victory was assured, it was just too easy to say "oh well, I'm done." Guess I could have used that game finishing service I saw on here recently! :D

Happily, CIV has brought back the magic for me. I guess it just suits my style. I like all the choices and layers. There's no "only best choice" that always works. I like that. CIV has a replayability that Civ III had lost for me.

SMAC is the best Sid game still, but IMO CivIV is the best of the Civ series. I never played the first but I picked up Civ2 about 10 years ago now and I've been an addict since.

CivIV fixed the one thing that always pissed me off about the others: border control. I try to encircle a good bit of land with my cities and keep other civs out so they don't settle, and in previous Civs this meant 'reminding' friendly AIs every turn to GET THE HELL OUT OF MY TERRITORY...AGAIN!

Then their settler/escort pops out on the other side anyway and well, that's just war.

But still, SMAC:

Sensors
Elevation
Planet Busters
Making Sister Miriam beg for her life.

Civ1 was okay, but Civ2 seemed a lot more polished. Problem with that was that I kept stepping into someone else's territory by accident, and the fact that a good player could build an insurmountable tech lead.

Civ3 was great: I liked the culture and resource factors introduced, but hated that the AI could get units "trapped" in my territory. However, the downside was that you could easily cover the terrain with reckless pattern-based city placement, as well as its crippling corruption.

Civ4 is also great, but being used to Civ3 I am having lots of trouble in Civ4 (I'm so far 0-5 in Civ4 - on Settler no less, and all by conquest - and all before Renaissance). I'll agree with the fact that it's a big learning curve from Civ3 to Civ4 (to be fair, I've only had this game for a week). IMO, they elaborated a lot on the antiquity part, but at the expense of the modern era - I'd like to see a paratrooper promotion, a transport helicopter, a navy helicopter, a supersonic fighter, missiles, combat engineers, and maybe a few near-futuristic units. Perhaps even a vehicle with firing ports for archery/gunpowder units.

I'd like to see someone try to recreate Civ1-3 with the Civ4 engine to the best of their ability. Should be interesting.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get my hands on a copy of SMAC and AC. My copies are for Mac, but I don't have a Mac anymore.

Wodan

All I can do is shake my head at the OP and wonder along with some of the other people here, "Why come here and post this negative crap?"

You only played the game for two days - you don't think there's any chance that two days isn't long enough for a fair evaluation, do you? And you don't feel you should 'have to study for hours to play a game good'? You DO have to study for hours to 'write English good'. Perhaps your free time would be better spent in that area.

You don't like the game and you come to a fansite to tell us that? And let me get this straight, you're NOT trying to start a flame fest? Oh OK, sure, I believe that.

For your reference:

# 1 - We don't care. You don't like it? Don't play it. You know, you can still play Civ I, II, or III. Have a nice life.

Warned - flaming.

# 2 - See # 1.

Exactly. I have won on Deity Civ 4 and that doesn't mean I like the game, in fact I don't. Some of us more civ veterans than yourself Chazcon are also entitled to our opinion whether it's positive or negative.

I'm really glad the vast majority like Civ4 because that will allow the franchise to endure and hopefully Civ5 will be more similar to Civ3 which I think was the best out of the four despite its well-known flaws.

All of us are fans of some Civ installment or another. Try to take it easy next time you post.

no offense but I don't understand why some people take to time to open their computer, open firefox, register to a forum, write a message to say what thousands have said before... If you think the game is weak you could at least bring some new facts so that we could learn how horrible of a game it really is.

I propose a official [all thing negative] tread