Civilization IV - the fall of Civilization series

Now that I know that the time limit of the game is 400 turns and now that I've seen the tech-tree I can say without any doubt that they've assassinated Civilization. And even the maps got smaller...

I would like to see a tech-tree similar to the one depicted in the "Rise and Rule" MOD. It has such a great diversity and quantity of technologies that there are indeed dozens of paths and dozens of strategies to choose from. You can choose each of these paths according to your starting location, neighbours or resources available. This IS realism. This IS Human History.

For instance, if you start near the coast you can immediately start to follow the "naval" path in order to take advantage of sea resources and sea exploration. If you start in a place with few shields you should choose technologies that enhance your production (thereby producing forges and worker camps).

If your closest neighbour is ferocious (ex:mongols) you should follow the military path, just in case....if not, you could choose a civilian path, discovering dynasticism, masonry, etc in order to improve your civ as fast as possible.


If you have camels but not horses, you should choose camel training and leave horse training or elephant training unless you find a source of horses or elephants...and no, this is not as redundant a most people might think, this is what I call flexibility...I mean you can always adapt to the varying conditions you face during the game...


Plus, with this model you can leave lots and lots of technologies behind (those that you wouldn't take advantage of) and still move forward...for instance you can reach the middle ages and feudalism without knowing how to travel by boat. If your civ is located inland and you have no access to the sea, what would be the point in having naval tecnhologies as prerequisite to move on to other techs??


To sum up, CIV4 sucks a little bit...nothing new other than the 3D (who really needs that??), civics and religion (could be more flavoured), no civil wars, no independence wars, less variety in units, the technological variety remains the same and no crucial concepts such as immigration,slavery and colonization...and trade is still very simplified.

They just put CIV3 in a nice, golden package in order to attract a new profile of players, they corrected some minor issues (stack of doom, roading every tile etc, I guess I could live with that, and it's not that unrealistic) and they ignored major and relevant wishes that have been claimed by thousands of fans since Civilization I.

I will not participate in this

If Civ IV is crap, Firaxis will without dobut take note of what went wrong and try again with Civ V and VI and so on.

they got my money

i dont care i am going to buy it any way causwe there are no other options

Fair enough view Eddie.

I think the small map/shorter game is without doubt the one thing that I hate about Civ 4. But I'm sure you will easily be able to mod your own longer game. And a crude early extended version of the tech tree, like that so many of us loved in Rise and Rule, will be out within say a month after the SDK release in January. Check other people's reviews, see how the modding progresses and I don't doubt you will eventually be able to piece together the game you want to play using the good features of Civ 4 as a basis. Wait and see because there is no game like Civ that I've found.

Uhm, time limit is not 400 turns. It's just a time limit of one of the three speed modes. On epic it is much longer.

I play Rhye's mod and it has 400 turns. It is a mod I enjoy a lot, it is not the number of turns alone that counts...

V. Soma said:

I play Rhye's mod and it has 400 turns. It is a mod I enjoy a lot, it is not the number of turns alone that counts...

Click to expand...

exactly, it's also the size of the map and the technological evolution...if these 3 things aren't improved, they deeply affect the epic environment of the game...

On the technological evolution. It's clear you want the game to be like a mod you've played. However, I doubt the majority of people on this site play that mod (even though they've got the option) so surely the current system is more favoured. Isn't the ability to create mods like this one of the main reasons civ is great anyway?

They have changed the tech tree a bit in that you now don't have to research every prerequisite for a tech, just one. This will mean you can completely avoid some techs and it will give you more choices and flexibility. I doubt it'll be good enough for you or make you want to buy the game. But if not I fail to see why your reading this anyway.

The game isn't out yet, it's impossible to tell how the game with play. I'm sure you'll be addicted to it like many other people within 10 minutes of installing it.

I also think 400 turns seems to short, but i'm sure the EPIC mode would be more my liking.

Not only that, but i'm sure patches will be released constantly to balance gameplay and fix bugs, chill out, i'm sure it'll be great.

Might actually be very easy to change the turn limit of a game as civ should be very moddable.

With regards to technology, I beg to differ with your view. Sure there are fewer techs on the later game, merely to balance early and late game. In civ 3 you would spend a short time in the stone age and much longer in the modern age. In Civ 4 this is balanced. Then you can choose to play quick game, limited turns. Normal game, or epic length.

With regards to the early game you can choose:
Growth:
Fishing > Pottery > Writing
Agriculture > Pottery > Writing
Agriculture > Animal Husbandry > Writing
Hunting > Animal Husbandry > Writing

Religion:
Mysticism > Meditation > Priesthood > Writing
Mysticism > Polytheism > Priesthood > Writing

Military Options:
Bronze Working > Iron Working

So depending on your starting location you can choose for fishing, farming, cattle or hunting as main source of food.

Or completely different focus on religion and choose buddism or Hinduism.

Or if you dont care for food and religion go straight for bronze working and iron working to go military strat.

And you dont learn what you dont need.

Markus6 said:

On the technological evolution. It's clear you want the game to be like a mod you've played. However, I doubt the majority of people on this site play that mod (even though they've got the option) so surely the current system is more favoured. Isn't the ability to create mods like this one of the main reasons civ is great anyway?
.

Click to expand...

The reason I'd like to see a more complex and flexible tech-tree is not because I played Rise and Rule and enjoyed it, but because I think the tech-tree model depicted in RnR is the one that best fits human history and realism. It's more accurate than the tech-tree in Civ3 or Civ4. I dreamed with a complex/diverse tech-tree even before I played RnR.

And I have no statistical data to corroborate this, but I've been reading thousands of posts and I believe that the hardcore CIV fan agrees with me.

And yes, this can be moded, however there are lots of concepts that they failed to recognize as fundamental and you can't mod at all, such as immigration, civil wars, colonization and trade.

thanks for your opinion

remconius said:

With regards to the early game you can choose:
Growth:
Fishing > Pottery > Writing
Agriculture > Pottery > Writing
Agriculture > Animal Husbandry > Writing
Hunting > Animal Husbandry > Writing

Religion:
Mysticism > Meditation > Priesthood > Writing
Mysticism > Polytheism > Priesthood > Writing

Military Options:
Bronze Working > Iron Working

So depending on your starting location you can choose for fishing, farming, cattle or hunting as main source of food.

Or completely different focus on religion and choose buddism or Hinduism.

Or if you dont care for food and religion go straight for bronze working and iron working to go military strat.

And you dont learn what you dont need.

Click to expand...

Well, I can only ask you to take a look at the RnR tech-tree (ancient age only) and let you take your own conclusions...

Incredibly cluttered and confusing?

well i bet you also found CIV confusing the first time you played it...i suppose you are basing your opinion on the number of lines, intersections and technologies you see...i suggest you look more carefully and read the technologies represented...

many people would consider this map as a lesson of history...

Yes I did find it confusing. But if it looked like this I wouldn't have played it at first at all. Not that I'm saying this is a bad mod, it's just nowhere near beginner friendly. Firaxis are in the tricky situation of trying to get people to buy there game. They're doing this by trying to make the game accessible while keeping the same level of complexity (which most players would say is about right). This just doesn't fit in I'm afraid

many people would consider this map as a lesson of history...

Click to expand...

I dropped history as soon as I could, the games there to entertain not teach.

Civ3 doesn't last 400 turns. I don't care what the timer claims. 540 turns? Are you kidding me? I've never had a game last over 480 turns, and only two, plus wacky variant games (like OCC) have lasted more than 400. That's out of like seventy total games!

They had to change the way technology worked at high difficulty levels in Civ3 to STOP games ending naturally in the 1000AD era. When Civ3 came out, the average Deity game lasted about 250 turns. :shock: I won by diplomacy once in 750AD!


It's not the number of turns, but what is packed in to them. Master of Orion is playable in under a hundred turns! It rarely goes to two hundred. You wouldn't know it unless you count them, though, as that game only has about twenty "empty" turns at the game start. By turn 100, you're very busy. Civ has always had a lot more disposable turns up front, where you move a unit or two and click next turn.

Just how many boring, filled-with-micromanagement, game-is-over but-you-can-keep-fiddling-your-cities turns do we NEED at the end of the game, anyway? If they make the late game fun, that will be a bona fide miracle, I admit, but Civ3 was widely and harshly panned on its release, and I got over a thousand hours of fun out of it.


- Sirian

@ Markus6 :

a civer who doesn't like History, that must be a first...maybe that could explain why you are so scared by this "confusing" tree...

I bet that they will release add-on pack after this to made those things better what basicly just didn't got any time to do.

I doubt it's a first, especially among more recreational players. I personally am not scared of it. I don't particularily like it, it's not exactly pretty is it? Beginners, who don't know what most techs do anyway, just aren't going to get it.