After a long, long time...

I'm ready to get civpwned again

It went something like...
"CivIII, look there in bargain bin... oh and expansion as well.

- Damn this stuff is hard, lets check some forums...
- Ohhh so you can do this.... Ahhhh if you do so... higher diff... one more turn... higher diff... no wonders game... pbem... double pbem... OMG I missed a turn on cow there.... You Aztec scum, oh its you mom, yeah I sleep, sure mom, work? What work?"

Then it took combined forces of WoW and EVE to tear me away from Civ. I didn't visit civfanatics, I didn't check up on CivIV, I didn't use words that start with "C" .


But now "Civ strikes back". what can I say... It is calling me
I really, really can't resist it anymore nor do I want to

So question is how is Civ IV? I checked reviews and all but from a civfanatic point of view... I loved Civ3 to death, never tried 1st or 2nd so I can't compare. But I didn't really fancy AI in CIII, they felt stupid deeper and deeper I come to understand game mechanics. Did they improve AI in IV? I also heard way back that AI can be modded... Is that true? IIRC 4th Civ should be the most mod friendly of the bunch Is the game dept still there? Hope they didn't simplify things :/

Oh I soooo look forward to torment you with my questions again guys Hope
Bede, Whomp, gmharriet and a few other friendly souls are still around, they had a patience like none I've seen, cheers to you guys/gals!

I played C2 the way you played C3

CivIII was not in my game list; I must had been occupied with other games at that time period, probably half life, counter strike and diablo 2, and then everquest. anyway, I just started playing C4 last week. My first impression wasn't all that good due to the seemingly over-simplifed game play; too much automation by default. and I wasn't happy about increased game pace... researching/building takes forever in slower game speed, and on faster game speed setting the whole game goes by too fast.

but for some reason, I just can't stop playing... and slowly (or quickly, since I've only been playing for a week), C4 started to grow on me and I am either starting to like the new features, or starting to accept them. and I find out the automation AI is actually pretty good, making about the same decision I would have made, and I can always intervene when I want some mannual adjustments. But I still don't like the game speeds.

Melhisedek said:

I'm ready to get civpwned again
So question is how is Civ IV?

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It's an excellant game, far better than Civ 3. You'll probably like it alot.

Did they improve AI in IV?

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Yes though can still be rather stupid, especially when it comes to war. You can't expect to much from today's computers. However the AI will quite often give you a good challenge throughout the game, even with things like researching techs.

I also heard way back that AI can be modded... Is that true?

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Not yet but it's coming, within a couple of weeks. They're going to release a Software Development Kit, which will allow anyone to tinker with the AI, as well as other areas in the game.

IIRC 4th Civ should be the most mod friendly of the bunch

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It definitely qualifies as that.

Xonic said:

I played C2 the way you played C3
But I still don't like the game speeds.

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Play Marathon. At 1200 turns it's the longest Civ game ever.

The AI is quite a bit better in Civ4 than in Civ3. AFAIK, the AI can't be modded yet, but it's supposed to be moddable once the SDK comes out.

Personally, I like Civ4 a LOT better than Civ3. There's a lot less micromanagement, freeing you to concentrate on things that should be more important than making sure that each and every citizen in your empire is on exactly the right tile (things like, you know, building an empire ). The new combat system also means that Spearmen have a roughly 1 in a million chance of beating a healthy Tank, instead of the something like 1 in 6 that it was in Civ3. There's also a lot less of the type of stuff that I personally found bizarre or outright counterintuitive in Civ3, like how bigger cities were worse than small cities.

The new additions to gameplay, like more things for workers to build, religion, and specialists actually not sucking are also quite nice.


Edit: geez, talk about slow posting...NOBODY had responded when I started working on this post

Willem said:

Play Marathon. At 1200 turns it's the longest Civ game ever.

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I started a marathon just couple days ago. Yeah, the game certainly gives me the epic feeling I seek again, but on this game speed, building/researching just takes forever+1....

Xonic said:

I started a marathon just couple days ago. Yeah, the game certainly gives me the epic feeling I seek again, but on this game speed, building/researching just takes forever+1....

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I think there's a mod over on the customization forum that brings production speeds back up to "Normal" speed while leaving research at "Marathon" speed...or something like that.

Artanis said:

I think there's a mod over on the customization forum that brings production speeds back up to "Normal" speed while leaving research at "Marathon" speed...or something like that.

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thanks, I need to go check that out.

Hehehe just the stuff I needed to hear Well I guess tomorrow will be the big day... Lord have mercy on my soul