Well I just played a game and here is a real player/user review. (Me used to civilization 3 conquest multiplayer <- played it over 200+ times at least )
I started the game and I choose the smallest game possible since I am on a slow system:
PIII 450 mhz, 256 MB ram and GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB of ram.
Pangea and default graphics/sound settings.
My windows xp is pretty much optimized and tweaked... so only 12 services running and no
other deleted like auto backup and error reporting and dll cache and that sort of slow
stuff, all disabled. That explains why my PC performs so well lol.
Anyway I was quite surprised that the game actually ran on my system...
I expected the game to run to slow to be playable but as with all games the game was playable.
The only problem so far was intro's/full screen animation.. the sound would stutter/stop every second. (I think I accidently skipped over the intro because I wanted to raise the app priority in task manager.. oh well I ll check next time I start it up I did see like space and world coming into view )
Well after playing for an hour or so I defeat the AI and my score was: 36404.
It said I was Julius Ceaser level or something
So much for the AI lol... Yes I played many online games so I know how to kick butt
Anyway my first impression was this:
1. First few minutes... wow I gotta get used to this big time. I was a bit scared and didnt dare to do much and was just exploring with my warrior lol... I was a bit worried the AI or the bad beasts would attack me... but fortunately non of that, I also immediatly got a free settler from a hut ?! How many players had that their first time lol ? I think I must have been very lucky ?
I also noticed some forests growing.... I thought to myself: "Hmmm that s pretty cool and could be handy.... now those forests replenish and can be cut down for extra wood=production <- yeah baby =D )
2. Second few minutes... hard to tell where units are and what kind of units it are...
3. Confusion about how to connect resources...
4. Trying to read the civpedia is hard... mostly pictures which makes it really hard to find quickly what you are searching for... but once you enter a random picture you can see all the units/text next to it but still... So the civpedia is a bit weird/dumb.
No links to things etc... which I also missed a bit.
5. I already build a farm on the horses... so now I had to build a pasture on it destroying the farm lol.. didn't know what I was doing at the start.
6. What the deleted is cottage? I think its housing for your people or something... I didnt really bother to look it up.. or maybe it s just a new city ? hmm I dont know... I do know it gives one extra gold.. so it's probably just some sort of city improvement which can grow ?!?
Sigh... well I can be short about all of this:
1. It has many many many building types ?! <- maybe a little bit too much ?
2. Research goes incrediably fast at the start and then slowsdown somewhat...
(I immediatly got a free village from a hut too maybe that explains it lol.)
3. I build more cities later... the ai build a city right after I destroyed his capital, I was a bit surprised like that... I guess he sneaked away with a settler or something lol... He only build one other city lol... then I destroyed that one quickly as well... Me had like 6 archers and two horses and destroyed his capital... (I think the civ was callled mallie or something like that... yellow dudes ) then had 4 or 5 left plus
one horse to take the last city... I was a bit lucky that I destroyed last city
since I destroyed it with my last archer )
Little addition: I am not sure... maybe I attacked the last city with two horses instead of just one... anyway I upgraded one of the horses with better sight after it destroyed the capital first... the upgraded sight was hell cool... I really liked it a lot... at the end I simply decided to throw everything against the last city with success as described above.
4. I do miss the "stack attack" option... all units have to be moved manually and attack individually ?
I can see that that would make the game a bit more fair but ok... required lot's of moving with mouse etc...
5. Actually my hand is quite hurting from playing this game... I never had that before...
I constantly had to move the mouse around to see what I was doing and to scroll the map etc.
My first final conclusion is this:
1. It's pretty much a deleted game... the graphics are too large/clumsy/hard to tell what is what etc... I did like some stuff like water flowing and air flowing when zoomed out...
2. I liked the overall view of civilization 3 better <- more cities and more units on screen.
So what I am saying is that the big graphics in civ 4 make the game a lot more hard to play...
My hand/arm/wrist is really hurting from all the game scrolling... I dont know why really...
Maybe the mouse just moved to slow... maybe my system was too slow...
Or maybe civ4 misses something...
But for now I ll give it the benefit of the doubt....
3. I will lower my graphics and I ll see if it has a mouse sensitivity option and maybe a "scroll faster" option etc... because all the scrolling was too slow
4. Also the startrek voice telling about some "stupid wisedom deleted started to annoy me a little bit... I hope it can be turned off lol because in multiplayer that would really start to annoy quickly lol... who gives a deleted about that deleted lol.
5. Anyway I havent played multiplayer yet. Thank god for that.. because first I have to tune it otherwise my hand would fall off or something =D
So i'll try to some it up in short:
What I have been able to tell so far from first game in duel mode until BC 1000 or something.
Good points:
+ New stuff, new boats, new fishing options, new resources, new ways to connect them.
Bad points:
- Graphics way too big, takes up too much space, no overview <- can zoom out but useless cant move units in zoomed out ?
- Graphics a bit fuzzy, hard to tell what is what and where etc...
All in all it was quite an interesting experience lol... I am not yet down playing this game etc... first I wanna see how it performance with lower graphics etc and how multiplayer is like etc...
And maybe I ll also try the game out on faster system etc... though I doubt it will make any difference for the graphics clearity... it will probably remain fuzzy etc...
Anyway that's about it folks...
See you sometime in the future possibly *
P.S.:
Personally I can not understand the positive review that it has been getting.
I read many reviews and I was like: "Huh ? New stuff ? Are you crazy ? All that stuff was already in civilization 3 conquest <- expansion pack"
So I guess most of those reviewers didn't play the expansion pack lol =D
To be honest during the game I wanted to quite and start playing civ3 conquest gain... but as I said before I am not done yet... I have to try civ4 at lower graphics... and I would still like to try multiplayer to see if it crashes less than civ3 conquest etc... oh well, sigh.
Bye,
Skybuck.
Moderator Action: Warned for language.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
I started the game and I choose the smallest game possible since I am on a slow system:
PIII 450 mhz, 256 MB ram and GeForce FX 5200 with 128 MB of ram.
Pangea and default graphics/sound settings.
My windows xp is pretty much optimized and tweaked... so only 12 services running and no
other deleted like auto backup and error reporting and dll cache and that sort of slow
stuff, all disabled. That explains why my PC performs so well lol.
Anyway I was quite surprised that the game actually ran on my system...
I expected the game to run to slow to be playable but as with all games the game was playable.
The only problem so far was intro's/full screen animation.. the sound would stutter/stop every second. (I think I accidently skipped over the intro because I wanted to raise the app priority in task manager.. oh well I ll check next time I start it up I did see like space and world coming into view )
Well after playing for an hour or so I defeat the AI and my score was: 36404.
It said I was Julius Ceaser level or something
So much for the AI lol... Yes I played many online games so I know how to kick butt
Anyway my first impression was this:
1. First few minutes... wow I gotta get used to this big time. I was a bit scared and didnt dare to do much and was just exploring with my warrior lol... I was a bit worried the AI or the bad beasts would attack me... but fortunately non of that, I also immediatly got a free settler from a hut ?! How many players had that their first time lol ? I think I must have been very lucky ?
I also noticed some forests growing.... I thought to myself: "Hmmm that s pretty cool and could be handy.... now those forests replenish and can be cut down for extra wood=production <- yeah baby =D )
2. Second few minutes... hard to tell where units are and what kind of units it are...
3. Confusion about how to connect resources...
4. Trying to read the civpedia is hard... mostly pictures which makes it really hard to find quickly what you are searching for... but once you enter a random picture you can see all the units/text next to it but still... So the civpedia is a bit weird/dumb.
No links to things etc... which I also missed a bit.
5. I already build a farm on the horses... so now I had to build a pasture on it destroying the farm lol.. didn't know what I was doing at the start.
6. What the deleted is cottage? I think its housing for your people or something... I didnt really bother to look it up.. or maybe it s just a new city ? hmm I dont know... I do know it gives one extra gold.. so it's probably just some sort of city improvement which can grow ?!?
Sigh... well I can be short about all of this:
1. It has many many many building types ?! <- maybe a little bit too much ?
2. Research goes incrediably fast at the start and then slowsdown somewhat...
(I immediatly got a free village from a hut too maybe that explains it lol.)
3. I build more cities later... the ai build a city right after I destroyed his capital, I was a bit surprised like that... I guess he sneaked away with a settler or something lol... He only build one other city lol... then I destroyed that one quickly as well... Me had like 6 archers and two horses and destroyed his capital... (I think the civ was callled mallie or something like that... yellow dudes ) then had 4 or 5 left plus
one horse to take the last city... I was a bit lucky that I destroyed last city
since I destroyed it with my last archer )
Little addition: I am not sure... maybe I attacked the last city with two horses instead of just one... anyway I upgraded one of the horses with better sight after it destroyed the capital first... the upgraded sight was hell cool... I really liked it a lot... at the end I simply decided to throw everything against the last city with success as described above.
4. I do miss the "stack attack" option... all units have to be moved manually and attack individually ?
I can see that that would make the game a bit more fair but ok... required lot's of moving with mouse etc...
5. Actually my hand is quite hurting from playing this game... I never had that before...
I constantly had to move the mouse around to see what I was doing and to scroll the map etc.
My first final conclusion is this:
1. It's pretty much a deleted game... the graphics are too large/clumsy/hard to tell what is what etc... I did like some stuff like water flowing and air flowing when zoomed out...
2. I liked the overall view of civilization 3 better <- more cities and more units on screen.
So what I am saying is that the big graphics in civ 4 make the game a lot more hard to play...
My hand/arm/wrist is really hurting from all the game scrolling... I dont know why really...
Maybe the mouse just moved to slow... maybe my system was too slow...
Or maybe civ4 misses something...
But for now I ll give it the benefit of the doubt....
3. I will lower my graphics and I ll see if it has a mouse sensitivity option and maybe a "scroll faster" option etc... because all the scrolling was too slow
4. Also the startrek voice telling about some "stupid wisedom deleted started to annoy me a little bit... I hope it can be turned off lol because in multiplayer that would really start to annoy quickly lol... who gives a deleted about that deleted lol.
5. Anyway I havent played multiplayer yet. Thank god for that.. because first I have to tune it otherwise my hand would fall off or something =D
So i'll try to some it up in short:
What I have been able to tell so far from first game in duel mode until BC 1000 or something.
Good points:
+ New stuff, new boats, new fishing options, new resources, new ways to connect them.
Bad points:
- Graphics way too big, takes up too much space, no overview <- can zoom out but useless cant move units in zoomed out ?
- Graphics a bit fuzzy, hard to tell what is what and where etc...
All in all it was quite an interesting experience lol... I am not yet down playing this game etc... first I wanna see how it performance with lower graphics etc and how multiplayer is like etc...
And maybe I ll also try the game out on faster system etc... though I doubt it will make any difference for the graphics clearity... it will probably remain fuzzy etc...
Anyway that's about it folks...
See you sometime in the future possibly *
P.S.:
Personally I can not understand the positive review that it has been getting.
I read many reviews and I was like: "Huh ? New stuff ? Are you crazy ? All that stuff was already in civilization 3 conquest <- expansion pack"
So I guess most of those reviewers didn't play the expansion pack lol =D
To be honest during the game I wanted to quite and start playing civ3 conquest gain... but as I said before I am not done yet... I have to try civ4 at lower graphics... and I would still like to try multiplayer to see if it crashes less than civ3 conquest etc... oh well, sigh.
Bye,
Skybuck.
Moderator Action: Warned for language.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889