The game most similar to Civ is....

what exactly?

I've spent countless hours on Civ since discovering it, in its fourth incarnation but I've always struggled to find a game that gives me the same satisfaction and enjoyment.

I've tried the Age of series but never really gotten into it. I'm not a big fan of the campaign and specific objective style of play that comes along with it. The only other game I've spent any decent amount of time on was Warcraft 3, not long before WOW was released. What I enjoy most about Civ is the freedom once you begin a new game to play as you see fit.

I'm toying with the idea of Tropico 5, am I likely to enjoy it?

The game I can think of that's remotely closer to Civ is the Empire Earth series RTS.
It's basically Age of Empires (with unique resources you need to harvest later in the game) that starts you out as club-wielding brutes to space-age laser squads that's pretty unique and good.
I wish I had that CD right now...

Those games aren't like Civ at all!

Warlock 2: The Exiled:

Endless Legend:

Those are more like it. Wasn't there also a game very much like Civ:BE released a little while before BE itself was released? Can't remember the name.

You don't get any closer than Civilization: Call to Power, which is a spin off of sequel to Civilziation II when Activision had both the rights to the Civilization name and still developed it's own games. Apolyton got their hands on the source code to the sequel. Dunno what became of that, but I did enjoy Call to Power II.

Stardock games are probably the closest thing I can think to civilization, GalCiv2 more than Fallen Enchantress.

I would agree that the Galactic Civilization series is quite similar to Civ.

If you're looking for other open ended games with freedom of choice if strongly recommend Crusader Kings 2. It's an awesome game.

Which civ? There's a big difference between 3,4,5. Warlock and endless legend are like fantasy versions of 5.

There really is nothing that is like civ4.

Master or orion 2 is sort of like civ3 in space. Actually it's a lot like civ2 and 3 if you change the map to space based (ie no tile improvements) and add turn based battles instead of stacks. The citizen management, food, production, gold concepts, research, are all very similar.

Alpha centauri is basically civ 2 or 3 enhanced.

You might also want to check out Age of Wonders III and Endless Space.

civvver said:

There really is nothing that is like civ4.

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Depends on whether or not you count Colonization.

FreeCol is a neat open source colonization clone, if you're like me and could never bring yourself to playing anything but the longest Civ campaigns it's good for a shorter game with some diverse and interesting possible playstyles. Unfortunately I never did play the original. Wasn't there also a Colonization "expandalone" for Civ4? Whatever happened to that?

Oh yeah they remade colonization with civ4 engine but I haven't played it.

"Wasn't there also a Colonization "expandalone" for Civ4? Whatever happened to that?"

It's a stand alone game, not an expansion. You can buy it on steam.

I find Civ4 to be unique because I haven't seen any other games with an economy quite like yet. There are so many ways to generate production and research in civ4 whether you use production and covert it, or trade techs around, or use commerce and buy everything or just tech or whatever. You can setup a ton of trade routes. Most games incorporate 1 or 2 of those concepts but not all, like how civ5 tech is pretty much just population + modifiers and how in moo1 tech is just production. Civ2 and 3 have building maintenance and corruption and waste. So do a lot of 4x games and it's a huge part of Master of Orion 2.

I also haven't seen many games that conduct war like civ4 with vs unit specific bonuses and cultural defense modifiers + barrage and collateral dmg. Some games do similar to civ2 and 3 with their combat of stacks of units and simpler systems of attack and defense and a lot of games do the hex grid, strategic style of civ5 but nothing seems really in the middle like 4 is.

Galciv II (and III is in production right now) is probably the closest thing from a turn-based strategy perspective.

civvver said:

Which civ? There's a big difference between 3,4,5. Warlock and endless legend are like fantasy versions of 5.

There really is nothing that is like civ4.

Master or orion 2 is sort of like civ3 in space. Actually it's a lot like civ2 and 3 if you change the map to space based (ie no tile improvements) and add turn based battles instead of stacks. The citizen management, food, production, gold concepts, research, are all very similar.

Alpha centauri is basically civ 2 or 3 enhanced.

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MOO2 is a great game IMO. I also think it has aged quite well too. I would say that it is better than Civ 1 & 2 and at least equal to civ 3. I especially like the way you can customise your race, even if it was open to abuse (creative ftw). I kind of wish that BE had gone down a similar sort of route. Its a testament to MOO2 that even with very basic AI, you still had way more persoanlity in each of the races than you did with any of the sponsors in BE. You knew exactly what you were getting if you spawned next to Sakkra, Silicoids, Klackons or Psilons. Because their traits betrayed their personalities.

yeah MOO2 is great, it just suffers from some really horrible balance issues, like mirv nukes being insanely powerful. Same with MOO1. I actually prefer the simplicity and straightforwardness of MOO1 but it has some major problems in the way techs are randomly available for research and also how the AI's tech choices do not take into consideration their competition. For example, you might get screwed and not get robotic controls until like 5 or 6 which is really expensive. And the AI won't notice they can't penetrate your planetary shields with stupid lasers and tech bombs. They'll independently decide to tech bombs sometimes but it doesn't matter if you have shields or not.

civvver said:

yeah MOO2 is great, it just suffers from some really horrible balance issues, like mirv nukes being insanely powerful. Same with MOO1. I actually prefer the simplicity and straightforwardness of MOO1 but it has some major problems in the way techs are randomly available for research and also how the AI's tech choices do not take into consideration their competition. For example, you might get screwed and not get robotic controls until like 5 or 6 which is really expensive. And the AI won't notice they can't penetrate your planetary shields with stupid lasers and tech bombs. They'll independently decide to tech bombs sometimes but it doesn't matter if you have shields or not.

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Yes - an updated version of MOO1/2 which had been rebalanced would be an interesting game indeed. Gal Civ III looks like it might be that game as reviews for it seem mostly positive.

I guess the balancing issues are one of the problems faced when the computer has a huge number of very diverse choices to be made. Hence why civ seems to have debilitated into a case of +1 here and -1 there. I found the challenge in MOO2 was managable when you could pick your traits all the way up to and including impossible difficulty. However, take that customisation away and play one of the stock races, the game became significantly more difficult. I especially found uncreative races a b1tch to play like the klakons. There are some interesting rebalancing ideas. like this guys:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/197873-master-of-orion-ii-battle-at-antares/68561419