Question of interest....

Hi all
I've asked the same question in the Civ III forum, so bear with me.

I'm interested to see that many of you are still playing Civ IV, even with a new version of Civ out there. Of course, what you play is up to you, I'd just like to know the reasons why.
So, in saying that, are you Civ IV players ONLY playing Civ IV, or do you play it as well as playing the other Civs.
If you are sticking to Civ IV, what are your reasons? Maybe it's because you are waiting to upgrade your PC??
Anyhows, I'm just interested to know, not in any way saying who should be playing what!
Cheers all
David

I simply play CIV IV because it is great and CiV sucks donkey balls. I do own Civ III but really can't get into it much - I probably woulda loved it if I played it back in the day or I knew how to actually play it. However, at this point it is not worth the time investment IMO.

david1806 said:

Hi all
I've asked the same question in the Civ III forum, so bear with me.

I'm interested to see that many of you are still playing Civ IV, even with a new version of Civ out there. Of course, what you play is up to you, I'd just like to know the reasons why.
So, in saying that, are you Civ IV players ONLY playing Civ IV, or do you play it as well as playing the other Civs.
If you are sticking to Civ IV, what are your reasons? Maybe it's because you are waiting to upgrade your PC??
Anyhows, I'm just interested to know, not in any way saying who should be playing what!
Cheers all
David

Click to expand...

CivV, by the accounts of the poor souls who tried it, was very poor. I originally avoided it because of Steam and PC issues and dislike of 1 UPT. The opinions of most players is that it was a disappointment. I play IV and III, reviews of V and what I saw of it didn't interest me at all.

I tried II, but I found it hard to tell from the interface exactly what was going on, what needed to be improved, and so on. A poll was recently done in OT so there wasn't a bias from one forum or the other. IV won handily, with III next most popular. V was only a little above II (which was released in the 1990's) so V hasn't grabbed most fanatics. I'm sure some of the people will give you a good list of reasons why they hate IV - they've tried it and wanted to love it!

I would advise BTS for your Civ experience. I think in the IV subforum that will be the opinion of the vast majority.

I'm not quite ready to buy a new computer to play the new version. Maybe when they do an expansion pack.

I play Civ IV with the BtS expansion simply because of the Civ series games I've played, I like this version best. [My favorite game is still SMAC though.] At the moment I see no reason to move to CiV: I'm not a "keeping up with the Jones" kind of gamer. Based on what I've read, I don't think I'd like the current CiV. Also, I'm suspicious of Steam.

1. My computer could barely handle CiV.
2. I will not put up with paying for DLC.
3. I'm still learning CIV. I still play C3C once in a while.
4. 1UPT, what were they thinking?

You may be interested in a question I've posted on the Civ V General Forum about the different versions.......

I'm guessing 1UPT = 1 unit per tile?

david1806 said:

Hi all
I've asked the same question in the Civ III forum, so bear with me.

I'm interested to see that many of you are still playing Civ IV, even with a new version of Civ out there. Of course, what you play is up to you, I'd just like to know the reasons why.
So, in saying that, are you Civ IV players ONLY playing Civ IV, or do you play it as well as playing the other Civs.

Click to expand...

I play the others as well. I also still trundle around with MOO and MOO2, even (occasionally) MOO3. I see no reason to quit playing a game I enjoy simply because it's now "outdated," or because others didn't like it.

I play a game because I enjoy it. I enjoy playing CIV, therefore I have no reason to switch nor add another game. Also, if I was looking for another game, I would never purchase a game that I could not play without hooking up online, such as Steam requires.

I play Civ 4 because it has proper support for mulitplayer.
I play Civ 4 because it made building (and maintaining) an empire fun and challenging.
I play Civ 4 because it was the first game in the series to make city management genuinely fun.
I play Civ 4 because of it's excellent mod support and the sheer amount of quality community-made content.


I don't play Civ 5 because multiplayer (which could have been a saving grace) doesn't work properly.
I don't play Civ 5 because it's economic model is shallow leading to repetitive play and boredom.
I don't play Civ 5 because the AI's offer little to no challenge once you figured out some basic tactics.
I don't play Civ 5 because diplomacy (despite the effort that went into it) essentially resolves into everyone hating each other (much like back in the Civ 1/Civ 2 days).
I don't play Civ 5 because there are simply less interesting things to do in the game than it's predecessors (Civ 1/Civ 2 notwithstanding).
I don't play Civ 5 because it is a deeply flawed game made on some deeply flawed game design premises and released to the wild without proper playtesting.


Master of Orion 3 taught me that the latest game in a franchise is not necessarily the best.

Couldn't play Civ V on my computer even if I wanted to. Reading the reactions of people who did, I no longer have much interest in it anyway.

I own Civ III, but stopped playing once I got Civ IV. I would not willingly go back to it now.

I also still have a copy of the Civ II disc around here somewhere, and it was a great game back in the day, but totally obsolete compared to III and IV.

In short Civ IV BTS is just a great game, and I am still learning. After a year of playing it! I still feel like I have a lot to learn, and a lot of new strategies to try before I could start to become bored with it. Heck, there are still civilizations that I haven't even played with. Civ IV is deep, fascination, challenging, and literally almost infinitely repayable.

I haven't played Civ V much since I got it, mainly because it just takes so long to play a game. I've got a pretty decent PC, and the patch that speeds up turn times was a big help, but it's just so slow regardless.

Tonight I played the first Civ 4 game I've played in about a year and I'm having much more fun than I've ever had with V. I'm sure it's partly because when I started the game I knew exactly what I was doing, how to go about playing the early game and all the various tips and tricks I've learned over the years certainly help me enjoy it. (thanks TMIT!).

Essentially I find Civ 4 to be more fun. And so much faster. Hell I've played almost 400 turns of an Epic game in about 2 hours.

1. I was about 13 y.o. when my brother brought Civ1 to my home and since then I've been addicted
2. I jumped easily to Civ2 when it came out
3. I jumped easily to Civ3 when it came out
4. It took me a while to jump from Civ3 to Civ4, at the beginning I thought Civ4 vanilla had a lot of bugs and i disliked the graphics. I finally did when the first "unofficial" patches began to fix the bugs
5. I was very excited since Civ5 was announced, I like the screenshots and I thougth the hexes were really cool, so I got the game immediately after it came in the market. I played and got bored, very fast, I didn't like the 1upt system and I felt Civ5 was dumbed down because many good concepts that Civ games got through the years (like religion, spionage, health, etc) were removed. So I went back to play Civ4 BTS. I'm not sure if Civ5 will be a worthy game sometime if the future; if that happens then I will try again.

Civ IV with no contest.

It takes about a year to play one turn of Civ-V on my computer, and I think I've just gotten too used to and addicted to IV.

I tried Civ5 and just hated it. I hate the huge annoying UI, I hate how they removed every single fun feature, and I despise the 1UPT premise of the game - it makes absolutely no sense. If only such a small, fixed number of military personnel could fit in one place, then how in the hell did the Allies invade Normandy from Great Britain in WW2? Plus, Civ4 has such an amazing amount of user created content here that it will be hard to ever get tired of it.

Main reasons I'm still on 4 are financial; I can't justify the expense right now, and Civ has taught me that even if I want the game it makes more sense to wait until the Gold version is out, so I pay for the game once instead of paying for the original release, paying again for expansion 1, and again for the release of expansion 2.

Question for all the people complaining about how slow the game is: Are your computers at or above recommended requirements, or closer to the minimum? Especially in RAM.

I'm wondering if the game is a resource hog (perhaps with the obligatory memory leaks) or just does an excessive amount of disk swapping.

eXplore
In Civ4 it feels like a crucial and important part of the game. Like it should be in a 4X. You find valuable resources(and if you don't find, that's actually fun too since you'll know you're in for a hard game!). Important city sites you'll need to secure. You look for a production hub, a science center and a GP-farm. You'll find green grass and those hard plains tiles. As you scout you are constantly thinking on "how do I approach this map?" Then you meet all the characters you love to hate. They have funny comments and maybe they are a bit of a parody on the real historical character, but at least they are memorable.

In Civ5 a hill is a hill. Doesn't matter if it's brown or green. It's a hill. As the map is revealed it really doesn't affect you much. For me, it wouldn't matter if the map in Civ5 actually never was unexplored. You don't look for nice city sites, you count the number of tiles needed between your cities according to the game rules and that's it. All strategies work in Civ5. You'll meet some AIs here too, but apart from a nice looking picture (well, it's animated, but they barely move!) there's little to remember about them and it does matter which one you meet. And AI is and AI. And you meet some city states which actually lacks personality even more! But the city states does remove the feeling of exploring an unsettled world. It's like "hello there, so you are founding a civ? Well we have been here forever...". Finally you also stumble into some natural wonders. To me, that's not really fun. It's ok for it to be in the game, but not what makes exploring fun.

eXpand
Well, if you want to that is. I mentioned earlier that you count tiles rather than look for sites in Civ5, but expansion is really optional. In Civ5 every strategy works!

In Civ4 expansion is an art. How can you do it fast enough without sacrificing science and security? The map plays an important part on how fast you should expand and if you should expand towards an early war or long-term spaceship race. Settling that nice juicy spot in Civ4 feels so good. It's important to balance food, hammers commerce while thinking on happy and health. Some careful micro'ing can be both needed and rewarded, Worker turns feels precious. Chop that tree? Or maybe road to get foreign trade route? But hooking up that copper is important... so many decisions! In Civ5 you expand as you like, keep an eye on your happy cap, but that's really it.

eXploit
What is there to say? The economy in Civ5 sucks bigtime! While the slavery option in Civ4 may be called unrealistic it's a symbol of what Civ4 got: A fun little game mechanic that actually allows you to manipulate the things you exploit. Civ4 got lots of methods, and they all need planning and are only good options under the right circumstances.

Finally we got eXterminate! The big thing Civ5 really focuses on. The new combat model with 1upt and tactical combat. And a complete disaster. There's no diversity in the units, extremely small army sizes to match the mapsize and a lot of tedious work moving those troops around! In Civ4 declaring war is an exiting thing! You have just used all the tools(see eXploit) and pressed your empire to create the biggest army you could possibly do(6-7 guys doesn't cut it here!). Will it hold? Have you scouted the AI enough and made a good enough plan? Will you be able to get cities you want before the war weariness gets to big?

All this is supplemented by superior sound and music. The music follows your progress from ancient exploring to the finally push. And when that war-horn blows it's so rewarding when it's you who are declaring and just insanely scaring when it's an AI that declares.

Civ5 = 4xFail

I pretty much knew from the get-go that I was going to need a new computer to run Civ5. I did download the demo and that confirmed my fears -- it lagged so badly it was almost unplayable and I quickly gave up. Nevertheless, I fully expected to upgrade my hardware someday and switch over to Civ5.

However, based on what I've read here since, Civ5 no longer holds any interest for me. I think the nail in the coffin for me came from the "Carpet of Doom" picture on Sullla's website. I just can't conceive of that possibly being fun.

Quandary said:

I'm wondering if the game is a resource hog (perhaps with the obligatory memory leaks) or just does an excessive amount of disk swapping.

Click to expand...

Well, my limited experience with the demo was that one of my CPUs pegged at 100%, which suggests it was busy doing calculations that my ancient graphics card couldn't handle. I didn't see much evidence that disk i/o was the issue.

Civ4 only.

IMO, Civ 3-5 are sufficiently different that gameplay will be more important than technology marching on. In some ways, I even prefer the aesthetics of Civ3 over Civ4's.

*

Civ5 is a mess of horrible design decisions. 1upt adds tactical appeal, but not enough to justify the brainless micromanagement it forces when a neutered Panzer General is crammed into a Civ game, on a scale that just doesn't work well.
Even less appealing when the AI can't play it. To make things worse, the system isn't robust (stacks of doom can be annoying, carpets of doom can lock up the game) and forced major concessions in the economy side so no joy there either.
It's nice to see that it's been patched up somewhat, but at release it gave the impression of utter incompetence of the designers. I had wondered how they'd tackle the obvious 1upt problems and they hand't, and as a cherry on top the happiness system was a heavy-handed attempt to prevent ICS that actually encouraged it.

Civ3 works as intended, but it makes me feel like the chief accountant rather than the ruler. Again some fairly heavy-handed mechanics that I have to subvert and exploit, and quite a bit of low-level micromanagement... I found it somewhat monotonous.
A good game, just not to my tastes.

Civ4 tried hard to eliminate filler, in the sense of 'things you have to do but don't have to think about', which I'm very thankful for. They also managed to balance expansion... spreading like herpes is gainful in the long run but requires enough sacrifices that it's not the only valid choice. The economy is complex without being overly complicated (well, some BtS additions are messy... but they're optional). I don't feel forced into a particular playstyle, there's more depth than I will fully grasp, and not even the tortured maths and unintuitive combat system (artillery suicide charge ftw!) put me off too much.