Sir Sam Vimes
Duke of Ankh
UPDATE: If you're new to Civ IV and would like to share your first impressions of the game, or if you're an experienced player with tips for newcomers or silly newbie mistakes you made and would like to share, please post here!
Civ IV Complete - First Impressions
I've been playing Civ games for years (I own Civ, Col, Civ II, SMAC Complete and C3C) but I've never had a computer powerful enough to play anything above C3C. A few months ago, I got a Win 7 32-bit netbook. Just after Xmas, I bought an external DVD drive, went on Amazon and bought Civ IV Complete. It arrived in the post the other day, and I settled down to play. I've played an epic game as Ragnar on Settler difficulty (come on, its changed so much from C3C!) and Epic speed. I've also played 'The Crossroads of the World' and 'Mesoamerica'. I have not played RFC (sacrilage, I know). As of today, I've DL'd and installed the UP 3.19, BBAI, Sword of Islam and Revolution DCM mods, but I haven't played them. Here are my first impressions...
1 - General:
Civ IV Complete - an exercise in false advertising: I figured I'd get a fully-patched, DRM-free collection of Vanilla, Warlords, BTS and Col. WHOOPS! THAT'S ONLY IN NORTH AMERICA! No Col (ok, that's no biggie), Vanilla and Warlords need the disk in to play and SIX DAMN YEARS after the release of Vanilla, I had to download a patch for BTS... C3C was fully patched...
Stupid Expansion Packs...: When you install the complete versions of Civ 2 or 3, its 1 desktop icon, 1 game with all content. But not with Civ IV! Just a niggle, but it makes life more complicated.
Main Menu: So, I ran BTS and my first impression was 'Hey, this looks fun'. After the fairly utilitarian menu screens of past versions of Civ, this looked bright and shiny and new. Nice!
2 - General Gameplay:
New Stuff: Love the religions and corporations: anything that adds strategic depth is good in my book, and its fun! Shame they axed them for CiV...
Barbs can build and capture cities? Brilliant!
Random events are fun
Colonies are an interesting concept...
The new terrain improvements are cool.
Tech Tree: Bring back icons! I wanna see what the tech gives me without having to mouse over it.
I wish the tree was more linear, along the lines of C3C (ok, so I'm a bit conservative...)
Tribes: Added African civs = win
C3C represented a step forward from Civ II in terms of differences between tribes. Even though Civ IV adds unique buildings, the lack of clear 'culture groups' and the failure to increase on C3C's one UU per civ policy means that I feel Civ IV doesn't represent a step forward in this respect.
Layout: The game screen is clear, aesthetically pleasing and easily understandable by n00bs. On the other hand, it eats precious pixels and reminds me of Rise of Nations. Narrow win.
Difficulty: So, I played my first game on Settler, because I knew there were a lot of new concepts for me to get my head around. After about 200 turns, my best city got captured by a rampaging hoard of Barbs. In nearly a decade playing Civ, I had never before lost a city to Barbarian units. WTF?
Firaxis-made scenarios: Fun, some cool ideas, but the lack of new units/techs made them disappointing when compared to the Conquests in C3C.
Historical accuracy: Speaking as a historian, a step back from C3C, especially because there isn't such a clear division between eras on the tech tree. However, I understand that RFC improves a lot of this.
Now, I love Civ IV and will continue to play it. These are just the immediate impressions of someone who has been stuck on C3C since forever and is experiencing culture shock. Any thoughts? Any mods/scenarios I should try?
Edits:
6/01/12: 11:36am - I've played RevolutionDCM and Sword of Islam: awesome!
Indeed. I was playing as Abbasids in RFC SoI, great fun, then a message told me 'a new empire has arisen, do you want to take control of it?' I figured 'woo-hoo, vassel state!' but nope... ended up starting over as a new civ. Ouch! I need to read the pedia
Treat me as a test case: I'll post here about if/when I hit a RAM wall of death...
Civ IV Complete - First Impressions
I've been playing Civ games for years (I own Civ, Col, Civ II, SMAC Complete and C3C) but I've never had a computer powerful enough to play anything above C3C. A few months ago, I got a Win 7 32-bit netbook. Just after Xmas, I bought an external DVD drive, went on Amazon and bought Civ IV Complete. It arrived in the post the other day, and I settled down to play. I've played an epic game as Ragnar on Settler difficulty (come on, its changed so much from C3C!) and Epic speed. I've also played 'The Crossroads of the World' and 'Mesoamerica'. I have not played RFC (sacrilage, I know). As of today, I've DL'd and installed the UP 3.19, BBAI, Sword of Islam and Revolution DCM mods, but I haven't played them. Here are my first impressions...
1 - General:
Civ IV Complete - an exercise in false advertising: I figured I'd get a fully-patched, DRM-free collection of Vanilla, Warlords, BTS and Col. WHOOPS! THAT'S ONLY IN NORTH AMERICA! No Col (ok, that's no biggie), Vanilla and Warlords need the disk in to play and SIX DAMN YEARS after the release of Vanilla, I had to download a patch for BTS... C3C was fully patched...
Stupid Expansion Packs...: When you install the complete versions of Civ 2 or 3, its 1 desktop icon, 1 game with all content. But not with Civ IV! Just a niggle, but it makes life more complicated.
Main Menu: So, I ran BTS and my first impression was 'Hey, this looks fun'. After the fairly utilitarian menu screens of past versions of Civ, this looked bright and shiny and new. Nice!
2 - General Gameplay:
New Stuff: Love the religions and corporations: anything that adds strategic depth is good in my book, and its fun! Shame they axed them for CiV...
Barbs can build and capture cities? Brilliant!
Random events are fun
Colonies are an interesting concept...
The new terrain improvements are cool.
Tech Tree: Bring back icons! I wanna see what the tech gives me without having to mouse over it.
I wish the tree was more linear, along the lines of C3C (ok, so I'm a bit conservative...)
Tribes: Added African civs = win
C3C represented a step forward from Civ II in terms of differences between tribes. Even though Civ IV adds unique buildings, the lack of clear 'culture groups' and the failure to increase on C3C's one UU per civ policy means that I feel Civ IV doesn't represent a step forward in this respect.
Layout: The game screen is clear, aesthetically pleasing and easily understandable by n00bs. On the other hand, it eats precious pixels and reminds me of Rise of Nations. Narrow win.
Difficulty: So, I played my first game on Settler, because I knew there were a lot of new concepts for me to get my head around. After about 200 turns, my best city got captured by a rampaging hoard of Barbs. In nearly a decade playing Civ, I had never before lost a city to Barbarian units. WTF?
Firaxis-made scenarios: Fun, some cool ideas, but the lack of new units/techs made them disappointing when compared to the Conquests in C3C.
Historical accuracy: Speaking as a historian, a step back from C3C, especially because there isn't such a clear division between eras on the tech tree. However, I understand that RFC improves a lot of this.
Now, I love Civ IV and will continue to play it. These are just the immediate impressions of someone who has been stuck on C3C since forever and is experiencing culture shock. Any thoughts? Any mods/scenarios I should try?
Edits:
6/01/12: 11:36am - I've played RevolutionDCM and Sword of Islam: awesome!
Large maps in the late game are going to make you miss Civ3. Another thing I like about IV is that diplomacy matters more in this game and you don't have to kill to get luxury resources (getting AI to trade resources in III is hard). Although warfare certainly helps in IV it isn't as much a war game as III.
I think RFC is the best mod for CivIV. However, I understand Fall from Heaven is more popular. RFC is definitely best for fun combined with accuracy. I find RFC seems enough like CivIV to lull one into a false sense of security that it works the same way and then a Plague or a Collapse occurs.
Indeed. I was playing as Abbasids in RFC SoI, great fun, then a message told me 'a new empire has arisen, do you want to take control of it?' I figured 'woo-hoo, vassel state!' but nope... ended up starting over as a new civ. Ouch! I need to read the pedia
Treat me as a test case: I'll post here about if/when I hit a RAM wall of death...