Will there ever be a market for Civ IV remake?

[lymond]

I'm still wondering why Civ4 would be considered the "logical" highest priority for a remake of a past Civ iteration?

Interesting point. Civ IV in my opinion is highly playable even by today standards. Graphics are clean and fresh and mods make it even better. When you look at Civ 3 it is really really dated now and unplayable for me.

 

[Fippy]

Imo there are markets for many older top games from all genres, but sadly it's not the big companies interest (who took over many quality studios back then, how i miss Westwood, New World Computing etc..).

 

[kyljys]

If they would add all the best content from the best mods (History Rewritten, Caveman2Cosmos, Rise&Fall, Rise of Mankind etc) in remake, it would make an awesome game. Biggest flaws at the moment are technical issues, such as crashing and net code.

 

[Windsor]

While we might see a fan made "Civ4Free" I don't think Firaxis will ever give us a Civ4 remake. While we love Civ4 it sold nowhere near as many copies as Civ5 and I don't think there's that many people out there who want to pay money for a polished Civ4-game.

What fascinates me the most is how different players think about what Civ4 needs. Adding "the best" from the mods kyljys mentioned would probably make the game much worse from my perspective.

 

[Kaiman]

I'm still wondering why Civ4 would be considered the "logical" highest priority for a remake of a past Civ iteration?

Isn't it the most widely-played of the older ones? That's why I thought, but Windsor's post seems to indicate that this may not be true.

Huh? What are you talking about?

You can only build one of a certain type of building per city. Normally the game enforces this by not letting you waste assets on a redundant building, but this isn't true with academies.

You can set a builder to "build route" from point A to point B to make a long road without having to click "build a road" in one square at a time every few turns, but it often picks an odd path (and sometimes even a different path from the one it showed you!).

There are 8 traits in the base game of Civ 4. That makes for 28 possible trait combinations. They only included 26 leaders and no leader has the same exact pair of traits as any other.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

You can only build one of a certain type of building per city. Normally the game enforces this by not letting you waste assets on a redundant building, but this isn't true with academies.

Well yeah, because you can't build academies except by expending a Great Scientist anyway?

You can set a builder to "build route" from point A to point B to make a long road without having to click "build a road" in one square at a time every few turns, but it often picks an odd path (and sometimes even a different path from the one it showed you!).

I think you might be able to set waypoints, but I never used that option myself.

There are 8 traits in the base game of Civ 4. That makes for 28 possible trait combinations. They only included 26 leaders and no leader has the same exact pair of traits as any other.

Ah gotcha, so you want the number of leaders to be identical to the number of unique trait combinations. I sympathize with that.

 

[Kaiman]

Well yeah, because you can't build academies except by expending a Great Scientist anyway?

Right, but by my way of thinking at least you shouldn't be able to expend the Great Scientist on nothing just because you're a new player who hasn't figured out all the nuances to very nuance-heavy game. For example, imagine if you could click to expend a Great Engineer to "rush build" a spaceship part and then it would just use up the Engineer without actually doing anything. Instead, it properly just doesn't let the user do this in the first place.

Ah gotcha, so you want the number of leaders to be identical to the number of unique trait combinations. I sympathize with that.

I guess there's no real reason it would "have" to be this way, it's just odd to include so many combinations but not all of them. Like, 26 of 28 is weird. If there were 26 out of like 60 combinations I'd be just saying "ok they didn't want to put 60 civs in the game, I get that".

Some other useful stuff would be:
* The ability to look over the diplomatic or civics screen when you're challenged to make a change by some leader
* A little bit better unit queuing system that can slide stuff into the middle and not just either end

And I'll be fine if they never do any of this, which I bet they don't, but compared to other games around the same period that had more useful features like this at the time, or that have received updates since then, this one is a little lacking in some of those certain ways even though it remains a really good game (if it was a mediocre game I would just play something else rather than wanting a usability change).

 

[AcaMetis]

Right, but by my way of thinking at least you shouldn't be able to expend the Great Scientist on nothing just because you're a new player who hasn't figured out all the nuances to very nuance-heavy game. For example, imagine if you could click to expend a Great Engineer to "rush build" a spaceship part and then it would just use up the Engineer without actually doing anything. Instead, it properly just doesn't let the user do this in the first place.

How does the game allow you to you waste a Great Scientist on an Academy, by being allowed to put it in a city that doesn't benefit from it? I just tested it, and I can't expend a GS on building an Academy when a city already has one. I even tried it with multiple GS selected, but the game only used up one of them.

Mind you that I am running with BUG/BULL, so it could be a feature of either of them, I guess?

 

[Drakarska]

Right, but by my way of thinking at least you shouldn't be able to expend the Great Scientist on nothing just because you're a new player who hasn't figured out all the nuances to very nuance-heavy game. For example, imagine if you could click to expend a Great Engineer to "rush build" a spaceship part and then it would just use up the Engineer without actually doing anything. Instead, it properly just doesn't let the user do this in the first place.



I guess there's no real reason it would "have" to be this way, it's just odd to include so many combinations but not all of them. Like, 26 of 28 is weird. If there were 26 out of like 60 combinations I'd be just saying "ok they didn't want to put 60 civs in the game, I get that".

Some other useful stuff would be:
* The ability to look over the diplomatic or civics screen when you're challenged to make a change by some leader
* A little bit better unit queuing system that can slide stuff into the middle and not just either end

And I'll be fine if they never do any of this, which I bet they don't, but compared to other games around the same period that had more useful features like this at the time, or that have received updates since then, this one is a little lacking in some of those certain ways even though it remains a really good game (if it was a mediocre game I would just play something else rather than wanting a usability change).

You can. Hit F2 or F4 ( Civics and Diplo) while the interaction screen is up, and it will take you to the appropriate advisor.
The second part is a bit trickier. CTL+Click will make your selection go to the top of the que. SHFT+Click is sequential for the que. A little creative keyboard hopscotch will give you approximately what your after. I do a gree that a nifty CLK+Drag feature would be snazzy though .

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Right, but by my way of thinking at least you shouldn't be able to expend the Great Scientist on nothing just because you're a new player who hasn't figured out all the nuances to very nuance-heavy game. For example, imagine if you could click to expend a Great Engineer to "rush build" a spaceship part and then it would just use up the Engineer without actually doing anything. Instead, it properly just doesn't let the user do this in the first place.

Huh? You can not expend a Great Scientist on nothing, unless you delete it I suppose. If you have a Great Scientist in a city that already has an Academy the "Build Academy" Icon simply doesn't appear.

I guess there's no real reason it would "have" to be this way, it's just odd to include so many combinations but not all of them. Like, 26 of 28 is weird. If there were 26 out of like 60 combinations I'd be just saying "ok they didn't want to put 60 civs in the game, I get that".

I completely agree with you here.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

How does the game allow you to you waste a Great Scientist on an Academy, by being allowed to put it in a city that doesn't benefit from it? I just tested it, and I can't expend a GS on building an Academy when a city already has one. I even tried it with multiple GS selected, but the game only used up one of them.

Mind you that I am running with BUG/BULL, so it could be a feature of either of them, I guess?

It is not a feature of BUG/BULL at all. Neither mod changes gameplay, or the rules.

 

[Drakarska]

Ruh Roh! Her Lemonyness showed up to "Have at Thee" in staunch defense of pride and joy ..
Just teasing LM. Nice to see you post in the Oldie threads. Hope you and the family are doing well.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Ruh Roh! Her Lemonyness showed up to "Have at Thee" in staunch defense of pride and joy ..
Just teasing LM. Nice to see you post in the Oldie threads. Hope you and the family are doing well.

All is good. I hope everyone here is doing well too. And playing lots of Civ4 in quarantine!

 

[Kaiman]

You can not expend a Great Scientist on nothing, unless you delete it I suppose. If you have a Great Scientist in a city that already has an Academy the "Build Academy" Icon simply doesn't appear.

Must either be a BTS/Warlords thing, or something that is different in a One City Challenge, because it definitely let me use up Great Scientists to build like 4 academies in my lone city before I realized I was only getting the benefit of 1 Academy. I'll have to do some testing and see.

 

[guspasho]

I'm still wondering why Civ4 would be considered the "logical" highest priority for a remake of a past Civ iteration?

Leonard Nimoy

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Must either be a BTS/Warlords thing, or something that is different in a One City Challenge, because it definitely let me use up Great Scientists to build like 4 academies in my lone city before I realized I was only getting the benefit of 1 Academy. I'll have to do some testing and see.

Must be an OCC thing because I've newer tried it but I've also not once seen the option to build more than 1 academy in all my years of playing.

 

[Kaiman]

Must be an OCC thing because I've newer tried it but I've also not once seen the option to build more than 1 academy in all my years of playing.

Yeah, I played around with it more, and it seems to only be allowed to waste the GS like that in an OCC.

 

[Pangaea]

Maybe you have mods that are mucking things up? I've played several OCCs lately, and this simply isn't possible (with the regular game). When you already have an Academy, the button for building one is gone.

Would have been pretty powerful if this was possible though, at least in OCCs. Build 5 academies or something, and tech really fast.

 

[Leoreth]

I'm still wondering why Civ4 would be considered the "logical" highest priority for a remake of a past Civ iteration?

I think that this is a question with a fairly obvious answer. Civ4 was the last game in the series that was in a clear tradition with the original entry in the series. While there have of course been massive changes, the overall ideas of how the map, combat, and the economy work can be traced back directly to the original game. Civ5 made an intentional and massive break from those ideas in each of these areas. The volume of fan outrage in response is clear proof of that, and to this day there are people with strong opinions on the subject. Civ6 in turn was very close to Civ5 in philosophy and an iteration on its ideas. Not only does this prove that Civ4 was the last game in the series before a significant break happened, it also solidifies that Firaxis is going into a different direction with the Civ series now than what Civ4 inhabited, giving good grounds for a remake.

Even taking into account that it's not really that old yet, that makes Civ4 a much more natural candidate for a remake than Civ5. Why invest into remaking Civ5 when Civ7 is the much more natural progression in its development? For the same reason, Civ4 already is the culmination of the "old style" Civ formula, so remaking an earlier game would be a step back.

Of course, it all depends what angle you take to look at a remake. If it's only nostalgia, surely there are arguments for all its predecessors (for me that would be Civ2 but only because that was my first Civ game). But from a game design (and software development) perspective Civ4 is fairly obvious.

 

[Kaiman]

Maybe you have mods that are mucking things up? I've played several OCCs lately, and this simply isn't possible (with the regular game). When you already have an Academy, the button for building one is gone.

Never have used a mod. No idea how it happened because I tested it out so far and wouldn't let me do it. I looked through my old saved games but I must have saved over that one at some point in the past year or so.

Would have been pretty powerful if this was possible though, at least in OCCs. Build 5 academies or something, and tech really fast.

It wasn't doing that though, it was still only giving me the bonuses of one academy. That's how I caught it - I build my 3rd one or so and then realized "Wait, I don't think my beaker output changed". So next time I got a GS, I looked carefully, verified I already had an academy, noted my exact Beaker output, and then had the new GS build an Academy to make sure it didn't change.

No idea how or why it was letting me do that, but it didn't let me do it in my test game just now. And I also had a couple of newer saves of OCCs I tested it out on, and there was no button there either. Maybe the game is just gaslighting me. :/