Are you referring to civ3 or Civ3 Conquest? Civ 3 was no doubt missing something when it came out ;it called multiplayer. At frist Civ 3 was a little disappointment and for a while I still liked civ 2 better until Conquests came along. Conquest (along with a few mods)for me made the different putting it on top over civ2. Civ4 is already a complete game even before any expansions.
Am I just crazy or is Civ4 just not as fun as Civ3?
- Thread starter Warlord Sam
- Start date
gunnergoz
Cat Herder
It's just you. The rest of us love Civ 4 even more than Civ 3. 
Just joking. Perhaps the expansion packs down the road will float your boat on Civ 4.
Just joking. Perhaps the expansion packs down the road will float your boat on Civ 4.
Haderach
Chieftain
Civilization IV definitely changed my overall strategy for winning games. When I win now, it is usually by the Space Race. In CivIII, I used to like to disable all victory conditions other than conquest to give me the feel of really conquering the world. To this end, I did indeed use a strategy of early expansion, then consolidation with a very heavy phase of defenders/skirmishers to fend off small attacks and to make the AI think about attacking me and tech research, get ahead in tech and then rush out a ton of military that was more advanced than the other civs. To me, micromanagement was key to get ahead early and mid game (though in all games it bogged down in the later parts of the game I admit). Certain things you do might affect you only 0.05% on each turn..but then multiply that by a 100 turns and you get the edge.
But now in Civ4 I had to change focus. I can't do an expansion rush (as of yet) effectively early and still manage to keep ahead. And with the addition of religions, I couldn't really ignore the long term effects of not founding a religion, meaning tech early on that I may not have bothered to research otherwise. Now I'm playing at Emperor level (involving lots of restarts to about 1000 B.C. to feel it different tactics) and getting my butt kicked, but figure it out. It seems that pretty fast early expansion is wanted, but not with conquest. The AI simply has too much military to rush early with the higher defensive values of units. So the rush has to be from settling while also maintaining good relations with neighbors. And winning has to be from early and mid-game micromanagement as per my usual style.
But enough of that. Civ4 is not the epic empire building game I was used to playing and loved with other Civ games, but still fun and challenging in its own way. It is so much more difficult to expand (in terms of land) that I needed to throw out my old strategies. Maybe a feeling of what's missing is a feeling of familiarity because frankly my strategies didn't change much through the last 15+ years (with many large breaks..not straight through!) of Civilization playing and it won on the hardest settings.
I'll get over while I play my next turn and figure out how to beat Emperor level, darnit.
Had
But now in Civ4 I had to change focus. I can't do an expansion rush (as of yet) effectively early and still manage to keep ahead. And with the addition of religions, I couldn't really ignore the long term effects of not founding a religion, meaning tech early on that I may not have bothered to research otherwise. Now I'm playing at Emperor level (involving lots of restarts to about 1000 B.C. to feel it different tactics) and getting my butt kicked, but figure it out. It seems that pretty fast early expansion is wanted, but not with conquest. The AI simply has too much military to rush early with the higher defensive values of units. So the rush has to be from settling while also maintaining good relations with neighbors. And winning has to be from early and mid-game micromanagement as per my usual style.
But enough of that. Civ4 is not the epic empire building game I was used to playing and loved with other Civ games, but still fun and challenging in its own way. It is so much more difficult to expand (in terms of land) that I needed to throw out my old strategies. Maybe a feeling of what's missing is a feeling of familiarity because frankly my strategies didn't change much through the last 15+ years (with many large breaks..not straight through!) of Civilization playing and it won on the hardest settings.
I'll get over while I play my next turn and figure out how to beat Emperor level, darnit.
Had
