Are you sticking with civ4?

[tdy99]

Ironically it was Civ5's imminent release that inspired me to get into 4. I was a long time CivIII player, but never bothered to upgrade to IV. When I saw that Civ5 was coming out it got me interested in the series again. I decided why wait when there's already a "new" Civ available. New to me at least. Plus, like Iranon said, it will take AT LEAST 1 major patch before I would even want to mess with it, and that's likely to be at least 2 or 3 months after it's released.

 

[CajNatalie]

I only just bought Civ IV a couple weeks ago. My tiniest laptop ever can barely handle Civ IV's requirements, so Civ V would mean digital suicide.
Personally, I'd rather wait until Civ VI is coming out, then buy Civ V Complete (by then I ought to have a more game-ready laptop... hopefully).

Plus, what the poster with the Schrodinger avatar said about Civ IV's bugs is very true. Civ IV is full of flaws, and I'm hoping for more updates on it.

 

[Paw]

I just got BTS about a month ago after having Civ IV + warlords for a year and a half or so. That, coupled with the fact that I play on a mac and as far as I'm aware, Civ V is not going to be released for the mac anytime soon, ensures that I'll be sticking with Civ IV for the forseeable future.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I'll probably stick with both. CivIV and CivV appear to be pretty different games (much more than CivIII -> CivIV) and CivIV has a lot of great mods that increase the replay value massively.

That's pretty much enough to classify them as two games, instead of "just" a sequel. That both appear to be worth playing.

Cheers, LT.

I agree with this. I'm also persuaded by posts like Iranon to wait to get CivV. We haven't seen enough of the game to know what bugs will still be in the game. I think I'll wait for an upgrade or complete. If you're determined to get it immediately, you will be milked like a cow.

Besides, I still haven't come close to mastering CivIV.

 

[duckstab]

Are you going to continue playing civ4 after civ5 comes out? There's no way my computer's going to run civ5, and I'm not going to buy a new one just because of that. I hate to admit it, but hopefully as many as possible are in the same position as me.

I'm in much the same boat. I'm going to try the demo but I seriously doubt my graphics card is current enough to manage it. If I get a windfall of some kind I'll buy myself a new computer, but otherwise I'm sticking with IV until at least next year.

 

[Psyringe]

I'll stick with Civ4, mainly for three reasons:

1. Civ4 caters so remarkably well to my personal preferences that any future Civ game, no matter how much I like it, will have a hard time totally replacing it.

2. My machine probably doesn't meet the specs required to run Civ5, though I'll try the demo.

3. I disagree with the means of distribution chosen for Civ5.

So, I'll stick around here for a good while longer (on and off, as usual).

@TheMeInTeam: I think you've overanalyzed Civ4, you dissected something you liked until it killed your enjoyment. I doubt that any game will ever be "finished" in the way you demand. Also, I like HoMM3 very much, but criticizing Civ4's AI and then pointing to HoMM3 as a good alternative is a bit off, don't you think?

 

[Countmonte8242]

Going on to 5, and hopefully its good enough that I won't look back for a while.

I've played a lot of Civ4 for what.. 5 or 6 years now? Its still fun here and there, but even with mods its pretty stale. I want a totally new Civ experience from the ground up.

IV is a great game, and I've spent a lot of time on it. But 1 and 2 were just as good if not better (compared to the games of their era), I spent a similar amount of time playing them, and I haven't looked back to them much either.

 

[Ulyaoth]

I won't be buying it, but my parents seem to like buying me any game that has civilization in the name every christmas. I never really even got into 4 that much anyway, ran too bad on my old computer and only finally got one that played it decently just over a year ago. Though certain things keep me from wanting to go back to 3 now.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'll stick with Civ4, mainly for three reasons:

1. Civ4 caters so remarkably well to my personal preferences that any future Civ game, no matter how much I like it, will have a hard time totally replacing it.

2. My machine probably doesn't meet the specs required to run Civ5, though I'll try the demo.

3. I disagree with the means of distribution chosen for Civ5.

So, I'll stick around here for a good while longer (on and off, as usual).

@TheMeInTeam: I think you've overanalyzed Civ4, you dissected something you liked until it killed your enjoyment. I doubt that any game will ever be "finished" in the way you demand. Also, I like HoMM3 very much, but criticizing Civ4's AI and then pointing to HoMM3 as a good alternative is a bit off, don't you think?

Yes, but think back on the great TBS titles that have been around past and present. If you remove civ from consideration, there isn't a lot of recent material to compete. Other genres are FAR more saturated, and definitely more mainstream/popular.

And sure, maybe I've played one too many games. It's possible since for well over a year I just threw a brick on the "play game" gas pedal and left it there. However, you can't possibly assert that most other popular, polished games have control flaws that make it difficult to select and un-select units (ESPECIALLY not in a game where its MP has a turn timer!), resource usage from years in the future, or an interface that LIES to you (not gives "too little" info, not misleading, it provides information that is outright false).

Maybe it was too hard to make a good AI (though a small team of unpaid guys made it so much stronger). Maybe without fixed maps the spawn balance was too high a hurdle. That's fine, but it does not, can not, excuse basic gameplay control issues and elements of gameplay that are SO BROKEN as to be super easy/hard relative to all others (Apostolic Palace). I get the feeling that many/most mechanics added post-vanilla were not tested much at all, and once released not changed or changed only minimally.

The problem/frustration as a player, however, is in that time span the post-release support felt the controls were JUST FINE and instead targeted supposed "exploits" and made ridiculous changes like the barb galleys (if you don't KNOW the underlying mechanics, you can not wall them on many maps because they come before MC is realistic on high levels).

Even some EVENT balance would have been preferable to a lot of the patch changes (but notice how these are relatively low-priority changes compared to basic gameplay issues), but changes to post-'nilla features are rare.

I stand by the assertion that few, if any, other "game of the year" class games have control issues so bad that the game moves things without prompt against the player's will or pretends he's pressing a button, or executes actions different from what is being input. That is SO BAD, and has been known about for SO LONG, that combined with ticky tack AI it's almost enough to kill my interest by itself. Controls are a FUNDAMENTAL element of gameplay, and no game to be taken seriously as "best in genre" and as one of the better games ever has controls flawed so badly that they can impact the outcome alone. 3.17 and 3.19 coming out with laundry lists of changes but not touching KNOWN, GLARING flaws in basic gameplay were each daggers in my patience and enjoyment of the game.

 

[lymond]

TMIT - You want some good TBS, try Silent Storm (Gold Version)

it's my favorite game, less CIV

 

[vicawoo]

There's a line between "bug" and "game-breaking flaw", and some of what I listed crosses it. Rather than correct these issues, the past 3 patches have done things like INTRODUCE bugs into overflow, spread culture missions, and "balance" the game by making barb galleys spawn 4x as often. Yeah, THOSE were DEFINITELY priorities over unit selection working and having the victory conditions balanced. Absolutely...provided you're on some kind of illegal substance.

Sure, every game has bugs, but most post-release games that anybody considers good do not carry high-impact flaws with direct gameplay for years.

Starcraft II has been out for one month and is already a more complete game, despite some balance issues (which can't even touch the singular issue with spawn balance in civ IV, mind you), but even if we ignore a model company, games like the much-maligned call of duty: MW2 have fewer bugs (and some of them were actually patched in timely fashion), LESS (though not 0) interface lies to the player, and better resource optimization. In fact most games that are rated as "good" manage a FAR better handling of bugs than civ IV, and did it years and years sooner, usually by the time they were released.

Maybe it's because the guys rating civ IV don't understand the game at all (Inca being called one of the worst civs is a prime example). Maybe it's ignorance/apathy from the community. Maybe it's the game version of "beer goggles", and most people somehow think this game is well-made. Maybe its the sad lack of good TBS competition at the moment. I don't know.

What I do know is that civ IV is OBJECTIVELY an incomplete game, and they're releasing a sequel in 22 days. I have serious issues with that, and frankly I'm somewhat appalled that I am in the minority in that regard. There is a reason that most of my youtube videos have gone over to starcraft 2, and that is because it is a LOT less frustrating to play it. Things like the apostolic palace and the ridiculously flawed diplo engine in this game make the cheesiest proxy gateways, 6 pools, and turtlewalls look like 100% fun and balanced things to counter. Bad as proxy gateway is (it's being patched in 1.1 WHAT A CONCEPT), it is nowhere near the imbalance and stupidity of the AP...and yet look! They're already tweaking its impact on the game in 1 month.

Civ IV brought us a patch with attention to relative spawn positions (and not just the broken capitol evaluation) by...oh wait, they *never* did that. Okay, but at least they fixed unit selection finall...aw hell. It's ok though, because in the vaunted BTS expansion they finally added strategy to the AI for each VC rather than slapping on mass bonu...wait no, that was Jdog and his betterAI team. BTS only taught the AI to stop tech and vassal whore itself for culture, none of the other VCs are even actively considered. Well, at least they made SURE the correct code for overflow in the unofficial patch was not implemented in 3.19 and left it that way officially .

See a pattern here? It's not a pattern you see from GOOD companies that make GOOD games.

Not fixed in 5 years. Not ever going to be fixed, by the looks. Good companies fix things in their games, especially gameplay-breaking things. As much as I've loved civ over the time I've been here, every stack-move with a worker, every worker moving into known danger w/o interruption, every BS accidental DoW, every game I've had to deal with a GUI that lies to me has taken a toll. The guys in charge have made it clear they care more about bells and whistles than actual, BASIC gameplay, and that is an excruciatingly unfortunate decision in a strategy game (or any game for that matter).

If you really paid attention to the starcraft scene, you'd see a lot of arguments becoming very weak within the last few weeks.

A good, but not great, Terran, beats one of the best players in the world, a Zerg 3-1, who's consistently beaten the best players in the world in big tournaments. How? 5 barracks reaper rushes for 4 games, then he fakes it one game and then hides air units. I can't think of any reputable sources who think it's balanced at the moment. You can win, but it's that's somewhat because of a factor you've completely dismissed:

random events. A large part of winning is because people hide builds (like said air rush) that are effective against some builds and spectacularly ineffective against others. And this brings us to, the recent Starcraft 1 finals:
game 1: Terran player fakes mechanical units, has lots of turrets to stop scouting, switches into mass barracks units. If zerg had built anti-barracks units, he probably wins, but instead he loses badly.
game 2: Terran cuts economy without zerg's knowledge, zerg can't scout (again), does a mechanical rush, zerg loses.
game 3: Fairly normal play, zerg wins
game 4: Zerg pretends to go economy, hides units, then when terran lifts defense, kills him. If terran doesn't lift, zerg loses.
game 5: reasonably normal terran win.
So 3/5 of the games were determined by random play, and only 2/3 on consistent, non-random play.

And then of course there were the Starcraft political issues, which outweigh x10 anything that fireaxis has ever done.

And if you checked out the beta, or even the game now, you'd see how much complaining about how fundamentally flawed SC2 is, due to Blizzard's "money grabbing, lack of desire to respond to feedback". How roaches are fundamentally flawed, marauders, ultralisks, roaches, reapers, archons, tanks, high templar, sentries, thors, ghosts, are all flawed/overpowered/underpowered. Even terran worker units were flawed for awhile, which people unanimously complained about so bitterly that blizzard finally had to fix it. And of course, how Blizzard's approach to fixing the game is fundamentally flawed, and it makes very tiny changes which don't fix said fundamental flaws.

It's like you're talking about a completely different game, or maybe just single player. If you want to compare map imbalances, compare it to age of empires, or don't randomly generate a map and use a preset map, like starcraft does. If you have a non-random map, you can slowly balance it for all civilizations.

 

[CajNatalie]

To be honest, the only control problem I've dealt with is the selection of units thing... someone decided to be stupid and make it 'click on unit body to select unit' instead of 'click on plot to select unit'.
So a unit one plot north of a Trebuchet or a Frigate becomes absolutely unselectable, forcing me to have to rotate the camera, click (and in the right place; the treb/frig still obstructs to a degree), then rotate the camera back again.
It pisses me off. =/

Alt+Click declaring war without a prompt does bother me, too... when, on the other hand, every time you try to explore a plot occupied by another unit you get that 'ZOMG DOES THIS MEAN WAR?' pop-up. I know, sharing tiles is a new thing, but the dialogue just becomes annoying when you can formally declare war. A dialogue on the Alt+Click declaration would have been much better.

But I don't know where the rest is coming from.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

I won't be playing Civ 5 in a while. It's just too darn expensive right now. When it gets to $20 and I've seen some people confirming it runs on Linux, I'll buy it. I'll also have to buy a little more RAM and a video card first.

 

[NewCivAddict]

Well considering that I just got civ 4 and don't have the expansion packs yet, I will stick with 4 for a long time. I am a pretty cautious player and my friend told me that civ 5 was going to be much more combat based. I am not sure if I would like that. I will read the reviews and the forums first.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you really paid attention to the starcraft scene, you'd see a lot of arguments becoming very weak within the last few weeks.

A good, but not great, Terran, beats one of the best players in the world, a Zerg 3-1, who's consistently beaten the best players in the world in big tournaments. How? 5 barracks reaper rushes for 4 games, then he fakes it one game and then hides air units. I can't think of any reputable sources who think it's balanced at the moment. You can win, but it's that's somewhat because of a factor you've completely dismissed:

I am a diamond league player and in the top 5 of my division generally (once I get more games in I see no reason I won't be #1). Oh, and I play zerg. I do follow the pro scene and I *did* witness Idra lose to 5 rax reaper.

And guess what? Shortly after that game, blizzard announces patch 1.1 incoming, which includes a nerf to reapers that would have cost the terran those games (not to mention a SIGNIFICANT nerf to tanks). How many balance tweaks have we seen in old civ IV? Well, we get more barb galleys :/.

game 1: Terran player fakes mechanical units, has lots of turrets to stop scouting, switches into mass barracks units. If zerg had built anti-barracks units, he probably wins, but instead he loses badly.
game 2: Terran cuts economy without zerg's knowledge, zerg can't scout (again), does a mechanical rush, zerg loses.
game 3: Fairly normal play, zerg wins
game 4: Zerg pretends to go economy, hides units, then when terran lifts defense, kills him. If terran doesn't lift, zerg loses.
game 5: reasonably normal terran win.

Looking at one series does not tell the story about the game. Not only that, but turrets are a considerable investment and do not 100% stop scouting. Nothing 100% stops scouting, and in fact the resource investment vs information attained is a legit consideration when it comes to scouting or blocking/avoiding scouting (protoss proxy at random places is even more annoying to find). Of course, I do have to point out that in NOT ONE OF THOSE GAMES was there an element not reasonably determined by one of the players that affected the outcome of the game. Scout + scout block =/= random events, which by the way are a relatively minor point in my denouncement of the completeness of civ IV in this thread.

And if you checked out the beta, or even the game now, you'd see how much complaining about how fundamentally flawed SC2 is, due to Blizzard's "money grabbing, lack of desire to respond to feedback". How roaches are fundamentally flawed, marauders, ultralisks, roaches, reapers, archons, tanks, high templar, sentries, thors, ghosts, are all flawed/overpowered/underpowered. Even terran worker units were flawed for awhile, which people unanimously complained about so bitterly that blizzard finally had to fix it. And of course, how Blizzard's approach to fixing the game is fundamentally flawed, and it makes very tiny changes which don't fix said fundamental flaws.

People are always going to whine about imbalance in MP-first games. I wonder what the "civs chosen" metrics look like in civ IV? People claim all these units are too good or too poor, but do the #'s justify those claims? Blizzard HAS been making changes to tweak the balance, and frankly it's a LOT closer than people say.

As for spawn balance, I understand that it is a very difficult thing to get right, because it involves subjectivity as well as some prediction of player behavior, meaning you'd need a top flight player in tandem with a good/dedicated programmer just to get some semblance of balance there, which is even harder when we take AI nonsense into account.

You can try to defend any of those points, but it doesn't change the fundamental reality: civ IV is not a complete game. Too many of its "features" are skeleton code and it sorely lacks in one of the most important design aspects in gaming: actually playing it via controls. If you really want to call out starcraft II, then I'll point out that ON RELEASE, selecting unit groups actually worked, as did all the other hotkeys for doing it more effectively. That is not an amazing accomplishment by Blizzard, but civ IV's problem with it is a HUMILIATING FAILURE, and the company saw fit to leave it in for the entirety of civ IV's existence to date.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I'll be sticking with CIV. I love to play slow and contemplative. Any one of my games lasts many weeks, especially since I've mostly gone to playing marathon. So, despite having played regularly for four years now, I have only played about 48 games all together. CIV is not the least bit old or stale for me. I still enjoy the unmodded game so much that I have never even tried one of the mods, except BUG which doesn't count in this context. Sure, the game is not perfect but no game that I have ever played was. The flaws in CIV are not game breakers the way that I play, so I just adapt to them. The random events, for example, would be game breakers for me, since I detest such things. I have adapted by turning them off. After playing a few games with vassals, I turned that off too. It did not appeal to me. I play for fun, not to set any records. As long as the game is fun, I will stick with it!

 

[Psyringe]

Yes, but think back on the great TBS titles that have been around past and present. If you remove civ from consideration, there isn't a lot of recent material to compete. Other genres are FAR more saturated, and definitely more mainstream/popular.

Sad, but true.

However, you can't possibly assert that most other popular, polished games have control flaws that make it difficult to select and un-select units (ESPECIALLY not in a game where its MP has a turn timer!), resource usage from years in the future, or an interface that LIES to you (not gives "too little" info, not misleading, it provides information that is outright false).

I didn't notice any truly annoying control flaws. I think the controls are decent, with some oddities when trying to switch units between existing selection groups, but I'm not sure whether that's an issue of the base game or of the mods I use. Compared to other complex strategy games I've played, I see Civ4's controls as quick and efficient.

Resource hunger due to an inefficient engine was definitely a shortcoming of Civ4, but one I was never really concerned about. For a while I could only play map sizes up to standard, but I knew that sooner or later I'd upgrade my PC and would be able to play bigger sizes. Currently I'm playing a giant map (150% of huge) with 34 civs on it. I'm content, but I don't deny that there's room for improvement in that regard.

I don't know what you mean by "lieing interface". I know about a bit of hidden info in diplomacy, but that was remedied by mods, so I don't regard it as a problem.

Anyway, I probably won't be able to convince you, nor was that my goal. You're entitled to your opinion and the fact that mine is different certainly doesn't make yours wrong. We just seem to have different approaches in how we experience Civ4. Since my way led to me still massively enjoying the game, while yours seems to have led you to focus on the negatives now, I'm not unhappy with my approach.

I just wanted to state that (imho) it's not realistic to expect Civ5 to be much more "complete" (in the sense you used the term) or polished than Civ4 or Civ3. I think for the level of completeness and polishedness you desire, you'll have to resort to either less complex games (which are easier to polish), or to indie works of love which don't have to run on a budget.

 

[moaz2]

well, the best tbs made anytime resembling current.

If you want to play some old but excellent tbs, look up warlords ii/iii by strategic studies group, or heroes of might and magic iii, which afaik is the best in the series.

They're not civ though and while they are excellent tbs, they don't cover strategy on this scale. I wish tbs were more popular as a genre.

agree!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The interface will flagrantly tell you a diplo value (say friendly) and show a diplo total (say +15). If you have a vassal with which the AI is annoyed, the game averages it and does not tell you. You are instead mislead by a -1 "we are upset that our rival is your vassal" now showing a total of +14, when the reality is that the AI is cautious with you.

- +14 friendly displayed
- +3 or less cautious reality.

That, my friend, is flagrant lying...and that's before the annoyances that hidden modifiers are in general.

I didn't notice any truly annoying control flaws. I think the controls are decent, with some oddities when trying to switch units between existing selection groups, but I'm not sure whether that's an issue of the base game or of the mods I use. Compared to other complex strategy games I've played, I see Civ4's controls as quick and efficient.

If you don't use hotkeys and control shortcuts, you won't realize that they are broken. That does not change the fact that they are broken. Why can't I:

- Shift-click to unselect units in a stack after selecting all units on a tile?
- Stop orders from a previous turn before units forcibly move on this turn?
- Into danger?
- Consistently select a group of marines on transports by pressing control, which supposedly selects all units of a type?
- Do the same thing with air on carriers?
- Click on an AI name without fearing that I'll declare on them w/o prompt rather than opening a trade window?
- Select all units of a type using control click in multiplayer if some of them have used movement?
- Safely click on a city and whip without checking to make sure it didn't select all cities

If you want to give them a pass for shoddy AI, fine. It is 100% inexcusable to give them a pass for neglecting major gameplay control issues for years, and that alone removes "polished game" status. However, having incomplete VICTORY conditions IE "object of the game" is also really bad, and 2 of the game's victory conditions (UN and apostolic palace, with a B for broken on the latter) are in fact incomplete.

Sure, with its complexity the game can't be perfect, but some of the ways civ IV behaves are not even passable, and yes other mainstream/popular/competitive games with depth DO get them right.

Another big minus in this game is that we are not told how certain things work IE how to play the game, and are often even giving incorrect information in the in-game instructions/civlopedia. IF the AI can suction 10000 to 30000 beakers of tech off another AI by abusing pop-ins to peacevassal and out, we should know about it. If the AI can hidden modifier its way to a UN victory over a human who is supposedly more liked by several civs, we should know about it, etc. We don't need to know shaka's ibuildunitprob to make it a good game, but we should probably know the consequences of our own actions! Trial and error gameplay stopped being fun back in the NES days.

 

[karadoc]

I'm also interested to hear more about the lying interface. I can only think of one minor example off the top of my head, which is that combat odds usually don't take the river-crossing penalty into account on long attack-moves (even when the path that the game highlights is clearly crossing a river to attack). I'm sure there are other examples, but I can't think of them. [edit - ninjaed. The vasal diplomacy is a good example of important misinformation. I haven't had the same problems as you with the 'sticky' alt key — probably because I've developed a (strange) habit of tapping ctrl, shift, alt, before I do something important which can be modified by those keys... it's a solution to a problem experienced out side of civ as well. I suspect it might be a flaw in the OS or maybe even in the keyboard itself.]

Whenever someone mentions a lying GUI, I immediately think of Diablo 2, which for many many years was full of uselessly-inaccurate numbers on the stats screen. I haven't played D2 for awhile but I know that many long standing bugs were fixed in a recent patch. I wish the same would happen to Civ4.

In Civ4, trying to move a unit from one selection group into another selection group is pretty frustrating. It should be easy, but it frequently results in many clicks of selecting and unselecting units like crazy trying to get the group I actually want, even after years of experience. So I do think there is an issue there. At least Civ5 won't have that particular issue...