CIv 3 vs Civ 4..

[Taras Bulba]

I would have to say that it depends on the price.... If civ3 complete costs like $20, and civ4 costs like $50 (that is how i saw it at my store) i would say civ3 is better buy. If there is no civ3 complete or it is just about as much as civ4, i would have to look at the graphics, and all that stuff. Look at the screenshots, and look at game concepts on main page. If you like one better, i would say that you should get the one YOU like, since that is the key thing to happen here.

MEEP-In my opinion, i would say that civ3 is better... but if you want a fair trial, i would say that posting in either civ4 or civ3 forums would get a bias (spelling?) if posted in civ3 thread, it would have had alot of civ3 compliments and civ4 rants, and visa versa...or so it would seem...but hey, i am no one to judge, so get what you think is best

 

[azzaman333]

The biggest difference in Civ 4 over all the earlier Civ games in my opinion:

The number of supportable cities rises as you research key techs in the tech tree (depending on how you play, it can be quicker or slower), so if you expand too fast too soon, you will kill science research and stagnate your empire, while the smaller, more nimble realms will pass you by and eventually come at you with more advanced units.

The Civ3 tactic of speeding up your territorial expansion will, instead of catching you up, be the death knell of the empire if you do it too early.

Of course, this only applies before you have a certain tech level under your belt (which, of course, is EXACTLY when the old Civ3 player will try to use their favorite Civ3 tactics to pull ahead). Get the pacing right, and you won't notice.

Civ 4 is my favorite of all of them.

My$0.02,
SR

By the time I get to Currency or CoL the AI already has not only built at least 1 or 2 more cities than me, but also has a significantly better economy than me (unless I've taken a nearby AI capital) and all the land is gone.

 

[Ammar]

By the time I get to Currency or CoL the AI already has not only built at least 1 or 2 more cities than me, but also has a significantly better economy than me (unless I've taken a nearby AI capital) and all the land is gone.

On what level are you playing? You are probably doing something wrong, but it's hard to say what without seeing your game.

Perhaps post some savegames 10-20 turns apart so we can see what you have been doing?

 

[Tronicoz]

in civ 3, the one whit most cities, won, civ 4 is more tactical

 

[mrt144]

MEEP-In my opinion, i would say that civ3 is better... but if you want a fair trial, i would say that posting in either civ4 or civ3 forums would get a bias (spelling?) if posted in civ3 thread, it would have had alot of civ3 compliments and civ4 rants, and visa versa...or so it would seem...but hey, i am no one to judge, so get what you think is best

How often does one who prefers civ IV and has played both visit the civ III forums? im willing to bet that for every 4 civ 3 players that trolls on the Civ IV forum, theres maybe 1 Civ IV player that trolls civ 3 forums. Why is that?

even in this thread, theres a few very vocal civ III players. the reverse is not true in the Civ 3 thread. Its funny because the only motives I can come up with are that they are trolls, suffer from personality defects, or are combination of the two.

 

[T.A JONES]

How often does one who prefers civ IV and has played both visit the civ III forums? im willing to bet that for every 4 civ 3 players that trolls on the Civ IV forum, theres maybe 1 Civ IV player that trolls civ 3 forums. Why is that?

even in this thread, theres a few very vocal civ III players. the reverse is not true in the Civ 3 thread. Its funny because the only motives I can come up with are that they are trolls, suffer from personality defects, or are combination of the two.,

Im not sure why you care so much others are voicing negative opinions of the featured game on designated threads, or why it matters there are less complaints of the same nature over in civ3.
Im not sure why you spend so much of your time trying to defend CIv4, jumping in only to post flamebait on threads like these or even ones that have newbies asking players for opinons Based on expierence, what game they liked better

Is your only motive to start a flame war ? I cant see how you can offer any ideas of interesting nature being it comparitive or even just negative Civ3 accounts to consider, Im mean, You ve only played Civ4 right?

Is this your same reaccuring joke showing a hypocrite giving hot tempered ill thought out statments to reflect typical fanbois attidude on the part of a ill informed flame baiter. Is the purpose to give decent and reasonable 'Civ4 preffered' players a bad name?

IF so youve done quite well again.

 

[gostanford22]

Good lord, civilization 4 is SOO much better. For one thing, the graphics are actually appealing, whereas in civ 3 they were actually a step down from civ 2. The gameplay is more complex, and everything is more streamlined. And there are really, really incredible mods, as well. I only wish I had a fast enough computer to run huge maps!

Sorry im going to have to call bullfeathers on you, i've seen the screen shots and i have Civ 3 and 4. Civ 3 graphics are desent, Civ 2 is crap. to answer your question, they are both awesome games, it is completely up to you. i played Civ 3 for about 4 years, and i bought Civ 4 last week. My personal opinion, buy Civ 3 Complete (Gold Edition) and about a year or so, buy Civ 4 after all the expansions come out and buy them in a pack.

 

[hahntsak]

also there is the money on hand issue.
you can get the entire complet civ 3 for like $18 from amazon civ 4 you shell out $30 for civ4, $35 for warlords and another $40 for beyond the sword. that's some bucks there. you can indulge for a mere 18 bucks and get all of civ 3. and the patches are all worked out.

 

[UnspokenRequest]

By the time I get to Currency or CoL the AI already has not only built at least 1 or 2 more cities than me, but also has a significantly better economy than me (unless I've taken a nearby AI capital) and all the land is gone.

Blame yourself instead of blaming the game. I don't know what your doing, but your strategy is not good.
you're probably playing a level too high for your current skills.

Go back down a level or try a new strategy. You're doing something wrong and you should try to find out what it is instead of complaining.

Civ 4 is more intellectually challenging. There's no doubt about it.

 

[azzaman333]

Blame yourself instead of blaming the game. I don't know what your doing, but your strategy is not good.
you're probably playing a level too high for your current skills.

Go back down a level or try a new strategy. You're doing something wrong and you should try to find out what it is instead of complaining.

Civ 4 is more intellectually challenging. There's no doubt about it.

Prince is too easy, Monarch is too hard. My strategy not only works on Prince, but in Pitboss games as well since out of 3 games I've played from the start I've been best economically and with enough power to handle most of my enemies in 2, and in the third I was attacked early because of aggresive settling due to a bad starting location.

 

[UnspokenRequest]

You can't necessarily keep the same strategy from game to game. Civ IV asks much more adaptation skills than Civ 3 did.
It's not because a strategy worked on Prince and Pitboss that it should necessarily work on Monarch.
It's true that multiplayer is harder in many ways (especially for war), but there is one domain where it doesn't help as much. It doesn't teach how to face ennemies who have production and economic advantages. From Monarch and upward, you have to deal with the fact that AIs can "unfairly" outproduce you and there are ways to do this (On Prince, the AI advantage is not strong enough to be a direct challenge to a player's strategies).
I'm a bit rusty in terms of strategies, so I won't give you any advice (+ I don't know how you play your games). I'm just getting back to Civ IV after a break of 6 months.
However, I can tell you this: (1) try new strategies. Experiment. Try to use the AI's weaknesses as a basis for new strategies.
(2) if you still can't find a way, then, ask around and you'll find some very good advice. There are people here playing on Diety. I have very few idea on how they do it (I've never past Emperor), but people found ways to do it.
That is what's great about Civ 4: it's intellectually challenging. Nothing is certain and you've got to adapt.

 

[ggganz]

I just have civ 3 vanilla and civ4 vanilla and Warlords and I can say that civ 3 sucks. These are things that cannot be fixed in an expansion, like corruption and waste makes it not fun, along with mainenance tied to buildings, this makes it impossible to do anything at a certain point, you can't have too many cities, but you also can't develop the cities you have. That was the main issue. Also that deals last exactly 20 turns, why not longer? In civ4, they last at least 10 but can be indefinite.

 

[Mirc]

Also that deals last exactly 20 turns, why not longer? In civ4, they last at least 10 but can be indefinite.

That shows how much Civ3 you played.

@the people who say Civ3 is all about building cities:
That's a totally stupid thing to say. Play Civ3 before saying that! Don't believe me? See how you can win in Civ3, on Sid, the highest difficulty levels (8 in total), where the AI starts with 3 extra settlers and about extra 10 units, playing an ALWAYS WAR, with only ONE CITY the whole game.

 

[Napalm102]

That shows how much Civ3 you played.

@the people who say Civ3 is all about building cities:
That's a totally stupid thing to say. Play Civ3 before saying that! Don't believe me? See how you can win in Civ3, on Sid, the highest difficulty levels (8 in total), where the AI starts with 3 extra settlers and about extra 10 units, playing an ALWAYS WAR, with only ONE CITY the whole game.

The remark about the building many cities is a generalization, because most of the strategies in Civ III are about rapid expansion. And besides it is a moot point since you can have an OCC in Civ IV as well.

The main point here is you tend to have less cities in Civ IV, but those cities are a work of love each and every single one of them, because each is serving it's purpose. What happens in Civ III if you loose a city on the edge of your empire? Thats like small change in the grand scheme of things. In Civ IV if you loose a city, that can be a death blow.

Again thats a generalization, cause if it's your 30th freshly captured city, it wont matter in Civ IV either.

 

[T.A JONES]

The main point here is you tend to have less cities in Civ IV, but those cities are a work of love each and every single one of them, because each is serving it's purpose.

Bah, I consider a city just another chip on the table and I get a whole lot of love in havin a fat stack to show. Like on the Blackjack table, Its nice to have a few the 'black' in the the stack.(100 chips) I had more love for those chips. Thats the same as towns put up on power grounds if you not gettin the anology. You get attached to those chips and sure don't want to lose them.
Whats to love about 6 cities and a couple towns situated near 3 or 4 'deadzones' tiles?

this whole thing about raving over Civ4;s way of taking one town to thrown a haymaker is a silly one. How many Russian towns burned or surrendered before Stalingrad was called the city to win the war for the Nazis. THe opponents in Civ3 bring their fat stacks to press you sometimes, with alliances coordinating over 100 cities all vyeing to take you out. One city ain't doing much to stop these guys. Its all out war baby! taking the right campign to them not taking the right stack to one city and watching them wither

...............................Rant cutoff line ................................................

 

[Jeff1787]

For me Civ 4 is a more challenging game. I have played it since it came out and have never gone back to Civ 3. I have played Civ since the start, and for each version I've never had the desire to go back to an older version.

 

[nullspace]

That shows how much Civ3 you played.

@the people who say Civ3 is all about building cities:
That's a totally stupid thing to say. Play Civ3 before saying that! Don't believe me? See how you can win in Civ3, on Sid, the highest difficulty levels (8 in total), where the AI starts with 3 extra settlers and about extra 10 units, playing an ALWAYS WAR, with only ONE CITY the whole game.

That's an impressive win on the hardest difficulty, but that game really just shows how unbalanced Civ 3 is, and how bad the AI is. First of all, an OCC is not evidence that building few cities is a good strategy, it's a challenge because it is harder then normal. That game would have been easier with more cities.

Dromons are way overpowered on archipelago maps. There's nothing that an AI or a good human player could do against them.

Sid level AIs on archipelago maps essentially commit suicide by building so many units that the maintenance crushes their economies before they can get out of the ancient era. If they're not losing units in war, they just keep building more cheap archers and spearmen.

I liked Civ 3. I played it a lot and I beat Sid level. But Civ 4 got rid of most of Civ 3 annoying micromanagement and exploitable tricks, and added features that allow multiple effective strategies with real pros and cons. I think Bardolph had a good description of this on the previous page of this thread:

1. Civics
2. Religions
3. Many key decision points. Strategic decisions involve significant trade-offs, which you must weigh carefully.
4. Streamlined gameplay. Much of the tedious micromanagement of previous versions is gone, but there is an enormous amount of subtlety for those who enjoy some micromanagement.
5. Much better AI. Also, as you play the game, you will find that each leaderhead has a distinct "personality" that affects your diplomatic relations. Very enjoyable.
6. City planning is deep and very complex. There are many different types of cities, and city specialization makes each city in your empire unique.
7. Tile management is deeper. There are more tile improvement options, and important trade-offs for each one.
8. The "City Maintenance" system, probably the most significant gameplay change in Civ 4, makes rapid expansion (REX) one option out of many, rather than the only option. Detractors will tell you that REX is impossible in Civ 4. This is not true. It just takes patience and skill to pull it off, and it comes with certain trade-offs.

Civ 4 is a game of trade-offs. Mastery of Civ 4 comes from learning how to synergize the different resources offered by your civilization traits, map tiles, neighbors, and technologies. This is no easy task, and there is still considerable debate over which strategies are "best." Definitely a good sign, if you ask me.

 

[spa]

Quote:
CivIV
-crippling corruption gone

Replaced by even more crippling maintainance

Not true. As the game advances you can support more and more. By the late game you can have an empire spanning across the world full of productive cities. That was impossible in civ3 because of corruption cheese. What you can't do is have more than a few cities in the early going, especially at the higher difficulties and you can't conquer city after city without taking a pause at some point to develop the territories you've seized (that is if you're keeping them).

-I find boats are really important and actually useful which is a first in any civ game for me

Boats are basically meaningless, and have little/no consequense in 99% of wars.

Maybe for you but if you're playing on an ocean map they can be used to bombard city defences to prepare the ground for invasion, starve enemy cities and cut enemy resources, protect your own coastal resources and cities and cut off enemy invasions at sea before they ever reach land where they can do damage. I personally use them in any game where there are oceans.

-pollution has been abstracted (except for nuclear attack) so no more micro

Change for the better.

We agree on one thing then.

-infinite city sprawl is dead

So is having more than 5 cities without all your units killing themselves.

See my comment on maintenace above.

-resources are fairly balanced and don't vanish annoyingly anymore.

Balanced = good, no chance of vanishing = bad

Vanishing just seemed cheesy to me since it only happened to the human player and always seemed to be oil, but I guess it's a matter of opinion. Did you know that you could get the vanishing resource to not vanish if you reloaded and gave a computer player something? The game just decided to hurt the human player and demanded a "sacrifice."

-the ai is "better" (good is still a leap for any game except maybe Galactic Civlizations).

Not really. The only reason its better now is because of Blake's AI, not through anything Firaxis has done (other than using Blake's in the core game)

As others have said you're 100% wrong here. The AI has its flaws, but it's a huge improvement over Civ3. Again though I wouldn't attach the "good" label to it. I know and have documented it cheating at sea (knowing whether or not my ship was sitting on my fish resource even though there was no way it could see it).

-why the ai likes or dislikes you doesn't seem so random anymore

You could always figure out why they disliked you in Civ 3, if you played for a bit.

So? I like being able to see the modifiers clearly laid out for me on the side panel there rather than having to play Sherlock Holmes and trusting that it's not random. I like that it's displayed primarily because I don't trust that they put it together all that well in Civ3.

-religion adds a nice touch

But is extremely bland. All religions aren't the same in real life, so why should they be in Civ?

They're bland and that's something that would have been difficult to do anything with given the problems of giving relgions traits (marketing nightmare!) and I agree with you that that's an unfortunate limitation. However, bland or not, I find the effect religion has on diplomacy fun.

-good graphics

Which should be of no consquence in a game like civ. Gameplay before Graphics, not overload the computer with stupid crappy 3d graphics.

Agreed. Graphics are secondary to me most of the time, but I still like having a pretty canvas to look at.

 

[azzaman333]

Not true. As the game advances you can support more and more. By the late game you can have an empire spanning across the world full of productive cities. That was impossible in civ3 because of corruption cheese.

It was called 'Communism' and it spread corruption equally across the empire leaving you with every city having the potential to make a lot of gold or production or both.

What you can't do is have more than a few cities in the early going, especially at the higher difficulties and you can't conquer city after city without taking a pause at some point to develop the territories you've seized (that is if you're keeping them).

In other words, if you are a successful leader of your troops and are able to conquer many cities without many losses, all your troops will abandon you.

Maybe for you but if you're playing on an ocean map they can be used to bombard city defences to prepare the ground for invasion, starve enemy cities and cut enemy resources, protect your own coastal resources and cities and cut off enemy invasions at sea before they ever reach land where they can do damage. I personally use them in any game where there are oceans.

Naval tactics in 3 are much more in depth and have more meaningful consequences than 4. Sure you can bombard city defences and stop cities working tiles with resources, but you could do that in 3, plus you had the ability to bombard any tile with a ship.

See my comment on maintenace above.

Personally, I believe making settlers more expensive would've had the same effect without killing the thrill of managing large empires.

Vanishing just seemed cheesy to me since it only happened to the human player and always seemed to be oil, but I guess it's a matter of opinion. Did you know that you could get the vanishing resource to not vanish if you reloaded and gave a computer player something? The game just decided to hurt the human player and demanded a "sacrifice."

It only ever gave you the message when it happened in your territory. And on the flipside, I had numerous occasions where I was lucky enough to gain a resource after it vanished from an AI's territory and appeared in mine.

As others have said you're 100% wrong here. The AI has its flaws, but it's a huge improvement over Civ3. Again though I wouldn't attach the "good" label to it. I know and have documented it cheating at sea (knowing whether or not my ship was sitting on my fish resource even though there was no way it could see it).

Yes, now it just sits dormant and research's towards space, even when the traits such as Shaka's and Montezuma's encourage attempting world domination. Conquer a few cities and give up, great way to completely shoot yourself in the foot Monty, great war planning.

So? I like being able to see the modifiers clearly laid out for me on the side panel there rather than having to play Sherlock Holmes and trusting that it's not random. I like that it's displayed primarily because I don't trust that they put it together all that well in Civ3.

Could easily be in Civ 3 though, not anything that was 'added' to the game really.

They're bland and that's something that would have been difficult to do anything with given the problems of giving relgions traits (marketing nightmare!) and I agree with you that that's an unfortunate limitation. However, bland or not, I find the effect religion has on diplomacy fun.

The religion modifiers affect it too much though for something that has literally no other purpose than diplomacy and civics.

Agreed. Graphics are secondary to me most of the time, but I still like having a pretty canvas to look at.

I like a 'pretty canvas' (if you can call it that) if it doesn't kill my PC on half the map sizes.