Civ 4 Rants Thread

[noto2]

Sure, religion and vassal states could have been improved upon, but they work to make the game more interesting and force the player to make choices, which is what Civ is all about.

I personally like managing health in my cities - again, decisions. (factories? Settle on the river?)

I don't really care either way about hexes or squares but from the pictures I've seen of Civ 5 it does look like hexes make a more realistic and better looking map - fine, I suppose hexes are better

And finally...stacking. I've said this before and I'll say it again - you can make a tactical game (like chess) or a strategic game (like Risk) or if you're feeling very ambitious you can combine the two very carefully (Rome:total war, MOO3, Star Wars Empire at War) but notice that in MOO3 the tactical battles were extremely simple and it was 90% a strategic game, and with star wars empire at war the strategic level was very simple and it was 90% a tactical game. Trying to do both in one game is completely unnecessary and will most likely result in a badly designed game. If I want war tactics I'll play Starcraft or Warcraft. I play Civ for a strategy game. I don't want to be micromanaging battles and deciding whether or not to pull back pikemen or which units to shoot at with my archers. Those decisions belong in Warcraft. Not Civ. I'm happy having my battles reduced to an abstraction based on chance - like in Risk, and in Civ 4 there are already enough tactical options (terrain, different unit types, etc).

To further illustrate what I mean, has anyone played Rise of Nations? Now, I do like that game and I spent countless hours playing it, but it suffered from a serious flaw - and that is it's economy was 100x more complex than warcraft, and it's battles were also more complex. It was impossible to optimally manage the strategic layer while micromanaging battles at the same time. To play that game very well you would need a team of 2 players - one managing the economy and one managing the military.

I've never played the Total War games but I imagine their strategic layer is simpler than that of Civ. How many battles do you have in an average game of Civ? Tons. Can you imagine having to micromanage each one? To put a tactical battle layer into a strategic game, both turn based, is just bonkers.

I don't think Civ 4's combat system is perfect, or even good, but it's a hell of a lot better than Civ 5's. Civ 5's combat is worse than Civ 4, worse than RON, worse than Moo3, it's just an epic failure. It was supposed to be the best part of the game but I find it the worst.

 

[Manco Capac]

^
That's a A quality ranting.

Combat system is better than CivIII too. Franchise evolves. Sometimes, it does great/better or other times it is a flop like CiV (because AI simply is too rudimentary).

 

[Quintillus]

Maybe I should take a look at the Civ5 rant thread to get an idea of what this thread is intended to be. I'm still not sure whether it's supposed to be (a) actual rants, (b) satirical rants, or (c) trolling. Which actually makes this thread all the more brilliant for the ambiguity. Especially since a fair amount of the ambiguity is due to other people's posts. Like, points 100 and 101 could totally fit into the "satirical rant" category. 102 could be either (a) or (b). And while several of the original 7 could be construed as trolling, esp. the ones without any explanation, several fit elsewhere as well.

18) The model scale is completely wrong. no man was ever born THAT tall.

19) so is the timescale. whats up with 100 year turns?!?! (??!!) it should be 1 day at a time

20) NO TRADINGPOSTS!!!! WHY!!! (!!!)!!

21) Individual city happiness and health??? omg why??? Better remove health and happiness. and culture and wealth and science too. Instead put a big "NEXT TURN" button in the middle of the screen. Its much easier that way, and no micro managements.

22) Thinking of 21 : Why not remove ALL micromanagements. In fact why not remove ALL managements. You get a Civ in 4000 BC, and next time you have to do something is to Vote at UN.

23) if not 22, then how about instead of limited units, or 1upt, we make ONE UNIT PER CIV. hah, good idea right?

24) Make units move realisticly. example : horses should move 2 forward and 1 to the side.

Lots of good ones!

104. Instantly stopping construction of a Wonder due to it being built by someone you've never heard of it totally unrealistic.

105. No one's ever lived 6050 years. Neither should the civilizations' leaders.

106. Gandhi's head is way out of proportion. Firaxis needs to hire an anatomist in the future.

 

[Funky]

For those unaware, rant threads exist so folks can vent their irritations rather than clog other threads with arguments. There is a rant thread for Civ 5 and now there is one for Civ 4. So lets keep this thread specific to complaints about Civ 4 and avoid defenses or arguments.

Civ 4 is full of epic failure. Lets keep the posts restricted to how lame and stupid Civ 4 is. Thanks.

So you ARE serious afterall! Please forgive my naivety!

There is a distinctive difference however between the Civ 5 and Civ 4 rants threads. The former was created by mods to contain the countless rants by players that were popping up every day in the Civ 5 forums. This one was created by a Civ 5 player who is frustrated that modders are sticking to Civ 4.

But by all means, go on ranting now!

 

[rfcfanatic]

105. No one's ever lived 6050 years. Neither should the civilizations' leaders.

Good point. At least some level of leader succession would be fun. For example, France could be led by Louis XIV until Renaissance, by Napoleon in Industrial era and by De Gaulle in Modern era and later. This has been accomplished in RFC mod on some level, but it's still succession of leaders without succession of traits.

 

[rfcfanatic]

107. Charlemagne as Holy Roman Empire's leader is historically incorrect. Holy Roman Empire was founded in 962 AD - long after Charlemagne's death.

 

[gps]

Civ 4 is full of epic failure. Lets keep the posts restricted to how lame and stupid Civ 4 is. Thanks.

So you ARE serious afterall! Please forgive my naivety!

Obviously this is meant serious.
We have a hardcore V fanboy / IV hater here who desperately tries to take revenge for all the bashing and hate his favourite game is getting over in the V forums - seven years after IV has allready proven to be one of the greatest strategy games ever and sure the best part of the franchise. So all we can do here is either turn this into a satirical rants thread (which I would consider fun and entertaining) - or simply let it die in dignity and grandeur...

 

[marmohr]

108. Getting a -1 diplo hit (you traded with our worst enemy) from civ A after acceding to a 'pay us tribute or be nuked from the map' demand from civ B.

109. Pacal's nipples.

 

[Steamwerks]

To further illustrate what I mean, has anyone played Rise of Nations? Now, I do like that game and I spent countless hours playing it, but it suffered from a serious flaw - and that is it's economy was 100x more complex than warcraft, and it's battles were also more complex. It was impossible to optimally manage the strategic layer while micromanaging battles at the same time. To play that game very well you would need a team of 2 players - one managing the economy and one managing the military.

I'm largely in agreement with you, this paragraph excepted. For hardcore RTS players, RoN is more than manageable, but there certainly is a tremendous amount of stuff to multitask. For this reason you're never able to approach optimal play, yet that's part of what makes RoN so compelling. There's almost always room for dramatic improvement, even at the highest level.

One thing I will say however, is that the game is grueling. Frantically multitasking and clicking non-stop for upwards of an hour (if you're evenly matched) can be really taxing!

 

[noto2]

dude...I've watched my Korean friends play Broodwar and be clicking 3 times per second all game, and RON is, let's be honest, an order of magnitude more complicated than Broodwar. There's no way one person can even come close to optimal play...the only exception would be if you were able to focus on the economy for 30-40 min straight with no war, and get everything perfect, and then go to war and be able to focus on that, but if you're getting raided early game and fighting throughout the game, it's just too much.
The pro warcraft players had APM of, what, 400? Starcraft is something like 300-350 to be pro (optimal play). RON would need something like 800 APM for optimal play, I don't think there are any humans who could hit that...Jedi knights maybe, but not humans.

 

[Funky]

Jedi knights maybe, but not humans.

And what about human Jedis?

 

[Jatta Pake]

Obviously this is meant serious.
We have a hardcore V fanboy / IV hater here who desperately tries to take revenge for all the bashing and hate his favourite game is getting over in the V forums - seven years after IV has allready proven to be one of the greatest strategy games ever and sure the best part of the franchise. So all we can do here is either turn this into a satirical rants thread (which I would consider fun and entertaining) - or simply let it die in dignity and grandeur...

You have misunderstood my motives. I am not upset. I am concerned though if the developers release a game in such incomplete Beta version like Civ 4 we are only encouraging them to continue such practices. I paid $19.99 for Civ 4 and I feel like I got ripped off.

My only motive is getting enough attention to the issue of Civ 4 that the big media guys at Polycast do some investigative journalism on the issue.

 

[Yaeri]

110) As the OP pointed out, you can build stacks of tanks reaching to the moon. That's all good and well, but then you can't build on the moon? What's up with that?
111) Where's the unit representing myself, the leader?
112) CIV IV colonization
113) Designer laziness. I heard they slept and ate at times.
114) Sneaky Leonard Nimoy trying to teach me stuff during my spare time with quotes and stuff.
110) REALLY, What's the point of stacking hundreds of tanks on each other if you can't use them as a bridge to the moon?!

 

[noto2]

I meant not average non-jedi humans

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Better Graphics quest has become so intense that game content has decreased on average and now a gigantic team is needed to set up games.

Prioritizing graphics to the point where gameplay doesn't consistently work is one of my biggest rants though .

There are things I'd like changed in civ IV's design, but the biggest complaints by me are always things that, if you go back to games made 15+ years ago, devs were already getting right. For example, in HOMM 1-3, how many instances do you have of a unit moving while being unable to prevent it from moving? Literally 0...in both the combat and overworld screens.

The reason I dog on civ IV and V is that they have quite literally *regressed* in these things. Warlords 2 (made 1991) has an algorithm for interrupting a unit's pathing if an unseen enemy blocks its path after moving through the fog. Why couldn't civ IV, made over TEN years later, manage that "feat"? I love the old games too and have LP'd quite a few (Warlords 2, HOMM III, with Warlords III and HOMM V coming soon...but also older pokemon games, GK II, ogre battle, etc). It's a shame when these games have better controls, better hotkeys (and in some cases, hotkey customization) and run MUCH better on their recommended specs than newer games (the latter being a direct effect of graphics-gouging).

Civ V is winning TBS sales now not because it's a great game, but rather because the best TBS competitors aren't around any longer for whatever reason. If there is ONE thing that would make the civ series better, it would be to learn how to make a decent-running engine and make sure their controls (and display of what controls do) work consistently...none of this "moving button on the display screen", "show one action but have the command do another", or "attack out of the stack even though all units are selected and it's stack moving" bullcrap.

Edit on APM: In Sc2, most APM is superflous. You only need ~200 apm at extremely short-lived intervals (big battles that involve multiple micro-intensive units). An AVERAGE of 100 would probably work against top tier pros, if you could spike ~250-300. The pros like to keep themselves forced at a higher speed though (usually giving something along the lines of "staying sharp").

RoN is starting to sound interesting...do its controls work unlike civ IV/V?

 

[Chase_2_Rabbits]

 

[vincentz]

115) obviously there is waaay to little ranting in the ranting thread. even moresoever there is rants about actual rants, and evenmoresoever there are rants that ranks as humerous or ridiculing and or complains about beforementioned rants. Some ranting doesnt even appear as proper rants while other rants is just confusing and or full of mispeling/grammar bad, that they appeear somewhat completely ununderstandable.
116) no human jedis nor giant death robots.
117) no moon (very disappointing when I first build my tank2moon-bridge)
118) no non human jedis (as if i wasnt enough disappointed about 116)
119) replayability : there is waaaay to much replayability. When will I ever master the game, or even finish it?!?

 

[Funky]

I meant not average non-jedi humans

Ah, those dudes. Yeah, they suck.

 

[gps]

I am not upset. I am concerned though if the developers release a game in such incomplete Beta version like Civ 4 we are only encouraging them to continue such practices.

Really, I would not worry! With Civ V and the much better state it was in when released, Firaxis really showed they intensely listened to the fanbase and learned from the financial and reputation disaster that Civ IV was - and made sure they never again release a game as unfinished and desolate as Civ IV was...

 

[SouljahAtWar]

My rant was valid. I'm not sure about the rest of these people here!