Civ IV or Civ V?

[Glassfan]

Having played both, I found Civ V a bit anoying. While it did get rid of Global Warming and espionage, playing tactical combat on strategic maps is stupid. The designers never do figure out helicopter combat - just one helo played as a ground unit. And ultimately I had difficulty with Steam. I'm back to playing Civ IV.

 

[Disgustipated]

I want to like Civ5, and I do like it better. I want to finish that game I started (although I'll reload to about 20 turns before I lost my city )

Someone please tell me how to make enough money to fund an army. I only have one gold resource (which I just got connected), and no other money resources. Why does every friggin' thing have to cost so much money in Civ5? Roads costing me money is what really pisses me off fierce. My country looks like crappy with one small road connecting my cities. Does the U.S. only have one interstate from each city to Washington? No. It's a ridiculous concept.

 

[Crezth]

Civ V reminds strongly of Civ IV out of the box, I was disappointed with both upon their respective initial releases.

Civ IV BTS is a solid, well-designed video game. Civ V is clean and ambitious, but feels incomplete or lacking direction at times. My theory is the expansions will fill in the gaps, just like BTS did for the original Civ IV, and the difference between Civ IV BTS and Vanilla can only be described qualitatively as "galactic."

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Im not sure if its just me but in Civ V all the AIs seem a little too trigger-happy and I prefer to play peacefully and then I keep getting killed so I gave up.

Civ IV seems a little better even if just for the option of Always Peace.

 

[Aquila SPQR]

So it seems that Civ V is still mostly considered not as good as it should be, especially as a successor to the Civ IV BTS.

I do not share and understand this "Civ III" thing. I forgot how it was called, but this red "production" (was it "corruption"?) was simply TERRIBLE. After reaching a certain number of cities new ones (for example colonies on a new continent) are worthless.

 

[Murky]

I'm gong to try playing Civ III again. I just bought the steam version for $2.49

 

[Tarquelne]

I do not share and understand this "Civ III" thing. I forgot how it was called, but this red "production" (was it "corruption"?) was simply TERRIBLE. After reaching a certain number of cities new ones (for example colonies on a new continent) are worthless.

Civ III had a number of mechanisms designed to make the game more challenging at the expense of realism. Given that none of the games come particularly close to "realistic", I think it was a good trade-off.

I prefer unmodified Civ III to unmodified Civ IV + expansions. Where I think Civ IV shines is the mods: Revolutions and the FFH2 family being the biggies.

 

[IdiotsOpposite]

The overwhelming support of Civ IV BTS in this poll makes me feel more reassured about the rationality of CFC

 

[Save_Ferris]

They're pretty equal imo. Although I will give a slight edge to CiV.

 

[Antilogic]

I would have preferred Civ4: Warlords to Civ5 base. I don't remember enough about Civ4 base v. Civ5 base, so I'll leave that as an unknown.

I prefer the game mechanics of Civ4 over Civ3, but Civ3 still has the Conquests scenario nostalgia. I remember playing the Rise of Rome and the Middle Ages scenario, both were excellently designed and deserved a better port to Civ4.

Final ranking is probably Civ4: BtS over Civ3: Conquests, and both beat Civ5 by a country mile. I've tried Civ5 a few different times, and never could really get into it. Same thing with my buddy's copy of CivRev. I played for about 20 minutes, got frustrated because I was so used to Civ4's detail, and [rage-]quit.

 

[Joecoolyo]

True but you can get CIV IV complete (or gold) and have all the features and all the leaders you could want for civilization. They are just now implementing religion in a Civ V expansion.

Complete is still an expansion.

Think Civ IV vanilla. Would you want to play that? Hell no, compared with the expansions, Civ IV vanilla was crap.

The same thing will happen with V, except I personally enjoyed Civ V right out of the box, which means expansions will make it godly.

 

[Tarquelne]

Want to play a tactics game? Panzer General Series.
Want to play a strategy game? Civ IV BtS.

Oooh.... I can't let that go without comment.

Want to play a wargame? Command Ops series.
Want to play a tactics game? Combat Mission series.
Want to play a strategy game? Since the oldie-but-goodie was already brought up: Panzer General. The new game Panzer Corps looks to be a dog: A good and faithful remake of PG. (Another oldie-but-goodie and more in line with Civ: Imperialism 2.)
Want to play a 4x game: Civ IV BtS + Revolutions
Want to play a RTS game that atones for the whole sorry genre? Dawn of War. (It's a hoot.)

 

[Buddhafish]

I prefer Civ IV. Civ V for me just took away playability and added modability.

Plus I can't get over the fact that they took away the stack of doom.

 

[Crezth]

Want to play a RTS game that atones for the whole sorry genre? Dawn of War. (It's a hoot.)

Dawn of War is a lot of fun, but there's no beating StarCraft.

 

[Tee Kay]

Think Civ IV vanilla. Would you want to play that? Hell no, compared with the expansions, Civ IV vanilla was crap.

I happened to have a lot of fun playing CivIV vanilla, even before the first patch came out.

Anyway, voted CivIV by default since I've not played CivV (and probably never will because of the Steam requirement)

And I agree with people here that CivIII was very enjoyable and IMHO has more character than CivIV. In CivIII you feel like you're building an empire. In Civ4 you feel like you're playing a game, albeit a very very good one.

 

[Camikaze]

You know I could probably actually agree that Civ4 with all expansions and patches (even with its well documented problems) is better than vanilla Civ5 (bit of an unfair comparison), but Civ5 looks like it's going to be a better game, especially with G&K coming out soon. Civ4's first expansion, Warlords, pales in comparison to what G&K should be.

I've not actually played BtS, but I don't think I'd ever be able to go back to Warlords Civ4. Just think the vassal resource trade exploit. Perhaps when Civ5 wasn't patched it would've been the other way around.

 

[History_Buff]

I'm still a pretty big fan of Civ III.

Yeah, Civ III was a lot of fun. Though I might still pick Civ II, just for some of the amazing scenarios that existed.

Though Alpha Centauri remains the best civ game there's ever been IMO.

 

[Kennigit]

civ IV is better as a game. I can't remember civ 3 much (played it when I was young) so I won't compare to that. I played 2 full games of civ 5 (emperor doing space/science vic as rome, immortal for a cultural win) after a few hours of reading the civilopedia/playing some including losses near the start on the immortal try.

I like civ IV mechanics pre-BtS probably more than BtS. I'm not too fond of the espionage/corporations/apostolic palace that BtS added. I like it for the new civs though, and some rebalancing/extending space race stuff.

I generally play just large continents/epic speed games, so obviously some things in the game change my opinion (if you play every game on pangaea and go for domination, that'd form a different opinion).

what makes civ V lacks to civ IV

Spoiler :

(a) economic/tile development specialization- Seems like it's pretty sufficient to just farm/mine every tile and not do any of the other tile developments (unless resource specific, like dye). It also seems specialists weren't anything that required more player maintenance. There's less planning for great scientist "bulbing" (as in civ 4 you often used great scientist on philosophy and education en route to liberalism). That relates to diplomacy, as in civ IV I felt it was necessary (for me) to sometimes have to very strategically beeline a tech to trade it, but civ V you are limited to research agreements.
(b) having too little penalty for unhappiness/abundance of happiness. I kind of like empire-wide happiness as opposed to specific city happiness (so that conquered cities don't just forever stagnate), but when I was ballista/legion rushing AI's on my continent as Rome I was just able to continue my science and production unhindered, despite pretty big unhappiness at one point. This may have changed with some patches though
(c) AI diplomacy--civ V I feel is almost nonexistant. The AI's are willing to trade their resources (which are abundant) for like one of your resources and some minimal gold per turn, which they seem to overvalue. City states are easy to handle. In the emperor game I didn't bother, and in immortal game I was able to buy everything. Friendly city states giving resources meant I could sell like 100% of my own resources since there was bound to be overlap, and so I could easily abuse the AI anytime I want for like 300 more gold to go make a city state "friendly" with me.
(d) warfare-- ranged units too overpowered, and the AI lacks in combat skills. I think I would like civ V combat better than civ IV stacks of doom--since at higher difficulties theres often nothing you can do (semi true for civ V if you get warrior rushed)-- but it seems you can probably archer rush your neighbour while getting the free settler under the one culture branch to get an easy 3-4 good cities. civ IV if you wanted to rapid expand you either did it yourself or focused 100% military, while civ V it seems you can do both and have success.
(e) beelining science techs seems to be pretty abusable by what people on cfc have written. I didn't do many research agreements, but I did save up like 3 great scientists for the last techs in the space race. It's not really strategic beeling that you may have in civ IV bts, as there is some variation in the final tech route for space race, but just "hey I'll save three great scientist and pop the last 3 techs at the same time". Great scientist can easily be fixed by just limiting the amount of science he can pop, but the end space race seems to be less strategic (and I like space race vics).
(f) lack of importance of roads. It just kind of felt to "watered down" or "easy" that early game all my resources just automatically hooked itself up to my trade network, as well as contribute to nation-wide happiness.
(g) there seems to be too much "high tier" of "good" leaders than in civ IV. civ IV the traits worked better to be overall more equal, rather than having a few very obvious higher tier leaders (still, civ IV had some higher tier, like lizzie at phil/financial).

but I did like some things better. The combat system would be quite good (not necessarily better) if balanced a bit better. But as for things that were better:

Spoiler :

(A)I really like the social policies (post liberty) a lot more. It gives more dynamic civic control than I ever could manage in civ IV (where I couldn't have a religion or else the AIs would hate me and kill me on emperor/immortal). It was pretty much always the same civics, all the time (hereditary rule, slavery/caste system, beeline bureaucracy, beeline liberalism for the free tech and for free speech/free religion; end game with universal sufferage). Liberty branch it by far the best branch, in the beginning. I also never could get specialist economies to work, so I always went with cottage economy. That further limited civic variation.

I also very much like the branch ideas that you fill out/complete rather than revolt to get 1 specific civic.
(b) I think the hex tileset and not having cities limited to the very specific big fat cross (BFC) is better game design. There is still plenty of city-settlement planning. It's also lets the border expand better in early game (in civ IV monuments were often not worth building, so I'd be stuck for a few cities until caste system where I could put on an artist for a couple turns). Also hex is better for warfare.
(c) empire-wide happiness seems a bit better in many regards, at least in theory.
(d) wonders seem to be better, and I can actually build earlier game wonders (I think it's the hagia sophia that give a great person? It seemed neat on my cultural victory that I got a great engineer via finishing the liberty branch to rush the hagia sohpia to get a free great person (chose artist)). It seems you can more specialize wonders for whatever victory condition you want to go for.
(e) the difficulty seems a better fit (it seems most games I could get a fair fighting chance at emperor/immortal, whereas in civ IV it seemed some games were unwinnable for me based on the start). And although some things are "Easier", that does make it a lot less frustrating. If you are running negative unhappiness/GPT in civ IV, often times you get screwed over. It seems in civ V you can dig yourself out of a hole better.
(f)on the science side of things, having libraries/etc give base science helps a lot. having a bunch of libraries in civ IV didn't help if I had to run my science at 30%. It also it much better for the social policy (culture) victory, as I still was able to research things and not just stagnate and turn the culture slider to be like 90% with science at 10%).
(g) resources giving multiple of the same kind for trading purposes expands diplomacy and would be better, but unfortunately you just get to abuse the AI with it.

 

[Crezth]

You know I could probably actually agree that Civ4 with all expansions and patches (even with its well documented problems) is better than vanilla Civ5 (bit of an unfair comparison), but Civ5 looks like it's going to be a better game, especially with G&K coming out soon. Civ4's first expansion, Warlords, pales in comparison to what G&K should be.

Yeah, I am very anticipating the release of G&K. It looks sweet.

 

[Tarquelne]

Dawn of War is a lot of fun, but there's no beating StarCraft.

I *could* acknowledge that the game has many strong points and that everyone is entitled to their own preferences.

But an open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded. Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.