Civ IV: The Game That Went Down in Flames

[Undisclosed]

Civ IV: The game that should have never been made.


I'll admit it. I was anticipating Civilization IV, and now, I honestly regret ever getting the game. This is one of the faultiest pieces of crap I have ever played. Here's a tip, if you were planning on getting it, use your money on something better like Battlefield 2 because once you get this game, you will hate yourself for life. Atari should have never sold the title to the know-nothing 2k Games, who can barely equal Firaxis' gaming capabilities to Civ 2. I have organized this post into my own little personal preview for you.


Barbarians: Ok, so I pop in the game and start up as the Germans and im thinking to myself "Wow, what a great game!" How could I ever be more wrong? I found my first city and shortly thereafter, lose 2 scouts because of barbarians, which was pretty bad. I founded 3 more cities and became the first to found Judiasm, then out of nowhere, a 5-unit barbarian horde comes out and ravages my capital and another city. So now im stuck with 2 cities. I mass produced Swordsman and Archers and launched an offensive against my capital that had been captured. I had roughly 3 swordsman and 2 archers attacking about 3 archers. This is when I discovered that the Barbarians can actually MASS PRODUCE archers and use some weird hack so that they can clobber my swordsman (level 6 str) with their pathetic 3 strength. Not to mention, these units were trained at a barracks and had the City Raider I promotion, which abusolutely nothing. I quit that game. So I enter the Rome scenario and 3 of my cities are captured by a barbarian horde of 7 swordsman and axeman that came from seemingly nowhere.

Artifical Intellegence: So they were claimed to be smart. Guess again. This AI was deemed to be "competitive" and when they outnumber my cities 2-to-1, they have no military whatsoever other than an occupational guard. This was on the difficulty Noble. Now tell me when a 13 year old child starts to own the crap out of a computer on an Easy-Moderate difficulty and ne might wonder "Were they designing this game for a 4-year-old?" Yes, they were, they were trying to pull more of the youth up to like the game by dumbing down the AI to such a poor extent. The AI's attitude was HORRIBLE. Im sure the Russians are only going to be annoyed when I burned 3/4 of their cities. When you do get a friend, they usually are on the Friendly mode. Ok, so I tried to sign a Defensive Pact. Nope, they were stupid enough to reject it when I was the leading world nation. The AI in this game is nearly as stupid as Civ 2.

Graphics: Realm of the dead. Zoomed out, the graphics are awesome...for the terrain. The unit graphics are worse then they were in Civilization III. This game was so badly plotted that they decided "Hey guys, lets NOT test it on Radeon graphics card and just ship it to make out fans happy!" Yeah, thanks the pixelated tiles, I enjoyed that. Civelopedia graphics are terrible. Gee, I didn't know that Modern Armor had TRIANGULAR turrets! The cities were designed beautifully along with the terrain, but the units is a no go, its just so bad its nearly indescribable by the English language. The ICBM, which looks little more than a steel spike with paper mache and a green tip on it. On a computer that had no video card, Civ 2 and Civ III worked, but not Civ IV, the terrain was ALL BLACK! AWESOME.
If you have already bought this game, you'd better start writing a suicide note.

Also, if you already bought this game then read this for some pros and cons about what you can do:

Pro: Makes a great gift to someone you hate =)
Con: It’s too cruel to make them feel that bad

Pro: Makes great firewood!
Con: Can’t burn well

Pro: A good dog toy
Con: Dog’s may choke on sharp pieces

On a scale of 1-10, im afraid this game will have to earn a 5.5. Its mediocre at best for a Civ game. I was very dissapointed by this game.

Thanks for your time and HEED MY WARNING!

Don't hate the game because you suck at it. Try playing on the settler difficulty.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Civ IV: The game that should have never been made.

Barbarians: Ok, so I pop in the game and start up as the Germans and im thinking to myself "Wow, what a great game!" How could I ever be more wrong? I found my first city and shortly thereafter, lose 2 scouts because of barbarians, which was pretty bad. I founded 3 more cities and became the first to found Judiasm, then out of nowhere, a 5-unit barbarian horde comes out and ravages my capital and another city. So now im stuck with 2 cities. I mass produced Swordsman and Archers and launched an offensive against my capital that had been captured. I had roughly 3 swordsman and 2 archers attacking about 3 archers. This is when I discovered that the Barbarians can actually MASS PRODUCE archers and use some weird hack so that they can clobber my swordsman (level 6 str) with their pathetic 3 strength. Not to mention, these units were trained at a barracks and had the City Raider I promotion, which abusolutely nothing.

The old guy is the barbarians---

p0n3d

 

[Prometheus1992]

Don't hate the game because you suck at it. Try playing on the settler difficulty.

You're right, i mean i should, you after all, are the best at mastering the settler difficulty are you not?

 

[Undisclosed]

You're right, i mean i should, you after all, are the best at mastering the settler difficulty are you not?

Duh, it's so easy!

 

[BlueTikiMan]

C'mon man at least be consistent. You whine about how good the barbarians are and then when someone suggests you turn it off you riducule them? " Ohh the barbarians crush me this game is stupid." Well turn them off. " And rule a continent unscathed? Yea that would be fun. (as the sarcasm meter explodes)" Which one is it? Also if something doesn't burn well it cant make great firewood.

 

[Brota]

Civ IV: The game that should have never been made.


I'll admit it. I was anticipating Civilization IV, and now, I honestly regret ever getting the game. This is one of the faultiest pieces of crap I have ever played. Here's a tip, if you were planning on getting it, use your money on something better like Battlefield 2 because once you get this game, you will hate yourself for life. Atari should have never sold the title to the know-nothing 2k Games, who can barely equal Firaxis' gaming capabilities to Civ 2. I have organized this post into my own little personal preview for you.


Barbarians: Ok, so I pop in the game and start up as the Germans and im thinking to myself "Wow, what a great game!" How could I ever be more wrong? I found my first city and shortly thereafter, lose 2 scouts because of barbarians, which was pretty bad. I founded 3 more cities and became the first to found Judiasm, then out of nowhere, a 5-unit barbarian horde comes out and ravages my capital and another city. So now im stuck with 2 cities. I mass produced Swordsman and Archers and launched an offensive against my capital that had been captured. I had roughly 3 swordsman and 2 archers attacking about 3 archers. This is when I discovered that the Barbarians can actually MASS PRODUCE archers and use some weird hack so that they can clobber my swordsman (level 6 str) with their pathetic 3 strength. Not to mention, these units were trained at a barracks and had the City Raider I promotion, which abusolutely nothing. I quit that game. So I enter the Rome scenario and 3 of my cities are captured by a barbarian horde of 7 swordsman and axeman that came from seemingly nowhere.

Artifical Intellegence: So they were claimed to be smart. Guess again. This AI was deemed to be "competitive" and when they outnumber my cities 2-to-1, they have no military whatsoever other than an occupational guard. This was on the difficulty Noble. Now tell me when a 13 year old child starts to own the crap out of a computer on an Easy-Moderate difficulty and ne might wonder "Were they designing this game for a 4-year-old?" Yes, they were, they were trying to pull more of the youth up to like the game by dumbing down the AI to such a poor extent. The AI's attitude was HORRIBLE. Im sure the Russians are only going to be annoyed when I burned 3/4 of their cities. When you do get a friend, they usually are on the Friendly mode. Ok, so I tried to sign a Defensive Pact. Nope, they were stupid enough to reject it when I was the leading world nation. The AI in this game is nearly as stupid as Civ 2.

Graphics: Realm of the dead. Zoomed out, the graphics are awesome...for the terrain. The unit graphics are worse then they were in Civilization III. This game was so badly plotted that they decided "Hey guys, lets NOT test it on Radeon graphics card and just ship it to make out fans happy!" Yeah, thanks the pixelated tiles, I enjoyed that. Civelopedia graphics are terrible. Gee, I didn't know that Modern Armor had TRIANGULAR turrets! The cities were designed beautifully along with the terrain, but the units is a no go, its just so bad its nearly indescribable by the English language. The ICBM, which looks little more than a steel spike with paper mache and a green tip on it. On a computer that had no video card, Civ 2 and Civ III worked, but not Civ IV, the terrain was ALL BLACK! AWESOME.
If you have already bought this game, you'd better start writing a suicide note.

Also, if you already bought this game then read this for some pros and cons about what you can do:

Pro: Makes a great gift to someone you hate =)
Con: It’s too cruel to make them feel that bad

Pro: Makes great firewood!
Con: Can’t burn well

Pro: A good dog toy
Con: Dog’s may choke on sharp pieces

On a scale of 1-10, im afraid this game will have to earn a 5.5. Its mediocre at best for a Civ game. I was very dissapointed by this game.

Thanks for your time and HEED MY WARNING!

Ok, so you asked me for a serious response in the other thread. Here it is.

So in your post you made 3 points against Civ4.

1. Barbarians are overpowered because they can take your town and you can't take theirs. If you have Barbarian activities around your border and you do not send your troops to clean them out, there's a chance the barbarians will build their own city and send archers to bother you even more. Couple solutions, 1) Turn Barbarian option off, which you laughed at being too easy. 2) Kill the Wolf/Lion/Bear/Warrior/Archer before they grow. 3) Once you see the black borders of a Barbarian town, send your troops (ones with +% defense are the best) into their border, pillage or sit on their resource tiles, so you slow down their archer production. 4) If you were too lazy and your city(ies) were captured, don't panic. Mouse over and see how many units they have in the city and who promotion they have, then build up your army accordingly. Yes, archers can beat swordmen if they have certain upgrades, but you can upgrade your own troops with barracks. Intellenges is your friend. Know your enemy before you attack. Actually Civ4 even tells you your chance against an enemy when you mouse over them.

Your 2nd point.
AIs are stupid and I owned them so hard on Noble mode. Noble mode is the default level that comes with the game. It's like when you play other games the default level would be on "Easy." Game gets alot more interesting past Monarch level. You'd actually have to make choices in which tech to develop first, who you should make friends with and where to setup choke points along your border. So if you think the game is too easy or the AIs are too stupid, just turn up the difficulty.

Your 3rd point.
Ok, I don't even know where to start with you. You first complained about units being ugly due to their low polygon, then you complain about the game does not run on ATI cards. Then you complained about the game runs poorly on low end spec gfx card. Make up your damn mind. I don't know how many games you play, As I'm in CAL-m league for CS:S, TWL for BF2. RR8 Sorc in DAOC and Rank.11 Rogue in WoW. Civ4 doesn't even come close to be a "machine demanding" game.

 

[Cygni]

Some notes i have:

1) I really dont understand why so many people are complaining about the interface. Ive played all the incarnations of Civiliazation through the years for countless hours (another victim of 'one more turn'), and other than a few layout differences... the interface in Civ4 is identical! You click on a city, you have a world view, you have advisor windows... all function the same as they have in each successive variation. The only difference i can see is that you now get a heck of alot more information in the world view, and can switch production in that view without having to go in depth into the city. Other than that, everything that used to be there... still is.

2) The difficulty levels seem really wacky to me. People here are complaining about EASYNESS on Noble? are you serious? My first invasion... each city had a stack of NO LESS than 15 units EACH. On noble. And this was the second LOWEST ranked civ out of the 11 i was facing! I had to make 40+ Cavalry to take them on, and ended up quiting the game when i tried to invade another in the late game, only to see they had stacks of 10+ Sam inf in each city.

3) The graphics... really, there are people complaining about the graphics? I find that pretty ridiculous. It looks like a 3D CivIII... and this is bad? The graphics are beautiful, and they run just fine on most ANY low range system. Graphics run fine on both my 2ghz AthlonXP + Radeon 8500 and 1.8ghz AthlonXP + Radeon 9200 systems. Can take a while to think about all the moves of the 12 civs on a huge map though.

In the end, my complaints come down to two things:

IMHO, when using conquest, there will never be an end game on the biggest maps, no matter the difficulty level. On lowest, each city is still stacked 15 units high by the end game, making invasions a 100+ tank affair, being pretty absurd to manage. Im sure this has everything to do with my Civ III 'expand as much as possible as fast as possible, build later' mentality, and i think its getting me into alot of trouble by forcing me to play the late game. Oh well, guess i gotta learn.

But bigger than above is the bugs. The game is not very stable at all on either my Radeon 8500 or Radeon 9200. Its deffinitly a problem, as it will crash every few hours or so, which is a real bother. Also, the game seems to have some strange performance slow downs from time to time... some times it takes just a few second to move all the computers units... some times a minute+, and i can hear the game really hitting the HD hard. Pretty strange.

 

[Jezner]

This brings me back to the day when CIV 3 was launched ... everyone on this board was crying doom and gloom ... "bring back the golden ages of Civ 2" was their rally cry. Granted, CIV 3 had a lot of showstoppers out of the gate. Still ... the one thing that people hated about Civ 3 was that it wasn't Civ 2. That's a natural reaction from being outside the comfort zone.

My thoughts to you, Prometheus, is to restart the game and this time, stop thinking Civ3. Start thinking about the game as its own beast. Forget about winning or losing. Just learn the new ways of game. Once you get over the learning curve, and the game still irks you, then rant till you turn blue. At least you gave it a shot and people will respect you for that.

On an aside, I just played Civ 1 tonight ... what a flashback. The game is so different without borders. Very very ruthless.

 

[microbe]

Funny post, im still laughing.

1. Yeah, great idea, ill turn off the barbarians and make the game less challenging and colonize an entire continent unscathed!

2. Haha, my father plays on noble and loses, this is funny.

3. I dont use a dell

1. So there should be a "Prometheus1992" level in which you feel chanllenged but programmed just that you always win.

2. So there ought to be a "Prometheus1992's Dad" level too.

Seriously, what's your point? You lose the game and you whine about it?

 

[thedaian]

so, the barbarians are too hard, but the AI is too easy? try turning off all the AI, and using raging barbarians. that'll make for a challenge.

 

[Vertronix]

Man...I'm running out of binkies passing them out to all the whiners that have cropped up lately.

Briefly....a few tidbits of advice.

1) Coming to a forum like this and complaining about getting jacked up by barbarians only makes you look incompetent. Seriously. Learn the game....develop your skills. If you continue to get owned by barbarians...well...maybe Civ is just too much for your 13 year old mind to handle?
2) UPGRADE YOUR PC!! I'm sick to death of reading people running museum piece PCs/video cards complaining about how they are having problems with a cutting edge game.

 

[Rexflex]

Oh, and some times they are like "Hah! I do not want to speak to you! Prepare to be destroyed!"...When they have a single...unguarded city that is about to be taken over. That is also bad.

Actually, it is realistic. Germany didn't capitulate in WW2 until Berlin was completely overriden. Iraq's communications minister was playing up their resistance strength when U.S. tanks were storming through Baghdad.