bryanw1995
Emperor
civ4 (and 3 for that matter) are both so cheap that I think it's a good idea to get all of them anyway.
Civ V => Civ IV
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civ4 (and 3 for that matter) are both so cheap that I think it's a good idea to get all of them anyway.
builer680
eats too much Taco Bell
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2010
- Messages
- 525
Get Civ IV and stick with it for a few weeks. When and if you go back to playing V, you'll be able to spot all the differences more easily and can make a more informed decision.
To everyone but the OP:
The rest of this post reflects my own personal opinions. I won't argue with or respond to anyone who contradicts them. They are only meant to offer the OP another perspective, not cause arguments with people whose minds are already made up.
My opinion is that IV is light years beyond V in every conceivable way except the 1upt implementation, and even this is a net negative when viewed in light of everything it affects. I'd be a big fan of 1upt in V if it didn't affect so many other things. It is the prime reason for low tile yields and thus long build times. 1upt on tiles this "large" requires relatively small armies in order not to make every turn a traffic jam. Thus I lose the feel of commanding the entire military of a huge empire built by conquest. Stacks of Doom in IV aren't perfect, but they did at least convey the feeling of huge clashes of titanic armies for real stakes. Warfare in Civ V, with few exceptions, feels more like border skirmishes.
While it may take a bit more thought to carry out an attack in V relative to IV (due to 1upt positioning), the fact is that neither is all that 'brain intensive'. The Total War series has a better grip on tactics if that's what you're looking for, and even it isn't perfect by any means. Therefore, to me, the small gains in gameplay gained from 1upt are more than offset by all that's lost in order for it work in its current implementation. If a way to use 1upt (or limited upt) can be found that doesn't so negatively affect everything around it, then I'm all for it. Until then, I see 1upt as the sole reason that the whole rest of the game was forced to become a house of cards supporting it.
In IV, you feel like it's a good thing to build an empire and create infrastructure. There are more limiters to expansion, but building the infrastructure necessary to expand just feels more satisfying. In V, building infrastructure feels like pulling teeth, costs the world, and gaining cities and territory is more likely to drive your empire into the ground than enhance your power. Both methods have "realism" arguments for and against them, but only one of them feels fun to me.
For an empire building game, V sure goes out of its way to penalize you for every aspect of building an empire.
To everyone but the OP:
The rest of this post reflects my own personal opinions. I won't argue with or respond to anyone who contradicts them. They are only meant to offer the OP another perspective, not cause arguments with people whose minds are already made up.
My opinion is that IV is light years beyond V in every conceivable way except the 1upt implementation, and even this is a net negative when viewed in light of everything it affects. I'd be a big fan of 1upt in V if it didn't affect so many other things. It is the prime reason for low tile yields and thus long build times. 1upt on tiles this "large" requires relatively small armies in order not to make every turn a traffic jam. Thus I lose the feel of commanding the entire military of a huge empire built by conquest. Stacks of Doom in IV aren't perfect, but they did at least convey the feeling of huge clashes of titanic armies for real stakes. Warfare in Civ V, with few exceptions, feels more like border skirmishes.
While it may take a bit more thought to carry out an attack in V relative to IV (due to 1upt positioning), the fact is that neither is all that 'brain intensive'. The Total War series has a better grip on tactics if that's what you're looking for, and even it isn't perfect by any means. Therefore, to me, the small gains in gameplay gained from 1upt are more than offset by all that's lost in order for it work in its current implementation. If a way to use 1upt (or limited upt) can be found that doesn't so negatively affect everything around it, then I'm all for it. Until then, I see 1upt as the sole reason that the whole rest of the game was forced to become a house of cards supporting it.
In IV, you feel like it's a good thing to build an empire and create infrastructure. There are more limiters to expansion, but building the infrastructure necessary to expand just feels more satisfying. In V, building infrastructure feels like pulling teeth, costs the world, and gaining cities and territory is more likely to drive your empire into the ground than enhance your power. Both methods have "realism" arguments for and against them, but only one of them feels fun to me.
For an empire building game, V sure goes out of its way to penalize you for every aspect of building an empire.
bonafide11
Worker
You might as well give it a try. You can buy it for pretty cheap now, and you'll definitely get your money's worth. Overall, I like Civ IV better, but I can't really play Civ IV anymore because I spent probably several thousand hours of my life playing it and now I'm just bored of it. So Civ V is a fun change of pace, and I do like Civ V, I just wish some things were different about it.
the343danny
Emperor
First, before you shelf Civ 5, try getting the Economy mod or the Balance mod, or any other mods that could significantly improve gameplay. You will be surprised how a better balance and improved buildings as well as additional can improve gameplay. Economy mod isnt updated to the current version but it should come soon. Afterall, you wont want to spend money on a game when you possibly could have had as much fun with the sequel.
And as for Civ 4, I recommend the Legends of Revolutions mod. In my opinion, its by far the best mod for Civ 4 that still keeps Civ somewhat historical (as opposed to dark fantasy world of FFH). You would want to get it before you play any games, because the revolution mechanic is really hard to get used to after playing vanilla Civ for a while, because vanilla civ gives you a sense of invincibility, because winning is really easy (even on immortal). However, only reason Civ 5 is harder to win at is because of the way the UN works; you can catch up to large advanced AI and defeat them in wars, but you will find it very hard to take all of their city states away because they are so rich. With revolutions, your civ can often get screwed over by revolutions, and at higher levels its pretty much guaranteed to screw you over, and leave you at the bottom until you can build up your infrastructure enough. In my game as Persia I was left at the bottom of the score, even after I captured two cities via immortal rush, because those two cities revolted to form Arabia, who was either too strong for me to take (I buffed knights and their replacements quite a bit) because I was far behind in tech, or they were vassaled on and off by the really scary Ethiopia south of me. If you werent used to playing with the revolutions mod you most likely feel you have been "cheated" out of success, where in reality you have not. It could take a while to play with a mindset that fully incorporates revolutions within your empire if you played without it for so long.
If you are like me, and like role playing, you will love Legends of Revolutions. Otherwise you will get disappointed at Civ 4, because the only checks to your expansion and utter domination of the game once you get the strength to do so is poor early game economy, where your economy will end up tanking due to over expansion, but such a thing is hardly an issue because with all that land you will skyrocket after you build up a decent amount of infrastructure. I like how in Civ 5 the game stops you from over extension in any point in the game through the global happiness system. I would have preferred if they kept local happiness, and renamed global happiness stability, as well as city maintenance, but I like how there is a powerful check to over-expansion. Legends of Revolutions does this better than Civ 5, and thats why I like it so much. Unlike that one poster to said he didnt find it fun to see your empire run into the ground after over expanding, I would be angry if it didnt. The revolution mechanics takes in nationalism (how much culture in that city was produced by another Civ), economy, distance, current state in wars, happiness, civics, military presence, and so much more, and it really does make Civ 4 a complex game rather than the simple one that is Civ 4, where you can win any game by warring in every era, using the same strategies, etc.
And as for Civ 4, I recommend the Legends of Revolutions mod. In my opinion, its by far the best mod for Civ 4 that still keeps Civ somewhat historical (as opposed to dark fantasy world of FFH). You would want to get it before you play any games, because the revolution mechanic is really hard to get used to after playing vanilla Civ for a while, because vanilla civ gives you a sense of invincibility, because winning is really easy (even on immortal). However, only reason Civ 5 is harder to win at is because of the way the UN works; you can catch up to large advanced AI and defeat them in wars, but you will find it very hard to take all of their city states away because they are so rich. With revolutions, your civ can often get screwed over by revolutions, and at higher levels its pretty much guaranteed to screw you over, and leave you at the bottom until you can build up your infrastructure enough. In my game as Persia I was left at the bottom of the score, even after I captured two cities via immortal rush, because those two cities revolted to form Arabia, who was either too strong for me to take (I buffed knights and their replacements quite a bit) because I was far behind in tech, or they were vassaled on and off by the really scary Ethiopia south of me. If you werent used to playing with the revolutions mod you most likely feel you have been "cheated" out of success, where in reality you have not. It could take a while to play with a mindset that fully incorporates revolutions within your empire if you played without it for so long.
If you are like me, and like role playing, you will love Legends of Revolutions. Otherwise you will get disappointed at Civ 4, because the only checks to your expansion and utter domination of the game once you get the strength to do so is poor early game economy, where your economy will end up tanking due to over expansion, but such a thing is hardly an issue because with all that land you will skyrocket after you build up a decent amount of infrastructure. I like how in Civ 5 the game stops you from over extension in any point in the game through the global happiness system. I would have preferred if they kept local happiness, and renamed global happiness stability, as well as city maintenance, but I like how there is a powerful check to over-expansion. Legends of Revolutions does this better than Civ 5, and thats why I like it so much. Unlike that one poster to said he didnt find it fun to see your empire run into the ground after over expanding, I would be angry if it didnt. The revolution mechanics takes in nationalism (how much culture in that city was produced by another Civ), economy, distance, current state in wars, happiness, civics, military presence, and so much more, and it really does make Civ 4 a complex game rather than the simple one that is Civ 4, where you can win any game by warring in every era, using the same strategies, etc.
deanej
Deity
Not quite true... Firaxis did try to hide the square tiles, but reversed the decision before release because it was impossible to distinguish the tiles from each other. Soren talks about it in his video on designing civ4.
I agree about 1upt (though I was never keen on it regardless of its impact on other things... civ is not a tactical wargame). Frankly, I don't think it's even possible to implement tactical combat on a strategic map (1upt supporters: you can try to deny it until you're blue in the face, but civ uses a strategic map, not a tactical one). As stated, 1upt is the cause of most (if not all) of civ5's flaws. For example, in order to keep army sizes down, Firaxis had to keep cities from becoming too good. This resulted in the return of building maintenance and the removal of specialization and the return of ICS.
moscaverde
Prince
It's cheap, you should try it. If you have fun, great, if not, you still have Civ 5.
It would be interesting to hear the OP's opinion of Civ 4 after a week playing it.
It would be interesting to hear the OP's opinion of Civ 4 after a week playing it.
I actually have no idea what drug you are high on.
But the last time I checked, city-spamming in Civ 4 will lead you to a very bankrupt treasury and building culture buildings is quite useless anyway since culture doesn't do much (when not near the border that is) except culture victory. Axe rush is easily countered by archers with city defense and/or horsemen pillaging the copper. I suggest you get a clue before you start typing again.
Although you just reminded me of another thing Civ 5 went back on: culture takeovers. They were essential in preventing the AI from cheekily wedging a city between your borders and making things very unrealistic and annoying. A peaceful takeover of a small city between your capital and your 2nd would be nice.
Elbow_Jobertski
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2010
- Messages
- 26
I can't find this.
Some footage here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn9D8HzCscQ&feature=related
Would love to get the original heightmap files. I don't know if anyone's tried to change Civ 4's heightmaps but they always show up corrupted in game for me, even though they're 8bit
I can't see it either. It shows Civ 4 vanilla for £9.99, and the expansions for £2.99 and £5.99
Complete is on Amazon though
In my personal opinion, Civ V just isn't fun for me. I could live through the AI issues if it wasn't such a drag for me to actually play the game.
Civ IV is a lot more fun, in my opinion. I don't want to get into super-specifics because there are a lot of threads and posts which already explain my feelings toward the game.
Civ IV is a lot more fun, in my opinion. I don't want to get into super-specifics because there are a lot of threads and posts which already explain my feelings toward the game.
I wouldn't pay $50, but I might pay $20. Graphics aren't as important to me, and in some ways I view the Civ 5 graphics as a mix of improvements and flaws. Civ 5 has higher res graphics, and the leaders look nice, but that's about it. In most other respects, I actually find Civ 4's graphics to be better, especially because of the degree of animation and visual information that conveys. The world feels more alive to me in Civ 4's map.
As for the Steam price, it's currently $30 for Civ 4 complete -- which includes Civ 4 vanilla, and the three expansions (Warlords, Beyond the Sword, and Colonization). I never tried Colonization, and I wasn't too keen on Warlords for the price I paid (I didn't like most of the scenarios, although I did enjoy the extra civs and leaders), but BtS was a lot of fun. For the package deal of $30, it's still a good bargain in my opinion. Worth checking out.
As for Civ 4 vs. Civ 5, plenty has been discussed about their differences. For me, Civ 4 is a lot more engaging. This comes at a price, of course --namely that you can REALLY leverage min/maxing and micromanaging if you care to. I'm talking about managing things like hammer and beaker overflow for production, switching tiles to achieve that, etc. In that sense, from what I can tell, Civ 5 did away with that. Mostly by making everything take FOREVER to do. 1UPT is not my cup of tea, mostly because I've actually PLAYED tactical combat games, and let me tell you, Civ 5 is NOT a tactical combat game. Or at least not a very well designed one. Unfortunately, it's not, in my opinion, a very well designed strategy game, either, because of the sacrifices that needed to be made to accommodate the pseudo-tactical 1UPT change.
To me, all of this makes Civ 5 a game that is built around game mechanics without a real sense of "why" each mechanic exists other than to support other game mechanics. There's less of a unified concept of "why are we designing this stuff this way", and to the extent there is one, it doesn't have to do with simulating, replicating, or even casually representing some general concept about the development of civilizations/nations/empires. Whereas it feels to me that the parts of Civ 4 support an overall holistic concept of the game abstracting how empires develop, Civ 5 feels like a game that involves a bunch of interconnected game mechanics that are designed to support another game mechanic which itself was introduced in response to a PRIOR game mechanic.
To me, it feels as if the designers of Civ 5 said "Man, Stacks of Doom were such a pain in Civ 4. We should make combat a lot more tactical." Then they went about doing that and changing a whole bunch of other things to make their chosen solution (1UPT) functional, without regard to anything else.
I pretty much agree with this.
"Civ" V is a conglomerate of concepts which do not really fit together.
From the very first moment on I had the impressioin that during the "design" phase (actually, I heavily doubt there was ever such a thing) everybody was allowed to announce his pet ideas, and finally they tried to make it work somehow.
Almost any concept in this game is ,if not outright broken, then at least sub-standard, may it be combat, diplomacy, the UI, mp support, whatever. To a certain degree, all these different sub-systems are working, no doubt. But in the combination, they are working ... how do you call it ... laborius (?).
Everything is a hassle.
It actually starts already with the first glance at your cities. Why would you open the city screen? To adjust your workforce.
What do you have to do? You have to manually open a sub-menu to be allowed to do so. And this is just one - maybe the most obvious - example.
Whatever you want to do, the game makes it tedious for you to do.
My gaming experiences date back to 1983. And even in the dark ages of computer games, games where actually better prepared for the gamer's input than the falsely so-called "Civilization" V.
They have advertised the game to be streamlined. This was a plain lie.
It is a game, made by an incompetent crew. And you can see their incompetence each and everywhere.
what?? that is a crazy price .... it says $30 for me
i would recommend cIV over ciV just due to the extra content avaliable and the polish (and if u can get it for $7!! i would repurchace just so that i had cIV linked on my steam account)
Yes, this has bugged me quite a bit as well, actually. Every game I reload I must open my workforce, set the upperleft to show science progress, and scroll my science bar to the right to see my researchable techs. The last of the three is the only understandable thing I should be required to do. The fact that every game I start I also have to open the citizen bar is ridiculous.
When the SDK is released there definitely will be cIV Civilization 5 mods made.
As far as an official product being made, I would of course wait and see since this company has lost my trust.
I wouldn't pay $50 but I would definitely buy the product if it truly was cIV. Perhaps $20-$25.
