Civ3/4/interface-your thoughts, my thoughts, from a newb

[BLOODYBATTLEBRA]

Apologies for spam


"From a guy who had sworn off of Firaxis games after the disaster that was CivIII, I'd say that's a fairly dramatic turnaround. Again, we're still on the honeymoon, as it were, but so far, color me impressed."

That was from: http://civilization4.net/3/180/343/
by a guy called “Velociryx”


Now, I've never played any Civ before this, and I rather like this one. D/L ing patch as we speak.


So was Civ 3 better or worse. I know that there have been various allusions to this and that asepct of Civ 3, in other threads, but what i am looking for is a few veterans to explain how and why Civ 4 is better/worse.


My impressions of this game? V.addictive. Definitely staying on the HD. No very gory battles, which is a shame but probably not appropiate for this game (besides, I have Rome:TW and BI for my blood fix) and the premise (bear in mind that it's new to me)of alternate history has me absolutely hooked.

What I don't like is how I keep being made to jump around my empire from this city to another to build something, even after I select 'Minimize pop-ups'. The only thing that does for me is give me a delay, before cycling through each city. Now that's not a problem up to 5 cities, but @ 20+, it's a tedious and annoying headache. And, once that window pops up, why oh why can't i move around my empire and/or minimize that window. Why do i have to choose then and there.


This has some negative 'synergy' (learnt that term on these boards actually) in that I'm being flipped from Moscow (north) to Xian (in the south, stolen from the Chinese) when a little red notificaion shows up to tell me that 'the enemy have been spotted near Delphi (several tiles to the east). By the time I get out of the silly build menu, the sign has gone, and I'm having to scratch my brain as to where Delphi is. Could I mod this (heard you can mod everything in this game) so that a list of events comes up on one side (e.g. left side of the screen has a list of icons, and when I click, it will tell me where the enemy has been seen, and what troop type it is, and would I like to go there?--->or am I really asking for a military advisor?) and the buildings on the other side (sometimes this will stay put until i click the first one, then it starts that annoying cycle...)


PLUS, I think I found a bug, that I don't recall reading about here. I was building Hollywood, afetr having chosen it from the cycling list, and decided to rush it (had the cash so why not?). Now, after choosing it from the first city on the list, it was still an option in the other cities on that particular cycle, so I chose itout of curiosity, even though it said '0 available'. So, rush finishes, Hollywood is built, all well and good. Next turn, I get a message that Beijing and Guanhzao can no longer construct the Hollywood wonder, and that the lost construction has been converted into x amount of gold. Exploit right? If I got, for arguments sake, 100 gold for each cities lost construction for a particular wonder, then what is to stop me queuing it up in EVERY city, and rushing it in the actual city I want? Taking 20 cities, 19*100=1900, which is enough to push your research to 100% for a good few turns....


Or am i mixed up?

 

[vinstafresh]

I'm not sure if this belongs in the strategy-section...

I agree on the frustrating 'this and this happened here' and when you're finally there, you don't see where it happened exactly. Especially when you are declared war on, you want to see where the invasion is coming from.

The choose here and now is in your face, I agree with that, but you can just select something and move back to change the production into something you'd like. You can also avoid this pop-up by queuing up production in a city (hold shift while selecting buildings, units or hold alt to produce this kind of unit indefinitely). I normally don't queue up stuff, I like to make up my mind here and then.

Compared to Civ3 this game is a dream. You don't have to open up each city every turn, a lot less micromanagement. A game of civ3 feels a bit like work, while civ4 is pure entertainment. I can't even imagine playing a full game of civ3 after I played 4.

 

[Reinhard]

Apologies for spam
"From a guy who had sworn off of Firaxis games after the disaster that was CivIII, I'd say that's a fairly dramatic turnaround. Again, we're still on the honeymoon, as it were, but so far, color me impressed."

I don't know what exactly the guy didn't like about CivIII. Calling it a disaster sounds pretty strange. I consider CivIII one of the best strategy games ever, definitely more ground-breaking than Civ4.

 

[vinstafresh]

I didn't read your last paragraph:

You can start construction of a wonder in multiple cities, but not at once. If you build a wonder in city 1 and you switch production to a unit and remove the wonder from the queue, you can queue it up in city 2. If you stop producing in city 2 and delete the wonder from the queue, you can start in city 3. If you finish in city 3, you get the produced hammers from city 1+2 back in coins. You can exploit this when you're out of cash. The only downside is that you can't pretty much control when you'll get paid :|

 

[Khan_Asparuh]

A question of point of view.

I definitely like Civ3 more, as it was more complex and I was able to control more things. Sorry, but the "there's always an alternative way" commercial argument hasn't convinced me. And here, I just spend 90% of time clicking "Next turn".

So, it is simplier, and simplified, but we've lost a lot of fun. IMO.

 

[BLOODYBATTLEBRA]

I didn't read your last paragraph:

You can start construction of a wonder in multiple cities, but not at once. If you build a wonder in city 1 and you switch production to a unit and remove the wonder from the queue, you can queue it up in city 2. If you stop producing in city 2 and delete the wonder from the queue, you can start in city 3. If you finish in city 3, you get the produced hammers from city 1+2 back in coins. You can exploit this when you're out of cash. The only downside is that you can't pretty much control when you'll get paid :|

No, what I meant was that I queued up the SAME wonder, on the SAME turn in half a dozen cities. So I had 6 or so cities all producing Hollywood at the same time...which I thought was impossible, as there is but one Hollywood...


Maybe they were building Bollywood.

 

[The Last Conformist]

So was Civ 3 better or worse. I know that there have been various allusions to this and that asepct of Civ 3, in other threads, but what i am looking for is a few veterans to explain how and why Civ 4 is better/worse.

There are a great number of differences between Civ3 and Civ4.

Some of the more obvious ones include a drastically rehauled combat system (I prefer the new way - some people don't), that Civ3 didn't have religions, and that Civ3 didn't have the Civics system, but instead a small number of Goverments, that had more global effects on your civilization. Oh, and of course, CivIII graphics were much uglier, altho arguably more informative at a glance. Another biggy is that in Civ3, when a city became more unhappy than happy, it wouldn't just get a few unproductive citizens; it would shut down completely, which was mighty annoying.

There are also many less immediately obvious changes; the AI is brighter, many exploits have been closed, the changes to maintainance mean that underdeveloped cities drain your treasury rather than enriches it.

Overall, I'd say Civ4 is Civ3 with a lot of refinements as well as a couple bold innovations. There are a few changes for the worse - what I find most annoying is it's harder to keep up on what the AI is doing during its turn during war - but on the whole I think Civ4 is a big step in the right direction.

 

[Gufnork]

Looking at the game as released, I think Civ 3 was much better. Civ 4 has one mother of a flaw, the research pace in the end game is way, way too fast. Once you hit renaissance techs come in every 2 turns. Once you've built your first Musketman you can start building Infantry. When your troops reach the front they're obselete. There are also many other flaws that I won't go into.

The thing Civ 4 wins on is the ease of which these issues are fixed. I've simply modded my game (I'm totally new to modding) and now most of the flaws are gone.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Civ3 as released was unbelievably buggy. Fighters and Jet Fighters simply didn't work, for a start.

 

[BLOODYBATTLEBRA]

In my most recent game, i started out next to Biasmarck. just us 2 on an island, so ater a long war I wiped him out, then expanded all over my continent. Went broke, and didn't hit tghe middle ages until 900 AD (!!!) then i got the renaissane in 1300, and now my guys have discovered and started mining uranium (year is 1780 or so). I am also ahead in tech again. This is because I got 2 great merchants, sailed them to the other side of the world, and made trade missions. 3000 gold goes a long way in research...

 

[rabottens]

I prefer Civ 4 to Civ 3 for several reasons:

Strategic resource allocations in civ 3 were always stacked against the human player.

City start points were alway unfavorable to human player

Wasted a lot of time micromanaging and roadbuilding.

AI could move through your borders and plop a city in your butt.

I didn't like civ 3 diplomacy either.

Civ 4 fixed a lot of the downsides in civ 3 but preserved the good things from the game. Civ 4 also brought back some of the things from Civ 1 & 2 that makes Civ 4 a more playable game. For example: hotjoin in multiplay Civ 2
Civ 3 mini wonders Civ 4 national wonders etc.

Overall Civ 4 has enough features from all the previous games to make it a better comprehensive game. The ai has much more intelligence than in any of the previous games. Diplomacy actually feels like diplomacy. You get back stealth units (carryover from civ 1 & 2). I like the look and feel of the game much better and I think they did a topnotch job.

 

[bigchief]

Overall I'm not sure if I like Civ4 better or worse than Civ3. Maybe after a couple of hundred more hours of playing, I'll be able to decide. There are certainly parts of Civ4 that I like better or worse than those parts of Civ3.

One of the things I like less in Civ4 is the advisors. I didn't really need the Civ3 trade advisor always telling me I needed more resources or the domestic advisor telling me to build more cities, but they did provide some useful information from time to time, and sometimes what they would say would add some comic relief to the situation (Hail to the Sultan, Baby!). The military advisor in Civ4 is either useless, broken, or I haven't figured out what it does, other than give me my unit totals. The domestic advisor has quite a bit of useful information, but there doesn't seem to be any way to go directly to a problem city once you have found the problem in the advisor. In Civ3 you could click on a city from the advisor's screen and you would be taken there. It was the same with the military advisor. You could use it to locate your units or take you directly to those units. The Civ4 advisors just don't have the personality or functionality of the Civ3 advisors.

 

[uniteatteri]

A question of point of view.

I definitely like Civ3 more, as it was more complex and I was able to control more things. Sorry, but the "there's always an alternative way" commercial argument hasn't convinced me. And here, I just spend 90% of time clicking "Next turn".

So, it is simplier, and simplified, but we've lost a lot of fun. IMO.

Which are the things in Civ3 you could control more than in Civ4? Apart from those innecessary MM's to avoid lost shields or such? You can MM in Civ4 as much as you want. It just isn't usually needed. Saying Civ3 being more complex is just wrong. Since it isn't.

Civ4 only lacks the joy of molewhacking pollution... What other concepts are simpler?

 

[Toshiro126]

I've played Civ IV and I think it is the best of the Civ series. Especially now after the patch, when the leaders faces are more than just teeth and eyeballs floating in midair.

The AI is a definite improvement between III and IV. At least when war is declared in the new version, you can see it coming most of the time, due to being able to see what other civs like about you and hate about you.

I'm also a big fan of the civics and religion options. They tend to flesh out the game more, and allow you to experiment with running the country different ways. And I am also a big fan of the great leaders. Technical bugs aside, I've been very happy with Civ IV. just ask my wife, who is going to toss my laptop PC out the window soon!

the only problem I'm having is trying to win the space race. I've won that way only once so far (as Spain, with Russia a mere one spaceship piece behind me. )

 

[theexile]

For me Civ2 was almost perfect. Civ 3 had the major addition of culture and Civ 4 has religion. Great.

With Civ4 I am pleased that the movies and tech tree are back but the game summary map when you retire is laughable and impossible to make out and much worse than 3. I also dislike the way in which the game shows that cities have flipped to you.

Worst thing is the memory leak and crashes every 20 minutes on a good computer. I hope the second patch (?) fixes that.