Civ3/Civ4?

[EMan]

All of the above plus I want a Map Generating utility program for HOF competition. (Viz. MapFinder by Moonsinger & Dianthus.)

AFAIK, a Civ4 version hasn't been written yet(?).

I got it for Christmas, but there was some kind of graphics problem. Apparently my mom didn't hear me say there might be a patch or something, so she returned it. Regardless, I'm still happy with Civ3.

I hear you Tim, agree 100%..........not the bit about your mom........mine's 85 this year!.............have a feeling she's a bit older than yours!

 

[azzaman333]

I still have the game, but the only time ive played it since Christmas was to play a pbem save. Its not as interesting. You have to actually win, which takes some of the fun out of Civ. I personally like playing through the early gam with no specfic goal in mind, and base my victory condition on my sit later. That cant be done in Civ 4, which disappoints me very much.

 

[vilemerchant]

Well, I've been playing civ 4 for the past few months and I think I've finally come to realise that it's just not as fun as C3C. It has nice graphics and a lot more features, but there really is something missing. The combined arms and promotions for instance, all it seems to add to the game is tedium. Civ is not supposed to be a tactical warfare game, it's always been strategic. C4 however seems in the middle and a little bit confused. While it's gone into more detail for land combat, it's made naval combat almost totally useless. And constantly cycling thru your 20 unit stack to test the victory % of every unit before comitting to combat is just total boredom. Civ3 also seems to flow much nicer thru the entire game. Most of the my civ4 games I don't even finish, all the enjoyment for me is in the early eras.

 

[Kristius]

I bought Civ4 when it came out, and was really looking forward to playing, unfortunately, like so many others, it runs really slowly on my computer, so I am waiting until I get a better computer to really try it out. In the meantime Civ 3 totally satisfies my cravings. Can't wait to really sink my teeth into Civ 4, though. Of course with all the bad things I've been hearing, I hope I won't be disappointed.

 

[Bungus]

Civ4 just feels like a good looking and sounding interface. Its a step back as far as graphical flavor goes (no era specific anything), and I completely disagree with some of the gameplay changes.

The biggest thing: I can't play a good epic, historic Earth map game.
Not that you can with C3C out of the box, but years of work from dozens of dedicated modders have changed that.
After spending a year myself compiling a giant Earth epic game (which I recommend those disappointed with civ4 try), Civ 4 is just too big a step backwards.

 

[gunkulator]

I'll speak out for Civ4. I find it to be a more challenging and fun game than Civ3. Maybe I've just played too many C3C games so that I'm tired of all the same strategies over and over again. Here are the big improvements to me:

• Much less MM - Shields left over at the end of a build are applied to your next build. Same with left over science. Unhappy citizens no longer cause riots. They just refuse to work meaning happiness and city productivity are no longer all or nothing. No more whack-a-mole-reassign-citizen pollution. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you for these!
• No more ICS - Let's face it. At the start of every C3C game, you do nothing but spam settlers and units all over again and again until you run out of room. Boring. Civ4 makes it cost prohibitive for you (and the AI) to do this. Your fledgling civ must actually invest in some infrastructure before expanding is feasable.
• No more maintenance cost for buildings - Finally, we are rid of the "builders penalty" that turned us all into warmongers. My first Civ4 win was spaceship. My second was diplomatic. I've never bothered with either in Civ3 because it's just so much easier to win by conquering/dominating.
• You can actually keep up with the AI in culture. Really. There are many more cultural options in Civ4 than in Civ3, including the option to "build" culture a la "building" wealth. At upper levels of Civ3, your border cities are always in constant danger of being flipped leading you, inevitably, down the warmonger path just for survival's sake.
• No more hokey prebuilding exploits - "I'll build a palace for 20 turns and then switch to a wonder." If the AI did this in C3C, we wouldn't be able to get even 1 wonder.
• Religion - this one is just plain fun. Founding and spreading religions gives you more diplomatic options and gives you more goals than just trying to be the first kid on the block to get tanks.
• More flavors of great people - Civ4 has great merchants, artists, engineers, scientists and prophets, each with different abilities. They no longer randomly appear. You build them now, although the type that gets built still has randomness.
• Combat: cripes, where to begin?
  
  
  [*]Armies. The #1 mother-of-all-exploits in C3C. You have them, the AI doesn't. The AI could have 100 cavalry stitting around but still it refuses to attack your cavalry army. Send in an army and pillage away the AI's resources and there is absolutely nothing they will do about it.
  [*]Artillery. You use these to redline AI defenders. The AI uses these pretty much only on defense or if you happen to park next to a city that has arty in it. Again, even if they have 100 artillery and railroads everywhere, the AI still won't concentrate its artillery on your advancing stack. The AI does do better with bombers but by the time they come along, you've already got the game locked up.
  [*]Pillaging. If the C3C AI happens to be in the neighborhood, they will pillage a resource. The Civ4 AI pillages like there's no tomorrow.
  [*]Promotion system. This is an acquired taste but I believe it adds more flavor to the game. It leads to more unit specialization.
  ​

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

I don't have it, it's too hardware demanding.

Interesting to read the opinions here, I don't know if I'll buy it someday, but I probably will, unless an even better Civ 5 is out at that time.

 

[Padma]

I've got Civ4, but it runs at barely 1fps on my system, so until I do an upgrade, I won't be playing it.

But that's okay, because I'm not tired of Civ3, yet.

 

[gmaharriet]

[*]Religion - this one is just plain fun. Founding and spreading religions gives you more diplomatic options and gives you more goals than just trying to be the first kid on the block to get tanks.

I found Religion to be the most boring aspect of the game. Sure, your neighbors like you better if you have the same religion as they do, BUT it makes absolute NO difference which religion it is. They're all exactly the same.

It would have been far more interesting if religions had flavors like different governments. Not differences like in real life where everyone thinks their god is better than your god, but just some sort of difference. If one religion were good for warmongering, another good for making money, another good for health, etc, there would at least be SOME reason to pick a particular one. The way Civ4 implemented it, it just doesn't matter, and I can't get excited about picking one without any logic behind it.

 

[gunkulator]

I found Religion to be the most boring aspect of the game. Sure, your neighbors like you better if you have the same religion as they do, BUT it makes absolute NO difference which religion it is. They're all exactly the same.

It would have been far more interesting if religions had flavors like different governments. Not differences like in real life where everyone thinks their god is better than your god, but just some sort of difference. If one religion were good for warmongering, another good for making money, another good for health, etc, there would at least be SOME reason to pick a particular one. The way Civ4 implemented it, it just doesn't matter, and I can't get excited about picking one without any logic behind it.

It isn't supposed to matter which religion you pick. That's the whole point and besides imagine the outrage if Judaism, say, increased science but lowered happiness while Christianity lowered science but increased happiness.

What you're asking for is already there in Civ4 in the form of civics, not religion. With 5 groups of 5 different civics, there are 25 choices all together. Some are good for war, some for building, some for trade, etc. Unlike C3C's get-to-Republic-and-stay-there, I typically change civics many times per game. Anarchies are typically 1 or 2 turns, 0 for Spiritual civs.

The important thing about religion is spreading it and getting your neighbors to convert, or converting to theirs if need be.

 

[gmaharriet]

It isn't supposed to matter which religion you pick. That's the whole point and besides imagine the outrage if Judaism, say, increased science but lowered happiness while Christianity lowered science but increased happiness.

I hear what you're saying, but it would make the choices more interesting. I would NOT want to live under Communism in real life (or Feudalism or Fascism), but it's an interesting choice in Civ, because it affects game play, and it actually makes a strategic difference. People don't get outraged at playing under a government they wouldn't stand for in reality, so why would they feel outrage about a make-believe set of qualities in a religion.

 

[Mad2rix]

I may have retired from Civ3 since I have Civ4 in my PC, however there's a slim chance that I may or may not reinstall Civ3 once more to compare the gaming experience between these 2 series.

 

[McLMan]

The way I think of the religions in Civ IV is that they develop their "flavor" in each individual game rather than being assigned specific attributes. The leaders traits and their tendencies play a large part in how religion is spread and it's impact on the rest of the world. While the different religions don't do anything different, they do offer a more dynamic set of choices than other "cookie cutter" options making it one of the most interesting parts of Civ IV for me.

More to the topic, Civ IV doesn't take anything away from Civ III. Civ III was, is, and always will be a great game that can stand on it's own. Civ III is no less fun since I've started playing IV.

 

[zeeter]

Reasons why Civ4 rocks and/or rolls:

Religion: Can't build a temple without it. Can choose civics to give your military a boost, building a boost, and the possibility of great people appearing.

Civics: Great concept. Now your government actually runs on specific politics, rather than just saying Democracy. Some increase gold production. Some increase happiness. Some increase great people discovery. Some help the military.

Culture: They did a far better job with Culture in Civ4 than in Civ3. You also have a great deal more control over how quickly your culture grows. That's not to mention the culture bombs.

Great People: Great Leaders weren't thought out well enough in Civ3. You never knew when you'd get one. You always had to be at war to get one. In Civ4 your can watch the count-up to your great person. You know that in x amount of turns one is going to show up. They can be somewhat planned on, although the chances of getting a specific person aren't a hundred percent. In Civ3 they either finished production or built an army.

Military: This may be a negative to some people, but the military system is much tighter in Civ4. There are less units, but those units are better thought out in Civ4.

Unit Promotions: Give a unit a strength increase, a city raider increase, a city defense increase, hill defense, forest defense, amphibious increase, etc....

 

[azzaman333]

TBH, the reasons i prefer Civ3 over Civ 4 are the same as zeeter's reasons that he prefers 4 over 3.

 

[Nicci]

waiting for the game to come to the mac-platform . . .

 

[MAS]

I'm going to buy Civ4 as soon as it is ported to the Mac.

 

[Civinator]

In my eyes Civ3 with all its tons of modded stuff is at time ahead on Civ4. Civ4 has a lot of good ideas and it´s fun that some of these ideas can be transported to Civ3.

1. Civ4 is much to slow on my PC when the gameplay comes to modern times. So I can´t play on the superbig maps or settings I want to play and this is completely "unfun" for me. I have no satisfying feeling on gameplay when I could only achieve to found a handful of cities in thousands of years of my rulership even if I won that game. This is no big empire! The limitation in the present Civ4 to small worlds is a very very "unfun" element if I can have big worlds in Civ3 .

Civ3 had a lot of these speed problems too when it started. Most were overcome when something of the Civ3 game-system was thrown "overboard":
p.e. the city-trade-net (El Justo). May be this trade-net, the religious system and something more must be cut down to make Civ4 a playable and "fun" game with big worlds. But at time I go the reverse way and try to bring "fun" elements of Civ4 to Civ3 as far as this is possible.

2. I like modding. The sentence that Civ4 is the best moddable game of the civ series is not true - at least not for normal players like me. One of the reasons I like Civ3 and Civ2 is, that modding them is easy. If I want a special building, it is no problem to create it with Civ 3 (and in total also in Civ2). To mod Civ4 at this time is really "unfun" for me (especially if I must do much more work to receive something that I know I must put on a much to small world).

The Civ game I would like most would be a Civgame that has the events, caravans, spys and aircraft and helicopter movement of Civ2, the units of Civ3 but not the limitations of these games and a new trade system. What I get was Civ4. I did´nt play it often until now.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I played a few games of civ4, and i just didn't really like it.

The reason why is probably this because i am more of a game theorist than a game player.
Civ3 is a game that is absolutely perfect for a game theorist like me. I have played probably no more than a total of 15 or so games in civ3, but i have done a lot of thinking reasoning, modelling and calculating. This helped me to become a good player without significant playing experience. It's always like that when i play games.

Maybe if i would spend a lot more time on civ4, i would also be able to take it on much better theoretically, but during the few test games i played it was more of a fuzzy mess for me. Small parts of the game like opening sequence and unit upgrades can be reasoned pretty easilly, but the big picture was not so clear.

 

[Iron Beagle]

Civ3 is more fun to modify. To me, a heavily modified Civ3 cleans Civ4's clock. Civ4 does have a couple nice bells and whistles like civics and religion, and it looks pretty, but in the end it's just not as fun.