Game replays

[lenardrulez]

Hi! I just started playing Civilization IV and I was wondering if I could watch game replays. It's kinda like what Warcraft does. Like you download a recently played game, load it, and just watch and learn. So, does anyone know how I can do that here?

 

[AlanH]

Hi, welcome

There's a replay option built into Civ4. However, I think you need to have a copy of the Replay file that was generated when the game finished. You also need to have the same mod loaded if the original game was played using a mod. This is primarily designed as a way to see a replay of your own games. Note that there is no way to see action replays of specific battles. You just get to see key events that occurred during the game.

Here's one alternative that may interest you.

I am involved in running the Game of the Month (GOTM) series of competitions, where multiple players all start with the same map and scenario settings and play the game to try to achieve the maximum scores or fastest victories. We now have over 6,000 submitted saves for Civ4 Vanilla alone, and a total of around 10,000 if you include Warlords and Beyond the Sword. We also run a Succession Game competition called SGOTM, and over 160 teams have played in 10 games. These competitions are also run for Civ3. We have our own web site supporting them.

The results of all these competitions can be found here and here (SGOTM), and you can run replays of the submitted games by selecting the game and player of interest here. The Replay facility doesn't work with Internet Explorer, but any other modern browser will do. You can use it to replay two players' attempts in parallel to compare their progress.

Many of the leading players in these competitions also post "spoilers" describing the way they approached the games. You'll find these in the Civ4 Game of the Month forum, and this is where we announce new games every month. The Civ4 and Warlords competitions support both Mac and Windows players, and we hope to extend the Beyond the Sword competitions to Mac players as well.

Hope this helps.

 

[da_Vinci]

The Replay facility doesn't work with Internet Explorer, but any other modern browser will do.

What aspect of the replay facility does not work with IE? Are you refering to the minor issues of how the turn by turn text displays? Or are you refering to something more drastic? Because except for some alignment issues in how the text displays, it seems to work fine for me in IE.

dV

 

[AlanH]

The text display used to be a disaster in IE, but I haven't tested it for a while. Have they fixed IE now?

Also, the IE version depends on the server generating the map animation images, and runs at a pathetic speed. And I have not updated that server code when I have fixed or improved the Javascript code that does the job in the other browsers that draw directly to the map. So there is no guarantee that IE displays the graphics correctly. It certainly doesn't work properly for the Civ3 animations.

 

[AlanH]

Hmm! I've just run it up in IE8. It certainly does a much better job of displaying the text listing than the last time I tried it - which may have been an early IE7.

Performance is still rubbish, and forget using it for Civ3 replays. The listing improvements may just give me enough incentive to try to fix it to support Civ3. But the server-driven animation will never achieve the performance of the full Javascript version.

 

[da_Vinci]

I should fire it up in Firefox and see what I have been missing ...

dV

 

[AlanH]

Here's what it looks like at full speed in Safari on my Mac. Once forward and once in reverse, comparing two well-known players in BOTM 23.

 

[lenardrulez]

Hi, welcome

There's a replay option built into Civ4. However, I think you need to have a copy of the Replay file that was generated when the game finished. You also need to have the same mod loaded if the original game was played using a mod. This is primarily designed as a way to see a replay of your own games. Note that there is no way to see action replays of specific battles. You just get to see key events that occurred during the game.

Here's one alternative that may interest you.

I am involved in running the Game of the Month (GOTM) series of competitions, where multiple players all start with the same map and scenario settings and play the game to try to achieve the maximum scores or fastest victories. We now have over 6,000 submitted saves for Civ4 Vanilla alone, and a total of around 10,000 if you include Warlords and Beyond the Sword. We also run a Succession Game competition called SGOTM, and over 160 teams have played in 10 games. These competitions are also run for Civ3. We have our own web site supporting them.

The results of all these competitions can be found here and here (SGOTM), and you can run replays of the submitted games by selecting the game and player of interest here. The Replay facility doesn't work with Internet Explorer, but any other modern browser will do. You can use it to replay two players' attempts in parallel to compare their progress.

Many of the leading players in these competitions also post "spoilers" describing the way they approached the games. You'll find these in the Civ4 Game of the Month forum, and this is where we announce new games every month. The Civ4 and Warlords competitions support both Mac and Windows players, and we hope to extend the Beyond the Sword competitions to Mac players as well.

Hope this helps.

Great! This helps a lot. Thank you!

 

[maqabee]

Can one play old games of the month? I would like to as I learn from the gameplay of those who did it officially.

 

[AlanH]

Go to the GOTM web site. In the right hand column of every page there's a list of current games. Below that there are menus where you can select older Civ4 GOTMs. Choose one.

If you prefer to play the games with your current setup, and not with the original versions of the software, then you can go to the "Results" page for the game instead. At the top of the results list there's a link to the WorldBuilder file. Download that and put it in your Saves/WorldBuilder/ folder. Select it in the main menu using "Play a Scenario".

If you want to play with the original versions of the software and HoF Mod, click "Game Details" instead, to go to the game's Release Page, where you can see the HoF Mod requirements, version information and download links for the start files.

You can find the old spoiler threads by changing the options when you list this forum so that there is no time limit on the threads that are listed.