How does civ 4 hold up in 2019 ?

[alwalo]

Hello,

Long time lurker here. I have started playing civ series ages ago with civ 2. Since its release civ4 was one of my favorite games of all time. I enjoy putting time into games that I play and mastering a single game.
Last years I was playing starcraft 2 and dota 2 but I got wrist injury and had to take time to heal. It got a lot better now but for my own safety, I decided to now only play turn-based games.
Recently I got urges to come back to civ IV (I was always a noob and never really got into civ), I have some questions for you:

1. Has the game been broken with the wonderbread economy (or other strategy developments)? When I was learning civ back in 2000s people were arguing SE vs CE. Now I see there was a consensus reached around 2014 that hybrid economy is actually preferred. Is Seraiel illustrated series still up to date? What I loved about civ is how strategy is mainly about playing your map best. There was tons of cool stuff with wonders, religions, specialist, espionage etc.

It seems now that postmodern civ meta is E = mc2. By which i mean, Food = production (with slavery), production = gold (with fail gold), thus food = gold (by whip overflow) and gold = science (enabling 100% slider) and science = production (better tech units means more buck per hammer). So it is all about optimization based on terrain that you get. Which is something I would enjoy. But is the game after all these new developments still challenge to play? Are there still competitive play styles and meaningful choices?

2. How is the multiplayer? Does every game always end with early domination victory? Is there enough defender's advantage to enable teching and longer games? What are the rules ? What game speed ? Are there any balancing mods used?

People always trash on Civ5 (rightfully so) but multiplayer was actually excellent. There are still people playing it and you can search for filthyrobot guides on youtube where he goes in depth into it.

3. Are there still people left? Booth in competitive single player and multiplayer? Is it possible to still find new games?

 

[krikav]

Hi @alwalo
What little you write here, I think that civ4 is the game for you.
My gaming career was bw -> wow (where I specialized in finding expoits and crazy tactics, such as a 100% avoidance rogue.) and then i dabbled abit in sc2 and then went to civ4. I had a long hiatus where I only focused on boardgames and online chess but made a comeback to civ4 this summer.
Still many people playing civ4, although activity on the forums goes in waves. When it's at it's best it's equivaletnt of what I call the haydays of 2011-2013, and when it's at worst it's rather silent.

There is still a whole lot of challenge left in the game.
We have had some "cookbooks" in the strategy&tips forums lately and there is still room for plenty of debate and disagreement about how to leverage a maps advantages best.
What you say about "playing your map best" I really agree with. But I see much of the challenge I face personally as being calmly observant and not enforcing my own faulty ideas on the map.
So in that matter, it's amost a philosophical problem.

I have no idea about the multiplayer community, but imho the challenges that I find enjoyable with civ4 doesn't really lend themselves freely to multiplayer where often more fast actions are required.

 

[AcaMetis]

The game certainly isn't at the point where even the most veteran player can roll a random map using a random map script playing as a random leader/civ on Deity and win 100% of the time, and as much as has been discovered about the game there's always the question of how and when to use it (trying to Wonderbread/Slavery your way to victory on a food poor Iso map would be...not ideal). MP I've got no clue, depends heavily on who you play with I imagine, but competitive SP games you can certainly find on the forum here.

 

[vincentz]

and there is always the mods to expand the experience

 

[Bibor]

The game is alive and well, and will be in a 100 years as well.

There is a bunch of strats out there, but gameplay is constantly evolving still. Not to mention some forms are still less played (no tech trading etc.).

I don’t think I’ll ever stop playing civ4, even if I fire it up every few years.

 

[ArchGhost]

Has the game been broken with the wonderbread economy (or other strategy developments)? When I was learning civ back in 2000s people were arguing SE vs CE. Now I see there was a consensus reached around 2014 that hybrid economy is actually preferred

The thing about wonderbread is it is a high scope meta -- you don't use it in normal games (though i guess you could) because such heinous abuse of overflow and the fail-gold mechanic requires quite a lead, at least to the extent WastinTime has shown it, and the game is already over at the point it applies.

Instead a more general "land is power" approach seems to fit more in typical games, with the game revolving around what you do with the land you have (where the whole CE vs SE vs Hybrid thing sits). A frequent solution is to get to a point that you can go take more, or at least remove some from AI hands so THEY don't run away. But there are several other ways to win and Civ4 is a cat with many ways to be skinned.

It seems now that postmodern civ meta is E = mc2. By which i mean, Food = production (with slavery), production = gold (with fail gold), thus food = gold (by whip overflow) and gold = science (enabling 100% slider) and science = production (better tech units means more buck per hammer)

Food = hammers is a good adage, since the whip is so powerful, and what kinds of things you can do with hammers (i.e. build units to go conquer or overflow them into another project, etc).


Perhaps it would be better to view that raw (base) hammers = gold/science instead. Whip overflow only works like that (economically) on massive scale. Fail-gold is not so cut and dry. There's a lot of variance due to many factors, such as WHEN the AIs complete and pay out your fail-gold, whether or not you have hammer multipliers (rarely worth it without at least IND, especially if you can build wealth at that point), and the opportunity cost of using those hammers on units instead or gold NOW instead of later. The wonder themselves that you use for fail-gold can factor, GLH is a bad one unless you already need Sailing + Masonry for example or were legitimately trying for it and got beaten to it. Stonehenge is better since it's easy to access, the Ais build it quickly, and you don't have much else better to do with your hammers at that point (a recurring theme for much of the game, hence why building wealth is a common option).

Gold = Science is fair enough too, though gold itself often becomes more valuable than science since with science modifiers like Libraries you can turn x gold in more than x science. A major power of tech trading is being able to snag gold for techs as well, since you can convert it to more than you traded for. It's more like Food = science (via specialists/bulbing and commerce), Science can be traded for gold, which can be turned into more Science. Something crazy like Food = Science = Gold = more Science.

Tech for a large part of the game is just enabling things: improvements, units, wonders. Civ4 is a game of reaching breakpoints: get to some wonder and build it first, unlock some units and put together a war campaign, be the first to Music or Lib, get the spaceship started on, etc. While it's not unimportant it's not completely central like it is Civ5, and is more like the other senior partner to Production. One of the reasons for binary slider, among others, is only teching what you need when you have to, and otherwise focusing on city management to slam out units for a war or specialists for bulbing or growing cottages and so on.

 

[Bibor]

@ArchGhost Also don't forget that some people play without "whip overflow into gold". I get only hammers.

 

[gramm87]

1 -> the game replayability is all about playing the map. Wonderbread/STRIKE economy are only extreme cases reserved to specific settings and goal. The challenge in a normal game is to consider all the options you have and make the best out of it. This is why people who like Civ 4 can play the game for decades. So about "competitive play style" and "meaningful choices", well if you play difficult maps on Imm/Deity any move you make is meaningful. In fact it's easy to watch some guy playing and think "oh I just need to do failgold" or "oh I just need to rush pyramids" then you start a map and you fail miserably because you're trying to force a strategy on the map. So that's the fun thing.

2 -> multiplayer : no idea

3 -> I don't think this game has new players. From time to time some guy join the forum and ask for advices, usually people who like the game and want to get better.

So it seems you are just asking if it's worth putting time in this game. If you actually like the game this question doesn't make sense. If you're playing because you want to beat other players or show people screenshots of your biggest city ever I don't think you'll get a lot of attention. It's mostly a game about getting better just for the sake of it.

 

[Fish Man]

1 -> the game replayability is all about playing the map. Wonderbread/STRIKE economy are only extreme cases reserved to specific settings and goal. The challenge in a normal game is to consider all the options you have and make the best out of it. This is why people who like Civ 4 can play the game for decades. So about "competitive play style" and "meaningful choices", well if you play difficult maps on Imm/Deity any move you make is meaningful. In fact it's easy to watch some guy playing and think "oh I just need to do failgold" or "oh I just need to rush pyramids" then you start a map and you fail miserably because you're trying to force a strategy on the map. So that's the fun thing.

2 -> multiplayer : no idea

3 -> I don't think this game has new players. From time to time some guy join the forum and ask for advices, usually people who like the game and want to get better.

So it seems you are just asking if it's worth putting time in this game. If you actually like the game this question doesn't make sense. If you're playing because you want to beat other players or show people screenshots of your biggest city ever I don't think you'll get a lot of attention. It's mostly a game about getting better just for the sake of it.

With respect to your last point...shattering records in the HoF does give you quite a bit of attention even around these parts. @WastinTime 's recent BC deity space launch is an example. But you have to REALLY put in a lot of work (like...500-1000 hours) to get those types of results.

 

[Bibor]

With respect to your last point...shattering records in the HoF does give you quite a bit of attention even around these parts. @WastinTime 's recent BC deity space launch is an example. But you have to REALLY put in a lot of work (like...500-1000 hours) to get those types of results.

Some media outlets picked up on the story as well, at the time.

 

[ArchGhost]

@ArchGhost Also don't forget that some people play without "whip overflow into gold". I get only hammers.

As far as I know, this is how it works for me too. I can see gold overflow in the bar sometimes (whipping warriors, etc I think you have to get more overflow than the base project cost to see it) but I never get that gold, just hammer overflow.

Is that option part of BULL/BUFFY or something? I've only ever used BUG alone because of things like this, about the only thing attractive to me in BULL without feeling like too much "help" is the auto-stopping chops on the turn they're due. That said I don't know much about it beyond things like calculating combat odds in more detail and "actual yield" tooltips.

 

[Pangaea]

Once an invention works, and works really well, people will like it. It stands the test of time. Civilization IV holds up in 2019 about as well as the wheel does.

Some game car developers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to try out square wheels. It's more stable than circular ones, they posited. It was also decided to have 1 Wheel Per Car. People were not pleased.

 

[AdamCrock]

Food isn't science because fail gold isn't commerce - fail gold is gold thus the following isn't true

production = gold (with fail gold), thus food = gold (by whip overflow) and gold = science (enabling 100% slider)

But that's a detail Game is still alive

 

[MAvL]

Food isn't science because fail gold isn't commerce - fail gold is gold thus the following isn't true

Gold is Commerce because commerce is generated in cities, which are fueled by gold maintenance.

 

[AdamCrock]

Gold is Commerce because commerce is generated in cities, which are fueled by gold maintenance.

Yeah but when You fail a wonder You get gold not commerce so You can't convert that commerce to beakers because it is gold already so the slider doesn't matter

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

I may step away from the game for a couple of years here and there, but I always come back. I'm back again now, and loving it as much as ever.

The good thing about taking a break, for me, is to break the cycle you tend to fall into when you play too much (ie I try the same strats over and over).