If Civ IV and Civ V were both released today, which one would you be playing?

Which Civ would you be playing?

  • Civ IV

    Votes: 199 44.1%
  • Civ V

    Votes: 252 55.9%

  • Total voters
    451
Problem here is that while people recall a fixed civ4, the world has never seen a fixed nor even a gameplay balanced version.

Civ5 is a good start but good lord, it needs major patching not only for the game play bugs, but also the overall gameplay mechanics. Civ5 really needs another 6 months of patching at the least.

Cheers!
-Liq

As far as i'm concerned we all purchased a pre-order which allowed us to have access to a Closed Beta which we're currently playing.
 
A lot of other people don't want to micromanage at all, and feel that it is boring or meaningless, only challenging by being tedious, and don't see a correlation between skill and willingness to endure boredom. :) Some of those players appear to enjoy the fact that Civ V doesn't require so much micromanagement.

The problem is that the tedious micro is still in there, it's just in a wrong place. Instead of microing your empire you now micro your army's movement. Also you still need to assign population to tiles in cities manually (which is more tedious than in Civ4 because you can't just turn the automated placement off) or the AI works some silly tiles. The chore of playing hasn't decreased at all but the things you can affect with it has.
 
Civ5 doesn't have the "one more turn" factor at all.

For you it doesn't, for me it does. I was about to quit but ended up playing 1,5-2 hours more because I had to finish Taj Mahal, had to live throught the golden age and adopt freedom policy and start rebuilding the countryside, steam power came along....
 
If they BOTH was released today, and the prize was the same, everyone would be playing V.
Who would buy older version with no support? There would never be Warlords or BtS, or ANY patch for IV. No-one would know that IV is still actually better, 'cause first real reviews of these games would come after many, many days.
 
I tried your idea of starting an identical poll on the Civlization IV message boards, and not surprisingly, the split there was 90% in favor of Civ IV but with much smaller total numbers.

Personally, my answer would definitely be Civ IV if they both came out simultaneously, but I've already played as much Civ IV over the years as I want to, so I'm hoping they patch the save game corruption bug in Civ V so I can get back to playing it.
 
Still voting Civ 4 at this point, even though 5 is great. I can still see myself playing both "Beyond the Sword" and "Ultimate Catan: City-States Edition" if they were released at the same time. They're just very different approaches in game design that I appreciate.
 
I think that's the crux of the issue right there. A lot of people feel that micromanagement is a fun, challenging aspect of Civ that deepens the experience - and that if you have to micromanage a lot, you're a good player. Some of those people appear to miss that experience in Civ V.

A lot of other people don't want to micromanage at all, and feel that it is boring or meaningless, only challenging by being tedious, and don't see a correlation between skill and willingness to endure boredom. :) Some of those players appear to enjoy the fact that Civ V doesn't require so much micromanagement.

There's no right or wrong here; it just comes down to personal preference. I myself obviously fall into the latter category - micromanagement to me is the equivalent of watching paint dry.

Can I do it? Sure... just like I CAN sit still for hours and watch paint dry. Do I want to spend my free time that way? Do I think my ability to sit and watch paint dry for hours makes me especially intelligent or capable? Hell no. :lol:

Let me give you an example of fun micro management and let's take the ancient era. In Civ 4 you have lots of decisions to make when you build your first improvements and when you are connecting your first resources (yes connecting). It's not just to build, you have to connect them and you have to protect them from Barbarians. You have to decide if you're going to build an Archer of an Axeman or both or perhaps several of them because sooner or later raging Barbarians are attacking your city.

After the first attack hopefully you have to decide the best promotion for your units and that's not an easy decision to make because eventually the first Barbarian Axeman arrives. By then you also want to connect to a Horse resource so you can build your first Chariot. This is what I call good and fun micro management. Good micro management is when you always have important short term and long terms decisions to make.

What about building and protecting your improvements in Civ 5? Well you just build the improvement, the City itself take care of the protection, if you play on a higher difficulty level you might have build a unit and station it in your city. That's what I call dull.
 
If they BOTH was released today, and the prize was the same, everyone would be playing V.
Who would buy older version with no support? There would never be Warlords or BtS, or ANY patch for IV. No-one would know that IV is still actually better, 'cause first real reviews of these games would come after many, many days.

I don't think that was the question.
 
Let me give you an example of fun micro management and let's take the ancient era. In Civ 4 you have lots of decisions to make when you build your first improvements and when you are connecting your first resources (yes connecting). It's not just to build, you have to connect them and you have to protect them from Barbarians. You have to decide if you're going to build an Archer of an Axeman or both or perhaps several of them because sooner or later raging Barbarians are attacking your city.

After the first attack hopefully you have to decide the best promotion for your units and that's not an easy decision to make because eventually the first Barbarian Axeman arrives. By then you also want to connect to a Horse resource so you can build your first Chariot. This is what I call good and fun micro management. Good micro management is when you always have important short term and long terms decisions to make.

What about building and protecting your improvements in Civ 5? Well you just build the improvement, the City itself take care of the protection, if you play on a higher difficulty level you might have build a unit and station it in your city. That's what I call dull.

That's an interesting example, because it shows me that we (as examples of "pro micro" and "anti micro" players - which is wildly generalizing, admittedly) don't even define micromanagement the same way. What you're describing IS fun, I agree. I consider "bad" micromanagement to be the mind-numbing drudgery that tended to infiltrate the late-game Civ4 sprawling empire kind of experience.

Your Civ5 example isn't something I find particularly dull, but I guess that's to be expected.
 
Civ IV was broken. Weak AIs declaring war. Defenceless fleets and navies left in besieged cities, even if no defender was present, useless tile improvement approach, poor map generation and all the usual bugs.
 
CIV IV

Because I have just installed Civ V, opened it, and as soon as the 1st screen appeared, I just said: HOW UGLY !!!
The blue ribbons that are supposed to be rivers. The Grey thing looking like a sleepig volcano with grey lava that is a moutain, the ugly fog of war like a grey wall, and the warrior playing at Diablo going to explore some ruins...

After 13 minutes (according to Steam). I exit the game.

This is not "my" civilization. This V is a waste of time , even if I understand it is a great thing for others, it is not for me. I don't like fast food.

Civ IV ... and Fall From Heaven 2 : HAPPY !!!
 
i would get sucked and play civ 5. why pretty graphics, then i will return to diablo 2 lod and spend some more 10k pindle runs, only because i think that civ 5 ripped me off.
 
As others have pointed out, Civ 4's initial launch was at least as bad if not worse than Civ 5's current launch.

Its unfair to say "Well what if they were both bug free?" because nobody has played Civ5 bug free whereas we've had 5 years of playing a reasonably bug free Civ4.
No human being would be able to make an accurate comparison.

Personally, all things being equal and I had cash, I'd try both. Hey plenty of people have played the Call To Power series and civ.

If, like now, I couldn't be so frivolous with Cash, I'd pay for the one that had Sid attached, because he's owned my soul for nigh on 20 years now. I have faith that just like Civ 4 went from buggy poor playing hack to a real gem with just a few patches, that civ 5 will do the same.
 
I have played Civ 1, 2 and 3 (2001), so if both 4, 5 are released today. I would follow the sequence by playing 4 first, and then 5.

From CIV 3 to CIV 4, the improvement was OMG, extremely good !!
From CIV 4 to CIV 5, umm... hmm, Ok.

As of now, I am already getting a little bit bored with CIV 5 after one week. I don't recall similar experience when Civ 4 is released.
 
Civ 4.

I've being playing both Civ 4 and 5 this week, and I can honestly say I still get more of a kick out of Civ4.

I don't recall playing Civ3 at all after Civ4 was released I was so immersed in the new game, but Civ4 is very definately going to be played for the foreseeable future.

Pity.
 
From CIV 3 to CIV 4, the improvement was OMG, extremely good !!
From CIV 4 to CIV 5, umm... hmm, Ok.

As of now, I am already getting a little bit bored with CIV 5 after one week. I don't recall similar experience when Civ 4 is released.

This is exactly what I just wanted to say, you've said it so much better.
 
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