Initial civfan reactions to Civ 4

[CultureManiac]

When people rave about Civ4 (and it was a great game) they remember the way it was after two expansions and years of modding.

How we forget the initial reactions on its release.

Here a a few reminders from the civfans archive. It all sounds really familiar.


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A mess. It looks like a sloppy mess. I can't help but think they are trying to make Civilization more 'chic' than it's meant to be by using this new layout and design. The engine looks fantastic with Pirates, but they shouldn't use Civ4 as an excuse to get more use out of it. Maybe if they shrunk those damn units down to a somwhat-more proportioned size it would look alot better.

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Is it just me or do all the screenshots of Civ IV, and now the E3, make it look kind of cartoony, like a little kids' game? If it's as good as Civ III then I'll play it regardless, but so far I'm not liking the game's aesthetic. Civ I through III all had a sophisticated kind of board-game-with-motion look to them, but with this one it seems Firaxis is trying to appeal to a greater audience.

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Oh God, it looks terrible! I simply don't understand WHY THE HELL must they do the terrain in 3D. I guess today's PC games players won't even touch anything, what does not have wonderful 3D graphics. I fear the 3D graphics will be everything what Civ4 can offer...

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I am very very upset. I hate what this game has come to be, even though I am a fanatic of the Civ series, I will not buy CivIV because it is a traitor to what Civ always meant for me, realistic simulation of world conquest.. and now it looks like a cartoonish ugly game that is just too ugly to play.

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This game does not look like a Civ game, I don't think it deserves to be labeled as CivIV.
Firaxis, I demand an apology for making me wait for several years for CivIV and come up with a piss-poor looking game. You have betrayed me, you have betrayed the modding community, and you betrayed yourselves.

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AI is always talked up but never delivered very well... so I'm hoping for lots of eyecandy this time ... That would make me happy and they CAN deliver it... AI? Sure would make me happy... but they CAN'T deliver it.

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Instead of starting a lame thread about AI's capabilities, we should give some valuable input. So here is my idea: make the AI better!

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Obviously developing a game is a business, but I'm worried that Civ4 is trying to catch a market by sacrificing the gameplay that has made it a classic among strategy fans.

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I have been a player of CIV since CIV I. I am always the first of my friends to pick it up, and I am always the one who convinces my friends to purchase it. This is the last piece of software I'll be buying from Firaxis. I'll ensure my friends address this similarly. Firaxis should consider actually testing their products adequately in the future before shipping.
My system is more than adequate to run their software, yet said software will not run. At first, it ran, but terrain didn't display (it was all black, only people, cities, and resources appeared). I reinstalled, and now it simply doesn't run.
To Hell with Firaxis. By the way, don't even try the support line. Call back in 24 hours my ass.......

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I wonder if this site will post the drop in Firaxis and Take 2 stock price tomorrow, when the plethora of consumers return the game and say goodbye to the series for good. Too bad they couldn't make a game that would run on a 10 month old laptop. Best of luck to Civ IV and not be able to reach your core market. I would put in a frowny face here, but there would be a full face and since I can't see one of those I won't give ya'll the extra pleasure.

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Have played for five or so hours, having a lot of fun BUT the game is quite buggy in my opinion.

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Now that I know that the time limit of the game is 400 turns and now that I've seen the tech-tree I can say without any doubt that they've assassinated Civilization. And even the maps got smaller...

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"If you don't like it - mod it" is only a small step away from "If you don't like it, write your own game." In other words, it's neither helpful nor productive. Most of the things that people want are because they think they will objectively improve the game. It's not Coke vs. Pepsi where it's just personal preference. We want the game to be the best it can be as released straight from the source. I'm not paying $50 for a fixer-upper.

 

[Uberfrog]

Plus ça change, indeed! Always good to keep things in perspective.

 

[MikalJ]

There is indeed nothing new under the sun.

 

[Gorbles]

This is one of the best threads I've read on any forum, of late.

 

[Sera Otoro]

Huh, I actually loved 4 coming from 2 and 3, and still favor it over 5 even without the mods. But everyone has their personal preferences.

Give it a couple of years and hopefully 6 will have warmed up the same way as 4, or even better. =)

 

[Gehennas]

This is perfect

 

[GermanSettler]

Thanks for this, awesome and very interesting post.

I do think that as of now CivIV and CiV are the more polished games.

But CiVI already offers a lot and it is simply a fresh breeze after so many hours with the old games. I am pretty positive CiVI will be seen as a worthy part of the series (imho it already is) very soon and many issues will be addressed.

 

[MyOtherName]

FWIW, I was a fan of Civ 4 when it came out. But then, I was upgrading from Civ 3. (despite the GPU driver problems!)

However, for Civ 6, I'm upgrading from BTS. (I shelved Civ 5 fairly quickly)

But while I'm not a Civ 6 fan yet, I'm not a Civ 6 hater yet either.

 

[Xyriach]

OP wins the internet for pretty much most of the year.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Nostalgia is a powerful thing . . .

 

[Cerilis]

This is gold.

 

[Deggial]

Indeed. And I always wondered, how the people (thank you for not unmasking the autors by naming them!) who wrote this stuff feel now. Did they ever eat their words? Was there ever a post of apology or a confession of having erred?

Will there be one for all the current "the heaven is falling!" threads?

Somehow I doubt it ...

 

[Plus Ultra]

Every single new product or idea is invariably criticized by someone at some point. This is true regardless of its value.

In other words, this is an amusing thread that helps lighten the mood, but proves nothing besides what we already know: people are always afraid of change.

Whether that fear is justified or not is another story.

 

[benjamin28]

Thanks for this! Indeed, nostalgia can be very misleading and biased.

Except in the case of Civ 3. I remember it by its repetitive, annoying sound every time you engaged in diplomacy; its unplayable, little new cities with a lot of corruption and inefficiency; its basic, moody music. I'm surprised there were people who compared it to Civ 4 and found the former appealing. But, as Plus_Ultra said, it's very easy to feel afraid of change.

 

[Joch]

Great Thread!

Yup, you see the same hair pulling, shirt tearing every time.

If anyone actually paid attention to all the negative posts, you would never buy a new game again.

 

[WiseGreen]

Truth be told, Civ4's trajectory is not unlike Civ5's - a mess at release, not really great until second expansion, not complete until the community patches came along. Civ6's release is a very high mark on the series, I think - the game works, and it has almost/all features from the final version of Civ5 while adding significant new stuff.

 

[anandus]

Truth be told, Civ4's trajectory is not unlike Civ5's - a mess at release, not really great until second expansion, not complete until the community patches came along. Civ6's release is a very high mark on the series, I think - the game works, and it has almost/all features from the final version of Civ5 while adding significant new stuff.

I agree.
Even though it definitely has it's faults, for a pre-patch Civ-release it's actually quite decent.

 

[IronfighterXXX]

This thread shows that Firaxis haven't learned anything from previous releases and still makes rushed, imbalanced and unpolished games (why they need to relearn the same lessons with each new game?)

 

[SammyKhalifa]

This thread shows that Firaxis haven't learned anything from previous releases and still makes rushed, imbalanced and unpolished games (why they need to relearn the same lessons with each new game?)

It shows that people don't understand that everything in life is this way and always has been.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

Huh, I actually loved 4 coming from 2 and 3, and still favor it over 5 even without the mods. But everyone has their personal preferences.

Give it a couple of years and hopefully 6 will have warmed up the same way as 4, or even better. =)

Yeah, pretty much my sentiment too.

I think a significant amount of the initial unhappiness targeted at civ4 was to do with compatibility & performance than anything fundamental in the game mechanics (there really weren't all that many changes from civ3).

As I had a good rig at the time, and the game ran fairly well for me, my 1st impressions of civ4 were mostly positive.
Though as the game was significantly more demanding than civ3, and quite high up the hardware requirements curve, it's understandable that a significant number of players were unhappy.

While I'm optimistic that civ6 will get better, it's carrying a lot of baggage from civ5 that I simply don't think I'll ever get along with(1upt & city states), so I don't anticipate ever being as satisfied with it as I was civ4.