There's certainly no lack of vitriol from TMIT today. Wow. 
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Civilization 7 has been announced. For more info please check the forum here .
Is there still people playing civ 4?
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TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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There's certainly no lack of vitriol from TMIT today. Wow.
Ah yes, the combination of civ V, the fact that it disappeared off my steam, and my memory of civ IV patch history ---> civ V release quality all put together into one nice basket
.00konichiwa00
Prince
I'll give a shout out to Vinz, his VIP mod is stellarmischief: you can thank me later Vinz).
OGI 3.01 is also a fairly newer mod as well. Plus some of the other "older" mods are getting fresh life breathed into them as well (AND 2, Evolutions, REVDCM)
thank you. I am giving civ 5 another try before I try those civ 4 mods
Drakarska
Epic Dadness
But, VIP is such a pretty mod (dangles carrot).. NP, I've pretty much given up on 5 and all of it's issues. Hopefully we'll see you here back in the real world
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I was just aimlessly looking around when I noticed this.Ah yes, the combination of civ V, the fact that it disappeared off my steam, and my memory of civ IV patch history ---> civ V release quality all put together into one nice basket
My (Frankenstein) Civ V disappeared from my steam account as well. I asked about on the civ5 forums to see if this was deliberate and if it happened to all the testers, but no one seemed to know. They said to ask on the test forum... but I couldn't really do that because apparently all activity on the test forum had been moved to a different subforum which I wasn't given access to - and when I messaged a moderator asking if I could have access to the subforum that everyone was actually in, I got no response and my access to the dead subforum was removed as well.
I figured that maybe I'd offended someone, somewhere, somehow, without anyone telling me. But at least now I know I'm not the only one!
00konichiwa00
Prince
But, VIP is such a pretty mod (dangles carrot).. NP, I've pretty much given up on 5 and all of it's issues. Hopefully we'll see you here back in the real world
yep seems so. I'm already starting to be borred of civ 5. the stupid thing is that I keep buying all the dlc's and exp. for it....
Princeofnigeria
The illustrious
Ummm... I'm just starting!
Been playing civ 5 for over 2 years, and bought four 6 months ago for around 10 dollars. Never really tried it, never really got into it. Tried it again recently and I found it very facinating and engaging (still prefer 5 though) and now I'll be trying it out more. As an aside, any good, VERY in depth turorials out their? The game gives no favors for the young and pretty much just hucks you in and says "good luck"!
Been playing civ 5 for over 2 years, and bought four 6 months ago for around 10 dollars. Never really tried it, never really got into it. Tried it again recently and I found it very facinating and engaging (still prefer 5 though) and now I'll be trying it out more. As an aside, any good, VERY in depth turorials out their? The game gives no favors for the young and pretty much just hucks you in and says "good luck"!
Drakarska
Epic Dadness
Ummm... I'm just starting!
Been playing civ 5 for over 2 years, and bought four 6 months ago for around 10 dollars. Never really tried it, never really got into it. Tried it again recently and I found it very facinating and engaging (still prefer 5 though) and now I'll be trying it out more. As an aside, any good, VERY in depth turorials out their? The game gibes no favors for the young and pretty much just hucks you in and says "good luck"!
Yuppers. Head on over to the S&T forums, and you'll have all sorts of info at your fingertips. I recommend the Nobles thread in particular, as they have a lot of new peeps there asking questions.
Ummm... I'm just starting!
Been playing civ 5 for over 2 years, and bought four 6 months ago for around 10 dollars. Never really tried it, never really got into it. Tried it again recently and I found it very facinating and engaging (still prefer 5 though) and now I'll be trying it out more. As an aside, any good, VERY in depth turorials out their? The game gibes no favors for the young and pretty much just hucks you in and says "good luck"!
If you start Vanilla Civ (not BtS) there is a tutorial.
Never tried it though. Part of the charm with civ4 was the high learning curve. Often a high learning curve means great depth. And I liked the trial and error :
"HA! now I got all figured out. Im gonna rule the WORLD!"
5 turns later Monty stands on my doorstep with a 50+unit SoD.
"D'oh!"
Kallikrates
Prince
There is the Sulla walkthrough (vanilla).
Princeofnigeria
The illustrious
I bought IV and it came with warlords/ BTS
Lennier
Emperor
Your offense was demonstrating better programming skills than the people Firaxis paid to do Civ IV.
TheMeInTeam
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They probably just dropped everyone who didn't continue on to test new content.
Still, that doesn't exactly encourage me to go buy the game I had issues against from the moment I had my hands on it, and particularly not their DLC/Expansions.
Hmm, come to think of it, what would have happened if we DID pick up DLC, only to have the base game dropped? Sounds like a questionable practice to me. Honestly though, it took me a while to even notice it happened. Failaxis made their bed with that one with the engine and inflexibility with UI improvement long ago in my book. UI could possibly be fixed (but they never, ever did it in civ IV, so why would they in V?), but the engine really can't be...or at least the cost would be too much for it to be feasible and there are too many people willing to accept a shoddy product to force it.
I probably didn't notice the removal from Steam for a long time too. But I don't really know for sure, because I don't know exactly when it disappeared. I stopped trying to play the game when it was released.
I was a bit disappointed with the testing process in general. Maybe it's just that I was a fairly late invite to the group, but from my point of view, I didn't get any opportunity to give any kind of useful feedback because there was almost no time between the game being too unstable to play and it 'going gold', apparently ready for release.
When I program stuff, stability is always #1 priority. If the program is crashing for whatever reason, then that's what I should be trying to fix. From my experience, adding new features while there are still unknown bugs causing the game to crash is just asking for trouble. New features may further obfuscate the cause of the crash; also, the fact that the program is crashing means something is causing "undefined behaviour", and so whatever the problem is, it might also be messing with other features in all sorts of unpleasant ways. This makes balance testing and AI testing and so on somewhat invalid because the behaviour might change when the bugs are fixed.
When I was testing civ5, I assumed Firaxis would focus on stability first as well. I figured that until they sorted out these fatal bugs, I shouldn't bother trying to give in-depth balance feedback or other end-game stuff like that. If I can't play through the game, it's hard to give balance feedback anyway. — I certainly didn't expect that they'd finalize the game features before fixing the bugs.
So I don't think I was a helpful tester on their team. The only feedback I gave them was a few crash reports and some general warnings about stuff that was too late for them to change anyway (such as telling them that peace-time body-blocking is going to be an annoyance both for players and for the AI). For that contribution, I don't feel entitled to a free permanent copy of the game, and I don't mind being exclude from whatever testing they are still doing. But I also don't think I deserve such disrespect that they won't even respond to me when I ask about access to the testers forum and about the removal of my Civ5 from my Steam account.
I was a bit disappointed with the testing process in general. Maybe it's just that I was a fairly late invite to the group, but from my point of view, I didn't get any opportunity to give any kind of useful feedback because there was almost no time between the game being too unstable to play and it 'going gold', apparently ready for release.
When I program stuff, stability is always #1 priority. If the program is crashing for whatever reason, then that's what I should be trying to fix. From my experience, adding new features while there are still unknown bugs causing the game to crash is just asking for trouble. New features may further obfuscate the cause of the crash; also, the fact that the program is crashing means something is causing "undefined behaviour", and so whatever the problem is, it might also be messing with other features in all sorts of unpleasant ways. This makes balance testing and AI testing and so on somewhat invalid because the behaviour might change when the bugs are fixed.
When I was testing civ5, I assumed Firaxis would focus on stability first as well. I figured that until they sorted out these fatal bugs, I shouldn't bother trying to give in-depth balance feedback or other end-game stuff like that. If I can't play through the game, it's hard to give balance feedback anyway. — I certainly didn't expect that they'd finalize the game features before fixing the bugs.
So I don't think I was a helpful tester on their team. The only feedback I gave them was a few crash reports and some general warnings about stuff that was too late for them to change anyway (such as telling them that peace-time body-blocking is going to be an annoyance both for players and for the AI). For that contribution, I don't feel entitled to a free permanent copy of the game, and I don't mind being exclude from whatever testing they are still doing. But I also don't think I deserve such disrespect that they won't even respond to me when I ask about access to the testers forum and about the removal of my Civ5 from my Steam account.
I've played the Civ series since good ole Civ II. I played Civ III but wasn't too thrilled. When Civ IV reared it's head, I was quite impressed and found it a worthy successor to the previous games. Warlords was ok, but BTS was far and above the better expansion. In summary, there is more for me to love about Civ IV than I liked about Civ V. It looks like the Civ series is about to go the way that Star Trek did, the even numbered productions are superior to the odd numbered ones, maybe? Guess we'll see, eh? 
Interesting point, but will that actually keep the developers from making more sequels? I think not. Most game developers will bat their eyes and keep "moving forward" with other ideas, totally ignoring the audience in favour of their superior business model. Afterall, gaming is a money-making venture. Quality is only secondary. If the company can grab your money as quickly as possible, even with a second-rate product, and then run for cover while counting their loot, they are the winners, not us. One reason I quit Steam was because I was upset that the company overlords had more power over my gaming experience than I did. I guess this is a bit off-topic hehe. Played Civ 5 a lot, it was a mundane experience at best. Played Civ 4 a lot, it was hard, but I enjoyed the steep curve and strategy. It felt like I was doing something useful rather than just pressing keys. Cheers...
Once in a while I venture into Civ 5 forums, to check if things got better and all. Not much better reception civ 4'ers get there(not to defend Joeys statement)
The funny thing is, if a civ 4'er makes a statement about the poor state civ 5 is in and the terrible AI, he is being jumped by civ 5'ers, who proclaim civ 5 is the best game ever and the AI is competent, and its full of complexity.
However, if you visit another thread, you will see the same person who said how perfect civ 5 is, describing/complaining about gameflaws, lack of AI, wrong game design etc. etc.
That's because most people like to be seen as positive
and not negative 
in wherever or whatever they are hehe. Heck, even I catch myself doing it sometimes!
TheMeInTeam
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The thing is, enough people like products where "quality is secondary" that there is no incentive to put $$$ into making an actual high-quality product. Let's say 80% of the fanbase buys (and 60% even defend) the game even if the UI is complete trash and its engine is a joke.
However, if they make a well-programmed, solidly balanced, stable game they get 100% of the fan base. However, doing this costs 1.5-2x times as much in development.
If it were like that (and considering that the vast majority of developers use failaxis model, I suspect it is, though I of course have no real purchase-rate figures), it wouldn't make sense to bring out quality games. While people do want quality games, not enough of them hit a purchase-or-not break point based on said quality. As long as it isn't overtly terrible to a 100% casual player's eyes on purchase day, people buy (and review companies get bought out). What true financial incentive is there to go the extra step when only a small % of people have the sense to not buy shoddy products?
Oh sure, EVENTUALLY the franchise might fall off, but models like Call of Duty, Madden, and similar game/year productions have shown us that such a process is gradual at worst for the companies. Net code + MP experience has declined since CoD MW2, and yet they still have had great sales for 3 consecutive games after. If you're failaxis and you look at that, what do you do?
You also rake $$$ off people willing to buy shoddy products...in fact they're happy to buy them, and get angry when people point out objective flaws in them. It's perfect money in the bank. Why alter that model if the consumers don't force you to do so?
Much as I hate what they've done to the series (and many of these flaws show up just as surely in civ IV), I probably wouldn't budget for these kinds of fixes either. Not enough people want them to make the cost worth it. That is the sad reality. These shoddy games *are* meeting market demand, so the real issue here is the market demand itself.
