Is there still people playing civ 4?

[vincentz]

I know its a noob question but whats RFC?

A mod

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=204

 

[Drakarska]

You forgot something:

UB: Whisky-a-Go-Go -- Replacement for the Barracks. Units start with +4 XP from the mosh pit training, and start with first strike.

Nutz. Thought things looked a little off. Happens when you move across 3 states and have no INET for 4 weeks . My thx Lemon

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Nutz. Thought things looked a little off. Happens when you move across 3 states and have no INET for 4 weeks . My thx Lemon

De nada.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

UResource - LSD. Alternating turns of +2 Happiness and -2 Happiness. Renders cities unable to report current state of health.

 

[Elite]

I love Civ IV, I mean, V is OK butwill NEVER replace 3 or 4.

 

[Moses7]

Of course.
Civ IV is the best

 

[rbj2001]

KMOD for improved gameplay/AI, etc.

+1 for Kmod. I tried some other mods like Rise of Mankind but there was just too much there and I couldn't get into them. Kmod, in contrast, is really similar to BTS, with no new techs / units / buildings, but with AI that is massively better and tons of subtle tweaks and balances that open up new strategic possibilities, where certain buildings or units were pretty useless before. In a game where the whole point is beat an AI, it's a major upgrade and keeps the game fresh for many more hours of play.

(For the record, I tried Civ 5 and found it totally boring. As well as being slow, shallow and having crappy AI, things like sound effects and leader themes and animations that really bring Civ 4 to life were missing. Plus, I just tried to start the game now (haven't played it for maybe a year) and I have to sit through this crap:



It makes me so angry. )

 

[TheMeInTeam]

+1 for Kmod. I tried some other mods like Rise of Mankind but there was just too much there and I couldn't get into them. Kmod, in contrast, is really similar to BTS, with no new techs / units / buildings, but with AI that is massively better and tons of subtle tweaks and balances that open up new strategic possibilities, where certain buildings or units were pretty useless before. In a game where the whole point is beat an AI, it's a major upgrade and keeps the game fresh for many more hours of play.

(For the record, I tried Civ 5 and found it totally boring. As well as being slow, shallow and having crappy AI, things like sound effects and leader themes and animations that really bring Civ 4 to life were missing. Plus, I just tried to start the game now (haven't played it for maybe a year) and I have to sit through this crap:



It makes me so angry. )

At least it still shows up for you on Steam. Mine...vanished? Odd because all of my other games on Steam are still there.

 

[gunslinger6792]

At least it still shows up for you on Steam. Mine...vanished? Odd because all of my other games on Steam are still there.

Be happy yours works. My civ5 is dead after they did an update. I can't reload a previous save while in the game without the game ctd. So I bought civ4 and its much more fun and hardere

 

[Lennier]

At least it still shows up for you on Steam. Mine...vanished? Odd because all of my other games on Steam are still there.

Firaxis caught to complaining about their bad designs once too often.

 

[noto2]

I'm not saying they aren't FUN, I'm just saying that most new games are focusing on making them easier to get good at without much practice.

Which is exactly why I compared most new releases to Civ5.

How can game developers make money when the majority of the customers want to not lose constantly and be good without practicing. To me that isn't fun, I want to play games where there are large skill gaps and higher learning curves.

I don't care though, tons of people still play the older versions.

Yes, you hit the nail on the head. The typical person doesn't want to be challenged. The typical person wants to have their ego stroked. Most people want to play a game that seems to be just a tad bit challenging, and then lets them completely dominate, so they feel good and special about themselves.

For some reason, video game developers didn't really outright cater to this in the early days (perhaps gamers were different back then). Look at the original Japanese Nintendo titles, they were hard, and then when they were brought over to North America they were made easier.

Still, games like Mario 3, FF 4,5,6, and Zelda link to the past were harder and more challenging than the crap released today.

Civ was never a blockbuster game. Games like Grand Theft Auto sell mega volume. So does Halo and Call of Duty. Sid Meier didn't give a crap before. He wasn't trying to outsell GTA, he was trying to make a good strategy game. It's a small corner of the market but he owned that corner. We are the strategy game players, the Civ fans. Then, with Civ 5 they tried to make it have mass appeal - and they failed miserably. The average CoD-loving guy will play Civ 5 a few times and stop. And a long time Civ fan such as myself just won't even try Civ 5 to begin with (I have my reasons), and so the game won't be nearly as successful as they had wanted it to be.

One of the reasons I will not buy Civ 5, probably the main reason, is because I am voting with my dollars. That's how capitalism works. I will not reward them for making that game by giving them my money. I have paid for CoD, btw, and GTA, because those games are exactly what they claim to be. I will pay money for the next good strategy game that comes out too

 

[noto2]

Although I don't have kids this is why I really like turnbased as well. Something is always coming up and you have to leave the game, sometimes for an hour unexpectedly. Besides, I find wives tend to think that, once they come into the room, you should drop everything to talk to them.

Heck, I still play CivIII sometimes. I don't care if the game is older, I care if it's good!

This is a very important distinction. I love Civ and I love Dota. I really love to play Dota. I used to play it all the time, even more than Civ. However, now that I'm an adult, I have a career, I'm on call, I have to answer the phone when my boss calls (I'm in the military) and I live with my girlfriend and her family, I just can't play Dota anymore. There's rarely a time when I can say "okay everyone, I'm going to sit and play a 60 minute game and NO ONE CAN INTERRUPT ME AT ALL DURING THIS TIME". It just doesn't happen. Turn based, on the other hand, well, works much better.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Be happy yours works. My civ5 is dead after they did an update. I can't reload a previous save while in the game without the game ctd. So I bought civ4 and its much more fun and hardere

No, my civ V does not work. Steam claims my civ V does not exist.

FF 4,5,6,

These games were NOT hard . Games like super ghouls/goblins, ninja gaiden, heck most NES/SNES action-based scrollers were harder. Final Fantasy as a series is so lulzy-abusable that any semblance of challenge is wiped out even if you don't grind much/at all...with the possible exception of the very early ones which, like Dragon Quest 1, FORCE you to painfully grind. Even then, it's not like you ever needed much skill or strategy, just time. I don't consider that actually "difficult", but perhaps one could equate tedium with difficulty.

If you want hard games made recently, pick up Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. They actually have some challenge in them to be very good and are far beyond the likes of Mario 3 (I could beat that when I was 8 or 9 years old no problem), any Final Fantasy, or 4 bottlefairy link to the past .

There are even challenging, well-designed shooters, like Gears of War 3. Then they get civ V syndome and release judgment.

Civ IV, HOMM III, and Warlords II/III are still the best turn-based strategy games made. I hesitate to put civ IV at #1 however, because its engine and UI are awful (a trait that civ V made even worse!).

Because you can DoW w/o prompt while the game "thinks" you're pressing alt, promotion buttons move and you click auto-explore, and units move despite orders not to move, I am forced to rank civ IV slightly behind HOMM III and Warlords III, despite that it's more complex. Controls that don't work piss me off that badly, and so does off-screen rendering/calculations that take 10x what they needed to take.

Civ V is a liar's game. If you try to play on a "huge" map with exactly "recommended" settings, you get some rather interesting results. Even moreso if you try it in MP.

 

[noto2]

ninja gaiden, I forgot about that ! I know FF4,5,6 weren't exactly super hard, compared to modern RPG's I think they were.

Okay, here's a better example. Compare Baldur's Gate to Diablo 2/3. I recently played BG again just for the nostalgia and...wow. A game that difficult released today would get shunned

 

[Drakarska]

Planescape: Torment was a really good oldie as well.

 

[AdamCrock]

ninja gaiden, I forgot about that ! I know FF4,5,6 weren't exactly super hard, compared to modern RPG's I think they were.

Okay, here's a better example. Compare Baldur's Gate to Diablo 2/3. I recently played BG again just for the nostalgia and...wow. A game that difficult released today would get shunned

What a coincidence !! I have never finished BG 1 untill recently - wanted to rest from Civ 4 for a while and installed BGT (Baldur's Gate Trilogy) BG1 on BG2 engine - and it was great ! It was not that hard for me - just playing with slings/bows/x-bows +haste potions luring out opponents untill level 3-4 and ocasionally switching to a melee weapon (preferably with a +1 enchantment to take down those vampiric wolves ) Well I was suprised how much thinking is required to defeat stronger opponents in BG but with a good tactics anything is possible To stay on topic I'd say that I enjoy difficult games more than easy ones but that's just my opinion

 

[TheMeInTeam]

ninja gaiden, I forgot about that ! I know FF4,5,6 weren't exactly super hard, compared to modern RPG's I think they were.

IMO part of the reason for this is that information about those games was more scarce if one played them close to when they were released.

I'm telling you, Demon/Dark Souls are harder than any game you've listed (probably, not super familiar with Baldur's Gate but Diablo was just a mass grindfest from the start) and they ARE modern RPGs . They still make good ones.

Higher difficulty >> low/none. However, games are compensating for the transition from gaming being "nerdy" and rare to being very mainstream. If I wasn't a 3 sport athlete with 9 varsity letters, I'd have probably been shunned for being really good at starcraft in high school and letting people know it. Instead, I was something of an enigma, having 5-6 pretty close friends and being "neutral" (use the faction system LUL) with all the major high school subgroups. Looking back it was amusing and I'm glad I went about it the way I did.

I think in the future you'll see a small increase in game difficulty (~5-10 years). The reason being is that while in previous generations gaming was less popular, now it is very much so and children SPAM them, developing skill sets early instead of gradually fitting into casual gaming as young adults/actual adults.

That doesn't mean we'll see "nintendo hard", but models like CoD's difficulty will fade to some extent I believe.

Civ V went the wrong direction, and I have SERIOUS doubts about Firaxis' ability to make a solid title simply from a technical and mechanical standpoint (when was the last time we've seen consistent, performance-optimized coding in a civ game with a UI that doesn't make playing *more* difficult than it needs to be? I'm not sure it's never happened, and certainly Firaxis never managed it, only getting worse with time). I hope they prove me wrong, if/when they make the next game.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Diablo = borderline arcade. Click, click, click, nova, nova, nova.

Level ups and items don't make the RPG. Especially true when compared with the other games of the same generation (Might & Magic series, Ultima, Baldur, Elder Scrolls & plenty of others).

 

[AdamCrock]

Diablo = borderline arcade. Click, click, click, nova, nova, nova.

Level ups and items don't make the RPG. Especially true when compared with the other games of the same generation (Might & Magic series, Ultima, Baldur, Elder Scrolls & plenty of others).

Yeah that's so true , and most of the quests in Diablo are - get there, kill that, reload, repeat ! I would hesitate to call Diablo an RPG too

Edit ^^:
If You guys want to try a good RPG Here is a good example of what RPG stands for ! ^^

Edit 2 : I forgot to mention the ultimate RPG game I have posted earlier got some pretty amazing reviews !!!
You can check out Here ^^ The review is actually better than the game itself hehe

 

[noto2]

well...Diablo 2 had some questionable design implementations. You could use a TP scroll at anytime, anywhere, and you could carry a ridiculous amount of potions. Bosses didn't heal when you teleported back to town. Thus you could simlpy go back to town in the middle of a fight, heal up, restock potions, repair your items, and port back into the battle, and rinse and repeat.
Last summer I played FF1 again and it was cool how you actually had to survive in dungeons with a very limited amount of potions and magic, there was suspense involved.

Anyway, as for civ, I hate it when a developer makes a niche game that does well and then tries to "dumb it down" for the masses thinking they've got a blockbuster. Civ 4 is perfect in the amount of complexity, in my opinion. Any more and the game would become too tedious (like MOO3, or those civ mods with 5 trillion different units/techs). Like...what were they thinking with the 1UPT?? Ugh.

They should have been more conservative. Civ 5 should have been a tweaked version of Civ 4, building upon it, changing the weak aspects of it. leaving the good ones, improving the UI and graphics. Instead they tried to radically change it from the bottom up.