Long time fan, absent a long time, makes a return. will i like civ4?

[StephanePare]

Stephane, the entire time I've been a member of this forum I've heard nothing but bad things about Civ V. So I'm led to believe that if you like Civ V then Civ4 will be the best game you've ever played; you'll never go back.

Which, even though I've never played Civ V, I think I would probably agree with, because the whole "hexagonal grid" idea just makes the map seem a little... awkward.

The hex grid makes thing fairly interesting for me actually, but that might just be because i've played too much heroes of might and magic. I's harder to bar someone's way, and it allows to get large armies moving easier, especially mixed melee and ranged units. But then again, it looks like it made the AI completely stupid, so, mixed blessing unless you play exclusively multiplayer

What irks me with V is that they completely removed my favorite management tool, the tax sliders, and tried to us that building science buildings that cost gold, and putting a few specialist is exactly like the sliders, but less complicated. i tailored it nearly turn by turn in chaotic games, it was an interesting and vital tool to me.

There's also tons of tiny details, none of them important, but they just add up, and many won't be addressed in the next expantion. roads don't stand out enough visially, the diplomaty screen doesn't state well enough who's allied with whom, the trade routes are somewhat awkward, and impossible to make outside your empire, though that one will ber solved in the next expantion.

anyway there;s lots of good and bad in civ5, the greatest of the good being the strategic view, i fell in love with it. Now if only they didn't disable some popups in strat view...

 

[s.bernbaum]

I never felt the game was, for the most part, 3D. However, I never zoom in. The only times that I have seen a zoomed view of a city is when someone posts one here! I do understand about too much graphic detail confusing the game. I don't think that CIV is visually confusing. However, I did try out BAT mod and Blue Marble and found that both of them degraded the game play for me because the added details caused too much visual distraction.

 

[gps]

Hmm, those zoomed out screenshots definitively look like something i can work with. It's not as good as i'd like, but it does the job acceptably, especially with the grid on.

To be honest I suspect those anti-3d-feelings a lot of people have seems to be just a matter of getting used to it. Besides Civ I always played a lot of 3d games (flight sims, race sims, those early shooters like Doom) and I never had any problems with the Civ IV 3d graphics. In fact whenever I go back to one of the older Civs I constantly feel the (unfullfillable) need to zoom in or out. For me the 2d graphics with fixed zoom are a severe limitation...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

and I never had any problems with the Civ IV 3d graphics. In fact whenever I go back to one of the older Civs I constantly feel the (unfullfillable) need to zoom in or out. For me the 2d graphics with fixed zoom are a severe limitation...

I have a massive problem with them. Civ insists on rendering them all the time (and I'm pretty sure it does it off-screen too much also). The engine can't handle it and it puts undue strain on machines that makes between-turn times and even post-movement lag times far worse than they should be. It's worse in V than IV, but bad enough on IV especially on huge maps. If you play on "recommended" specs for either title, the performance is a complete joke for a turn-based strategy game. I used to think it was just a ton of unnecessary calculations being done (though the game does that trash too), but in reality 3d rendering on an inefficient/shoddy engine is a big issue as well.

 

[lymond]

^^^sometimes there's a good time and a bad time for that tangent

 

[TheMeInTeam]

^^^sometimes there's a good time and a bad time for that tangent

Well, okay you're right. Point is, civ IV is *much* faster than V, and that should be considered a positive for it.

In that context, it's a valid issue. While neither game handles resources efficiently, on a given machine civ IV will be considerably more responsive on equal specifications. Part of that is due to the engine quality itself (Civ V's is pretty poor) and part of it is that civ IV is older and as a result less resource-demanding just by general game progression.

As for preferring IV or V, it's going to come down to how much depth he likes, and whether he finds the tactical demands of stack or 1upt combat more appealing (both have their good and bad things to them). A fundamentally strong player in one game will do well pretty quickly in the other, because effective play in civ is built on the decisions made and one's reasoning for making them.

 

[lindsay40k]

As a big fan of pixelart with a modest hardware budget, I can sympathise with anyone who says 'oh boy, not 3D'.

That said, I did acclimatise to CivIV pretty quickly, and the game draws you in so much you end up learning to tell the terrain and unit types at a glance. It's not as bold as the SNES Civ, but you get used to it.

The 3D does play a useful role, in that all buildings and wonders are physically depicted on the zoomable map. So if you don't have enough espionage intel on a rival to examine their city screens but want to steal their Pope hat, you can physically march a scout through their territory and visually locate the Vatican!

 

[Lennier]

The 3D does play a useful role, in that all buildings and wonders are physically depicted on the zoomable map. So if you don't have enough espionage intel on a rival to examine their city screens but want to steal their Pope hat, you can physically march a scout through their territory and visually locate the Vatican!

Can't you get that info through the "top five cities/world wonders" screen? You might have to use a scout to find all their cities, but once scouted, wonders should show up there. But that would be an interesting way of locating national wonders of rivals. I never tried that, but it should work.

 

[UnforcedError]

Can't you get that info through the "top five cities/world wonders" screen? You might have to use a scout to find all their cities, but once scouted, wonders should show up there. But that would be an interesting way of locating national wonders of rivals. I never tried that, but it should work.

Once scouted you can see all buildings in their cities (some might hide on neighbouring tiles etc. though ). As long as you haven't ever unfogged a city the wonders screen will not tell you what's inside (although you still might get the info which nation built which wonder in case you already knew them at the time the wonder was built).