Looking to get into Civ

[Guardian_PL]

Civ5 is for casuals, Civ4 will make you a fanatic.

Care to elaborate?

Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword Expansion (cIV BTS) has MANY more features because it is two expansions deep into the main game. It has also has had many patches to improve the small issues that matter to the fanatics. More features isn't always better though, it can be very confusing to new players.

civ 5 has less features but is much more accessible (less confusing due to less features),has new (IMO better) play mechanics, has better visuals, and is not as difficult due to the AI not handling the new one unit per tile mechanic very well.

civ 5 will get to the point of having as much depth as cIV BTS but it is not there yet. That is assuming they do the same thing to civ 5 and put out 2 new expansions eventually.

Gee, and I thought that was question I was to answer...


Civ4 is a complex, box-inside-a-box game. Despite what others might say it's not hard - take such advice with a grain of salt You can play it for ages on Noble level, thinking that you're actually doing good and then you might look at some option, ask yourself "hmmm, I wonder what that does?" and suddenly you discover amazing new layer of strategy like trade routes, slavery usage, Great People mechanics (and ALL great people are useful unlike Civ5), religion pros and cons that just blows you away. So your current difficulty level gets too easy, you go higher and again - boom! City maintenance, chopping, designing your empire, war weariness - every aspect of the game you thought you know shines like new, presenting new challenges and solutions to problems you encounter on the way.

Why is it that people can debate for eight pages when posting the Civ4 game start online where to settle and which techs to go for first? It's because there's so many possibilities, and they are all interesting.


Civ5 is a one-night stand. After a while nothing is changing, it's all the same and meaningless, regardless different UAs for different civs. You reach Immortal with ease, and you turn away from the Deity because it's so bloody tedious. Yes, it's not amazingly hard, it's just tedious.
I've never won a game in Civ4 on Immortal. In Civ5 I won Deity thinking to myself "Finally, couldn't wait to stop playing this nonsense, never again such a skeetshoot contest!" You just kill and kill and kill and kill and there's no end of it, and it's boring, and your units have like 20 promotions but the AI just keeps coming and yaaaaaaawn. No cheesy exploits like four horsemen or "sell everything and declare" repeatedly - there's no need for that, AI is dreadful as it is.

I completely agree that Civ5 is not finished. It's empty, there are big holes where game content should be. And how boring it is all this luxury/open borders deal renegotiating, over and over and over again. Or dragging dozens of units here and there, with traffic jams everywhere - when I've played a game of Civ4 later on I thought how amazing stacks are - there you go, your immense horde here, two other armies there, couple of clicks and done - let's see what units to attack with first... Simple and effective, yet people rejoice that there's no tedius micromanagement in Civ5 - that always baffles me.

So yeah, maybe one day Civ5 will get interesting (though I doubt that), but for me it's simply not fun. You've got some candy graphics (which are not THAT amazing tbh, still, unchanging backgrounds to those so-called state-of-the-art leaders animation are drab) to drag casuals in and an inept psychotic AI to be pounded like a puppy.

Even what SuperJay said about not trusting Montezuma is sad - in Civ5 he's only a shadow of his former self, as stupid and insane as all the other AIs - I actually always thought I'm playing vs the same AI in Civ5 regardless the visuals.

In Civ4 every leader has it's own distinct personality and feels alive. And no, just because you know that Isabella is religious or Shaka a warmonger doesn't make it a cakewalk or boring - there's so many factors involved that there's always new, interesting diplomatic pattern to a developing game. But what you get is a sense of familiarity, you remember that this or that leader helped you/betrayed you in the past and now that he's in your new game you're like "hello again" and it's a great feeling.
And yeah, fear Monty when you have him as a neighbour in Civ4.



Is that elaborated enough for you starrywisdom?

I'm not referring to the "silent majority", I'm referring to the extremely positive feedback that civ 5 has gotten when the past several patches have come out. I'm not sure why you've got such a need to criticize civ5 and/or anybody who plays it. Maybe you would be more welcome back in the civ4 forums.

Oh and that is just rich "Extremely positive"? Oh but of course - after all now an engineer specialist finally gives more hammers than ordinary citizen, we've got graphs, or higher tile yields - of course it's positive, what's not to like? But it's still a boring game, while I don't mind that others are playing it or enjoying it and I'm not telling you where you should be posting.

 

[Brichals]

You don't really need all those extra mechanics like trade routes, religion, massive tech tree and loads of units. Civ2 and Civ3 didn't have those and they were just as classic as 4. Civ5 is just as immersive in my opinion, or at least not as bad as some people scream. People say its a departure from the civ series but really it is closer to Civ1-3 than BTS was. Thats just my opinion. I played loads of Civ3 (and Civ2 but I was too young to remember). Civ4 bored me to be honest. I feel a lot of tension and excitement in Civ5 but it's possible of course my experience is completely different. I try not to go for/don't know cookie cutter builds so I struggle to keep up on higher levels and have to plan hard. That being said, I've seen Lets Plays on YouTube with exploits to get longswords and steamroll Deity in the BCs and it looks quite frankly rubbish. Some of these have been balanced out though I hope.

 

[mattcrwi]

You don't really need all those extra mechanics like trade routes, religion, massive tech tree and loads of units. Civ2 and Civ3 didn't have those and they were just as classic as 4. Civ5 is just as immersive in my opinion, or at least not as bad as some people scream. People say its a departure from the civ series but really it is closer to Civ1-3 than BTS was. Thats just my opinion. I played loads of Civ3 (and Civ2 but I was too young to remember). Civ4 bored me to be honest. I feel a lot of tension and excitement in Civ5 but it's possible of course my experience is completely different. I try not to go for/don't know cookie cutter builds so I struggle to keep up on higher levels and have to plan hard. That being said, I've seen Lets Plays on YouTube with exploits to get longswords and steamroll Deity in the BCs and it looks quite frankly rubbish. Some of these have been balanced out though I hope.

Those strategies were enabled by research agreements being over powered and long swordsmen being over power. Both those have been fixed in the last two patches.

 

[SuperJay]

I'm not referring to the "silent majority", I'm referring to the extremely positive feedback that civ 5 has gotten when the past several patches have come out.

That's cool, but "Civ 5 got positive feedback on some patches" does not equal "Most longtime players now enjoy Civ 5." Like I said, stick to what you can safely say with accuracy, stay away from sweeping claims about the opinions of thousands of other people you've never met.

I'm not sure why you've got such a need to criticize civ5 and/or anybody who plays it.

Re-read my post. I think you're confusing me with someone else, perhaps? (Though your first sentence did respond to me, so who knows.)

Maybe you would be more welcome back in the civ4 forums.

I'm plenty welcome here, but thanks for your suggestion.

 

[spider1]

Must every thread in here turn into a Civ IV vs. V battle? It's kind of old. Some folks don't like (pick one), some folks like them both, and some folks don't like either.

Now then, it's settled, let's move on.

 

[Windom]

Relax guys, its just a game. We're all here to enjoy.

So played another couple of hours of Civ V yesterday...this is too addicting.

So I'm in about 1500AD or so now and I find myself progressing really slow. I'm researching everything so my tech tree is well balanced, but I get the feeling that I could concentrate on certain branches?

I have 6 cities now and looking for further expansion but it is getting difficult because, as I mentioned that I'm on Continents, and I'm right in the middle of the map. I had a GE and built an Academy, also had a Great General but didn't think that I needed a Citadel so got into Golden Age. Got bored since I don't know what to do other than continuously building roads, farms and mines, I DoW'd Persia (hate those Persians, jk ;P) as they kept denouncing me ever since the start of the game. I kept expanding near their boarders and put military pressure right near them. I demanded stuff from them and when they decline I DoW lol

So I went to war and right into their Capital. Now, problem is how do I capture the Capital? I tried bombarding it to 0 but the last bit of health don't decrease...am I suppose to use something to get into it? I would love to take away their capital and further my expansion. Even France came to me and denouced Persia in the middle of the war, lol. Anyway, they wanted to negotiate peace but I declined, killed pretty much all of their units and the city was bare. Then came a 2nd peace offer which included much more stuff than the first so I accepted

Oh and Montezuma is awesome. He's been my friend ever since the beginning

I just realized that for those smaller nations, where when you click on them there is no picture of their leader, you can only DoW or gift them. Can't form an alliance or something...so I guess I'll need to wipe them out =S

 

[bryanw1995]

Gee, and I thought that was question I was to answer...


Civ4 is a complex, box-inside-a-box game. Despite what others might say it's not hard - take such advice with a grain of salt You can play it for ages on Noble level, thinking that you're actually doing good and then you might look at some option, ask yourself "hmmm, I wonder what that does?" and suddenly you discover amazing new layer of strategy like trade routes, slavery usage, Great People mechanics (and ALL great people are useful unlike Civ5), religion pros and cons that just blows you away. So your current difficulty level gets too easy, you go higher and again - boom! City maintenance, chopping, designing your empire, war weariness - every aspect of the game you thought you know shines like new, presenting new challenges and solutions to problems you encounter on the way.

Why is it that people can debate for eight pages when posting the Civ4 game start online where to settle and which techs to go for first? It's because there's so many possibilities, and they are all interesting.


Civ5 is a one-night stand. After a while nothing is changing, it's all the same and meaningless, regardless different UAs for different civs. You reach Immortal with ease, and you turn away from the Deity because it's so bloody tedious. Yes, it's not amazingly hard, it's just tedious.
I've never won a game in Civ4 on Immortal. In Civ5 I won Deity thinking to myself "Finally, couldn't wait to stop playing this nonsense, never again such a skeetshoot contest!" You just kill and kill and kill and kill and there's no end of it, and it's boring, and your units have like 20 promotions but the AI just keeps coming and yaaaaaaawn. No cheesy exploits like four horsemen or "sell everything and declare" repeatedly - there's no need for that, AI is dreadful as it is.

I completely agree that Civ5 is not finished. It's empty, there are big holes where game content should be. And how boring it is all this luxury/open borders deal renegotiating, over and over and over again. Or dragging dozens of units here and there, with traffic jams everywhere - when I've played a game of Civ4 later on I thought how amazing stacks are - there you go, your immense horde here, two other armies there, couple of clicks and done - let's see what units to attack with first... Simple and effective, yet people rejoice that there's no tedius micromanagement in Civ5 - that always baffles me.

So yeah, maybe one day Civ5 will get interesting (though I doubt that), but for me it's simply not fun. You've got some candy graphics (which are not THAT amazing tbh, still, unchanging backgrounds to those so-called state-of-the-art leaders animation are drab) to drag casuals in and an inept psychotic AI to be pounded like a puppy.

Even what SuperJay said about not trusting Montezuma is sad - in Civ5 he's only a shadow of his former self, as stupid and insane as all the other AIs - I actually always thought I'm playing vs the same AI in Civ5 regardless the visuals.

In Civ4 every leader has it's own distinct personality and feels alive. And no, just because you know that Isabella is religious or Shaka a warmonger doesn't make it a cakewalk or boring - there's so many factors involved that there's always new, interesting diplomatic pattern to a developing game. But what you get is a sense of familiarity, you remember that this or that leader helped you/betrayed you in the past and now that he's in your new game you're like "hello again" and it's a great feeling.
And yeah, fear Monty when you have him as a neighbour in Civ4.



Is that elaborated enough for you starrywisdom?


Oh and that is just rich "Extremely positive"? Oh but of course - after all now an engineer specialist finally gives more hammers than ordinary citizen, we've got graphs, or higher tile yields - of course it's positive, what's not to like? But it's still a boring game, while I don't mind that others are playing it or enjoying it and I'm not telling you where you should be posting.

Overall that was a very good description of civ4. In fact, you made me want to go start a vanilla game (which I haven't done in quite a while).

Check rants/raves posts after the most recent patches. Civ5 had a ton of needed improvements, many of which have been at least partially addressed. Is it perfect? No. Is the overall game experience as immersive as civ4? Probably not, but it has improved a ton since the beginning. Why is it so hard to understand that they are different games? Tons of civ3 players hated/still hate civ4, that doesn't make it a bad game however.

I told superjay to go back to the civ4 forums, not you. However, I am curious why anybody who so clearly hates a game would spend a single minute in the forums for that game. Early on I could see it, as many long time diehard civ players expressed their frustration/disappointment/etc with the original civ5 release. But still hanging out/trolling almost a year later?