Varelse
Rabble Rouser
- Joined
- Jul 25, 2002
- Messages
- 377
Like other people here at CFC, I also must reluctantly admit that I'm getting a bit bored with Civ4. I'm not sure the problem is with Civ4 in particular though, the problem might be with Civ in general. I first started playing Civ with Civ2, and I was immediately hooked. The expansion packs for Civ2 were enjoyable as well. When I heard Civ3 was coming out I couldn't have been more excited. I enjoyed the way Test of Time expanded on the Civ2 gameplay and was looking forward to more of the same with Civ3.
Although Civ3 may have been an overall improvement over Civ2(debateable) I think in many ways it was a step backwards. It was narrower in scope than Civ2 especially when you took the expansion packs into consideration. When you got bored conquering the world with Civ2, Civ2 went the extra step and allowed you to use multiple maps and had an almost infinite amount of new units that you could mod into the game with the click of a button. Some were futuristic, others were magical, others were simple expansions on the current themes of the regular game. Any scenario you could invision, you could very easily make happen.
Not only were most of these options removed with Civ3, but you could no longer add any units to the game without altering the game folders themselves and you couldn't even change your leader name without making a mini-mod(this was somewhat improved with expansion packs but not much). Don't get me wrong, I stayed up many a night playing Civ3, but I was definately hoping that Civ3 would have broadened the scope of the game as opposed to narrowing it.
I felt the same disappointment with Civ4. Pre-game hype led me to believe this would be the most moddable Civ game ever, so even if the scope was not broadened in the vanilla game, it would be easier to make the game I'd been hoping for through modding. Now I find out that for the average person not versed in computer programming, this game is even less moddable than Civ3, which was already less moddable than Civ2. There isn't even a proper editor with the game. There is a world builder but that is essentially useless. And on top of that the game is even narrower in scope than Civ3 was. Less unit variety, no ability to mod even the smallest things without tinkering with gamecode, a quicker game with smaller maps, and less ability to just play the game for the game's sake....you pretty much have to choose a victory condition at the beginning of the game, and that victory condition dictates how you play the game. I've read people saying all you have to do is up the difficulty level but I find that makes things even worse. You are even more of a slave to your victory condition and there is little room for error so you cannot even veer from your chosen path briefly to add a bit of fun to your game. Actually the funnest game of Civ4 I've played so far was the first game that I played on Cheiftan level to get used to the new rules....it was the only game I played where just about every victory condition was still on the table later on in the game.
And on to less important aspects of the game.....much of the personality is gone. There are no advisors to speak of. To give one quick example, culture. You can look in the demographics and see your culture level on one of the graphs, but with Civ3 when you were on the foreign advisor screen you could just highlight a leaderhead and an advisor would go through a whole list of comparisons between your two civs. "So and so is in awe of your culture" "So and so is fearful of your knights" "Oh no! So and so has infantry!" and in each advisor screen there was an actual advisor giving somewhat generic but also useful information. The military advisor told you how your army compared with an opponent's, the science advisor gave its opinion on different techs. All of this is gone. This is not quite as important as the other stuff I've mentioned, in my opinion, but it is not entirely irrevelvent.
The Call to Power series tinkered with expanding the scope of the game, and came up with some interesting concepts. The first Call to Power even had true future techs, allowed you to build cities and even highways in the seas and oceans, was the first civ game to even attempt stacked combat and combined arms and even had different map layers that allowed you to build cities and units in space(imagine if you could zoom out to the globe view in Civ4 and use oribiting weapons and spaceships above the cloud layer, even build colonies). The concepts were sound even if the implementation left something to be desired. I don't think the failure of the Call to Power line of games should have scared the Civ developers away from such concepts that way that it has. Even with all their faults, the Call to Power games added some interesting new aspects to a game genre that really needs a bit more evolving.
Civ4 is a great game and people who are new to the Civving world are going to love it, and probably stay up til 3am playing one more turn after one more turn like many of us have done with previous Civ versions. For some of us who have been playing longer, perhaps we have just outgrown the game. No variation of the same old Civ is going to keep us up til the wee hours of the morning anymore. The epic feel is gone because, well, we've been there and done that already. Or maybe as someone suggested earlier on in a different thread....maybe some of us are just getting a bit too old?
Although Civ3 may have been an overall improvement over Civ2(debateable) I think in many ways it was a step backwards. It was narrower in scope than Civ2 especially when you took the expansion packs into consideration. When you got bored conquering the world with Civ2, Civ2 went the extra step and allowed you to use multiple maps and had an almost infinite amount of new units that you could mod into the game with the click of a button. Some were futuristic, others were magical, others were simple expansions on the current themes of the regular game. Any scenario you could invision, you could very easily make happen.
Not only were most of these options removed with Civ3, but you could no longer add any units to the game without altering the game folders themselves and you couldn't even change your leader name without making a mini-mod(this was somewhat improved with expansion packs but not much). Don't get me wrong, I stayed up many a night playing Civ3, but I was definately hoping that Civ3 would have broadened the scope of the game as opposed to narrowing it.
I felt the same disappointment with Civ4. Pre-game hype led me to believe this would be the most moddable Civ game ever, so even if the scope was not broadened in the vanilla game, it would be easier to make the game I'd been hoping for through modding. Now I find out that for the average person not versed in computer programming, this game is even less moddable than Civ3, which was already less moddable than Civ2. There isn't even a proper editor with the game. There is a world builder but that is essentially useless. And on top of that the game is even narrower in scope than Civ3 was. Less unit variety, no ability to mod even the smallest things without tinkering with gamecode, a quicker game with smaller maps, and less ability to just play the game for the game's sake....you pretty much have to choose a victory condition at the beginning of the game, and that victory condition dictates how you play the game. I've read people saying all you have to do is up the difficulty level but I find that makes things even worse. You are even more of a slave to your victory condition and there is little room for error so you cannot even veer from your chosen path briefly to add a bit of fun to your game. Actually the funnest game of Civ4 I've played so far was the first game that I played on Cheiftan level to get used to the new rules....it was the only game I played where just about every victory condition was still on the table later on in the game.
And on to less important aspects of the game.....much of the personality is gone. There are no advisors to speak of. To give one quick example, culture. You can look in the demographics and see your culture level on one of the graphs, but with Civ3 when you were on the foreign advisor screen you could just highlight a leaderhead and an advisor would go through a whole list of comparisons between your two civs. "So and so is in awe of your culture" "So and so is fearful of your knights" "Oh no! So and so has infantry!" and in each advisor screen there was an actual advisor giving somewhat generic but also useful information. The military advisor told you how your army compared with an opponent's, the science advisor gave its opinion on different techs. All of this is gone. This is not quite as important as the other stuff I've mentioned, in my opinion, but it is not entirely irrevelvent.
The Call to Power series tinkered with expanding the scope of the game, and came up with some interesting concepts. The first Call to Power even had true future techs, allowed you to build cities and even highways in the seas and oceans, was the first civ game to even attempt stacked combat and combined arms and even had different map layers that allowed you to build cities and units in space(imagine if you could zoom out to the globe view in Civ4 and use oribiting weapons and spaceships above the cloud layer, even build colonies). The concepts were sound even if the implementation left something to be desired. I don't think the failure of the Call to Power line of games should have scared the Civ developers away from such concepts that way that it has. Even with all their faults, the Call to Power games added some interesting new aspects to a game genre that really needs a bit more evolving.
Civ4 is a great game and people who are new to the Civving world are going to love it, and probably stay up til 3am playing one more turn after one more turn like many of us have done with previous Civ versions. For some of us who have been playing longer, perhaps we have just outgrown the game. No variation of the same old Civ is going to keep us up til the wee hours of the morning anymore. The epic feel is gone because, well, we've been there and done that already. Or maybe as someone suggested earlier on in a different thread....maybe some of us are just getting a bit too old?
