My System Specs:
FX57 - Asus A8n SLI-Premium - 2G Corsair Twinx2048-3200c2 - 2x120gb SATA 7200RPM - 7800GTX - Audigy2
Game Engine:
The game has problems, serious problems.
1 - load times of savegames are absurdly long
2 - littany of graphical problems people have listed, I am lucky that the only problem I experience graphically is a HUGE drop in frame rate if I zoom out far enough for clouds to appear - which is really really annoying, but playable
3 - all the other crashes, lags, dropouts that you all have testified to, again, I seem to be lucky that mine has only crashed to desktop, or powered down the system a couple times
Gameplay:
I really like some of the changes to the game and overall the game seems to be, in principle, a good expansion to my favorite franchise.
1 - Permanent Alliance is a great addition allowing you to become basically one super-country with a long time ally, or you might find yourself with a unified front of enemies - it adds serious depth to the diplomatic portion of the game
2 - Unit XP/naming - something we as a group have been asking for and we finally got it and it is very well executed. It's really fun to see your stoneage warrior unit "Hit with Rock" eventually become a rugged and battletested Navy SEAL unit by late in the game.
3 - AI on the whole seems to be make less serious military blunders, and react well according to the PC, for example in one game I was playing as a pretty aggressive imperialist type, only to find that three of my enemies together formed a huge permanent alliance, and secured the necessary votes to give themselves a diplomatic victory... I lost, but it was awesome.
4 - Leader personalities and bonuses seem well balanced and appropriate
5 - the game does seem to play a little faster, which is nice, it still takes hours and hours to complete a large epic game, but the game is less bogged down in some ways, I don't have to watch enemy movements
Graphical Interface:
Frankly, I am really really disappointed with the game's interface. Although I might not be the best judge in these parts, I overhauled my XP shell with BlackBox and have my entire GUI fit to my liking, I still think CivIV should have made some improvements here that it didn't.
In general, I am a huge proponent of allowing users to resize and move around windows. My textbook example of this being done well in a game is Morrowind. When you go to your inventory/status window/spells/everything else you can drag, move, resize, everything you want to make it please you personally. In a game like Civ, where a lot of time is spent navigating windows and menus, I'd like to see this level of customization.
Town/City Window:
Here is where I have the biggest complaints. In the city view you have a HUGE picture of the city's geography, which really doesn't amount to much besides manually assigning CIVs (which often don't even do). The most used functions, the production ones, are relegated to a small space on the bottom with annoying graphical icons of units. I hate having to negotiate the scroll bars to find the unit/building I want to produce. I also really would have liked to have a way to access/examine/modify my stored production queues short of loading them in the current city.
World Window:
Better than the Town/City view, but again, I would have liked to have the option to move windows around to where I want them, change colors, etc. I also don't think moving windows around is too much to ask, and certainly isn't that hard to code. I'd rather not have all the new 3d graphics/pixel shading and everything else (which really don't mean much in a game like this but have managed to slow it down) and instead have a revamped and customizable user interface.
Final thoughts:
Some of the core game elements have definately been improved upon and obviously the game has better graphics then previous iterations. However, I am really criticial of the lack of improvements/customization in the interface.
Technically, at the time of my writing this, the game is a f$%&ing disaster. The game was clearly pushed out the door long before it should have. Aside from the numerous unplayable problems you guys are listing on these forums, the slowdowns experienced on a high level system like mine is ridiculous. Furthermore, the game is just not running optimized. On my rig, I can play BF2, be downloading multiple torrents, have WinAMP open, and be able to ALT-Tab easily between all my open programs. Task switching back into CivIV after being in another program takes FOREVER.
I think, I hope... that the bottom line is that after some patches and some fixes, we'll be very very happy with CivIV. While we aren't likely to see all the interface changes I want, hopefully the game engine itself will be fixed. At its core, it seems to be a very excellent game, but was released way prematurely. I am very very disappointed with that. PC games require thorough testing and bugfixing which this game didn't have.
I am also a little confused by this, because essentially CivIV is targetted at the loyal civ fans. We'd all buy it 6 months from now if it was delayed, because there simply isn't any other game that compares. To rush it out early seems very counter-productive, because I feel all that will do is alienate newcomers who buy the game and can't get it working. Oh well, I'm not working up in the front office of Firaxis.
Overall rating: D+/C- solely because of technical problems. I think it has the core to be an A game if it worked, but it doens't. I myself would give it a B- because I can at least play it, but I am taking into account all the complaints and problems I have seen on these forums.
FX57 - Asus A8n SLI-Premium - 2G Corsair Twinx2048-3200c2 - 2x120gb SATA 7200RPM - 7800GTX - Audigy2
Game Engine:
The game has problems, serious problems.
1 - load times of savegames are absurdly long
2 - littany of graphical problems people have listed, I am lucky that the only problem I experience graphically is a HUGE drop in frame rate if I zoom out far enough for clouds to appear - which is really really annoying, but playable
3 - all the other crashes, lags, dropouts that you all have testified to, again, I seem to be lucky that mine has only crashed to desktop, or powered down the system a couple times
Gameplay:
I really like some of the changes to the game and overall the game seems to be, in principle, a good expansion to my favorite franchise.
1 - Permanent Alliance is a great addition allowing you to become basically one super-country with a long time ally, or you might find yourself with a unified front of enemies - it adds serious depth to the diplomatic portion of the game
2 - Unit XP/naming - something we as a group have been asking for and we finally got it and it is very well executed. It's really fun to see your stoneage warrior unit "Hit with Rock" eventually become a rugged and battletested Navy SEAL unit by late in the game.
3 - AI on the whole seems to be make less serious military blunders, and react well according to the PC, for example in one game I was playing as a pretty aggressive imperialist type, only to find that three of my enemies together formed a huge permanent alliance, and secured the necessary votes to give themselves a diplomatic victory... I lost, but it was awesome.
4 - Leader personalities and bonuses seem well balanced and appropriate
5 - the game does seem to play a little faster, which is nice, it still takes hours and hours to complete a large epic game, but the game is less bogged down in some ways, I don't have to watch enemy movements
Graphical Interface:
Frankly, I am really really disappointed with the game's interface. Although I might not be the best judge in these parts, I overhauled my XP shell with BlackBox and have my entire GUI fit to my liking, I still think CivIV should have made some improvements here that it didn't.
In general, I am a huge proponent of allowing users to resize and move around windows. My textbook example of this being done well in a game is Morrowind. When you go to your inventory/status window/spells/everything else you can drag, move, resize, everything you want to make it please you personally. In a game like Civ, where a lot of time is spent navigating windows and menus, I'd like to see this level of customization.
Town/City Window:
Here is where I have the biggest complaints. In the city view you have a HUGE picture of the city's geography, which really doesn't amount to much besides manually assigning CIVs (which often don't even do). The most used functions, the production ones, are relegated to a small space on the bottom with annoying graphical icons of units. I hate having to negotiate the scroll bars to find the unit/building I want to produce. I also really would have liked to have a way to access/examine/modify my stored production queues short of loading them in the current city.
World Window:
Better than the Town/City view, but again, I would have liked to have the option to move windows around to where I want them, change colors, etc. I also don't think moving windows around is too much to ask, and certainly isn't that hard to code. I'd rather not have all the new 3d graphics/pixel shading and everything else (which really don't mean much in a game like this but have managed to slow it down) and instead have a revamped and customizable user interface.
Final thoughts:
Some of the core game elements have definately been improved upon and obviously the game has better graphics then previous iterations. However, I am really criticial of the lack of improvements/customization in the interface.
Technically, at the time of my writing this, the game is a f$%&ing disaster. The game was clearly pushed out the door long before it should have. Aside from the numerous unplayable problems you guys are listing on these forums, the slowdowns experienced on a high level system like mine is ridiculous. Furthermore, the game is just not running optimized. On my rig, I can play BF2, be downloading multiple torrents, have WinAMP open, and be able to ALT-Tab easily between all my open programs. Task switching back into CivIV after being in another program takes FOREVER.
I think, I hope... that the bottom line is that after some patches and some fixes, we'll be very very happy with CivIV. While we aren't likely to see all the interface changes I want, hopefully the game engine itself will be fixed. At its core, it seems to be a very excellent game, but was released way prematurely. I am very very disappointed with that. PC games require thorough testing and bugfixing which this game didn't have.
I am also a little confused by this, because essentially CivIV is targetted at the loyal civ fans. We'd all buy it 6 months from now if it was delayed, because there simply isn't any other game that compares. To rush it out early seems very counter-productive, because I feel all that will do is alienate newcomers who buy the game and can't get it working. Oh well, I'm not working up in the front office of Firaxis.
Overall rating: D+/C- solely because of technical problems. I think it has the core to be an A game if it worked, but it doens't. I myself would give it a B- because I can at least play it, but I am taking into account all the complaints and problems I have seen on these forums.
