Old timers: did the release of Civ 4 bring such rage?

[Dave_Oz]

Why do people compare Civ 5 to Vanilla Civ 4?

Civ 4 BTS was the last in the series that came before this, i think its quite fair to compare it to that.

 

[Watiggi]

Why do people compare Civ 5 to Vanilla Civ 4?

Civ 4 BTS was the last in the series that came before this, i think its quite fair to compare it to that.

Might have something to do with the expansions and improvements that were added to Civ IV after it was released versus Civ V straight out of the blocks.

Civ IV at release was a mess on the forums with all the bugs it had. I personally didn't have any problems with it, but a lot of people did.

 

[Bast]

Civ 4 had a lot of issues with people's computers not being able to handle the game and bugs. The most (in)famous was the Queen Victoria "cheshire cat" effect. BUT the game was a huge step forward. Beautiful and challenging. I'm not sure if I feel that with Civ V and I'm not going to get it.

Feels too much like Civ Rev.

 

[Cilpot]

I remember being one of those disappointed in the transfer to 3D graphics. As I used to make a lot of graphics for Civ III, I could not be arsed to learn 3D design just for Civ IV. I also really missed the out of game worldbuilder.

However, when the decent mods started coming I was silenced. For the casual tweaker the modding oppurtunities in IV was worse, but it was a good trade-off for the many excellent mods being made by real modders.

I don't remember many complaints regarding anything gameplay-wise in IV. Possibly with the exception of the lack of ranged combat. But in Civ III the AI never got the hang of it anyway.

There was considerably more outrage when Civ III was released, but the forums were so small then that the "vocal minority" never felt so overwhelming.

 

[Arlborn]

Oh, I got fond memories of the threads called 'Civ3 vs Civ4'. T Jones anyone?


I don't have Civ V yet, it didn't come out here yet(I think? Gotta check it better), but from what I am seeing I think it is a lot like some people here said.

First, this game has a LOT to live up considering how well CivIV did.

Second, there are some big changes in the gamecore compared to the other Civilizations and that means it will usually take longer to get used to it, and still some people will moan about how a certain thing was better before.

Third, well, Firaxis usually does a great job in patching and in expansions! BTS fully patched was a very different creature from CivIV vanilla!

Ah... I want my Civ V!

 

[apotheoser]

Civ 4 was entirely different complaints. The problem with Civ 4 was bugs and technical problems, not game design choices.

By contrast, Civ 5 is mostly about design choices and changes to the fundamental game. Secondarily, people are complaining about UI changes.

There was considerably more outrage when Civ III was released, but the forums were so small then that the "vocal minority" never felt so overwhelming.

I remember this, even though I wasn't posting then. Civ III was worse then Civ 2 in many ways, although Civ 3 did introduce many important concepts that were kept for Civ 4, like cultural borders and unique units.

What was so good about Civ 4 was that it combined all the important stuff from Civ 3 while getting back to what was good in Civ 2, also.

I guess we should just wait for Civ 6 to have Civ 4 with hexagons, civics/governments + social policies for the win!

 

[Lillefix]

Civ 4 was entirely different complaints. The problem with Civ 4 was bugs and technical problems, not game design choices.

You have a good point, although I remember many people complained that the game sucked because their economy crashed after they had built only 6-7 cities in the beginning of the game.

 

[dannythefool]

"every aspect of the design has been streamlined to make it easier for new players to jump in"
IGN said that about Civ IV five years ago.

I don't seem to remember the complaints being only technical. In any case, most of the complaints about Civ V certainly are. A lot of information is missing, some is inaccurate, rivers look terrible. But Civ IV certainly got its fair share of people saying "this is even worse than Civ III, I'm going back to Civ 2 now" just based on some random design changes.

 

[apotheoser]

You have a good point, although I remember many people complained that the game sucked because their economy crashed after they had built only 6-7 cities in the beginning of the game.

There were a lot of tweak to city and distance-from-capital maintenance over the course of Civ 4 and the expansions. It's a fundamental balancing feature and hard to get just right.

 

[Psyringe]

There were a lot of tweak to city and distance-from-capital maintenance over the course of Civ 4 and the expansions. It's a fundamental balancing feature and hard to get just right.

I think the problem with city maintenance was not balancing, but simply people trying Civ3 strategies in Civ4. In Civ3, far-away cities were practically useless (due to corruption), but they didn't cost maintenance. There wasn't really a penalty for overexpanding except that it slowed down building speed. People who applied this strategy in Civ4 struck out because in Civ4, the cities cost maintenance and their maintenance even increases with the number of cities you have, so overexpanding now broke your economy and caused you to lose your army. This took some getting used to for many players - but after the initial battles in the forum settled down, I haven't seen this topic discussed much more, so it seems that players successfully adapted to the Civ4 economy after a while.

Btw, I think that a lot of the early complaints about being broke could have been prevented. In a way, Civ4 economy was a trap for Civ3 players at first. There was no warning that overexpanding would break your economy, players usually noticed it when it was too late. A simple (perhaps optional and defaulting to "on") popup upon city founding, informing the player that "founding this city will increase your total city maintenance by +x gold", would have helped here.

 

[Razzinator]

So what is your opinion? Me myself I disliked the ******ed design of Civ4. It looked childish and unprofessional 2 me, unlike the pretty damn awesome design of Civ3.

Anyway, take your pick.

I have played Civilization since its first release, back in the early 90's. Being disabled I've been able to play 1000's of games one after another for years.

My opinion is that Civ III is the best version so far. I only played Civ IV about a dozen times before just returning to III. I loaded up the Civ 5 last night and dinked around in the Tutorials to see whats new. It may be the old dual core processor I'm running (about a 60% load), but the Advisors were very slow to pop up. Though they seemed helpful they were so far behind were I was clicking they seemed a bother. Still a lot of grey information areas in the Civilopedia but looks pretty good so far and the addition of the Forums should help the information gap quite a bit. From what I've seen on the forums I really don't feel a need to go buy a book.

Thanks All

 

[crag]

The biggest problem Civ4 had were it's launch. CD's were all messed up and many were have issues installing/running the game.

But the issues in the game are different. So I'd say the rage is worse now. Cause one the disc issue got fix it all died down to arguing over which leader was the best.

 

[mmmfloorpie]

Old Timers!? Civ 4 came out in 2005 right???

I remember there was a lot of anger over Civ 4 when it first came out. Maintances/corruption costs were killer. Cities built 30 tiles away from the capital were completely useless because of corruption costs. There were also no grouping tools. You had to manually move every unit individually.

Civ4 literally was filled with a million bugs and glitches but over time they patched them and made the game really enjoyable.

I'm sure the same will be said about Civ5. It will get better. But it does seem that they've completely removed a lot of the good parts about Civ.

 

[Psyringe]

I remember there was a lot of anger over Civ 4 when it first came out. Maintances/corruption costs were killer. Cities built 30 tiles away from the capital were completely useless because of corruption costs. There were also no grouping tools. You had to manually move every unit individually.

I'm not sure which game you're talking about, but corruption was never present in Civ4 (actually the whole point of the revised maintenance system was to replace the heavily criticized corruption mechanic of Civ3). Cities built far away from the capital weren't useless in Civ4 because you could develop them normally as long as your other cities produced enough gold to pay the maintenance, whereas cities built far away from the capital in Civ3 were completely useless because the corruption mechanic limited them to one shield and one trade, you had to buy every single building for them but there wasn't even a point in doing that because what's the point in paying maintenance for a building that provides a 50% bonus to a production of one trade. I'm also pretty sure that you could group units by shift-clicking on them since day one, although I'm not entirely sure on that one since moving single units around never was a problem for me.

 

[fresca]

I remember lots of technical issues, and complaints about the move to 3d leaving lots of laptop gamers unable to run the game. Civ3 was a staple on my business-class laptop at the time, and Civ4 was too much for the integrated graphics chip in it to handle.

Lots and lots of discussion on why a strategy game needed to move to 3D, etc. Unhappy laptop users. Unhappy "Empire Builders" unable to build continent-spanning empires with the new Civ4 corruption mechanics.

Oh yes, there was Drama.

 

[Kietharr]

IMO most people are upset because they're wondering why they can't click the same buttons they did before and win automatically like they did with Civ IV (and with Civ III before it...)

personally I'm upset not because you push different buttons, but because there are still 'i win' button tactics that work even more effectively than the 'i win' buttons in civ4.

Civ3: Spam cities everywhere, road every tile, mine grasslands farm plains and build gigantic stacks of doom with archers > swords > MI (conquests) > rifles > infantry > tanks plus cats > trebs (conquests iirc) > cannons > artillery and you win. Corruption failed to punish warmongering enough to stop it from being the best way to win.

Civ4: Build one or two good specialized production cities, maybe axe rush enemy if they're close enough then build slightly smaller stacks of swords > maces > rifles > infantry > tanks plus cats > trebs (warlords) > cannons > artillery and you win. Maintenance failed to punish warmongering enough to stop it from being the best way to win. After BTS Diplomatic becomes the easiest way to win but is SO easy and lame that people avoid doing it because it takes the fun out of the game.

Civ5: Build three or four swordsmen and a bunch of whatever ranged unit is most practical and you win. Nationwide happiness has failed to punish warmongering enough to stop it from being the best way to win. It HAS managed to increase the year of victory though, creating the illusion that it was more difficult because it took longer. I'm sure you can pull off ridiculous 500AD wins if you just methodically burn every capital with longswords though.

I was told that civ5 was going to make military victory more difficult and add incentives to playing peacefully. I see very few indications that this is the case. Oh boo effity hoo, the city states are crying when you're being a warmonger. I hated civ4 at launch but played it, but the issues at hand are very different. Civ4 pissed me off because it kept kicking my ass for seemingly no reason. Civ5 pisses me off because I am kicking its ass with almost zero effort, it feels more like civ revolution than it does the traditional civ games, as if I can just build a few cities then keep hitting enter until I get a victory video. No tech trades has absolutely crippled the AI especially in lower difficulties. I am consistently at least a tech of units ahead of the AI at Monarch.

In the longrun, I forgave civ4 and eventually came to prefer it to civ3 because the economy made more sense and with BTS the AI became competent enough that I actually occasionally lost games at my 'comfortable' difficulty to strong leaders like Shaka or Catherine.

As for the actual level of complaining, it was way worse from civ3 to civ4 because of the ridiculously buggy launch and because you ran a successful economy in civ3 in the EXACT OPPOSITE way you'd run a successful economy in civ4. As earlier posts stated, it was a trap for old players who didn't bother to do their homework.

 

[May Day 10]

haha.

Civ 3 the name of the game was a Settler-driven land grab in the beginning, attempting to found the most possible cities over the largest possible area.


You can imagine how that strategy translated to Civ IV.

 

[eris]

Yep, Civ4 was heresy, bad programming, ugly graphics, uglier play mechanisms, greedy marketeering, lousy support response and the death of the Civ franchise forever. Terrible stuff. And don't forget the vicious arguments over copy protection!!!

The one thing we learn from history is we don't learn from history, even if it was only 5 years ago. As a species and as gameplayers we have developed this terrible case of ADHD. Again.

 

[Buccaneer]

I recalled the rage and just chalked it up as typical CFC immaturity. Didn't get into it because I was too busy learning and enjoying playing vanilla Civ4 - three full games in the first month, if I recall.

 

[the Wahoo boy]

Yep. Or the Total War series for that matter (which had some admittedly buggy releases). The most amusing/interesting times to hang around any game forum is right before/after a launch because one could almost take posts from other forums during game releases, change a few words, and they would fit on any board. Granted, I haven’t played every game, but in my experience even the best loved games suffer Release Day Rage.

well, E:TW really was the worst crap I had ever seen on release. And I'm not really a whiner. But then again, maybe some people found challenge and didn't mind the constant CTD's. The forums usually represents the most hard-core fans.