Only 18 Civs allowed in the game? Civ 3 could do better!

[croxis]

I want to also stress what Crayton said. Each civ takes up X ammount of room in memory, and in Civ IV this is larger than ever before. If you look on the map a GREAT deal of extra numbers are kept track of than in any other previous incarnation. Soren and the rest of the Firaxis team put 18 as the limit FOR A REASON. It is not because they are lazy. It is not because they hate you. It is because the number of computations would triple from the levels they are already at and consume more ram. 3D has little to do with this specific issue. Had the game remained 2d sprites they would still have the same issues.

Let me put it to you this way. Had they made 31 civilizations playable even if computers would not have been able to run it you would have complained that the game was buggy and unstable and that they shouldn't of had so many civs playable.

And here is my final point. THIS ISN'T YOUR GAME! I made similar comment to people who had problems with the content of The new star wars movies. They felt that abc shoudl have hap[pened instead of xyz. If they wanted to have a story (on in this case a game) with particular features then make it yourself. Is Civ IV perfict? Nope and they are already working on patching it I'm sure, but don't cry because they limited the current playable levels to 18 civs.

 

[sanjoggopal]

Weasel,

I cannot find scenario properties. What am I doing wrong. Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[Blackfire13]

I disagree croxis about your reasoning. basically you are saying, they did it this way, therefore it is the end. But I am talking about the Modding aspects!

It IS all about me. Modding is about doing what you want and not what the developers want.

It is one thing to say that Firaxis should have put this Civ in instead of that, or this unit should be here but not that, with modding, I can change it myself and be satisfied. Firaxis didnt have to hard code this limit. perhaps it would be true that the game would play much more slowly if we use 31 civs instead of 18.
But so what? maybe a few of us have very powerful computers because some of us(really big nerds) like playing Civ instead of buying a Ferrari, or maybe we just want to put 2 or 3 more civs in, which in that case, whats the difference between 18 and 20 civs?
The free market will decide and most of us when we discover the computer cant even handle even 18 civs stop it, then thats our choice but give us an option.
The more options the better.

to sum it up: There is no need for the developers to "protect us from ourselves" we know what we want, and we know our limits.

also theres nothing stoppping a modder from making a unit with almost infinite attack, movement, which is immediately available in the stone age and called The Space Marine UU of the Billy bob civilization. This is too silly a scenario, and not something developers would have in mind, but they shouldnt get rid of the Civ editor because some silly fool would waste the Civ editor on ridiculous project like that.

 

[neriana]

In that case, Civ4 is gay. Everyone go back to playing Civ3. Thank you.

You mean it's happy? Why would I not want to play a happy game? I like happiness, it is good.

Or, oh, do you mean THAT kind of "gay"? Awesome, maybe the workers will dress better.



Anyway, is there seriously no limit to the number of Civs to choose from? I'd never want to play with 18 civs on one map, but can I really make like 400 different civilizations to choose from? There MUST be some kind of limit there, mustn't there? Because if not, I foresee some long weekends of making up some crazy civs .

 

[Goldflash]

Just to striagten this out: In the Mystical Civ 4 editor land you can add a 19th (and so on) or not? I don't give a wooden nickle about having 37 bajillion civs on the map at one time... I just want 37 bajillion civs to choose from.

 

[hahntsak]

Has anyone ever considered that after they work out more bugs and issue several patches, they might make an expansion that adds more civs at a time and possibly adds some more leaderheads to the single ones in the current one.

just a thought.

 

[Barret]

18 civs in a game at the same time is enough for me. What's important is that I can add new civs to choose from.

 

[CyberChrist]

Hardcoded 18 civ limit?!

Making any kind of 'feel right" world history scenario is going to be very hard (if not outright impossible) with only 18 civs - it was barely possible with 31 civs in Civ3.

Of course, the possibility of barbarian cities does help a lot if scenario is only focusing the very top dogs, but I suspect until they figure out a way to optimize the CIV AI engine - or whatever is making system slow down with more civs on map - any serious large mods/scenarios of any quality will be few and far between in CIV.

 

[maxpublic]

THIS ISN'T YOUR GAME!

In case you somehow missed it in all the interviews and previews, one of the primary selling points of Civ 4 is that it'd be one of the most moddable games ever created - precisely so we could tweak it as we please, to truly make it OUR GAME. And that's not even addressing the fact that we aren't renting the software, we're buying it - and that means IT'S OURS.

Max

 

[Gorbad Ironclaw]

Just to striagten this out: In the Mystical Civ 4 editor land you can add a 19th (and so on) or not? I don't give a wooden nickle about having 37 bajillion civs on the map at one time... I just want 37 bajillion civs to choose from.

That should be possible(and even relaticly easy once you know how I think). You just can't have more than 18 on the map at a time.

 

[davbenbak]

I just wish they would have picked a better 18 civs to choose from. Also, it's great to have different leaders for different eras but they should also have different UU's. George Washington and Navy Seals? 5 or 6 civs on a map at a time is about all my computer can handle without 5 minute waits between turns. I wish they would have been selected more along historic lines say five ancient, five medeival, five Age of discovery/Napoleonic and five modern/WW2. But then that would make 20, not a stretch from 18 I would think. Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

 

[hahntsak]

I just wish they would have picked a better 18 civs to choose from. Also, it's great to have different leaders for different eras but they should also have different UU's. George Washington and Navy Seals? 5 or 6 civs on a map at a time is about all my computer can handle without 5 minute waits between turns. I wish they would have been selected more along historic lines say five ancient, five medeival, five Age of discovery/Napoleonic and five modern/WW2. But then that would make 20, not a stretch from 18 I would think. Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

well, well, you want more than 18 civs to choose from? well check the mod section and my post about playable barbarians. no UU but they have the two remaining trait combinations and favorite civics.

 

[killbot]

18 isn't such a bad limit. If the community can find some sort of way to spawn civs from revolutions or barbarian cities, this could actually end up making Civ 4 a much more realistic (and enjoyable) game.

 

[Supa]

I can see why the limits is there but it's a little disappointing. True, all scenarios don't need to have 31 civs ingame to be good but still..

I hope the limit will be raised as the game performance is improved.

 

[croxis]

Fraxis did what they did for a reason. Yes more civs can be added tot he main screen, so there can be more than 18 options, but only 18 can be played in the game. We wont know for sure why this is the case until we get the code. And despite this limit, the game is still the most moddable even without the sdk. Civ 3 had a hard playable limit, as does civ 4. More does not always mean better.

 

[perryrutherford]

Its a turn-based game, why would perfomance matter?

It's turned-based but everyone's turn happens at the same time. So my meager P4 1.6GHz can only handle 5 civs at resonable speed. If anyone can play an 18 civ civ4 game, let me know what you're running

 

[clinton]

I can run an 18 civ game quite easily. I'm running an athlon 1700+ I think. You could probably play 100 civs, as long as the world size isn't too big. The world size matters more than number of civs.

 

[Tboy]

I can run 18 civs at once as well, but I've only tried it on a duel size map so far. Not sure if my computer could handle a huge map...
EDIT:By the way, I'm running a 2.4GHz computer with 1024MB RAM and an Nvidia Inno 3D Geforce FX 5200 graphics card.

 

[frankieaquino]

18 Civilizations? I can only play with 12....unless I use Rhye's earth mod.

Is there a way to play 18 civs without using any mods. I tried custom build a world with 18 civs but it only takes 12....

 

[Mr. Will]

I can run 18 also, 2.2 GHz AMD with a gig of ram.
128 MB Video card, forgot specifically what kind.