So, what do we find "bad" about Civ4?

[NARC]

I'll be brief and stick to my main gripe:

Production times are way too high. On Epic mode (the only mode where the game doesn't fly by in the blink of an eye), unit production costs are insanely high, meaning that your first warrior takes 15-20 turns to build, then another 15-20 for your first worker (which also prevents your tiny capital from growing). Your first settler is even worse! Long story short, after almost 4000 years have progressed, you have maybe four cities and three buildings, and have never even had the ability to wage a war had you wanted to.

There is no early game beyond exploration and researching automatic techs. That's a killer. Just skip right to the dawn of the Christian era while you're at it, and leave the poor Egyptians, Greeks, and Persians behind if you're going to do that. I think the Babylonians, Carthagineans, Hittites and Sumerians saw this coming, so they made other plans.

I TOTALLY agree.

/End turn. End Turn. End Turn. ad infinitum

 

[jomorisin]

Boy we go through this every time a Civ is released. Chill out - seriously - and wait for the patches and mods.

For me the biggest disappointment is no WW2 scenario!

 

[kasner]

i don't have civ yet. but i'll wait for a new computer, more patches, and lesser reports of horrible bugs and stuff. i'll buy when patches are avaliables, and technical errors have been straightened out, and readily avaliable to fix. i just don't rush out and buy a game, you know. i can contain my excitement, but not my addiction

 

[Wolfwood]

King Jason, Ravinhood and EVH: All of you seem to have a clear grasp on what I also like about the game. I'm hoping to download some of your mods as soon as the game is released in Europe and I get my hands on it!

The world size sounds incredibly small in the vanilla version. Isn't 32x20 like the size of a tiny map in Civ3?

 

[Pushead]

The constricted and convulated city build interface. Civ3 had it pretty nice, a long fast list with unit names and cost and attack ratings and you name it. Here you get a bunch of pictures in a row where you have to mouse-over each one in order to make sense of it. Further on you have to scroll through a very little window to see it all (a poor design which is seen many places in civ4).

I agree with this whole heartedly. A text only (or text and logo) view option would make this better for me.

As for anything else, I haven't played this enough to have firm opinions. I agree with some of the posts that say some people haven't been playing at a high enough difficulty. I think that's my problem as well.

 

[Tobyoneknobi]

If going from basic archers to machine guns is your kind of upgrade path, then you'll love Civ IV.

I played on noble and built a bunch of archers, then I eventually get gunpowder, seemed a little early to me, but I must have played the tech tree right...so I build 1 Musketman, then whoa! I have rifleman tech so I build 1 Rifleman, then whoa! I have machine gunner...I end up upgrading archers to machine gunners - never used a single musketman or rifleman.

Tech advances way too fast for me. Overall, I was very disappointed with the gameplay. I also felt a little misled by some reviews that suggested the old tactics don't work. I tried new tactics and got trounced. I used old tactics on Noble and was a top civ until I got bored and quit. Rumours about staying small as a good strategy? I found that to be inaccurate. Grow your civ, box in others with your borders and start building up the industrial machine. Problem is that techs come too fast.

Remember the times when you would check your tech tree/research every turn to see how long it would be until you could build [insert needed unit/building here]? Not in this game. Remember how you used to plot your tech tree advance to get to GL, or for me Adam's Smith? Remember you would finish a tech and you would have to decide which tech to go for next? Now, don't even think about it. Just click whatever is at the top of the list, you'll have the others in 10 minutes anyway. Tech advantage? By time you try to leverage it, you are obsolete.

So, how bad was it for me? Let me put it this way, last week I was up until 2am playing Civ III to refresh the game for me in advance of Civ IV. I drove to 5 stores the day of release, eventually going 40 minutes out of my way before finding a an extra pre-order copy at EB. Last night, I quit playing at 9:30 and watched TV instead. I didn't have the slightest bout of "one more turn".

So, I now bow down to King Jason, Ravinhood and EVH. You have blazed a trail and I plan to follow. I had the feeling through out the game that there was a lot more depth in the game, but because techs came so fast, I would blow over them because the new thing was up next. I think slowing down the tech will make the game richer because I'll have the chance to play with and explore those nuances and appreciate what a maceman is instead of skipping over him in favor of a something better.

Besides, I liked the neverending game. Right now, it feels more like warcraft than civ. (And I was never a fan of Warcraft). Thanks King Jason!!

 

[Slbot911]

The good thing is there will eventually be mods released that strike a nice balance between Normal and Epic.

That’s what I can't wait for. Please someone fix this. The Epic game seemed to just fly by…..

 

[spiralx]

True, many of the game issues can be fixed that way.

But the problem is, the interface is by FAR the worst part of the game. All the stupid little icons all over that you have to mouse over, instead of a nice handy little list like Civ3 had for city units etc.

That part Cannot be fixed with mods, and it is the biggest flaw in the game by far.

The interface was apparently written in Python, so I'd imagine it's customisable out of the box...

 

[tyrspawn]

I cant really understand all the rave reviews for civ 4 - im entirely dissapointed, I wouldn't considering playing this for long.

Some problems:

- The interface: unusable, awkward, lethargic
- Graphics: everything is way too big, cartoony, poorly rendered and quick moving - it reminds me of a dumpster diver game. The most annoying characteristic of the graphics is definatly the giant size of units and objects on the map - just clutters the screen. Everything besides citys need like a 75% size reduction. Also the graphics don't allow for small land masses, do you guys see long island east of new york in the revolutionary war scenario? It doesn't exist. Pretty funny, considering the biggest battle of the revolutionary war was fought there.
- Gameplay: Where do I begin? I'll just cover the points which made me uninstall the game. The research is way too fast, the unit build times are too slow, the dark/epic mood of civ 3 is destroyed by the game engine, the removal of advisors as being real people who offered advice is unacceptable (as is the truncation or removal of many civ 3 features on the advisor screens), the map is way too small, the game itself is very easy even on the hardest modes (in civ 3 i usually played regent and could sometimes squeak by at monach and it was truly the most challenging game i ever played) - too much to list.
- Civilopedia: Some pretty glaring historical inaccuracies in addition to what everyone has been saying about its poor design and implementation
- Climate: perhaps the worst thing about civ 4 is it completely disregards the time honored and perfect "Climate" of civ 3.

Remember when planning a invasion was a serious consideration that took 25 years? You built a huge fleet of triemes, loaded them with troops and sent them from carthage to greece - it took forever, and now your at a great risk, if your fleet gets intercepted, gets destroyed by nature or your army doesn't do as well as you'd like in greece, you might be met by a reprisal and be destroyed. There was always a feeling of danger, urgency and realism in civ 3 - theres no consequeneces or sense that you can lose in civ 4. There is no strategy, its just massing and attacking. Civ 3 is all about careful empire administration, placing border armies, relocating troops, micromanaging everything, maxing the limits of your economy, confronting new threats, careful and delicate diplomacy - and all these little touches will make you win, in civ 4, just mass, let 10 new researches every minute come to you automatically and dont worry about anything. In civ 3 if your invasion army was lost, you were in deep ****. Everyone has had that experience in civ 3 where you entered a horse culture's first square and was picked apart by horse archers - then you were ****ed, they steamrolled into your territory and you lost half your empire before you managed to regroup in the south and counterattack.

Remember when there was paradigms that lasted for hundreds of years? Although there was no official institution for it - I.e. game mechanic, it felt as if there was paradigms. For example, most civs were experiencing the "Bronze age" which lasted forever, and slowly civs would start creeping into the iron age realistically. Since it took so long to do research in civ 3 you could invade entire nations while your civilization was still in one paradigm. In civ 4, there is no paradigms, everything progresses far too quickly. Its unrealistic and not nearly as satisfying to see your civilization progress.

Anyway what I reccomend for any new guys on the forum is to get civilization 3 with the conquerors expansion and play the following mods from this website:

TAM (the ancient mediterranean)
Rise of Rome
Warhammer
LOTR
I'm sure there is other great ones too, but I prefer ancient/fantasy games.

 

[KymeraTX]

Civilopedia has always been of only cursory interest.

The one "bug" I have is that it's juuuuust a little counter-intuitive on how to initiate diplomacy; ie, there's no "Contact" button, just the leader pic.

Click on the leaders name in the lower right corner, new ones will apear when you meet them

 

[Smidlee]

You can make your own personal speed first copying one of the speeds like this:

<GameSpeedInfo>
<Type>GAMESPEED_NORMAL</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_GAMESPEED_NORMAL</Description>
<Help>TXT_KEY_GAMESPEED_NORMAL_HELP</Help>
<iGrowthPercent>100</iGrowthPercent>
<iTrainPercent>100</iTrainPercent>
<iConstructPercent>100</iConstructPercent>
<iCreatePercent>100</iCreatePercent>
<iResearchPercent>100</iResearchPercent>
<iBuildPercent>100</iBuildPercent>
<iImprovementPercent>100</iImprovementPercent>
<iGreatPeoplePercent>100</iGreatPeoplePercent>
<iCulturePercent>100</iCulturePercent>
<iAnarchyPercent>100</iAnarchyPercent>
<iBarbPercent>100</iBarbPercent>
<iFeatureProductionPercent>100</iFeatureProductionPercent>
<iUnitDiscoverPercent>100</iUnitDiscoverPercent>
<iUnitHurryPercent>100</iUnitHurryPercent>
<iUnitTradePercent>100</iUnitTradePercent>
<iUnitGreatWorkPercent>100</iUnitGreatWorkPercent>
<iGoldenAgePercent>100</iGoldenAgePercent>
<iHurryPercent>100</iHurryPercent>
<iHurryConscriptAngerPercent>100</iHurryConscriptAngerPercent>
<iInflationPercent>27</iInflationPercent>
<iInflationOffset>-100</iInflationOffset>
<GameTurnInfos>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>40</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>75</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>25</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>60</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>20</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>25</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>10</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>50</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>5</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>70</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>2</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>50</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
<GameTurnInfo>
<iYearIncrement>1</iYearIncrement>
<iTurnsPerIncrement>100</iTurnsPerIncrement>
</GameTurnInfo>
</GameTurnInfos>
</GameSpeedInfo>

then paste it between Epic and normal "</GameSpeedInfos>" text then change the first three lines where it say "GAMESPEED_NORMAL" to any name you like. Make any changes you want for your personal speed and still have the three original speeds. So you have the power to make it as slow as you want. Have fun.

 

[Volstag]

Many of these complaints, IMO, stem from:

1) Lack of familiarity with the Civ series in general.
2) Lack of familiarity with Civ IV in particular.
3) Playing on a low difficulty level.

I think #2 is the big one. There's always period of adjustment between each title in the series. It took me several games to really "get into" Civ III and Civ II -- and I clearly remember being discouraged with both of them. The whole "we like words more than pictures" UI complaint is just, well, weird. The main UI in Civ III was all icons and pictures. It was bewildering until you knew what each of them did.... much like Civ IV. As other posters have mentioned, I think many people are playing this game as if it's Civ III or Civ II. It's a completely different beast, with vastly more strategic choices to be made. I'm just beginning to truly grasp all the options available to the player. You can really go off on some highly specialized routes.

The complaints about the advisors is mystifying... the advisors in Civ IV, generally speaking, are much more useful than the advisors in Civ III.

In the early game, you do spend a lot of time pressing the enter (end turn) button. Why? Because you're not roading every single square in your empire; you're not managing dozens of workers; you're not checking with each individual leader, every turn, to see what techs are available for purchase; you're not spewing forth endless streams of settlers; you're not optimizing your "4 to 6 turn settler pump". In short: you're not micromanaging.

The game has its problems, for sure, but every single game in the series has had its problems. Do any of you remember the boards from Civ II and Civ III after release?

But, to answer the OPs question: What do I find "bad" about Civ IV?

* I would have liked the landmass to be larger. Huge, in Civ IV, appears to be roughly equivalent to "Large" in Civ III.
* The Civlopedia could use some work.

Obviously there are those who simply aren't going to like it -- but, personally, my initial impressions are more positive than any previous iteration. On the whole, it's a more strategic game w/ more decisions to be made. I have this feeling that as I become more accustomed with the mechanics, interface, etc, it's just going to get better. But, we'll see...

 

[glothar]

And my main gripe is modding the game. This "powerful" world builder has some nice features, but it suffers the same interface problems as the main game and you can't change the rules! I complained a lot about the Civ 3 scenario editor, but it is far superior to the Civ 4 one, except for being accessible in the main game, that's nice. I want a scenario editor in which you can change the rules and add civilopedia entries. A true modding program with a finely-tuned GUI.

As a software engineer, I find this attitude rather annoying. Without spending a second to look at what the World Building is supposed to do, you immediately declare that the modding system sucks. You want the modding system to be better than Civ III but simpler to use. You want to be able to do whatever you want, but you want the editor to do it for you.

Repeat after me: The World Builder does not create scenarios or mods. The World Builder, as the name implies, builds and edits a World.

That modding capability you want is there, in XML and Python files. Of course that's not what you want. You want a flashy application to let you do it. But a flashy application would take months of development. You want it now. A flashy application also means that you're stuck changing the things that Firaxis makes available. Thats not what people want. They want power to change everything. So Firaxis gave them that power.

And now they're complaining about it.

Basically, what (many) people want is all of the power of a full blown object oriented scripting language without having to actually use it:

"I want to be able to write triggers so that Christian cities go through anarchy in the renaissance if they don't have a Temple built or if the Sistine Chapel hasn't been built in a friendly city! ...But I want to be able to just click a checkbox to get it!"

 

[Shigga]

kinda offtopic, but still:

Did someone check the forums over at apolyton? In terms of complaints it seems still as a lake compared to the raging sea around here. Without attacking 'poly in any way, but still I find this very, very strange.

Reading this I hope I will not regret ordering cIV.

 

[Volstag]

There was always a feeling of danger, urgency and realism in civ 3 - theres no consequeneces or sense that you can lose in civ 4. There is no strategy, its just massing and attacking.

Oh yeah! Remember when the AI would send perpetual streams of 3 or 4 obsolete units against my heavily fortified cities -- turn after turn after turn? Remember the joy of placing a stack of mechanized infantry on a hill or mountain within the edge of an enemy civ, and killing scores (if not hundreds) of units in a single turn? Remember blitzing the entire map and winning by conquest in 530 B.C.? Remember the tactical thrill of moving your 65 cavalry + 35 artillery from city to city destroying everything in your path?

Don't get me wrong, I love Civ III, but there were many glarring problems with that game. Generally speaking, warfare in Civ III was automatic: build a huge stack, kill everything that opposes you.

 

[SignalSgt]

I've only been playing for about 6 hours now, but I just lost two gunships and a Panzer to a Longbowman. A man with a stick and some twine with an arrow...

Combat just took a step back to CIV original where a battleship could be wiped out by a galley.

 

[Stuporstar]

Glad I could help, I hope it works out for you, I've been playing this one game right now for 4 hours and JUST discovered Guilds (which gives you knights) about 10 minutes ago.

My tech speed is 200 as Ravin had mentioned, which which makes the research 100% slower.

I think it makes the game much more interesting for those that want longer games - without the burden of slower production/GP birth rate/Improvement/etc.

As far as Ravin and stupor go.. let me know how if it works out with you guys, if you manage to get a game or two in with the edited stuff.

After playing the game I'm on now, I definately think 200 research is the way to go regardless, it's alot of "click to end your turn" stuff in the beginning, simply because you have no techs. but once you get going you can actually spend time building up city infrastructure or armies and going to war, while the techs slowly come in the background - makes for much more interesting gameplay. It's not just whoevers smartest wins because the flow isn't as fast, yet it also makes technology more important at the same time, because if your DO happen to be the first to discover X advantagous tech, then you most likely have it for a while. Or in the very least, have a few turns head start doing whatever that tech allows before everyone else (i.e. get an early start on a wonder).

Oh and I'll definately post on this in the mod forumn.

I have a feeling it will not only add to the strategic gameplay (i.e. you actually have to choose your techs wisely, trade techs, and have a chance to use your units before they become obsolete) but the improvements and scientists designed to increase your research time will actually MATTER.

Comparing this to CivIII though, I found the tech was too fast in that game as well. At least I could change the minimum research time (usually to min 6-12 turns depending on how long a game I wanted). I think increasing the research cost is a much better way to handle it though, and I have a feeling CivIV, once modded properly, will be much better balanced that way.

 

[reznap]

Remember that a) Sirian and Sullla are very good players, b) have played the game for half a year already, c) the level is comparable to Regent and most importantly, d) they know the internals of the game through the discussions they must have had during the beta test period.

The walkthrough game just explains the mechanics IMHO, I think you just can't make assumptions about the AI's strength based on that.

EXACTLY!

How would an inexperienced player know that researching Moloneism would leave himself a good chance to discover Judism even if he failed to discover Hinduism first? Like Sulla did in his walk-through game?

Actually Sulla's walk-through used almost perfect strategy, from the beginning of choosing Spiritual cibilization and adopt a religion/great people path.

Besides, Sulla's walk-through just covered up the early stage of the game (somewhat slow and easier in CIV IV), how could some people here tell that you can easily steam rolling AI in the whole game from that?(Actually very hard in middle to high level) .And WHY some people complained that his research was too quick and his newits obsoleted too quickly? If you feel that way, either you didn't focus on military researching so you didn't discover real leading units like calvary. Or your city production sucks. Or you judged unit value only by strength and thought spear man were "obseleted" in front of a knight with much more strength.

I feel some people are just TOO adapted to CIV3 style: in order not to be rushed over by ICS/cheating AIs, you ARE FORCED from the beginning to expand like crazy while worring impossible AI demands. The problem is :is it really FUN to play like that? Absolutely not for me. I never like any RUSH or early battle in startegy games. Actually I hate rushers, whether or not they are AI or human.

IMHO, Early battle or rush will give you MUCH LESS strategic chocie and is thus MUCH BORING. Even playing a real-time game like Rise of Nations, most people still want some build-up time before start an epic battle. The biggest problem of CIV3 design is: it does give player enough early challege, but most people are just playing for fun, not for frustration dealing over aggressive, cheating AIs. Civ-buliding itself can already give players sense of achievement and much fun, so battling AI should help players to "achieve", not over-stretch them beyond frustration. After all,Simcity series has no "challenge AI" at all, but that series is still fun enough.

CIV IV actually brings the fun from CIV2 or SMAC back. That's why so many people love it. However, CIV3 DID create its own loyal fanbase even if many old CIV fans feel it is a step back from SMAC or CIV2 ( read Amazon user reviews, you will see how many CIV-lovers dislike it). The problem now seems to be: some CIV3 lovers simply cannot accept the fact that CIV series are now "back to the right path".

 

[yars]

i am in agreement with those that think the problem most people have with the game is that they are stuck in the civ3 mindset. most of the issues that people have been complaining about will likely be forgotten after spending a bit more time with the game.

i played a single game last night, on normal speed, noble. in civ 3 a standard size, normal speed regent game would take me about 8 hours on average. the civ4 game took me about 4. during this game i didn't war once, i barely made any units, took the default buildings and techs as they popped up, and employed basically zero strategy. i lost miserably. now, if i were to actually employ some amount of strategy, possibly go to war a time or two, that will more than double the amount of time i'm putting into a game. so on normal speed, it appears that civ4 is still at least as long a game as civ3.

regarding the issue of getting too many techs early, this appears to be in response to the fact that to keep up in civ3 you had to trade techs with every other civ, or you'd fall too far behind to compete. if you started on a continent by yourself, that was often enough to cost you the game by itself. in civ 4, this isn't a problem. you can research everything early on yourself. in fact you have to, since you can't trade techs until you learn whatever tech it is you need to do so. you're still getting techs about as fast as you were in civ3, except now they only come from you, rather than from everyone.

regarding units being produced too slowly, this is in response to the fact that in civ3, you had to have dozens of units in stacks to wage war, which was ridiculous. in civ4, an individual unit is rather powerful and important, as you don't have the time to pump out hundreds of them.

mid and late game for techs, it seems that in a competitive game, you will need to lower your science % to support your cities and extra armies, which you will need to defend yourself. yes, you may have fewer cities to cut down on maintenance costs to keep research high, but then you have less production with which to defend yourself. so past the early stages it appears that research will slow down, although this may be compensated a bit by trading techs.

overall, civ 4 appears to be a much more strategic game than civ3. you need more than your basic defensive unit, offensive unit approach to conquest. there are a lot more options in choosing research paths, and religion and the new leaders add some interesting options as well.

i think that most people have simply not played the game enough to be able to make educated complaints about the game.

 

[Lahdoz]

I won&#8217;t touch bugs here, but I do see a few things that are improvable. I know there are more, but these come to mind quickly.

1-is glaring, 3-is troublesome, 5-I may have just forgot/missed something, 2 and 4-are just part of this being a new game and probably can be dismissed.

1. Civilopedia, as mentioned many times.

2. Advisors, as mentioned by many. I miss the city-by-city military unit list most.

3. The screen layout. I like the fact that so much information is displayed on screen, but I find it a little troublesome to have to look at the bottom left, when I am hovering over the advisor buttons in the top right. Until I am used to what all of the buttons are, I am constantly going back and forth. It&#8217;s not particularly user friendly for the first few games. The advisor button titles should display up near the buttons when hovered over.

4. Unit build options. I&#8217;d rather see titles and details than icons. The mouse over is a little awkward, but I&#8217;ll get used to it.

5. I&#8217;d like to be able to click something to end turn.