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

[oldStatesman]

Basically, it's silly to ask for everything. I wish I had a car that got 120 mi/gallon in the city and off-road while making no noise and carrying both 1 and 12 people in equal comfort. But it's simply stupid of me to ever ask that of a car designer.

That's silly. As consumers, if we never ask, the makers will never know what we want. They will never make improvements or strive for a better product unless the consumer demands it.

For myself, I refuse to be a quiet meek sheep - I'd rather be the lion. And danged if I won't roar when I feel it is needed.

 

[Ravinhood]

Amen Old Statesman you tell him. We as consumers have a voice and it must be heard if we want anything new or changed. I mean just look at CIV IV as it is, my gawd, I just wish I knew what crowd was screaming for THESE types of changes, the interface is not really that friendly the Civilopedia is a laugh and the icons are sooooo small some of us have to have a magnifying glass to see them and the ADVISORS, this is the worst set of ADVISOR features of all the games to date, cept maybe CIV I, I don't recall it having advisors at all. CIV III really had the best advisor feature, but, I did enjoy the talking advisors of CIV II a lot. Made me laugh. The military and city advisors are the worst, it was so much more "streamlined" in CIV III on the use of Advisors and they said CIV IV was more streamlined. lol

 

[Zhahz]

I'm iffy on the 'pedia in Civ IV. I'm not liking the icon style but I think over time, sickly, I'll have every icon in the game memorized and it won't matter. Ultimately, Civ IV gives you so much info in game via popups that I can't see myself using it much. I've only really viewed it to look at info while eating and not actually playing.

I haven't had the science advisor problem you describe - dunno what you're talking about. As with all Civ games, the advice your advisors give is almost always questionable. What conqueror of the world needs advisors anyways!?

Somewhat agree about the city screen. My only real problem with it is how you setup production. You can easily have so many things to build packed into that tiny scrolling box that it's a real pain to set production at times. It's somewhat similar when selecting units from a stack if you have a monster stack, as I often do as I head out to war (no point in NOT using a stack unless your enemy has siege).

I like how religion works and I don't want it to completely influence the whole game. Religion can play a huge part in your relations and determine alliances, which is enough for me.

I do sometimes have mouse-over issues but nothing I can't deal with.

I'm loving the game. I do have a few nit picky issues, but nothing really traumatizing and several issues I initially had went away once I figured out that it was lack of knowledge (like ctrl+tab for event log, or clicking the icon at the right hand side of a city name label on the map to change city production from the map).

 

[LoopyLewis]

Ok, I haven't got the game yet (won't for a while), so I can't add anything to this. But I can say that the more you guys post - the less I'm inclined to go out and buy the game. So my quick question is: "is it THAT bad?"

 

[Matte979]

It’s the best strategy game out there, so what was your question again?

The game have major issues for some players and only minor issue for some but when it comes down to it what’s the alternative not buying it that’s crazy its CIV they haven’t destroyed the CIV aspect and that’s the point.

And compared to all the other bad wanna be strategy games like AOI III it shines.

We should get the issues on the table of course and to the developers so they can be addressed but this is a good playable strategy game out of the box and not perfect but far from a terrible or mediocre game.

To answer your question no its not that bad, you need to buy it.

Buy it and form your own opinion. And we all know that we wont leave the franchise even if we don’t like some aspect of the game and this game is very mod-able so 6 months from now we have a different game it happened to CIV3 and it will happen to CIV4.



Do you want to be part of the process or be a bystander just because you might dislike some aspects?

 

[basickillr]

Sorry did not read whole thread, 430 feet of Vinyl Privacy Fence to install cutting into my playtime. Played 5 or 6 games to various stages, only 1 until then very end (spaceship victory for Isabella!).

I think unit balance is out of whack. With the % modifiers, its just to ez to rack up an insane unit that can mow down dozens of attackers when your on the defense. I played at emperor level for all games. Despite a dozen wars against me and probably 50 more AI vs AI wars, 1 AI was wiped out and maybe a dozen cities changed hands in all the other wars combined (1 of mine very early).

Computer tries to spread its units out, I didnt care, a dozen cannon/artillery would reduce his attacking force to rubble and I would mop up. If you cannot attack the city directly when you declare war, odds are your force will get wiped out by cats etc, race to cavalry definately doesnt mean much anymore. 4 Maceman (started out with 10% bonus) wiped out 37 different computer units in 2 turns. I finished off the few that had retreated, sent in some workers with guards and had fixed the pillaged areas in a few turns. Of course, the comp cities tended to do the same thing to me when I attacked.

Tech advantage is KING, you have to have a era's ahead units to have a reasonable chance of winning a fight with anything less then a horde. And you had better have the exact right type needed for the job or even then victory is iffy.

Experience is supposed to be progressive, but I found it almost impossible to build up serious offensive units on a consistant basis. The odds do not seem to matter much, great, 24 to 16 I should win... opps almost... bye 23 XP calvary. The only practical way is to use defensive units to finish off pummeled by artillery units then hunker back down in a city before comp can finish your unit off.

Some of it is learning curve I have no doubt, but using % increases for things means your progressivley getting greater and greater returns. Meaning unit quality gets more and more important each era by a considerable margin and units of the same quality the defense will almost always have the advantage or at worst be equal to your probably more expensive offense unit.

All in all, lots of great qualities. I am fearing anything higher then emperor though. Twist thos emaps and lemme know how it works out.

 

[King Jason]

as far as values are concerned for modding the epic file, I found that keeping all the values the same as the normal setting, and just increasing the research to 200 makes the game much more enjoyable.

The timeline may have to be manually adjusted but I've yet to work on that because I'm not too concerned with when things come, I'm just concerned with how long I have to use them.

Ravin seems to have the right idea as far as the year-per-turn ratio.

 

[Thumper333]

I never played the prior Civ games, so I can't compare the interfaces. For me, it works just fine.

My only real complaint (and I am only at 1800AD on my first game) is that you can apparently link units for moving, but when you attack, they attack one at a time. Maybe there is something I am missing, I may have to go back and read the manual more and see. If I sent 5 companies of Archers against a town, I want a HAIL of arrorws. Not 5 different tiny volleys.

Religion.

Yeah, it seems tacked on and useless. I discovered Buddism, Christianity, Taoism, Islam and one other.......to me they are just pop up windows saying "You founded Islam!"

Yay. So what? What does that DO? Other than being minor steps in the tech tree, religion is useless.


I do love this game though and am having a lot of fun.

 

[Megatherion]

Thanks for pointing out some positive aspects as well. I was beginning to regret to have ordered it... (and I was so happy when I saw that Amazon.de already shipped it more than a week prior to the official release date) Perhaps I shouln't have looked into the "What's bad" thread.
But as far as I see it, it WILL be an enjoyable game.

 

[King Jason]

Thumper, religion can be used to get alot of money from other civs, since a religion is required to build a temple. If you manage to have several religions, use great prophets to create shrines in each holy city. That way, where a temple to that religion is built in the world, you will recieve gold for it.

is a city has multiple religions, it can build multiple temples, so if you have 4 holy cities, it's best to spread each religion all over the world so you can get alot of money for it. If you have the same state religion as other civs it can also improve relationships.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The BENEFITS of Religion-from somone who hasn't even PLAYED the game !

1) Great Prophets can build a shrine in your Holy City-this means you earn gold for EVERY temple to that religion which exists in the world.

2) You get 'Line of Sight' into cities which share the same faith as your holy city (no shrine required).

3) You get bonus happiness in cities which share the same religion as your state religion (and bonus happiness for EVERY religion in a city after you adopt 'Free Religion' as a Civic)-no need to found a religion for this benefit.

4) Your diplomatic relations are better with nations that share your faith-especially after many turns.

5) For every religion a city has, you can build a Monastary (+10% science), a Temple (happiness and culture) and a 'cathedral' (more happiness and culture-I think??) So, if you have Judaism, Islam and Hinduism in a single city-that city can build THREE monastaries, for +30% science. He can also build a Synagogue, Mosque and (Hindu Cathedral??)

6) Cities which share the faith of your Holy city are more likely to flip over to you.

7) If you have Organised religion, then you get a +25% bonus to construction in cities that have you State religion.

So, does that sound like a tacked on and useless addition to you? I mean, 3 out of 4 of these benefits go directly to the founder of a religion, with the other 4 being useful much earlier to a religions founder. The thing is, though, that spreading the faith-both within your nation and to other nations-requires some work on your part, both in building your culture up, urging conversion in diplomacy and by sending out missionaries.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Mujadaddy]

"I mean just look at CIV IV as it is, my gawd, I just wish I knew what crowd was screaming for THESE types of changes, the interface is not really that friendly the Civilopedia is a laugh and the icons are sooooo small some of us have to have a magnifying glass to see them and the ADVISORS, this is the worst set of ADVISOR features of all the games to date, cept maybe CIV I, I don't recall it having advisors at all."

Nice run-on...

Civilization I, I assure you, had Advisors. And punctuation

 

[Wlauzon]

95% of the complaints are not about the *gameplay*, but the interface - or in some cases, the lack of one.

IMO, one of the biggest hassles to me is the lack of a military advisor screen like C3 had, where you could list all units you had in the game, by type or by city, and click on what you wanted and go to that unit or city.

It was great for easily finding obsolete or useless units that you had lost, forgotten, or forgotten to upgrade.

No place in Civ4 can I find anything enen close to that. Took me 10 min to find an old warrior from 4000 BC that was out exploring and then just... stopped. I finally found him by accident when I almost ran over him with my Modern Armor.....

 

[oldStatesman]

95% of the complaints are not about the *gameplay*, but the interface - or in some cases, the lack of one.

IMO, one of the biggest hassles to me is the lack of a military advisor screen like C3 had, where you could list all units you had in the game, by type or by city, and click on what you wanted and go to that unit or city.

It was great for easily finding obsolete or useless units that you had lost, forgotten, or forgotten to upgrade.

No place in Civ4 can I find anything enen close to that. Took me 10 min to find an old warrior from 4000 BC that was out exploring and then just... stopped. I finally found him by accident when I almost ran over him with my Modern Armor.....

If you go to the Globe view - there is a button that will show you where all of your units are. The Globe view is the little icon on the extreme right in the bottom right of the screen. you can also see Areas your religion covers, areas of trade, etc.

That said, I do like the Military Advisor screen in Civ3 better. I liked the advisor screens better there overall - mainly because I had modded my advisors to be playboy bunnies . And I liked the occasional easter egg message I would get from them "Sleep is for the weak"...

 

[Gebstadter]

"Hey! Where's the wrench that makes gazebos?"

This is a very apt metaphor.

 

[henry k c]

I don't know anything bad about civ 4....yet. I do know alot of bad things about amazon.com....

 

[RichardMNixon]

I played the quick game and still found it too slow... Research flows like mad and units crawl out. By the time I had built three four axemen, I could already build swordmen. The only "one more turn," was "maybe if I play one more turn, it will be fun." I'm giving it one more shot, starting classical, at normal speed.

Edit: THE MAP DOES NOT CONNECT LATERALLY! Why would they do that?... Is Euclid not good enough for Firaxis?...

 

[Ravinhood]

Nice run-on...

Civilization I, I assure you, had Advisors. And punctuation

I punctuated or did you not see the commas? And I didn't come here for an english diagram lesson, so, booger off punk.

 

[RichardMNixon]

CivIV has some really cool features, I will grant you that; but they broke a basic rule: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I had no problem with the CivIII interface, the graphics never bothered me. Sprites or not, I considered it 3D; everything looked fine as long as you never went through it with a fine toothed comb. I don't see why they couldn't just keep the interface and add/change the mechanics. Is there someone more computer and/or civ savvy that can explain why civIV couldn't fit in the civIII interface?

Edit: In hindsight, I suppose it'd be terrible marketing to have the games look so similar, but still... the icons.........

 

[Arturus]

It seems to me that aside from consistent complaints about the civilopedia (which probably wasn't fully completed due to the rush and really, how often did people navigate around it in Civ III?), and the interface (which will probably be cleaned up with patches or by modders), those who are complaining are those who completely bought into the Civ III style of game play. That is, massive empires, large wars with hundreds of units, and little else. Civ IV makes the content of the city, not the number of cities important and makes each unit for unique (promotions) and precious (can't produce as many). Also, religion makes culture more important than before. In otherwords, it sounds to me like Civilization is actually resembling reality and finally moving away from the warbased Civ III. I hated Civ III, especially multiplayer, because people always focused on mega-empires and warfare and not on commerce, culture, and technology. Civ IV will fit into my style. I like specialized cities, I am over protective of my units and am not a big unit builder to begin with, and I focus on culture and actually building a civilization not dedicated to warfare. It's about time the franchise made the shift, I don't feel any sympathy to those missing the brawl style of Civ III.