Was Civ4 a success gameplaywise compared to earlier installments?

[hexem3117]

Civ IV has lots of good ideas, but they haven't be implemented evenly, and that hurts the game.
Consider the freebies for being the first to discover a Tech. Very nice: but because only a handful of techs give these bonuses, your tour through the Tech tree is going to be the same every time. The fix, I feel, is to remove UUs from nations and add them to the tech tree: eg if you are the first to research Guilds, you get a variant Knight (hopefully, of your choice). Many early UUs are only useful in unusual situations (frex, Jaguar is great if you don't have iron, useless otherwise) so this would allow you to select them when needed. Also, if a tech renders a wonder obsolete, this shouldn't occur if *you* are the first to develop that tech.

Unit promotions look cool, and if you never enter combat, you can happily waste time tinkering with your favourite units. But so what? In Civ III, a guy with pointy stick could kill a tank. In Civ IV, a guy with a pointy stick can kill a carefully upgraded tank. So why bother?
Combat is far too random, and improvements in weaponry have only minimal effect. The basic tactic in Civ III - rely heavily on fast units - has been nobbled by crippling the ability to withdraw. So everybody uses SoDs, because there's no alternative. So the designers have added completely unhistorical siege units as stack killers: so we build stacks of catapults!
Ridiculous.
One obvious fix: units get a huge bonus when fighting opponents who don't have the tech needed for building them: this reflects the shock value of the new weapons. Historically, elephants have only been effective in these circumstances. However, every battle against the new unit type should give beakers towards the new tech, to reflect captured weapons/seeing the units in action/defectors etc. And yes, this should allow access to techs that you don't have the pre-reqs for!

Adding religion was a good move; it is one of humanity's primary obsessions. It is handled in a wussy PC fashion, but if they hadn't, they'd have been sued off the face of the earth. So we should be grateful for what we've got, I guess. The thing with religions is that:
a) they aren't the same, or even similar. A Jewish or Christian democracy looks nothing like a Islamic theocracy and neither look anything like a Buddhist military dictatorship.
b) most 'new' religions are old religions that have crossed national boundaries. Christianity has become the world's most successful Jewish sect by spreading amongst non-Jews. Islam (and other forms of Arianism) occurred when garbled ideas of Christianity spread into the barbarian world. Buddhism is dodgy Hinduism for non-Indians.
Now, (b) could be coded! When a religion spreads across a border, give it a (high) chance of mutating into something unrecognisable by the home country. That would encourage deliberate seeding of your pet religion by missionaries to prevent heresies.

I like the idea of gaining military knowledge through combat with higher tech units...Also, the UU is a cool idea, but unfortunately some of the UU's are just not nearly as useful as some. The UB aspect is more imba IMO...some are just awesome, like the HRO or as I've found out this past game the Portuguese Feitorias. I'd like to see what the Dutch UB for levee does and how imba that is.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Definitively the best one. Playing since... far too long. Started back then with CivNet (which is basically Civ I in multiplayer), played Civ II for ages... and was sorely disappointed by Civ III (wait, culture *was* a great thing... and by sorely disappointed, I only mean in contrast with the other titles - it still consumed endless hours of my free time! ) after seeing the options and depth of Alpha Centauri.

Civ IV, at least to me, all the shine of Civ II with modern design and depth. And the sheer volume of mod options is better than Civ II: Fantastic Worlds, also something I only have very dear memories of.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Davor]

Yes.....
How old is your computer and are you sure you have the right requirements. I've never heard of anyone with the right requirements having a problem with performance that wasn't something they needed to do.

I have 2 gigs of ram, and 2 1.8 ghz so almost 4 ghz chip. If you were around when Civ 4 came out, you would have herd all the complaints that people can't play the game especailly when they surpass the specs.

People cry when they can't play Huge maps, only small maps barely. I have a new computer, I thought my old computer was old, but I got a new one, and it's still slow as well.

 

[T.A JONES]

I have 2 gigs of ram, and 2 1.8 ghz so almost 4 ghz chip. If you were around when Civ 4 came out, you would have herd all the complaints that people can't play the game especailly when they surpass the specs.

People cry when they can't play Huge maps, only small maps barely. I have a new computer, I thought my old computer was old, but I got a new one, and it's still slow as well.

Yes everyone who's been here and read the tech forums, heck the complaints seap over here aswell, will say you are right and the one who you quote is just badly unaware we shall say.

It was so bad at release date its unthinkable to imagine a launch layed out the same, like what it would do to this legacy of this timeless game. Probably kill it.
There were patch mistakes plus weak computers coupled with horrid high reqs. Yet as computers become more adapt and old junkers fell by the wayside, CIv4 stacked on to its feeble frame giving the newer rigs performance on a level pritty muchl the same.
Warlords and most notable BTS really made huge maps a tough go and lets admit it, Mods are what makes this game really go (go on) Im sure most know any mod that tries to add even more will suffer late game cutoff. Simple as that.
Reason enough when it comes to making a great rise n rule for this chapter mod designers have been hesitent to throw in the hat

 

[brun58]

I've played since the 1st one, have to say is my favorite though, and as with most all of them, I can always find a mod that moves it closer to how I want to play, one thing I've always liked about the civilization series.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Yes everyone who's been here and read the tech forums, heck the complaints seap over here aswell, will say you are right and the one who you quote is just badly unaware we shall say.

It was so bad at release date its unthinkable to imagine a launch layed out the same, like what it would do to this legacy of this timeless game. Probably kill it.
There were patch mistakes plus weak computers coupled with horrid high reqs.

Sigh. The OP asked whether Civ4 was a success wrt to gameplay, not whether the game itself ran well which is what you are going on about. I know you feel that Civ3 is much better for gameplay than Civ4 so make your case for it. Some people may even agree with you. As you may have guessed I don't agree with your view but feel free to convince other people.

 

[Breunor]

Civ II was good at the time but I found the combat system there wasn't really that great, I thought Civ III was a vast improvement.

I think Civ IV is the best game in the series by far. Firaxis started the design of Civ IV with issues that they wanted to improve from Civ III, and I think they did a rather good job. For instance, they wanted to give incentive to avoid infinite city sprawl. In Civ III, expansion was the key to victory. In Civ IV, you have to expand, but it is harder, as you have to also build the economic infrastructure and you have to figure out when and how much to expand.

They added a terrific number of building styles in Civ IV --we now have cottege economies, specialist economies, etc. The great people were an interesting addition. Firaxis hired some of the AI programmers like Blake and improved that area; I know in my case I could win Civ III on demigod rather easily but now I struggle to win Civ IV on monarch.

In Civ III the way to fight happiness problems was to build markets and fill them with resources to get tremendous bonuses -- this meant conquest was absolutely necessary. Buidling a temple or cathedral was a 'mistake' for weaker players. In Civ IV, although not perfect, the impacts are much better balanced. On high levels you still pretty much have to conquer territory, it is very hard to win otherwise, but again I think there are more options than Civ III.

Adding civics has greatly increased the ability to 'tailor' your civilization and match your style of victory. This feature also allows greater differentiation of leader characteristics. The choices of civics is far more differntiating than the governments in Civ III.

I feel Firaxis did fix the problems they saw. I do think there still are some areas for improvement. In both Civ III and Civ IV artillery is overpowered; maybe Civ IV is a little better here but I find it problematic in either case. But I think the series has just gotten better from a player's standpoint, even significantly.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Joshua368]

I feel Firaxis did fix the problems they saw. I do think there still are some areas for improvement. In both Civ III and Civ IV artillery is overpowered; maybe Civ IV is a little better here but I find it problematic in either case. But I think the series has just gotten better from a player's standpoint, even significantly.

While I agree with most of what you said, I'd say the latest patches of Beyond the Sword signifigantly help ballance seige to not be overpowered. While it was certainly overpowered at the start, removing its ability to actually kill and making them a bit more pricy in hammers helps to make sure you bring a good ballanced stack with plenty of combat units.

Unless you don't have BtS.

 

[Breunor]

While I agree with most of what you said, I'd say the latest patches of Beyond the Sword signifigantly help ballance seige to not be overpowered. While it was certainly overpowered at the start, removing its ability to actually kill and making them a bit more pricy in hammers helps to make sure you bring a good ballanced stack with plenty of combat units.

Unless you don't have BtS.

Well, it is certainly a lot better in BtS. However, I actually find a build MORE of them in BtS because they are weaker.


Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[T.A JONES]

I have 2 gigs of ram, and 2 1.8 ghz so almost 4 ghz chip.

Acually Davor I didn't see this Or I would of enlightened . You don't combine dual cores seperate CPU'S to arrive at its total rotation speed output . Not how it works

Sadly CIv4 is mono optimized, meaning they designed the game on a monocore which says to me they probably found ways to best utlize their engine in sync with the top computer of tha day's abilty to translate performance. The most advanced mono tech for that time was Pent 4 CODENAME Cedarmill. THis high L2 cache approach ( 3x that of AMD's Athlon) was for more CPU memory coupled with higer bus speed this meant faster delivery, basicly for the elimination the rig's tendency to call up ram every second chance thereby killing turntimes in the process

AMD had much more more effecient pipe structure thus avoiding the need for so much L2 Still the cedar has so much more L2 then AMD's athlon that when the cedar cameout out as a die-shrink of the faster 3.6ghz Pent Presscot coupled with this amount of L2 and abilty for higher bus speeds., this outweighted the benifit of AMD's shorter pipe structure ...thus I suspect the used pentium to make civ4 (lol IF your still here sorry but assumtions need backing )

Anyway so your actualy heeding the best results when you stray into dual or quadcore. What usually has these newer rigs play better is the better mobo speed, then ram , then g-card of that day.
Just transfer that stuff to a mono and you'll get much better mono-utilized game play
DEFAULT Mobos on the old monos never really topped 800mhz tho I suspect the ones at Fireaxis were rare exception lol

So beacuse most don't realize this and buy new rigs thinking civ4 will fly, Id say the tragedy of this game is more severve. Even with Cedarmill-line Monocores suited with quadcore gear your still going to struggle on a "Huge" (less citys then civ3's) with a decent amount of Civs. Meanwhile Civ3's larger data cache megamap super mod epics play smooth as can be.
Id say your still right.

 

[T.A JONES]

Sigh. The OP asked whether Civ4 was a success wrt to gameplay, not whether the game itself ran well which is what you are going on about. I know you feel that Civ3 is much better for gameplay than Civ4 so make your case for it. Some people may even agree with you. As you may have guessed I don't agree with your view but feel free to convince other people.

Hmm I think 'Gameplay' is a moot point when you can't get into it long enough to develop a substantial opinion
Here-by It should be said in support of this statment that Civ3 in contrast offereed up large maps deley-free and real-size proportions in all facets, essentialy creating an empire-feel approach that was popular and won acclaim when easy-moddin eased unreal corruption on expansion, ontop of quelling up other aspects left flawed, a complaint filled sea if you ask me
Buy ya, THis all corresponds with gameplay "sigh"

Now you want to say how was the gameplay when fiddling round on tiny 'done in days sitting ' maps? Sure, it was ok. But Hey, unless we stray into lack of ease in all important 'mod-a-bili-ta', where things like eyesorness that won't go away (no terrain mods) or lack of tackling unreal maintence, 2 examples how python ate even the mini-me replaybilty, get in the way.

Obviuosly I won't fill the page unless further pressed, but Id sum up saying civ4 modded by refering to it as 'one hella of a mess'. The issue with regards to patch and expansion adaption especialy caused unpresdent levels of frustration and coined the term "patch paranoia" contributing to high opportunity cost for delevelpers.

MP players they will have there say n btw, wouldn't you know it they all love the gameplay. Yet was this game meant to be catering on the majority level that way? I say Nay!. Those dolts hit up the wrong crowd in terms of gameplay!
But ya I have lots more here. Ive got more examples that illistrate clear the 'empire feel' or what you call 'my way' of gameplay was told to takethe highway durin development days.. 'Sigh' but look at time and besides, Im bout all outta rhyms here

 

[Pluvo241]

Hmm I think 'Gameplay' is a moot point when you can't get into it long enough to develop a substantial opinion
Here-by It should be said in support of this statment that Civ3 in contrast offereed up large maps deley-free and real-size proportions in all facets, essentialy creating an empire-feel approach that was popular and won acclaim when easy-moddin eased unreal corruption on expansion, ontop of quelling up other aspects left flawed, a complaint filled sea if you ask me
Buy ya, THis all corresponds with gameplay "sigh"

Now you want to say how was the gameplay when fiddling round on tiny 'done in days sitting ' maps? Sure, it was ok. But Hey, unless we stray into lack of ease in all important 'mod-a-bili-ta', where things like eyesorness that won't go away (no terrain mods) or lack of tackling unreal maintence, 2 examples how python ate even the mini-me replaybilty, get in the way.

Obviuosly I won't fill the page unless further pressed, but Id sum up saying civ4 modded by refering to it as 'one hella of a mess'. The issue with regards to patch and expansion adaption especialy caused unpresdent levels of frustration and coined the term "patch paranoia" contributing to high opportunity cost for delevelpers.

MP players they will have there say n btw, wouldn't you know it they all love the gameplay. Yet was this game meant to be catering on the majority level that way? I say Nay!. Those dolts hit up the wrong crowd in terms of gameplay!
But ya I have lots more here. Ive got more examples that illistrate clear the 'empire feel' or what you call 'my way' of gameplay was told to takethe highway durin development days.. 'Sigh' but look at time and besides, Im bout all outta rhyms here

T.A, please slow down, man, you’re tripping over your typing!

The pauses are putting you off, I see. They’re that bad on your rig? Seriously? Maybe I’m just more forgiving (or oblivious). Sometimes my naval maneuvers will cause noticeable delays and late game delays do crop up sometimes as well, but nothing really irritating to me. Is it that any pause or delay is too much when compared to the buttery smoothness of Civ III?

Tiny maps take days for you to play? Am I reading you right? Wow. I wouldn’t like that either. I’ve not experienced that myself, but I feel for you. If that were my experience, I certainly wouldn’t play Civ IV. That’s for sure. Personally, though, I think it’s a hoot that you prefer Civ III’s graphics to Civ IV’s. Is that for real or are you just wanting your 2D back? I love the dynamic graphics in Civ IV, they’re way better than what came before. Mods run fine in Civ IV, sir. I currently run Blue Marble 4.2 Gold and BAT 1.0 and they are sweet. Back in Vanilla, I used to run Sevomod and it was very cool indeed!

I can’t comment on multiplayer, but as for the patch paranoia… maybe, back in the beginning. Now it’s pretty much over. I doubt anyone is holding their breath waiting for the next patch. You know?

And if a Civ III player is hanging out on a Civ IV forum, maybe that player really should give Civ IV another chance? What do you think? Come on! You might even like it.

It is, after all, the best Civ yet.

 

[Airefuego]

I loved Civ III. BUT...

Now I occasionally have nightmares that I will wake up and Civ III is still the latest Civ, and Civ IV was just a product of a magnificent dream...

Civ III - ugh.

Civ IV - "OH YEAH!!!"

 

[Iranon]

Re the graphics... I wouldn't mind 2D graphics as long as they didn't take that as an excuse to be careless about looks altogether. Sharp 2D graphics can still be beautiful even if they are less spectacular, with little effort and little drain on resources.

Talking about careless graphics... they could make groups of hills/mountains merge somewhat in civ1, and by the mid-90ies doing so had become standard and looked quite good. In civ4 we have clumps of identical square hills. Ugh.

 

[Davor]

Acually Davor I didn't see this Or I would of enlightened . You don't combine dual cores seperate CPU'S to arrive at its total rotation speed output . Not how it works

Sadly CIv4 is mono optimized, meaning they designed the game on a monocore which says to me they probably found ways to best utlize their engine in sync with the top computer of tha day's abilty to translate performance. The most advanced mono tech for that time was Pent 4 CODENAME Cedarmill. THis high L2 cache approach ( 3x that of AMD's Athlon) was for more CPU memory coupled with higer bus speed this meant faster delivery, basicly for the elimination the rig's tendency to call up ram every second chance thereby killing turntimes in the process

AMD had much more more effecient pipe structure thus avoiding the need for so much L2 Still the cedar has so much more L2 then AMD's athlon that when the cedar cameout out as a die-shrink of the faster 3.6ghz Pent Presscot coupled with this amount of L2 and abilty for higher bus speeds., this outweighted the benifit of AMD's shorter pipe structure ...thus I suspect the used pentium to make civ4 (lol IF your still here sorry but assumtions need backing )

Anyway so your actualy heeding the best results when you stray into dual or quadcore. What usually has these newer rigs play better is the better mobo speed, then ram , then g-card of that day.
Just transfer that stuff to a mono and you'll get much better mono-utilized game play
DEFAULT Mobos on the old monos never really topped 800mhz tho I suspect the ones at Fireaxis were rare exception lol

So beacuse most don't realize this and buy new rigs thinking civ4 will fly, Id say the tragedy of this game is more severve. Even with Cedarmill-line Monocores suited with quadcore gear your still going to struggle on a "Huge" (less citys then civ3's) with a decent amount of Civs. Meanwhile Civ3's larger data cache megamap super mod epics play smooth as can be.
Id say your still right.

Well I don't know much about computers. That is how it was explained to me. Thanks for the clarifaction. I am playing Civ 4 again, starting to love it now, but am playing on regular or smaller maps. It takes a bit of the fun out since I love playing on huge maps.

Yeah I thought Civ 4 would fly on my my rig, but it did run better on my lap top then it did on my desk top.

As I said I would have said Civ4 would have been a very great game if it lived up to it's specs. Sadly it didn't at the time, and I had to wait over 2 years to play it properly. That is not good for a game to become a classic. Maybe that is why I say Civ2 is the best of all time. I enjoyed it as soon as it came out, I had to wait over 2 years and BtS to really enjoy Civ4.

I hated Civ3, I couldn't get into it all. I don't know why, I guess, it was so hyped up, I loved Civ2, but saw Civ3 as a BIG LET DOWN.

Now playing Civ4 I am looking forward to Civ5, but with caution now so I am not disapointed like Civ3.

Maybe Civ has the Star Trek Curse. I don't agree with this, but people say Start Trek movies that are Odd and mediocer movies and even numbers are awsome movies.

Maybe Civ even numbers are awsome games, and odd number games are mediorcer or meh.

Here's hoping for an awsome game of Civ 5 or even Alpha Centurai 2.

 

[Pluvo241]

Re the graphics... I wouldn't mind 2D graphics as long as they didn't take that as an excuse to be careless about looks altogether. Sharp 2D graphics can still be beautiful even if they are less spectacular, with little effort and little drain on resources.

Talking about careless graphics... they could make groups of hills/mountains merge somewhat in civ1, and by the mid-90ies doing so had become standard and looked quite good. In civ4 we have clumps of identical square hills. Ugh.

2D graphics aren't, by their nature, inferior to 3D graphics in my mind either. City growth and map/unit animations can all be done well in 2D and maybe should've been in 2D in Civ IV. It's just my opinion that Civ III's graphics could certainly stand to be updated.

More variety is generally better whatever the topic (if you ask me) and the Hill/Mountain tiles are no exception. Of course, since the game map is tile-based, patterns repeat often: nice rows or columns of cottages, mines, mills, or farms... blanketing cloned Hills under spammed improvements.

 

[Death2thepelicn]

Civ 4 is definately an improvement over civ 3. But there are things that I miss from civ 2--the music, for one thing. And then there were the units...diplomats and spies that could do a whole lot of stuff like steal technology at your own risk, paratroopers (my favorite unit), and...uh, I guess that's it. Oh and also you used to be able to flex the luxury tax rate to make people happy. I wonder why all that stuff was taken out...

But I like civ 4. It's made tremendous improvements.

 

[Joshua368]

And then there were the units...diplomats and spies that could do a whole lot of stuff like steal technology at your own risk, paratroopers (my favorite unit), and...uh, I guess that's it.

Both of those are in Beyond the Sword.

Oh and also you used to be able to flex the luxury tax rate to make people happy. I wonder why all that stuff was taken out...

And that's in Vanilla.

The culture slider, revealed at Drama. Same function. Your cities get 1 for each notch, and theatres/colloseums help multiply this. Useful in wars to combat weariness.

 

[T.A JONES]

Hmm I think 'Gameplay' is a moot point when you can't get into it long enough to develop a substantial opinion
Here-by It should be said in support of this statment that Civ3 in contrast offereed up large maps deley-free and real-size proportions in all facets, essentialy creating an empire-feel approach that was popular and won acclaim when easy-moddin eased unreal corruption on expansion, ontop of quelling up other aspects left flawed, a complaint filled sea if you ask me
Buy ya, THis all corresponds with gameplay "sigh"

Now you want to say how was the gameplay when fiddling round on tiny 'done in days sitting ' maps? Sure, it was ok. But Hey, unless we stray into lack of ease in all important 'mod-a-bili-ta', where things like eyesorness that won't go away (no terrain mods) or lack of tackling unreal maintence, 2 examples how python ate even the mini-me replaybilty, get in the way.

Obviuosly I won't fill the page unless further pressed, but Id sum up saying civ4 modded by refering to it as 'one hella of a mess'. The issue with regards to patch and expansion adaption especialy caused unpresdent levels of frustration and coined the term "patch paranoia" contributing to high opportunity cost for delevelpers.

MP players they will have there say n btw, wouldn't you know it they all love the gameplay. Yet was this game meant to be catering on the majority level that way? I say Nay!. Those dolts hit up the wrong crowd in terms of gameplay!
But ya I have lots more here. Ive got more examples that illistrate clear the 'empire feel' or what you call 'my way' of gameplay was told to takethe highway durin development days.. 'Sigh' but look at time and besides, Im bout all outta rhyms here

T.A, please slow down, man, you’re tripping over your typing! .....................

What? Wait a minute you slowdown chum. Slow down on the grammmer elitist tip or least show me were I tripped with these Typos?
OH a comma misplaced, a slight run on ? I mean Comon! Show me the mistakes!

 

[T.A JONES]

Well I don't know much about computers. That is how it was explained to me. Thanks for the clarifaction. I am playing Civ 4 again, starting to love it now, but am playing on regular or smaller maps. It takes a bit of the fun out since I love playing on huge maps.

Yeah I thought Civ 4 would fly on my my rig, but it did run better on my lap top then it did on my desk top.

YA civ3 wasn't for everybody. Not everyone had the time to get it in line I mean. In a lot of the way the game was designed to be enhanced by the poeple on personal pref. . THose army's invincible(undone), that sea of red when expanding,(undone) relience on stacks of arty doom(undone!) . All that was fixed on my games
. With Civ4 I can't say the flaws got ironed out the same though. I never graduated from MIT so don't know how some can say moddin out things like unreal maintence was ever " easy"

ANyway about the specs, Glad to explain a bit here. Try the tech forum for some band-aid solutions that just mihgt make things bareable(sp!) ..and heh, Sorry about a those type "e's (errors) . You truly had something to harp about here, yet ignored the obvious grammer travisty and judging by your responce, seemed to understand the gist of it.
That Deserves a No problems understanding 'englishh' with an extra letter on the end over here

Tiny maps take days for you to play? Am I reading you right? Wow. I wouldn’t like that either. I’ve not experienced that myself, but I feel for you. If that were my experience, I certainly wouldn’t play Civ IV.

To @pulva I'll say re-read. The lil mocka- a-thon your hot on I can properly unwind but one's debate that centers on the ol fanbois, "my games purrfect. To bad about yours!" stalemate, just ain't that fun to deflate.
The rest I can rebuttal with images seeing you have a hard time with words. Anyone can see what I summerized was laid out quite clear. 'Real' huge maps are the impossable. When do I state "tiny" or, hows "empire feel' translate to anything near?