What keeps you playing Civ IV?

[gps]

What is the easiest start? Is there a leader that is easier to start with or should I go random? Otherwise, looks like pangea, standard map, temperate climate?

I think best start for an absolutely first game would be a small or duel map on settler level - and maybe not an archipelago map. But all the rest does not matter too much, to understand the basic mechanics, so don't worry. The game should provide you three game icons (Civ IV standard/vanilla plus the two expansions Warlords and BTS) - and I would recommend to frist try the Tutorial that comes with the standard game. I would recommend to start with the standard game anyway, as especially BTS comes with a huge load of added stuff and game mechanics that might be very confusing and over the top for an absolute beginner.
Btw. the game has a built in world builder that can be accessed anytime directly. So you can use this game more or less like a physical board game and can change whatever you want whenever you want - if you don't check it off deliberately. With this you can cheat, tinker and experiment with the game situation as much as you want. There's no need to be afraid of making mistakes.
Enjoy!

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

One point that has not yet been made is the challenge. The challenge to keep improving, to win at a higher level or with a better score or an earlier date or a different victory condition or whatever. Not to mention all the little challenges, completing this gambit or that one or -- the best of all -- looking for a new gambit yourself. One game you go military and then next culture. New land patterns, new neighbors, new tech paths, new trait/UU/UB combinations, it just seems to never end.

It is hard to imagine that you have mastered it all, and until I do that I don't want to stop playing.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

^^ That

er... This.

Sigh... What he said.^^

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

I agree to concur and concur to agree fully with the points made by the previous poster, without reservation or restriction, implied or otherwise, not bounded by geographical or legal limits or borders of any kind including, but not limited to, ramifications of changes in time or location, henceforth recognized as one continuum, and thus unite my opinion wholly and unabashedly with the stated and inferred definitions and preferences according to general understanding of these terms in each and every sense referred to by either party.

Sigh, what she said. ^^

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I agree to concur and concur to agree fully with the points made by the previous poster, without reservation or restriction, implied or otherwise, not bounded by geographical or legal limits or borders of any kind including, but not limited to, ramifications of changes in time or location, henceforth recognized as one continuum, and thus unite my opinion wholly and unabashedly with the stated and inferred definitions and preferences according to general understanding of these terms in each and every sense referred to by either party.

Sigh, what she said. ^^

I love you so much right now.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

That's nice to hear once in awhile, thank you.

That "right now" does kind of put the kibosh on the whole thing though, I hear the footsteps of discontent approaching already. Not exactly without reservation . . . .

But considering we have never met, I'll take it. Especially today.

 

[rah]

I would suggest playing Settler level, which is the easiest level, and not worry about winning.

While I'm not as expert as many of the people here, is it even possible not to win on settler level?

 

[georgjorge]

It is. Someone on this forum once tried to win Settler following Sid's tips (for settling, technology choices etc) at every opportunity and couldn't do it...got defeated by score in 2100.

 

[Heathcliff]

The reason I come back to Civ 4 time and time again is the earlygame.
I think it's like a puzzle. You got a map, how do you play it out the most efficient way in the early game.
I often replay a map several times and see what position I get at 1AD.
For the first games I have maybe 4 cities and poor research.
But after I've played the map a couple of times and when I find a buildorder that works for that map, I might have 8 cities instead at 1AD and more technologies.
I think it's kinda facsinating how much difference the different buildorders and worker moves makes, even if I made moves that I thought was good in the first game.
That is why I comeback to Civ 4.

 

[ngraner42]

I'm in my mid-40s and I've been blissfully playing computer games for decades, but recently I've experienced something I've never really felt before. It happened while I was - finally! - playing Diablo 3. Diablo's launch sucked and I had horrible luck in my repeated attempts to play the game, but then I was playing and it was fun. Cool, I thought; but I hadn't played the game even 12 hours when the feeling, something akin to depression I think, fell on me: I was wasting my time.

Which was funny, because the game was fairly enjoyable. And yet I couldn't escape the feeling. It was weird, but while playing I had the unshakeable sensation of endlessly spinning my wheels as it were. I've played bad games before, of course we all have, and boring games and good games buried underneath an avalanche of clunky interfaces, but here for the first time I had encountered a fun and exciting game that left me feeling bad for having played it.

Which defeats the purpose of playing games in the first place and brings me to why I play Civ IV. The game has soul and leaves me feeling fulfilled when I play it. It's complicated enough to give me the options I crave, but doesn't make things complicated artificially. It rewards me with an endless barrage of small-wins every single session, so that I feel like I've actually accomplished something other than just whiling away my time. Super Sweet Bonus: it does all this while allowing me to wallow in my favorite subject of all time - history!

Just today I commented to a friend that I had no desire to ever play Diablo 3 again. It is probably the equipment purchasing system that unbalanced loot finding and smithing. The end result was exactly what you said, I felt bad about playing the game and I did not care about my character. This is a terrible black mark for such a brilliant dedicated company like Blizzard.

CivIV succeeds on the exact opposite of such points. The game requires intelligent decisions at every point. Every decision you make has a direct impact on the game. You always feel that your mind is engaged in a useful way. Your civ is the accumulation of your choices and you deeply care about it.

I had a friend who spent a week on one turn. He was not taking a break, he spent the week doing spreadsheet analysis to shorten his time to a culture victory. We estimated that he would loose by about 20 turns. He spend that week figuring out how to shave off twenty turns and won by two turns in the end. That kind of effort is deeply satisfying.

CivIV diplomacy is real and significant. I remember one of my greatest gaming moments. I was playing Master of Orion and I went to the Bulrathi and asked them to join in war against the Klackons. They were friendly with me and responded "Yes, lets join together and rid the galaxy of the hated Klaxons". This kind of true alliance is normal in CivIV.

The bottom line is that CivIV gives you the satisfaction that your efforts are meaningful and satisfying. The fact that game success is closely assigned with the quality of your decisions make the GOTM play fair and another reason I continue to play CivIV.

 

[Knightly_]

I`m a gamer at heart. I play computer games since my parents bought me a Nintendo NES System when i was a child, some years later i became obsessed with computer games on a 486. Despite being 30 years now i still love to play computer games and as of now i am sure i will do for my whole life. As games entertain me i never felt that it was a waste of time. I do play alot, sometimes to the annoyance of my girlfriend and always to a mystery of my parents, who still think i will at someday become too old for this "childish" hobby. Anyway i play all kinds of games (for example Baldurs Gate, Monkey Island, D3, Starcraft, Xcom, WoW, Crysis, HL2, Gta, Capitalism, TF2, Quake, Dustforce to name just a few) from all genres, most of them from time to time. But there are only two games which i kept playing during the last 7 years and these are Dota and Civ4.
Dota, as a multiplayer game, closed the gap of team-oriented, professional rts gaming and is a very rewarding game. Despite its unfriendly community i still enjoy playing with my friends because we have the right balance between playing serious but not taking the game too serious (for example always try to win, but also always go -random in allpick mode).
Civilization 4 is the only singleplayer game which continually thrilled me during in the last years. First of all, even after thousands hours of gaming i still do learn new stuff and thus still climb up the ladder of mastering the game. Second, the game is extremely rewarding. It`s such a pleasure when an extensively planned strategy unfolds after hours of careful execution and leads you to victory. Civ4 has the right mix of strategy, knowledge and decision making on all scales immersed in an exciting theme. Every game is a challenge and with deity difficulty, HoF, and GotM games there is still more for me to come...

Knightly_

 

[themute88]

Cut & dry version - its amazing

The details have almost all been mentioned. It just stays fun, unlike any game ive ever played. I know it was already mentioned but I feel its a strong point for the game; your decisions have a direct impact, for every build, build order, and every time you punch in a turn, you just shaped your civ. Did I say it was amazing?

Its been 4 years, on and off have you, but even still and its not old and its probably not going to

Again a lot of posters have pointed out its golden features. Seriously - best game I have ever spent my time on

 

[Drakarska]

Ok, here's one that really defines Civ for me. I have 4 boys, ages 24-13. The 3 oldest ones dropped by for a visit this Labor Day weekend, and we were supposed to go out to the lake, boating, swimming, camping, you know, outdoor family stuff. We got everyone comfy and situated upon their arrival, when I hear my 13yr old ask his brothers if they brought their laptops with them. The rest, as they say, is history. All of us wound up playing Civ the entire weekend that they were here ( ROM mod, if your curious). Now that, is one of the main reasons that keeps me playing Civ ( besides me just loving the game of course ), There are very few game series out there that can survive long enough to be passed down to the next gen of gamers.

 

[bhazothemad]

Well. I love TBS games in general, started when my dad bought MoO way back in the DOS ages. Played that game constantly as a kid. Then Dad got Civ2, and I was sold. Civ3 was ok, added some good concepts, but didn't flesh them out enough for me. Civ4 does it right, fleshes everything out, has good diplomacy, just enough complexity to keep me always thinking about what to do this turn, and where I should go in the next few turns, while trying to balance an overall plan vs immediate need. Civ5, eh, I like a lot of the things they've done, but feel that the flaws outweigh the benefits. One step forward, two back kinda thing. I feel that the Gods and Kings expansion is much the same. Love the fact that religion has individual benefits that you choose, hate everything else about it. Love that spying can affect the city states, miss all the other fun things that spies can do in the earlier games. It just seems dumbed down streamlined to the point where there's no really hard decisions to make. And that's why I choose 4 out of the Civ franchise.

I also don't really care for modern games. Skyrim suffers from Bethsucka's usual world is an ocean with all the depth of a puddle problem. Very pretty, big world, that I love exploring, full of the most boring NPCs I've ever seen who fail to get me absorbed in the story since I don't care about them. Not to mention all the Elder Scroll games are "You are a prisoner who is fated to save the world, so you do" story that's getting threadbare. LA Noire is a great game, one of the best Mature titles around, as it isn't just blood'n'guts, but suffers because it tries to be LA Noire and GTA at the same time. GTA is great fun, I'll play it when I want to blow off steam, but I don't have to think too hard to play it. Spore was... just disappointing. Never really got into FPSes. Puzzle games are fun, but Civ is like a puzzle game, with the addition of war.

 

[May Day 10]

Basically, I believe that Civ is the best series in gaming. It is something I always fall back on for stretches of playing. It is something that is extremely challenging and so much variability. Every game is completely different.
I have been on board since Civ 2 and every installment IMO has gotten better and better, building off one another.

Civ 5 didnt do it for me. I feel it took many steps backwards.

So I still play and enjoy IV

 

[Monopoly]

A major part of why I play Civ games is how closely it models the real world. I get a chance to control the fate of a civilization throughout history and make decisions that leaders of that civ made.

After playing both Civ V and Civ IV, it feels like Civ IV is closer to reality.

Religion is a huge part of Civ IV, I like it since it's true in the real world. Historically, wars has been fought base on religious differences. In reality, different civilization views religion differently and that's closely modelled by the behavior of different AIs. Diplomacy base on flavors is not real. When is the last time a country declared war because it's neighbor doesn't focus in culture?

Science base on commerce is also realistic. In reality, major technological advances happen through government funded research. A more educated population is also a major factor in science. A poor country with a huge uneducated population generally doesn't have good tech.

Global Happiness in Civ V just isn't real. Why should a city become happy all of a sudden if a circus is build in a city far away? Why should a city in a warring empire become unhappy once the empire invaded a rival city? I see why the invaded city wouldn't be happy, but I don't think home cities should be affected negatively.

I do agree that Civ V introduced some good ideas.

Unit having 2 base movement improves game play. I think Civ 4 should have 2 base movement for infantries and 4 base movement for Calvary. With Mountains, Rivers, and Forest reducing movement by half. I never understood why it takes a promotion for you to use enemy road. In reality, if you are being invaded, you can either destroy the road so no one can use it, or everyone should be able to use the road.

One Unit per tile is also a good concept since it adds more strategic elements to the game. But having a archer attack two tiles away doesn't scale. A tile in game fits a city, it's unreal for any archery units to shoot an arrow across a city!!! I think Civ IV should be modified have a unit cap of 4 military units per tile. You will still be allowed to lay siege to a city with 32 units (8 attacking point for each city). Think about what that will do to game play -- 1. a city is easier to defend if it boarders a impassible mountain as enemy can not attack from that direction (although city will have limited tiles to work on) 2. a city is easier to defend if it boards a river as units attacking across river gets penalized unless the attacker has Amphibious promotion 3. 4 units per tile creates different army corps which requires a defender to defend the mini stack. 4. Specialized military units are more important than ever as you will be required to attack across river or defend from hill. Outnumbering your opponent will still be the main ways to archive victory similar to wars in real world. Strategies in war will become much more important.

Any thoughts?

 

[damerell]

I never understood why it takes a promotion for you to use enemy road. In reality, if you are being invaded, you can either destroy the road so no one can use it, or everyone should be able to use the road.

Because from the point of view of gameplay the mechanics work very well. In enemy territory, they have the logistical advantage. It might not be "realistic", but who cares - in every Civ game time and distance scales are utterly demented, and complaining that an archer can fire "across a city" is missing the point.

 

[May Day 10]

@Monopoly:
I think that 1 unit per tile isnt good, and like you said, an entire city fits on a tile so we run into scale issues.
I always thought that each unit should have "Mass Points" and each tile could only fit so much "Mass". So, say each square you can have "10". Infantry is 1, Panzer Tanks are 2, and Mechanized Infantry is 2.
You can fit 10 Infantry, or 5 Panzer Tanks, or a combination.

Maybe a leader can have a Militarized or General trait where their Mass Cap per tile is one or 2 higher? Or a great general can increase it within a stack

 

[Monopoly]

@Monopoly:
I think that 1 unit per tile isnt good, and like you said, an entire city fits on a tile so we run into scale issues.
I always thought that each unit should have "Mass Points" and each tile could only fit so much "Mass". So, say each square you can have "10". Infantry is 1, Panzer Tanks are 2, and Mechanized Infantry is 2.
You can fit 10 Infantry, or 5 Panzer Tanks, or a combination.

Maybe a leader can have a Militarized or General trait where their Mass Cap per tile is one or 2 higher? Or a great general can increase it within a stack

Totally agree. All I'm getting at is that we need some thing between 1 unit per tile and infinite unit per tile. Brings more strategy in play. Unit per tile can also be related to era. We can have a smaller cap early game and a larger cap late game.

 

[Monopoly]

Because from the point of view of gameplay the mechanics work very well. In enemy territory, they have the logistical advantage. It might not be "realistic", but who cares - in every Civ game time and distance scales are utterly demented, and complaining that an archer can fire "across a city" is missing the point.

OK. I'm not going to complain about archer range not scaling in Civ V. But having ranged archer in Civ V is completely due to one unit per tile rule. I think we can do better than that. In terms of enemy road, don't you think it adds to strategy to destroy your own road/bridge to slow an enemy advance? I love Civ IV, played 500+ hours. I'm just brainstorming ways to add to the game.