whats the best civ game

[Jimbo30]

Played them all, originally.

They are all great games and very little has changed, it's more been a refining issue. For that, I still consider Civ 3 to be one of the best games I've ever played.

Civ 4 fixed many of the infuriating flaws of Civ 3 but brought it's own too. I remember when Civ 4 was originally released, I thought it was too badly done and a step to far to be rescued.

I also thought that about Civ 3 however and although I shouldn't be surprised I am suprised to be playing Civ 4 (Warlords) again, almost a year since I last played it.

 

[King Flevance]

Civ3 AI couldn't/didn't take advantage of the many options the player had. For example: Armies, artillery,etc. So adding a butch of options which the AI couldn't handle kind of hurt both SMAC and Civ 3 for me. There were just too many options to totally cream the AI.
The best civ game I've played which gives the player a lot of options plus a good AI has to be Gal Civ 2. Yeah I know that's not in the Sid's civ series so I guess it will be civ4 for balance.

I agree about Gal Civ 2. I will probably play it today some now that I am back in town.

Yes the armies were an idea that may never be able to be balanced enough for an AI to fully use properly. However, I do not feel this same way with artillery. It would work almost exactly how it does now, but it just wouldn't "run forward" and must be guarded. I think the artillery system in 3 was needlessly thrown out. The promotion system is better than the army system but I think it sucks that they are soley for defensive purposes. I think if they really expect promotions to overtake the armies idea, they need to throw in more offensive promotions other than simply city raider. Like terrain attack promotions.

However, C3C has such an epic feel that CIV will never be able to recreate. The mere size of empires makes a game so fun.

Yeah, hundreds of cities that you developed in exactly the same way. Civ 4 lets you make meaningful decisions about the development of your cities (cottage or farm, heroic epic or national epic), but Civ 3 was mostly repeating the same build order in all your cities. This was a major improvement for Civ 4.

I do not unerstand where this comes in. Because all of my games hold the same basic idea behind them no matter what civ I play in 4. The current system added in a bunch of new tile improvements but they can have watermills back as far as I am concerned. I am almost willing to hand back the workshop, which is really no different than the old system where you could mine a grassland. The national wonders have a place that bests suits them once you figure out the purpose of your cities. (Having your cities hold a primary purpose was in 3 BTW it was just expanded upon in 4 by a decent amount at the cost of other things, namely military.)

In 4 I still "Mostly repeat the same build order in all my cities." So this was barely touched. This is coming from someone with a simply casual playstyle as well for the most part. The only REAL big changes I see are:

1) Civics - No more "best government" is great but they streamlined it in the end. Eventually they lock me down with the UN into using civics I dont want to use and I have no choice but to do it. I cannot even leave the UN. A great idea that fell short right before reaching its goal IMO.
2) Great People - An expansion of what they had developed in 3. I like the current system better but I still don't see why the GG was not put into the game from vanilla when it was he (in 3) who inspired the whole system. I like this expanded idea in the end, however.
3) Promotions - Good idea that need expanded upon more for a more offensive setup for you army. I personally would like to see them raise the cap-offs as well a little bit. But I mostly think it needs more aggressive promotions involving some terrains.
4) Specialists - They used to be a bother to me because you didn't see them until your city had went up in population for a while. But now you can focus your efforts a lot earlier.
5) Religion - Either do something with it or toss it out. Here is all religion does currently:

a) The AI bases a HUGE portion of its relations off of religion allowing the player to use religion to sway relations of other empires into their favor. The AI will always pick what religion holds the most benefits and never checks with it's relations as to what it picks. So the AI never uses it here for relations. Whereas the player has the ability to switch and a few turns later have an old neutral/annoyed civ lay its life on the line for something that only recently changed. And holds no real commitment on the part of the player. Here the player has now used religion in a way the AI will never be able to understand. So it is off balance here.
b) Rather than actually having to mess with harbors and trade routes and economic civics, just found a religion and build a shrine. You now have an instant economic backbone. This is rediculous. Sure, I don't mind having a little gold income come from religion it makes since but I don't think you should be able to base an economy off of the idea. This is unbalanced.


That about does it really as for new stuff. Promotions and Civics are a good start, but I think they need to be completed for a more balanced system. GP and specialists I like the idea of and it actually changes gameplay. Religion, well my explanation explains it as well as I could here - it is way off balance.

I do not see the game as any more diverse than it has ever previously been. We may have all new stuff but it we are doing the same stuff with it. As ThERat says, it is only diverse on a superficial level. I am going to cut it off here. I know this thread is dying but I am bored today and haven't figured out yet what I am going to do after I finish playing on the boards.Maybe play some Midnight Run 3.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

ive played every version and every expansion since Civ 2, and civ 4 is the best by a thousand miles. There are only 3 things which are worse in civ 4 than in previous civs:
1) The advisors just aren't as fun (remember civ 2 anyone?)

Yes! Bring back the Council.
"Ponder matters carefully, my lord, before you attack other civilizations."
"Let love and wine their play enjoy... No complaints, sire!" (The military adviser when really happy.)
"Wise men say a civilization needs entertainers to be really great... king."
"All the world marvels at our superior intellect, sire!"
"Let's do lunch, sir." (The economical adviser in modern times, when really happy.)
"My talents go to waste, sire! Go explore!"
Of course, the Council just complements the ordinary information screens, but ti does so in an extremely enjoyable way.

3) The palace screen. As I understand it they are working on a civ 2 style of this for the next expansion.

Is that true? Do you know that you're my hero? You're everything I'd want to be. But I do hope it will be the throne room from Civ 2, not the palace seen from the outside.

[

But these things are a speck of dust compared to the improved AI, the new economic system, more Great People and, above all, combat.

I agree, but I should like to see more goodies for builders and cultur mongers in the next XP; the warmongers got a lot of new items in the first one, and now it's our turn.

Öjevind

 

[King Flevance]

I agree, but I should like to see more goodies for builders and cultur mongers in the next XP; the warmongers got a lot of new items in the first one, and now it's our turn.

What did the warmongers get in your opinion?

I don't mean that in any in any other way than - I am simply curious.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

What did the warmongers get in your opinion?

I don't mean that in any in any other way than - I am simply curious.

The new leader traits which were great for warmongers but not for builders. The more aggressive attitude of AI civs. (I swear it is there.) The change so you need a level 5 unit to build Heroic Epic, though that is apparently going to be changed back to level 4 in the patch. The demand for a level 5 unit means that now you need to go to war to build it, and fight quite intensely, instead of getting the HE from fighting barabrians. The tremendously overpowered trebuchet, which makes capturing cities much easier. The Great Generals, which aggressive leaders get cheaper than peaceful leaders. Most of the new civs are warmongering civs, and the same is true of most of the new leaders and most of the scenarios. The vassal states contribute to a concquest/domination victory. The Great Wall generates more Great Generals inside your cultural borders. In fact, almost everything in Warlords was included to make warmongers happy.
Don't get me wrong - I certainly don't begrudge warmongers their fun. One of the greatest points about Civ is that you can play it in so many different ways. But I hate warmongering. I tried it several times and was good at it, but it was really boring. Kill, kill, kill. Backstab, backstab, backstab. More kill, kill, kill. Raze, raze, raze. (I'd better stop now.)

Öjevind

 

[atomicgopher]

When I first got CIV I was generally unimpressed after I got past the fancy graphics, and I've stuck with C3C for about a year now, and taught myself some modding to elimate the corruption. I have started playing CIV now, but the thing that I miss the most from C3C is the epic feeling. Every now and then I want a game thats going to take me a weeks worth of game time to complete. CIV on the huge map doest retain a bit of that epic feeling though.

 

[Drakan]

I think it is almost pointless to discuss this. I found out that people who really liked C3C (like mysef) do not really get into CIV.
However, people that liked Civ2 and didn't like Civ3 really like CIV. It's a pattern that has something to do with personal preference and will always exist.

Now, I would love if someone would rework C3C and improve it as TA Jones mentioned, most importantly
- teach the AI how to use armies (man I love armies, without them Civ is not Civ)
- rework the 'reputation' model as you can thrash your reputation unwillingly

However, C3C has such an epic feel that CIV will never be able to recreate. The mere size of empires makes a game so fun.

This is exactly how I see it. I liked more C3C than C4. And I still can not get over the childish graphics of C4.

There seems to be some preference pattern.

As a sidenote, this kinda resembles Democrats and Republicans and who is in office . There seems to be two great flows of opinion on this. Hopefully C5 will revert to the liking of those of us who prefer C3C to C4.

 

[TM Moot]

Civ I: A great introduction to the series, although I was a bit too young to fully appreciate it, and it was a little too complicated.

Civ II: It came at the right time. By the time I got the game, I had fully got to grips with the game concept and was able to fully appreciate it in all it's glory. How many hours I spent playing this I don't know.

Civ III: Massive disapointment. It wasn't really playable until Conquests was released, and even then, I didn't find it that much fun. I only ever completed a few games on it, I just couldn't get into it. It had great new ideas, but he game just wasn't fun.

Civ IV: By far the best Civ game. I have rediscovered my love for Civ that dissapeared with Civ III. Building on ideas introduced in Civ III, and introducing more, Civ IV is both innovative and fun. Several hours are again being lost to Civ.

Sums it up for me. Great intro with Civ I, spent hours and hours on Civ II, never really got into Civ III apart from the Scenarios, now enjoying Civ IV (but only following release of Warlords, wasn't hooked before that).

 

[Lepakko]

Civ 1 was great when it came out. I was too young at the time to understand all of it, but it was still enough to blow my mind. When I played it again some time ago, I found many things about it quite annoying (things such as no borders, need for the diplomat unit for diplomacy, no resource system), of course because I was used to these things in later civs. I wouldn't want to spend time playing it again, but in my book it's the most influential civ game.

Civ 2 rocked. It was so amazingly easy to create new scenarios and mods, it got me addicted right away. Again, when I played it again after a long pause, it felt totally incomplete. I'm probably just too used to the newer civs.

Civ 3 is the game with which I've spent most time, and for good reasons. In the beginning I wasn't so interested, but as I got Conquests and some of the great mods for it, it became something truly beautiful. I still can't play Vanilla Civ 3, because I have to compare it to the mods, which bring so much variety and playability that makes me such a fan for Civ 3.

As Civ 4 came out, it seemed great at the first glance, but somehow quickly became something I didnt want to see anymore. The features sounded good, but there were a couple of things that made me dislike the gaming experience (namely trading the smoothness of Civ 3 for graphics, making the map sizes smaller as well as the number of civs). I was hoping mods would make the situation better, and I was very happy to hear how moddable Civ 4 is, but it came to me as a surprise how rare good mods and conversions are in relation to Civ 3. It's logical; modifying Civ 4 is almost a day time job with lots of learning in areas of programming and/or modelling before you get there, but it seems to me that I'm not the only one yearning for truly good, playable mods for Civ 4 and at the same time being disappointed at the fact that things such as 3D-terrain and detailed leaderheads and units are, if not killing the modding community, at least restricting it to investing huge amounts of time to create good mods instead of doing it as a free time hobby to give pleasure to fellow players.

However, when I come back to Civ 3 after playing Civ 4 there are things that annoy me, for the same reasons as in Civ 1 and Civ 2; I'm searching for the features of Civ 4 and can't find them. The lack of things such as religion, smarter AI, better health/happiness system made me let go of Civ 3 and come to Civ 4, again, even though I now think it was a lot more satisfying playing Civ 3. I'm still hoping - and I also believe it will turn out that way - that in the end I'll find Civ 4 more fun to play than Civ 3.

However, as I now think of it, I did have hard time changing from Civ 1 to Civ 2. What I disliked then was the change from top-to-bottom view to isometric view. As I started playing Civ 4 I didn't like the change from isometric to top-to-bottom. In the same way I was disappointed how difficult it was to modify Civ 3 compared to Civ 2; no more could you change all the rules of the game with Notepad in one text file or draw new unit graphics with Paint Shop Pro, and I was sure Civ 3 was the end of good mods for Civilization. I guess I'm just attached to the old, disliking the new. Luckily it does seem to get better with time.

Still, the best Civ game for me would be Civ 4, but with bigger maps, more civilizations, faster playability and easier modability. This could include worse graphics, preferably less 3D. In fact it could be in ASCII Code but with these features I would be happy.

 

[Smidlee]

Civ2 had the best space race. I really wished civ4 would have went back to racing toward AC.

 

[Red Door]

Civ 1 - The original game deserves a shout-out.

Civ 2 - The most original of the games.

Civ 3 - The best, easily.

Civ 4 - The most uninspired piece of crap on the market, might as well be an RTS.

 

[lasdlt]

Civ II: I love this game. This is the game that got me started on the Sid Series. I played this game even after Civ III came out. It's amazing. I love this game, and I always will remember it for bringing me into the Series.

SMAC: This game was an awesome extension of the Civ series. I loved the idea of it, splitting humans along lines of ideology. It was dark and mysterious and the aspects of its gameplay, namely the visible terriroty lines live on in all future Civ incarnations.

Civ III: I didn't get this game until at least two years after it came out, but I'm glad I did! I played it so much, probably even more than Civ II. Eventually I found out my friend had it as well, so we started playing it over the internet (once PtW came out) and had a blast! I can remember staying up for hours on end playing this game.

Civ IV: This game has really revolutionized the whole Civ experience, really making it fun and different again. Right out of the box, my friend and I played this thing online and discovered all the new, kick-ass things in it. The Warlords expansion pack really adds a whole new chapter to it, as well.

Favorite overall: Civ III. It was the first one I played online with friends and expanded the Civ universe out beyond my home.

 

[spiralx]

Civ IV for me. Well, SMAC actually...

Civ I was something I spent far too long playing, same with Civ II. Both great games that kept me playing again and again. And SMAC was even better, superb game and great setting which had had tons of thought put into it. And so, when Civ III was on the horizon, I had it pre-ordered from America to ensure I got it as quickly as possible.

Sadly, Civ III sucked badly, and I remember just not being bothered finishing any games of it at all... something about it just seemed dull, you just kept on doing the same thing again and again... *yawn*

Civ IV however, rocks. Tons of new options and strategies, it's all pretty much well-balanced, they've removed pretty much all the annoyances they'd introduced in Civ III, and it looks so much nicer and has gone back to the non-isometric view of Civ I.

 

[Impartial, & VR]

I haven't tried CIV yet -- waiting for the Warlords patch, and a stretch of free time -- but for me it would be a toss-up between Civ II and Civ III.

To me, the original Civilization, path-breaking as it was, didn't sustain my interest because it didn't allow historical scenarios. It was the scenarios in Civ II that got me hooked originally, and most of the features of Civ II (notably in C3C) that I like better than Civ II are improvements to the functionality of the scenarios -- improvements in the diplomatic engine, for example, and the move to cultural borders. So C3C is my favorite version to date, but Civ II may have been the most exciting to me at the time.

I would say that the improvement from I to II was the biggest in the franchise, and III to IV seems to be the smallest, with 3D graphics being the main change, and a mixed blessing. However, this seems to be rejuvenating the fan base of Civ, which is good for everyone, and bringing back scripting (from Civ II) opens up new possibilities. Also with Warlords' scenario-worthy improvements to diplomacy and apparent AI fixes as well, I will definitely have to try out the patch and see what I think.

 

[Swedishguy]

What did the warmongers get in your opinion?

I don't mean that in any in any other way than - I am simply curious.

Let's see... mediocre that's the word! And the series has been more dragged down in the UU swamp. No more no less.

 

[bru]

Number 1 is my fav - nights of dragging myself off to bed at 4 in the morning. Total addiction.
But I have to say I have enjoyed each Civ and expansion pack equally. Each one has brought a refreshing view for me.

 

[Arlborn]

I played all.
I was really addicted to CIV3, a bit to CIV1, didnt like that much CIV2(dont ask me why) and now I'm really addicted to CIV4. So I go with CIV4 because for me it took away most of the annoying things in CIV3 and the things introduced are really nice! So many people I hear complaining about CIV4 only because it's "heavy" for the computer or so, that is just..Ah well each person has a different opnion no?

And CIV4 has some real nice mods. I only played CIV3 with mod I must ocnfess, that mod really famous of earth map that came with PlayTheWorld. And it was even more slower than the games I play now with CIV4 lol

And for who wants no 3D graphic..I would say you maybe have a slightly chance of getting a moddification that allows 2D graphics, but the whole game back to 2D in CIV5??? Dream on 0.o

 

[King Flevance]

Let's see... mediocre that's the word! And the series has been more dragged down in the UU swamp. No more no less.

I agree. I like the unique units but I don't credit them as only a war monger attribute myself. Of all the things listed I only view these as contributions to warmongers:

-The tremendously overpowered trebuchet, which makes capturing cities much easier. (1 unit. I doubt they are honeslty that much of a contribution to the entire game.)
-The Great Generals, which aggressive leaders get cheaper than peaceful leaders. (This is a real contribution, but as I always have claimed is one that should have been in from the start. As it was in 3.)
-Most of the new civs are warmongering civs, and the same is true of most of the new leaders and most of the scenarios. (Again, this was just addressing a lack of, not adding more.)

Everything else though I see as "stretching for claims". And these 3 were just throwing in what was missing in vanilla.

I am not pushing for a debate on the matter but I see Civ 4 and Civ 3 as essentially equal myself. Both playstyles are pretty monotone between the builder and the conquerer. Instead of Kill, kill, kill - you build, build, build. I play both styles on the flop when I play. But I think both aspects would benefit if war was given some tactics to it outside of promotions.

HOwever, enough of that and keeping in line with the thread, this is why I see:

#1 - 3&4 Where one lacks the other makes up.
#2 - 2 This game was crazy fun for a long time and I can still play it for hours.
#3 - 1 This game was great, but it is easy to see it was the start of them all. Many praises for it from me but we have evolved.

 

[binhthuy71]

CivII is the version that I played the most. CivIII was a mixed blessing. Civ IV is interesting in that while it's superficially more playable, you now need to do a lot of micromanagement to create and maintain specialized cities if you want to win big.

So I don't win big.