Why is CIV4 still the best civ game?

[aieeegrunt]

That's why I've been into moderate retrogaming for a while now. You know, DOOM mods, OPENXCOM etc. The spirit of the old days is still alive and well, the money just isn't behind it.

Once I am Civved out Unreal Tournament is next on the menu

Oh Lord gonna have to jump through those hoops to get a controller to work with UT again

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Once I am Civved out Unreal Tournament is next on the menu

Oh Lord gonna have to jump through those hoops to get a controller to work with UT again

I was not even aware you could play it with a controller. I mean, it's a shooter. Why would you?
This said I will admit that I was always more of a Quake 3 Arena sort of person.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I was not even aware you could play it with a controller. I mean, it's a shooter. Why would you?
This said I will admit that I was always more of a Quake 3 Arena sort of person.

Playing FPS’s with a mouse and keyboard causes me rapid wrist strain, which is why I didn’t do it much till Halo happened

I caused a brief renaissance of Unreal on xbox live by hosting a server for UT3

I carried my Unreal Championship 2 disc with me for almost two decades waiting for it to be backwards compatible on xbox live, and then it happened!!!!

 

[valerislysander]

So my first ever civ was civ5 base game and I was very new to strategy games in general so I only played on very low diff levels for 100hr or so. I then got civ6 which i truly got the next turn bug and have 1000 hours in.
Ive since gone back and played more of 5 and recently played a bunch of civ4 (after initially being put off by the UI/Graphics).

So I find the comparisons between the games very interesting. Personally from what I can see is that 4,5,6 all have pros and cons and are superb games in there own right. However I see a lot of bashing of 5 and 6 from players who love 4 and threads like this that state civ4 is the best civ game even now.

Civ4 is superb but honestly its not a better game than 6.

Combat is very simplisitc compared to 5/6 which I suppose the AI is better at but as a player its pretty boring. Mass out the same untit in one stack, go to city. Take city bashing the right mouse button done. Really not as satisfying as 5/6 combat.
City management is fun in 4, better than 5 but in 6 the terrain is much more interesting with district/wonder placement. In 4 you then basically spam cottages in a few cities, spam mines in a production city etc.
I like the commerce mechanic. Makes balancing your economy much more challenging and fun. Compared to 6 where gold comes very easy and then mid game you start to buy everything up.
UI - I hear so much that civ6 UI is terrible. For me 4 is horrible UI. Took me ages to find things and work out what was going on - much wiki reading. I get its a 2005 game so a different era and so I reckon if you played it back then you were used to it but in 2022 its not a better UI at all.
Civics - Civ6 is better and a lot more interesting at timing things but its the same concept 4 had so I like it. I didnt like 5 where you essentially had to lock yourself into a civic path and never change.
Tech - Tech tree in 4 is far better and more interesting compared to 6. 5 is decent as well and i think its because in 6 they moved a lot of things to the civics tree which wattered it down a lot. I usually use mods to improve it in 6.
Religion- This is very well done in Civ4. I like the diplomatic consequences as well as the less micro version of civ6s religion.

Overall for me Civ6 is still more fun but there is a lot to like about 4 and its been interesting learning how to play it. You can see lots of things that moved from 4 to 6 and then were devleoped further there and overall i think both are better than 5 which seemed under developed in many areas.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

For your UI complaints you have to remember that very few if anyone still plays CIV4 without the BUG mod which is a massive UI overhaul. So when we are comparing 5 and 6 to 4 we are actually comparing CIV4BTS+BUG to them. Without BUG the vanilla CIV UI does indeed leave much to be desired.

 

[aieeegrunt]

So my first ever civ was civ5 base game and I was very new to strategy games in general so I only played on very low diff levels for 100hr or so. I then got civ6 which i truly got the next turn bug and have 1000 hours in.
Ive since gone back and played more of 5 and recently played a bunch of civ4 (after initially being put off by the UI/Graphics).

So I find the comparisons between the games very interesting. Personally from what I can see is that 4,5,6 all have pros and cons and are superb games in there own right. However I see a lot of bashing of 5 and 6 from players who love 4 and threads like this that state civ4 is the best civ game even now.

Civ4 is superb but honestly its not a better game than 6.

Combat is very simplisitc compared to 5/6 which I suppose the AI is better at but as a player its pretty boring. Mass out the same untit in one stack, go to city. Take city bashing the right mouse button done. Really not as satisfying as 5/6 combat.
City management is fun in 4, better than 5 but in 6 the terrain is much more interesting with district/wonder placement. In 4 you then basically spam cottages in a few cities, spam mines in a production city etc.
I like the commerce mechanic. Makes balancing your economy much more challenging and fun. Compared to 6 where gold comes very easy and then mid game you start to buy everything up.
UI - I hear so much that civ6 UI is terrible. For me 4 is horrible UI. Took me ages to find things and work out what was going on - much wiki reading. I get its a 2005 game so a different era and so I reckon if you played it back then you were used to it but in 2022 its not a better UI at all.
Civics - Civ6 is better and a lot more interesting at timing things but its the same concept 4 had so I like it. I didnt like 5 where you essentially had to lock yourself into a civic path and never change.
Tech - Tech tree in 4 is far better and more interesting compared to 6. 5 is decent as well and i think its because in 6 they moved a lot of things to the civics tree which wattered it down a lot. I usually use mods to improve it in 6.
Religion- This is very well done in Civ4. I like the diplomatic consequences as well as the less micro version of civ6s religion.

Overall for me Civ6 is still more fun but there is a lot to like about 4 and its been interesting learning how to play it. You can see lots of things that moved from 4 to 6 and then were devleoped further there and overall i think both are better than 5 which seemed under developed in many areas.

The biggest problem I have with Civ6 is that after the base game there was clearly little to no playtesting, balancing and bugfixing done. With the exception of Barbarian clans the new modes are broken and unbalanced and the AI cannot handle any of it

 

[D64]

I'll admit to enjoying the worldwide wargaming aspects of Civ4 more than the rest. That's my bias.

With that in mind, the CIV series has always violated basic wargame principles of scale - y'know, like it taking years to march a few hundred miles. I know that for play-balance, it's hard to avoid scaling issues, but 5 and esp. 6 make it worse, not better. The elimination of stacking in 5 did the series in for me right there. I know people complain about stacks of doom - but that's how battles were typically won: you concentrate your forces and go to work. I dearly wish 5 or 6 had introduced logistics and supply rules (or zooming in on combats) instead of ludicrously deciding that only a few thousand guys could fit in an area of hundreds of square miles. Then 6 introduced archers who can shoot arrows for miles, and that was it for me. The tile optimization and religious "battles" did nothing for me either. Ah, well... I like 4. I'm happy it exists.

 

[Zombie Horde]

I have just bought and installed civ 4 this week! (i know don't hate me for being late) also coming from playing all the other versions first including civnet.

With Civ 2 i sunk a stupid amount of time into back in the day seeing as it was on playstation 1 and i could whack it on the big TV in the living room, but Civ 3 was my favourite and felt like id fell into a wormhole with it's fancy animated graphics and gameplay so i was very pleased to see civ 4 had improved on this and not totally wiped the format clean like in civ 6.

I can already see civ 4 being the game that i will be play from here till i die, the detail, gameplay and modding are second to none and is set in stone in my ultimate replayables list along with legend type games such as monopoly, chess and playing cards ....it is that good.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I have just bought and installed civ 4 this week! (i know don't hate me for being late) also coming from playing all the other versions first including civnet.

With Civ 2 i sunk a stupid amount of time into back in the day seeing as it was on playstation 1 and i could whack it on the big TV in the living room, but Civ 3 was my favourite and felt like id fell into a wormhole with it's fancy animated graphics and gameplay so i was very pleased to see civ 4 had improved on this and not totally wiped the format clean like in civ 6.

I can already see civ 4 being the game that i will be play from here till i die, the detail, gameplay and modding are second to none and is set in stone in my ultimate replayables list along with legend type games such as monopoly, chess and playing cards ....it is that good.

Oh boy get the Realism Invictus mode, it’s like Civ4 on steroids

 

[Zombie Horde]

Oh boy get the Realism Invictus mode, it’s like Civ4 on steroids

I've got it already on my data bank drive ready to play, just trying these 4 first before any others, trying not to get to giddy with all the choices then any other full game mods for civ4 i play next will feel like me buying a new game of a franchise i adore.

Had a play on these for 200 turns each - Star trek and it's spin offs - Caveman 2 cosmos - Dune revival VIP - but i am absolutely loving Fall from heaven WOW what a mod , some serious thought and work has gone into that and has also got my brain fired up.

What with that and other mods for civ4 i now want some crazy versions to be made and might even have a dabble myself, on my hitlist so far is The expanse using final frontier base, GTA vice world, a simpsons type one or cartoon one with various civs being different cartoons (homer vs Peter), a crazy horror one with classic monsters frankie etc, a resident evil one, battle star galactica or a mashup with all the bygone scifi shows like babylon 5, firefly, buck rogers etc as civs, the witcher, elder scrolls.

The main one though i would try to make and make well is a fallout one, they tried on civ 5 with a few mods here and there but they were disjointed and felt half arsed but still a decent play through once you added all the relevant mods but felt empty somehow .

 

[BigThor120]

Put simply what happened is that the gaming industry moved away from the passion driven developers who wanted to make a great game to the profit driven model of earn as much money as possible at any cost.

And those two goals are fundamentally opposite. You see that in all industries. Just look at all the all time classic movies that didn't make a huge hit at the box office or compare the profit margin on junk food (which is literally poison) to an actual restaurant.

Most games produced by big companies these days including civ5 and later are junk food. They exist to appeal to as many people as possible at the expense of quality. And their purpose is not to be great games to be remembered It's to be bought by as many people as possible, played for a short while and than discarded as they move on to the next game and next purchase. Instant gratification with no staying power.

And it does not matter that the game is no good in the long run because in the long run you'll be selling them the next game or the next or the one after that. Indeed you don't want them to keep playing your game 20 years later because that means they aren't buying the 20 new games you will be releasing each of those years. The objective for such a game is not to be a classic that will last for ages but to make you play it just long enough for the legally mandated refund period to expire.

These are excellent points. Literally one of the best write-ups explaining the downfalls of the modern video game industry that I have ever seen. Well done.

Another example of this would be modern RPG’s. The classic games such as Baldur’s Gate 2, and Morrowind were artistic masterpieces that were driven by a desire to make the best possible gaming experience for the end user. In stark contrast to that, consider the modern RPG’s such as Dragon Age Inquisition — An utterly soulless and boring experience that was obviously just a pure money grab.

A return to the old ways of developing video games would certainly be a welcome change, indeed. It is because of these reasons that I support small, indie game studios as much as I can, rather than the cash grabbing corporate elites that aren’t even actual gamers, such as Electronic Arts and their ilk.

 

[MassRiflemen]

On stock settings, CIV 4 is the best civilization game.

Turn on agressive AI and no tech trading and play the difficulty level in which you lose 80% of the games and CIV 4 becomes the best game ever made.

 

[gavenkoa]

Turn on agressive AI and no tech trading

People reported that aggressive AI cripples AI development, makes games easier.

 

[TheBirdMan]

People reported that aggressive AI cripples AI development, makes games easier.

I can confirm that.

Even in the RI mod I always use - which is modified so well, that you almost think it is a brand new release of the BtS expansion (well it is actually - at least kind of) - I had to turn off that feature and restart my last game - simply because 5 of my "selected" AI opponents had been destroyed by the aggressive natives even before the game reached year 0. That was "just too much" for my opinion.

 

[gavenkoa]

RI mod

Is it Realism Invictus mod?

 

[Plains-Cow]

Put simply what happened is that the gaming industry moved away from the passion driven developers who wanted to make a great game to the profit driven model of earn as much money as possible at any cost.

And those two goals are fundamentally opposite. You see that in all industries. Just look at all the all time classic movies that didn't make a huge hit at the box office or compare the profit margin on junk food (which is literally poison) to an actual restaurant.

Most games produced by big companies these days including civ5 and later are junk food. They exist to appeal to as many people as possible at the expense of quality. And their purpose is not to be great games to be remembered It's to be bought by as many people as possible, played for a short while and than discarded as they move on to the next game and next purchase. Instant gratification with no staying power.

And it does not matter that the game is no good in the long run because in the long run you'll be selling them the next game or the next or the one after that. Indeed you don't want them to keep playing your game 20 years later because that means they aren't buying the 20 new games you will be releasing each of those years. The objective for such a game is not to be a classic that will last for ages but to make you play it just long enough for the legally mandated refund period to expire.

This is the correct take. In a world where the "new thing" is always the "best thing," where taking a temporary financial loss in order to make a better product long-term is literally illegal if it lowers stakeholder value, there's no wonder why newer games are churned out faster than ever before.

 

[Patine]

I have recently installed civ 6, to play hot seat with my SO, it feels so empty and soulless. What happened to the civ series after civ 4 was it a financial flop?

Decisions feel important in civ 4, in the newer game I can just leave all the choices to the adviser.

A very loaded title question?

 

[ArchGhost]

Put simply what happened is that the gaming industry moved away from the passion driven developers who wanted to make a great game to the profit driven model of earn as much money as possible at any cost.

it doesn't have anything to do with passion vs. profitability. Those small devs literally don't exist anymore or are forced to use things like free-to-play models to even get market share. The entire video game industry monetized heavily after the success of online multiplayer, with heavy investment from tech companies like Microsoft and the sudden need to please investing shareholders. So much money was being put into it, after games became a proven commodity after a couple decades, that it blew the entire thing up.

The core issue is instead of mass appeal. No one on the dev end cares how crap or not the game is as long as it can be forcibly marketed to make record profits. You do that by casting as wide a net a possible and spending as little time developing as possible to implement in-built obsolescence, creating the streamlined hell that is companies like Ubisoft or Activision and dumbing down the product whether intentional or not.

And I couldn’t even be bothered to finish the Infinite campaign because it was so painfully obvious that they threw away everything distinct about Halo in order to chase yesterday’s trends.

Unfortunately, Halo was long gone already by H4, arguably even Reach before it. Ironically they were trying to ride CoD's coattails, the franchise that muscled Halo out. CoD4 was a phenom that upset H3's grip in shooters, not to mention the huge success of the sequel, and by the time Black Ops came out, Reach had no chance at all.

 

[Daniel Boone]

I would say that is because Civ IV actually gives you a challenge. Civ VI might look pretty and have loads of content, but the bottom line is the AI, and Civ IV is much superior in that regard.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Is it Realism Invictus mod?

It is yes.


An updated version will be released within a couple of month or so.

Much stuff is already pre-released via the SVN, so it can be tested properly by many regular users of the RI-mod (or by anyone else after a download of the latest SVN-release). Anyone "just" interested on what's going on in general can read more here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/