Why is CIV4 still the best civ game?

[s.bernbaum]

Thanks for the advice, i guess now it‘s the best time to try Civ4, as the Complete Edition is on sale at Steam right now.

Definitely give it a try. Though i don‘t know when i will be able to actually play it, due to Reallife, but when i get the chance, i won‘t hesitate asking.

Today i only would like to ask for one or two need-to-have mod recommendations? Civ6 for instance is unplayable without mods for me.

Oh and Marathon speed is what i always play, even in Civ5 or 6.

Play the Beyond the Sword (BTS) expansion. Add the BUG Mod to it. BUG does not change play at all but enhances the interface so you can play more easily, which removes several tedious ways to use interface without it. A lot of people also like to use BAT which includes BUG but does make some minor changes in game play. I prefer plain BUG. I also almost always play Marathon.

 

[Charky]

Civ 4 has squares and not stupid hexes.

Its feels like a war game. Big militaries. Bigger maps. More cities. Does not feel as dumbed down. Easier to learn and manage the resources and city placements. I dont have to play rubics cubes with my units to get the right one to the front line.

The eXploration phase is great fun, especially on ultra massive maps. I want to manage an empire, not a collection of city states.

The AI could be improved, especially the diplomacy.

The following civ games just felt so dumbed down to me. They didnt really add anything to improve the gameplay, unless you wanted a scaled back easy to play version. Reminds me of the remake of Xcom before the Long War mod.

 

[TheBirdMan]

Today i only would like to ask for one or two need-to-have mod recommendations?

As always I can recomend R:I (Realism:Invictus). The newest release is ver. 3.61 from 24nd Dec 2023. Look for it here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/page-500 , where "our" R:I Curator Walter Hawkwood has posted partly an overwiev for the latest patch partly a link, where you can get the full mod with latest updates.

 

[TheBirdMan]

After the first look at Civ7 gameplay, I think I will stay with RI for another few years...

I'm not surprised - not at all .

 

[Core Imposter]

Without reading this thread, the answer is still the same and always will be. It goes back to Einstein. Time and space. Civ IV was born in that time and space when the goal was to make the best game. Then came the suits. The goal is henceforth to make the most money.

If they accidentally made a game as good as IV again, someone would get fired for it. They do not want to make games that people will still be playing decades later.

But it's okay. I still have Civ IV. On disk and backed up.

 

[mycophobia]

Civ 4 represents the result of 15 years of refinement of a genius concept by people who really love the game. Civ 5 represents a total from-the-ground-up rebuild initially guided by a vision that boils down to "I really like Panzer General, and I want diplomacy to be as vague and frustrating as possible." From there through Civ 7 this idea wasn't so much refined as halfheartedly fixed up with other ideas of varying quality kind of randomly pasted onto it. They're effectively two completely different series, and the first one ended with 4.

 

[Core Imposter]

One day game AI will have improved to allow them to restart the Civ4ever series and it will be a dream come true. But some other company will have nailed it first. Someone will crack the AI issue. It's a matter of time. Maybe another 20 years.

When Sid was talking, I saw, or imagined, a haunted look in his eyes. I believe there is hope in the world.

 

[Fippy]

I'm not confident that things will change again for gaming in general..
they make more $$$ with games like Civ 6&7 if they cater them towards a casual player base.
And that crowd has become huge..consoles, mobile, social media etc.

Few peoples are interested in planning & working for gains in games anymore.
They want achievements, flashy things on their screen..a fast feeling of success. Not pondering "how do i deal with a Shaka attack". Which improvements should that city get.

There are some genres with more recent releases that almost look like classics.
Adventure games for example, i recently played Kathy Rain and it wasn't so different from playing something like Gabriel Knight 30 years ago.
But with a big name franchise like Civ i have no hope anymore, it's all about money for them now.

 

[Sephi]

I'm not confident that things will change again for gaming in general..
they make more $$$ with games like Civ 6&7 if they cater them towards a casual player base.
And that crowd has become huge..consoles, mobile, social media etc.

Few peoples are interested in planning & working for gains in games anymore.
They want achievements, flashy things on their screen..a fast feeling of success. Not pondering "how do i deal with a Shaka attack". Which improvements should that city get.

There are some genres with more recent releases that almost look like classics.
Adventure games for example, i recently played Kathy Rain and it wasn't so different from playing something like Gabriel Knight 30 years ago.
But with a big name franchise like Civ i have no hope anymore, it's all about money for them now.

Have you played Hearts of Iron IV? That game is absolute strategy hardcore, harder to learn than civ4, arguably a bit easier to master though. It has about as many players as civ6 on steam. There are other strategy games like old world that follow the legacy of civ4. Lots of players love deep strategy games.

 

[Core Imposter]

I would love to see the Civ IV old guard here do a poll on what someone should play if they ever decide to move on. Although I will probably just do the
RI mod. I might try Civ VII years from now when it's fully developed.

There are still things I haven't done in Civ IV. I have just made my first great medic for example. There is always something else.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Have you played Hearts of Iron IV? That game is absolute strategy hardcore, harder to learn than civ4, arguably a bit easier to master though. It has about as many players as civ6 on steam. There are other strategy games like old world that follow the legacy of civ4. Lots of players love deep strategy games.

I played III but not IV, because it looked more sandboxy and "Civ-like," when I prefer that game series for its gritty realism. Would you say that it holds up in that regard? RI for Civ IV is my favorite game by quite a margin, but while that has a nice realistic and wonderfully polished historically immersive feel and excellent strategic depth, it's still candidly not trying to be a plausible simulation, a niche where I think hardcore wargames shine. So, I never even really bothered with HoI4 for that reason and occasionally play HoI3 when I'm in that kind of a mood. If you've played the previous game, how would you compare them, both in terms of fun and with respect to feeling like a realistic simulation of World War 2?

 

[Sephi]

I played III but not IV, because it looked more sandboxy and "Civ-like," when I prefer that game series for its gritty realism. Would you say that it holds up in that regard? RI for Civ IV is my favorite game by quite a margin, but while that has a nice realistic and wonderfully polished historically immersive feel and excellent strategic depth, it's still candidly not trying to be a plausible simulation, a niche where I think hardcore wargames shine. So, I never even really bothered with HoI4 for that reason and occasionally play HoI3 when I'm in that kind of a mood. If you've played the previous game, how would you compare them, both in terms of fun and with respect to feeling like a realistic simulation of World War 2?

I have not played HOI3. Only played 4 because a friend wanted to play it in MP. To me it feels more like a sandbox and less like a simulation but that is maybe my playstyle. I tried weird non historical stuff like conquering europe as turkey or south america as argentina or declaring independence as india. But I liked that you had to plan well in advance to execute your ideas and the tech trees I feel offered a lot more choice than in unmodded civ.

 

[AspiringScholar]

I have not played HOI3. Only played 4 because a friend wanted to play it in MP. To me it feels more like a sandbox and less like a simulation but that is maybe my playstyle. I tried weird non historical stuff like conquering europe as turkey or south america as argentina or declaring independence as india. But I liked that you had to plan well in advance to execute your ideas and the tech trees I feel offered a lot more choice than in unmodded civ.

Oh, ok. Yeah, that is the kind of stuff that I can't really take too seriously in a game sincerely trying to model the world at the time of the conflict, but to each their own!

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Honestly HOI4 is fun but it's completely off the rails in terms of implementation. A lot of the design decisions built into the core of the game such as the focus tree system only really make sense for a game that is intended to be a history simulator with minimum deviation (like if you play as Germany you can actually win level of deviation). But than at some point along the lines they started adding ahistorical paths. And once they realized just how insanely popular these were they just leaned into it full bore. But the game it self, and especially the focus tree system are not really good for that.

Really, in terms of gameplay you can clearly see the turning point at Together for Victory. That was the last DLC that sort of went with the flow of the actual original intent of the game.

 

[May Day 10]

I was really hopeful that Civ 7 would get back to the roots of the franchise, and maybe (long shot I know) be a more direct sequel to Civ IV. No avail.

I remember how much I looked forward to Civ 5. I preordered all the goodies. Played 1 game. On all Civs, I struggled to win on just average difficulties. On Civ 5, I was rolling in my first game, obviously making major mistakes that didn't seem to matter. I lost interest in the first game, and never picked it up again. Too video-gamey. I had a similar experience with 6, however, played it quite some time after launch. It didn't captivate me. Civ 7 does not look promising, IMO. I will say that 1upt really is a big factor. The prospect of building (or facing) limitless armies (if I so wanted to) was a nice part of old Civs for me.


I would love for a Civ IV remastering or something like that. Or maybe Paradox improves on Millenia. Paradox games are the most like Civ IV IMO. Everything is based on modifiers, and everything you do has a cost and a benefit. They don't quite scratch that itch though. I think I may go back and play some Civ IV for awhile. I really have a lot of enjoyment left in that game, as I never really got that GOOD at it.


As far as Hearts of Iron IV goes... its very Civ IV-like for the first half of the game through the build-up to the war. However, it gets a bit unraveled once the war starts and loses its fun as a builder. It turns into a political/war game, and eventually everything just gets tied into a knot.

 

[Quintillus]

IV is the most moddable Civ game (without game extensions like the Civ2 ToT Patch Project or the Civ3 C3X mod - and probably even allowing for those), and it has a large library of popular mods.

IV is also the last of the Civ games (so far) with an AI that can make warfare interesting and challenging.

And it has among the most depth of the Civ games, though I think one can make a case for VI giving it a run for its money when it comes to peacetime pursuits.

It doesn't look like Firaxis is going to lean heavily into the warfare side in VII, although they're doubling the size of the AI team and loosening the 1 UPT mechanic, so I think there's a good chance that warfare will be less dull than in V and VI. Will it be as moddable? Doubtful, but we don't know anything yet. Similarly with depth - from what I've read it sounds like they might scale it back a bit from VI, but we don't know enough yet to say.

And perhaps the expectation shouldn't be that VII will be "IV, but better", but "another fun, but different, game in the same genre". One of the things I like about the Civ series is that there are three iterations (III, IV, and VI) that I enjoy playing, which makes it more interesting than if everything were so iterative that there was no point in playing anything older than VI.

Don't get me wrong, I still think Firaxis should release a "Civ IV Remastered" or equivalent with 64-bit support and various related upgrades. But I can see why they aren't choosing exactly that as Civ VII.
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I've played far more HOI4 than HOI3. HOI4 can get a bit silly unless you turn on at least some of the options for historical choices (you can turn them all on with one click, in which things will fairly closely follow history). I tend to at least have the major powers and several of the moderate powers set to follow historical decisions. That said, I prefer that level of control in how historical you want it to HOI3, which IMO railroads you into following history. HOI4 also has huge improvements in quality-of-life, especially if you are controlling a large nation with a large army. Put simply, I could not go back to HOI3 due to the level of micromanagement required.

 

[mycophobia]

just a re-done EXE for Civ IV as a patch would be nice. even better would be the source, though I can imagine there may be third party license issues with that

 

[Krugi]

From the few games I've played (I don't have any "expansions"), Civ 6 Deity is basically horse rush solitaire. Strategy in that game isn't a function of AIs / map / civ / leader traits (unless you lack horses, I suppose, but you will still want to rush in the Classical Age). After taking out a neighbor, you will always snowball into further conquests with the subsequent tier of tech; what remains is purely a micro exercise. By contrast, Civ 4 Deity AI is a real threat to win the game and requires good macro to take down.

Army composition makes for interesting decisions in Civ 4 (mainly in the ratio of siege to line infantry). 1UPT means army composition is dictated by what fits on the map in Civ 6: a frontline carpet plus however many ranged attackers are covered by it. A single battering ram or observation balloon outperforms having none to such a degree that it is usually foolish to go without one, yet the second one usually adds nothing.

I think I've never lost a Great General/Admiral race in Civ 6, either, which is disproportionate to their value. Imagine if Civ 4 AIs never teched Music.

Navies are too strong in Civ 6. They are already deceptively strong in Civ 4; Combat promotions go a much longer way on ships at tech parity than on land units because of how few bonuses there are in play; the East Indiaman is sometimes disparaged for being a ship UU but is IMHO the strongest UU on non-Pangaea maps outside of the absurdly-busted Quechua (although this is more true in MP, because frigates are on the Steel line anyway, but it's still good to skip on frigates for stack cover entirely so you can ferry more units in one go); Combustion gives the biggest military edge from a single technology in the game, but of course it's balanced by pure navies being unable to take cities in Civ 4. No such restriction in Civ 6 on missile cruisers + Great Admiral + Venetian Arsenal (the only wonder worth building on Deity), which will capture every coastal city on the map.

Empire management. In Civ 4, there is the whip and all it entails: short-term vs. long-term potential, and identifying the right pay-off for your (localized) potential. Specialists did the same thing. Again, micro and macro are hard to distinguish here, as it should be. Civ 6 has rush-buying for global potential only, which is at least something, but due to the inflation mechanic meant to rubberband "wide" strategies, most cities are going to take 20+ turns to produce a single unit/building and you can do nothing about it. The 1f:2h:3c balance / trade-offs don't really exist in Civ 6 due to the same inflation; most cities post-conquest just cannot afford to build districts, which is where all the valuable mana (used for everything) comes from. Food is just a stepping-stone in Civ 6 instead of the main currency; production if anything is king but only because it converts into mana: upgrades, rush-buying and conquest are the main source of production later; tech and purple tech are obviously important to stay ahead in, too.

Writing all this admittedly still makes me want to play Civ 6 again, which is lizard brain

 

[Orango Nash]

Civ 4 represents the result of 15 years of refinement of a genius concept by people who really love the game. Civ 5 represents a total from-the-ground-up rebuild initially guided by a vision that boils down to "I really like Panzer General, and I want diplomacy to be as vague and frustrating as possible." From there through Civ 7 this idea wasn't so much refined as halfheartedly fixed up with other ideas of varying quality kind of randomly pasted onto it. They're effectively two completely different series, and the first one ended with 4.

More random ramblings on this...

Just played my annual couple of games of Civ 4 and have to agree. Following after a run through of Civ 5 and a Civ 6 game, after not playing any Civ for over a year, it's like seeing the series with fresh eyes (after playing them all since Civ 1). And I noticed more strongly than ever, how different Civ 5 is to what went before. From Civs 1 to 4, the basic idea is refined, mechanics improved, the GUI improved. Each starts it's design where the previous left off and refines further, changing what were generally perceived as weak points. Also taking advantage of improving computer technology. But it feels to me that Civ 5 dumped this approach. As if Civ 5 threw Civ 4 away and started again. I think Civ 5 is "OK", not terrible, but still, at times it feels like Civilization for people who disliked Civs 1- 4. So it's no suprised there is this divide between many Civ Fanatics. Those who liked the series up to Civ 4 and those who live Civ 5 and 6 (and will lap up 7), but have no interest in the first 4. It's like instead of getting a focus group of Civ 4 fans and asking them what they liked and didn't like in Civ 4, they sat down with a bunch of gamers who all hated the Civ series up till then and asked them "what can we do to perhaps get you interested in a Civ game?" Civ 6 does this even more: "make it look like a mobile phone game".

Why this happened, to what level it was deliberate and what level was incompetence, I have no idea. Probably many factors. It really struck me though, just how different Civ 5 is. As if Civ 4 was a failure! It clearly wasn't, so I'd guess it was more that the designers of 5 didnt' have a deep enough understanding of the series till then. Yet despite that, they stumbled upon a formula that worked and brought millions of new Civ fans in ... while turning thousands of existing fans away.

The funny thing - I've played loads of Panzer General and Panzer Corps over the years. Played PC2 a lot recently. Also games like Order of Battle and Unity of Command. I have no problem with 1UPT. I really like it in those tightly focussed tactical wargames. 1UPT is an abstraction that works well in tactical wargames on maps of small areas. I hate it on the global scale of large scale, global strategy games like Civ, though. Thought I'd add this just to show it's not that I have some irrational hatred of 1UPT! I like it. I just don't believe it is the right solution for every map in every game. And definitely not the one for a Civ style 4X game.

Back to my recent play throughs of Civ4. I do believe Civ 4 has issues that needed improving. I have no problem with stacks, but when the AI turns up with stacks of something like 100+ units, the game does drag! There is a middle ground betweem 100 units slugging it out and 1 unit, though. I much prefer the Civ 4 AI to both 5 and 6. It's not perfect, but it does behave mostly coherently. The characters like Montezuma and Tokugawa, the different ways they play, are still fun to this day. Again, the diplomacy of Civ 4 needed refining, not throwing away and made bafflingly absurd and frustrating. Similar the road and rail building spam. It gets a bit monotonous by the end, but needs refinfing, not rejecting. Apparently Civ 7 will not have builders at all. Since Civ 4, this is how anything that casual players find a little awkward is dealt with. Take it out.

BTW On Stream achievements, it says 34% of players of Civ 6 have declared a war. Perhaps this is a clue as to who the game is now aimed at? Players who want to lay down 5 or 6 cities, then click end turn for a few hours until winning. This is how Civ 6 feels to me - though I am one of the minority of naughty warmongers who has actually declared a war!

Anyway, I totally agree with your comment that Civ 5 is a completely different series. Playing the games now, after even more years to let change settlle, made this clearer than ever. It's not just "old people" either. My children loved Civ 4 and both still occasionally play it to this day, preferring it to Civ 5. And neither has any interest in Civ 6 at all.

I agree with those that say a Civ 4 remaster would be excellent. Well, I'd be delighted with a remaster of any of Civs 1- 4! Honestly, any of them remastered would be better, deeper, more interesting games than Civ 5 & 6 .And 7 most likely. because if they reintroduce any of the things that made Civ 4 great, it is likely that it will annoy the new fans of Civ 5 & 6.

 

[Luke1195]

Back to my recent play throughs of Civ4. I do believe Civ 4 has issues that needed improving. I have no problem with stacks, but when the AI turns up with stacks of something like 100+ units, the game does drag! There is a middle ground betweem 100 units slugging it out and 1 unit, though.

For UNIT_CANNOT_MOVE_INTO

use this code to limit stacks of doom. (This code limits to 16 units per stack)
# <---------- begin unit stack changes ----------------->
myPlot = gc.getMap().plot(iPlotX, iPlotY)
myUnit = gc.getPlayer(ePlayer).getUnit(iUnitId)
if(myPlot.getNumUnits() >= 16 and myPlot.getNumVisibleEnemyDefenders(myUnit) < 1):
return True
# <---------- end unit stack changes ----------------->

My 32 Civs mod I just released has this included and more!