Why is CIV4 still the best civ game?

[mycophobia]

Honestly framing Civ 4 in the way I did in that post doesn't give it enough credit. I watched most of Sullla's Civ 3 playthrough he has on YouTube recently and it hadn't occurred to me until then that there's still a lot of Civ 1 in it, a lot of really dumb stuff that got completely rethought in 4. But the way 4 did things is to keep the spirit, the essence, of the rules in place but make them work in a much more logical and fun way, it didn't tear everything down and start anew. Originally in my mind Civ 2>3 was the big jump but on reconsideration it's actually 3>4; it's a pretty remarkable product on its own, not merely another incremental step.

 

[Krugi]

Civ 5 was designed by a modder who had made a total conversion mod for Civ 4 (Final Frontier) that looked cool but was very much out of balance and the AI couldn't play it. Ominous.

It also apparently wanted to be Rhye's and Fall, such as with the whole "small empires should be able to compete with large ones" idea Shafer had that is completely out of whack with what the 4X genre intends, but very much in keeping with RFC (which is more like a Paradox game from the timeline where they weren't on steady and precipitous decline ever since EU2/HOI2). Sometimes I think sampsa is right that "the worst game mechanic in Civ 4 is modding", but I admit I like Rhye's vision a lot; Civ 5 fails because it is an unholy mixing of the 4X/"classic" Civ and RFC fabrics.

If the Civ 6 AI wasn't so utterly incompetent, it would be a better game than Civ 4. I guess you could still derive challenge from SP by competing for finish dates etc., but Deity AIs being piñatas after T80 or so and unable to defend against early attacks (and subsequently against every attack, because somehow you'll have an effortless tech lead over them all game) simply spoils the fun of planning for me. It's like these absurd HOF Marathon Quechua rush games. "...who can care / for a world of omnipotent vision / if nothing is monogrammed there." (A bit misapplied. Forgive me.)

 

[AspiringScholar]

It also apparently wanted to be Rhye's and Fall, such as with the whole "small empires should be able to compete with large ones" idea Shafer had that is completely out of whack with what the 4X genre intends, but very much in keeping with RFC (which is more like a Paradox game from the timeline where they weren't on steady and precipitous decline ever since EU2/HOI2). Sometimes I think sampsa is right that "the worst game mechanic in Civ 4 is modding", but I admit I like Rhye's vision a lot; Civ 5 fails because it is an unholy mixing of the 4X/"classic" Civ and RFC fabrics.

A couple of thoughts here, if you don't mind being asked:

1. The older Paradox games are some of my absolute favorites, but EU3, HOI3, and Victoria II were the ones I played extensively. (While I was initially really optimistic with the newer releases, I found them a lot more gimmicky and less serious or historically immersive than these, and frankly found the DLC spam, especially the paywalling of basic features, quite off-putting.) I knew that the older titles had a strong reputation already, but seemed to leave a lot wanting just with UI and quality of life improvements. I later went back and dabbled in them some, but am curious if there is a case to be made for these being better overall somehow. Nostalgia and familiarity from an older player base count for a lot I realize, but it seems that the transition of Gen 2 -> Gen 3 Paradox games (much as has been said for the first four Civ titles being "spiritually" one game concept in successively refined iterations) was more of a refinement of existing concepts with cleaner UI and a bigger scale, not a reinvention of the fundamental game as we have seen in the later Civ titles. For instance, I just can't really see EU2 being better than EU3, but I am genuinely curious as to why someone might think so. With Hearts of Iron, it makes a little more sense because of 3's excessive micromanagement and essentially pretty similar UI, but I can't see the other flagship titles having a similar case to be made for this.

2. It's amusing to me that the player base which vocally desires a remastered Civ 4 to be the direction taken with the newest official release is also as a group typically pretty averse to the original game being modded. There are some very high quality overhaul mods (and not even just from a standpoint of refining game design, but also modernizations like rescaling the menus to fit modern resolutions, which even BUG hasn't done to my knowledge). Most of the people who sincerely love the vanilla game but have a small list of grievances with it basically have their wishes granted already with mods like Realism Invictus, which keeps the soul of Civ 4 aflame but is beautifully polished and carefully balanced while addressing the main things that several people would like to see improved, and is ironically actually even more challenging than the vanilla game in many key ways. It's a longer game and a slower pace, which I can see being less appealing to some, but it basically is "Civ IV 2," having enjoyed more love and attention to balance and nuance from decades of play than a commercial release would have ever gotten, and so I find it interesting that somehow if a profit-driven studio released something in the spirit of this, it would be legitimized in a way that a community project like this isn't. Just my thoughts.

For the record, I love Civ 4 and have played it (probably with more regularity than with any game) since it came out in 2005. I also have won deity and am not a stranger to "how" to play the game at a high level. I just don't see a reason why (outside of competitive HoF) it's some kind of sacred canon which can't benefit from any kind of revision, presumably because Firaxis published it a certain way with the last official patch.

 

[Krugi]

EU3 went a major step into "sandbox" territory as opposed to "historical grand strategy game". It was perceived, at the time, as being as big a departure from EU2 as EU4 from EU3; just as you now find the same flaws with everything from CK2 onward (as I do). Here is a post by ubik (!) that gives you a glimpse of the argument: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/is-eu3-better-than-eu2.348269/page-2 Also featured: players complaining about PDX selling patches as "expansions" in 2008. Stat crux dum volvitur orbis...

But I admit that with said "expansions", Gen 3 PDX is only "decline" in the sense of "ruining my purestrain genre". Final-form EU3/HOI3/Vic2 are all fine games I still play. And privately mod, to align more with historical plausibility.

FWIW, I do not want a "remastered Civ 4" from Civ 7; as mentioned I think "Civ 6 but the AI is good" would actually make for a fantastic Civ 7.

Prejudice against mods comes from my self-loathing "libertarian" tendencies (counterbalanced by a strong aversion to "historical materialism"). As in: I love anyone for rejecting corporatist "wealth" structures and attention to "economy", and yet I immediately also distrust them for it (because where is the "existential" pressure? Sometimes it's still there, but it requires extraordinary, religious inward "motivation"/guidance -- so as not to give in to sin, excess, leisure -- and build only what is truly necessary. I realize this is an argument of faith much more than reason I require here. Essentially my exegesis of what it means to "make friends with the unfair Mammon".)

Certain mods seem to actively violate my (or Sid's, or Soren Johnson's) vision of strategy game design. (To illustrate, even better than Civ 4 design-wise to me is Go.) I had a specific one in mind as egregiously exemplary when railing against modding up there. You can probably imagine which one. But of course, cultures and creeds will constantly clash. I have no more authority in your eyes to declare something good or bad than what you award me for your own reasons. I do not believe there is a "dialectical" process in which my opinion must participate -- more in an endlessly-recurring storm. But enough of that.

It could certainly be that Realism Invictus is a far superior game to Civ 4, but these days, I would rather become good at a game I'm already familiar with and which has fantastic communities of scholars attached to it (e.g. Strategy & Tips). Of course RI might have its gurus just as well, but given that Civ 4 has stayed the same for over 15 years while RI is still in development, it is almost by definition impossible for the knowledge bases to be on the same level. And I do not trust myself to have the intelligence to figure out groundbreaking RI stuff myself any time soon. To wit, in another turn-based strategy game I've played quite to my exhaustion, it took me about 5 years to start being able to innovate and "win".

PS. Even though I've also been playing since 2005 (as a kid on Settler having even less of an idea of strategy than I do now), I have not won, or even played, Civ 4 Deity yet. Recent efforts in Nobles' Club are meant to get me there one day.

Do these answers satisfy your interest?

 

[AspiringScholar]

Thanks for a thoughtful and interesting reply! I'm not quite sure what libertarianism or avarice have to do with opinions surrounding mods, but otherwise I'm following you...

EU3 went a major step into "sandbox" territory as opposed to "historical grand strategy game". It was perceived, at the time, as being as big a departure from EU2 as EU4 from EU3; just as you now find the same flaws with everything from CK2 onward (as I do). Here is a post by ubik (!) that gives you a glimpse of the argument: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/is-eu3-better-than-eu2.348269/page-2 Also featured: players complaining about PDX selling patches as "expansions" in 2008. Stat crux dum volvitur orbis...

That's a throwback. I joined those forums in 2010, but I remember being around there during "that" era, generally.

Well, EU2 being literally deterministic made events feel really tacked-on and railroaded, no? In EU3, for instance, major historical events were still "softly" ordained, so to speak, but certain criteria had to be met. The Reformation would fire in October 1517 in EU2 no matter what was happening, whereas in EU3, one must have hired a level 3 or greater theologian among some other things, if I recall correctly. Ironically, that precisely is something that in my opinion makes it feel much more historically immersive rather than forced. If actual factors are contributing to shape major defining events (sometimes, though rarely, not occurring on the basis of them), that makes it feel much more like I am in an alternative world that could actually have manifested instead of shoving whatever's happening into real history's timeline without regard to plausibility or likelihood. Granted, things are still supposed to gravitate in the same general trajectory, but that flexibility actually contributes towards the immersion to my mind.

Certain mods seem to actively violate my (or Sid's, or Soren Johnson's) vision of strategy game design. (To illustrate, even better than Civ 4 design-wise to me is Go.) I had a specific one in mind as egregiously exemplary when railing against modding up there. You can probably imagine which one. But of course, cultures and creeds will constantly clash. I have no more authority in your eyes to declare something good or bad than what you award me for your own reasons. I do not believe there is a "dialectical" process in which my opinion must participate -- more in an endlessly-recurring storm. But enough of that.

Go, the ancient board game? If not, what are you referring to with this mod?

It could certainly be that Realism Invictus is a far superior game to Civ 4, but these days, I would rather become good at a game I'm already familiar with and which has fantastic communities of scholars attached to it (e.g. Strategy & Tips). Of course RI might have its gurus just as well, but given that Civ 4 has stayed the same for over 15 years while RI is still in development, it is almost by definition impossible for the knowledge bases to be on the same level. And I do not trust myself to have the intelligence to figure out groundbreaking RI stuff myself any time soon. To wit, in another turn-based strategy game I've played quite to my exhaustion, it took me about 5 years to start being able to innovate and "win".

Yeah, that's all completely fair to my mind! Unmodded Beyond the Sword is still one of the best games of all time, and there is something to be said for the unchanged thing remaining a "sealed package" when trying to optimize play around a fixed set of rules that are held in common by a hardcore community. Criticism of mods from said player base tends to take a form that they're a cope or simply made to be flashy and tantalizing for players who aren't good enough otherwise to play the default game competently. That's simply not true in this case, but furthermore, I simply find the more granular and realism-inspired focus more engaging and fun (and the unending trove of careful and painstaking historical flavor and detail added in for much content which is oftentimes purely cosmetic); things like balancing combined arms bonuses and logistics penalties in stacks, different use cases for various units and armies with various army compositions performing vastly differently in different circumstances, and a longer-ranged view of production and commerce which requires more forward planning and takes more time to come to maturity, rather than putting that same strategic effort into trying to optimize a whip/chop for one novel strategic unit plus a certain ratio of siege, wheedle a new tech the best way possible, etc. There is a lot less slack everywhere and you have to deliberately invest in a lot of what even on deity you get much more passively in BtS. I won't claim that it's a better game overall in some kind of manner where I'm aiming to dictate someone else's preference, but it's simply a lot more fun to me, and I've earned my stripes in the base game too.

Which game are you referring to with the 5 years?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

even better would be the source

We've had that for over a decade now:-

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/cvgamecodedll-c-source-code-files-bts-3-19.16274/

Civ IV source code?

I'm interested in investigating further the mechanics and properties of RNG in this game, as well as just how the seed affects combat results, mining resource pops, forest growth, and the like. I've done some digging in the early days and realized that people such as Manco Capac and DanF5771 (if...

forums.civfanatics.com

 

[mycophobia]

That's the DLL, I'm talking about the EXE itself. As long as that remains binary only its performance is going to be limited.

 

[P&nny]

We're 20 years after... maybe we can get this ?
Do we start a petition for it, maybe they'd be willing to provide, I cannot see a downside for them to provide us the EXE's code ?

 

[mycophobia]

Can't hurt to ask, but companies are weird and will have some reason you didn't think of for not doing something that would seem obviously harmless. As I speculated earlier there might be some third party code in the EXE they don't have the legal ability to distribute the source of or something, or maybe there's some Firaxis secret sauce in there that they don't want randos getting a hold of. Maybe some extremely dedicated individual will do a cross-platform open source implementation of it someday (not holding my breath )

 

[brick623]

Civ 4 is timeless because it's such a challenge and the AI is a real threat. I can barely beat Emperor level, often having to reload. Henrik's strategies on YouTube are pretty fun to try out and it made me realise how crucial early attacks are at higher levels.

By contrast I've beaten Civ 6 Deity on domination with 22 players, twice. I can't be bothered to do it a 3rd time. I'm pretty sure I could beat them if it was 1vs 21, such is the AIs utter incompetence at war. If I tried that in Civ 4 I wouldn't make it past 2000BC. Civ 5 and 6 aren't at all balanced either, and Civ 6 isnt even trying to be.

I also find fighting world wars with 500+ units in the modern era a lot more fun than the 1UPT carpets of tedium in Civ 5/6. Especially when tactical nukes start getting lobbed about, the game becomes terrifying.

 

[Skwink]

Civ IV will always be my favorite, partly because it was the first Civ I was really into (though I played III as a small child who had no clue what I was doing) but one of the best qualities will always be that Civ IV was the final Civ of the era in which one could buy a complete game and that was that.

V introduced the leader packs, and scenario packs, and all. VI went wild with the concept. VII I see already has additional leaders you can purchase in addition to the game itself, and it's not even out yet. We can rest assured that 2K will try to market dozens upon dozens of other little packs, in addition to the tradition expansion packs. I'm surprised they didn't go a Sims 4 route, and make the initial game free to play, while marketing hundreds of small additional transactions.

I find that sort of game marketing off-putting. IV gives me a sort of cozy feeling, knowing it was from an era before this sort of thing became standard.

Beyond that, there's a quality of like, love, in the making of IV that seems void in the new games. VI especially feels like it was made in a factory, with admittedly very nice animations and graphics, but made sort of soulless-ly. I don't know exactly why, but to my IV feels like a labor of love from a smaller, more veteran team.

 

[mycophobia]

As much as I don't really like the DLC model in general, resorting to it is understandable these days if you want to keep the price of a AAA game around the same level as it has been despite inflation, but more importantly, despite the profit margins for game development having continuously plummeted over time. In Civ 1's day games still cost around $50 but maybe 10 people maximum worked on any given one, and while the audience for them was much smaller, the profits from such an endeavor were still proportionally massive. Nowadays AAA game development typically meets or exceeds the budget and manpower of a blockbuster film. Some folks like EA are just milking the DLC model in the most soullessly capitalistic fashion possible and is rightfully disparaged, and I personally would prefer that AAA game developers release a complete cram-packed product for say $100 instead of piecemealing everything, but DLC is not necessarily always a total cashgrab.

 

[mycophobia]

Honestly framing Civ 4 in the way I did in that post doesn't give it enough credit. I watched most of Sullla's Civ 3 playthrough he has on YouTube recently and it hadn't occurred to me until then that there's still a lot of Civ 1 in it, a lot of really dumb stuff that got completely rethought in 4. But the way 4 did things is to keep the spirit, the essence, of the rules in place but make them work in a much more logical and fun way, it didn't tear everything down and start anew. Originally in my mind Civ 2>3 was the big jump but on reconsideration it's actually 3>4; it's a pretty remarkable product on its own, not merely another incremental step.

And just because I'd like to pontificate on this more, the example of improved mechanics from 3>4 I found most striking that I hadn't really thought about before is the removal of the arbitrary population caps on cities and nearly the entirety of civil disorder in favor of elegantly integrating the thematic concepts of both of these into 4's happiness/health systems that you gradually increase by making any number of varied decisions like building stuff, running the culture slider, running civics, hooking up resources, trading for resources, and any combination of those. It's so much more interesting than "build an aqueduct".

 

[Garabaldi]

I've come back to Civ4 after a long hiatus and it is still the best Civ game due to how clean of a design it is. At it's core it is about building the biggest and most efficient empire from your starting conditions. There's many different ways to go about winning so it stays interesting.
I actually like Civ 5 as well from time to time, but I keep coming back to 4 as it is just so easy to approach. Plus the AI with the mods is really dang good.
Civ 6 I have not played so no comment. I don't like that they with Paradox have gone the never ending development software as a service DLC cycle route. Games should be finished at somepoint. I don't like the never ending games as a service cycle becuase no makes a coherent game with it.This is a general problem with software industry in general right now where they want us to pay forever but never deliver innovation but I digress.
I am interested to see what Ed Beach does design wise. Before he was a designer on Civ 5 he was known in the boardgame world for Here I Stand and Virgin Queen which are very interesting wargames if you can find the time and people tonplay them. In those games each faction has radically different rules and win conditions so you can see where the trend in the new civ games to make each civ play almost seemly different games comes from.

 

[Fippy]

I don't like that they with Paradox have gone the never ending development software as a service DLC cycle route. Games should be finished at somepoint.

Yup..money money money must be funny.......
And peoples talk and talk and talk about which leader should be in, wishes for the new DLC and so on.
I cannot even blame Firaxis, they are just taking what today's gaming community offers.

 

[Garabaldi]

There is hope lol, just look at the Factorio devs. They made a fantastic game and now are finally set to release a massive expansion they have been working on for four years. I have no hesitation to pay them whatever they want on release.

 

[Fippy]

Lots of addiction warnings for Factorio
Very positive ratings.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Lots of addiction warnings for Factorio
Very positive ratings.

Do you as an elite Civ 4 player personally like it?

Also, I'm curious what other games fall in suit with what Civ 4 does excellently as a strategy game, obscure or otherwise. There are lots of fun and amusing other historical strategy games but they tend to follow the trend of disparate, independent chains of effects with a superabundance of information density which are actually more strategically shallow than they appear, and are not lastingly interesting.

 

[Fippy]

Misunderstanding there, i just looked at reviews quickly (and most mention the addiction factor)..
never played Factorio.

Imo Civ 4 is "no nonsense" at it's best.
I often wonder in other games "why did they take this turn now", but Civ 4 stays true to itself.
No rock bands
I have no idea what they actually do in one of those later Civs, but i just know it's not part of no nonsense.

 

[AspiringScholar]

Misunderstanding there, i just looked at reviews quickly (and most mention the addiction factor)..
never played Factorio.

Imo Civ 4 is "no nonsense" at it's best.
I often wonder in other games "why did they take this turn now", but Civ 4 stays true to itself.
No rock bands
I have no idea what they actually do in one of those later Civs, but i just know it's not part of no nonsense.

Ah, I see. Yeah, incidentally before replying earlier I had just been talking with a coworker whose favorite game is Magic: The Gathering and he was arguing that its merits are in the vast array of variability and unique outcomes possible with the whole range of cards and their effects, as well as the dynamic created by variable strengths due to things like different deck compositions meeting each other in play and such. From admittedly only a superficial understanding of its rules, though, I was aiming to make the point that simplicity and depth are two different, but related aspects of a strategy game, and that often complexity creates an illusion of depth by increasing the clutter of information by tacking on ever new rules and effects. I'm not saying that Magic is an inherently bad game or that it isn't fun for a lot of people, but is it ultimately that deep of a game, when a player aspiring to master or even simply become strong at it must first and primarily memorize a huge list of individual and unique effects that don't have interrelated opportunity costs or a "zero sum" relationship with each other; when there are 99 different unrelated and uninteractive ways to win? It seems like this general trend is the direction that most "thematic" strategy games have gone recently, whether fantasy or historical. That approach does create a rewarding sense of progress or success, but I think there is a large "smoke and mirrors" amplification going on when it comes to actually being a deep and profound game.