Why is CIV4 still the best civ game?

Ha...It probably came from the meme...."bro" can sometimes be perceived negatively..

I recommend for yall to please drop that line of discussion now and move back to the topic.
 
Last edited:
I like much of what Civ 4 has to offer...except for the combat. I just don't think it's very fun.

-I don't care for stacks. For whatever faults the AI has in Civ5/6 about using 1-unit-per-tile, those two games still lend themselves to being board games, where it would be impossible for two pieces to occupy the same space anyway. So what people are complaining about on the theoretical side of things I don't know...If the AI can't handle it, that's a program problem, not a core gameplay element problem. From what I've heard, the Vox Populi mod does fix much of the AI in Civ 5.
-I don't care for combat odds. Which only seem to be a reflection of how good you are at producing lots of units, rather than positioning them correctly.
-also, less talked about, I don't care much for zero city defense. which means a sizable number of my units are spent defending said cities...rather than doing anything. any other game I play, using an army to capture a city despite there not being a huge army to stop me is actually quite hard, not easy.

I await your responses but there is no convincing me that I should be running to play Civ 4 to play a good war strategy game.
 
Last edited:
mdl5000 said:
there is no convincing me that I should be running to play Civ 4 to play a good war strategy game
Click to expand...
Agreed, Civilization is an Empire building game which happens to include some war elements.
 
Some tidbit: civ4 is also pretty accurate. I'd been wondering why Monty is such a crazy warmonger. I mean, Gandhi is obvious, from a historical viewpoint, but Monty lost to the Spanish... Well, until like 30 minutes ago, when I discovered the Aztec death whistles. Holy sh!t, if normal Aztec soldiers were this metal, then no wonder their leader was totally nuts.
 
I decided to give Civ VI a fair chance. I'm 6 or 7 games in now, and... playing it feels more like a chore than a game.

A lot of what's been said in this thread is absolutely true. Arithmetic is not strategy, and memorizing the game, future buildings/districts/unlocks, just to do mental arithmetic on where to place buildings/districts/wonders isn't fun, it's a chore. It also feels wrong/contrived the way memorizing the game and playing from the ancient era for wonders/districts that won't be available until the modern era is rewarded.... like the wonder that you can only place next to a government plaza.

The war and religion "strategy" feels contrived and can barely count as strategy once you've done it a couple times. I dread doing a domination or religious victory because it's simply a chore to build, move, and place units. There's no strategy, just managing a formula. I'm attempting a religious victory right now, and after getting the appropriate wonders, I'm just spamming apostle's, giving them the appropriate upgrades, and sending an army of them over, calculating what/how to spread the religion. In the end it's all formulaic arithmetic, not strategy.

Same with the policies. I dread unlocking new civics, because then I have to sit and agonize over what works best and what I want to do with my empire. In the end, the amount of time investment doesn't match the reward. It just becomes a chore to get that extra 10% or 20%.

Then there's the predictive/linear nature of the game. Civilization VI feels everyone's riding on tracks and simply adding to a train. Civilization IV feels like a true civilization simulator where the world unfolds around you, and how the game will go nobody knows.
 
Evil Beejeebers said:
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.
Click to expand...
Yes Civ 4 was the best, Civ 3 was good too
 
Its probably not surprising that the majority of posters on a civ 4 sub forum think that civ 4 is pretty good.
 
FriedChicken said:
Yes, but why
Click to expand...
To me, civ4 most perfectly captures that "exponential" feeling of 4X games. When you play well, your production, science, and military all surges faster and faster, so every turn is massively more powerful than the turn before. When you play badly, things really fall off the rails. And there's so many things you can learn, ranging from big strategy decisions, to little micro tricks that save 1 worker turn. But with the fast exponential growth, even those little micro tricks really *matter*. With the other civ games, improving the micro usually just slightly boosts your score, it doesn't cause such a dramatic difference like it can in civ4.
 
1UPT kills the game, and the devs won't get off of it. The problems within Civ 4 are fixable by better means, but the mentality of the series moved towards making it a skinner box rather than a game.
I still think Civilization 2 is the more interesting game for its time, but Civ 4 mods give it nearly unlimited replay value and extendability.
If I were to make a new Civ game though, I wouldn't look to the earlier games and try to copy them. I'd do things very differently, probably get away from tile / unit management altogether and streamline the military aspect of the game. The civilization-building decisions have always been more interesting for me. I would like a civ game where the military aspects are largely automated - you declare war, manage your civilization's overall military status / status of internal revolts, and the generals do the fighting. But then, I see this as a way ot mitigating one of the series' nagging points to me - that civilizations tend to suffer from internal instability, and this is not at all reflected in the series. I get why this isn't going to be realistic - you have to control one civilization from 4000 BC to 2000 AD, and no civilization could last that long. The military aspect automation though could be done while retaining Civ's overall take on history. I really would like the social side of civilization-building to be emphasized more, because that's one of the most interesting parts of history for me - how empires and societies face struggles both from outside and within, and how leaders manage the really big crises.
By limiting the military side of the game, it allows more game time for the things that are interesting, and it also allows a more interesting take on managing armies, military industry, and so on. The way it is done in civ with per unit hammer costs emphasizes the wrong basis for militaries imo. Militaries are recruited from the population, especially in eras where the basis for the military were citizen-soldiers or peasant levies. It would also allow the player to focus on the development of technology and science at the period where it was actually historically relevant, while early game conflicts would largely not require beaker investment since they're largely driven by population and resource availability. By industrial era the deployment of artillery and modern ships would require a whole industry and supply chain, development of oil, etc., which was in our history a really big reason why modernity turned out the way it did. Late game military in civ tends to be disinteresting, especially in Civ 4 due to SoD. I remember having lots of fun with late game war in Civ 2 because the battle options were right for the game - more varied from Civ 1 which only had fighters, bombers, and basic tanks, and the introduction of partisans when fighting democratic or communist civilizations was cool. These things could be abstracted into something that is more interesting - something that is a factor, but that happens behind the hood and is a consideration for your civilization.

Anyway Civ 4 remains my goto Civilization game due to the mod library. Realism Invictus does a good job of teaching the AI new mechanics, although the player will be able to boost ahead in techs unless playing at Emperor difficulty or higher, which makes the game really difficult to play early. Some of the tactical decisions in RI are questionable, like how early game skirmishers are really strong in the field, but they did a good job of mitigating the usefulness of SoD, and if you were playing against quality opponents, you wouldn't use a single SoD in Civ 4, but you'd deploy armies with the goal of taking cities and harassing enemy territory. Because the AI uses SoD and often has a huge production advantage, you're kind of forced to SoD in Civ 4 vs. AI.
 
onefinneday said:
1UPT kills the game, and the devs won't get off of it. The problems within Civ 4 are fixable by better means, but the mentality of the series moved towards making it a skinner box rather than a game.
I still think Civilization 2 is the more interesting game for its time, but Civ 4 mods give it nearly unlimited replay value and extendability.
If I were to make a new Civ game though, I wouldn't look to the earlier games and try to copy them. I'd do things very differently, probably get away from tile / unit management altogether and streamline the military aspect of the game. The civilization-building decisions have always been more interesting for me. I would like a civ game where the military aspects are largely automated - you declare war, manage your civilization's overall military status / status of internal revolts, and the generals do the fighting. But then, I see this as a way ot mitigating one of the series' nagging points to me - that civilizations tend to suffer from internal instability, and this is not at all reflected in the series. I get why this isn't going to be realistic - you have to control one civilization from 4000 BC to 2000 AD, and no civilization could last that long. The military aspect automation though could be done while retaining Civ's overall take on history. I really would like the social side of civilization-building to be emphasized more, because that's one of the most interesting parts of history for me - how empires and societies face struggles both from outside and within, and how leaders manage the really big crises.
By limiting the military side of the game, it allows more game time for the things that are interesting, and it also allows a more interesting take on managing armies, military industry, and so on. The way it is done in civ with per unit hammer costs emphasizes the wrong basis for militaries imo. Militaries are recruited from the population, especially in eras where the basis for the military were citizen-soldiers or peasant levies. It would also allow the player to focus on the development of technology and science at the period where it was actually historically relevant, while early game conflicts would largely not require beaker investment since they're largely driven by population and resource availability. By industrial era the deployment of artillery and modern ships would require a whole industry and supply chain, development of oil, etc., which was in our history a really big reason why modernity turned out the way it did. Late game military in civ tends to be disinteresting, especially in Civ 4 due to SoD. I remember having lots of fun with late game war in Civ 2 because the battle options were right for the game - more varied from Civ 1 which only had fighters, bombers, and basic tanks, and the introduction of partisans when fighting democratic or communist civilizations was cool. These things could be abstracted into something that is more interesting - something that is a factor, but that happens behind the hood and is a consideration for your civilization.

Anyway Civ 4 remains my goto Civilization game due to the mod library. Realism Invictus does a good job of teaching the AI new mechanics, although the player will be able to boost ahead in techs unless playing at Emperor difficulty or higher, which makes the game really difficult to play early. Some of the tactical decisions in RI are questionable, like how early game skirmishers are really strong in the field, but they did a good job of mitigating the usefulness of SoD, and if you were playing against quality opponents, you wouldn't use a single SoD in Civ 4, but you'd deploy armies with the goal of taking cities and harassing enemy territory. Because the AI uses SoD and often has a huge production advantage, you're kind of forced to SoD in Civ 4 vs. AI.
Click to expand...

Have you ever given Victoria 2 a try? While it only encompasses one century (from 1836 - 1936) it quite ornately does exactly what you describe WRT social pressures and resource constraints in the context of war, with a much more dynamic diplomacy as well. It leans more towards being a simulation than purely a game as Civilization, but I think you might find the way that it implements its mechanics to be interesting and satisfying to your expectations (case in point, your armies not only require relevant supplies of oil, machines, ammunition, etc., but are also drawn from your population directly, who then no longer can be useful in other roles, and additionally have their own political views and might not necessarily be loyal to your agenda if you're fighting people in league with their cause).

Realism Invictus's revolution mechanic feels like the perfect gap filler for what was missing in IV, to my mind. Sure, it's still a highly abstracted game and not aiming to be truly "realistic" but as you say, for being flavored by and loosely modeling real historical empire building, those internal social pressures were dishearteningly negligible in the series, IMO. Just the single addition of this one feature completes the game conceptually for me, all else aside. I also like how if you leave cities unhappy, even if they don't revolt, they'll riot and destroy your buildings and improvements. In vanilla BtS, unhappy population is just reserve hammers under slavery and not a liability besides a potential lost opportunity cost if they could work a tile elsewhere and not an actual threat to your stability. (I used to be a huge EU3 player, and I actually went back and played a game recently, then found that RI still does a better job of managing separatism than that game, with fluid modifiers based upon foreign culture, religion, your own garrison size, espionage level, the civics you're using, etc., whereas in EU it's mostly a binary question of "core vs. non-core" which triggers suddenly after 40 years.)
 
Haven't played Victoria but perhaps I should - have heard great things about the series and I've read a lot about the British Empire. It does help to focus in on a particular era.
 
Civ5/6 play like a generic cartoonish board game, while 4 feels like it's own world which I think is a combination of the art style and strategic depth. I'm not holding my breath for Civ7 either it's going to be another iteration of the same simplified gameplay of Civ5/6
 
onefinneday said:
Haven't played Victoria but perhaps I should - have heard great things about the series and I've read a lot about the British Empire. It does help to focus in on a particular era.
Click to expand...
I personally find it to be a bit too much of a spreadsheet simulator. But from what you wrote I think it's just what you are looking for.

This said, the whole "if I could make a CIV game today" tangent is quite an interesting one. Like, I personally could write volumes about what I'd do. But at the top of the list would be making the AI more SMAC like.
 
I must have played nearly all 4X games since Civ 1 was released. Stil lcome back to Civ 4 a couple of times a year and am always impressed by it. As some have said, it does feel like the peak of the original Civ vision. So from there, all the rivals can do is make arbitrary changes. And gratuitous changes. Like squares to hexes. I've no problem with either...ultimately they make no difference to how you feel about a game. And that's just it, they make no meaningful difference. Well, other than some people do feel smarter for using hexes - which is odd, because how can being able to move in 6 directions require more intellectual capacity than moving in 8 directions? Somebody should tell the people who invented chess! Anyway...that's just one specific, there are many more, superficial, changes. While, ironically, losing some of what made Civ 4 genuinely unique and great.

What I notice when I start a game of Civ 4 is how every turn counts, from the start. It's right back to what Sid Meier said about a strategy game needing meaningful decisions. Civ 4 trumps all competitors in this aspect. I've played a little AOW: Planetfall recently and straight off, there is so much more time doing not much, just clicking "End Turn". Hardly any meaningful decisions. And similar applies to the entire AOW series, really. Also Galactiv Civ, all of the Endless games ("Endturn" games!) . Decisions are fewer. Games are more railroaded. Follow a simple recipe and click end turn, watch your empire grow and win.

And then there's the *length* of the competitors games. I can rattle through a game of Civ 4 in maybe 6 - 10 hours, win or lose. Which then leaves me plenty of time to start a new one, with a new leader, new map, new victory conditions , most probably a very different game. The competitors have less decisions, more end turning clicking and they can go on for 50+ hours on the same map. More quantity, but less quality. Yes, I get that it is a general problem with 4X games, that time from when you know you will win (or lose) to actually winning (or losing) can be excessive and quite a chore. But in Civ 4, it's 2 or 3 hours. In Planetfall, it can be 20 hours.

As a meta-aspect of games, for me, the sweet spot is a map that I can play in 10 hours, then generate another different one and again, finish in 10 hours. If it takes 50+ hours on one, it becomes a slog and I imagine most other 4X games I've tried, that is the point I stopped. One 50 hour game. Little motivation to start another..then uninstall. And end up back to Civ 4.

The lack of meaningful decisions means that different maps, different factions, lack the variety of Civ 4. Though its far from perfect, the AI opponents in Civ 4 have way more personality than in the 4X rivals. No amount of hexes, 1UPT , districts or tactical battles can fix that! So Civ 4 has way more replay potential than other games.

Part of the answer to the question is to look at the number of threads here on "Strategy and Tactics" for each game. Civ 4 wins out by miles. Civ 5 fewer and Civ 6 even fewer. There's your answer - if you like "strategy", Civ 4 is the one with the deepest. Oh, and that isn't because it's been out longer than Civ 5 and 7. It has way more strategy discussion than Civ 3, too. It's because it has the best strategic possibilities. The best "meaningful decision" making. Those post numbers are Exhibit A that it is real and measurable, not just opinion.

Yet there are plenty of ways Civ 4 could still be improved. I am a bit disappointed than in the years since it's release, things like improving AI and diplomacy have never really been genuinely improved on. The road and rail map clutter is ugly . Workers have too much to do at start and nothing to do at end. It's all small improvements. For me, Civ 5 went off in a completely different direction. As some have said, captured a different market and left us oldies behind!

<EDIT> BTW I did used to have an account here and posted regularly many years ago, used to do GOTW of both Civ 4 and 5. Haven't visited for years, though and it appears that account was (sensibly) closed. Recent disappointment on the state of 4X games (Planetfall/MOTM remake/Gal Civ etc etc) led me back to Civ 4 :)
 
Last edited:
onefinneday said:
Haven't played Victoria but perhaps I should - have heard great things about the series and I've read a lot about the British Empire. It does help to focus in on a particular era.
Click to expand...

Victoria 3 is a mess! Not sure what it is intending to be. As if they went badly wrong in the first design meeting. I *think* they wanted it to be a genuine economic simulator and at first, it does appeal. But wears off very quickly when you realise it's "wack a mole" mechanics. Simply list your most profitable industries and build them. Wait a few weeks (game time, though it feels like real time) , rinse and repeat.

Further to that , it is filled with total absurdities. After their success with CK2, I think Paradox are moving deliberately away from historical strategy (with cult following) to hilarious meme generators (with mass following). "I conquered Europe as Congo". "The Pope has allied with the Caliphate and invaded Russia". "Bulgaria makes no clothing or weapons but has an army of 500,000".
 
CIV4 is the best Civ-game because it's endless possibilities for new varieties. With 17 years behind and still going strong, no other civ-games comes even close to it.... so many major mods and submods have been created over time, some with personal changes.... it is beyond any comparison


Just take my favorite mod - the Realism:Invictus - at least 12 year old by now ....

Well our dear CourtPainter/R:I Curator Walter Hawkwood has decided to take an indefinite hiatus from this mod - what he is going to use all his time for now is mystery to me:confused: - but now it's entirely up to me, what changes I want to make - what way I want to go...... As long as it can be done in XML that is - because I'm not capable of programming just a little bit seriously.

Well... up to me, what changes do I want??? It has always been that way - Right silly :hammer2:??? Yes, sure :yup: . But it has also been a lot of work :faint: (read finding the errors[pissed] I always make during this) to transfer the "good" changes from an "old" version to the new one, when Walter approx. one time a year made an update, that I in no way wanted to "miss". But now I do not "know", if a new update will come. So therefore........

The only real modpart I (still) miss - and proberly will miss forever - is, if the AI could "learn" to use siegeweapons the way a human can use it - allowing the AI to bombard attacking "human-controlled" units without making more-or-less suicide attacks - the way, that is present in Dales mod for BtS "The Road to War"..... If that could be integrated with the latest release of the Realism:Invictus mod (ver 3.6 from Dec 2022), then we would have a Super-mod.


Anyway: It's a simple privilege, that we have such a program as CIV4 available... nothing more, nothing less.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

T
Discussion On Why Civ 7 Doesn't Feel Like A "Civ" Game
11 12 13
Replies
244
Views
12K
CliffCo
CliffCo
F
The perfect army
Replies
5
Views
2K
Fins
F
T
Raging Barbarians setting: impact on AI Survivor
Replies
6
Views
1K
Noble Zarkon
Noble Zarkon
D
Civ 7 where it let me down
Replies
0
Views
318
Ditpoct
D
Xefjord
Am I the only one feeling like the Civ count is getting in the way of replayability?
4 5 6
Replies
119
Views
6K
Krikkit1
K
Back
Top Bottom