Will there ever be a market for Civ IV remake?

[noontide]

If only just to update the graphics, the game mechanism is pretty sophisticated as is. Maybe nerf Inca, or at least have AI starts with warriors and archers.I'd be the first one in line to buy it.

Moderator Action: Moved to Civ4 GD. leif

 

[DWilson]

This is highly unlikely. Civ is an iterative series, and from a dev standpoint is presumably improving each generation. They won't take it backwards.

Maybe a fan effort could do it? I rather doubt it, however.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

This is highly unlikely. Civ is an iterative series, and from a dev standpoint is presumably improving each generation. They won't take it backwards.

They're in business to make money. I could see a "Civ 4: Classic Edition" or some such product being released if Firasix/2k thought it would sell well enough.

It's the sort of thing that could replace Beyond Earth as a between Civs release.

 

[plasmacannon]

We'll see what they come up with in Civ7.
Hopefully, they increase the UPT. Maybe to include a squad one of each unit type, such as a front line, ranged and mobile units (melee, archer, mounted) or (gunpowder, artillery, tank).
It would be more than 1UPT but less than infinite.

If only just to update the graphics, the game mechanism is pretty sophisticated as is. Maybe nerf Inca, or at least have AI starts with warriors and archers. I'd be the first one in line to buy it.

Also noontide, there are some good mods for Civ4 where progress has been made in graphics, Inca changed and AI's do start with archers on Monarch and above difficulties.
Try the Realism Invictus mod. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/realism-invictus.411799/
There are also a New Dawn, VIP mods and the enormous Caveman2Cosmos mod.

 

[6K Man]

I’m going to go with “no”, here.

I’d guess that the people who are playing Civ6 now instead of Civ4 would have little interest in an updated Civ4, even if it was filled with prettier graphics. They presumably have those in Civ6 already.

Those who are still playing Civ4 likely don’t care about the graphics. From what I have read here, they want
- A goto function that works
- A fix to line-of-sight cheating
- A smarter diplomacy system e.g. no more traded-with-worst enemy penalties when you just met them
- A better AI at higher levels, as opposed to an AI with more bonuses
- Etc.

There are lots of Civ4 mods that have attempted to fix some of these issues, with some success.

 

[2popbulb]

i don't really care about shiny new graphics. Diplomacy needs fixing especially AP/UN voting. I hate when they force you to adopt a civic and you can't change it ever again.
And some of the stuff is just stupid. You can:
-build power plants without discovering Electricity
-send people to the Moon without Electricity,Radio,Flight,Computers,Television,you just need a bare rocket
-build Notre Dame and Sistine Chapel with 0% Christianity in your empire
-have more soldiers than population for thousands of years without crashing your economy
.
.
.

 

[plasmacannon]

i don't really care about shiny new graphics. Diplomacy needs fixing especially AP/UN voting. I hate when they force you to adopt a civic and you can't change it ever again.
And some of the stuff is just stupid. You can:
-build power plants without discovering Electricity
-send people to the Moon without Electricity,Radio,Flight,Computers,Television,you just need a bare rocket
-build Notre Dame and Sistine Chapel with 0% Christianity in your empire
-have more soldiers than population for thousands of years without crashing your economy
.
.
.

LOL! Yea, and building The Great Wall while never have built a single regular wall. One would think our empire would construct a smaller scale version first before attempting one on such a colossal scale.

 

[2popbulb]

Since you've mentioned it,you can build TGW on a one tile island. Very realistic indeed.

 

[Quoth the Raven]

I would buy it. I think there would be a market for it. Especially if they adjusted and re-balanced it and put an easy to use play by email feature in it.

 

[lymond]

Graphics are darn good and will really never get old. I like them much better than V and VI. I like how in IV you can look at everything clearly and know what it is. V was just looking at icons. VI is just corny, and looking at icons.

I believe incorporating some of the UI and graphic mods as standard, like BUG/BULL/Blue Marble and maybe VD (BAT Graphics), would be nice.

And most important, update the engine and remove the performance and memory leak issues.

I would not really change any of the core game mechanics. I'd still leave all that for mods. This is still a game we've loved to play for years, so I would not suggest changing anything no matter what we think about it. Most "enhanced editions" don't do that, just put a shiny coat on the game and, if anything, add content to the game.

I could see like a 15th year anniversary edition or something in a couple of years.

 

[plasmacannon]

I'd like to see the Combat odds show the correct odds and better explain them. No losses on 99.9% or higher chances to win.
I'm sure TMNT would have a list of things he'd have too.

 

[Fippy]

Yup videos on YT clearly show the biggest issue with IV..memory leak, lag.
I sometimes wonder how Lain i.e. does not go crazy when i see how slow games move in videos (much slower than for me tbh).

I also wonder where some peoples take their illusions from, with V and VI having better graphics..
maybe for smartphones lol, those games look really unimpressive.
Strategy game graphics must have good atmo, cos you look at the same stuff always, and IV did really good there with the love for detail.

That being said, i could not go back to standard graphics (need BAT or blue marble),
new graphics would be good, but CIV needs serious & realistic style..
not that comic like nonsense from V or VI.

 

[Michkov]

Why would you? AFAIK the game works on modern system and looks decent enough. I'd rather spend the dev team on a new game. I'll grant you that a patch would be nice for the minor flaws but I honestly dont see anyone investing time and money into that.

 

[lymond]

Well, good point Michkov. I don't really see this happening anytime soon. The thing is that IV is very playable both visually and otherwise. Most of these updated "enhanced" editions of late like Baldur's Gate, Icewind, AoE II, NWN, Rise of Nations, etc, predate IV by quite some years, circa 2000 and before. The games are great but, kinda like Civ III, are just visually hard to deal with now.

IV hit a sweet spot as far as when it was released and the graphic engine of the time that still holds up so well, and always will. I can think of some other games around this time that still hold up visually like Silent Storm, which just had an amazing engine - and pre-dated IV by a year. Dawn of War I, released a year before, holds up nicely too, although I highly predict an enhanced edition on that game one day...probably via kickstarter.

Still, IV is an all-time classic game so one day I could see an update.

 

[Michkov]

and not to forget it loads fast. On my old machine I could play PBEM games as they arrived while doing other stuff without much trouble. V never was that easy on the multitaskery

 

[Quintillus]

There's a market, but far smaller than for Civ VII. Still, IV is the logical one in the series to make a remake of, as long as VII/VIII/IX don't move back towards it from a gameplay perspective enough to satisfy those of us who don't frequent the V/VI forums.

Best case, IMO, would be something like Age of Empires II: HD Edition, only likely with more focus on fixing the technological limitations than on HD support, which already exists. Make it 64-bit to fix the memory issues, maybe parallelize some AI calculations to speed up the turns, and I'd be willing to re-buy.

And there is at least a little precedent for unlikely updates. Civ III got a multiplayer update just a few years ago, after GameSpy went down, over a decade after its prior most recent update. I doubt that really made significant amounts of money - maybe some hardcore players re-bought it on Steam, but likely not tens of thousands. By comparison, simply adding 64-bit support to Civ4 would seem like an attractive proposition.

 

[krikav]

There's a market, but far smaller than for Civ VII. Still, IV is the logical one in the series to make a remake of, as long as VII/VIII/IX don't move back towards it from a gameplay perspective enough to satisfy those of us who don't frequent the V/VI forums.

Best case, IMO, would be something like Age of Empires II: HD Edition, only likely with more focus on fixing the technological limitations than on HD support, which already exists. Make it 64-bit to fix the memory issues, maybe parallelize some AI calculations to speed up the turns, and I'd be willing to re-buy.

And there is at least a little precedent for unlikely updates. Civ III got a multiplayer update just a few years ago, after GameSpy went down, over a decade after its prior most recent update. I doubt that really made significant amounts of money - maybe some hardcore players re-bought it on Steam, but likely not tens of thousands. By comparison, simply adding 64-bit support to Civ4 would seem like an attractive proposition.

Yes, I believe this too.
I would honestly pay up toward double civ6 retail price for a re-release of civ IV with only improved performance. (Memory issues, parallelization, etc).
The game is more or less just the way I like it, which is why I still play it. But due to the technical limitations, I tend to avoid getting into the modern era alot, which is a pity.

 

[OneFootInThe...]

What I would love is a multi-threaded, 64bit Civ IV engine which would be compatible with BTS mods.

I'd pay $60 for that. (even more to be honest as that would be better than 95% of my Steam library, and certainly better than anything else released by Firaxis after BTS )

 

[Gumbolt]

Memory issues don't really affect newer systems so much. Once you have 16gb 3200mhz ddr4 and a decent graphics card the game crashing becomes much less of an issue. I can't remember last time my game crashed due to memory. They already did Colonization as an add on here. Not sure what a revamped game would really offer. Sorting the memory leakage here is not a quick fix without redesigning the whole game engine. I think modern systems kind of solve this.

Moving away from full screen to windows mode really helped me reducing the game crashing. Albeit I only did that when I was running my Core 2 Duo which was 10 or so years old. It was limited to 4gb of ram which was much slower than modern ram.

If you don't like the basic graphics use a mod. What would a revamped Civ 4 really add? Really not sure. I never got into civ 5. I suspectCiv 6 is something I will avoid too.

 

[plasmacannon]

What would a revamped Civ 4 really add?

Multiplayer stability. I still have issues playing Caveman 2 Cosmos and FFH over a LAN. Eventually they go OOS and reloading doesn't help for long. Most people don't even have the patience for that nowadays.
Features included in BUG/BAT and other mods, like zoom control, GP and GG progression of the top of our screen, Ctrl-x city placement planning,
Make Chariot Archers, Horse Archers thru gunpower using Cavalry a separate path from melee using Horsemen, so the Spearmen & Pikemen's bonus won't apply to them (they are not charging, they are shooting targets at range),
Add more resources (apparently poultry was never hunted or eaten by any civilization ever),
Active terrain (FFH has storms, PIE's has sandstorms; both damage units),
Recon unit progression throughout time,
Allow siege units to attack at range instead of suiciding them,
Realism Invictus introduced a stack penalty if we have too many units in one stack. So we can have 20 units if we want, but they won't be as effective as 2 stacks of 10 because of the logistics issues of maneuvering so many people at one time over a large amount of area.
More religions (Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greece, Roman gods, Norse gods, Celtic beliefs, etc)
In some mods our workers can get promotions making some more valuable and worth protecting,
Ships can be customized to have a skeleton crew for +1 speed but -1 str, or +1 extra cargo space but -1 speed, or +1 str but -1 cargo. These create variety in every game.
I could go on.
The base BTS is a good start, but Wow is there MORE that could be done to improve upon it.
Now, do all this and update the graphics for 4K TVs at a minimum and they'd have a game worth buying again.
Just don't put in any of that tracking software that's been giving Civilization 6 a bad name. No one wants that.