Will there ever be a market for Civ IV remake?

[ArchGhost]

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.

Now for me, my issue with remasters is I already loved my OG versions plenty. I grew up as an RPG player and I'm not sold on graphics or accessibility features alone. My favorite N64 game is Mario Tennis, a game with about 2 hours of replay value...That's why I don't think there's a point to trying to sell the games again to a person like me -- I like my old Starcraft, my old Halo etc. just fine the way it was, I don't see a point in purchasing it again (then again I have no qualms about piracy or emulation of such dated titles either, especially when the IP owner has long since abandoned their support). I can objectively look at something like Diablo 2 vs. Diablo 3 and say "yes, those graphics are better than the older ones." But that doesn't make the case for D2 being bad; its the far superior game subjectively.

My cousin just texted me 2 days ago randomly about how much more slick and easy to play the EE version of Baldur's Gate II was, it has all these simple interfaces with more transparency and such. Not trying to be too elitist, but my response was "So? I knew all of these things that were difficult for some, already." I loved that game and so was intimate with the Infinity Engine and the obscurity with which the game presents details on character sheets etc. I learned it. I'm meticulous like that. It doesn't add anything to person like me. It just slaps a new coat of paint on things and tries to market it as augmented in some way, but comes off as a blatant cash grab with some fanfic thrown in, SJW nonsense among the license holders, and not crediting community modders for their open-source contributions. Games like Halo: Anniversary or Starcraft Remastered are even more glorified reskins, though SC:R did add some additional server functionality. So no, I don't really see a point in doing a little cheap touchup work and then carting it out again. It is possible for a classic to remain classic despite the ever ongoing march of the industry touted uniformly as "progress."

I think some of it stems from the same societal mindsets that arise from the corporate dumbing down of games in general too. Younger gamers look back and say "how outdated, how clunky and unintuitive" while the older gamers look ahead and say "how pointless, it plays itself, where's the incentive" etc. Yet the newer generations are the ones that shuffle off to the next CoD or Assassin's Creed each year and are buying gambling simulators, so they influence the industry and tell it what it can sell. I haven't bought a new game in 4 years. I remember ridiculing micro-transactions for cosmetics the first time I was exposed to them. DLC was a novelty in the infantile days of console network gaming. Now they aren't just the norm, they are the expected cash flow of many gaming titles, and if they aren't it's because they are paywalling content behind gambling.

Er....I believe I ranted off-point. I still like my "old" games. They'll never not be what they always were to me. I don't think what constitutes a "remaster" in the games industry is enough to make me want it...twice. Reboots and retoolings are different that can go very very right if they keep in the same spirit of the original (Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a good example). Let us hope instead that they can "fix" where they went "wrong" (emphasis due to subjectivity) going forward,, though that's very unlikely. It doesn't make them money to do that.

 

[Marla_Singer]

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.

I would love that too, that's for instance what's they've done with "Civ 4 : Colonization" which was actually a remake from the 1994 game Sid Meier's Colonization (not really a good one though, but modders have donne a fantastic job out of it).

The only issue I believe here is about marketing. With the iterative principle of a video game series, the customer expects the newer version to be necessarily better than the older version. Hence, the casual player will probably get lost and don't understand why a remake of an ancient outdated retrogame named "Civ 4" would be released instead of a brand new shiny "Civ 7".

From a marketing point of view , the only way for this to be understood by the customers would be to present the "remake" as the launch of a new alternative Civ serie. For instance "Civilization : Beyond the Sword 2". Maybe as such it could work.

I know it's highly unlikely, but that's personally what I'm dreaming of since I understood, with Civ 6, that the old strategic dimension which I loved so much in Civ 4 was definitiely gone from the main Civilization series and will never come back.

 

[ManUnited4Ever]

Once you have [...} a decent graphics card the game crashing becomes much less of an issue.

What are you talking about here? What type of crashes are we talking about, and how does a decent graphics card help the issue?

 

[krasny]

Another company could make a spiritual successor to IV. Hello Soren.

 

[Chinese American]

V and VI may be more technically advanced, but not necessarily more aesthetically pleasing or strategically deeper or interesting.

1. With the rush for new graphics, ironically the screen became more cluttered and harder to distinguish between elements. At a glance, hard to tell apart units from terrain from buildings. Now Civ VI putting districts and wonders on the map, it's super distracting.

2. Be careful when asking them to "fix " or "Improve " something. Like how they "fixed" stacking. Which has made combat less fun, less interesting, and more tedious.

///

I suggest buying the Steam version of Civ 4, and load it up at least once a month. Steam has a chart of amounts of players by daily, monthly, yearly. Tells them people are still very much interested in Civ 4's gameplay mechanics.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I plan to do just that -- my new Windows 10 laptop doesn't have an optical drive, so I will need to buy a new version of Civ 4 through Steam on it. I've made my peace with sending them data about my gaming habits, and in this case, it will help provide data about the appeal of a strategically deep game.

 

[Michkov]

I plan to do just that -- my new Windows 10 laptop doesn't have an optical drive, so I will need to buy a new version of Civ 4 through Steam on it. I've made my peace with sending them data about my gaming habits, and in this case, it will help provide data about the appeal of a strategically deep game.

It's on GOG too if steam isn't your cup of tea

 

[rah]

I think the last time I bought 'complete' it was like 4.95 on GOG.

 

[TruePurple]

What needs a remake is Alpha Centuri, that was such a great game, but so many base issues like how growth worked.

 

[guspasho]

I heard the source code was released years ago. Does this mean someone could do a remake of their own? It's a dream of mine to one day play a version of Civ as replayable as IV (or SMAC) but on an iPad, one with a UI that is designed with tablets in mind.

 

[MookieNJ]

They just released a remake of Age Of Empires 2 despite there already being an Age Of Empires 3 and while they work on Age Of Empires 4.

To me, Civ4 is the last of the "classic" Civilization formula. Civ5 and Civ6 changed combat so much, and not necessarily for the better. Updating the graphics and adding working multiplayer would certainly get a lot of players' attention. I'd certainly purchase it myself.

 

[rah]

and adding working multiplayer

MP works find. We played it for years. But alas the old gang has gone it's way, so now it's only SP

 

[Azdul2]

IMO the best hope for modernized Civ 4 is creating open source engine for it.
OpenMW and its spin-offs has worked out internal workings of NetImmerse engine, so the work does not seem as daunting as it may seem.
Civ 4 makes heavy use of scripting languages, so the only thing that needs rewriting is C++ core.

What it would mean:
- Civ 4 on any platform, including mobile devices
- better multithreaded performance
- no more 32-bit memory limits
- no restrictions on what mod can and cannot change
- fixing hardcoded bugs

Of course graphics improvements would not be as impressive as with professional remake / remaster - just an upgraded renderer and some better shaders.

 

[JustinRaz]

Hello Civ4 lovers. I have previously(3years ago) knew exactly how to add secon Unique Units and Buildings to CIV4. Now started to do it again, my unit appears on the map, but i stuck on the part ,,how to assign unit to specific civilization". It seems that you should add units in CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml file under<units> </units> tag, but it keeps crashing and saying file is failed to load, the game keeps on running. All i want to do is to replace a certain unit with my modded one and to assign it to specific civilization. Now it works only with all civilizations. Thank you in advance.

 

[plasmacannon]

Hello Civ4 lovers. I have previously(3years ago) knew exactly how to add secon Unique Units and Buildings to CIV4. Now started to do it again, my unit appears on the map, but i stuck on the part ,,how to assign unit to specific civilization". It seems that you should add units in CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml file under<units> </units> tag, but it keeps crashing and saying file is failed to load, the game keeps on running. All i want to do is to replace a certain unit with my modded one and to assign it to specific civilization. Now it works only with all civilizations. Thank you in advance.

It sounds like you would get a better response to your post if you create a thread in the Civ4 - Creation & Customization section. Most of the modding happens over there, instead of the General Discussions section.

 

[Patine]

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

None of the six iterations of Civilization has ever been outright "remade," (except arguably Civ2 into Test of Time, but that's very much of an expansion of the game, without being an install-on Xpac), except to make it compatible with gaming consoles from a PC/Mac version. I don't see such a trend actually getting started unless new material is losing money and nostalgia is viewed as having a market. But, in that case, it would be unclear which iterations would even have priority for such remakes from Firaxis' point-of-view.

 

[georgjorge]

I don't really think so (how many people are still playing the game?), but I'll be very excited when it happens.

My dream would be something that changes the game a bit like BTS changed vanilla IV: largely the same concept, but with introductions which sometimes really change your decisions. Things like:


Tweak the tech tree a bit so there are more incentives to go down lines which are used very little now (when was the last time you self-teched Iron Working?), add a couple of new techs and wonders

Introduce a mechanism which makes limited wars (i.e. take three or four cities and make peace) more attractive without losing those cities to culture

Fix the voting behavior of the AI in UN and AP to not be totally random

Fix the balance of civilization traits (Protective...) and improve those bad Unique Buildings and Units (when is the last time you were excited about a Ballista Elephant?)

Improve combat AI (no stack of only Catapults, no having a stack of thirty units sit ten turns near a city while a lone Catapult slowly reduces its cultural defences)


If they take some hints from the many mods already existing, maybe it wouldn't be such a great development effort, and would bring some freshness to the game. I can play a mod if I want these changes, but it takes away from the comparison with other games (i.e. BOTM or other forum games), so a common version would be great.

 

[Kaiman]

Really they just need to do about what Age of Empires 2 recently did - a "new version" that is mostly the same gameplay with only a few addons, but a lot of new convenience / functionality added.

Stuff like not letting you build an academy where you already have one, allowing you to set pathing on "build route" commands, for vanilla Civ 4 adding the 2 missing traits (26 out of 28 was a really bizarre choice), better info in the city screen for culture/health/happiness sources, and including a decent world editor (seriously, most of the convenience-in-design stuff is forgivable as nobody had thought of it at the time, but for example C&C Red Alert 2 came out 5 years earlier and their world editor was 10x better).

Younger gamers look back and say "how outdated, how clunky and unintuitive" while the older gamers look ahead and say "how pointless, it plays itself, where's the incentive" etc.

True but there's a difference between "fixing" stuff by making it thoughtlessly automated, and fixing stuff by presenting information in a reasonable format and not making someone go through three times as many clicks and separate screens to do something as is necessary. That latter is a kind of "fake difficulty" for me. It only makes games harder in that you sometimes skip doing it the right/better way only because some designer needlessly made it a giant pain in the ass that wastes time. It's like busy work.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

Stuff like not letting you build an academy where you already have one, allowing you to set pathing on "build route" commands, for vanilla Civ 4 adding the 2 missing traits (26 out of 28 was a really bizarre choice)

Huh? What are you talking about?

 

[Patine]

I'm still wondering why Civ4 would be considered the "logical" highest priority for a remake of a past Civ iteration?