Would you recommend to a Civ IV player?

Ita Bear

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Hello folks,
I am a huge Civ IV player and have played since it was released in 2005. Civs V and VI never really gripped me and, although I still adore IV, I am curious about Civ III. Folks like you on the other side of the fence claim this is the best Civilization game of all time. :D I love Civ IV for its decision making and empire building mechanics, city maintainence being a longterm investment, varied AI behaviour, cottages vs specialists, improvements and so on. That said, I'm not a fan of the suicide artillery and the RNG combat can grind at times.

I'm an empire building guy; and once I've built mine, I want to destroy others. :D Does it make sense to take a step back and check it out? I know the game is dirt cheap these days and easily accessible, but I'm interested in hearing what the game would hold for someone with 15+ years of Civ IV under his belt.

Kind regards,
Ita Bear
 
Bearing in mind that my Civ IV experience is minimal, from what I have read here, IV is the game that III wanted to be when it grew up! Which is not to say that III is a bad game (I mean, I got it in 2009, and I'm still playing it!), but it does, by all accounts, use much simpler versions of the mechanics that you will have already encountered/mastered in IV.

For example, III's governments each consist of a set of specific (moddable) parameters, but your choice of gov is all-or-nothing: you can't pick and choose between the individual components of a government in the same way that IV's Civics(?) allow you to.
Spoiler More details... :
You start in Despotism, and gain access to new govs as you progress through the tech-tree (Monarchy and Republic towards the end of the Ancient Age, Feudalism at the beginning of the Medieval Age, etc...; oh yeah, BTW you're also compelled to learn all the 'obligatory' techs per Age, before you can progress to the next Age). However, since Despotism is crippling for growth, and since you can lose up to 9 turns' worth of productivity while in "Anarchy" (turns lost is a randomly drawn number from 2 to 9, but weighted by your Civ's size: more pop + towns => greater likelihood of longer Anarchy), you want to switch as early as possible, which essentially means choosing between Rep or Mon.

And unless you're playing one of the 7 'Religious' tribes (for which Anarchy is always limited to 2 turns), then once you've chosen, it's usually better to stick with that government from that point on, rather than going through a second Anarchy in the late game (when it is pretty much guaranteed to lose you 9 turns). So your 'choice' of government will depend on whether you intend to play a shorter/ warmongering/ small map game (Mon = no War-Weariness), or a longer/ high-tech/ large map game (Rep = high Commerce).
The combat model is also a lot simpler. In some ways that makes it easier to grasp, and predict likely outcomes, but the actual (RNG-determined) outcomes can also be frustrating at times. III is the reason why this smiley exists!

:spear:

Artillery, however, behaves as you would expect it to -- and the recent .exe modding work by @Flintlock (see this thread) has apparently vastly improved the Civ III AI's use of several unit-types (bombard-capable land-units and "Armies") that it previously neglected, to its detriment.
 
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Folks like you on the other side of the fence claim this is the best Civilization game of all time. :D
Well, Firaxis themselves claimed this... It says so on the CD cover of the disc I bought in 2001... :D

To be honest: when Civ4 came out in 2005, I tried one and a half games and then uninstalled it in disgust. It did not feel like Civilization at all. It was definitely a step backwards from Civ3. The brain-dead artillery (why should a cannon get destroyed, when it fires the first shot at the enemy??) the fact that ships couldn't bombard (and planes neither, iirc), numbed-down railway, the fact that you could no longer trade with another nation, once it had a different religion (yeah, like we don't trade oil from the Saudis, just because they are Muslims... :mischief:), the kindergarten graphics... The "unit & counter-unit" concept as well as the "unit promotion tree" were way too complicated. And lots and lots of other stuff that was just plain stupid in my eyes.

In my games I liked to mimic world history as realistically as possible, and Civ4 just didn't work for that. Civ3 was so much better in that regard. (Especially the many scenarios available for it, like Roman Empire, Napoleonic Wars, Pacific War, Age of Imperialism, The Great War, etc.)
So I went back to Civ3 and never regretted it...

PS: here is the cover of the German edition. The subtitle means translated "The best Civ of all times!".
The English edition apparently had a different subtitle: "More Civ than ever". I think the German title fits better... :D

BestCivEver.jpg
 
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I personally still play Civilization III and IV, I switch them around every so often. Civilization III is the most empire-building Civilization game out of all of them, in my opinion, so yes, go for it!
 
Thanks for the post @Lanzelot but I must say that in some respects you are incorrect. Artillery doesn't always get destroyed when attacking as it had a withdrawal chance, and is at no risk when bombarding defences. Ships can indeed bombard cities and it is very possible to trade with nations with different religions. The scenarios sound interesting - Civ IV could benefit from a good Roman scenario. :D

Kind regards,
Ita Bear
 
Artillery doesn't always get destroyed when attacking as it had a withdrawal chance, and is at no risk when bombarding defences. Ships can indeed bombard cities and it is very possible to trade with nations with different religions.
Perhaps they have changed it in one of the later add-ons? I heard the game got much better with BtS. (But I never really gave it another try, the first impression was too lasting... )
 
I love Civ IV for its decision making and empire building mechanics, city maintainence being a longterm investment,
[...]
I'm an empire building guy; and once I've built mine, I want to destroy others. :D Does it make sense to take a step back and check it out?

If you do, you might want to keep the difficulty level reasonably low, say regent as that is where neither AI nor the human player gets any bonus or malus that depends on the difficulty level.

In Civ3 rapid early expansion pays off. So that would be a major difference. Also there are different stages of development that prefer different city spacing in terms of tiles per city.

In the ancient age you want as many towns (size<7) as reasonably possible. So that would be spamming towns, at least in the short run if you donnot care about the long run.

In the medieval age you want cities (6<size<13.). And starting in the industrial age you want metropolises(size>12).

Finding a proper balance between what makes sense when is one of the challanges. If you keep the difficulty reasonably low you will fare well with aiming at 16 tiles per settlement, even though this means you need to wait till late till you can use all tiles in the territory you cover.

Many settlements per territory give you more net food and more free unit support. Fewer but larger settlements have requirements such as aqueducts and hospital, which means that they are not available early on. As settlements have no costs attached to them but buildings do cost maintenance, fewer but larger settlements are preferable in the long run. Also corruption favours fewer but larger setttlements.
 
Several mechanics of Civ IV are expansions of those in Civ III.
  • Great People: Civ III has only two types, Military Great Leader and Scientific Great Leader, vs. all the GP in Civ IV. The great leaders in Civ III cannot be produced by cities, only by certain events in the game.
  • Golden Age(s): Civ III has one golden age per game, again generated by certain events in the game.
  • Diplomatic Victories: Civ III has only the United Nations, available in the Modern Era; no Apostolic Palace
  • Religion: In Civ III, everyone can build "religious" buildings that generate culture. Religion has no impact on diplomacy.
  • Trespassing: In Civ III, you may walk your units through the cultural boundaries of another civ without automatically declaring war. The AI civ will ask you to leave; it may then demand that you leave or declare war. This "just passing through" mechanic is useful in the early game when one is trying to explore coastlines.
In addition, Mountains are not impassable in Civ III !!!. One may (and the AI do) build roads, rails, and mines on them. Iron and coal are found in mountains.
 
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@Ita Bear , overall I find that Civ III's simplicity lets me focus on the empire and less on specialization. I can build empires of dozens of cities and not feel overwhelmed. I'm a Regent player on Civ III, not nearly optimal in micromanagement. When in doubt, build more workers to improve the land, build settlers to fill in the gaps, and then offensive units.

Each time I go back to Civ IV BTS, I feel like I have to think harder, plan ahead more, always planning my next war. Do I build that next city, or wait for these to grow? When to whip, and what to whip? Is it time for the elepult rush, or cuirassiers? You may miss having all those decisions, or you may find the fewer decisions to be a relief.
 
Great People: Civ III has only two types, Military Great Leader and Scientific Great Leader, vs. all the GP in Civ IV. The great leaders in Civ III cannot be produced by cities, only by certain events in the game.
Reminds me of the game I played a few months ago in which I had generated something like seven SGLs. At Monarch. It was insane(ly good).
 
Hi Ita Bear,

I think it can be worth to have a try with Civ 3 - and it is only a step back in the number, but not in the game play and fun this version of the Civ series can provide to you. At present in the GOG summer sale, Civ 3 Complete can be bought for € 1,29, so if you don´t like it, this was no big waste of money.

... or you may find the fewer decisions to be a relief.

In my eyes this is one of the key reasons to discuss. Here is the scan of a part of page 34 of the Troy Goodfellow interview with Sid Meier (SM) and Soren Johnson in the "Chronicles of Civilization":

Troy Goodfellow Interview.jpg


Unfortunately starting with Civ IV this important fact became to be ignored and more and more additional 'minor trees' were added (per example for unit experience and for governments and so on) and with Civ V and VI this became even much more intense. The question is: Brings this massive amount in additional micromanagement really such a lot of additional fun when playing the game ?

For me it is not worth those additional tons of micromanagement (of course other civers can see this different), but when reading the statement above by Sid Meier, I think his philosophy would tend more to throw this kind of micromanagement out of the game than to add more and more of this not necessairy stuff. And for those, who say that it would be worth to burden this additional micromanagement to the game, the question would arise, if there wouldn´t be a better way to achieve a more interesting result in the game without adding such additional "trees". Per example, wouldn´t it be better to improve and use the present options in C3C to make combat more attractive (movement handicaps, stealth attack, king flag settings and so on) than to install an additional 'new tree for unit experiences'?

The main reason for me to stay with Civ 3 is, that I don´t like the - in my eyes - for a strategy game not fitting 'table top presentation' of Civ 4 - Civ 6. The philosophy in the Civ series was - and in my eyes still should be - that all actions can be seen clearly and without any problems on the map. Units laying in different directions all over the map kill all the fun for me in the game. Symbols, lenses and 2D maps to explain, what should be seen normally clearly on the map in a good Civ game without these additional explanations show, that the graphical approach in Civ 4 -6 collides massively with the original idea about Civ.

Ita Bear, I made a C3C mod called CCM 2.50, that in about 1 1/2 years was downloaded more than 3.100 times and could be interesting for you, as it incorporates a lot of features of Civ 4, coming from the skillful analysis from Soren Johnson in his instruction manual of Civ 4 Vanilla. That´s why at page 1 of the thread of this mod I wrote: CCM was also helped by Soren Johnson´s skillful analysis of Civ III gaming elements at the end of the handbook for Civ IV. In that sense: The end of Civ IV is the start of Civ III CCM. :D

Besides many other new features this mod holds a different - and in my eyes much better working - solution of the ICS problem, what could be even more interesting for civers, who focus on the building aspect of a civ game. I think it also holds a better implantation of the different world religions and many other features like eraspecific different leaders in a game. The units in C3C in my eyes look much better than those of Civ 4. The next version of this mod will be combined with the Flintlock patch that was addressed in that thread in a former post.

The download of this mod can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/authors/civinator.58536/ and the introduction post of the mod can be found here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ccm2-epic-mod.625812/
 
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Thanks for the post @Lanzelot but I must say that in some respects you are incorrect. Artillery doesn't always get destroyed when attacking as it had a withdrawal chance, and is at no risk when bombarding defences. Ships can indeed bombard cities and it is very possible to trade with nations with different religions. The scenarios sound interesting - Civ IV could benefit from a good Roman scenario. :D

Kind regards,
Ita Bear
True, siege units have a small withdraw chance (10-20% maybe?) but why should they have to bother with that in the first place? They're bombardment units and have no business being consistently engaged in melee or other direct combat. As for town/city defenses, why should culture have anything to do with it? Only walls protected Constantinople from Huns and other invaders, not its arts or literature. Settlement size as in Civ3 makes it simple, neat and sensible IMHO. Also, why should aircraft get a penalty (-50% IIRC) of combat effectiveness against ships? It's historically unrealistic; should be the other way around. That said Civ4 is a great game but there's simply too much arbitrary complexity for the sake of complexity. Better stick with 3.
 
No. But my brother played 2 and said it was superior to 3! To each their own...

In many aspects Civ 2 in my eyes is superior to Civ 3, especially when looking at the new Civ 2 TotPP with its lua programming. But when looking at the limitation that only a maximum of eight civs can be played in a game and Firaxis making a big mistake with the real animation and sound of units in Civ 2 ToT (there only the attacking units are animated and the defending units are static during combat and there are no different sounds for moving a unit, only a klack, klack, klack), I think in total C3C is superior to Civ 2 and even the current Civ 2 ToTPP.

I also think, that Civ 3, especially C3C with the Flintlock patch, in total is superior to Civ 4 when looking at the units in Civ 4. In my eyes Civ 4 (together with Civ 1, but thirty years ago the options for games were very limited) has the worst unit graphics of the complete civ series, what is no wonder when every second pixel in a Civ 4 unit is cut out of a 3D model of the unit and additionally to that 'unhealthy' look these units are presented in a table top view that is breaking the philosophy in the Civ series that all actions should be seen clearly and without any problems and without additional helping tools on the map.

Of course this is only my point of view and other civers here can have a different opinion.
 
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My verdict on CivIV
Positives: UI
Negatives: the rest

conclusion:
its a worse game with worse graphics, thats easier to use
 
I started playing Civ 2, purchased from a discount bin in the early 2000s after Civ 3 was released. I played on my Windows XP computer, and stopped playing when I got a Windows 7 computer. Lots of great memories, but my success at playing is probably obscured by all the warm and fuzzy memories. I didn't switch to Civ 2 ToT since I had read the AI were more aggressive, which sounded less fun.
Civ 3 has been my go-to version of the Civ franchise for > 10 years. It is what I measure all the other games against.
 
Nobody mentioned whipping. Pop-rushing in Civ4 is way over the top. In Civ3 each citizen worked to death adds only 20 shields and plus-one unhappy for 20 turns. In Civ4 each one ordinarily produces 30 hammers at normal speed, and regardless of how many are killed per whip it only adds 1 unhappy for just 10 turns. That's why Slavery is probably the most critical Civic in the game.
 
I did not like CivIV, but it is almost immaterial. Civ III is it's own game and is a game that absolutely is worth the investment of time, particularly as it is so cheap. You have very little to lose and it completely holds up today. For me the appeal is particularly strong if:

- you like a stiff challenge that feels fair and where the AI feels very engaged and responsive to a lot of the decisions you make. To the extent you will imagine they care about things they probably aren't actually coded to care about (e.g, I have convinced myself they hate my cultural borders competing with theirs).
- you like combat OR
- you like cultural dominance, pacifism and diplomacy (what absolutely sets it above CivII in my opinion)
- you are willing to play 'in character' for your Civ using different tactics and aiming for different win conditions for different games. If you play to win at all costs, you will find straightforward optimum tactics and it will be repetitive.
- you like customised rulesets (a novice like myself can ask a few questions here then make about 90% of the game perfect for my difficulty and play style preferences)
- you like the option to race through the odd occasion when it is a duller game. Automate workers and have city governors manage happiness and you could flash through a duller game in 7hrs, then luxuriate for 40+ hrs with more micromanagement if your next game is more engaging and you like to smell the roses along the way.
- you like multiplayer (both head to head and including AI (although there are bugs in both to be aware of).
- you like genuinely different game experiences and optimal approaches depending on what Civ you select (again better than Civ II)

I would warn the automated Civ, fresh water and resource spawning locations is a bit rubbish, particularly on Archipelago with medium sized maps. If you played your first game with those settings you may end up underwhelmed. I'd play continents for an introductory game (or a decent sized Earth map) but ultimately I now always make a bunch of maps, save them in a folder and pick them 6 months later to ensure I get a balanced game with all AIs and myself having a reasonable chance of success.

I would also say the scenarios that come with the game are a mixed bag and I do not consider the Roman ones well balanced. Enjoyment varies depending on what Civ and difficulty you play on the default scenarios, but I'm sure people can recommend optimum approaches for them.
 
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