How many have played any of the Civilization Series (does not include Freeciv)?

I guess I have considering I gave the fourth game in the series 10/10 in PC Powerplay. :P

Warlords is an awesome exapnsion btw. 9/10 in the same publication.

Myself, I never really went for the whole rule-by-iron-fist thing, I was always diplomatic and kind of slowly assimilated everything. Think the Blob, except way older and technologically advanced. Mechano-Blob, maybe :P

Also, my Xfire profile represents 1 game of Civ4. The day after I installed, my network died, so I had to continue without logging; then I uninstalled to make room for Chaos Theory and haven't looked back. I'm scared; the savegame showed something like 80 odd hours on ONE GAME. I'm scared to reinstall.

i havent had a chance to play Civ4 yet my comp is not up to the challenge yet, but ive been playing Civ3 Complete for some time now, and i did play civ2 on the psx

I love Civ 3.. one of my top games!

I have and I think it's fair to say that Civ 4 is probably the best game ever made.

I haven't had a lot of time to play it recently but I'm going to go back and finally win an 18 Civ deity game.

Disagree. Civilization 4 seems to be more about the presentation, the style rather than the substance.

Couldn't disagree more.

Civilization III added a lot of features such as culture to the existing gameplay set out in Civilization II. Fine in theory but it meant the game lacked cohesion. Elements didn't gel with the core as well as they should have to make Civilization III a truly brilliant game. As a result, dispite the overhauls, etc... Civilization III was a lesser game than its predecessor Civilization II.

Civilization IV took the brave step of distilling what elements made Civilization I and II the great games they were (the journey from Civ to Civ II was essentially the development of the core game, Civ III was the first faltering step to making it something more than it was already). Then they took all the stuff they wanted in Civ III with a few extras and added it to the list. Then they redisigned the gameplay mechanics to accomodate all of their wish list as opposed to the Civilization III method of trying to simply shove a square peg into a round hole.

Civ III was a great game and the honeymoon period was great. Civ IV had no honeymoon period... it came out baked to perfection and extended time with the game did not reveal weaknesses (as opposed to Civ III which felt more hollow the more you played it).

Granted this is all just my opinion but I alluded to the 10/10 score I gave the game. It was PCPP's second ever 10/10 and it occured one issue after our first. As a result I spent a lot of time thinking very long and very hard on the very issue being discussed. Probably the most time I've spent thinking and theorising about a game in my professional capacity.

Once again, still just an opinion but one formed of a not inconsequential amount of time with Civ's II, III and IV.

I think I only half disagree.

Civ 4 definitely has Style! :D

But it definitely comes with bucket-loads of substance. Sure some things have been simplified, but there's been plenty of additions that I think add to its greatness.

The beauty of Civ 4 is that it really is one of those games that are easy to learn but impossible to master. Each component is quite simple, but the overall picture is a masterpiece.

I actually think El Prez scored it a bit low in pcpp.

Unfortunately my editor at the time was not as big a fan of This is Spinal Tap as I and I doubt he would have let me turn it up to eleven. :P

This game just isn't as good as Civ 2 or Civ 3. Developers are so busy turning a game from 2D to 3D, that they didn't pay enough attention to the game itself and they made a completely inferior product, especially later on in Civ 4.

In what ways is it inferior?

And I certainly wouldn't put Civ II and Civ III on the same pedestool. If those two games were the only two computer games in the world I believe Civ II would make Civ III and absolute mess.

Regarding the 3D it had very little impact on development. So a lack of enjoyment of the fourth game does not stem from a focus on 3D. The 3D engine had already been written (it is the same engine from Sid Meier's Pirates! - exclamation mark Firaxis' not mine :P), the art team was obviously seperate to the design team and because of the way 3D was implemented the game design never had accommodate 3D. You could make the exact same game as Civ IV in 2D with not one iota of alteration to the game mechanics/design.

While I'm disagreeing with you with regards to the quality of Civ IV I'm not saying your opinion is wrong. It is opinion after all but I am very curious to extract exactly what it is that you don't like about the game in comparison to Civ III (this is the part I have the most difficulty understanding, if you couldn't tell Civ III is a bit of a sore spot with me :P) and Civ II (can sort of understand this... Civ II does rock hard).

The reason I'm so curious is that you are the very first person I've encountered who holds Civ III above Civ IV.

Civilization 4 is simply a blending of Civilization 3's worst traits made worse with its good traits made better. And it is not a bad game. Let me go ahead and say that again. Civilization 4 is not a bad game. It just simply doesn't live up to its pedigree.

But what are these traits? Tell me to fark off if you can't be arsed going in to that much detail (after all we post on forums for fun, not because it is a job :P) but I'm genuinely curious.

Perhaps you just need to play it on a higher difficulty. You don't really appreciate how good the game is until you play it at at least Prince difficulty IMO.

The gameplay in Civ IV is very different from what I was hoping for. It does put you in command of a civilization that you grow with over thousands of years, but there doesn't feel like there is any point to it. Games take hours to complete on average, and then end as soon as someone obtains one of the conditions for victory. The game doesn't offer much variety either, with each country only having slight, often imperceivable differences. Every game feels the same, and although there appears to be a lot of choice in each game, there are actually only a few viable paths to victory. A.I. is strange, expanding their territory oddly, accepting horribly unfair trades that don't benefit them in the least, then the next minute not accepting resources for dirt cheap prices. Battle is unrealistic, with the ability for warriors armed with stone axes to defeat Panzer tanks if they get lucky. When playing Civ IV, you will with that it was more sim-like and realistic, and what you are doing actually mattered.

I wouldn't worry. I've got at least 270 hours on WoW, and I've only had it for a couple of months.

1. The point is to win <_<
2. You can keep playing after someone wins and if your games are going too long play against less people and increase the speed.
3. The differences between nations are massive and if you don't have totally different tactics for playing as different countries then you're simply playing the game wrong.
4. There are 6 different victory conditions and you need completely different strategies for achieving all of them. I'd hardly call it all the same.
5. Put the difficulty up to at least Prince and take a lesson from how the AI plays. If you don't want rubbish deals, pay more attention to your diplomatic relations and religion.
6. As far as battles go. Yup it is just a game. Pay more attention to the bonuses different combatants get in certain circumstances and the odds of victory. Occasionally an Axeman might beat a tank, but if you look at the circumstances of that, I'd warrant that in almost all cases there was more to it than just being a fair fight.


In summery, my suggestion is play the game on a harder difficulty and make sure you've got the latest patches installed (which make significant changes to the game).

Number II is the only one I've played for the PS1.

I have III for the PC, not installed yet though. Might give it a shot. But I did love II.

Civ 4 is the greatest game ever made. Fact.

I wouldn't say that, but it's definitely worth picking up at EB's current 2 for $50 sale.

I submitted it for best game ever in my contribution to the PC Powerplay Top 100 of all time.

For it is awesome. :D

I also agree with all of Texta's points.

One thing Texta didn't respond to in Robert's post was the whole nations not accepting resource deals even if you are selling cheap. Buying resources for resources sake (even cheaply) is not a clever strategy. Every move in Civ needs to be measured and the AI (particularly on higher difficulty settings) is aware of this.

yeah exactly. If you treat all resources as equal you're going to get some pretty rubbish deals. But some resources at certain times are actually worth a hell of a lot. For example if your capital is no where near a good source of Iron or Copper then you need to be prepared to do anything it takes to get some, otherwise you're not going to be able to build a military capable of even holding off barbarians and your civilisation will collapse.

What are your thoughts on having more than one religion in your nation's cities. For instance, the more religions you have in a city, the more temples, cathedrals, and monestaries you can build, altogether giving the city a lot of culture, happiness, and other bonuses. Plus, if you are practicing Free Religion, each religion in the city gives one happiness.

The only cons I see about having more than one religion in your cities is that another civ can ask you to convert to that religion, and if you refuse, they will not be pleased. Another is that if you have other religions in your city, the more difficult it is to spread other religions, and that's a bad thing if your state religion hasn't spread to that city, for instance.

The other con is that the person who founded that religion can spy on you.

The last few games where religion has been important* that I've played have been for cultural victories and having as much religion as possible is definitely helpful there. But I think it's something you have to view fairly strictly on the merits of the type of victory you want. But it is really important I think, to keep a pretty close eye on religion. It can be pretty critical to diplomatic relations.


*A lot of the games I play these days are small games that I try to win before about 2000 BC. Religion doesn't bother me much in these.

I have had one that went 27 hrs and some, huge map, low water, max number of rivals, prince difficulty and no permanent allies and only conquest as the terms of victory.