Civilization 4

[Atlanteax]

Have anyone else gotten this game yet?

.

So far it has been a drastic improvement over Civilization 4.

The graphics are amazing (considering the previous versions) and the gameplay is drastically improved.

4 has been rebuilt from the ground up with multi-player in mind, and the AI for the computer players have exceeded my expectations.

I definately like the revamped tech tree and the "great people system" and there's the added bonus of how extra food/resource/science production carries over (so you no longer need to micromanage as extensively).

The promotion system for the units has also proven to be an improvement over the 5 health bars system of +1 for veteran and +2 for elite ... and it is a lot harder for inferior units to defeat superior ones. Though it is equally nice how a highly experienced (you get "exp points" for each combat you win) "obselete" units can still compete with later generations units due to promotions.

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I only have two complaints so far.

First, Civ 4 has been incredibly slow to load on my computer (especially when loading saved games or starting a new game) but that is because my 3 years old computer does not completely meet the performance requirements (I would had figured that 1.3 ghz & 512 RAM would do fine, but I've been meaning to get a new computer this Xmas season).

The second complaint is in regard to gameplay where I'm not happy with some of the leader traits that certain civilizations have. I refuse to play a civilization I'm not a fan of because they have the traits I desire.

[Sean of the Thread]

I bought it last nite.. have not installed it yet.

[Hulkein]

Nice, forgot this was coming out. Wish I had money to buy it, heh.

[Valthissa]

We had a 4 hour session Friday night. My view is that it is currently unplayable due to bugs that crash the game.

I expect a lot of Sid Meier as he designed some of my all time favorite games - the original Pirates, Railroad Tycoon, and Civ I.

C/Valth

[Showal]

The most recent pirates was not that great. Very ... predictable in all outcomes. Not much variation.

[Wezas]

Yeah, pirates is fun, haven't installed Civ4 yet.

Torrented them both.

[kheldarin]

Yeah, I got it last week, it's pretty awesome. It's weird though, an archer killed my modern armor so I dunno..

[Unique]

Originally posted by kheldarin
Yeah, I got it last week, it's pretty awesome. It's weird though, an archer killed my modern armor so I dunno..

That's always been a problem with the Civ series. If it happens too much, bad.

Someone will eventually make a "realism" mod for it which fixes that problem.

[Showal]

My friend's spearmen defended against a tank once. Those were some tough spearmen.

[Sean of the Thread]

You have to look past the fact that the unit is a "tank".. it has attributes that matter. A very experienced old unit can take on a modern noob unit.. and that is understandable.

Now I don't know about the bug complaints because I havn't had one occur yet. Smooth sailing thus far.

[Sean of the Thread]

Okay after a night of playing it I'm having trouble adjusting to the new look/UI etc. I guess I'm a lil old school when it comes to CIV games but this seems a bit dumbed down.

Should have an option like win xp to switch to classic mode.

[Sean of the Thread]

Bad tie you need to upgrade your computer.. loading times are about 7 seconds for me.

Been hours and not a single crash. So testing mode seems to be over for me but time will tell. Time to start a new game.

Afterall Rome wasn't built in a day..just a mere click of "ok" rather.

EDIT to add that Leonard Nimoy doing the voice acting is great hehehe. I wonder if Sulu ever grabbed his wang?

[Edited on 11-2-2005 by Xyelin]

[Makkah]

So someone post a final summary of its Advantages vs. Disadvantages over Civ 3 because I'm a fucking Civ junky, but it doesn't look that much different (and I still really enjoy Civ 3)

[Atlanteax]

Originally posted by Makkah
So someone post a final summary of its Advantages vs. Disadvantages over Civ 3 because I'm a fucking Civ junky, but it doesn't look that much different (and I still really enjoy Civ 3)

This isn't a full summary, but are the main points off the top of my head...

Advantages:
Artillery Weapons are stack-killers (you no longer can easily get away with moving 20 units around at once, an artillery unit can cause collateral damage to all the units in a stack)

Intelligent AI (yes, the AI was targetted for improvement, and from what I've seen so far, it's definately improved)

Population growth no longer "stops" until you have aqueduct/hospital. However, if your city is unhealthy (no food resources that gives + health via trade routes, or city improvements that + health such as aqueducts) then your city food production is penaltize.

Tech tree is no longer restrained. You can focus on military research instead of infrastructure/economic. (you can always go back by trading technology for those you skipped)

No longer assured of having a wonder. If a Civ completes a wonder first, the other Civs CANNOT SWIFT PRODUCTION. What happens is that all the production on the wonder is instead converted into gold.

Science/Production/Food carries over. Micromanagement has been minimalized where if you only need 10 more production to finish a project, but your city generates 21, an extra 11 will carry over to your project.

No longer penalitized for switching projects. If you're building a granary and have 30 of 50 shields done, but need to create an unit instead. You can start production on the unit (from 0 shields) while progress on the granary is "saved" at 30 shields. Then when you finish the unit, production will resume on the granary.

Customization of Units via promotion system. You can promote your swordman in offensive abilities, such as city raider, to increase lethalness against cities, or against melee (or gunpowder or etc) units. OR you can promote your swordman to be a medic (heals units in same square) or to be a town defender.

[Atlanteax]

Originally posted by Xyelin
Okay after a night of playing it I'm having trouble adjusting to the new look/UI etc. I guess I'm a lil old school when it comes to CIV games but this seems a bit dumbed down.

Should have an option like win xp to switch to classic mode.

I like the Interface. However, I disliked the huge units, so what I did was click the options for them to be displayed as a single unit with a health bar.

It's also nice that you can just move your mouse over something and the game will tell you about it. Like what promotions an unit has (or an enemy unit has).

[Atlanteax]

Originally posted by Xyelin
You have to look past the fact that the unit is a "tank".. it has attributes that matter. A very experienced old unit can take on a modern noob unit.. and that is understandable.


An archer has a base strength of 3 versus a tank of 16 (?)

Archer can then get, for examle from promotions, +50% for city defender, +25% from being fortified for 5+ turns, +30% strength bonus... and if you toss in +40% for the city's strong cultural value... the experienced archer could be at 10.2

Then the tank has a 16:10.2 odds to win, instead of an easy 16:3

There is a random element of luck in there too... in early periods, it's not that uncommon to lose a 2:1 advantage (probably 1 of 5-6 times) which is a bit better than a 16:10.2 advantage.

[Showal]

Hey Wezas, want to send me Civ IV tonight? huh huh? cmoooon.

[Sean of the Thread]

There are way too many things to list.. they basically built this from scratch. After playing thru till 6 am this morning I only noticed one bug and it had to do with the growth bar indicator not updating right away.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/

That has a nice overview.

And as far as the interface it was because I was in 1600 x 1200..Changed it down and got much better.

[Sean of the Thread]

PWNT

[Landrion]

Originally posted by Showal
My friend's spearmen defended against a tank once. Those were some tough spearmen.

In addition to the unit experience question. My first thought would be whether that player had pushed the tanks Blitz ability too far. Secondarily was he attacking against some sort of terrain disadvantage or worse a city assault. By and large, these kinds of upsets are rare in the game unless you do something to ask for it. What I have noticed is that a damaged unit has way less chance than a fresh one - making the aforementioned collat damage weapons real dangerous.

I always open up my city assaults with artillery now. Even if they get one hit off it makes the odds better on your next 6 or so fights.

I used to get annoyed throughout the series with little upsets like this. Eventually I thought about a couple of explanations. After all, how do spearmen beat tanks.

1) Many of the more modern units are still subject to breakdowns, accidents and failures. Heck sometimes air units in the real world die on maneuvers. What if a tank pops a tread and is sitting immobile on a battlefield. What if the spearmen set up a deadfall trap over a ravine or other pit and the tank rolls face first into a 30 foot drop. Yeah its ludicrous to imagine some spearman skewering an abrams with his weapon. But there are ways a tank could be destroyed while trying to hunt down and slaughter men on foot. Its better not to imagine the Ewoks defeating the imperial forces on Endor because it sucked madly - but it does give you ideas.

2) Supplies and multiple engagements. Even Modern units need time to ressupply and refuel. When my cavalry gets worn down in battle after battle with horse archers I think Custer's last stand. Even a tank can't fire forever. So if your tank gets dropped going into battle at less than full strength sometimes you just ran out of shots or gas.

3) Speaking of Custer, sometimes there are just individual unit blunders. The local commander got stupid and decided to start looting or didnt post guards or ran into a hail of molotov cocktails or something. After all, how were a bunch of primitives with sharp sticks going to hurt his unit anyway?

No fucking way this flies, Landrion.

We're not talking about one or two tanks that would be supporting a squad. We're talking about Armies. Think the 2nd Panzer Division that the Germans had. Something about that size.

Maybe, one or two tanks might break down, Spearmen get lucky and somehow take out another two, but guess what? There are a TON more left and with a ton more in reserve. We need to understand that Civ is played on a huge scale, and even though we see one or tree tanks, that doesn't indicated there are one or three tanks at all.

- Arkans

[Sean of the Thread]

Bah so far it's acceptable mechanics. I've lost two super cobras to musket men and one to a pikeman. My air cav has about 60-1 kill ratio. And the losses were my fault as I used them when wounded etc or with out the first strike promotion.

[Showal]

I torrented this game finally. I'm gonna need some help unpacking the file. It's an mds file.

[TheEschaton]

Uhhh....

I haven't played Civ since Civ II. But it's GOLD EDITION!!! W00T!


This new Civ scares me. Elite?

As long as Leonardo's Workshop in conjunction with Sun Tzu's Academy still kicks ass, I'm all for it.

-TheE-

[FinisWolf]

I have tried previous Civ's, and did not care for them ... all this talk, I guess I should go ahead and try Civ IV.

Finis

Leonardo's Workshop got wicked nerfed. It's no longer an auto upgrade of all obslete units, but a cost in price (at least that way in Civ3)

- Arkans

[Showal]

I got it working. It's a fun game. I'll play it again tonight.

[Sean of the Thread]

After playing all the way thru a game.. I am happy with it. Now I couldn't find a decent multiplayer game for shit.

So.. on that note, when are we down for a pc only game.

[Wezas]

There an option in Civ 4 to host a game without going their their online certification?

If so, I'd be up for it with my haxored version.

[Blazing247]

Be a pal and spread your hax around Wezas.

[Wezas]

Not hax, and not from me.

mininova.org to find the Civilization 4 file. Mount it using Daemon Tools or Alcohol 120% and install.

I haven't tried to install yet, you might need a crack. And you won't be able to play online unless they allow direct IP connections without going through their servers.

[Neildo]

Yeah, I bought it last week. Sweet game. Best of em so far.

The thing I like the most is all the small little details with the graphics. I like how when a sea square or land area is being used for production, it'll show a tiny house or a boat. I also like how the buildings in a town are shown on the map in the city detail. And now you can build little towns, windmills, watermills, camps, fishing nets, and all that too. It really makes your territory look like a country. It also makes plundering a lot more important and more valuable on the sacker's side.

The only thing I'm disappointed in is that there's no longer a ranged-combat system as there was in Civ3. I loved using artillery and ships to bombard units. I'm glad spies are back in though so I guess that makes up for it. Just too bad there aren't as many options for the spies to use; no poisoning cities, planting nukes, or destroying buildings -- unless I haven't figured it out yet.

- N

[Edited on 11/4/05 by Neildo]

[Sean of the Thread]

You can use the bombard option from right next to the city or defense.. not sure if thats what you meant. Which is a must.. that or bomb the fuk out of them.

I also like taking my f16's or stealth bombers and making airstrikes on peoples improvements. I had to keep sending strikes to take out chinas uranium mines so they couldn't build an ICBM.. was fun.

[Neildo]

Yeah, you can do shore bombardments to cities with ships if you're right next to it, but in Civ3, you could fire a square or two away with artillery, catapults, battleships, cruisers, etc rather than limiting it to only city attacks from ships.

- N

[Sean of the Thread]

Yeah ranged was cool.. but from the square right next to a city you can hit B still to bombard teh defenses with catapults/arty/cannon etc or even fighters/bombers from range (5-6 bombers in one run is usually enough to knock it down)

The fighters and bombers are the only thing I found to "bombard" from range.

[Neildo]

Oh cool, arty can still bombard, thanks. I must have not noticed the icon.

- N

[Sean of the Thread]

I missed it until half way thru the first game myself. "B" is your friend.