Civilization?

[>>FrEnZy<<]

I just bought this game purely because Ive heard about how addictive and great it was.

Can someone tell me whats so great about it? Im determined to like that game now that Ive bought it. Also, Does anyone know any good civ sites that will link me to the community?

 

[Roland Deschain]

Best site: http://www.civfanatics.com/. The game is so amazing because every new game is utterly different. However, its a very slow game, so if that's not your cup of tea, than you lost some money. Try the tutorial and a couple of easy games to get the feel for the game.

 

[pvtbones]

the AI can be very very interesting (in the good way too!) I'd have wars where I invaded Alexander of Greece (that bastard, HATEHATEHATE!) which caused Cathrine of Russia to declare war on him aswell, without any prodding by my part. The AI is really well done but some are a bit predictable, tokanugwa or how ever you spell his name is really agressive so you can expect him to declare war on you at some point.

*edit* I suck at grammar

 

[Fishlore]

Civ was probably my favorite franchise growing up. I played each and every one to death. Civ 4 was a complete and utter disappointment for me. I stoped playing it after about a week. That game subsequently killed my enjoyment of the franchise and I'll probably never go back.

http://civfanatics.com is a great community though. I highly recommend it.

 

[Roland Deschain]

Civ was probably my favorite franchise growing up. I played each and every one to death. Civ 4 was a complete and utter disappointment for me. I stoped playing it after about a week. That game subsequently killed my enjoyment of the franchise and I'll probably never go back.

http://civfanatics.com is a great community though. I highly recommend it.

May I ask why, as for me its directly the reverse. I could never get into Civ 2 or 3, but Civ 4 really reeled me in even though I usually don't like the slow games.

 

[alehm]

After they took out bunny hopping and sky walking I stopped playing Civilization. I mean, how are you supposed to win in tournaments? GOSH!!!!!1111

 

[Fishlore]

May I ask why, as for me its directly the reverse. I could never get into Civ 2 or 3, but Civ 4 really reeled me in even though I usually don't like the slow games.

I hate, loathe and despise the way the game looks first and foremost. It's probably the ugliest game I've ever seen, in my opinion of course. I'm not talking resolution or the number of polygons being pushed. The art direction, the scale, the colors, the many graphical errors and many other features are simply hideous looking to me. Civ is a TBS, but Civ 4 looks like it wanted to be an RTS similar to AOE3. Give me old Civ 1 DOS graphics any day of the week.

I hated the addition of religion. It's practically useless having a bunch of generic religions that all do the exact same thing.... Nothing. The addition of religion didn't add depth to the game. Civ 4 is like a kiddie version of the Civ franchise. The game feels incredbily dumbed down compared to previous versions. Remove for a second the initial land grab and you have a game where you hit "end turn" a hundred times in a row.

I hated the changes to combat. I liked old Civ games because I liked the way the combat worked. Attack/Defense/Movement. The move to one value with bonues and upgrades changed the combat so much that it feels like a different franchise. I'm also disappointed that they spent their time worrying about graphics, adding MP, adding religion and ignoring aspects of the game that haven't worked right since Civ began. Navies and Air Forces are very underutilized, under emphasized and poorly implemented.

My love of the Civ franchise would have and should have overcome all of these issues. That's not the case though. You can have all the features in the world, but eventually it simply comes down to the fun factor and the gameplay. I simply didn't have fun playing Civ 4. Every game of it seemed exactly like the game I played before it. I never had that feeling with old Civ games and I have trouble quantifiying why it's happened with this one.

Simply put, I don't care about my favorite video game franchise anymore. It's completely dead to me. I won't even check out a demo of future titles. I hope they picked up enough newbies to the series to make up for the numerous vets jumping ship.

 

[Roland Deschain]

I hate, loathe and despise the way the game looks first and foremost. It's probably the ugliest game I've ever seen, in my opinion of course. I'm not talking resolution or the number of polygons being pushed. The art direction, the scale, the colors, the many graphical errors and many other features are simply hideous looking to me. Civ is a TBS, but Civ 4 looks like it wanted to be an RTS similar to AOE3. Give me old Civ 1 DOS graphics any day of the week.

I hated the addition of religion. It's practically useless having a bunch of generic religions that all do the exact same thing.... Nothing. The addition of religion didn't add depth to the game. Civ 4 is like a kiddie version of the Civ franchise. The game feels incredbily dumbed down compared to previous versions. Remove for a second the initial land grab and you have a game where you hit "end turn" a hundred times in a row.

I hated the changes to combat. I liked old Civ games because I liked the way the combat worked. Attack/Defense/Movement. The move to one value with bonues and upgrades changed the combat so much that it feels like a different franchise. I'm also disappointed that they spent their time worrying about graphics, adding MP, adding religion and ignoring aspects of the game that haven't worked right since Civ began. Navies and Air Forces are very underutilized, under emphasized and poorly implemented.

My love of the Civ franchise would have and should have overcome all of these issues. That's not the case though. You can have all the features in the world, but eventually it simply comes down to the fun factor and the gameplay. I simply didn't have fun playing Civ 4. Every game of it seemed exactly like the game I played before it. I never had that feeling with old Civ games and I have trouble quantifiying why it's happened with this one.

Simply put, I don't care about my favorite video game franchise anymore. It's completely dead to me. I won't even check out a demo of future titles. I hope they picked up enough newbies to the series to make up for the numerous vets jumping ship.

I do agree with you that the beginning of the game can be painfully slow, but the penalty for having many cities early on ensures that the game is not decided by who can create the most cities as early as possible. I usually end up having three cities within the first couple of turns, and then wait for my economy to pick up. By 1000AD I usually end up with 7 cities and any further growth has to be done through conquest as the other players have taken up the good land.

I like the religion concept. A state relegion gives you nice bonuses (although they are generic, I give you that), but that's why your neightbours will hate you and its far more likely that they will declare war on you. I'm usually the last one to adopt a state religion (Islam in that case). I don't get the bonuses in the early game, but I also avoid several wars. Adopting the religion later also allows me to pump out missionaries faster to convert my neighbours (at this point they don't attack me, as I have a decent army).

I have no problem with the combat system, and I'm entirely addicted to leveling up. Nothing better than having a level 7 marine late in the game. It makes you care about your units more, and it adds further strategy, as your army, even though composed of the same unit type, varies greatly in experience. I do agree with you that air units suck in Civ 4 and I usually avoid pumping them out, except a few bombers, in case the enemy decides to do a stacking strategy.

It is more user friendly (dumbed down), but I don't find it a bad thing. I like the concept of Wonders and Great People, the the AI is very nice.

I'll go back to Civ III and see how it compares now. I know that I could not go back to Max Payne 1 after playing Max Payne 2. I'm curious if that'll happen to Civ III.

 

[StardogChampion]

I hate, loathe and despise the way the game looks first and foremost. It's probably the ugliest game I've ever seen, in my opinion of course. I'm not talking resolution or the number of polygons being pushed. The art direction, the scale, the colors, the many graphical errors and many other features are simply hideous looking to me. Civ is a TBS, but Civ 4 looks like it wanted to be an RTS similar to AOE3. Give me old Civ 1 DOS graphics any day of the week.

I hated the addition of religion. It's practically useless having a bunch of generic religions that all do the exact same thing.... Nothing. The addition of religion didn't add depth to the game. Civ 4 is like a kiddie version of the Civ franchise. The game feels incredbily dumbed down compared to previous versions. Remove for a second the initial land grab and you have a game where you hit "end turn" a hundred times in a row.

I hated the changes to combat. I liked old Civ games because I liked the way the combat worked. Attack/Defense/Movement. The move to one value with bonues and upgrades changed the combat so much that it feels like a different franchise. I'm also disappointed that they spent their time worrying about graphics, adding MP, adding religion and ignoring aspects of the game that haven't worked right since Civ began. Navies and Air Forces are very underutilized, under emphasized and poorly implemented.

My love of the Civ franchise would have and should have overcome all of these issues. That's not the case though. You can have all the features in the world, but eventually it simply comes down to the fun factor and the gameplay. I simply didn't have fun playing Civ 4. Every game of it seemed exactly like the game I played before it. I never had that feeling with old Civ games and I have trouble quantifiying why it's happened with this one.

Simply put, I don't care about my favorite video game franchise anymore. It's completely dead to me. I won't even check out a demo of future titles. I hope they picked up enough newbies to the series to make up for the numerous vets jumping ship.

Agreed.

I haven't played Civ 4 for longer than a few hours... at most.

The art directions gone all "Pirates!". Horrible for this type of game.

 

[Fishlore]

I do agree with you that the beginning of the game can be painfully slow, but the penalty for having many cities early on ensures that the game is not decided by who can create the most cities as early as possible. I usually end up having three cities within the first couple of turns, and then wait for my economy to pick up. By 1000AD I usually end up with 7 cities and any further growth has to be done through conquest as the other players have taken up the good land.

I like the religion concept. A state relegion gives you nice bonuses (although they are generic, I give you that), but that's why your neightbours will hate you and its far more likely that they will declare war on you. I'm usually the last one to adopt a state religion (Islam in that case). I don't get the bonuses in the early game, but I also avoid several wars. Adopting the religion later also allows me to pump out missionaries faster to convert my neighbours (at this point they don't attack me, as I have a decent army).

I have no problem with the combat system, and I'm entirely addicted to leveling up. Nothing better than having a level 7 marine late in the game. It makes you care about your units more, and it adds further strategy, as your army, even though composed of the same unit type, varies greatly in experience. I do agree with you that air units suck in Civ 4 and I usually avoid pumping them out, except a few bombers, in case the enemy decides to do a stacking strategy.

It is more user friendly (dumbed down), but I don't find it a bad thing. I like the concept of Wonders and Great People, the the AI is very nice.

I'll go back to Civ III and see how it compares now. I know that I could not go back to Max Payne 1 after playing Max Payne 2. I'm curious if that'll happen to Civ III.

Sorry if my post sounded like an excesive bash. That wasn't my intention. Re-reading it, it sounded sort of harsh. Anyway, if you can get past the graphics I'd suggest checking out Civ 2 over Civ 3. Civ 3 vanilla version has plenty of issues of it's own, somehow they didn't bother me as much though. I think Civ 2 is where the franchise peaked. Of course all this is just one man's opinion and shouldn't matter to anyone.

Agreed.

I haven't played Civ 4 for longer than a few hours... at most.

The art directions gone all "Pirates!". Horrible for this type of game.

LOL, so true.

 

[Kangy]

I love the art direction personally, although I modded it to the Blue Marble terrain set NASA made recently, and I think that's even better. Then again, I really enjoyed the art of Pirates! too. Far too much realism wank is about right now, not enough striking art styling.

I didn't think they'd dumbed it down much either, it seemed if anything the whole XP thing made things a lot more complicated, as did the collateral damage/bombard thing too, as you ended up having to choose between hurting the units themselves or hurting the fortifications.

Navies could definately be improved significantly, as there's rarely a reason to actually have one operating outside your waters in war time. I hate the fact that in the modern era, if they send enough transports, you cannot stop them, regardless of how well you've planned naval defence. I think they need the ability to be sunk by aircraft in addition to other naval vessels.

Airforces are also a bit weak, but they definately have a big role in the endgame. I'd like to have the ability to run paratrooper drops back, really, only without the shitty paratrooper unit. However, they're certainly pretty important in the end when using conventional artillery becomes too slow and risky, so you end up using aerial bombing to sort out fortification destruction. I also like the fact that you end up needing to move the airforce into newly captured cities means you're putting them at risk. It seems like a very good way to alter the offense/defense dynamic.

 

[theotherguy]

I hadn't played any civ games before civ 4, and I thought I would hate it, and I did at first (turn based games are so boring) but eventually I started to like it, and once I removed the tech goals and time limit I really started to enjoy it. Something just makes me feel good about having this little country that expands over a continent and then wipes out other civilizations overseas. Every time I study world history I get up and go play civ (because it reminds me of the game). Sadly I haven't been able to compare civ 4 with any of the others, and if its a worse game I'm none the wiser.

 

[Jintor]

I didn't even look at Civ until Civ 4, but I love Civ 4. I don't play it often anymore, though - end-game really, really, really lags my system, and makes winning a MONTH long game - but it is really addictive and really fun.

 

[sinkoman]

I bought civ4. My first entry in the series.

I stopped playing after a while though. I sucked at it too much, and found that I had more fun managing my cities than actually trying to get new ones. Then the ai would block me into a small piece of culture about 1/50th the size of the continent, and i'd just lose because all my people were swimming in their own feces.

But according to Xfire, i've spent 50+ hours in it. So yes, it's very addictive I guess.