Civilization IV

Remove all ads!

Translation: "We have replaced all units with either terrorist or counter-terrorist models and we promise fast'n'furious fragging experience!"

Anyway, there was a advertiser's review on IGN that I read yesterday. According to it, the gameplay should be mostly that-same-old, but some of the annoyances have been straightened out for more open-ended playing.

 

FYI, the general consensus out there are very promising indeed.

CIV reviews

 

Warning, salesman speaking. On GameSpot, which is strange, for I thought they had good reviews. Reminds me of PC-Gamer magazine that is basically a ad-magazine with a price tag.

Can tell for sure, myself, after a few days...

 

If you want to know more about civ4, go to civfanatics
BTW, I hate the 3D graphics. I'll probably have to upgrade my computer in order to to be able to play it.

 

Not really. I got my hands on it today and, after the first session, it does feel as addictive as the previous parts. The 3D isn't that heavy or fancy, but does the job. At the first glance, I hope they would had paid a bit more attention to the detail and added more graphic/sound variation...

 

I received a copy for my birthday so I have started playing. It is for the most part similar to the previous games but it is a much faster game. Even on a large map it seems balanced for a much smaller number of cities - but then again I have only 1.5 games under my belt so far.

I had heard that there was supposed to be less of the warrior/spearman beats tank phenomena but the opposite seems true. I have only got as far as cavalry and riflemen but they lose to warriors, eventually. There is a hit point based attack rating system so that your cavalry will probably take out the first warrior but the more wounded you are the worse you fight so it is much easier to beat a tougher enemy unit by wearing down its combat skill with a wave of weaker units.

 

The Good:
+ More diplomacy, less war. Relatively, at least.
+ Less tinkering, more doing.
+ No cheating AI, game starts better than in previous parts (e.g: no 1x4 starting islands anymore).

The Bad:
- Maybe a bit too fast development. You won't be spending much time with any particular era, especially the first ones which should be, by the real history, the bloodiest ones.
- Very basic graphics and sounds. I would had much rather taken detailed 2D than less-than-satisfactory 3D. More soundscape wouldn't had done any harm either.
- A touch too simple combat. Loved the one in Alpha Centauri.

**EDIT**

Well, the fun lasted for two, full weeks before I got tired to it. Apparently, the AI still knows how strong your military is and plays according to it, so don't even think about creating a strong culture with weak military. Instead, aim for strong military and wipe out all other races before anyone actually manages to reach the Middle Ages. Bleargh. Two weeks and already I need a break from this...

[ November 04, 2005, 22:49: Message edited by: Wirhe ]

 

In typical Civ induced fashion I only got three hours of sleep last night.
I am still finding that even on a huge map there is no where near the level of cities compared to previous games. I started a new game and I still got really far into the game for the amount of time I played.

I noticed a toggle for epic mode last night but I have not tried it out. I will have to do so and see if it makes a difference.

 

Well it arrived today I think it's actually released here monday, but is anybody else experiencing random crashes ?

 

I haven't come across any crashes. However, I'm noticing a serious memory leak. After playing for more than a couple of hours things start to bog down. After reaching the Modern Era with the map explored and the cities established things get really bad. At this point, at the end of my turn, if i have a tech that just finishes, i hear Lenard's voice a full minute before the game stops loading.

I've noticed quite the problem with game imbalance as well. Its far too common for the computers inferior unit to take out my uber modern unit (this is no contest when they're defending a city).

The game itself is as addicting as i'd hoped. Only, as has already been mentioned, the game seems to go by way to fast. The different ages go by so fast its not unlikely that a single unit of that timeframe won't even be created. Also, in my last game, I was finished with 29 turns left. I had just got jets and i'd been playing for a mere 10 hours. After that, the first thing that went was the time limit and the space race... both options that guarentee an unsatisfactory end to a great deal of blown man-hours.

 

What are the requirements for Civ4?

Although, nothing will ever be able to beat the first Civilization!

 

Recommended is
1.8GHZ processor
512mb RAM
128mb graphics card
dvd rom drive
directx 9.0c
2000 or XP both with at least service pack 1

 

Same, although I'm pretty sure it took a bit longer than 10 hours. Were playing a nice game with no "surprise wars" in a archipelago type of map, had amassed an army of 30+ units to take over the weakest civilization, and all were just waiting for the transport ships (which there are just one type to have).

So then I finish this one tech and this "100" counter appears to the upper right corner of me screen. Guess what? The game is about to end. When I was finally ready to conquer one or two civs and ram to the real victory. At that point it simply no longer mattered a jack, since all you had to do is to research the final techs and build the spaceship...

--Below:
Try "Noble"; it's the normal difficulty with no player-handicaps and relatively apt AI.

[ November 07, 2005, 15:00: Message edited by: Wirhe ]

 

I love the game! CivIII was a major let down for me. Every decision depended on the first few moves you made, jungles were a pain to settle in and in general I didn't like the theme of the game.

CivIV is brilliant, it reminds me much more of the brilliant CivII. Although the original Civ is still the best this is a close second. After a space race win and a diplomacy win I as well will turn of those victory conditions. On the lower difficulties they are way to easy. I'm going to try more difficult setting.

 

I'm not impressed with this game, it's far too fast in acquiring technologies but too slow in building. The workers are completely useless on automation, if you tell them 'just this city' they do everything they can and sit in the ciry indefinitely. E.g. when I got railroad with coal and iron I expected them to come flying out of the city and build railroads, they didn't and when I acttivated them and automated them again they wouldn't do anything.
The memory leak in the game is absolutely abyssmal and I'm playing on a 1Gb machine after 45-60 mins things start slowing down, the movies don't play, it crashes far too often but this may be to do with my firewalls etc that I can't switch off.
In a city trying to create a build queue is so annoying as it sits there thinking about something before it puts the item in the queue.

Overall pile of S*** and complete waste of money I'll wait for the patch to solve some of the problems as they did make III better although conquests made it better still. Civ and Civ II still rock.

 

According to the gamespy game of the month award you can apparently change the speed of the ages. Has anyone tried this? Does this solve the issue of things going too fast?

 

Yea, there are three settings; epic, normal, and quick. By my experience, epic doubles the research times of 'normal' setting, so it was a bit better "Civ" experience. Not completely sure, because I started my break soon after...

 

Just got this game. I'm not sure if I'm going to like it more then CIV 3.

 

That's a given play a custom game so you can add/subtract what you wish and epic speed it seems abit better on that IMO

 

There seem to be a lot of bugs, but hopefully they'll have a patch by the time I get it.