Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization Announced

[DrSpike]

More from Civ2 and Civ3 - especially how not to do it in the latter case.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by DrSpike
More from Civ2 and Civ3 - especially how not to do it in the latter case.

Civics
Promotions
Narration
Return of wonder Movies
Ideology affecting relations
The UN (which would have been a million times better if done exactly the same as the SMAC planetary council)
Detailed city governors
Trade routes (exactly the same as they where in SMAC)
Interface

ect.


Civ3 was basically civ 2,5 that ignored everything that SMAC proved could work, except visible borders. But that was originally a CTP innovation.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Heraclitus

Civ3 was basically civ 2,5 that ignored everything that SMAC proved could work, except visible borders.

Civ3 was not Civ 2.5........that would have been much better. IIRC you are quite young - have you even played Civ2?

I'll give you promotions and civics though - it is clear SMAC played a role. It's just not the main reason Civ4 was a good game.

[Dale]

Civ3 == Civ1.5
Civ1 < Civ3 < Civ2 < Civ4

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by DrSpike




Civ3 was not Civ 2.5........that would have been much better. IIRC you are quite young - have you even played Civ2?

I've played all the civ games.


I never said Civ 2.5 was better than civ 2.

I called it that since it basically took civ 2 and threw in culture, reasources and UU. It also tried to kill ICC with corruption and it made the space race boring. This was unfortunatley copied by Civ4, only recenty have we gone back to something similiar with BtS.


My list:

Civ 4 > SMAC, Civ2 > Col > C3C > CTP > Civ3 > Civ

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by DrSpike

I'll give you promotions and civics though - it is clear SMAC played a role. It's just not the main reason Civ4 was a good game.

Yes it was.

The only thing not in previous civ games and not in SMAC that I can think of are:

-Great People

-UB (added via expansion and are in any case just a spin of of UUs)

-Multiple leaders for civs

-Single stat unit strenght

-Religion




This is the one third new. The one third improved is basically a rip off of SMAC. The one third old is more or less Civ3/Civ2.

You can't deny that every point I made about how SMAC influenced Civ4 was true. You can dissagre in how big a part this made in making civ4 a good game.

BTW In your opinion what did make Civ4 a good game?

[DrSpike]

It's simple - the strategic depth.

I think where we are differing is that you are coming at this from a features perspective. Since Civ3 had the same basic features as Civ2 (with culture etc as you said) you call it Civ2.5.

But actually it's the way the features are implemented and gel which is important. Civ3 (which I actually quite liked btw, just not as much as other games) was quite one dimensional. You were basically forced by corruption into the same model of tight early expansion followed by FP. You would use the same government path each game, and so on.

Civ2, despite 1996 AI and some 'balance issues' around spies and howies etc, had far more strategic depth. I expect you've only really played it in passing so hard to get across, but look back at some of the early landing threads, where new resources were being found almost a decade after the game came out. I remember one game in particular where Bloody Monk beat my AC time using 20ish city Monarchy mass camel approach versus my 'standard' small rep/dem based empire with less higher value vans. Conquest games had a lot of depth too with tech paths and govt switches requiring a lot of skill to match the map.

So yeah, Civ4 borrowed some successful features of SMAC. But the reasons it is a good game is it recaptured the depth of Civ2 (and later SMAC which was heavily based on Civ2) in how those features gel and balance.

[Nikolai]

An excellent post Spikie.

[DrSpike]

Naturally.

[Nikolai]

AND humble to boot.