YOUR REVIEW of Civ4

[smithldoo]

My opinion

[IMG][/IMG]

[mrs_c]

I would have been one of those very unhappy folks except I uninstalled/reinstalled the game. So many things were fixed by doing that. Now I can stop the movies from playing and by doing that, the game plays for hours with no problems.

Ok, after 5-6 hours of playing the games slows or crashes. But that is so much better than before when I got the 'your system has suffered a serious shut down message' after every wonder movie. I couldn't stop them from playing until the reinstall.

It's a great game...it just needs a few tweaks

[stankarp]

I have tried on 2 different recent computers, both greatly exceed recommended except for video cards, but exceed minimum recomendations (GE Force 4 and Radeon 9200).

It is not the wonder movies, it is the slowness of the game. By turn 1000AD, with graphics on minimum, animations and effects off, it still takes 5-8 seconds to activate a unit, grab it and move it one tile. By this time it lacks any atmosphere IMHO.

[Tommar]

Yeah, I gave it a try, but I'm going back to MMORPG's. It makes no sense that I can play World of Warcraft, with a hundred or so players visible on my screen (Ironforge) with fewer technical issues than playing a turn-based game solo.

[TexTek93]

I have been an avid Civ fan forever....Never stopped playing Civ3 on the laptop....Civ IV is outstanding, but I am getting irritated with the load times and computer crashes when playing a "Huge" game during the later stages (year 1850+). Any suggestions for improvement?

The desktop has AMD Athlon 3000+, 512Mb, 2.10 GHz, and NVIDIA GeForce 6200. Additionally, the opening video (or is it just the sound?) is choppy. All my specs are well beyond the box requirements... What gives?

I have always loved playing the "Huge" game and would hate to stop now.

I just wish I could load and play Civ IV on my "old" laptop. I travel too much for work and my wife won't let me get a gaming capable laptop....Grrrrrrrr

[Impaler[WrG]]

I've been playing a few days now, I'm running with minimum spec video card but my good CPU (AMD 64 3200) seems to be able to compensate. I initialy had some Black terrain and skipping problems, video card updates improved the terrain and 1.09 took care of skipping. The only little hicup I have now are the shadow blop animal resorces, but this is livable and playable.

I'm still learning about the game but I already feel that the game lacks the high grade polish that realy makes a game great. Little inconveniences in the UI pile up quickly, you cant realy call it poor design or even mediocure its just not "Great". Overall the game simply dose not "drip" with style the way SMAC did. Its still a very good game but it dose not beat SMAC. Civ 4 is like the StarWars Episode III of Civ a very good game but it definatly dose not raise the bar for me. I give it a 92% vs SMAC's 98% (using PC Gamer math). The modibility may end up being the thing that dose it though, the comunity may end up bumping the game up past SMAC (or atlest equal to SMAC if by doing nothing more then turning it into SMAC)

[stankarp]

I have played 4 games on monarch level and was unable to finish any because of performance issues. Specs well above minimum but it just got painful and the game died regularly. 2.8 gig processor, 512 ram and it was taking 4 minutes to start the game and about the same to load a game.

Using Infinite Attack Sleaze, I was able to basically ignore religion, trade and diplomacy (which is much poorer than Civ 3) and just splatter one ai at a time much easier than Civ 3.

Much of the stuff in Civ 4 sounds good in theory but in practice has little or no real effect in gameplay, certainly not if you are super aggressive (which youu could not be in civ 3).

[ubuck]

A minor problem

I love this game. However, i have one minor problem with the game.

NO way to auto-adjust the number of Civs. I little to play, but I don't always want to play 10 people every game. Also, in the play now section, you can't pick the number of people you play little in past games. I know this is minor, but its just something that I wish they would fix, but thats just me.

I'd give the game 9.3 out of 10.

[Nikolai]

Your complain is nonexistant. When you change map size, the number of civs changes according to your choice. This can be changed again by you if you want to.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Nikolai
Your complain is nonexistant. When you change map size, the number of civs changes according to your choice. This can be changed again by you if you want to.

But I want it to be random*



* With limits of course... I don't want to end up with the largest map avaliable, but only 1 AI

[Jaybe]

... and I want random map style option. To NOT know whether you are on Terra, continents, or whatever would REALLY spice up the game!

[Adagio]

Agree... more randomness

[smithldoo]

Some figures re Civ 4 from the Civ 4 Stories and Reviews Threads.

Score update.

Post Negative Points re Civ 4----123

Anyone else severley disappointed in Civ 4---173

It seems I am not alone in my disappointment ---16

Total 312.

Post Positive comments re Civ 4---43.

Raw statistics only.

[Tommar]

Originally posted by Nikolai
Your complain is nonexistant. When you change map size, the number of civs changes according to your choice. This can be changed again by you if you want to.

I don't understand why you dismiss the complaint for that reason. Why should the map size matter?

[Joseph]

Re: A minor problem

Originally posted by ubuck
I love this game. However, i have one minor problem with the game.

NO way to auto-adjust the number of Civs. I little to play, but I don't always want to play 10 people every game. Also, in the play now section, you can't pick the number of people you play little in past games. I know this is minor, but its just something that I wish they would fix, but thats just me.

I'd give the game 9.3 out of 10.

Use custom game and you can set the number of other nation from 2 to 12 on any map size you want to play with.