Civ 2 vs. Civ 4?

[Mao]

OK, so the last Civ I played was Civ2, and I played that one for a LONGASS time. Now, my question to all you poly tubbies here is this:

How easy would it be for me to adapt from civ2 to civ4? I mean, is the interface easy to understand? How bad would the learning curve be? I'm still used to the time of government forms and have no idea wtf these "cultures" and other such things are.

I'm not going to bother asking whether or not I should get it, as the answer seems to be an overwhelming yes. However, I won't be able to get it until December at the earliest probably not even then as I'll be going abroad again soon thereafter, so we may be looking at a June purchase date...by which time, fortunately, the patches and such may be out and ready.

[Solver]

The interface is... subjective. I believe it makes pretty easy to learn the game as it has ouseover help for just about everything, terrain, units, building effects, etc.

The manual is there to give you an idea on the new concepts. There's culture, religion, the new combat system, that sort of stuff.

You're a veteran civ player, I don't see why you would have too much trouble adapting. Then again, it will take a fair amount of time to get used to Civ4, it is significantly different after all. But it does have very enjoyable SP!

[VetLegion]

He's a beta tester, don't trust him! j/k

Mao, there are many Civ2->Civ4 people, just check the civ2 multiplayer forums in a while and we'll let you know if the King is dead, and whether Long live the King.

[Falconius]

If you loved C2, I'm curious why you would never try C3.

Anyway, my advice to you is to stick with C2. You love it, so why switch? Then, when we are much older and Civ 18 is out, featuring it's Full-Room Enveloping Alternate Reality Card, and the rest of us are actually living in the game, you'll have an advantage because you'll still have a real life!

[Mao]

pffft real life...bah!

I dunno why I never got Civ3 to be honest. It seemed interesting at first...but then the mixed reviews...the blatantly "it sucks!!!" reviews...I figured I didn't want to spend the money on it, especially if it would turn me off of civ.

MP section eh? That's where all the Civ2 players hide out these days? I check SL once in a while, even though I don't even have Civ2 installed on this laptop (hell, I never even got ToT), it's good to bring back old memories, Red Front, etc.

Oh, how are the scenarios that come with the game? Are there any? WWII? WWI? Napoleonic wars? I'm curious as to how those stand up.

How does the new combat system and such work? I won't be getting the game for a while, so I'm kinda curious if you can point in the right direction for this stuff...

[Solver]

The scenarios are WW2 mediterranean, American Revolution, Earth 1000 AD, something else... don't want to make a mistake here.

Try taking a look here: http://civilization4.net/3/169/ - these are our previews of the game, and there's quite a bit of info to be found there and in the discussion threads.

[DarkCloud]

Don't worry Mao, you're not the only one who's going to be making the jump from Civ II to III.

I'm still waiting to see if the reviews are good enough to justify a possible purchase of a new video card to play Civ IV personally, though- so I might be holding off till Civ V.

[Mao]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Don't worry Mao, you're not the only one who's going to be making the jump from Civ II to III.

I'm still waiting to see if the reviews are good enough to justify a possible purchase of a new video card to play Civ IV personally, though- so I might be holding off till Civ V.

The reviews all seem pretty positive thus far...

Stupid question: How do you even check what kind of graphics card you have? I have a laptop and I can't seem to find it in the device manager...

[RobRoy]

I'm one who did try Civ3, but was terribly disappointed. Perhaps expectations were too high, but it seemed to take years and way too many patches to make it come close to Civ2. And I'm still more impressed with the quality and replayability of user scenarios made for Civ2 than those made for Civ3.

It's only the Civ2 scenarios have kept me coming back to Civ, despite some decent competition from other publishers over the last few years (e.g., Total War, Europa-Universalis). Civ3 has long since been uninstalled from my computers.

So far Civ4 has exceeded my (admittedly lowered) expectations, so my hopes are growing. The interface is going to take some getting used to, especially if you're coming from Civ2. But the learning curve should be much easier than most new games.

Most of the newer concepts seem to be fairly intuitive and working well. Culture is from Civ3, and was a positive innovation, IMHO; it's pretty straight-forward, and can sometimes result in an entertaining flipping of cities. They've also added a parrallel to happiness called health. Approaches to unhappiness and corruption are vastly streamlined and seem improvements over both Civ2 and 3, to me. Trade is completely different from Civ2, along Civ3 lines (not sure yet which I prefer, but Civ2's was awfully exploitable). Diplomacy is generally improved, but no diplomat units. Religion has been added, but in a pretty sterile, lame way, if you ask me (but at least they'll avoid endless discussions about why religion X should have this advantage over religion Y). Civics options allows tweaking your government without too much micro-management, I think. Unit differentiation, particularly offensive vs. defensive is now primarily done via promotions and specialization - not sure yet whether I like this feature, but there is an option to automate it, I believe.

The earth map actually seems quite well thought out and is the only one I've been using so far. The starting scenarios are more varied and appear, at first glance, to be more solid than anything that was initially offered for either Civ2 or Civ3, but maybe not up to the level of some of the add-ons sold for both products. I haven't experimented with the tools much yet. They strike me as powerful but probably hard to master/use. In any event, I'll wager we see better scenarios from both subsequent add-ons and user mods sooner than we did for Civ3. But I don't feel hugely cheated from a scenario-lovers perspective, by what's included in the basic package (as I did for Civ3). Along those same lines, I haven't tried it, but I gather multi-player is fully functional in the basic package, too.

The biggest thing is going to be hardware. Civ3 was a huge resource hog. Civ4 is far worse. I have access to seven computers. Only the one less than half a year old runs the game adequately (and that not great!). A second, which also exceeds the recommended specs and is only one and one-half years, old bogs down terribly by about 500 AD. Machines two years older and more, even if they meet the minimum specs run unacceptably, by my sights, even for the first few turns, even with all the bells and whistles turned off. Possibly, there are ways to optimize my configuration to achieve an acceptable response, but I haven't seen any such recommendations yet, and part of me would resent having to do that.

Did I mention that the graphics are pretty spectacular? They are. Unfortunately, I couldn't care less about them. I'd prefer to be able to run the game on systems that are advertised as being able to run the game. But they seem important to many people....so the graphics bars on new games get higher and higher...

FWIW, sorry didn't mean to be so long-winded, just saw another name coming back, thought I'd share my thoughts.

Graphics Card: check Display Adapter in Computer Hardware/Device Manager...under System and My Computer, IIRC

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Mao
Stupid question: How do you even check what kind of graphics card you have? I have a laptop and I can't seem to find it in the device manager...

If you have DirectX already installed - go to Start>Run and type in "dxdiag" and OK. That will give you a complete report on all the hardware/drivers installed on your system.

[Andrew1999]

I think it can be summed up as

Civ4 : Civ3 :: AC : Civ2

To anyone having hardware problems, I'll repeat some cliched advice: install the latest graphics drivers. Both NVidia and ATI have come out with new drivers in the last month. I couldn't even start the game until I put in the new NVidia drivers.

[Mao]

Originally posted by Stuie


If you have DirectX already installed - go to Start>Run and type in "dxdiag" and OK. That will give you a complete report on all the hardware/drivers installed on your system.

Ah...thanks!

So I'm running a Pentium (R) 1300MHz with a Radeon 9000...is Civ4 a dream too far for me?

[Mao]

so yeah...any ideas?

[Stuie]

Your system might be pushing it unless you stick to some pretty small maps. How much RAM do you have and what's your operating system?

[Mao]

I'm running XP Pro and have 1 gig of RAM...