Please explain civ4 to a civ2 player

[TCO]

I never made the move to civ3. Please explain civ4 to someone who understands civ2 very well, but not civ3. Thanks.

P.s. no comparisons to civ 3!

[JackRudd]

A lot of the general concepts are still the same; you still have cities producing food, production and commerce, and you still have the old unit/improvement/Wonder choices for building in cities.

Some major changes:

CULTURE AND NATIONAL BORDERS: Certain city improvements, all Wonders, and some types of specialist produce culture per turn. National borders are produced by the expansion of culture (every time culture in a city hits a threshold value, the borders of the city expand). You can't work tiles outside your empire's borders.

RELIGION: A city may have up to seven religions in it. You may pick any religion present in one of your cities as your state religion, which, if you are running Organized Religion, Theocracy or Pacifism (see CIVICS), gives you benefits to all your cities with that religion. Religions are founded by being the first to a certain tech (for example, the first civ to discover Monotheism founds Judaism).

CIVICS: Instead of just having one set of government types, there are now five independent columns, and you have to pick a civic from each of them. For example, the Government civics column gives you the choice of Despotism, Hereditary Rule, Representation, Police State or Universal Suffrage, while the Religious civics column allows you to pick Paganism, Organized Religion, Theocracy, Pacifism or Free Religion. Each civic gives you various bonuses; part of the challenge of the game is figuring out which civics work well together in which situations.

NATIONAL WONDERS: In addition to the Great Wonders, which act in the same way as Civ2's Wonders Of The World, the game also has "Small Wonders", which can be built by every civ. However, no more than two Small Wonders can be built in one city, and each usually has an effect only on the city in which it's built.

GREAT PEOPLE: Wonders and Specialists produce Great People points. Every time you reach a threshold value of Great People points in one of your cities, a Great Person pops out (and the number of points needed to get your next great person increases). Great People can be settled in a city, or used to research/shave research time off a tech, or (in some cases) used to build a special building. Additionally, two or more Great People can sometimes be combined to give a Golden Age (a period of several turns where your cities produce much more production and commerce).

[fed1943]

civ4 is not very far from civ2.

Some diferences I remember: "resources" to be connected by road and

improved, not necessarily worked, to give advantages to our whole

civ; national territory comen from commerce/trade; religions, mostly

for hapiness; more "governments" style SMAC.

A good game, very worthy to try.

Best regards,

[Adagio]

Any veteran Civ players can easily get into Civ 4, so you shouldn't have any problems adopting to the changes
Have you tried the demo?

[patcon]

Originally posted by fed1943
"resources" to be connected by road and improved, not necessarily worked, to give advantages to our whole civ

The connection to a resource tile does not necessarily need a road connection. Rivers and coast can serves as a trade route connection. That's worked very nicely for me in the early game where I might have separated cities on connected rivers (even connected by emptying into the same major body of water) which could share resources. I'm not sure, but I think a resource tile with a water edge still needs a road in the tile to connect to the water. I like that, it represents the roads and docks needed to get the resource to market.

[Diadem]

There are no resources in civ2, so perhaps we should explain that concept as well. That's a rather big change, after all.

So, in addition to JackRudd's excellent overview:

HAMMERS: In civ2 you had shields. In civ4 you now have hammers. A purely cosmetic change, but confusion at first.

RESOURCES: In civ2 (and civ1) you already had special tiles giving additional food, hammers or commerce. This returns in civ4 (and 3) but in a rather different way. First of all resources now need specific upgrades to be utilized (sometimes mines or farms, but in other situations entirely specific upgrades like plantations or pastures). Secondly these resources don't just give a bonus to the tile they are in, but they give a specific empire-wide bonus as well, provided they are connected to your trade network (basicly: you have a road or river to them).

There are three kinds of resources. The first kind simply gives a happiness bonus if you have it. If you have gold, all your cities get +1 happiness. If you have silver, idem. Both gold and silver gives +2 happiness, but 2 gold will only give +1. The bonus is once for each type of resource. You can trade additional resources you don't need to AIs though.

The next type of resource gives a health bonus. I guess health is new in civ4 as well thoug, so that requires some explanation. In civ4 you no longer need specific buildings to allow cities to grow beyond a certain size. Cities can grow all the time to any size. However for each population point their unhealthiness counter increases. If you have more unhealthiness than total health (which is produced by resources, but also some buildings, etc) that costs you food, so growth is slowed and ultimately halted.

The third type of resources are strategic resources. Things like iron, coal or oil. These are resources you need for specific units. If you don't have them, you can't build those units. For example to build swordsmen, you need iron. No iron, no swordsmen for you, even if you have the tech. And if you want horse archers, you better have horses. In additional, you need coal to build railroads. No coal, no railroad. You don't need a specific number of resources though. One source of coal is enough to build railroads over the entire world (in civ3 resources could be used up. No such thing in civ4, thank god).

There are always units you can build without needing any resources, but usually the best units need resources. The ones you can build without resources tend to be defender-type units. Especially late age it is essentional to have oil and aluminium. By then your empire should be big enough to always have such resources within reach.

However since resources require tile improvements on them, destroying those tile improvements can remove acces to a resource for your enemy. This can cripple someone during wartime.

[TCO]

demo? Where?

With the borders, does that mean you can't just pop cities whereever you want? I loved doing that to the AI and how it would do it to me. good war starters...

[Solver]

You can't enter another civ's borders. You either need Open Borders (a diplo agreement) for it, or war. And even if you can enter their borders, you can't settle within them. And in many cases, settling right outside their borders is a bad idea. And there's a demo here:

http://apolyton.net/dir/index.php?sid=700011157&id=4979&t=reviews&toprate=5.0000&tophits=5904&cat=350

There are a few strategic/gameplay changes that are important switching from Civ2 or Civ3. ICS is dead. If you expand like crazy in the early game, you're dead. Well, skilled players can expand fast, but your goal is no longer to get as many cities as you can. More importantly, having more cities doesn't mean having a better empire. With the right strategy, you can have 10 cities and outresearch a 15-city civ.

Next big change goes for war. In Civ2, global conquest was easy, in Civ3 also warmongering was more powerful. In both it was the best way to win at high levels. In Civ4, you don't actually need to fight a lot. Difficulties of Monarch and below can be won entirely peacefully. Higher difficulties can be won almost peacefully, with just an early war. Aeson has demonstrated that even on Deity, with enough space for a few cities, you can win a culture victory...

[LDiCesare]

You should look for a thread by Caligastia asking essentially the same thing, except he got the game.
Important changes not mentioned yet:
-ICS doesn't work because upkeep is per city (and per unit), not per building.
-Fights: One unit kills one unit at a time, not a whole stack.

As for planting cities, cultural borders are a bit like CtP2. If borders have expanded, you can't plant a city there, but it's very possible to build one between 2 enemy cities if the culture hasn't filled the gap.

[rjmatsleepers]

A couple of other changes from Civ 2.

You don't build vans. Trade routes are established automatically. The number of routes is influenced by discoveries, buildings, wonders and choice of civics.

You can't bribe units or cities.

RJM

[Lord Avalon]

You can build roads outside your cultural borders, just not improvements (farms, mines, etc.).

No Leonardo's! You have to pay gold to upgrade your units. (Exception: if you have the Warlords expansion, a unit with a Great General attached gets free upgrades.)

Promotions: As a (military) unit gains experience, at certain levels it gains a promotion. There are various types of promos, and levels of each. Like Combat I giving you 10% to attack, or Woodsman I giving +20% defense in forests/jungles (Woods II gives additional bonus and MP cost of forest is reduced to 1.) There are medic promos, city attack or defense promos, bonuses against certain types of units, etc., etc., etc.

No caravans is a bit of a bummer as far as wonder building. You can chop forests to gain resources for it, or if you have a Great Engineer, sacrifice him to speed it up.

Just a few things that came to mind, while I'm here at work.

Edit:
Resources - can be shared by all your cities if you connect them by roads/rivers/coast (with Sailing). Chariots and other cav units require access to Horses (with Pasture), so you need to connect the resource to closest city and then to other cities in order to build cav from them. If barbs or enemies pillage your source(s), then you can't build anything that requires it. Other resources can provide health benefits, or happiness, to your empire.

Edit2:
No ZOCs! (ZsOC?) Units can move right past each other. Even in the same square if you're at peace. Forts are worthless - the terrain defense bonus (if there is one) is equal or better than what the fort provides. And you can't have a fort and an improvement - try to build a fort on top of an iron mine, and you'll remove the mine.

[MasterDave]

Another small change from Civ2 that I have not seen yet: Roads no longer produce commerce. You do get some bonus production on mines and forests with rails (but no food bonus).

A big, big change from Civ2 is that Unit density is far, far less and the pacing of the endgame is far faster. I remember spending hours and days trying to slog through the last few turns of a Civ2 game with large maps. The endgame in Civ4 does not slow to a crawl as badly as Civ2 and most other 4X games tend to do.

[Diadem]

Quite a few changes, JackRudd and I had already named a large number, and we had forgotten quite a few still, it seems.

One thing I still really miss in the new civ's in Darwin's Voyage. I want it back!

Another important change that hasn't been mentioned yet (unless I missed it): Cottages! There is now a specific upgrade to produce commerce. So you have farms for food, mines for hammers and cottages for commerce. Roads and railraods don't produce bonus commerce anymore, so you do need those cottages for your commerce production!

[Garth Vader]

There are a lot of new terrain improvements aside from cottages. Watermills, windmills, workshops to name a few. This allows for a lot more flexibility in your cities.

[alms66]

Re: Please explain civ4 to a civ2 player

Originally posted by TCO
I never made the move to civ3. Please explain civ4 to someone who understands civ2 very well, but not civ3. Thanks.

P.s. no comparisons to civ 3!

2 Parts Civ2
1 part candyland
1 part shoots & ladders
1 part RTS (anyone will do since they're all the same)

blend thoroughly and serve.