Please explain civ4 to a civ2 player

[LDiCesare]

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.

I beg to disagree. Late game is stuttering and slow on small maps, and tedious to unplayable on medium maps for me with Civ IV, but the same computer runs civ2 without a problem.

[Hobie819]

Also (this is easy to figure out) but units no longer have seperate strength and defence stats, it's just one power stat. Each unit (with few exceptions) has bonus's to other type's of units (spearmen being good against mounted units, axemen being good against other melee units). so you

[trev]

Cottages gives give money for a tile, so in a commerce sense they replace roads, they also develop after a specified number of turns of use by a city population into hamlets, villages towns, each upgrade providing more gold per turn, of ten for a good tech rate you need to work half or so of city squares as cottages, rest as farms, mines etc.
Workers are used for terrain improvements, settlers to build cities, both workers and settlers use the food surplus from cities as well as hammers for their production but their production does not reduce your city size, however city growth halts during their production.
The various civics that can be learnt and used are roughly of equal use, ie a civic learnt later is not better, just has a different benefit and suits a different stage of the game or a different style of play, all religions are equal in play, and having a state religion is not always a good idea, sometimes 'no state religion', although the religious civics apart from 'free religion' will then be generally worthless.

[trev]

Buildings do not cost money to maintain, however each city does, with an increasing cost for each city founded, so a core of city earning good money from cottages developing into towns is required before founding many new cities or capturing too many cities.
No techs are given to you when you capture cities, you have to learn or trade for all technologies, also you can trade for only those techs which you already have the prerequisites for, not those higher up the tech tree.
Unless you have specific upgrades for your military units, they cannot take advantage of road and rail bonuses in enemy terriory, but move as if the terrain is unroaded, also units on rail can only move 10 squares, no more unlimited movement.

[Dr. A. Cula]

GOLD / POPULATION RUSHING: The option to hurry production in a city has been changed as well: most of the time, you simply can't do it. You have to use the Universal Suffrage civic if you want to spend gold to hurry production (just as in civ 2), or you can use the Slavery civic to sacrifice population. Both methods have their advantages and drawbacks: the price in gold for everything is quite higher from what I remember from civ 2 and the penalty for sacrificing your people is increased unhappiness for a number of turns. The formulae for both types of rushing are explained somewhere in the forums if you care for this level of micromanagement.
UNHAPPINESS: first, your city has to acquire a number of angry "faces" (this is done through unchecked growth - people complain about overcrowding, pop-rushing - abuse, or war weariness - you can't be at war with someone for millenia without consequences). These are usually countered by happy "faces", produced by buildings, luxuries and culture. If your number of angry "faces" exceeds the number of happy "faces", one or more of your citizens becomes a rebel and refuses to work. This is the moment when you get the warning about the city being in revolt. However, the rest of your citizens in that city continue to work, so you have a chance to build a temple or colosseum (for instance), but obviously production will be hampered. Another stage of rebellion is cultural revolt. This usually happens in border cities where there is always the chance that your neighbours cultural influence will spread to your own cities. If you don't counter this with your own culture or a huge number of troops (or a great artist), the entire city will revolt for a number of turns and you run the risk of losing it to your neighbour. This can also happen with newly occupied cities in war.
Speaking of war, since you no longer have a republic or democracy for government choices, senate opposition to war has been replaced by war weariness: your people become increasingly unhappy with war and eventually revolt. With this in mind, however, you can declare war on anybody, almost any time (you have to wait a number of turns before declaring war on someone you just made peace with). You just have to prepare for war very carefully.

[Arrian]

Some other stuff...

No corruption. Instead, maintenance costs. So you don't lose shields (hammers) and commerce to corruption, but rather your cities cost you money for upkeep. Buildings cost no upkeep - it's all about the city itself (this is impacted by the overal # of cities you have, the proximity of the city to your capital or forbidden palace city, courthouses, and I believe the size of the city... also, the State Property civic removes the distance calculation).

We love the ____ day isn't insanely powerful like it was in CivII.

City defenses - a city will have a % bonus to defense, which is dependant on the city's cultural power and also any defensive improvements (walls, castles). You can remove these by bombarding them with siege units (catapults, trebuchets, cannon, arty), air units or (if coastal) some ships (frigates, ironclads, destroyers, cruisers, battleships).

Counter-units. Somewhat like CivII (if memory serves), certain units are designed as counters to other units. Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Stacks and Collateral damage: a stack of units cannot be destroyed by merely beating the top unit, as in CivII. The best defensive unit will defend (depending on which unit you attack with, this could be several different options, because of the counter system). However, if you have units that deal collateral damage (siege units, the Chinese crossbow unique unit, air units), you can soften up a large stack and then kill it off. Still, you've gotta do it 1 by 1.

Defensive advantages: the defender has a number of advantages in CIV. The attacker cannot use the defender's roads, limiting his mobility. Healing in enemy territory is slow. Cities are tough to crack: in addition to city defenses, certain units get big bonuses when they are parked in cities (archer units).

Unit promotions: as units gain XP, they can be given promotions that grant them various bonuses. The Combat line (combat I-V) is the simplest, giving + 10% strength each time (plus the higher ones give bonuses vs. gunpowder and healing and stuff, but it's pretty minor). There are specific unit killer promos: shock (+25 vs melee), cover (+25% vs archers), formation (+? vs mounted), ambush (+? vs armor), etc. There are specific task promos: city raider (+ vs city attack, garrison (+ to city defense), medic (healing), amphib (no penalty to attacks across water, including rivers), woodsman (defense/movement in forest/jungle), guerrila (defense/movement in hills)... you get the idea. You get to specialize your units.

Peaks (mountains) - can't do anything with them. Impassable, unuseable. They're just barriers.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Unhappiness/unhealthiness:

Unlike prior civ games, if your city is unhappy it won't riot & shut down... but more and more citizens will stop working and eventually the city will be a mess and starve itself down (unless you do something, obviously).

Cities don't grow to a cap (like size 6 w/o aqueduct, size12 w/o sewer). If they have a food surplus, they grow. If they become unhealthy (too big given health resources and buildings), then they lose some food (-1 food per unhealth level). This will result in stagnation or even starvation.

Things that give health: fresh water access (built on river/lake), forests within the city's workable radius (2 forests = +1 health), health resources (many - cows, fish, etc), buildings (granaries, aqueducts, grocers, harbors, hospitals, supermarkets). Some of the buildings provide added health only in conjunction with specific resources (harbors only help health if you have seafood resources hooked up).

Things that take away health: population, jungle tiles w/in the radius, flood plain tiles w/in the radius, buildings (forges, factories, coal plants, etc).

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Originally posted by 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.

I'd say the road/railroad changes are big ones.

No commerce from roads... you have to get it elsewhere. The new kid on the block is the cottage. It's a terrain improvement you can build, but you must actively work it for it to grow. As it grows, it produces more and more commerce, until it's a Town.

Other terrain improvements/resources provide commerce, but do not "grow." Some change a bit with tech, though (windmills, watermills).

Farms do not get more food with RRs, but they do with the Biology tech, so that's kinda a wash.

RRs do NOT provide unlimited movement. They provide 10 tiles of movement/turn, flat rate, for all units.

-Arrian

p.s. Gotta hammer home the no ZOC point. Coming straight from CivII, that will trip you up. Especially if you run into Mongol Keshiks (hills/forests don't slow those bastards down).

[Lord Avalon]

To elaborate a bit...

You need Pottery to build cottages.

Keshiks are the Mongol unique unit (UU), replacing the horse archer. They're available relatively early and ignore terrain costs.

In the Warlords expansion there's a new building, the stable, which adds 3XP to cav units. With the 2XP from barracks, you've got two promotions right off the bat. (There are civics which also add XP.)

Galleys can't cross open ocean. You have to hug the coast, and can only go out to sea as far as your cultural border goes - in most cases one square out (it takes a while before you have enough culture to expand borders farther than that). Other civ's borders will block you, unless you have an Open Border agreement.

Caravels can cross ocean, but can't carry settlers or military units - only Great Persons, scouts/explorers, missionaries & spies. They can enter closed borders, but can't unload any unit other than a spy without raising the do you want to go to war? box. It takes a while to get to Galleons, which can carry "big" units.

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by LDiCesare

I beg to disagree. Late game is stuttering and slow on small maps, and tedious to unplayable on medium maps for me with Civ IV, but the same computer runs civ2 without a problem.

I was referring more to gameplay pacing rather than technical requirements when I mentioned end game slowdown. I remember Civ2 games where I had to move literally hundreds of units every turn and set production orders for dozens of cities.

Assuming that your hardware can keep up with the graphical requirements of Civ4, and you are not hit by one of those late game memory leaks, on a typical medium map you will have far, far less cities and units to move than you did in Civ 2 or 3 and can get through your turns much faster.

[gdgrimm]

LOL. Reading this thread is rather fun.

"Explain CivIV to a Civ II player".

First post....

"A lot of the general concepts are still the same;...."

Followed by a HUGE list of things in multiple posts that just about covers EVERYTHING in CivIV.

To the OP...

I also was a CivII'er (never like CivIII). Much of the game mechanics and philosophy are the same, so it's pretty easy to get started. But you'll really have to completely relearn almost everything else.

It's loads of fun!! And at the end of the day, I believe IV is significantly better than II.

[Caligastia]

I asked a similar question not too long ago TCO. Here's my thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=157790

[sparkyal]

Units: as has alr4eady been mentioned, each Civ in the game has its twn unique unit. for example, the USA get's SEALs (Marines on speed). Germany get's the Panzer. the unique units get special bonuses. For example, the Panzer gets +50% verses other armor units. Also, you will notice that there are not the same number of military units. In CIV II you had a huge number of different units...AEGIS warships, cruise missles, tactical nukes, howlizers...etc. Also, not more howlizers, which is a good thing since they were invincible. It was also mentioned that units simply have stength, not a defensive number and an offensive number. this is a very large change. So, a BB has a strength of 40. without promotions (mentioned earlier) it will defend and attack at 40..unless it is damaged. It your battlewagon is at 25/40, then it defends and attacks at 25. Promotions also effect this number.

WAR: as has also been mentioned, there have abeen a lot of changes here...namely stack warfare. you have to fight each unit...so here come the stacks of death. But, you also have collateral damage. Fly in some bombers or bring in some artlilary and you can damage the whole stack. also, no more super sneak attacks. so, moving all of your units into an opponents border and declaring war can be done...but the second you do it all of your units will be kicked out, then you can begin your war. Keep that in mind while planning. Also, your units will not get road/rairoad bonuses in enemy land. Oh, and hurt units still move at their max movement points.

NUKES: they are far wimpier then ever before. All you have now are ICBM's and SDI (75% of intercepting) is quite a deterent.

Workers: there are no more engineers. all work is done by workers now. your workers will automatically gain abilities and speed through techs. Also, gone is pollution, so no more sending engineers around to lkill pollution. the only thing your workers will clean up is fallout.,..and you only get that from a nuke.

WONDERS: many wonders have been changed, so check them out.

RIVERS: they are now a part of the tile, not a seperate tile. So, when bridges come along you do not have to go around and put in bridges.

Multiplayer: it exists (ok, it was there for CIV II, but it was terrible)

obviously there are alot of changes. So there isa lot to learn. we still haven't covered all of them, butthe game is significantly improved and it worth the costs and the ffort to learn it.

sparky

EDIT: spies are very different. first, you have to build a national wonder before you can build them and you can only build 4. and you cannot steal tech. (even when you take a city you don't get a tech). the spies are more limited in their abilities in general....

[Virdrago]

I'm not going to add anything new, most of you already have, and some have been repeated...

You think TCO is still reading this thread?

I guess, at the very least, there may be somebody else who is getting well informed... or nostalgic (*sigh*, howitzers...)

[Diadem]

Definitely nostalgic. Though I must admit I've never played much civ2. At least not compared to the number of hours I've spent on civ1. Oh... I so loved civ1!

Civ2 is just civ1.1 anyway. The only real improvement was nuclear terrorism.

And they took that out again *cries*