different editions?

[lord of the mark]

whats included in Gold edition? Game of the Year Edition (in the US)?

Ive been told I might not want to play with the warlords Xpack, and might want to try to play original Civ4 before that or BTS. Which edition would be best?


Note, my local circuity city has Civ4:GOTY for $15 US, so if I that lets me play the original way first Id pick up that, though if I can spot vanilla Civ4 for less I might get that.

[Unimatrix11]

Get anything that includes BTS and your are set. Dont settle for less and you dont need warlords if you have BTS - all you will get by Warlords is some extra-scenarios (which at least i do not play anyways...). So if the GOTY-box says: includes BTS you are fine - just get it. If you play vanilla first, you will just get confused about some changes in BTS, when you´d switch to that later. No need for doing that to yourself - just start with BTS.

EDIT: I am amazed a Deity needs advise on this...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
Get anything that includes BTS and your are set. Dont settle for less and you dont need warlords if you have BTS - all you will get by Warlords is some extra-scenarios (which at least i do not play anyways...). So if the GOTY-box says: includes BTS you are fine - just get it. If you play vanilla first, you will just get confused about some changes in BTS, when you´d switch to that later. No need for doing that to yourself - just start with BTS.

EDIT: I am amazed a Deity needs advise on this...

I came to this forum way back when for advice on playing Civ2. I participated in Civ2 general and strategy, and in the Scenario League. I played SMAC as well. lately ive come here for other games and OT only though, I never played Civ3 (though i had participated in discussions about it prior to release) and havent really gotten into Civ4. Oh, and the box, beleive it or not, did not SAY which Xpack was included, which is why I asked here.

Ive also definitely heard that it was worth trying vanilla first. I very much doubt playing BTS after vanilla would confuse me, as Ive played probably a couple of dozen different Civ2 scenarios/mods, all with different units, techs, etc, and of course SMAC after that.

Edit: I am amazed someone on Apolyton assumes that someone with experience on this site must have it on Civ4, esp if they managed to look at my join date.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11

EDIT: I am amazed a Deity needs advise on this...

All the best Deities on this site could whip ass in Civ2, SMAC and possibly Civ3. cIV is for the young 'uns.




OK, so I play cIV too...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MrWhereItsAt


All the best Deities on this site could whip ass in Civ2, SMAC and possibly Civ3. cIV is for the young 'uns.




OK, so I play cIV too...

Actually I never got into the MP scene. When I got to the point where I could beat the AI on deity using my preferred (non exploit) strategies, on a variety of maps, I shifted to mainly playing scenarios, discussing scenarios, and contributing to scenarios (I researched and wrote detailed descriptions of the historical techs of Kulls "Ancient Empires" mod/"Seeds of Greatness" scenario.

And yes, I got passionately into debates about what Civ3 should be. Both because I wanted to explore other sides of gaming, because I was dissappointed in the direction Civ3 took, and because my financial priorities meant I didnt at the time have a PC that would play Civ3, I stopped following it closely, however I remained an active member of this community.

I got a pair of new PCs (long story) two years ago, but by this point I had heard it was worth skipping civ3 for civ4, but I didnt have quite enough RAM for Civ4. I finallly upgraded my RAM a few months ago, but Ive had a backlog of games to play through. Now that Im getting toward the end of that, I want to pick up Civ4.

[TriMiro]

When Civ IV came out I could not afford a computer that would play it. For a few years I had only played couple of low difficulty games on a friend's computer, I basically knew the interface and some basics such as building a settler stops the city from growing.

Then I got a good computer. In a matter of 4 months I went trough Vanilla, Warlords and finally I got BtS when it first came out. The change was bad since there is a big gap in the difficulties. BtS is much more difficult than Vanilla and Warlords, unhealthiness is different for late factories and power plants and corporations were broken initially. Anyway, I has a lot of hard time making the jumps. My advice would be to play couple of Vanilla games to get used to the interface and the basic mechanics, then go for BtS directly.

[Theben]

I can beat CivII & SMAC easily on the highest levels (the official ones, I never beat civII Deity Plus), and did fairly well in Civ3, but didn't contribute to the Civ IV discussions (b/c I felt we had been mostly ignored with civ3) and didn't get civ IV until this year. I mainly played it at my friends house, or when I visited my dad (being retired, he's got all day to play civ and usually does ). I just got my computer fixed and it still needs an upgrade to play civIV properly.

[Blaupanzer]

Welcome LOTM

Lord of the Mark, welcome to this side of the site. I see you on History and OT often, providing good insight. Would love to see your comments here as appropriate. I would suggest starting directly with BTS, as the other stuff will come quickly for any veteran of Civ II. BTS with the 3.17 patch is quite superior to the other Civ IVs and contains all their best features.

As I understand it from their literature, Take 2 has NOT included BTS in the Gold or Game of the Year Editions. Only goes up through Warlords. This appears to be a crassly commercial decision, so the buyer must still buy at least two boxes to have all Firaxis has to offer.