Post negative points of Civilization 4 here

[smithldoo]

I will keep it brief.

Game is buggy, worst I have ever played.

System specs deliberately played down so people would get the game first, then upgrade. Not only my opinion. This is the basis of a complaint in Australia to have the game removed from shelves.

Tutorial and Civilopaedia are a farce (not only my opinion).

Time line up the creek, early in the game I can research 2 advances for the time it takes a level1-2 city to build a spearman.

Diplomacy largely pointless, civ 3 was much, much better.

Have not read anywhere where people say what the main thing religion does is, except give you more building options.

Worst thing though, not enough penalty if you go to war. Played 2 games (monarch/gt plains) was totally peaceful, turn 1200-1500 AD was about equal 1st when an AI attacked me when I had never attacked anyone else. 2 more games using stankarps IAS (infinite attack sleaze), killed 7.5 AI over 2 games, turn 1800AD, 2.5 to 3 times the nearest AI score, and no AI attacked me, they sat their in line while I splattered them one at a time. Hardly bothered with diplomacy or Trade.

Biggest point to note though, the thread for bad things about civ 4 is TWICE as long as the thread for good things (4 pages to 2).

Who said statistics never lie?

[royrules22]

I'm going to say the opposite of everyone here. CIV is my first Civ game (and only my second TBS - Rome: Total War being the first), and I understood almost everything that others in here are complaining about. It felt natural to me. It was as if I'd been playing CIV for a long time. Granted the tutorial sucked, I learned everything with a few games on settler. Oh and the AI declared war and peace and everything on Settler! In face I decalred war on Saladin because I wanted his border cities and his ivory and pulled Catherine, Alexander, and Bismarck into it. Saladin sued for peace once one of his city fell. I obviously decline and took another of his. Just as my 1st Infantry and 1st Cavalry approached Mecca he calls peace with all my allies and brings in Montezuma who flanks me on the west and blockades me. Thankfully this was settler and I had a few destroyers and ironclads to break his wooden ships, and I had to pull back and declare peace on Saladin.

But seeing that this is a negative thread my only complaint is the very obvious Memory Leak. I assume there are some bugs in which they forget to release used memory back or they reload textures instead of reusing it. In any case a large Pangea map in 1800 uses 1GB of RAM + ~750MB of Page File..

Oh and the only errors for me was when installing I got a cyclic error on Disc 2, and upon researching I found out that it was installing something erroneously. I picked up my disk two and I saw a thin line of fiber (and I never put it on any fabric). I cleaned it up and it worked perfectly. And the discs were also labeled incorrectly.

[smithldoo]

On Monarch level, great plains ( as I like all land and like the enemy to be able to get to me), huge map. 4th game, basically ignored diplomacy, just crushed one AI at a time. Won comfortably by turn 1800AD odd, but it was excruciatingly booring because it was so, so, so slow, even with all effects/animations turned off.

As easy a walkover but much worse to play because of performance, than the vanilla AI in Call to Power 2.

[Mr. President]

Unless I missed something, Probe Teams (spies) can only do three different actions. I miss "Assassinate Prominent Researchers" and "Introduce Genetic Plague".

Edit: By the bye, the U.N. could stand to have a couple more things to vote on.

[smithldoo]

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.

[Zydor]

There is a Major Memory issue in Civ IV. A fix has been produced that really does work. The thread is sprinting towards 32,000 hits at the time of this post - all in 4 Days!

Its not a dubious amateur hack. If you get CTDs - slow down - reboots - massive save files etc - go now to this thread, its put Firaxis to shame

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146309

Regards
Zy

[Generaldoktor]

Patch v1.53 was released around Xmas. Merry Bells, Firaxis! It has mostly resolved my technical issues with the game. (I am still afraid to play it with my anti-virus/firewall/system analyst-regulator running, which I never was with Civ3.) I did have two "slowdowns" in mid-game, but it looks like they did something good here. Some minor changes to Civopedia, but that is still a major non-technical weakness of the game.

I also want military Great Persons in the inevitable expansion pack. We went from mostly military great persons in Civ3 to none. I suppose somebody is going to tell me that is now reflected in the promotion system, but I don't get that impression. However, I'm not sure how military Great Persons should work, without affecting play balance. The old "armies" system did stack the deck rather heavily in favor of the human player. (AI's, in my experience, never did "get" armies.) I also told Firaxis, in their recent poll regarding an expansion pack, that I thought more naval units should be included. The diverse naval units for the period covered by "The Ancient Mediterranean" mod were beautiful and interesting. And for the modern period, where I've heard some critics say it was boring, what happened to our nuclear submarines and AEGIS cruisers? You telling me the 1914 German sub is basically the same animal as an Ohio class nuclear delivery vehicle? I liked the stealth fighters too. But of course, I was a CTP fan and never understood why all the future technology was dumped after Civ2, unless all the futurists went over to Activision to work on CTP.

Why don't I mod this stuff myself? Because I really don't like messing with programs and don't really trust, after all the other early problems, the game "editor" to behave as advertised. I had a game-ending lockup pre-patch when I tried to access the "world-builder" in the middle of a game. I thought I read you could do that if you wanted to "cheat" in single-player. Not in that version. I guess the "world-builder" only deals with certain aspects of the game editor, but the scare I got kept me from messing.

Why am I not playing "AOM," the enthusiasts answer to the disappearance of CTP? Again, I worry about messing with the program and its interaction with my system. AOM is not a commercial product, but then, neither was TAM or some other variant I tried called RAR or something that I liked with Civ3. I may try it sometime, but for now, I am just interested in further refinement of Civ4.

[Spunky]

Severely needs modded

By the looks of things, the guys at Firaxis just threw this out the door with any old settings, in the knowledge that if they provided a comprehensive editor the community would come to the rescue.

I've played the Civ series since the first one came out on the Amiga, and after a quick run-through game to see all the available features.... am incredibly disappointed.

Style over Substance - engineered to sell to the AOE userbase who 'like purdy graphics'. Poor show.

Comments:

1. Switched Nimoy's voice off midway through the game.

2. Switched off Music midway through the game. Unfortunately this means that I don't get the (fantastic) opening game music.

3. Combat is a jump all the way back to Civ 1. The old 'Settlers beating up Battleships' problem is back. In one of my games I had an enemy catapult destroy one of my gunship units - must have been one hell of a shot. WHAT'S GOING ON????

4. Couldn't Nuke some cities problem??? Nukes are WAAAAYYYY too weak. Also - other civs didn't seem to appease me because I had a nuclear arsenal.

5. Gunships can't fly across water. Ummm, why not?

6. Hopefully this new patch will sort out the graphical issues. I agree with EVERYTHING that has been said about this. It's too intense and demanding for what is a strategy game. Should have provided a 2D Mode.

7. As everyone else has mentioned, the Civilopedia and associated documentation is completely sub-standard. It's just not good enough, when you have 3 previous incarnations of the game with a near perfect system. Who's idea was it to bring in Nimoy?

8. No airstrips. I know this has been stopped since Civ 2, but I was kinda hoping it would be in.

9. SDI far too powerful.

10. Have to attack with Siege Weapons, rather than just bombard. Which means they can get damaged by a guy with a pointy stick. No foundation in reality whatsoever.

11. Spies are hopelessly underpowered.

12. Transports can only take 4 units.

13. Where are my armies?? A great idea in Civ3, I had hoped it would lend itself to better organisation of troops in Civ4. The group feature is useful, but would have been nicer to create and save these groups as it is still micro-management when moving these around.

14. Wonder movies are pointless and will be switched off once I have seen them once.

15. Build Queue is unusable. Can't re-order items?

16. Over complication of tile improvements which essentially do the same thing. E.g in Civ 1 you had three TIs - road, mine or irrigate. Now you have Quarry, Plantation, Winery, Pasture, Blah Blah Blah. Shouldn't it just have been 'Build whatever reqd to Extract Resource' order? I thought they were trying to cut down on Micro Management.

I'm sure to have more, but that will do for now.

Overall - good potential, just ruined by some awful judgements. Cannot wait for the 'Civ - The Way it Should Be' Mod.

[caralampio]

I hate the map

I've read all the thread and agree with many of the posts. However I've not seen anyone complain about the map.

Sure up close the swaying palm trees and little factories look pretty, but once you get bored of looking at them, at mid-level view the map is not aesthetically pleasing IMO, and zoomed out it is horrible... it looks like a quilt.

The diagonally-placed tiles of Civ III were a great improvement over previous games. They produce a more "natural" look for borders, coasts, different-terrain interfaces etc. In Civ IV, the change to horizontal squares is a reversal (perhaps a nostalgic return to Civ I?). Everything looks so... so... SQUARE!!!

And its not only the looks. In Civ III the AI did a great job creating random maps. Similar terrains were clustered, producing mountain ranges, even some massive ones like the Himalaya, coherent deserts, mountain ranges continued on gently into hill ranges, etc. Rivers running through deserts created credible floodplains of Mesopotamia type.

In Civ IV, the temperate zone is a hodge-podge of completely randomized terrains. Virtually every city will get a couple of hills, a couple of deserts, a couple of peaks, a couple of grasslands, a couple of floodplains, etc. There is no believable geology... an isolated desert tile is usually surrounded on one side by a hill, on the next by a grassland, on the next by a forest, on the next by a jungle... There are no sierras or mountain ranges, other than those created by the purely random coincidence of three or four peaks or hills.

For this, and for many of what has been said above, I think that after playing Civ IV out (I have to get my money's worth don't I?) I'll go back to Civ III.

What a waste of a golden opportunity to have produced a truly great game.

[Generaldoktor]

Re: I hate the map

Originally posted by caralampio
I've read all the thread and agree with many of the posts. However I've not seen anyone complain about the map.

Everything looks so... so... SQUARE!!!

And its not only the looks. In Civ III the AI did a great job creating random maps. Similar terrains were clustered, producing mountain ranges, even some massive ones like the Himalaya, coherent deserts, mountain ranges continued on gently into hill ranges, etc. Rivers running through deserts created credible floodplains of Mesopotamia type.

In Civ IV, the temperate zone is a hodge-podge of completely randomized terrains. Virtually every city will get a couple of hills, a couple of deserts, a couple of peaks, a couple of grasslands, a couple of floodplains, etc. There is no believable geology... an isolated desert tile is usually surrounded on one side by a hill, on the next by a grassland, on the next by a forest, on the next by a jungle... There are no sierras or mountain ranges, other than those created by the purely random coincidence of three or four peaks or hills.

For this, and for many of what has been said above, I think that after playing Civ IV out (I have to get my money's worth don't I?) I'll go back to Civ III.

What a waste of a golden opportunity to have produced a truly great game.

Yeah, even though I'm grateful they solved the locked-up video drivers mess, I think I'll go back to CivIII soon also, or try AOM. I never even thought about the map, but you're right on all counts, it is ridiculous. And I've taken college level geology too; and just bought a beautiful book last summer on the multi-varied Florida microclimates. The mess they've got is an insult to the intelligence. Their "microclimates" are in many cases, biologically and/or geologically impossible. That's too bad because they finally got the mountains to look almost as good as CTP's and you do get some impressive ranges playing on the "Highlands" custom world option.

[Alanus]

Interface improvement needed : Resources

A few comments after my first game :

Resources :

There should be a way to detect resources within your empire that require an improvement. So far, when showing resources (CRTL+R), the color around the icon only indicates to whom the resource belongs (white if no owned).

As it is not possible to build improvement in advance (except for road), and as the automated workers do no seem to be smart, it implies micro-management.

Boring

[Alanus]

Interface improvement needed : City List

In the city list (F1), the bread/hammer/gold/etc. quantities shown do not reflect the current production after all modifiers are included.
Therefore, it is not possible to quickly spot your best cities to reorganise production in a smart way (e.g. select the best city for a wonder).

Also, unlike previous games of the series, it is not possible to change production of cities from the city list, using a pull down menu.
Again, this would be extremely convenient for quick production assignment.

[Generaldoktor]

Re: Interface improvement needed : City List

Originally posted by Alanus
In the city list (F1), the bread/hammer/gold/etc. quantities shown do not reflect the current production after all modifiers are included.
Therefore, it is not possible to quickly spot your best cities to reorganise production in a smart way (e.g. select the best city for a wonder).

Also, unlike previous games of the series, it is not possible to change production of cities from the city list, using a pull down menu.
Again, this would be extremely convenient for quick production assignment.

Alas, they dispensed with many of the graphics improvements of Civ3, in favor of a 3D multi-media show. Maybe they wanted some of the Playstation crowd. This is why I think I may be returning soon to Civ3 or mods.

[LBaeldeth]

Crashes.

Frequently.

Yes, I'm currently working through the various suggested fixes. Slowly, because I am not, how you say, tech-savvy.


Oh, and the unit colors are ... weird. Why are my Roman longbowmen wearing the heraldry of Russia (orange)? And the riflemen of all nations are a pale blue. Good thing they've got those little flags or I'd never know who's who.


Other than that, I love it.

[iapetus556]

Originally posted by Generaldoktor

There is some rationale for this and we see it in the current affairs debate about nuclear proliferation. North Korea gets A-bombs right? (I do think they already have them, late for breakfast again, Bushie.) This is a superweapon, as gunpowder was undoubtedly when introduced. Other powers, (at least certain other powers,) feel a need to attack North Korea because they have the superweapon and so many don't. Get it?

A similar rationale recently existed real-world for fighting a war over some other power's alleged acquisition of various other "weapons of mass destruction." (WMD's.)

Rational in the real world, and rational in Civ as well.

On several occasions I've declared war on a civ when they acquire a powerful military tech.

Typically, when an aggrssive civ (by which I mean one that been repeatedly threatening or extorting me) aquires a tech that will render most of my current units/strategies obsolete (musketeers, Ironclads, etc), that I am a long way from getting myself.

So rather than waiting for them to build up a large, invincible army (and then invade/bully me again with impunity), I will premptively attack in order to take them down before they can actually make use of their new tech.