First Impressions (screenshots, etc.)

[yin26]

Was doing the tutorial and had to laugh at this one in the context of ICS:



You've already seen a lot of the stuff in the special edition box, but here is the fold-out CD holder:



After trying to save the tutorial and restarting it after dinner (which, by the way, didn't work as one turn in to the reload I was given a conquest victory!), I decided to launch a game. Noble difficulty (AI and human equal). Highlands map, which I am told should give the AI a strong position:

[Akaoz]

Okay... we have one First Impressions thread and one Screenshots thread... And now you have combined the two into one Über-Thread! Good Job!

[yin26]

Thank You!

Here is something I like right away: The advice on what to build is put right in this pop up text. Very clean and simple:

[yin26]

Another nice feature: The sound effects change depending on what you are centered on. Frozen wastelands have a nice, howling wind. Forest have chirping birds, etc. Sure, the real test will be the AI and gameplay, but this kind of atmosphere is really, really nice.

[Guynemer]

Liking what I'm hearing.

Of course, the game was just listed as "shipped," so the absolute earliest I'll get it is tomorrow. I've already committed the evening to the LL; Friday I'm working the old 7am-7am shift into Saturday morning, and then I'm working a full day Sunday. I'm just gonna have to cram a lot of civving into Saturday.

[Sirian]

If you research Animal Husbandry, your workers can build Pastures for your Sheep. If you also research Hunting (and then Archery) you can train Archer units to guard the sheep. (Why is this significant? Uh... It's probably not!)

DISCLAIMER: The above information, while entirely true, may represent information of no direct consequence. We apologize for the inconvenience! Now back to your regularly scheduled "Day One Review".


- Sirian

[yin26]

Hey, nice tips! If I research scouting plus entertainment, I hope to be able to build the American Idol Wonder!

Here's something REALLY nice:

I was just about to manually set my scout out in to the fog of war, thinking to myself: "Would it be nice if Civ 4 learned from some RTSs out there and let me set him to auto-explore? Maybe in the X-pack." Then, Holy Cow, there it was: Auto Explore!

[Bill3000]

Civ3 had auto-explore as well.

[yin26]

Ah, don't recall it as I stopped playing after a few days never to try it again. Good to know, though. Great feature.

[alva]

Exploring is part of the fun!!! why automate it??

[yin26]

Alva: I can see that. Perhaps I'm just on information overload on this first try and welcome the idea of sending them off without worrying about them. As I get more experience, though, I'll probably try to optimize their search paths manually, get huts quicker, etc.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Sirian
If you research Animal Husbandry, your workers can build Pastures for your Sheep. If you also research Hunting (and then Archery) you can train Archer units to guard the sheep. (Why is this significant? Uh... It's probably not!)

DISCLAIMER: The above information, while entirely true, may represent information of no direct consequence. We apologize for the inconvenience! Now back to your regularly scheduled "Day One Review".


- Sirian

NO SHEEP FOR YOU!

(Move along, people, nothing to see)

[Sirian]

Originally posted by yin26
Alva: I can see that. Perhaps I'm just on information overload on this first try and welcome the idea of sending them off without worrying about them. As I get more experience, though, I'll probably try to optimize their search paths manually, get huts quicker, etc.

OK, a real tip this time. Explorers tend to survive longer in forest/jungle plots. Moving from one to the next, and resisting the temptation to "go faster" by ending unnecessarily out in the open, keeps your exploring units alive for longer, on average.

You can also "see farther" from hilltops, so sometimes it pays to go out of your way to climb up there.

I know the auto-explore tries to do some of this, and succeeds, so it's not a huge deal. Just one of those little things the human can manage better if he cares to.

Something to think about in Game Four or Five, maybe? OK, sorry for pestering you.


- Sirian

[abenamer]

My first impression?

Negative stuff first

Tanks still lose to pre-gunpowder units I lost two tanks to pikemen... argh! The worst part? You can tell when your units die BEFORE the animation ends because the stats report will show a combat strength of 0.0 for your unit.

Civ4 slows down when you pull out and doesn't let you remove all the labels on the map so that you can just see terrain and cities.

In general, the UI took a step backwards -- kinda disappointing.
Interface is VERY cluttered. The little pieces of bread (for food) and hammers (used to be shields) are everywhere. I prefer it when I can just simply infer from looking at the map what would be going on without the need for "extra" information telling me exactly what was I seeing. Because the artwork is more realistic you now need icons telling you what's on a tile. Unlike earlier Civs, all the tiles are slightly different mimicking real life, yet each hill has exactly the same value in shields. The problem is that some hills are more or less hilly than others and thus your natural inference would be to guess that some hills would allow for more shields than others. That's not the case though. They took away Sid's old design concept of consistent schematized terrain in order to accomodate a more realistic 3d look. I knew this might be a problem in screen shots but it's kinda annoying after a while.

The music is crap in the 1940s and 1960s range. It has a Psycho-like screech to it and strange noirish touches that give the game a neurotic edge that I wish it didn't have. Nothing like an endgame with a psycho killer's theme song going through your brain. It's kinda annoying.

No simple way of getting straight into the city window without clicking on city name and typing "e". I prefer just a double-click on the city. The game is going to invite lots of micromanaging because of all the specialists you can now use. I don't know if this was a good idea.

I don't like the opening movie sequence. It's the worst of all the Civs. It looks like someone made a very tame version of Rome Total War's opening movie and decided to get rid of any dramatic tension in the sequence. How can you have a Civ opening movie sequence that begins and ends in the pre-Christian era??? It's kinda nutty.

Good points...

Religion and culture bombs rock and I love the idea of converting neighboring civs to whatever religion I'm in.

It slows down the pace of the game. It's annoying that you can only travel 10 tiles at a time over railroads but you can't really blitzkrieg like you used to be able to with earlier Civs. No more taking 5 or 6 cities at a turn with a death star-like stack of tanks.

Can't use my super-simple grid of city spam anymore. Much of the terrain can be completely lacking in food or resources. Hence, I can't use my city spam grid like I could in earlier civs.

No more perfect techs -- I remember how war used to break out the minute I got tanks or cav or (as a Persian player - Immortals). Basically, once I got a superior military tech I would go nuts on the AI. Not possible to do that anymore with the way the tech tree is laid out and with the glacial pace of military campaigns.

Lots of diplomacy options -- haven't played with them yet but they ARE interesting.

Of course, my impressions are just off of one game but as you noticed I'm focusing more on UI issues right now as that won't change no matter what level game you're at.

[Fidel]

yin, did you get clobbered by now? too busy playing? all your base are belong to them?