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I played Civ4 for about 5 hours last night--not long enough to really do a proper review, but I will give some first impressions. If you want to read no more, the bottom line is, so far, it's tentatively POSITIVE.
I run a 3-year old system: P4 1.8 ghz @ 2.0 ghz, 512 mb ram, 64 mb GeForce3 card. It meets Firaxis "recommended" specs almost to a tee.
ICS comments, see 5e
AI city spamming, see 5c
overall impression so far, see 6
1) I would say you will want at least a 2 ghz machine with 512 ram and 64 mb video card to run Civ4 properly. If you have less, you'll have to turn down the graphics options to get what is, in my opinion, acceptable performance from the 3D engine. Grant you, this is with very limited testing, and tweaking, so the jury is still out. Most of you have faster than 2.0 ghz systems though, right??
2) Major :thumbsup: to Firaxis and the team for making this game "feel" like Civ1. They even brought back the Russians music from Civ1! Outstanding!
3) The AI's attitude toward you, and the reason why they feel that way, is made VERY clear to you in Civ4. I like that. And in my opin, the REASONS why an AI civ has a certain attitude toward your civ are very logical, coherent reasons. Unlike Civ3, where the AI could hate your guts the whole rest of the game over some minor border incursion you did in 500 BC.
3a) in a similar vein, the AI won't just declare war on you for nothing. Generally, you kind of half know when it's coming (at least so far this has been my experience). They don't seem to move units into your territory and as per RoP rape like they did in Civ3.
4) The background music is right on; it doesn't get in your way while playing, and, well, it's good. I noticed no "obscene drumbeat" in the ancient times, as some have complained about. Perhaps all of this will change as I hear the same music over and over...
4a) unit movement is very easy, it's much like prev ver's of Civ, with use of the numpad keys, go-to command, etc. You don't seem to be able to right-click on a tile/city//unit to view a menu of all the units there, though...this has me a little confused...
5) The startup video's sound and gfx were choppy on my system; but again that's very preliminary; I could have had some firewall interference or some background process running to hamper it. More testing needed. Besides, the game itself ran fine, it was only the intro vid that had chop and sound cutting out. Surely my SB Audigy2 is not too old hardware for this...
**anyone else have this problem with the startup vid?
5a) this game, in my limited testing, seems very complex enough. People worried that Civ would be "dumbed down". I would say, no way man. Granted, when you first play a new ver of Civ, it always takes me a while to get a handle on the city screens, for example, so I'm sure after a few more games it will be less complex.
5b) worker automation seems pretty good, the workers seem to do just fine. I've always been a MM'er of workers in Civ3 so I'm sure I will learn how to best optimize my cities radius of prod. for the situation...but until then I can be content with the automation.
5c) Is the AI spamming cities dead? Doesn't appear so...the AI declared war on me, sacked and burned one of my cities, and before I could build a new settler to re-build there, the AI had already plopped down a settler of their own there. :thumbsdown:
To make a long story short, here's some strat advice, that was also good in Civ3: If ya can, keep a spare settler around for this situation.
5d) In Civ4, PROTECT YOUR CITIES. In Civ3, I could get away with interior cities being garrison-less. Perhaps I'll get that in Civ4, but so far I have not had a large enough empire to know.
5e) ICS comments. Well, all I can say so far is that my little Roman empire only had/has 5 cities, and most of the AI civs have between 5 and 15 cities. But guess what, I am keeping up fairly well. In Civ3, I'd be stone dead by now (1750 AD). Yes, I'm in last place out of 6 of 7 known civs, but not by much. (Hey, it's my first game, cut me some slack...)
6) I had FUN playing for those 5 hours. I played the Romans on NOBLE level (which is equivalent of Regent in Civ3) and so far, I've made it to 1750 AD and have survived. hehehe. And I am an experienced Civ player going back to 1992. In fact I was a better Civ1 and 2 player than Civ3, which I never truly mastered. Trust me folks, there is a lot of new stuff to learn in this iteration of Civ.
6a) Gotta love Leonard Nimoy's voice on the techs. I wonder if the foreign-language versions have him speaking French, German, etc.?
more l8r...
I run a 3-year old system: P4 1.8 ghz @ 2.0 ghz, 512 mb ram, 64 mb GeForce3 card. It meets Firaxis "recommended" specs almost to a tee.
ICS comments, see 5e
AI city spamming, see 5c
overall impression so far, see 6
1) I would say you will want at least a 2 ghz machine with 512 ram and 64 mb video card to run Civ4 properly. If you have less, you'll have to turn down the graphics options to get what is, in my opinion, acceptable performance from the 3D engine. Grant you, this is with very limited testing, and tweaking, so the jury is still out. Most of you have faster than 2.0 ghz systems though, right??
2) Major :thumbsup: to Firaxis and the team for making this game "feel" like Civ1. They even brought back the Russians music from Civ1! Outstanding!
3) The AI's attitude toward you, and the reason why they feel that way, is made VERY clear to you in Civ4. I like that. And in my opin, the REASONS why an AI civ has a certain attitude toward your civ are very logical, coherent reasons. Unlike Civ3, where the AI could hate your guts the whole rest of the game over some minor border incursion you did in 500 BC.
3a) in a similar vein, the AI won't just declare war on you for nothing. Generally, you kind of half know when it's coming (at least so far this has been my experience). They don't seem to move units into your territory and as per RoP rape like they did in Civ3.
4) The background music is right on; it doesn't get in your way while playing, and, well, it's good. I noticed no "obscene drumbeat" in the ancient times, as some have complained about. Perhaps all of this will change as I hear the same music over and over...
4a) unit movement is very easy, it's much like prev ver's of Civ, with use of the numpad keys, go-to command, etc. You don't seem to be able to right-click on a tile/city//unit to view a menu of all the units there, though...this has me a little confused...
5) The startup video's sound and gfx were choppy on my system; but again that's very preliminary; I could have had some firewall interference or some background process running to hamper it. More testing needed. Besides, the game itself ran fine, it was only the intro vid that had chop and sound cutting out. Surely my SB Audigy2 is not too old hardware for this...
**anyone else have this problem with the startup vid?
5a) this game, in my limited testing, seems very complex enough. People worried that Civ would be "dumbed down". I would say, no way man. Granted, when you first play a new ver of Civ, it always takes me a while to get a handle on the city screens, for example, so I'm sure after a few more games it will be less complex.
5b) worker automation seems pretty good, the workers seem to do just fine. I've always been a MM'er of workers in Civ3 so I'm sure I will learn how to best optimize my cities radius of prod. for the situation...but until then I can be content with the automation.
5c) Is the AI spamming cities dead? Doesn't appear so...the AI declared war on me, sacked and burned one of my cities, and before I could build a new settler to re-build there, the AI had already plopped down a settler of their own there. :thumbsdown:
To make a long story short, here's some strat advice, that was also good in Civ3: If ya can, keep a spare settler around for this situation.
5d) In Civ4, PROTECT YOUR CITIES. In Civ3, I could get away with interior cities being garrison-less. Perhaps I'll get that in Civ4, but so far I have not had a large enough empire to know.
5e) ICS comments. Well, all I can say so far is that my little Roman empire only had/has 5 cities, and most of the AI civs have between 5 and 15 cities. But guess what, I am keeping up fairly well. In Civ3, I'd be stone dead by now (1750 AD). Yes, I'm in last place out of 6 of 7 known civs, but not by much. (Hey, it's my first game, cut me some slack...)
6) I had FUN playing for those 5 hours. I played the Romans on NOBLE level (which is equivalent of Regent in Civ3) and so far, I've made it to 1750 AD and have survived. hehehe. And I am an experienced Civ player going back to 1992. In fact I was a better Civ1 and 2 player than Civ3, which I never truly mastered. Trust me folks, there is a lot of new stuff to learn in this iteration of Civ.
6a) Gotta love Leonard Nimoy's voice on the techs. I wonder if the foreign-language versions have him speaking French, German, etc.?
more l8r...
How dare the AI do what I have always done. It is well played by the AI.
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