Anyone else severely disappointed in Civ4? (RANT)

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by stankarp
Quick point or two about the tile improvement spam in AOM (BTW it was there because it was in Cradle).

I see AOM as the successor to Cradle.
I'm not going to deny that this was an issue in Cradle. I greatly underestimated its power, and had I continued to develop Cradle, it would have been toned down even more. Hence my suggestions to you about toning it down (and you know I have been asserting this for a long time).

Originally posted by stankarp By turn 200+ no AI has complete rings of untouched tile improvements. Especially sea ones as the pirates pillage lots of them. On land, barbairans and warring AI cut improvements wherever they go, meaning also that many are destroyed before they can accumulate a lot of benefit from them.

I mentioned that one of the AI cheats involved giving a global spam of TIs when the AI reaches a certain tech. I am assuming that this usually happens between t200-t300. I started taking notice of this when yin played a quickstart game and on t100 noticed that all of the AI cities were fully developed - and so I decided to track down why it was happening. I also noticed that in one of my AOM games (at about t250) that when the AI took one of my cities, it was able to fill the city ring with Outposts in the span of a turn, and I see this going on constantly in AOM games.

Originally posted by stankarp
For that reason the Outposts ARE a big, big balancer for the Human in AOM, because he can use them better and get cartels as well, IMHO.

Over time, the global TI spam creates a reservoir of PW funds. So the AI is able to build Outposts at will, creating a snowball effect (more resources gathered - since Outposts are clearly the most powerful TI for a long time).

I would consider them a balancer once you remove the AI's ability to spam the map with them. I think the benefit they offer outside of a cartel is tremendous, and when I see the AI put down 6-8 every turn, then the player loses whatever balancer he gets from a cartel.

Originally posted by stankarp
In civ 4, in my 4 games (bear in mind the difference in scale), I did not build a worker usually till I had built 3-4 military units and a settler. Time enough for the bonus worker the ai gets on that level to build 20+ tile improvements and roads for 3-4 cities, enough to connect all cities and improve every working tile.

So you decided to go a different route in your build choice and are surprised when the AI is able to jump ahead? Create a worker first, heck create two workers first and you greatly close the gap in that area. In fact, if you wanted to emphasize TIs in a civ4 game for yourself, play India.

...chop outside your borders too.

And I would also maintain that the speed which TIs can be created in civ4 makes these areas less critical, because you can close the gap quickly.

Originally posted by stankarp
That was the whole object of my game design, to crank up AOM intensity (which Yin acknowledged and complimented) but make the human work for his balancers.

I maintain that AOM is the beter game, but I also maintain that much of it's difficulty lies in the way the AI benefits from cheats, bonuses and events that create AI cheats through attrition directed only at the player - and I am of the opinion that the totality of them is greater in AOM than in civ4.

There is nothing wrong with admitting that either.

[stankarp]

Can I summarise the tile spam for the AI.
1) it does not fire all the time, a lot of them get pillaged, so the effect is much, much reduced than Cradle.
2) The pw cheat is now reduced, and is very heavily used repairing units. In my current test game the Incans who I am attacking have not built ONE outpost yet, turn 200. My observation is that 1-2 outposts are being built per turn by all the ai put together now, (that is not each ai).

I reckon the balance has been good since I emailed V1.03 (Yin's update) to people 3 months ago.

You missed my point about the worker in Civ 4, I was not surpirsed, was just saying giving the ai a worker on Monarch level is the same as a mini tile improvement spam in AOM, but that worker if not killed can go on forever and spam tile improvements, replacing pillaged ones for no cost etc. IN AOM, you PAY for every tile improvement, the AI pays for some AND ALL ITS REPLACEMENT ONES, so it is different altogether.

Some quotes re civ 4 for the benefit of Jaybe:

aerocabin

I played Civ1 as my primary game for over a year, same for Civ2, Civ3 lasted 3-4 months, but Civ4 has only been good for 1 week...........I don't care about higher difficulty levels, or handicapping. This is a simulation, like every other game, it should be an even playing field from the start. ...I can forgive handicapping in the first version of Civ where it was released on a 386, but this is a different age, computers have alot more processing power, maybe they should focus the power on AI instead of graphics.....There are tons of "Ups" in Civ4, ever notice how there are no negative events in this game?...............Why are the "Downs" or declines that occur to real-life Civilizations completely ignored in this simulation? Why is there a Golden Age, but no Dark Age?...............Civ4's system requirements are ridiculous, it infuriates me that they chose to alienate the poorer gamers. ....

[smithldoo]

My challenge to you - play civ4 on the highest level with the highest AI aggression level and with raging hordes. It is the same that you use in AOM. Beat the game, and post the file here (not a screenshot - an actual gamefile too) so there is no doubt that you won.

by Hexegonian.

I would if I could but I cant so I wont. Unless Hex you buy me a new video card.
I have the performance issues (with interest) that aerocabin refers to. Simply not worth playing Civ 4 with graphics equivalents of civ 1.5 even when I turn everything off, and then it is still like "dragging a dead sloth through quicksand" by turn 1000AD.

Ctp2/AOM has the biggest inbuilt human leveler of all, the "retreat" button in combat. The whole combat system helps the human huge amount. IMHO.

I am testing for stan at the moment, and I agree, the AI tile spam is nothing like it was and I don't even think about it. I think the balance is pretty good now and it is a "no issue" AFAIAC.

[stankarp]

My final point for the tile improvement bonus.

Turn 200+, 2 Harappan cities, >9 in size, working the fat X. One has NO bonus improvements at all, the other has 9 out of a possible 19 tiles improved.

As Maq said, those extra tile imp are sometimes a good target for pillage raids anyway.

[IMG][/IMG]

[robtheailean]

At the risk of being taunted by a bunch of rather childish flamers; I am very disappointed in the game.

I have bought (and played to death) CIV1, CIVNET, (yeah, I know), CIV2, CIV3, and now CIV4.

Played a number (high) of games through to the death; from Chieftain to Noble.

Firstly, it looks as though this was rushed out the door because of the TAKE2 take over of Firaxis.

A patch announced DAYS after release? - this is not a Gold edition, it was not even a release candidate (Microsoft's "gift" to release management terminology...), it was barely a Beta release at time of sale.

I feel, IMHO, that it has "dumbed down" for all the whiners who can't cope with long games.

Essentialy its CIV1 with a great deal of 'eye candy' which adds nothing to the game - but satisfies the moron element in the Publishing Industry, who need "3D" in every title.

I think Sid is the greatest game designer ever; but this is a turkey.

And for those who never played it, as evidenced by some of the replies, there is a lot of concepts in here lifted straight out of CTP.

Finally, the game plays slooooowly on a AMD4400/2Gb ram and 2 x 7800GT video cards in SLI - what on earth is the graphics engine in this?

What I find most disappointing is that there were still (and still are) bugs in CIV3, but they were ignored for this...

[Hawk Firestorm]

Yes indeed this would have been a magnificant addition to the series IF the game actually functioned.

The Patch hasn't addressed any Crash issues on this system, and from the looks running the game is actually setrimental to the integrety of the system as a whole, with Random reboots, and CTD's utterly corrupting the Vid display to 4 Bit.

Which seriously sugests to me that it's causing some serious problems with the OS in what's it's actually doing.

What ticks me off greatly out of the past 3 games from 3 different developers, NONE of them worked out of the box, including Civ4, X3, And UFO Aftershock.

It seems to be a trend that's grown over the years where developement houses think it's ok to throw any junk out the door and sort it later.

While as a consumer I full expect their to be bugs in software, being a IT guy of 30 years, BUT I do expect to open the box and find more than a beta RC1 candidate in the box!

All I can say is SHAME ON YOU! Fraxis

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by stankarp
Can I summarise the tile spam for the AI.
1) it does not fire all the time, a lot of them get pillaged, so the effect is much, much reduced than Cradle.
2) The pw cheat is now reduced, and is very heavily used repairing units. In my current test game the Incans who I am attacking have not built ONE outpost yet, turn 200. My observation is that 1-2 outposts are being built per turn by all the ai put together now, (that is not each ai).

I reckon the balance has been good since I emailed V1.03 (Yin's update) to people 3 months ago.

Well, the comparison is supposed to be with AOM vs civ4...not AOM vs Cradle. As far as I'm concerned, Cradle is dead

Does the AI have Currency or Aqueducts yet in your above posted file???? The Outpost spamming is a result of the free TIs the AI gets when it researches specific techs, which IMO is also a very powerful cheat/bonus. It allows the AI to spam with more TIs, because so many have been built

My version of AOM is an older one, but Yin's update also is not part of the public release at your site. So the casual gamer who tries AOM can end up with a version of the game that 'Outpost spams' the map. And as it has been pointed out, first impressions of the game can make or break it. After all, the entirely justifiable complaints about civ4 computer performance are doing that now...

You could also remove the natural gold and food bonus of a tile from the Outpost and keep the current production bonus only - which would further limit the AI advantage - and make the player more likely to diversify his own improvements.

Originally posted by stankarp
You missed my point about the worker in Civ 4, I was not surpirsed, was just saying giving the ai a worker on Monarch level is the same as a mini tile improvement spam in AOM, but that worker if not killed can go on forever and spam tile improvements, replacing pillaged ones for no cost etc. IN AOM, you PAY for every tile improvement, the AI pays for some AND ALL ITS REPLACEMENT ONES, so it is different altogether.

Then kill some AI workers - force the AI to pay for them. Since you are a warmongor player at heart, why are you sweating this????

Unfortunately, you also miss my points...
The gap of an extra worker in civ4 can be reduced quickly if the player chooses to build more of them, especially early on.

And if this disadvantage is a major issue to the player, he can also play as India which allows the player double-speed workers. A player can have 1 worker to get the same result as having 2, and if he choose to emphasize this as a strat, he simply builds more than the AI and then the advantage is clearly in his favor. He can nullify that AI advantage VERY quickly in that situation.

In gameplay terms, it's called playing to your inherent strength.

This type of option is not available to the AOMer to the same degree as in civ4, because he will not any much chance to reduce the PW gap between him and the AI until much later in the game, no matter who he plays or how he chooses to play.

The AI starts out with 2000 PW on Hard, which can be considered to be the equivalent of Monarch (but there are more playing levels in civ4, which make for some guesswork on how the levels compare from game to game)

2000 PW translates into 8 farms, or one complete ring around one city.

The AI also gets
- ongoing PW bonus - whether you have reduced it or not is secondary, because it still is a bonus for the AI and becomes larger as the AI gets larger.
- A global spam of Trading Posts when it researches Currency, Pastures when it researches Aqueducts, and Nets when it researches Hull Making (approx t200-250). This is a very hefty gift too, even if it does not fire on all tiles. If the AI only gets 2 Trading Posts/2 Pastures per city, and it has 20 cities, it gets 80 free improvements or in math terms, the equivalent of 30,000 PW free and clear.
- A 20% Dark Age pillage of player-only Roads and any Tile improvement unlucky enough to be on those roads.

The totality of this setup is what makes it so powerful to the AIs. Cartels can help close the gap, but it takes a lot more gametime in AOM than in civ4 to negate the AI cheats. The player does have some early game options in civ4 to offset it much faster.

Most importantly, these bonuses occurs ON ALL PLAYING LEVELS with the exception of the starting 2000 PW bonus. That bonus is higher or lower, based on difficulty. At the highest level in AOM, it is 8000 PW, or the equivalant of 32 free Farms.

Your argument does not acknowledge this fact, which is somewhat ironic because you are complaining about an AI bonus on a higher level in one game, but do not recognize that your setup has AT LEAST the same level of cheat built into its own system at the comparable levels (I would consider it more) - and the most powerful AOM TI cheats are in the AI's hands on the lowest level too. This greatly skews those lower AOM difficulty levels.

Originally posted by smithadoo
I would if I could but I cant so I wont. Unless Hex you buy me a new video card.

I totally agree that Firaxis screwed up on this issue, and if the game does not get fixed in this area, civ4's shelf life on my system will not last as long as it could potentially last. I can only play standard maps and below with acceptable performance.

And in my limited testing, I can see the game does favor the warmongor-style of play.

However, until you play the game at the highest level, highest aggression, and at Raging Hordes, (the same standard you apply to AOM) your analysis of AI proficiency regarding combat is incomplete, at best and seriously biased, at worst. And there are options within the setup menu that allow the player to shut off tech trading and to have constant war with the AIs (which was another one of your gripes)

Frankly I thought you would relish the chance to put that argument to rest once and for all and thus be able to present AOM as the clear alternative over civ4 - leaving NO room for doubt whatsoever.

Originally posted by smithadoo
Ctp2/AOM has the biggest inbuilt human leveler of all, the "retreat" button in combat. The whole combat system helps the human huge amount. IMHO.

You would have saved a bit of trouble if you had presented this first when talking about balancers. It is by far the strongest one...

...and I would trade it all for an AI that would use the retreat feature and thus require less AI cheats.

[stankarp]

Does the AI have Currency or Aqueducts

Yes. Looks like Aqueducts did not fire and Currency did not fire for all cities. Please note, Slic code that depends on arrays often does not fire later in the game. I have made backup codes for the critical ones but the Tile Imp spam does not fire all the time for all ai for all cities AFAICS.

You could also remove the natural gold and food bonus of a tile from the Outpost and keep the current production bonus only - which would further limit the AI advantage

Not necessary IMHO as the AI does not and cannot spam outposts. I wrote a small code that uses the ai pw if it is over 2500 to build outposts on goods now and since the ai rarely builds a city next to a good, it only gets the bonus not the normal production p/f/c.

The gap of an extra worker in civ4 can be reduced quickly if the player chooses to build more of them, especially early on.

Only at the expense of production and stalled city growth early on. In AOM I choose to build less tile imp early because unless I can defend them properly, they can be pillaged easily and they COST PROD TO REPLACE, unlike civ 4 where I end up spamming TI so the workers have something to do.

I have taken your challenge to heart re Civ 4 but the latest for both Smithldoo and I is that;
1) we cannot buy the vidoe cards suggested in minimum specs.
2) new video cards are 8X or faster now. Both our approximately 3 yr old motherboards only support up to 4X video cards. My supplier offered me a 8X suggesting it may work but no refund if it did not???????
3) we both dragged to the death games on huge map that ended up being excruciatingly boring and painful to see the end result. I did not finish any but fel tI knew what was going on in the last 2. Smithldoo finished 1 out of 4.

We are testing interesting new games of AOM with the religion/attack codes and many, many frenzy tweaks, arms reduction treaties, ai allies that attack designated target cities (but keep asking for money to do so) , etc.

10 AI opponents, impossible, gigantic map, turn 320, over 300 cities and 2500 units in play, NOT ONE FREEZE, CTD, etc. I can grab a stack and move it as quickly as I did on the first turn????? The only thing is each AI turn goes from 1.5 seconds at start to between 4-5 seconds now, less that it took for me to move one unit one tile in Civ 4 at turn 1000AD.

[stankarp]

While as a consumer I full expect their to be bugs in software, being a IT guy of 30 years, BUT I do expect to open the box and find more than a beta RC1 candidate in the box!

Absolutely, totally agree with interest.

Civ 4 is the WORSE GAME OUT OF A BOX I HAVE EVER PAID FOR. Yes I know I am shouting, I don't care if @#!@##$ Firaxis hears me

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Haven't had a chance to read ALL the posts in this thread so, if I repeat something said by someone else, I apologise. Boris is 100% when he talks about people having short memories. I can remember the S**T-STORM which erupted, both here and at CFC, over what a hugely buggy game Civ3 was in its early days. I am not talking technical issues with video cards etc, I am talking whole concepts that were broken (like fighter interception) or stuff promised, but which was missing (the editor and mp). I was personally prepared to cut the developers some slack on that one, 'cause they had lost their lead designer (Brian Reynolds) over half-way through the project AND Infogrames forced them to release the game much earlier than they ideally wanted.
If anything, given what a huge move 2D to 3D is-in terms of CPU power required-I am amazed that there haven't been far more widespread problems with Civ4-it is definitely a 100X less buggy than its predecessor. As for the interface, its absolutely brilliant and, yes, far more intuitive than in Civ3. Now, I rarely, if ever, need to go beyond the main screen in order to do anything (though I do like to enter the city screen from time to time). Also, there are the new game concepts-such as civics and religion, which are absolutely great. Sure I might have liked to see different civics choices (or MORE civics choices) and different religions, but that is just my personal opinion, and certainly hasn't stopped me from seriously enjoying these parts of the game (oh and, unlike how I previously thought, the civics are NOT unbalanced (except perhaps in upkeep)-they really do seem to be 'opportunity dependant' in many respects-such as an isolated civ adopting mercantilism, but dropping it if he ever encounters foreign civs. The point is that I really needed to play the game a few times to understand why they weren't unbalanced.)
Oh and the music, voiceovers and ambient sounds are to die for-sure they don't add anything to gameplay, but boy do they make the game immersive. My Grade? A, with a chance to go to an A+ after a couple more patches.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Yours,

[The Eliminator]

I hope Firaxis hears me, I'm so dissapointed with this game, its not even funny. I played Civ since 92, and this is by far the worst one, worse than CTP and CTP2. Aside from the opening movie and music, this does not feel like Civ, this does not play like Civ, and it certainly does not have the addiction factor that Civ is supposed to have. It took me 3 hours to get this thing going, still crashes on me, I can only play on small maps, the interface sucks, and the graphics are poor, clunky, and obnoxious. And what the hell is with the interface anyways? There is so much crap crowding the screen, I dont even know where my stuff is half the time and it makes me feel &^%$ing claustrophobic.

And another shout out to Firaxis, you notice how they're all on the General or Creation forums, giving out helpful advice, but they are nowhere to be found in the Help forum? They should be ashamed of themselves for putting out a mess like this - and it looks like they are. Take some responsibility for this garbage. You've stripped the heart and soul out of this game to please a bunch of internet nerds, newbies, and bandwagon jumpers.

I'm not going to give up yet, but to tell the truth I really do feel sick to my stomach. Not only did I piss away $67 after taxes, but I pissed away 13 years of my life on this franchise, and now it looks like my fun has come to a bitter and unwelcome end.

In closing, I hope I'm back here in 3 weeks saying "boy was I wrong, I love it!" But I ain't holding my breath. So thanks Firaxis et al, you thouroughly **** the bed on this one.

[angrybowen]

I can remember the S**T-STORM which erupted, both here and at CFC, over what a hugely buggy game Civ3

I don’t remember anything like that at all, I got the original collectors editions and don’t recall any major issues but that was a long time ago.

If anything, given what a huge move 2D to 3D is-in terms of CPU power required-I am amazed that there haven't been far more widespread problems with Civ4-it is definitely a 100X less buggy than its predecessor

I 100% disagree. I have got some one else’s Civ 4 (Stankarp) as after all the threads (over 600) re technical problems here at Apolyton, was not prepared to pay for a game. Already having the same problems trying to finish one game. I can play any TBS or RTS style strategy game released this year without anything but very minor graphics problems (e.g. units jerky occasionally in RomeTW in maximum size battles), but Civ 4 is slow, excruciatingly slow, I have had dark maps, corrupted maps, crashes, freezes, you name it. I totally agree with another comment I read where someone was critical of Firaxis for under stating the system specs. They quoted in min specs a 4yr old graphics card you can no longer buy. Very, very naughty.

3d does nothing for playing the game IMHO and if you zoom out to a normal type view (same as Civ 3) it is nearly impossible to tell who a unit belongs to or if there are multiple units there. Very, very poor design IMHO. Do not have anything like those problems with CTP2/AOM or Civ 3. Graphics are insipid, lacks atmosphere and is terrible when I have to turn off the animations and special effects just to get the ****** to run.

Also, there are the new game concepts-such as civics

Excuse me, these are mainly just government traits recycled. All it means instead of several main government types, you end up with lots of little decisions all the time all over the place. Decisions that don’t produce a historical government but rather some conglomerate. In CTP2 (where much of this stuff is borrowed from) there are 63 different settings for each government giving a lot of variety without all the chopping and changing.

and different religions

I have seen several posts where people ask what is the main point of religions? The only answer I have seen so far is it allows multiple culture/happiness buildings in cities. There is apparently a diplomacy adjustment for religion, but in my games I have noticed no practical difference.

What was the line from the movie “I’v got a bad feeling about this” and I have not even managed to finish a game yet. Think I will be back at AOM to play AOM II very quickly.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Well, how is it that I can play dozens of games, for hours on end, without a single lag or crash-that sounds like a hardware issue to me, not a software problem. I also cannot believe that you are comparing Civ to CtP-possibly the crappiest game in the entire TBS genre (oh, SURE, it had some good ideas-but most of them were poorly implemented and Activision refused to support its product post-release). I LOVE the civics and religion system-and have seen a majority of posters who feel the same way as I do. The fact that you personally don't like them doesn't make them bad-just means that this game is clearly not your thing-so I wish you all the best with AoM, but PLEASE don't try and turn your personal dislike for elements of the game into a 'Civ4 is crap' argument, because its just not gonna wash here.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[angrybowen]

Well, how is it that I can play dozens of games

Congratulations, I am one of the hundreds who cannot. Tried 2 different computers, both on paper exceed recommended specs in a big way except for video card. Neither plays properly.

I will download the patch and see if that helps but according to another friend, it has not really made a lot of difference for him.

Re ctp, both games, I was able to take them out of the box load and play with a average (specs wise) computer and play with out crashes, freezes, corrupted maps. So FYI, both games have a huge lead on Civ 4 in that department.

[padillah]

First I want to say I'm not picking on angrybowman but he made a statement I've seen several times before that really anoys me when talking about "The Horror that is Civ4"

Originally posted by angrybowen
Tried 2 different computers, both on paper exceed recommended specs in a big way except for video card. Neither plays properly.

[rant]
If the video card was not up to spec then the machine was not up to spec. It's that simple. The specs are not a give and take. You don't get to barter them down. They are set because the software uses technologies that depend on this level of support. If the support is not there then there is no reason to expect the software to function properly.

I've seen post that have "everything but 256 meg of memory" or, the single most common, "I have everything except I have a 32meg video card"

Then guess what, you machine is not up to spec so don't sit in stupified wonder when the game doesn't run correctly.

It's like putting a CD on a phonograph and wondering why it sounds bad.
[/rant]
Tom P.