It seems I'm not alone in disappointment

[dsilvia]

Well, it would seem that I'm not alone in my disappointment from some of the threads I've viewed here! Unfortunately, at Civilization Fanatics' Forums, some of these people would be flogged and pilloried for daring to say that Sid let them down.

Anyway, my take on the game is:

1) Too expensive, almost twice the price of previous

2) About half the game tuning ability. I'm talking preferences, world modelling choices, player/opponent choices (less than previous and you cannot even pick opponents unless you go to a whole different paradigm, "Custom Games")

3) I can do a review like this one while the game is loading and starting up.

4) It takes more PC horsepower than it should compared to its predecessors. I've got an AMD64 with 1G of RAM which should be more than enough according to the requirements specs, but performance is sluggish. The map "floats" around as I move the mouse as opposed to the snappy performance of other Civ versions.

5) It looks more like Sid trying to write a version of Rise of Nations or Age of Wonder or Age of Empires than trying to write the next in the Civ series.

AND A BIG

6) Civilopedia went from being on a par with Brittanica to being more like the Golden Book Encyclopedia. The information is _extremely_ terse and there's little or no linking around to related subjects.

I'm _very_ disappointed. Although it's as good a game as many empire builders (The Settlers?), it's certainly not on a par with the Civilization Series games!

JMTCW,
Dave S.

[MarkG]

1) Too expensive, almost twice the price of previous

huh? civ4 has the standard price all new games have....

About half the game tuning ability. I'm talking preferences, world modelling choices, player/opponent choices (less than previous and you cannot even pick opponents unless you go to a whole different paradigm, "Custom Games")

the "custom game" screen is exactly what you're looking for. are you complaining that these options are in single-screen setup and not in a series-of-screens one?

3, 4

cant speak about that, my beta runs fine on my pc (except from the earth 1000ad scenario)

5

you'd have to be more specific on what you mean...

6) Civilopedia went from

never read the historical descriptions in the civilopedia of any civ game...

[dsilvia]

Originally posted by MarkG

1) Too expensive, almost twice the price of previous

huh? civ4 has the standard price all new games have....

About half the game tuning ability. I'm talking preferences, world modelling choices, player/opponent choices (less than previous and you cannot even pick opponents unless you go to a whole different paradigm, "Custom Games")

the "custom game" screen is exactly what you're looking for. are you complaining that these options are in single-screen setup and not in a series-of-screens one?

3, 4

cant speak about that, my beta runs fine on my pc (except from the earth 1000ad scenario)

5

you'd have to be more specific on what you mean...

6) Civilopedia went from

never read the historical descriptions in the civilopedia of any civ game...

I get the feeling from your response that you're a dyed-in-the-wool fan.

Previous Civ games were more flexible in tuning the game to you desires/preferences with many more options for same. Just open Civ III PTW or Conquests or GOTY and look at the choices you have. Now, first find them, then look at them in Civ IV. Much less flexible with fewer choices. And, on each iteration of Civ there's been advancement in this area, in Civ IV it's a regression.

In the performance end of things, are you saying that you don't have a long wait for it to load with lots of "init" screens showing up? And, when you move around on the map is it clean and crisp like Civ's always been, or more of a float like in Rise Of Nations.

On number 5, I don't know how to be more specific. It looks like Firaxis hired away the Rise Of Nations or Empire Earth teams from Micro$ or Sierra to write their rendition of Civ. I can see incorporating features of other games, but not trying to emulate them.

If you've never looked at the Civilopedia, then how it's been degraded is, of course, no concern to you. To those of us who used it to better understand the game and how to play, it's a serious shortcoming in Civ IV. And, to new players, they won't have the benefit of what us "veteran" players have and a good Civilopedia is invaluable. At least, it was to me in learning Civ in the outset.

I'm just _very_ disappointed. I know Firaxis could have done better. I'm sorry they didn't.

JMTCW,
Dave S.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by dsilvia
I get the feeling from your response that you're a dyed-in-the-wool fan.

i now cant look at civ3 screenshots. am i guilty?

Previous Civ games were more flexible in tuning the game to you desires/preferences with many more options for same. Just open Civ III PTW or Conquests or GOTY and look at the choices you have. Now, first find them, then look at them in Civ IV. Much less flexible with fewer choices. And, on each iteration of Civ there's been advancement in this area, in Civ IV it's a regression.

please dont make me install civ3. if you're so sure about it, please post a screenshot from civ3 . there is screenshot of the Civ4 custom game screen in the Directory http://apolyton.net/dir for comparison

In the performance end of things, are you saying that you don't have a long wait for it to load with lots of "init" screens showing up?

define long

If you've never looked at the Civilopedia, then how it's been degraded is, of course, no concern to you. To those of us who used it to better understand the game and how to play, it's a serious shortcoming in Civ IV.

how does the history of the Pyramids affect what you know about how to play the game?

[dsilvia]

Screenshots!!?? I'm talking about the number of choices available in preferences/world definition/player choices/game rules. The number of comparison screen shots would be more of a maze than the Civ IV tech tree!

Define long!? Define "runs fine", the phrase you used in your reply! How about this; I can reboot and have my system up and running again (this includes starting up ZoneAlarm Security Suite with its checks, Spy Sweeper with its checks, and MailWasher with its checks along with all the "normal" Windows XP Pro startup) in less time than it takes for Civ IV to just load! Or defined in real time: 1m50s. And that's skipping over all the rah-rah promo crap at the beginning. This is a system with an AMD64 3200+ 2010Mhz with 1024Kb cache, 1024 Mb system memory, and a Radeon 9200SE video card. Not exactly a slouch of a system.

As to the history of Pyramids, are you high? Who said anything about history? I'm talking game concepts and play operation details. Things like what does it do for me in the game to build the pyramids? What do I need to build the pyramids? What does it cost? Etc, etc, etc. This is all in previous versions of Civilopedia and crosslinked for quick, easy reference. The quickie thumbnails that pop up in roll over context in Civ IV don't quite cut it and the Civilopedia set up in Civ IV is not nearly as comprehensive or easy to use as its predecessors.

And somehow I know, if you've used the past versions as you say, you know all of this. So why are you being so obtuse?

It's okay to be devoted and a fan, but playing dumb doesn't help the discussion.

[Orcrist]

Originally posted by dsilvia
This is a system with an AMD64 3200+ 2010Mhz with 1024Kb cache, 1024 Mb system memory, and a Radeon 9200SE video card. Not exactly a slouch of a system.

Um, yes... that is a "slouch" of a video card. It was a slow budget card when it came out, and that was, what, 2 years ago? I mean, I just went dug through my old gaming magizine from Sommer of 2003 and there was an article about 'cheap' DX9 cards, and the first point was that the 9200 didn't even support DX9 (which seems to be pretty important for this game), and the second point was that the then already old Geforce 4 ti beat it in all categories.

So what you seem to have is a very lopsided system. Your 64-bit super fast Athlon from hell is spinning its wheels waiting for your old budget graphic card to do its thing. Its like a Porsche engine with Yugo suspension or something. I wouldn't be surprised if your hard drive is similarly mismatched. Unless you're a developer, you should have saved on the Athlon and gotten a better graphic card, I'm running on a 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, laptop with a Radeon Mobility 9800 (64 MB) and it takes 17 Seconds from double-click to main menu (if I click past the intro stuff), and a further 10 seconds to load a game (which is still at 200 A.D. I admit it takes longer later in the game) so I would strongly suggest you have someone with a clue advise you about balancing your hardware before *****ing that your 'fast' system is slow with this game.

I'm sure your system is very fast running as, for example, a database server, but rendering DX9 graphics is going to be like driving through mud with the Porsche-Yugo I mentioned above.

-chris

[Khab]

He's right - a graphics card upgrade would most likely do you no end of good.

I have an Athlon 64 3000 with 1024 megs of RAM and a Radeon 9700 with 128 megs onboard - a card that's about the same age as yours, but that was the high performance part back then. It does quite alright - there's some slowdown when I zoom out to world view, but in the regular view it's no problem. This is with all graphics options turned on, too.

As for your other complaints, well, an upgrade won't help there. Personally, I completely love Civ4 (and I *hated* Civ3, I thought it too bloated and unfocused) though, and I hope you give it a second chance.

[dsilvia]

Originally posted by Khab
and I hope you give it a second chance.

Oh, I haven't given up on it. I'm just disappointed in what I feel it lacks. And, like I said, based on other posts, I'm not alone.

However, I am beginning to feel like I just walked into St. Paul's Cathedral and said "Isn't that an unleavened disk of unbleached flour?" (ahh, yes, holy wars! God love 'em!)

[Cort Haus]

dsilvia,

It's true that an attempt was made to make the interface more accessible to RTS players, but what's wrong with that? I'm sure some RTS players would welcome an introduction to the pleasures of TBS. It doesn't make it an AoE clone as you suggest because AoE is a clickfest and Civ 4 is TBS.

The Civilopedia is widely considered to be weak, so many will agree with you on that, but I think your comments on price and performance have been addressed. I have the same graphics card as you and it's a bit sluggish, and I can't play big maps, but that's because I know I've got a cheap old graphics card. Civvers have traditionally not needed high-end graphics cards so we've been spoilt until now.

I notice you didn't critique the gameplay at all - as if you so disliked the price, interface, game set-up screens and helpfile, that the actual gameplay was irrelevant. A lot of people have come down here, guns blazing, to slag off the game because their Civ 2 strats don't work on Civ 4. You haven't done that, but it's strange to see a collection of gripes about the interface constituting a review.

So, once you accept that your graphics card is not the best, and that the price is actually par-for-the-course, and that the helpfile is not ideal, and the game config screens are arranged differently - what about the gameplay?

[Blake]

Bringing new meaning to "Judging a book by it's covers" .

[Stuie]

Originally posted by dsilvia
Previous Civ games were more flexible in tuning the game to you desires/preferences with many more options for same. Just open Civ III PTW or Conquests or GOTY and look at the choices you have. Now, first find them, then look at them in Civ IV. Much less flexible with fewer choices. And, on each iteration of Civ there's been advancement in this area, in Civ IV it's a regression.

You must be missing something. What choices could you make in Civ 3 that you cannot make in Civ 4?

Civ 4 has way more map types, and retains all the other typical settings of a Civ game. Just because they are on one screen doesn't mean there are fewer choices.

[smithldoo]

I have been playing a lot of Ages of Man, before buying Civ 4 and I am very cranky.

Sorry, I have spent the past 3 days trying to finish ONE game of Civ 4. I have been having all the troubles referred to in the help columns, eventually finishing the game with the partly fogged out map referred to. Trying all sorts of drivers. etc.

Without a doubt, I have had MORE trouble with Civ 4 than EVERY other game I have played PUT TOGETHER. As a average computer person, I did not realise that you needed a special video card to play Civ 4. I can play RomeTW, MTW, EU, AOE3, and RON on big maps with lots of units and no troubles, but on my 2.8gig processor, 1.5gig Ram, 128 mb video card (2 yr old), Civ 4 is like dragging a dead sloth through quicksand. CTD, freezes, mouse freezing, CTD that totally locks the computer that even Ctrl/Alt/del would not release, had to power off to regain control. I have finished one game and that will be all. I also forgot the small memory leak.

Go and read in the Civ4 Help column for a while, far out, its a disgrace. Even in the general forum there is a lot of discussion about bugs etc.

If I knew I had to buy a special video card to play civ 4, I would never have bought it. IMHO the system specs are vague and if you read the Civ 4 help threads, MANY, MANY people have also been caught out.

Many wrong, vague or inconsistant messages and bits in manual.

When I disband a cleric in a home city, I get a message to say if it is successful or not, in a foreign city no message, have to check the little religious icons to see if there is any change. IMHO very inconsistant.

In respect of the Gt Person for advance, I expect what the MOUSEOVER says, you "AUTOMATICALLY GET THE ADVANCE". I now know find this is not the case, but that is buried at the end of a paragraph in the manual and clearly contradicts the mouseover.

I am looking now at GP Keppler in my last game. It says
"+3288 for the research of Fibre Optics. This will have the great person AUTOMATICALLY DISCOVER A TECHNOLOGY. This action will consume the great person".

I am aware of the process now, after having it pointed out. However I have highlighted the part that is confusing and misleading if you do not remember sentence 3, para 1 page 82 of the manual.

Too put it simply in a civil court if I had 2 DEFINITIVE statements vs one that is contradictory, I believe I would win on the balance of probabilities. It says in the mouseover, quote again "automatically discover the technology". Simply one of several wrong messages and vague explanations in the manual

Kassiopeia is dead right, a lot in the manual is not very clear, collateral damage, inflation etc.

There are more instances of the above re wrong messages. The game I got out of the box is not even a good beta in my opinion, more like an alpha IMHO.

The in game manual and the tutorial are a farce, if I had a hand in those I would be moving cities and changing my name in embarrisment.

Dragging a dead sloth through quicksand play.

In AOM, I can be playing a game that was 5 times the size of the one I finished up winning in Civ 4(huge map), and I can grab a stack and be ready to move before the last one finished at turn 300 when there are nearly 300 cities and 2500 units in the game, you tried that in Civ 4? It takes up to 5 seconds in civ 4 for a unit to move one tile towards the end of the game. Far out.

I bought it in good faith, the system specs are really not very factual or clear, much like the manual and mouseovers. If I knew I needed to buy a new video card to play, I would never have bought it.

If they had simply added the new concepts to the old civ 3 graphics, I would not be complaining, simple as that.

The AI.

Re the AI, I am well aware that for over 3 decades we have been told that real AI is a decade away. however, I have seen much better AI than this one in older games.e.g. The civ 3 ai was more of a challenge IMHO.

As far as the cheats go, in AOM, once you eventually get on top, you don't have to worry about AI getting all sorts of handouts to boost them. The cheats are much fairer IMHO in AOM.

In the first 2 civ 4 games I played to I had never attacked anyone (except barbarians). Then both games I was targeted by a friendly neighbour. In the second game, I was attacked out of the blue by Bismarck 2 turns after I had given him cow and 20 gold as a gift??? Funnily enough, when I decided to implement IAS (aka Infinite Attack Sleeze (as discussed with stankarp)), it was predictable and booring. Get to 5 -6 cities then attack, target a neighbour with happy resources and go for it. In game one I was half way through my 3rd ai and it was pretty booringly simple, when the game died. Played again and this time managed to get to the win, one turn before I killed my 4 th AI (but I did it anyway). Capturing cities regularly funds deficit research spending.

Get this, while I was super aggressive, NO AI DECLARED WAR ON ME. How realistic, wow Over 2 games I crushed with ease 7.5 AI and no one even sent me a diplomatic note. What BS. In AOM, by the time you kill one medium size AI you are on the threshold of being branded a cross between hitler and attila and one more war and you are on your own buddy. When I was totally peaceful, I was attacked????

It (the out of the blue attack)was only a problem in my first 2 test games because I was lulled into a false sense of security, 5500 years of peace, never attacked anyone, traded with all. The reason it was a problem is proximity, the map is basically full by 500-1000AD. After I became aware of the possibility it was not a problem, in fact it was funny watching ai units immolate themselves on my defences. Then of course, have cavalry to kill those stupid catapults that often travel like sheep in groups by themselves.

Religion.

So far, I have not seen what the major impact is in CIV IV. Is there one?

Remulak

Well in 4 games so far (all monarch level, huge map), 2 tests, one crashed and died when I researched Broadway, and one eventually finished with a mucked up map, I ask the same question. AFAI can see, the only major difference I noticed is multiple religions in one of your cities allows you to build different religious buildings in the one city. In the last game I researched one religion, then as border cities got new religions would build other religious buildings and clerics to spread religion and buildings to make more happy and culture points. After a while it got pretty repititive. It made IAS very easy as there were practically no happiness issues.

Diplomacy.

Rubbish as partly covered above. Too many advance related exclusions, bring back civ3 diplomacy any day of the week.

As far as playing again on a higher level, shove it. Slow, teedious, over animated, bland map, booring ai, diplomacy much poorer than civ 3 etc. But, before you all go off, I will simply say if they had put the new concepts into the old civ 3 engine, I would not be complaining.

In AOM I can play a gigantic game with 300 cities, 2500 units, map 500% bigger and do a turn in the same time as civ 4. In AOM I can grab a stack and be ready to move before the last one finished, tried that in civ 4??? It takes up to 5 seconds in civ 4 for a unit to move one tile towards the end of the game. Hexegonia said it takes you 3 hrs to do 15 turns during the dark ages in AOM, it took me that long to do that many turns in civ 4 in my last game (1800AD) that is 25% of the size because the whole thing is sluggish and jerky and gets worse. Yes I had graphics on mimimum, animations off, quick battles etc,etc,etc,etc and the result was a bland, booring featureless waste of time.

I vote Civ 4 the worst out of a box game I have ever played.

[Khab]

*sigh*

Sorry, I'm not gonna comment on your gameplay issues - they are yours and while I haven't had those problems, fair enough.

But to call CivIV the buggiest game ever on release is a joke. EVERY time a major strategy title is released there are bugs. In an FPS or RTS there's only so much you can do, and testing everything isn't completely impossible. Despite that, usually there are quick patches to fix hardware incompatibilities in most 3d games nowadays - there's always some combination of mobo, processor, graphics card, sound card, RAM and drivers that causes a fuss.

In a game like CivIV or Europa Universalis with the scope of HISTORY as we know it, there's a whole world of further actions the player can take to contend with, especially in the field of AI.

Personally (and I have a two-three-year-old ATI graphics card!) I've had NO problems, and I've found the game to be more balanced than any other out-of-the-box strategy title in a LONG while.

Of course, if you want to exploit the issues that are there, then go ahead, but for crying out loud, don't whine about how those exploits YOU decided to use made the game boring because you won too easily!

The final patch for Civ2 was 2.42.

[dsilvia]

Originally posted by Orcrist


Um, yes... that is a "slouch" of a video card. It was a slow budget card when it came out, and that was, what, 2 years ago? I mean, I just went dug through my old gaming magizine from Sommer of 2003 and there was an article about 'cheap' DX9 cards, and the first point was that the 9200 didn't even support DX9 (which seems to be pretty important for this game), and the second point was that the then already old Geforce 4 ti beat it in all categories.

So what you seem to have is a very lopsided system. Your 64-bit super fast Athlon from hell is spinning its wheels waiting for your old budget graphic card to do its thing. Its like a Porsche engine with Yugo suspension or something. I wouldn't be surprised if your hard drive is similarly mismatched. Unless you're a developer, you should have saved on the Athlon and gotten a better graphic card, I'm running on a 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, laptop with a Radeon Mobility 9800 (64 MB) and it takes 17 Seconds from double-click to main menu (if I click past the intro stuff), and a further 10 seconds to load a game (which is still at 200 A.D. I admit it takes longer later in the game) so I would strongly suggest you have someone with a clue advise you about balancing your hardware before *****ing that your 'fast' system is slow with this game.

I'm sure your system is very fast running as, for example, a database server, but rendering DX9 graphics is going to be like driving through mud with the Porsche-Yugo I mentioned above.

-chris

Well, it performs just fine with all my other gaming software. I'm happy with it and I don't intend to spend several times the price of Civ IV on a new board to run Civ IV!

As to the long start-up time. I've isolated that and it has nothing to do with graphics. It is a matter of on-access virus scanning. Civ IV opens up a lot of stuff (Init this... Init that... ) and each time my antivirus looks to see that the software is not infected. I can either live with that, or just disable on-access while I run Civ IV.

Please, no more comments about upgrading hardware? Civ has always been low tech in that respect and being shocked by it's new dependence is quite understandable, I think. A warning from Firaxis in this respect would have been in order, however, imho. Instead they imply, with their relatively low requirements, that this area has changed negligibly, when in fact it hasn't. It's changed quite markedly.

[Khab]

Actually, I remember very well that I had to upgrade for Civ2 to be properly playable - it was slow as muck on a 486 DX2 66Mhz. Ran fine on a Pentium 166, though!