Civ IV or not Civ IV, that is the question

[rjmatsleepers]

I've had a quick look at the Civ IV forum and noticed that there are a number of bug reports. Have any of our regular Civ II players tried Civ IV yet? I'm reluctant to buy a copy (or even ask Santa for one) until I hear something positive from some of the trustworthy people on this forum.

RJM at Sleeper's

[vomitus]

I'm waiting for a plethora of bugfixes first.

[DaveV]

There's a demo available, so you can check whether it runs on your system and try out the gameplay. I've asked Santa for the game, but I'll try out the demo in the meantime.

[solo]

The game installed and worked fine for me, with no problems at all.

I think this has been the case for most players, who are busy playing and can't be bothered to report in the forums that the game works okay.

The first patch is out, too, which has fixed the problems keeping many people from being able to play the original release.

However, if the demo does not work for you, it's best to wait, I think.

[Straybow]

What is your system? That's what will help readers. For those of us who don't have cable modem 314MB is alot to d/l.

[solo]

I made my own with the following ingredients:

AMD Athlon 64 3500 processor
Asus A8V-Deluxe motherboard
ATI Radeon 9800 pro with 256 mb
Creative Audigy Sound Card
2 WD hard drives with Windows XP Home (SP1)

I can boot to either drive. One is 120 GB and is for general use, internet browsing and storage. The other is a 32 GB 10,000 rpm Raptor drive used exclusively for games or other demanding software, running just Windows and leaving out all of the other clutter such as virus checkers, spyware, etc. All the latest device drivers have been installed on both drives. I test things out (such as new games) first on the general use drive and if they work okay there, install them permanently on the performance drive. This drive never goes online, so is safe from any invasive software.

[N35t0r]

I've played a couple of games (one which never left the classical age, a finished one, and the third is on the 1800's ) And I must say I like it very much. It doesn't run smoothly at all, especially if I stay away from the smaller map sizes, however, but it's still enjoyable.

I've got a 2.4GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM and a GeForce FX 5200

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by N35t0r
I've played a couple of games (one which never left the classical age, a finished one, and the third is on the 1800's ) And I must say I like it very much. It doesn't run smoothly at all, especially if I stay away from the smaller map sizes, however, but it's still enjoyable.

How would you say it compares with Civ II? My impression is that it is considerably more complex, but I'm not sure whether this adds to the enjoyment, or whether it simply complicates things.

Any thoughts from those who have played?

RJM at Sleeper's

[solo]

A big difference is that games are less tedious. You will not be having as many cities, so there will be fewer to manage each turn. Tedious chores like managing ship chains and using incremental rushbuying are gone.

Civ II has much more detail, and probably has more hidden mechanisms (such as Oedo years, city cycles, trade commodity lists, etc.), so I doubt that years from now we will be surprised by still being able to discover new things about how Civ IV works.

Civ IV has nerfed most of the exploits players used in Civ II, especially ICS. Some may argue that part of the charm of Civ II was discovering and making use of the numerous exploits.

Civ IV has more viable strategic choices, whereas in Civ II and even Civ III, rapid expansion was the key to success.

The Civ IV, the AI are much improved and more competitive, especially at the higher levels, where it really will be a challenge to win.

In Civ IV, doing things like winning the Space Race with a size-1 city on Deity using Raging Hordes are not going to happen. So Civ II permitted much more in terms of variant ways to play.

The games are very different.

Civ II's system of using caravans and freights to trade commodities is perhaps its best feature. Trade, as implemented in Civ IV, does not even compete with the quality, depth and detail seen in Civ II.

Civ IV is superior in its implementation of new features such as Culture, Civics, Religion, Strategic Resources, and Great Persons.

Civ II will run on almost any system, but with Civ IV you can't be sure. Its complexity and 3d graphics makes its less stable and more prone to bugs that may spoil a game in progress.

Both are addictive and I predict that both will remain so.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I may even buy Civ4, if solo says it's addictive.

(but not until it's on sale! )

[N35t0r]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers


How would you say it compares with Civ II? My impression is that it is considerably more complex, but I'm not sure whether this adds to the enjoyment, or whether it simply complicates things.

Any thoughts from those who have played?

RJM at Sleeper's

Solo pretty much sums it up.

Also, when reading my comments take into account that I've only played 3 games, one of which was abandoned a little while after being started.

IMHO, it is not much more complex, but simpler, and rather has a couple of extra stuff to keep track of.

I've played some Civ3 (never finished a game though) and so I'm used to culture and resources, so that made Great People practically the only real 'new' feature I had to grow used to. (At least the only big one)

There's a couple of beginner's guides around which might be useful. (I found Sulla's Walkthrough pretty useful.)

All in all, I think it's a definite step foward (rather than with civ3, which had some good ideas but just didn't do it). The streamlining of the interface (which admittedly was in since civ3) is a great help, although I miss some of the right-click features which aren't there any more. (or maybe I haven't found them still.)

Most of the things I disliked the most about Civ2, which are ICS, my urges to have humongous empires, and micromanagement (including having to build as much vans as my cities can churn out and sending them as far as possible) are out. I guess you can still get a bit more juice if you squish it enough, but the difference isn't as big.

Combat is much better, reducing the reliance on single unit types (no more crooks & clads conquering the earth... well you can, but it'll be cheaper and faster to mix it up a bit), and I like the promotion system very much.

It incorporates a lot of the (IMHO) good things SMAC had, like commerce replacing Civ2's vans (which were inexistant on Civ3), the variety of terrain enhancemnt possibilities, and the Social Engineering system, reincarnated into the civics model, which lets you fine tune your civilization depending on what your goals are.

It does play rather laggy, but I've heard of people reducing the texture and/or 3d models ' qualities to make it significantly faster withouth much visual effect. (Not that us Civ2'ers can complain, eh )

Besides, try playing Civ2 on a 486 50 with 8 MB RAM and it won't exactly go fast

[edit:] Actually adding the link to the walkthrough might be useful.

[rjmatsleepers]

Sulla's walkthough seemed pretty impressive. I liked the culture idea and the ideas around religion are pretty authentic. I'm not sure whether the effort on "gee whiz" graphics actually improves the game play, but that seems to be the direction things are going. If it will run on my system I'll probably give it a try.

RJM at Sleeper's

[Elephant]

Originally posted by N35t0r
It doesn't run smoothly at all, especially if I stay away from the smaller map sizes, however, but it's still enjoyable.

I've got a 2.4GHz P4 with 512 MB RAM and a GeForce FX 5200

If this isn't a typo, it sounds like a big worry for me. The only >2GHz machines I've got are work machines, with generic video cards, and I'm not going to play on those. Is there any provision for reducing the 3D video demands to get things to run on older, slower machines? I hate $50 games that force me to buy a new $1000 machine...

[N35t0r]

The greatest limit on my system is the video card. (It's cheap as ****)

If I had a better vieo card, it'd run with no problems, and while I'm a bit tight on memory, the processor is above the recommended specs.

[solo]

Not so much the processor, but if your memory and video card are minimum spec, expect the game to just barely chug along. You can help things out by turning off a lot of unnecessary processes that start up along with Windows.

I think a lot of game settings can be turned down to improve performance, too, if you get the game to run on a minimum spec machine, but I would still expect side effects and slow downs, even after doing that.

I think the cheapest and best performance boost comes by adding more RAM and a decent video card. There are many very good cards out there now under $200, and probably the Nvidia 6600GT will give the best performance now for the money.

Good luck!