So who is this Robert Plomp person?

[Ming]

Wait... who said Civ IV sucked on original release?!

All the people that couldn't even get the game to play... the ole "blue screen of death"... You must have forgotten all the whining and complaints when Vanilla IV first came out. And the balance issues... a stack of cats was all you needed to take somebody out, since they could kill units and take cities

[DriXnaK]

I loved the Axe wars. It was pretty much pure axes followed by a race to see who could get catapults first, which pretty much came down to oracle. I don't think you can make a game much more mindless than Civ4 was when it was first released. You were dealing with significantly less cities, worse land, and a dumbed down military system that required you to simply slave out your units to point A and then move them to point B. Civ4 was and still is sheer stupidity. I guess if you like really dumbed down and simplified games that even a 5 year old can play, then Civ4 is just awesome. Since it has hardly any skill gap, you can rejoice in that every single game will come down to score (which by the way is horribly flawed and broken) unless the guy was a total idiot. I also loved how the game made techs cheaper for the guy that was behind. A game truly made for communists where all players are created equal and remain equal.

Civ5 isn't a whole lot better in this regard unfortunately, at least not in its current form. It has potential to be pretty good, but so much has to be done, and it's not going to get done. Not only that, you already lost most the player base. Hoping an expansion pack will fix it won't bring these people back. Civ5 MP is dead in the water.

[SlowwHand]

Hmph... well, If they could go back and start with CivII again, and fix some of the issues there (instead of going off the wrong direction like Civ3), that would be amazing.

[EPW]

Technical issues aside, I remember Civ4 being pretty good on release. Certainly better than Civ3, CTP1, CTP2, and from what I've read Civ5.

[SlowwHand]

I think Kaak means MP.

[DriXnaK]

Civ4 was pretty good on release for MP, at least for me. I had no problem playing a bunch of games. This was instrumental in making sure that I quit the game quickly since rather than stringing me along in hopes that technical fixes would make the world right, it made it clear that the game just sucked with or without technical issues.

[Berzerker]

global warming never improves terrain... Algore's damn contribution

[Aeson]

The Civ4 release problem with some ATI cards was far and away the most glaring technical issue, but it was fixed within the first week or so wasn't it? (And a fix posted the next day IIRC.)

As for balance, the game was better at high difficulty than low. And because of it, better for SP than MP. MP played at Noble, so happiness and health weren't much of an issue, thus chopping and slaving had no real tradeoff. Axes had no "first unit" counter. All 3 were available at Bronze Working, which was bad for MP. (But for high level SP, Alphabet was generally better still.) Horses were visible on the map from day one. Cats were bad (you're welcome, that they weren't much much worse ).

[Kaak]

If only the civ2 source code hadn't been lost.

wait, what?! How the heck does that happen?!

[ColdWizard]

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/183163-When-Civ-II-Source-Code-Is-Released...-What-Are-Your-Plans?p=5523446&viewfull=1#post5523446

[OzzyKP]

Civ2 sucks, get over it everyone.

[Kaak]

Ozzy, sacrilege is bad, mmmkay?

[Kaak]

bah... there is no way the code is completely lost. Most programmers/computer nerds (including me) never get rid of anything. Track down the lead programmer/pm from the CIV2 and ask him for it.

[OzzyKP]

Yea, I know. All the folks clinging to that relic of a game are going to burn me alive for my heresy.

[Provost Harrison]

He's the lawnmower. And your arse is grass.


That's who he is.