What SMAC fans say about Civ IV?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by frostking
From (crash) what (crash) I've been (crash) able to (crash) play (crash), I'll (crash) call it...
...One crashing SOB!
(CRASH)

Cant' wait to get it an see how it performs on my Nvidia Vanta 16 Mb VC

[binTravkin]

[wgabrie]

I like the relationship points that pop up when you place the mouse over a leader's head. It's better than the mood system.

[Dis]

before I begin, I must say I liked civ3. Though it's not nearly as good as SMAC.

That being said, I like civ4 as well. It's fun in nearly every aspect. War is fairly fun as well, but difficult to run.

SMAC is still the game with the most balance between builder and conquerer styles of play. With hybrid in the middle. Civ3 went to far to the builder style, and waging war is difficult at best. Just try to get a domination victory on a huge terran map. I want to see a save game of that.

The good thing, is I should be able to mod civ4 to give conquerers more bonuses/less penalties. I haven't bothered to do this yet, though. I'm more of a builder myself. So it's not that big a deal. The key will be getting the right balance. I will of course beef up all units past infantrymen. Though I may keep grenadiers the same. I was upset my grenadiers were losing to longbowmen. But if you think about it. The arrows go further than one can throw a grenade.

[Kataphraktoi]

Civ3 went to far to the builder style, and waging war is difficult at best. Just try to get a domination victory on a huge terran map. I want to see a save game of that.

huh civ3 i always found a non-war strat to be practicly impossible with the lack of vertical devolopment and no drop\choppers.i cant give you a sav because i dont like the game and wont play it,but i think a domination would be quite easy,just by removing the other players.i built up a mins base at start,then military and start snowballing.

[Dis]

I meant civ4. I keep getting the names mixed up.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Dis
I meant civ4. I keep getting the names mixed up.

Maybe it's time for replacing your s with a z

[Illuminatus]

I've finished my first game of Civ4. I played as Egyptians on map of Chiron on the noble level difficulty. I was on the north half of the jungle/dune continent in SMAC. (come to think of it, in Civ4 there is desert in place of Monsoon jungle, and jungle in place of Dunes). My only neighbour was Saladin, and I beefed my relations with him by converting his cities to buddhism. Up to 1300, we haven't met anyone else (there were five other civilizations, one on middle continent and four on the L continent).

I haven't been involved in any wars and I founded all religions (used wonders and missionaries to get prophets which propelled me through religious technologies). Saladin's AI matched me in earl game, but I started to outrun it in the middle game. I had cities raking up in culture, so I decided to take that path to victory.

To my surprise, Saladin beelined directly for Rocketry, ignoring other technologies and planted his flag on the Moon around 1880s. After closer inspection I discovered Saladin saved an engineer to finish Apollo project the same turn it became available. He completed SS casing and thrusters before I researched rocketry. Chinese were also a trouble as I fought with them for the place of UN secretary, but neither him or me had enough support of other civilizations.
By 1920s, Chinese, Arabs, Persians and Greeks were all participating in space race. I am simply stunned by the AI competence in this aspect of endgame.

In the end, my superior science output managed to get all the prerequisite technologies before rivals and I managed to launch the starship around 1950. The victory movie sucked like other CivIV movies and I was rated Ivan the Terrible.

Speaking from the technical side, I had one CTD. But several times the screen just froze and then my monitor turned off. I noticed that the less map you reveal, the faster the game. Immediately after discovering other continents game started to slow down, although just turns before there were no pauses between the turns.

Some notes:
*some advisors are now useles
*interface is now better
*argh! F is for Fortify
*combat aspect is mostly useless. All AIs who went to war were on the bottom, and I managed to finish the game without any wars.
*I want my hyperlinks back!
*I can best AI with only five or six cities.
*barbarians Now more interesting and annoying. While Alexander and Montezuma were at war, barbarians took over five or six of their cities, creating a big barbarian buffer zone between them.
*Religion to easy to get? I played a bit in my second game (Rhye's map) and I noticed that no AI beelines for religions after buddhism and hinduism are discovered.

[LoriTX]

My husband who is addicted to CivIII, just had to run out and get it as soon as it came out!!!

Well looks like we need to upgrade our computers!!!!
They are about 4 yrs old now! We have the video card problem, that alot of people have.

So looks like we will be upgrading soon.

As long as we dont upgrade so much that my SMAC wont work!!!

Lori

[smacksim]

Originally posted by LoriTX
As long as we dont upgrade so much that my SMAC wont work!!!

Lori

Glad to hear you have your priorities straight!

-------

We also want to hear some opinions on how the C4:Smac project is going.........

[Marid Audran]

Well, I broke down and bought Civ IV.

Because I'm in the dark on much of the new improvements to the game (as I haven't played a new wholesale civ-styled game since Civ II), I started up the tutorial, featuring a ventriloquist Sid gently coaxing me along the commands the basic features of the game.

I mostly just drifted along, automating most of my workers and assigning square "governers" to work my tiles because I can't understand a goddamn thing in the city radius...what squares are being worked on and which ones are not? The City menu is no help; every square in the radius seems lit up with food/resource/trade icons.

I founded a few religions, unlocked a few civics, and discovered many a new technology. Despite the tutorial I'm not really clued in as to what culture, religion (citywide or nationwide?), great people, or ...specialists? are really about vis-a-vis CivIV, however. I just sort of randomly assigned stuff as the tutorial didn't go in-depth enough about these concepts. The civlopedia is not very helpful or hyperlinked for ease-of-use.

The game looks pretty enough, though the interface seems rather cluttered at times. The city screen seems rather icon-happy and I would have preferred more written lists, particularly with what-unit-to-build screens. Also, there are slowdowns and performance issues which make the game sluggish and less enjoyable, particularly with the videos, which stutter intermittedly.

Leonard Nimoy was a nice choice as our voice of erudition and elucidation, though his delivery is muddled and almost campy at times, compared to the SMAC tech/facility voice-overs. The tech quotes seem more glib than profound.

The wonder videos are forgettable. The opening movie seemed more like some dialogueless promo for the movie Troy or a direct-to-DVD release on Macedonian wars or something.

I really think FMV was the best choice for such things. However, that particular technology seems to have been abandoned wholesale for many years now in favor of all CGI movies.

This is just preliminary...I'll give the manual a slow gander and then start a real game on one of the lower difficulty levels (but not settler).

[yellowyellow]

I actually started playing SMAC because of being disappointed by the poor performance of CIV4.

When CIV4 wouldn't work on my system, I gave a try to CIVIII, became frustrated with that game and was thinking of playing something entirely different, when some guy on a forum linked me to a collection of quotes from SMAC, namely, http://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/smac.html

Then I knew I had to get the game. I did and am now playing my 3rd game. It's awesome.

edit: i r gud at speling

[binTravkin]

Another Latvian?

[yellowyellow]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Another Latvian?

Yes. Small internet, huh?

[Kataphraktoi]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Another Latvian?

[quote]Then I knew I had to get the game. I did and am now playing my 3rd game. It's awesome.[//quote]