What SMAC fans say about Civ IV?

[Dis]

I haven't had that problem on warlord, but the AI can beat me to the spaceship on Noble. Even though I have the tech lead and should easily complete in time...

[Straybow]

Cheatin' AI!

[Phreddo]

personally, Civ4 makes me wish my SMAC/x wouldn't keep locking on me

[dacole]

first game report

Ok my report on Civ IV though with Yin's and velocyix's reviews we really don't need it now..

Civ is back! I stayed away from Civ III based on what I read here and elsewhere but I would have kicked myself if I stayed away from this. It is deceptivly simpiler in that you can still have fun with it and be reasonably succesfull without knowing all that is going on underneath but once you try and find out what is going on underneath it is wayyy more complicated than even AC. ICS is dead, though this may seem like it makes things even less strategic this isn't true. How you use your cities, where you place them is now wayyy more important and this ups the strategy 100 fold. Do you go for ships early and place one city on each continent to halt the spread of rivals (at the risk of slowing your own growth on your main continent) or do you focus on your main continetnt at the risk of allowing your rivals to spread? Do you build the cultural wonders and buildingings in the middle of your empire where they will build faster, or do you build them at the outskirts where they will have more effect in pushing back your rivals culture? Do you focus on building buildings or do you put people into specialists as early as possible to up the great people rate and control the typle of great people you get? Or do you wait until you have all the tiles worked to make any specialists at all (the tried and true AC strategy)? Then there is how do you use your great people and what even do you research since or gates have been added to the tech tree. The strategy is endless and will hardly ever be the same for any game even one played with the same people on the same map.

Winning by conquest is much much harder, especially if like me you skipped civ III and are unfamillar with the culture system. In fact I would be deeply impressed if anyone can win a conquest victory on a huge map at noble level or above. In AC this was difficult but possible. I'm on the fence if this is an improvement or not. However there are always now at least 2 or three things your city could be building and no real winner on every level at any one time. Unlinke in AC where building a supply crawler was what you built if you didn't need anything else.

Overall I think I like AC better but that is only because I'm a sci-fi more than a history buff. Also AC has a story and characters that Civ can't match. AC is almost a hybrid between a roleplaying and a strategy game. They missed a huge opportunity in my mind to add this by making the religons and the AI's that choose them different. Make Islam and Christiantiy expansive and millitaristic while making taoism and buddhism peaceful and sedate. I can understand the bussiness decision though be sure not to offend anyone, especially in todays climate. As a pure strategy game however Civ IV beats AC and my playing time will be at least evenly splitt between the two.

[Kataphraktoi]

Cheatin' AI!

Lets not forget SMAC AI cheats too, particularily on smaller maps where domai for example could have +5 industry in effect,and full LOS,etc. They just dont cheat as badly as other AI.