Civilisation IV: Opinions

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I see you can now get the whole Civilisation saga in one box this Christmas. Cool. But can you imagine playing the original Civilisation on your modern PC. It would look weird.

But, having played every Civilisation incarnation since the beginning (included the ill-advised Civilisation: Call to Power), I now watch with interest the number of people here enjoying Civilisation IV.

So, in summary, what are the main differences between Civ III and Civ IV and why should I buy Civ IV?

 

Oh geez. It's been so long since I've played Civ3, it's hard to remember what the differences between 3 and 4 are. The biggest difference that I can think of off the top of my head is that you get much more specialization in the military. In civ3, experienced units basically got more hitpoints as they advanced from conscripts, normal, veteran, and elite. In Civ4, you can personally customize your units as they gain experience, making them better against archery units, or melee units, or city attacking specialists, or defensive specialists, etc. Plus, since all units are eventually upgradable into better units, and they retain their abilities once upgraded, these customized abilities are typically "permanent".

The other major difference is that you need a very balanced military. Some units are naturally superior when fighting against other units, but not so great versus others. For example, chariots do very well against axemen, but very poorly against spearmen.

Another new item is the appearance of "Great People". Depending on how you play and what your priorities are, you can great people in the form of (Great) Prophets, Scientists, Artists, Entertainers, Merchants, Engineers, and (if you get the expansion pack) Generals.

Finally, I would also recommend getting the expansion pack when you buy the game. Not only does the expansion had a whole list of new nations and additional leader choices from existing civilizations, they also introduce unique buildings for each civilization as well. Unique buildings work just like unique units, in that the replace the base building, but do something more than what the base building does.

 

You mean that your little units actually "level up"? Is this some sort of CRPG convergence?

 

You could say so. It simply means that after you kill some enemy units, you get a flashing button urging you to choose some bonus. That's about it.

I didn't really like of Civ4, since it is still quite heavily emphasizing on war and the single-player AI is, still, quite primitive. AFAIK, they always end up hostiling you unless you lick their butt and lick it good by giving out free stuff through the game.

It's not probably that much different online, it now being kinda late to join against the vets. Don't know. Alpha Centauri was good, though, but it's seriously outdated now.

[ December 15, 2006, 18:07: Message edited by: Wordplay ]

 

Heh. It took them how long to take that stuff from Alpha Centauri and put in the Civ series? Seven, eight years?

Ah well.

 

Basically as your units kick ass, they get more experienced and better at it, and can take more specialized combat roles, like medics, anti melee units, city raiders, city defenders, terrain defence specialists, first strikes, better odds ro retreat from a losing battle...

The traits are more meaningful to each civilization and Unique units are much more important. They make or break a Civ in some cases.

All in all, it is a vastly superior game, requiring more thought into expansion, war and what to build.

The one weakness is that the only real vulnerability the AI has is warfare. The Ai is not great at picking good fights or executing them.

 

How come the AI was so great in Civ 2, but seems to have gone downhill since then?

I did like Alpha Centauri.

 

The AI was crap in Civ2, it was only good for its time. No Civ AI has ever been able to truly wage war, it has gotten slightly better at it but the only way you can lose a war to the AI is through attrition and if you do that you had already lost the war the moment it started. The AI is decent at managing its civilisation but for it to have any chance of beating a human opponent who half a clue how the game works it needs to cheat and cheat a lot.

 

Through attrition, or if they are technologically superior to you and can build better units. While I agree that you should always beat the enemy AI when you're on a level playing field, that is frequently not the case, espcecially on harder difficulty levels. Another problem is even if you are technologically equivalent, it can be a real pain if your neighbor gets their UU at a critical time. Having the Romans as a neighbor with early access to iron can ruin your day.

 

The AI does know how to tilt the field in their advantage. That's what makes some games virtually impossible. The AI will make demands and will not give a fair deal in tech trading, forcing you to choose between going without or giving them a huge edge...

The AI trades among themselves before talking to you, and will often beg you for a tech even though they have stuff you want but they won't trade...

 

^ "Give me all, I give nothing" -syndrome. A simple way to cover the shabby AI, much like cheating. As funny as it is, they are still at the same level as 20 years ago, when the first Doom was published...

 

They try to bully you. Why should they share their tech with you when they can bluff you into giving it to them. It seldom works...