Civilizations IV

[Seteyu]

I'm surprised no one has brought up the topic of Civ IV, and as I do quite enjoy the game, esp the new content (bit more about that in a bit), and I've increased my PC by one to make this

Anyways, Civ IV! Now, Civ IV is not the first civ game I've played, I've touched I (waaay back when I wasn't a gamer yet lol), never touched II, played III in elementary school, hated it (and sucked at it so I cheated like mad). How a fully loaded tank could die to a spear-man I'll never know, but ugg. Granted, I should of :rtfm: at the time, but was I very smart back then? Hell no. But this is about IV, which imo is the best of them all. It takes a great deal more PC power to run it at full steam (which I can do, much <3 GTS 8800), but damn, the game has been overhauled pretty much everywhere. My first reaction to the game was "Borders?, CLOSED Borders? Hell Yes!" Sure the AI opens their borders to everyone else they meet, which imo is annoying as hell, cause on large land masses an AI waaay the fuck over yonder can declare war, and have marched zillions of troops through other countries, to *your* border, and fuck you over. Hate Hate Hate. Plus there's the the ability to slam parts of the map closed to everyone but you, so you can drop Settlers where you want later without worrying about AI settler cluster-fucking it up.

This is where in the game the AI fails so hard with city settling. Lets see, common stupidity example. You've claimed all the territory you want, but a single tile in the north (or south) in still neutral. So it's ice, typically on the coast, surrounded by either useless ice tiles, or your own freaking borders. The AI will come in with a ship, drop a Settler, and 2 defense units on it, make a city, then BITCH that "your close borders spark tension". WTF!?

But that's just me bitching. Granted I've yet to try the game past the "Nobel" setting (the "balanced" setting, my ass it is). Which is my only real complaint about the game. Fucking cheating AI. I HATE it. How the hell can an AI have: a pop 5 capital, a worker, fuckload of military units and a second city, in the time it take ME to make a single settler, on the "balanced" setting? (the annoyance is that while building settlers/workers, city growth is halted. So how can the capital be pop 5?, along with all the other units)

If any of you've been paying attention to Civ IV of late, the newest expansion pack, called Beyond the Sword was released like last week. Civ IV is a great game, but BTS makes it so much better. Granted I can't whore the starting wonders like I used to (I'll explain later), but the changes make up for it. New civs, new wonders (world and national), new units, civ-unique building, random events, a straight up smarter AI, and lots more goodies. Just go look Beyond the Sword up in google to find all the funtastic details.

One thing about the BTS is the better AI when it comes to wonders. Typically, in a standard Civ IV marathon (slowest speed setting) game, I can research Mysticism, then beat the AI out to Polytheism, founding Hinduism. Which you can't do anymore. I've lost, every time. Also, I along with what I just said, I could pump out a settler from my pop 2 capital (I wait for the 1 city growth before starting), place it close, and start building Stonehenge right away from it. And I'd win, 95% of the time. Not anymore, firstly, a Settler used to require 40 turns (or 200 hammers) to build, but its been increased to 300 hammers, so 60 turns. Those 20 turns pretty much means "you lose", cause in every game save the last 2 (I've been playing a few games trying to get my new strats down) I've lost the building race to it, which sucks, cause Great Prophets are extremely nice to have. So, I used to be able to get Hinduism, build Stonehenge, The Parthenon (the tech needed for it has been changed now), The Hanging Gardens, sometimes The Oracle, sometimes The Great Lighthouse, and if not, or even if I did, The Colossus. By then I've over-extended my cities, my research is fucked (cause I've no money), and it take the rest of the game to catch up. (So I got the starting, and ending wonders, but never the middle game ones) Pretty much watched my tried and true strat trip-up and fall flat on its face now. I can't say what the later game stuff is like because I've not gotten there yet (I get my ass declared war over religion. Fuck)

(my "tried and true" strat is haul ass for bombers and fuck my opponent(s) up, cause nothing says "your fucked" like 20 bombers laying waste to a city)

Anyways, this has been a lot of semi-random ramble, but maybe it'll influence ppl to write their own experiences (good and/or bad) about Civ IV. Or this topic will be ignored like pretty much everything I post. Meh.

As a final note, the new techs in BTS are voiced by Cid himself instead of Leonard Nimoy, which saddens me greatly, cause his voice is awesome.

 

[Pupusa]

I really enjoyed Civilization 4 also. I know the computer cheats like mad, and I never got too good at it, but I used to love how different each game can turn out to be. I went heavily into the cultural aspect when I first started playing, it was a great feeling when my enemies towns would convert to my side just cause I had some much culture pumping out each turn.

I've also noticed that the computer seems to get its hands on necessary resources much sooner than I did, especially for military units, but it could just be bad luck as to where I settled.

I've checked out Beyond the Sword, but since I played the original to death, I can't really seem to get the motivation to pick it up. Usually with Civ I get real excited early on in maps but once things hit the industrial age, it just starts to feel repetitive for me. It is a great game though, much better than the Sim City series or other simulation type games.

And that sucks that is has no Leonard Nimoy, I remember when I got my first tech saying, "Did I just hear Spock?"

 

[Damita]

The Civilization series has always been great. But, I can only play it once in a while. I'll normally start a civilization, play the course of game, and then not play again for a month or more. It gets so damn frustrating managing all the units and cities and then have a bad turn make you want to reload. :smile:

 

[Arien]

I played this game for awhile. The damn AI cheats like nobody's business. I kept trying to advance in difficulty levels but once you get up in the hard levels it's f'n impossible. I'd love to see somebody beat those difficulties. I'd be raising my archers while the AI was busy planning a nuke attack. It got too lame for me.

 

[Damita]

Well that's still how it is Arien, but there are ways to weasel around that. /cough Diplomacy /vomit. Also, when underpowered, go go spys. Steal steal steal.