f13.net

I was initially not going to write anything about my experiences with Civ 4 for fear of the ensuing nerdrage destroying the known universe, but after talking to a few people about it I think a public service announcement needs to be made.  If you are not already a Civ player, Civ 4 is not For You.  If you are not prepared to spend a lot of time and effort having other people help you have fun with Civ, and you don't want to devote your life to figuring it out on your own, Civ 4 is not For You.

If you are one of those people who does already like Civ because you were inoculated against it at an early age, this review is not For You.  Especially the rating at the end.

As for myself, I like the type of game Civ supposedly is, but I couldn't get into it.  The interface is clunky, and behind it I couldn't see a lot there.  Managing the military is a giant pain in the ass, but if you're not doing that you're just watching your cities level up so you can... I don't know what, I couldn't figure out what the point was to the cities besides building more military units that were a pain in the ass to control and only become more of a pain in the ass once I had a bunch of them for lack of knowing what else to do.  I did manage to make it through an entire round (which I apparently won by running out the clock or something) before uninstalling.

Rating: Avoid.

I don't think you "like the kind of game Civ supposedly is."  If you did, complaining about a steep learning curve wouldn't be the main thesis of your review.  That's the entire point of Civ:  a relatively deep strategy game.  Even still, Civ is about as intuitive as a game of its kind can be, there's an in-game encyclopedia that can be brought up by right clicking on anything in the game, automatically displaying the entry for that building, unit, etc.  

You "couldn't figure out what the point was to the cities?"  Wtf?  I can't figure out what the point is to this review.  There are multiple paths to victory in Civilization, including cultural, space race, and military.  All of these victory conditions are set by the player himself.  Look, there are a lot of fucking problems with Civ (especially Civ 4) but this review comes off as extremely ignorant even to a casual Civ player such as myself.  I mean why even bother posting a review like this?  Amateur hour.

This review is not For You.  Your commentary on it comes off as extremely ignorant.

Edit:  :why_so_serious:

Nerdrage ++

I played Civ for the first time like 3 years ago.  Does that count as "inoculation?"  My commentary comes off like someone that has played the game a few times and has two brain cells to rub together. Your review reads like it was written by Simple Jack.  (DURRR what do cities do?) Implying that I'm some sort of rabid Civilization fanboy because I'm calling a spade a spade is one way to handle the situation.  

Did you play the other ones? If not, yeah it would come off as ridiculous.

I didn't like Civ 4 as much as the other versions because of the meaningless additions. They added religion, but they pussed out at the end and made them all homogenous beyond just picking a "State" religion. No benefits, no downsides, no special items or units. Just pick a faith and move on. I'd rather they just left that part out if they didn't have the balls to actually tailor it to reality.

I can understand what you mean about the military thing. I'm a cultural player and the military conquests usually just get in the way of my building shining cities on a hill. Some people LOOOOOOVE late game rounds where and an entire turn of moves takes 30 minutes. I hate those with an almighty passion. It's simply a style thing. I'm the defensive/builder type that never works in an RTS anywhere, but you can shine in turn-based strategy with the right technology curve.

Civ 4 didn't come off all that different from Civ 3 for me, which made me question it's existence. HOWEVER, and it's a big however, the modding community completely saved this game. Fall from Heaven 2 is widely regarded as one of the most fun mods for the game ever. For one, they fixed my problem with religions by making them very very different and special. Also it has a fantasy base. It's pretty badass overall.

I've heard this from a couple of people now, and it was a big part of what inspired me to write something up as a warning to people who don't know about the modding scene, or that it's better if you have someone else spend time showing you the ropes, or whatever.  The impression I'm getting is that people who rave about how awesome Civ is aren't mentioning that it's not awesome out of the box.  It was a rather unpleasant surprise for me since I expected to fire it up and have fun right off the bat.

What is it, killing sacred cows week in BIIF?

Thursday: Diablo 2, why it is overrated
Friday: Portal, not all that

 :why_so_serious:

To be more serious, my one real complaint about Civ 4 was that the games so short on the default speed that they stopped feeling like a Civ game, so I usually put it on 'soul grindingly slow' technology progression.

That's how you criticize Civ 4 in a meaningful way.

I like Civ 4, but comeon. Same category as Diablo 2 and Portal?

Maybe Civ 2 or Alpha Centauri, but 4? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, stretch.

If I ever reviewed a Diablo game I'm pretty sure schild would kill me with his mind.

I thought comparing Assassin's Creed was much shakier ground really.  :-P Just hyperbole.

Actually, you'd probably die the moment your hand hit the paper. You wouldn't even have to write anything. The pen would jump out of your hand a blast a Bic shaped hole in your frontal lobe.

I can see writing a review like this for an obtuse indie game.  But I really can't see the point of writing a review for a Triple A title like 3 years after it game out that basically says "didn't feel like spending the time to figure this one out, not my cup of tea."  Or at least, I don't see the point of front paging it.  Paelos wrote a better review in the comments section.  I'm not pro-Civ, I'm just anti-useless.

Every few BiiFs some chucklehead wanders in who didn't read the sticky at the top of the forum and asks "why did you even bother to review this if you're not going to spend a couple of weeks desensitizing yourself to its many torments?"  Here ya go:


The point of this particular review, such as it is, is to warn off people like myself who might have been thinking "hey, Civ 4 is on sale.  I've never played Civ but I've heard it's pretty good.  And I like building/strategy/sim games.  Maybe it'll be fun."  If only someone else had written this review first, I'd have spent last night doing something more fun, like laundry, and my life would be better.  So now it's done and anyone else who wastes an evening trying to get into Civ unprepared will at least have been forewarned.

BIIF is open to abuse by the author.  There is no burden on them to completely or even moderately explore the title.  They can play 15 minutes of it, write what they want and give whatever recommendation they want.  Fuck, they don't even have to play the main part of the game.  They could rate Smash Brothers purely on its story mode if they choose.

There is technically no such thing as a bad or useless BIIF, although I've seen plenty of them.  I've also been on the receiving end of getting lambasted for not giving Marvel: Ultimate Alliance the respect due a "classic RPG".  Sam's BIIFs may come across as someone that's extremely bored, irritated, and flippant to the point of carelessness; all while playing something he'd never like.  But it's his BIIF, and he's working well within the framework (I got an A- in "Backhanded Compliments 302: Complex Dickery")

Personally, I'd rather see the Buy, Rent, Avoid rating replaced with something a little more subjective like Liked it, Meh, Hated it. I wouldn't tell anyone how to spend their money on something I really didn't dive into.

edit: Seriously dude, bad week or something?

That's a bad idea to give people. Anyone who abuses that, I want to remind them that I reserve the right to remove BiiFs.

Forza 2, dude. Forza 2.

edit: I'm saying "dude" too much.  I haven't watched Big Lebowski or played Disgaea anything in a while.  I swear.

What about it? I just said anybody who abuses it, I'm not sure Azazel abused it there. So, I might be missing your point.

I have no Internet, so I'm playing through my backlog of rainy day games.  I figured I might at least be able to give my suffering purpose by warning other people away from making the same foolish impulse buys I did.  

Tune in tomorrow for my thoughts on Roller Coaster Tycoon 3.  It might not suck!

We would be in disagreement then in regards to certain aspects of my statement.  Not a big deal.  I've beaten that horse enough.

Anyhow... I look forward to Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 BIIF.  Never played any of those games.

edit: Sam, your AC review was the third one for that game.  :awesome_for_real:

I wonder if nominating games for people to review would lead to interesting results.

In hindsight, Alpha Centauri was the most enjoyable CIV for me.

They failed to convey exactly how wretchedly slow the game wants to you to walk around.  Something needed to be said.

This gives me an idea for an Eve review...

Fair point.

Don't agree with the "Avoid" rating but I do agree the interface is clunky. In fact I would say it's fucking horrific. All of the Civs have been like that and most of his other games too.

My main complaint with Civ IV is you can't "Borg" like you could in Civ III. In Civ III you could assimiliate other cities culturally. In theory you are supposed to be able to do that in Civ IV too but I've never seen it, though I haven't tried the really high difficulties yet. In one case this one city was totally isolated from the rest of its empire (totally surrounded by foreign borders) and down to just a couple of squares of border and it *still* wouldn't switch sides.

I actually liked Pirates (the recent one) quite a bit.  I don't remember the interface ever pissing me off.

I think I did borg a couple of neighboring cities in Civ 4, but as far as I could tell it wasn't because of anything in particular I'd done.  They just said "hey, we're on your team now," and I said "um, okay?"

I wonder what I'm doing wrong then.

I thought that was a very fair review, and agree that the interface is clunky. I think Civ fans like clunky interfaces though. I think I'd hate Civ 4 if it was all streamlined and easy to grasp.

Civ 4 feels very different from Civ 3 to me, simply because I've never won a game of Civ 3 ever. I always DIE, no matter what I do. I have literally launched 20 tanks against one person phalanx and lost. If I go cultural, everybody gangs up and kills me. If I mind my own business, they find me and kill me. I must have gotten a hacked copy or something. Other people can finish a game of Civ 3 (or at least they SAY they can!).

I can win a game of Civ 4, so I like it. ^_^ Plus Fall From Heaven rocks.

I can't really argue with Sam's review, I'm a long time Civ player so it's Not For Me anyway.

Minor offtopic: Anyone know an easy way to turn off AI civilizations? And remove the time limit? I'd just like to explore and civilize a large, empty world, eventually building a space ship, etc. But there's always some chucklehead AI that builds on the only Stone spawn and I hate going into the World Editor to delete them.

No one likes clunky interfaces.

But in the world of Civ and Civ-likes, your options are clunky and clunkier. Most of the gaming industry just tends to ignore the GUI as being important anyway. Particularly in the MMO/RTS/RPG/Strategy sectors. It gets even worse when genres are hybridized.

Edit: Huh. Civ without Civs would be a great mod.

Start a custom game, turn off all AI opponents (close their slots), uncheck all the victory conditions except for space race.

Awesome, thanks Trippy. I've always just gone to Play Now! because I liked the more detailed starting options, but this definately works.

Custom games actually give you more options, it's just presented differently.

Ahh, I always assumed it gave the same options but with less information; I can never remember exactly what each landmass type means, for example. Will turning off "Time" as a victory condition prevent me from dying of old age?

Yes. You can read the Civilopedia for an explanation of what all the victory conditions mean.

At which point the author is open to abuse by the reader.  I can't imagine anyone who writes one of these "You know that game that most of you have played and really like?  Well I just played it for 15 minutes and it sucks!" BIIF's is doing so for completely innocent motives. 

I also think that it highlights one of the weaknesses of BIIF's.  When it comes time to back up one's "review", ignorance due to lack of play isn't a very compelling arguement.

It's based on the culture output and the various cultural levels of a city. As a city grows in influence it's cultural borders expand and, where those borders butt up against another civ there's some bleed between the two in the border squares. A city pumping out a lot of culture influences neighbouring territories more than one with low culture outputs, when the neighbours loyalty to their own civ drops below about 30% they'll have a pro-you riot. If it continues to drp then they'll defect.

I like to build a lot of cultural buildings in all my cities (libraries, universities, theatres, monasteries, cathedrals etc) and maximise my Great Person birthrate as much as possible. When I get a Great Artist, I find a border city of mine that has a few wavering cities from other civs near it and go create a masterwork there. You can have multiple cities defect at once if you're lucky.

I understand how it's supposed to work and I do pump up the culture in my border cities, hence the border shrinkage on their side, but I've never gotten any to flip for me.

It can take a while to force a flip without something like a great master piece spiking the culture up usually what you wind up doing is choking that city off so they cannot feed themselves until it withers down to about size 5 or so and then eventually it can switch to you.

I usually use it more for crippling enemy cities than capping them if you can force your border deep enough near their cities you can mess them up bad and then steal all their improvements with your own workers to make your city better and theirs worse.

The interface isn't that bad.  I've seen worse, for certain.  Once you get used to it it is okay.

The biggest issue with all of the Civ games is the crazy combat.  I mean, can a spear brigade really beat a horde of musketmen or riflemen?  I'm sure those walls help and all.........

I don't like how the role of water based units has been lessened with Civ4.  Civ2 sea based units rocked.  In Civ4 you barely even need them. 

I don't think Sam was trolling, he thought Civ4 would be fun because people here make FoH sound like robot jesus.  The problem is, Civ sucks unless you like EXACTLY THAT TYPE OF GAMEPLAY.  There is nothing fun about Civ if you aren't a Civ player.  So I get what he's saying, if you don't already like Civ, ignore the FoH induced fawning because its still Civ which means its still boring as shit.

I enjoyed Civ on the PS1 back in the day, I played the future/space one a fair bit in the internet cafe days.  I still don't really like Civ4, I got it because I wanted to try FoH, I installed FoH and realized I was going to have to climb some kind of Matterhorn learning curve to even figure out which race to play as.  In the end, I don't have the time for Civ anymore, there are things buried within the gameplay that I know exist and their existence pisses me off because I'm incapable of wasting enough time reading the in-game encyclopedia and web sources to figure out how to incorporate them into my build city, build armies, hope city doesn't randomly fail forcing me to try to figure out why its failing.

Do you mean Fall from Heaven when you say FoH?

Because I somewhat agree. The learning curve is steep, and I've spent weeks getting to know the lore. Thankfully somebody paid me to waste my time at work with such nonsense!  :awesome_for_real:

If you are that hardcore about Civbuilder games, its worth it though. If you aren't, Civ4 might be needlessly complicated for you already, especially with the expansions.

If you just play through their storyline/scenario campaign thing you don't have to worry about picking a race, etc.

Sounds right on. As much as I enjoyed this game, I've only recommended it once, and that was to a RL friend I played SWG with (which probly says a lot about me).

I had games that lasted up to 15 hrs of total play time. It's been a while, but I remember feeling great satisfaction in having neighboring cities join my empires willingly. The soundtrack choices work well for the game, especially after a stressful work day. I haven't played the others Civs.

On a side note, is it radio legend Carl Kasell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Kasell) who does the tech achievement quotes in the game? That guy is cool.

Its Leonard Nimoy. Although I think for the extra techs added in the expansions it is actally just Sid Meier himself.

They're cool too, but I'm a little disappointed.

This man gets it.

I found Civ4 to be a giant letdown and/or disappointment…

But I figured that might be remedied as it took a couple of years worth of patches for Civ 3 to end up being a decent game…

And I enjoy the TBS sort of game, though endgame military maneuvering (moving stacks around the board/world) is a PITA…

Civ 2, Alpha Centauri and FreeCiv were the pinnacle…

QFT.


(http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/files/1/4/0/7/3/0/civ4screenshot0136_thumb.jpg) (http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2409&c=24)


This is the Civ interface.  The buttons on the bottom right simply change the visual displays on the world map.  One toggles a resource indicator that highlights strategic resources on the game map thus making them easier to spot at a glance, one toggles grid lines on the map to see the "tiles" on which units can move, etc.  The buttons on the top right are where you access basic information about your civilization, conduct diplomacy, conduct espionage, change your civics, change your religion, etc.  The sliders on the top left control the rate of your spending on technology, culture, etc.  You double click on a city to choose what you want to construct there, and how you want to allocate your citizenry.  That's about it.  The interface is pretty clean and utilitarian considering the depth of the game and the amount of information one needs to be able to draw upon and process.

As far as managing your military units?  You simply drag a box around a stack of units and it selects them all, then you right click where you want them to move, and they set off in that direction.  Just like in every RTS game ever made.  But yeah, there is a learning curve.  There's a learning curve to anything with any complexity.

I thought it was pretty well done with the resource grab colonies you establish and somewhat slow-war machine build up to reflect the costs of war. The worker improvements is a big part of the game that I really enjoyed tuning too. Turning down research to 30% to fuel a rampaging Mongolian Asian invasion in World Map was a pretty high-point in Vanilla Civ for me.

I played my first game on Prince-difficulty yesterday (having kept playing at Noble for years). Forced every other civilization except one into being my vassals... then won by diplomatic victory =P Cossacks are win.

It's a solid strategy game.  Not great, not terrible.  Saying the game sucks because you don't understand what cities do is pure fail.

You mean when I ended the BiiF by saying



Reading comprehension FTW.

Half of the damned BiiF is in the form of disclaimer. My first paragraph is all about that, and then I end with that. Then read my BiiF of Lego Star Wars, also a game made up of Shit I Don't Usually Like, yet it won me over. Sometimes games from a genre you don't usually like can grab you. Sometimes, they don't. Unless you bother to play them, you'll never find out. Fuck, if you're still upset about the Forza BiiF not being a typed blowjob to the game, write your own one as a counterpoint.

edit - Oh wait, you DID. So you're still upset that I had a different opinion of a game to yours? wtf? /edit

Build a bridge, etc.

Really though, unless you want every BiiF to be a cheerleading "Buy it" or softcock "Rent it", you're going to get opinions that sometimes don't match your own. I disagree with Sam's opinion of Civ4, but I "get" it.

 :why_so_serious:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Isandlwana

It's pretty difficult. In the game (currently on hold due to drakensang/charlie's angels) I'm playing, I'm working on taking over another country culturally. But it's a bitch. It took about a quarter of the game to get half of his island taken over, and there's still one city that won't flip. My guess is he built a cultural wonder or something there, it's been isolated for a looong time, starved down to almost nothing.

Of course, my methods are based on FFH2. Besides building cultural buildings and wonders, I have older cities pumping out disciples who can give a city a small culture bonus, and just load up my borders with them (Nexus helps).

I didn't care much for vanilla Civ, and I'm a huge Civ fan. Out of the box with no expansions or mods, it's the worst Civ in the entire line. BtS is a very good addition and FFH2 is essential, it makes it  :drill:

Although learning the races and their specialties takes a while, I tend to just learn by playing. By the end of a given game I've kinda figured out how a race is supposed to be played and move on to the next game. I almost always allow the game to assign me a civ and leader and figure it out from there. Usually a mid-game point where I smack myself in the head (oh, elves can build upgrades in forests!), but the research is more fun.

That's pretty misleading. That's *one screen* of the Civ interface, there are a lot more than that. I love the game, but the interface really is pretty cluttered when you look at the entire thing. The city screen in particular is pretty impenetrable at first glance.

Broham.  If you can't figure out that one man's opinion is purely subjective, and that the BIIF - well done or not- will illicit the nerd discussion you're looking for anyway, you have no business on my internet.  F13 BIIFs don't appear to me something to camp outside blaring Rage Against the Machine, and waving protest signs depicting longcat.

As for CivIV.  I have two words.  Not intuitive.

Dwarf Fortress is "not intuitive".  And I had some fun with DF.  Civ is a level beyond that IMO.

OK now I am going to call you crazy! DF is significantly more unintuitive/micromanagey than Civ 4, imo, up there with the most  :uhrr: of Paradox games, like Victoria.

I found the Civ IV city screen to be pretty easily figured out with a couple of trial error clicks.  20 or 30 seconds of experimenting tops.

Either you're trolling or you were having a really bad day.

Possibly a bad day.  I used the city screen only a couple of times to queue up new stuff to build, screwed myself by accidentally cancelling progress on the dudes I desperately needed to defend my city from the incoming barbarians, and then found out that the game would just prompt me whenever it was time to queue up stuff, and even helpfully suggest what stuff I should queue next.  So after that I just never opened up the city screen again since it had brought me nothing but pain.  :-P  I just clicked the highlighted options in the prompts and hit enter for three hours until I won.

There is only 2 things you really need to do in the city management screen, and you only need to do those if you are into micromanaging.

The most important one is to set your workers working the tiles you want, say if you want to up food production over hammer production.  You do that simply by clicking the tile you want to deallocate the worker from and then clicking the tile you want to allocate the now unemployed worker too.

The other is moving unemployed workers to other jobs, like research.

Pretty much the rest of the screen is informational.

Well, the other side, of course, is that unless you want every BiiF thread to be cheerleading, you're going to get opinions that don't match the reviewer, too.  Bitching about things you disagree with seems fine to me, as long as people have reasons for it.


I have problems with this, too.  It's incredibly hard to overcome city defenses, for me.  Once the computer has archers, I'm basically done with the military until I can get trebuchets or better.  I guess this works both ways, but when the computer rushes a city with fifteen units and kills the two I had guarding it, it pisses me off just as much as when it costs me fifteen units to take an enemy city that's only guarded by two.

I just want to add that TAM (The Ancient Mediterranean) Mod is awesome too. That and FFH2 make Civ4 great.

A single catapult will neutralize the whole "2 archers hold against 15 attackers" thing. Just bombard the defenses until 0% (shouldn't be higher than 20-40% to start with in early games), then throw away the catapult in a suicide attack to weaken both archers a bit, then pounce with the 15. =P

I agree completely. Reasons besides "you're a retard if you didn't like this game" are where the valuable discourse comes from, and there have been several in this thread.

A cannon is fine too.   :grin:

This, and...




This.

Dwarf Fortress's UI is much worse than Civ IVs.

DF's UI certainly isn't pretty, but it has the advantage of all being more or less in one place, so you can see the full list of options available to you pretty easily, even if you have to mess with them to figure out what they do.  It invites exploration.  I think what gave me a poor experience with Civ was that I had no motivation to go looking for any of that depth I'd heard about, and wasn't even sure where I'd start looking.  Aside from combat (which was still clumsy as fuck) nothing I experimented with gave me any better results than just auto-accepting whatever the prompts told me to do.  Shit, I ended the game with a higher score than every other civ on the board put together, and most of what I did in the game for three hours could have been done by a drinky bird.  With most games you'll generally be given some sort of goal that encourages you to go exploring, or you'll get some sort of feedback when you try new things, or both.  Civ was pretty much a brick wall.

Hell, it wouldn't even give me errors when I tried to do stuff that for whatever reason I couldn't do.  Just as an example, I ended up with a bunch of stealth bombers toward the end because the prompts kept suggesting that I might like some, so when it came time to try nuking another country, I figured I could use the "recon" command the bomber has to go scout out my targets.  So I find one of my bombers (locating and selecting my own units always seemed to be an inordinately painful process, btw) click that command, and then click the dark region of the globe I think my enemy's in.  Nothing seems to happen.  Did it just get queued up and need a few turns to complete?  I skip a few turns to see.  Bomber is still sitting there.  I tell it again to go over there.  Nothing.  What the fuck?  After a few minutes of poking I figured out that my planes just can't fly that far.  Now, in any other game, I'd have gotten an error telling you "ye cannot recon ye continent," and maybe if the game was really helpful "try using X instead".  But the folks who made Civ 4 seem to assume that the only people playing their game are long-time Civ fans who will already know the uses and limitations of each unit.  

Which is fine.  My position is simply that there should be a warning on the box or something if that's the case.

I love Civ 4, and think it's even better than Civ 2 (which was great).   You can die now.  :why_so_serious:

Just to stir further controversy, I think the best version of Civ is Civilization Revolution. 

Or, when you clicked the bomber you could have seen the brightly lit circle around it that shows you the range.  Inside circle good, outside circle bad.  Planes are not boats, they need to be stationed at an airfield (or carrier) and have to return to it at the end of their turn.

They are incredibly powerful as it is and having them be able to make 'multi-turn moves' would not only be unrealistic but game breaking.

The circle was what eventually clued me in, but I didn't see it the first time because I'd scrolled over to the other side of the map before hitting the command (meaning no part of the circle was even on my screen).  And I didn't know to look for a circle because none of the other units I'd used had had any sort of range limitation like that.  And, like I said, it couldn't be bothered to give me an error message after I'd clicked (and the circle goes away then IIRC), so I didn't even know anything was wrong right away.

I actually tried to put the bomber on a carrier to ship it over to where it could be useful, but apparently bombers don't like to go on carriers?  Either that or the command to "re-base" or whatever isn't the right way to put a plane on a carrier, even though it seemed like the obvious choice.  I don't know, because it didn't give me any sort of feedback when I tried it.  I think that was about the point where I said "sadf" and tried to get the game over with ASAP so I could uninstall it.

Civ combat always left me confused as to what made the difference between winning and losing beyond a screw-up probability generator. At times you could pull the crank and just get ridiculous results like tanks losing to musket dudes. Very odd shit.

And very annoying shit, since even if you reload and attack all over again the same tank will lose to the same musket dude. I recall something about a random seed generated each time you start the game, or some such, but no idea how it works.

This has been a problem since the very first Civ. Every sequel they say they've tweaked things so it isn't so bad but it still happens regularly (musketmen killing my tanks happened in my last game too).

Yep, I still remember playing Civ 2 with super carrier battle group in late game. 3x3 squares of Aegis Crusier, Battleships with one carrier in the middle of it carrying a dozen of Fighters, Bombers, 2 dozen scuds and 3 nukes. Basically with air force you can somewhat forsake using land arty and pummel defenses multiple times per turn.

I don't understand the Dwarven Fortress comment, first of all you need to read the code of the Matrix to even play the game...

That said, I remember having this same stupid argument about fighting games awhile back.  Just playing Civ doesn't teach you anything, in fact like Sam said it encourages you to NOT try anything you come up with on your own.  Every time a novice player muddles with things he ends up causing disease, or famine, or not having the military unit he needs or something else bad.  So you're left with two choices, either read a whole bunch of shit to figure out where this bad stuff comes from or play the game while avoiding the depth that aficionados will tell you is the best part.

I think you can see the combat probabilities if you select a unit and hold down "alt" while mousing over the opposing unit you plan on attacking.  That goes a long way toward making you feel better about the combat.  Even if you lose a 99% chance of victory from time to time, you still feel like it wasn't just some arbitrary buttfucking by Sid Meier.

The alt combat odds window is also good for learning how the game handles combat, why walls are good, etc. Then when you figure out bombards destroy defenses, etc, it becomes more manageable. If you're trying to attack a walled city on a hill full of fortified veteran units and your attackers don't have a bevy of upgrades, yeah a musketman is going to wipe out the tanks. Think of it more as the tanks never even making it up the hill, the crew getting out to push and getting shot by musketmen :)

Yeah that's a good point.  I've only ever seen one weirdly impossible combat encounter in my time with Civ4.  I get the feeling most of the people who complain about things like "tanks losing to muskets" don't really understand things like terrain defense bonuses, unit upgrades, etc.  The combat system is really incredibly simplistic.  Units simply have a base numerical strength score, which is then modified by terrain, natural unit proclivities, and combat promotions.  These things are displayed in the left hand corner of the interface.  One can add these up himself, or use the alt button for a calculation to the nth percentile.

It's all about stacking defense modifiers.  Defenders in Civ4 get way, way too many of these, while offense requires a highly-ranked unit or a shitload of bombardment to remove/ reduce the defense bonuses.  Attacking a unit in a city built on hills with a %400 fort bonus and a well-promoted defender means stupid shit like musketmen (or in one case a Phalanx) taking out my Modern Armor.  :uhrr:  I finally read a thread on CivFanatics that went into detail about it and understood a bit.


Yeah, every game has a seed for the randomizer. In Civ, you can set this to reset on loading a saved game or only at the start of the program. If you've got it set for the start of the program, every probability roll will come up the same every time you reload a game... or something like that.

Actually just select a unit, press g and hover your mouse over the enemy you want to attack. You'll see what's the base % chance and the modifiers for both attacker and defender without the unit even leaving town or making a move.

I'm still having a blast when revisiting the Fall from Heaven mod, it has a good mix of combat and empire building which depending on the map generator can be very epic. There's a certain satisfaction when your empire rose from the desert and slowly train a band of mages to convert the desert into plains and eventually flourishing grasslands while the AI flounders elsewhere in the world. I'm still having goosebumps when viewing the corrupted plains of Ashen Veil empires spreading and blazing the terrains.

I've got to get back to my game as the elf raiders, we're in the late game and I've been culturally pushing across an enemies' island (playing the islands map, one large per civ plus lots of small). He started seeding the arctic regions in case I borg his entire homeland just as I started pushing into the arctic for resources grab. Except he gets these cheesy little crap towns and I develop big elf cities in the lush grassland forests I create.

If there is one true genuine complaint of mine about Civ overall is the AI is just so poor at navy, it felt like cheating when you know when you start off in a island by yourself. There's no way they can invade you at all.

Yeah, Civ Iv doesn't really improve that at all.  I had one game where there was a moderately large continent that started with two AI players and then one killed the other off and had it all to him self.

That AI pretty much led the game in income and research for maybe 3/4ths of the game but was never a threat to anyone and eventually I bombarded his cities down and landed a bunch of stuff and killed him off in like 10 turns.

There's a lot to complain about :) Navy is definitely one of them, but in FFH2 you definitely have to watch out for the Lanun, especially if they've rushed OO. In my current game they had rushed naval techs and were messing with everyone pretty badly. Only a lot of political wrangling in the Overcouncil and the fact that they lagged badly technologically (meaning they could be bought off with free techs) saved a few civs (mine included) from getting swamped. Actually, I bought her off about two turns before her fleet landed on my mainland, she had been refusing my inquiries and it was before I had the Nexus. It was close to game over for me, or at least being set back hundreds of years, I was focused a continent away.

Just right-click (or left-click, depending on what option you use to move units) and hold, instead of mucking around with the keyboard shortcuts =P

I'm not sure about that, I'm usually play on Prince difficulty and things has been quite swell for me even when I only have one 'shipyard' town since the AI seems to struggle with establishing colonies in a different continent while trying to improve desert tiles around their home base, I usually employ privateers to clean things up without declaring war over sea skirmishes. The only dominant AI seem to have access to a huge landmass, despite having 3 neighbors, they still maintain the 2nd biggest empire after mine. But the funniest part is when the Lanun sent over 2 dozen units against my hero Teutorix. He must've killed at least 1.5 dozen of swordsmen before finally killing Guybrush Threepwood on the final attack. Two cities later, including the capital city the Lanuns, they capitulated and became my vassal state.  :awesome_for_real:

Yeah I already said that, except with the alt button.  Didn't know you could use g instead of alt though.

So I checked out the Civ 4 demo. 100 turns tells me that it seems a bit like Civ 2 and SMAC, so I can likely get up to speed and not hate it. My main question is: do I need all of the expansions, or can I totally cheap out and just get the base game and then use the FFH2 mod?

If you want to play FFH2 you need the Beyond the Sword expansion.

I think I saw the complete Civ pack with both expansions for like 30 bones in Best Buy the other day

Complete Civ pack on steam for $40 (which includes all the expansions, and the Colonization remake).

Yeah, at least get BtS for FFH2 compatibility. It really does improve the base game, too. Also, FFH2 >>>> Civ4 :) I've played a single Civ4 game since I found out about FFH2, and that was when I bought BtS.

Careful there, duse is liable to get upset if you decide vanilla Civ 4 isn't the best thing ever made after only one game.  If you don't invest at least a month in it you're just ignorant.

 :why_so_serious:

Or if you explain in your 'review' that you couldn't "figure out what cities do."  Then you're just stupid.

FWIW I don't think FFH is actually all that outstanding. It is clear the guy put a lot of work into it, but I actually think the base game is more fun personally.

Could you link me to the review you pulled that quote from?  I'd like to read it.

Add me to the list of people who didn't get the appeal of FFH. I tried a Custom Game and just got owned really hard by barbarians and kind of lost interest.

Part of the problem for me is it just feels like some random dude's D&D campaign world. Which of course it is. The story stuff in the scenarios is at times painful.

I love FFH, and everything about it.  But it does fall more into the trap that Samwise complained about (unlike the vanilla civ game, which I think is very mass market, and Sam is crazy).  It is a game of insane depth, and it takes a long god damn time to figure out everything.  Your first few games will always end quickly and badly, usually just from Barbarians alone.  Once you get the hang of it though, theres so much replay value as every race really does play different.

Yeah, I respect FFH2.  But, as has been said, the barrier of entry is much higher simply because all of the names of the technologies are unfettered from reality.  In Civ, you have some idea of what the "horseback riding" tech will garner you, even if you don't understand the exact mechanics of it.  With that said, I never really took the time to delve into it.  Mainly because when and if I play Civ (which is rare) I play online.  The computer AI is too stupid to provide any threat without 'cheating' on harder difficulties.  Humans are much more cut throat than a computer could ever be.

My first attempt at FFH2 the other day went fairly well, although I always feel like I'm cheating when I win a game of Civ IV by getting three cities with Legendary Culture.  It seems like there's some balance issues here and there from what little I've messed with it.  I had one hero or adventurer unit or whatever they're called who single handedly managed to defend himself against what felt like 2-3 dozen enemy units right near the end of the game.  I think he had something like 6-7 first strikes and god knows what else.

One mans balance issue is another mans reason to play the game.  Some of my fondest memories of MoM were of having an uber hero run through a stack of the opponents armies without breaking a sweat.  It's the end result of a well played mid-game in my opinion.

Methinks we need to get someone to your address to give you an injection - Civ 4 is awesome-o :)

 :hello_thar:

I thought we used to have a little mole smiley?

Thanks for posting! See you in 2013 in a 2009 thread!  :thumbs_up:

Date Registered:     May 17, 2007, 11:55:41 am

So, he'll come back around next year to get post #4?

Going to his website explains his posting patterns.