10/25/05 - Civilization IV (PC)

[stray]

Like I said on the other site, I can't get bored of games like this --- It's more about what I want to do, and less about what someone else wants me to do.

[dusematic]

Another thing I just realized is that when I toggle the productivity indicator that pops up how productive each tile is, I only see food.  I only see food and it's always 2 food.   Just 2 little bread slices on every fucking tile.  I didn't notice before because I didn't really mess around with the toggles and was still familiarizing myself with the new features/interface. 

It's kind of lame though, and I don't understand why it would do that.  It would make deciding where to build cities so much easier.

[Sairon]

Sairon, ya, it gets boring.

But that's not a problem. IMO you shouldn't be playing game after game after game of this.  Should be something you launch up, play through a civilization, then leave alone for a while.

Yea I guess you're right.

Anyway, I think this gameplay suffers a bit from the "lazy syndrome". It takes a lot of time to achive anything, and turns take longer and longer to complete. I don't have the patience for it anymore. A funy thing I did a couple of months ago was starting to play some old amiga games, and I found some of the REALLY good old gems to be extremly lacking. I played some Syndicate for example, and as you might remember quick save didn't exist back then. Redoing a whole mission because you died gets pretty damn irritating. Same goes for Lemmings, which I couldn't stand for more than 10 minutes. Back in the days I could play them for days without geting bored.

[Merusk]

Another thing I just realized is that when I toggle the productivity indicator that pops up how productive each tile is, I only see food.  I only see food and it's always 2 food.   Just 2 little bread slices on every fucking tile.  I didn't notice before because I didn't really mess around with the toggles and was still familiarizing myself with the new features/interface. 

It's kind of lame though, and I don't understand why it would do that.  It would make deciding where to build cities so much easier.

Freaky, it works just fine for me.  New and unusual bugs for the joy.

I'm getting a lot more frequent crashes as I've entered the modern age and have a lot more units and landmass to pan around.  I read the Civ Apolypton and Civ Fanatics sites and the crashes are a universal problem.  I've get "virtual Memory is Low" warnings after about 3 hours of play, which then gives the game a hard-lock forcing a reboot.  Not sure if that's a memory leak or just a symptom of how much it's keeping track of... I suspect a leak though since the reboot fixes things for another 3 hours or so.  (Barring any crashes due to other bugs...)

Resources are irritating as the new ones seem to show up everywhere but my country.  I can tell that if I weren't the superpower I'd have a hard time of things building modern units without inciting a war to take control of certain cities for their resources. Then again, it's a lot easier to stay friendly with folks and know why it's that way and in any of the previous Civs games.

As to boredom: These are the games I love.  MoM, MOO, Civs.. I can't get bored of any of them and still play all of them fairly regularly when I'm just worn out of an MMO or there's nothing new I want to play.  I'm loving the Huge Epic Terran game I've got 23 hours into and still going.  The lenght of the turns can get tedious, but then anything can if you've been sitting there doing it for 5 hours straight.

Hmm Lemmings. I  need to find my diskette of that and load it up again sometime.  Sounds like a good lunchtime diversion.

[Sairon]

As to boredom: These are the games I love.  MoM, MOO, Civs.. I can't get bored of any of them and still play all of them fairly regularly when I'm just worn out of an MMO or there's nothing new I want to play.  I'm loving the Huge Epic Terran game I've got 23 hours into and still going.  The lenght of the turns can get tedious, but then anything can if you've been sitting there doing it for 5 hours straight.

Heros of Might and Magic would be the game for me, in fact I'm thinking of installing HOMM 3 ( which is my favorite togheter with HOMM 2 ) right now. Funy how it's suprisingly close to civ gameplay wise but still manages to be fun for long sessions for me.

[Sky]

I had been playing HoMaM3 Complete just before Civ4 came out, I love that game.

I finally got the time to spend with the game, got to maybe 1500AD on huge terra, which still seems a bit small to me. And the resolution thing is really bothering me, the widescreen forum people seem not to care since it supports 16:10, though not the quite standard res of 1280x720 (16:9).

But setting those gripes aside, it's a great improvement in a whole lotta ways. I had a great time playing through as FDR, but expansion was really limited by the amount of civs in the game. I actually restarted because there was no room to build a big civ the first several maps I tried, until I limited it to 4 or 5 civs with a Custom game. The map is too small. Well, I was going to set that gripe aside. Oh well. Kinda tough when it completely changes the way I played the game, in a bad way, especially when compared to how great the game itself plays.

And having the bottom of my screen cut off. Yeah, it's tough getting past those gripes. I want to give it a 9/10, only dinging it for a few technical and QA issues, but as it stands right now, I can't. With bigger maps and 1280x720, I give it a 9. It might happen, one hopes, given the mod-friendliness they promise.

I've taken to naming my units rpg-style. Beowulf and Conan, my axemen. Ol' Creaky the catapult. That's kinda cool, along with the upgrades. Lots of nice improvements, I'm really enjoying the game. Oh yeah - count me in the 'I don't get tired of these games' camp. Grinding mmogs, yes, but long strategy games, hell no.

[WayAbvPar]

Finally got my PC up and running and got Civ 4 installed. I was busy most of the weekend, so  I didn't end up playing it at all until 9 PM Sunday night. Bad idea. I got to bed around 2:30, up for work at 8. My ass is dragging!

I really like it so far. I played through the tutorial to get a feel for the new interface, but I still have lots to learn. I also re-learned the age old Civ 101 lesson- don't take your neighbor's good will without a giant grain of salt. They are all just waiting for the right time to rat-fuck you. Isabella went from Pleased to taking over one of my cities in about 4 turns. Bitch.

I am going to lose A LOT of time with this one. These are my very favorite types of games. I am staring at the strat guide on my desk here at work...I will be thumbing through that the rest of the day. I may need a 12 step program before this is through.

[Morfiend]

I have been playing a lot of this game. This being my first Civ game, I have a few gripes that I dont know if are series related or just Cvi4. I always feel like I run out of time before Im ready for the game to end. I dont understand how a lot of the stuff works. Usually I just build the recomended units (for the most part) unless I know for sure what I want to build. So far in 4 pretty long games I have not had a single civ try and attack me, and just by making a lot of settelers and doing the recomended options, I always win on points. Yeah, this is on easy level, I just wish I understood what I was actually doing a bit better. Also, by the time I have Stealth Bombers and Fighter Jets, all the other civs are just starting to get Gunpowder.

Another thing I found, is that some times my units just disapear. Gone. I dont know if there is some thing I am unaware of, or it is a bug. But some times while a unit is parked in or on a city, Ill come back to it a few turns later, and all the units on that tile are gone except for one.

I found a way to bypass the fact that the games always seem to end to soon by playing the "Ice Age" map. This starts you at 180,000bc instead of 3,000bc.

[Jobu]

And the resolution thing is really bothering me, the widescreen forum people seem not to care since it supports 16:10, though not the quite standard res of 1280x720 (16:9).

And having the bottom of my screen cut off. Yeah, it's tough getting past those gripes. I want to give it a 9/10, only dinging it for a few technical and QA issues, but as it stands right now, I can't. With bigger maps and 1280x720, I give it a 9. It might happen, one hopes, given the mod-friendliness they promise.

All these widescreen gripes... it's like listening to a Ferrari owner whine about bad gas mileage. Suck it up.

P.S. I  Sid Meier. Thanks buddy.

[Toast]

I found a way to spice the game up. I realized that I was always playing as a pacifist. I would have a small-medium size empire with almost no military.

So, my game last night I played as Japan to play a militaristic strategy. I had a great time, especially when Mao attacked me out of the blue.

I didn't have much of an army at the time, so Mao may not have realized that I had the tech saved up to build marines and bombers to go against his grenadiers and riflemen.

I dominated that game (my score was around double the next civ). Unfortunately, that rat bastage Napoleon completed the space program one turn ahead of me with 9 turns to go in the game.

Expanionist strategies don't seem to work really well in this game. The maps are possibly smaller, and it's slower to build settlers.

[tazelbain]

Played a couple games over the weekend.  They seem to have really balanced the military vs civics.  Even when I vastly out gun my opponents, bum rushing a near by enemy city seems was hardly worth it.  The city will be severely degraded and won't be productive for a dozen turns plus all the productivity I lost to attack in the first place.

[dusematic]

I have been playing a lot of this game. This being my first Civ game, I have a few gripes that I dont know if are series related or just Cvi4. I always feel like I run out of time before Im ready for the game to end. I dont understand how a lot of the stuff works. Usually I just build the recomended units (for the most part) unless I know for sure what I want to build. So far in 4 pretty long games I have not had a single civ try and attack me, and just by making a lot of settelers and doing the recomended options, I always win on points. Yeah, this is on easy level, I just wish I understood what I was actually doing a bit better. Also, by the time I have Stealth Bombers and Fighter Jets, all the other civs are just starting to get Gunpowder.

Another thing I found, is that some times my units just disapear. Gone. I dont know if there is some thing I am unaware of, or it is a bug. But some times while a unit is parked in or on a city, Ill come back to it a few turns later, and all the units on that tile are gone except for one.

I found a way to bypass the fact that the games always seem to end to soon by playing the "Ice Age" map. This starts you at 180,000bc instead of 3,000bc.

Yeah dude.  You'll find when you stop playing on easy level that you will be attacked, and that you will die.  There won't be vast technological disparities either, unless it's you behind the curve.  So, there's that to look forward to.  Also, the manual is decent, and I hear the strategy guide is quite good, though I didn't buy it, because I haven't stooped that low in many moons.

[dusematic]

My favorite thing about this game is the diplomacy.  You can actually cultivate friends, and those friends will go to bat with you.  It means something.  In a similar vein, you can't be friends with the enemies of your friends, of which religion will play a big role, so it's nigh on impossible to be friends with everyone.

[MrHat]

Bah, my highest score was shit today.

[Nazrat]

I haven't purchased Civ 4 yet.  This thread is making money burn a hole in my pocket with pay day tomorrow.

Does anyone else turn off that damn space ship in every game?  I always play for domination or time but I hate that space ship. 

[MrHat]

Go into the config file in the main folder of yer civ directory to turn on windowed mode.

Might solve yer problem with widescreen.

[MrHat]

I found a way to bypass the fact that the games always seem to end to soon by playing the "Ice Age" map. This starts you at 180,000bc instead of 3,000bc.

Can't get this to work..

[Sky]

Go into the config file in the main folder of yer civ directory to turn on windowed mode.

Might solve yer problem with widescreen.

The widescreenforum folks said there is an ini in the My Documents Civ4 folder. Going to hit that up last night but I was Mario last night.

Not gaming, but ripping out plumbing 

[Toast]

I cranked up the difficulty a bit to "Noble", and some bad things happened to me. In consecutive turns, barbarians conquered and razed two new cities I had just built. Pure evil.

[tazelbain]

Just bumping up the AI up 1 level from default, the AI went Linda Blair.  2 AIs decided that they where going raze me even though they basicly ruined there own empires to do so. Weak.

[dusematic]

I started on Noble and thought it was pretty easy.  Go for an early religion and spread it to your neighbors.  If you get into a war, use cats to bombard down the city defenses, and then send them in to cause collateral damage on the unit stack inside the city.  Sign open borded agreements to spread your religion and increase your trade route income.  Try to earn enough money to keep your research at 100%.  If you do those things Noble is pretty easy.

[El Gallo]

This guy seems to know what he is talking about on the world size issue http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=f370a204d0326a76261ee93958b533d9&threadid=141673

I've finally had the chance to start playing in earnest.  I think I am in love.  I am not so hot on the new map yet, it doesn't want to pan out far enough for my taste, but I guess I will get used to it.

[Sky]

I heard a lot of statistical claptrap, and this is what I got from it:

So as you can see, the actual sizes -are- smaller, but the per-civ amount of land area is not. In most cases, it's larger. You can add or subtract civs to your desire, though. (In Civ3, you could subtract, but not add beyond the cap without modding).

Bolding mine. Per-civ land amount can suck my ass. The huge map is smaller.

[Pococurante]

And... it's not a mirror.

[El Gallo]

Yeah, it looks like this is the real info:
Civ3 Huge - 12800 total
Civ4 Huge - 10240 total
Civ4Terra - 14592 total

So, Terras can be bigger than Civ3, but in those maps you only have access to half the map until you can build ocean-going vessels, so it plays a lot different than a regular map.  Hopefully, modders will get on the ball for those of us who want to really catass!

[WayAbvPar]

Just bumping up the AI up 1 level from default, the AI went Linda Blair.  2 AIs decided that they where going raze me even though they basicly ruined there own empires to do so. Weak.

Yeah I was playing on the level below Noble (Warlord?) last night. Things were going swimmingly- I had the highest culture rating in the game, but was kind of limited on expansion areas due to the large # of civilizations stuffed into the same area. Then the AI decided it had had enough of me, and within 5 turns, 3 of my 4 neighbors declared war on me. They took 3 of my cities without batting an eye, and I went to bed in disgust. I need some more tinkering time to get used to the tech tree and other things. I don't have a feel for a proper expansionist/cultural strategy yet, so I am getting routinely pwn3d by the AI.

Is it just me, or do you end up meeting the rest of the leaders MUCH, MUCH earlier than in previous versions? I have a nearly full diplomatic area by the time I can even build boats. In older versions it seems like I would meet 3 or 4 of them, but not discover the rest until I had a monster navy.

[tazelbain]

It just seemed like the AIs were just attacking me to grief me, not doing whats in their best interest.

I wish you could ask others to close their borders, it'd really slowed the assault if my enemies couldn't walk through the friendly nations to get to me.

I have been experimenting with bribing others with tech to get them to declare war on my attackers(thus closing borders), but it seems risky.

Is culture take overs of others civs cities a viable strategy? or is it a nice perk the every once in a while a small city will join you?

[Yoru]

Is culture take overs of others civs cities a viable strategy? or is it a nice perk the every once in a while a small city will join you?

I've seen it happen once; I was expanding over onto a second island which happened to be the home continent of another civ. Since I was placing cities to strategically capture resources, I ended up with two clusters of colonies, which the AI decided to slap a city between. Turns out the two cities he decided to place between were in ideal growth/production sites, so they rapidly rose in culture while the AI's city got smushed between the encroaching borders. The city seemed to flip only after about 75% of the land immediately surrounding it fell to my side.

I imagine it would be possible if you strategically encircled another civ (or portions thereof) in your cities and blasted out culture and Great Artists, but squeezing your borders together also drops diplomatic relations into the toilet, so you might just get a war out of it instead.

Indeed, in the above example, the civ that lost the city declared war only a few turns later.

Fortunately, my words are backed by nuclear weapons.  :-D

[Shockeye]

It seems Civ 4 collector's edition is only $37 at Fry's. Must resist.

[WayAbvPar]

I paid $71 for the preorder special edition and the strat guide, so that ain't a bad price. Make sure and take pictures of the kids before you start playing so you can remember what they look like.

[Shockeye]

I paid $71 for the preorder special edition and the strat guide, so that ain't a bad price. Make sure and take pictures of the kids before you start playing so you can remember what they look like.

I need to remember what happened when Alpha Centauri came out and all thoughts of buying this should go out the window. Should.

[Merusk]

It's getting silly. I love the game but it's crashing every-other turn now.  I'm having to save every turn and reboot if I crash, so the time to play is achieving levels even MMOG catassing hasn't seen from me. (At least I can walk away for a few mins and not worry about anything happening, though.)

Culture war is greatly reduced compared to Civ3.  I wouldn't try to take-over cities, and just enjoy when it happens.   Even when it does happen, that city's borders are going to be tiny until you start pumping culture out of it.  A city looks like it can flip as soon as the population hits about 51% of your race, but all the ones I've recieved have been at about 70% before they revolted. (Nice thing, though, was that the garrison units auto-upgraded to my best.)

You Can NOT ignore your military in this game.  I traditionaly just dumped 1-2 defenders in a city to prevent an easy takeover and counted on high production/ rails to save me if things took a bad turn.  I'd see building military units as a waste of precious time/ shields that could be going towards a city improvement.  That doesn't work so well in Civs 4 unless you are so far ahead of everyone technologicaly that you could steamroll them anyway.

 Big tips I've discovered, you NEED a combined arms force, not just one or two of the 'best' units, because of the way combat and unit structure has changed.  Also, you can NOT just send a settler out and then produce a defender.  They need to go with their defense garrison when they settle.  This used to just be a good idea, but in Civ4 it seems to have become a requirement if you don't want your city crushed by barbarians or opportunistic civs.

Also it seems like the AI will NEVER trade you oil.  I offered almost everything I had and my closest ally refused.  War or a new city looks to be the only option if you're screwed out of getting any oil on your land.

[WayAbvPar]

You Can NOT ignore your military in this game.  I traditionaly just dumped 1-2 defenders in a city to prevent an easy takeover and counted on high production/ rails to save me if things took a bad turn.  I'd see building military units as a waste of precious time/ shields that could be going towards a city improvement.  That doesn't work so well in Civs 4 unless you are so far ahead of everyone technologicaly that you could steamroll them anyway.

I think this is spot on. I have been using the traditional approach and getting my ass handed to me. Time to crank up the war machine.

[Toast]

I think militarism is also encouraged by the fixes to the revolt system. I remember in Civ3 that creating military units and waging war would create a bunch of annoying revolts. The new system lets you wage war without all the annoying diversions.

Also, I'm coming to realize that playing harder difficulty is actually more fun. It forces more strategic thinking with less laziness. It's one thing to produce settlers and expand. It's another thing to have to worry about securing the colonies against barbarian attack!

[Morfiend]

I found a way to bypass the fact that the games always seem to end to soon by playing the "Ice Age" map. This starts you at 180,000bc instead of 3,000bc.

Can't get this to work..

I was wrong its not the Ice Age map, its one of the senarios, called like 30,000bc, or some thing like that.