Civilization IV

[The_Doctor]

I have it.

And it is incredibly slow. I only have 256MB of RAM. I need a hell of a lot more to run it properly. Luckly RAM is cheap now. I have turned all the options to low, which helped a lot.

I have not played it much, yet. Mainly becuase it is so slow.

I tried the medieval scenario. It took over half an hour to load, and then it was too slow to do anything. It is very well made. The map is of the earth with lots of civs and preplaced cities and religions. It looks like a lot of fun.

How access the editor outside of the game?

I really like the music on the menu screen.

[screwtype]

I've got a gigabyte. It runs fine on my machine. Except that the music doesn't work properly.

[The_Doctor]

That is twice the recommanded amount, so it would be fast.

[The_Doctor]

There might be memory leak. But, as you say, the patch will fix things. It comes out next week.

[Papewaio]

I'd also like to know why after all this time there aren't separate build queues for units and buildings - especially given the long build times for buildings in this game. And why does it have to take so long to build military units anyhow? There's already an effective limit on the amount of military units you can build because of the gold it takes to support them.

I thought everything had a separate building queue. You could stop building something switch to something else, and once finished come back and begin where you left off... no transfer of production from one queue to another, and the only time shields turn to gold was for a wonder that was piped by someone else building it... mind you all I can do in Aus is READ about it.

[screwtype]

I thought everything had a separate building queue. You could stop building something switch to something else, and once finished come back and begin where you left off... no transfer of production from one queue to another, and the only time shields turn to gold was for a wonder that was piped by someone else building it... mind you all I can do in Aus is READ about it.

I guess it depends whereabouts in Oz you live, because I live in Melbourne and it arrived at the local EB store on Thursday. It took them ages to get BI though - that only just got here last week.

And what you're describing is not really a separate building queue. Yes, the game does appear to have some sort of "stop working on this and come back to it later" feature. But it isn't a separate pipeline, you can still only build one thing at a time. I'd prefer an RTW type system, where you have a separate queue for each.

But in any case, I really think on reflecton that the better solution is not a separate build queue, but just the ability to churn out military units in a turn or two, like RTW. The glacial pace with which you're forced to create an army makes the military option almost unviable.

[Efrem]

I saw Civ 4 at myers in the city yesterday Pape.

[screwtype]

I really don't like the interface, either. It's alot less intuitive than Civ 3's was. Especially with the lack of good right-click menus.

I believe you can reactivate those menus. It's in the preferences somewhere.

But yeah the interface is less intuitive. The new iconified Civopedia is a step backwards.

[frogbeastegg]

Civ 4 thumped through my letterbox this morning just as I was leaving for work. It nearly crushed my foot.

The manual is the fattest I have seen since Age of Wonders 2, hurrah! And the poster is good too. The disc looks all shiny and disc-like. The box is all box-ish. Hmm, I guess I should install and play it. That generally helps

[doc_bean]

For some reason I got an incredible craving for civ yesterday, so I went out and bought it, even though I've only had civ3 for a year or so and haven't really played it that much...

A couple of quick points about the game

The Tutorial: I started by playing this, digital Sid is scary ! It's pretty buggy too, not a good start.

The interface: I preferred the old Civ3 one, but it isn't that bad

The graphics: prettiest civ game, but that's not saying much, they do the job.

A first quick game: I picked the Mali and played it them on the easiest setting. Don't use the easiest setting ! It provides no challenge what so ever, I got a pretty good idea about the changes though, I quit around 1400AD and went to bed.

The manual: I read most of it this morning, it sure is big ! A couple of translation mishaps and misspellings though. Pretty annoying

A second quick game: I picked the good old US and played on warlord (third difficulty level, just under the fair 'Noble'). I had a comfortable lead on my neighbours throughout the game, I never got involved in a single war. I lost when caesar finished his space ship 2 turns before me (hey I was exploring the game and didn't really concentrate on winning until the end). It seemed a lot easier then Civ3 on a comparable level though, so what if i didn't win, i didn't feel like I got a real challenge either.
A quick game can be finished in an afternoon -, I rather like this. I assume epic is needed if you want to be a serious warmonger though.

[screwtype]

I'm having second thoughts about the game right now. It's probably better than I thought. It just takes you a while to get to grips with the new interface and the new techs and so on.

In fact at this stage, I'm inclined to go out on a limb and say I think it's probably considerably better than Civ3. There seem to be a lot more options and strategies you can employ, like the new Civics for example.

It's a game that really rewards a bit of careful study. A read of the manual, especially the tech tree, doesn't go astray.

[The_Doctor]

I'm having second thoughts about the game right now. It's probably better than I thought. It just takes you a while to get to grips with the new interface and the new techs and so on.

I concare, your excellence.

[econ21]

I've been having some fun playing it hot seat with my son today. The "feel" of it (graphics, I guess) reminds me a lot of Civ3 - it's not the kind of leap that you see from MTW=>RTW (or Civ2=>Civ3). The gameplay also seems very like both games - I can't say I've spotted a single "major" innovation (equivalent to the MTW=>RTW strategy map difference, for example). I guess if you have got a good thing - it feels like Civ2 but with modern production values that my son can accept. I am especially to know there's no extreme corruption (one shield producing cities once you get past 20 or so) like Civ3 as that was very clunky and put me off that iteration a lot.

Small things: I like the diplomacy so far - at least the feedback about why civs like or don't like you. I like the retention of culture, one interesting new feature from Civ2.

The Wonders and some of the old favorite techs I aimed for in Civ2 seem a little watered down - I raced for the Great Library, but it seemed a bit anti-climatic. Ditto monarchy. But I rather this early stage of learning a game and not knowing exactly what I should be prioritising - in Civ2, it got to be like walking a tightrope, trying to nab the key wonders and win on Deity etc. It's nice to be able to blunder around and learn from your mistakes.

The manual is a real old style game manual, full of content. I haven't read thoroughly it yet, but first glance it seems less well laid out than some earlier ones I recall. For example, there's no quick start for Civ vets or even a list of the major changes. The indexing/contents are not ideal, either. I could not find out about "upgrading" units - the in-game content seems to imply you can change a pikeman into a riflemen or something, but I couldn't find it in the units sections of either the basic or advanced parts of the manual.

No real problems with the interface or presentation, except some batt+les - played MP hotseat - aren't shown. As player 1, I just hear my scout has been eaten by wolves or the barbarians attacked my city - I don't see it, which is a pity.

I also haven't heard Leonard Nimoy - I thought he did some voicework for techs? The only speech I've encountered has been Sid in the tutorial.

[Ser Clegane]

I also haven't heard Leonard Nimoy - I thought he did some voicework for techs? The only speech I've encountered has been Sid in the tutorial.

Each time you discover a new tech, Leonard cites a historical quote that fits the discovery.
I am not sure if there is an option to disable it, but by default it seems to be turned on

[screwtype]

I've been having some fun playing it hot seat with my son today. The "feel" of it (graphics, I guess) reminds me a lot of Civ3 - it's not the kind of leap that you see from MTW=>RTW (or Civ2=>Civ3).

I disagree with that. I think the graphics in Civ4 are WAY better than Civ3 and a major step forward. The game's a pleasure to look at now, you couldn't say that about Civ3. Perhaps you just haven't played Civ3 for a while. You might be remembering its graphics as better than they were.

The gameplay also seems very like both games - I can't say I've spotted a single "major" innovation (equivalent to the MTW=>RTW strategy map difference, for example).

I actually think the gameplay changes between Civ3 and 4 are greater than those between MTW and RTW. The campaign map in RTW doesn't add much to the overall gameplay in my view. In fact in some ways it detracts from gameplay.

There are at least two major innovations in Civ4 that come to mind. First is the abolition of corruption. I really hated that feature and so did a lot of gamers. If you read the designers' notes in the manual, corruption was originally introduced to stop the tactic of "ICS" - infinite city spamming, which was an easy way to win the game.

What they've replaced it with instead is a maintenance cost and distance penalty for new cities which I think works very well. In my current campaign for example, I found a large area of undeveloped territory and thought I was made, I started spamming cities in it as fast as possible and then suddenly noticed that my finances were deep in the red! I had to wind my 100% research rate right back to 10% and even now much later in the game I've still only managed to get it back to 50%.

The new system creates an excellent tension between city spamming and financial health, you now have to decide which is more important, or try for a balance. You can still expand your empire of course, but now it depends upon building up your wealth through trade, development, expanding the population in your existing cities and research of appropriate techs. It changes the whole dynamic of the game.

The second major innovation is the introduction of Civics instead of Governments, which gives you a much larger and more flexible set of government conditions you can set or reset. Combine it with the new more flexible research chart, where you no longer have multiple prerequisites for researching certain techs, and you have a far wider range of strategies to choose from in developing your empire.

Apart from these changes there is also the introduction of Great People, which some gamers swear by (I've yet to figure out a way to really exploit them), the introduction of city health as well as happiness, the fact that a single disgruntled citizen no longer brings your entire city to a halt, unit promotions, spread of religion, greater movement for workers, autoexplore for units - yada yada yada. These are early days yet, but I'm finding it a much more compelling package than Civ3.

I am especially to know there's no extreme corruption (one shield producing cities once you get past 20 or so) like Civ3 as that was very clunky and put me off that iteration a lot.

Ditto.

Small things: I like the diplomacy so far - at least the feedback about why civs like or don't like you.

Yeah, that's another good little feature. In terms of pure colour, I find the leader animations quite amusing as well!

I like the retention of culture, one interesting new feature from Civ2.

Not sure what you're referring to here. I never played Civ2.

The Wonders and some of the old favorite techs I aimed for in Civ2 seem a little watered down - I raced for the Great Library, but it seemed a bit anti-climatic. Ditto monarchy. But I rather this early stage of learning a game and not knowing exactly what I should be prioritising - in Civ2, it got to be like walking a tightrope, trying to nab the key wonders and win on Deity etc. It's nice to be able to blunder around and learn from your mistakes.

Yeah, the wonders are completely changed and it's a mistake to go for your old favourites thinking they still grant the same bonuses. I made the same mistake early too, and it's one of the reasons I had the initial impression that the Wonders are not as effective as before.

The new Wonders actually seem to open up new possibilites within the game. I never even bothered trying to win the culture wars in Civ3, but it's clear you could do it in Civ4. So options other than pure conquest are, I think, more viable than they once were. Certainly more viablie than in Civ3, which some players believe is a conquest-centric game.

The manual is a real old style game manual, full of content. I haven't read thoroughly it yet, but first glance it seems less well laid out than some earlier ones I recall. For example, there's no quick start for Civ vets or even a list of the major changes. The indexing/contents are not ideal, either. I could not find out about "upgrading" units - the in-game content seems to imply you can change a pikeman into a riflemen or something, but I couldn't find it in the units sections of either the basic or advanced parts of the manual.

That's a good point, yes I think they forgot to document the upgrading. But you find out soon enough anyhow.

It's nice to have a thick manual in a game for a change. It's almost worth the new game price tag. My guess is that the manual will go electronic for a later discount release.

No real problems with the interface or presentation, except some batt+les - played MP hotseat - aren't shown. As player 1, I just hear my scout has been eaten by wolves or the barbarians attacked my city - I don't see it, which is a pity.

That's a shame to hear. Game designers always seem to do this with hotseat. I think it's something of a poor cousin to MP.

Is it possible to swap Civs halfway through a game using hotseat? That's a feature I like in a game, but it's not often seen anymore.

I also haven't heard Leonard Nimoy - I thought he did some voicework for techs? The only speech I've encountered has been Sid in the tutorial.

I've got Leonard loud and clear. He's not as good as they say he is. But it does add a nice human touch.

I do however have no sound at all during the opening credits and the Wonder anims, since I turned off the in-game sound. That's not how it's supposed to work. The game definitely has some sound issues. Hopefully they can eventually be fixed.

[frogbeastegg]

Agreed on the digital Sid comment. Brrr :shivers:

I played the tutorial, so my impressions are limited. I also haven't had time to read the manual yet. All in all I'm favourable, though not loving. Many of the ideas I like the sound of I haven't really seen in action, like the diplomacy and the city support mechanism thingy.

My overall impression from the tutorial is of many nice little touches and a lot I wish to explore.

I am being hit by a load of silly little glitches and bugs, and that really spoils, no - ruins things for me. When the civic screen doesn't show all of its text properly it's impossible to tell what civic you are running, let alone what it does and what you can change to. The wonder movies don't work - they flash along at one frame per 5 seconds, and that frame shows as blank blackness instead of a picture. I have to randomly click about the box until I hit the invisible 'ok' button. The strangest thing is that for the first 15 minutes or so the gasme was perfectly alright; it slowly de-generated into such a mess I quit because it was unplayable.

I've just changed my ati drivers, so this may help. :grumble: I get graphical bugs in BI too, and I've tried 3 lots of drivers with that and no success. I begin to wonder if the card did actually get damaged when my PC was fried by a thunderstorm, after all ...

As far as sound goes, it's really quiet, although turned up to maximum. I haven't meddled with my PC's control panel either; this volume level works fine for everything else I've run in the last year or so. Grrr. I don't want to need to alter it, because it's hard to get it precisely back as it should be, and inevitably I forget at some point and then deafen myself.

I do have music, however. That's both a good and a bad point. It's quite neat how the music fades in and out as you zoom the map. But the music stops at my favoured zoom level; one tiny fraction further out and it plays. I presume at closer zoom levels you can hear the wildlife and so on? It's too quiet on my PC to tell.

The music I've heard has been quite nice. The (A? Not sure if there are more than one in this style. I suspect so) medieval choir one especially. I have the contents of the soundtrack file playing now via mediaplayer, so it's obviously made a good impression, and I only wish I could hear more of it (in both senses of the word) in-game.

I'm going to hit the tech forums and see if there are any threads on the problems I'm having, then I'll see if the new drivers helped.

[screwtype]

I do have music, however. That's both a good and a bad point. It's quite neat how the music fades in and out as you zoom the map. But the music stops at my favoured zoom level; one tiny fraction further out and it plays. I presume at closer zoom levels you can hear the wildlife and so on? It's too quiet on my PC to tell.

You don't have the ambient sounds? Yeah, there is quite a bit of wildlife sfx, hammering sounds from your workers, wind, waves and so on. Be a bummer not to have them, I like my ambient sounds

I'm going to hit the tech forums and see if there are any threads on the problems I'm having, then I'll see if the new drivers helped.

Sorry to hear about your problems, I guess I've been lucky because so far the game has worked fine for me. The only problem is with the anti-aliasing. If I turn it up full bore the game falls asleep for minutes at a time and the Civics screens are corrupted. I can play on AAx2 with only a small delay and the odd missing tooltip, and with AA off altogether it runs fine.

[econ21]

This is probably not the place to ask, but I have mechanics query that is gnawing at me and I wonder if someone here has the answer - I have two cities that are ploughing their food surplus into production. They are both cities that I want to grow, not produce but I can't tell why this is happening or how to stop it. Thanks for any advice!

[frogbeastegg]

No, no ambient sounds unless I zoom so far in I can hardly see, and even then they are very, very quiet.

I did sort out the music and speech, and I'm rather proud of the Cunning Plan(TM) I invented to do so - I used a free program called MP3Gain to increase the volume of all the MP3s in civ4, so they play a little louder.

The music continues to be very pleasant, now I can hear it properly. I quite like the title screen song.

It seems the civ4 tech forums on the two sites I looked at (apolyton and civfanatics) are swarmnig with people having all sorts of troubles. Mine were mostly unique, and, judging from the 3 hours I just played, fixed.

Ooooh! My eyes! My poor eyes! I don't like staring at a screen for this long. But I found these nice clumps of resources which just begged for a city or two, and then I found these barbarians, and some barbarian cities, and then I got into a war with the barbarians, and ...

[doc_bean]

This is probably not the place to ask, but I have mechanics query that is gnawing at me and I wonder if someone here has the answer - I have two cities that are ploughing their food surplus into production. They are both cities that I want to grow, not produce but I can't tell why this is happening or how to stop it. Thanks for any advice!

If you are producing settlers or workers, your food is used (additionally) to produce them. HTH

[The_Doctor]

Ooooh! My eyes! My poor eyes! I don't like staring at a screen for this long. But I found these nice clumps of resources which just begged for a city or two, and then I found these barbarians, and some barbarian cities, and then I got into a war with the barbarians, and ...

I know what you mean. I just won the American War of Indepence as the Americans.

[Papewaio]

I've just changed my ati drivers, so this may help. :grumble: I get graphical bugs in BI too, and I've tried 3 lots of drivers with that and no success. I begin to wonder if the card did actually get damaged when my PC was fried by a thunderstorm, after all ...

From working with Telephony servers there is a link between thunderstorms and degradation of equipment. Even if the items survive the storm a lot of them will have a shorter working life.

[GoreBag]

A second quick game: I picked the good old US and played on warlord (third difficulty level, just under the fair 'Noble'). I had a comfortable lead on my neighbours throughout the game, I never got involved in a single war. I lost when caesar finished his space ship 2 turns before me (hey I was exploring the game and didn't really concentrate on winning until the end). It seemed a lot easier then Civ3 on a comparable level though, so what if i didn't win, i didn't feel like I got a real challenge either.
A quick game can be finished in an afternoon -, I rather like this. I assume epic is needed if you want to be a serious warmonger though.

You should have nuked his posterior.

[Craterus]

Guess what I just got? Having never asked nor taken an interest in this game...

Very strange. Well, I assume it'll be better than the half-game that I am able to have with BI.

[screwtype]

Guess what I just got? Having never asked nor taken an interest in this game...

Very strange. Well, I assume it'll be better than the half-game that I am able to have with BI.

You may well assume wrong A lot of people are having technical problems with the game.

And I use the word "game" advisedly. The Civ paradigm is more like an exercise in masochism than a real game. After a week of playing it, I'm scratching my head wondering whatever could have possessed me to buy another title in this series after the frustrations of Civ3.

I guess there is the challenge in just trying to beat the darned thing. But it must have about the most tedious gameplay ever. It's just build, build, build, build and build, trying to get a bit of functionality into your cities. There's bugger all action, and almost nothing in the way of crises or challenges to keep you interested or on your toes. Just a slow, relentless grind toward dominance - or, more commonly, defeat. I honestly can't understand why it's so popular. Imperialsim II is a much better game design, and yet it's almost unknown.

I think the original Civ just came along at the right time, and so a fan base developed, and it went from there. And then, there are so few games released for strategy gamers these days...

[Papewaio]

Has anyone played MP online yet?

[Rosacrux redux]

Lovely game, dunno why so many people seem to hate it. I'll need to pump up my RAM to 1 GB to be able to play at an acceptable speed with a Huge map (right now I am confined to Large with my 512 MB).

This is an extremely moddable game, though, but the community will have to take some time to familiarize with the XML and - especially - Python, until we get some high-quality mods to pester our lives even more (like the original game wasn't enough...).

For the time being, I've modde the Epic game setting, to allow for really epic games - research at 300%, while buildings were kept at 150% and units at 130. I altered the turns accordingly and now, with the really slow research, it makes for a really epic game and you can actually engage in some serious warfare with your units before they get obsolete.

[econ21]

I'm enjoying Civ4 - it's as addictive as Civ2, but more fun. I can't compare it to Civ3 fairly, as I very much disliked that incarnation.

Civ4 retains the same core appeal as Civ2 - nursing your empire to greatness (primarily by research and building in my case) with lots of historical flavour (wonders, units etc). Playing on epic+huge, it feels very similar to how I remember my Civ2 games.

One strength of the Civ series - good AI - also seems to be continued; it's pretty strong compared to most strategy games (including TW, cough). I was amazed when the Japanese declared war on me. It was hopeless for them, as they were my very close neighbours confined to tundra. But war was still excusable - I was culture bombing them further into the Antartic and had only warriors, it was their last and best chance. They attacked from both land and from sea with higher tech units than I had (swordsmen). It was only when I finally killed them that I realised what they had done - simultaneously pillaged my only two sources of copper (needed for good units). Good grief, I don't think I could have come up with a tactic as clever as that!

But Civ4 adds to Civ experience in a number of ways.

The combat is more fun - the promotions and the rock-scissors-paste aspect make it feel more involving and strategic. I enjoyed coordinating my invasion of Japan - far more than the tedious "move dozens of units one square" I remember from Civ3 and Civ2. I had fewer units (often stacked), cared about them more and used them for more specialised functions. The better graphics really help out here.

The great leaders and religion are excellent additions to the flavour. Having a great leader spawned is very rewarding (they are just so cute and productive) and I love hearing the music when judaism spreads to another town.

The diplomacy is rather nice - some leaders tend to hate you for a reason (e.g. you're squeezing their territory) but the others are interested in making mutually beneficial deals - I even feel like giving them tech to make like me more.

I agree with Screwtype that Civ falls short of Imperialism II in streamlining micromanagement and providing thrills. But for me its still a fun game in its own way.

[Kekvit Irae]

I got it, and right off the bat I started to hate it. The game running slowly for me (unit orders are delayed by half a second or so) is my main gripe. I would much rather play Civ3 or Civ2: Test of Time than this. Ah well, maybe a patch will help my woes.

[The_Doctor]

I have the same problem. How much RAM do you have?

I have not really played it much, I want to play on the Earth map, but it takes 30mins to load and then it is too slow to play it. I am going to buy some RAM at the weekend. 256Mb up to 1GB, that should solve the problem.