Civilization IV

[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!

[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

[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 ...

[frogbeastegg]

I'm also one of those lucky amphibians for whom the game runs very well, now my initial problems have been solved. Although sound still seems too quiet sometimes, and there are great long stretches without any music at all.

Anyone else finding the random map generator to be a bit ... erm ... rubbish? Or am I supremely unlucky? I get a rubbish start in every map I've tried - deserts, jungles, tundra, ice, mountains. As I explore I continue to reveal bad terrain. I manage maybe 4 cities if I put them in places I don't exactly like, and then that is it, no space to expand because there is no terrain capable for supporting another city. Jungle at least can be cleared to something which might be useful, slowly and painfully, but the rest is permanent. :grumble: I'm using the default temperate/continents/etc settings too. :grumble:

Another strange thing; the lighthouse building. Only one of my cities could build it in my last game, though I had two others with a good amount of coastal tiles in their workable range. What's going on? It's one of those Very Important Improvements. The manual blurb on them is not helpful; it only lists effects, cost and tech requirement, nothing like how close to the coast you have to be to build them.

I've seen a lot of people complaining about ships in this game. I have to agree - they are too slow, and it takes too long to get anything capable of leaving the coast lines. If I can find out how I might mod those two aspects.

I might also mod myself a 'useful' epic mode, one with slower research than the normal game mode, but faster unit production and building production the same. Epic should mean a long game with slower progression along the tech tree, not slower everything to the point of having less to do, IMO.

On the whole, though, I do like the game, more than civ3. The civics system is great, and I like the unit promotions. I am beginning to understand the religion system now too, and I like the way it is going. Not needing to cover the entire map in roads and railways to get the commerce bonus is good too; the hamlet/village/town system is neat. The game is ... fun, the first in the true Civ series to be so for me.

[The_Doctor]

I upgraded my PC to 1GB and now it runs a lot better. For example, the Medieval scenario took me half an hour to load and now it only takes a minute or two.

Another strange thing; the lighthouse building. Only one of my cities could build it in my last game, though I had two others with a good amount of coastal tiles in their workable range. What's going on? It's one of those Very Important Improvements. The manual blurb on them is not helpful; it only lists effects, cost and tech requirement, nothing like how close to the coast you have to be to build them.

The city has to be on the coast.

[screwtype]

I'm also one of those lucky amphibians for whom the game runs very well, now my initial problems have been solved. Although sound still seems too quiet sometimes, and there are great long stretches without any music at all.

Yes, I find the game a tad quiet too.

Anyone else finding the random map generator to be a bit ... erm ... rubbish? Or am I supremely unlucky? I get a rubbish start in every map I've tried - deserts, jungles, tundra, ice, mountains. As I explore I continue to reveal bad terrain.

There has been quite a bit of controversy over the map generator at CivFanatics. I've complained about it myself. The maps seem smaller and pokier than they did in the previous game, even on huge map size. I never played the huge map with Civ3, it would take forever to finish a game. On Civ4, it's the only setting I use.

And yes, you can have a bad run with starting positions. I had a whole bunch of starts in the middle of [snip] jungles, which totally cripples your chances. Jungle makes your townsfolk sick and takes time to clear, but you can't even start clearing it until you get iron working, which is quite a way into the tech tree. IMO there shouldn't be so much jungle on the temperate setting.

If I get a bad starting position now, I immediately dump the game and start a new one. Unfortunately, the game does not remember your previous game settings and you have to reset them all before trying again, but it beats trying to win from jungle. It took me six or seven goes to get a good starting pos last time.

Another strange thing; the lighthouse building. Only one of my cities could build it in my last game, though I had two others with a good amount of coastal tiles in their workable range. What's going on?

Your city has to be adjacent to a coastal tile, not merely have one "within its workable range". It was the same in Civ3 too BTW. So you have to build your city either adjacent to the sea or two tiles away from it, otherwise you end up with a bunch of sea tiles you can't improve.

I agree it's a bit limiting. I think at the very least you should be able to build a "coastal" city next to river tiles. Maybe that could be modded in.

I've seen a lot of people complaining about ships in this game. I have to agree - they are too slow, and it takes too long to get anything capable of leaving the coast lines. If I can find out how I might mod those two aspects.

Not sure if I agree with this. It was much the same in the earlier game, the only real difference is that now galleys have an MP of two instead of three. But there is an "auto-explore" function which is quite useful. Build a couple of galleys early and put them on auto-explore, they will map your continent out in no time.

I might also mod myself a 'useful' epic mode, one with slower research than the normal game mode, but faster unit production and building production the same. Epic should mean a long game with slower progression along the tech tree, not slower everything to the point of having less to do, IMO.

These are similar to the changes I'm considering myself. Unit production really is cripplingly slow (much like Civ3) and epic mode does not seem terribly epic, especially in the later stages. However, the buzz for me ATM is trying to beat the game on standard settings

On the whole, though, I do like the game, more than civ3. The civics system is great, and I like the unit promotions. I am beginning to understand the religion system now too, and I like the way it is going.

Yeah, it ain't bad. But its moddability is probably its great redeeming feature. I'm sure we're going to see a lot of good mods for it over time

[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.

[ah_dut]

Do you people think it's worth forking out £35 or thereabouts or is there a better game to get at the moment (legally bearing in mind I'm under 15 and have no credit card etc)

[Kekvit Irae]

Do you people think it's worth forking out £35 or thereabouts or is there a better game to get at the moment (legally bearing in mind I'm under 15 and have no credit card etc)

Honestly? Buy CivIII Gold and the Conquerers expansion. It is much better, in my opinion. It's fun playing a Regicide game in the Sengoku era of Japan

[econ21]

Ah_dut, it depends whether you like Civ-type games (ie slow turnbased, with an emphasis on building rather just total war). If you do, I think it is very nice addition to the genre. Lots of fun features and keeps the same tried n tested turnbased strategy game play. It's a pretty substantial game (the manual is 200 pages, pretty much all solid content), so it is worth a full price tag (I saw it in ASDA today for £29.99). So far, I've got to 1750 or so in an epic huge game on noble (the neutral difficulty setting), and it's been fun - building wonders, developing cities, winning the tech race, getting stabbed in the back and fighting wars of vengenance etc.

Whether there is a better game out right now, I don't know. BI is better, but other than that nothing recent has grabbed my eye (Oblivion is the next one on my radar).

Froggy, I'm glad you can hear the opening music - I really took a liking to it when I found out it was the Lord's prayer in Swahili (knowing the meaning behind it gives it more gravitas).

I agree with your assessment of traits - in terms of leaders, I'd recommend Elizabeth. I nearly always play English as I find it easier to remember my towns. But she has two nice traits - financial hauls in the cash (good for a tech lead) and philosophical give you more great leaders which are just fun. The redcoat is a nice and flavoursome unit - it kicks in about the time I might want to fight (being a turtler by nature), although even on epic it was very quickly made obsolete by infantry.

[Kekvit Irae]

I personally prefer Frederick for the +100% GL Birth Rate and Panzers, or Catherine for the Cossacks. I havent yet tried the Fast Workers

[screwtype]

Do you people think it's worth forking out £35 or thereabouts or is there a better game to get at the moment (legally bearing in mind I'm under 15 and have no credit card etc)

Remember you're taking a risk with your money given that lots of folks are having problems running it. If you really want to buy it, try and buy it from a store that has a good refund policy so you can get your money back if it doesn't work.

But Kek's advice ain't bad. If you haven't played a Civ game before, get a copy of Civ3 with the Conquests expansion. You should be able to pick them up for a song. It will give you a feel for the Civ paradigm and whether you like it or not.

Civ4 has better graphics, but in many ways it's not much different from its predecessor. And there are some features of Civ3 that are actually better - the human advisors for example.

The one thing I would do before playing Conquests is go into the game editor and wind corruption back to about 50%. At the default 100% setting, it's just an exercise in frustration.

[frogbeastegg]

Patch is out, and suspended so autoupdate doesn't find it. Some vague mumblings about a possible issue, or something.


I made the first incarnation of the FrogMod, and it turned out quite well, aside from my not getting build times for structures quite right for the tech descovery rate, meaning I got stuck with nothing to build but units and none of the hammers->whatever techs available for a long time. Tweak that and that should be good. I made units build at 67% of the normal speed, like in a fast game, techs discover at 150% of the speed like in an epic game (and buildings will go to match this), and all the rest is as per the normal speed. Much better, IMO.

I might move catapults so they are available sooner, as in my test game I found there was a very, very long stretch of the game where everyone had large armies but could do hardly anything with them due to a lack of artillery support. I have a few other ideas too, if I can find out how to do them. Er, and get the time to do them.

[frogbeastegg]

The patch is available again.

Official 1.09 Patch for Civilization IV

Changes:
- increased cost of Apollo Program...
- increased SS parts cost...
- Animal Husbandry reveals Horses
- tweaked Rifling, Chemistry, Steel, and Railroad tech costs...
- increased late-game tech costs...
- can now add two specialists in size 1 city with Mercantilism...
- final score is now modified by difficulty level...
- Speed up load times
- Global performance enhancements

Added:

- Include WB map size in the description field
- Save login name
- Added password encryption
- Added regenerate Map Button to World builder Map Mode...
- checkbox for using low resolution textures
- more logging for init failure
- minspec / video memory checking
- Added ability to change to and from fullscreen while in-game
- holding during startup will clean out the cache
- improved bink playback, added ini options

Fixes:

- ATI issue Failed to Init Renderer Fixed
- Multiplayer Lobby list jump problem and lobby crash fixed
- fixed war weariness calculation bug...
- units maintain their name when upgraded
- fixed Gold-for-Gold diplo exploit...
- fixed no research choice overflow exploit...
- Fix for voice initialization crash
- Fix addressing takeover AI and retirement OOS.
- Fixed issue with diplomacy text being always used in its first form in the translator.
- Popups, screens, and diplomacy properly cleared when exiting from main menu.
- Games protected by admin passwords (only) cannot be loaded if the version is different from the one that created the save
- Fixed bug where player could not offer any deal to other human in PBEM/Hotseat
- Sorting by date on domestic advisor now works.
- fixed bug where settlers could not move if the strategy layer was selected
- fixed Ironworks...
- fixed AI units not obeying open borders rules on declaration of war...
- fixed bug that prevent placing of units in world-builder
- fixed bug that prevented gifting of units to a human player
- stack attack infinite loop fixed
- Civic screen update fix (wasn’t showing the right maintenance and anarchy values)
- ctrl-g crash fix, optimized city bar art
- fixed right-click menu crash
- Intro movie crashing problems

[frogbeastegg]

Question: Will I still be able to play MP with someonme who does not have the FrogMod if I have it installed in the custom assets folder? We're playing with a direct IP connection, and he is the host, if that is any help.

So far we've played without the FrogMod on my machine; I removed it when I patched the game. Now I want to remake it, and perhaps add to it a bit. But I still want to play MP.