What is your favorite Civilization game?

[Kekvit Irae]

Post what's your favorite Sid Meier's Civilization incarnation or Civ clone, and why.

To me, it's either a toss-up between CivII: Test of Time, Master of Magic (a delicious cross between Civ and MoO) and Alpha Centauri plus the Alien Crossfire expansion pack. If given the choice, I would choose SMAC, since it's more graphically sound, and you are given a LOT more choices on how to end the game, rather than just kill everyone or get all spells/research. Test of Time gave you scenarios with three worlds to play with rather than one, and the original campaign allowed you to play on Alpha Centauri once you built the spaceship, adding a new world to conquer.

[doc_bean]

I've only played III and IV and not nearly enough to judge them

Why are there so few hours in a day ?

[drone]

The amount of time I wasted playing Master of Magic and Master of Orion 2 boggles the mind, so I would have to select the clones. Never really got into normal Civ for some reason.

[Kekvit Irae]

Yes, MoM is indeed luv

[professorspatula]

The only one I've played (well I've played MoM too) is Call to Power 2, which was out around the time of 'Test of Time' if I recall. It looked and played nice enough, but needed some AI improvements and modding, although to be fair there were a fair few mods for it. My computer couldn't really handle much more than small/medium sized worlds so I never got the best out of it.

I try to avoid Civilisation type games like I do for Football management sims as I'd know I'd never have any kind of life left if I gave into them.


Hang on - I also remember briefly playing Colonization but never really got into it. Shooting a few Apaches never really had that much appeal to me. Master of Orion 2 was a game I played to the death, but don't really class it a proper Civilisation clone .

[Kekvit Irae]

I believe CivII Test of Time came out around the same time as Call of Power (I wish I could edit my poll), I believe. Either way, many people online see Civ: Call to Power a horrible mistake. I, for one, never played it.

[Mount Suribachi]

SMAC - the ability to customize your units, factions that all played very differently, the storyline. Loved it.


Oh, and Doctrine: Air Power

[econ21]

I voted Civ4.

Civ2 was like a nasty drug - incredibly addictive and surely the work of an inspired but evil genius. Evil because when you were playing it, it strangely was not fun at all. While playing it, you absolutely could not do anything else - not eat, drink, sleep, wash. But still, it was no fun whatsoever. It was also interminable, descending into a quagmire of hundreds of one year turns that took about a year of real life to manage goodness knows how many cities and move goodness knows how many units one meagre square each. If you did finish it by some strange chance - you were bedridden during a summer holiday, or stranded on a desert island, or bitten by a vampire and granted immortality, whatever - then it was a hollow and unrewarding accomplishment. You awoke from a trance and thought - what the heck did I just do with the last X hours of my life?

Civ3 was a monstrous abomination that should have been strangled at birth.

Civilisation: Call to Power 2 was strangled at birth, or at least lobotomised, by a brain dead AI. (It was only marginally redeemed by giving the world WesW, creator of MedMod.)

Then I tried Civ4 and found it was just as addictive as Civ2, but also fun. Great leaders were fun. Combat was varied and tactical. Ancient and medieval wars were feasible. There was no "one way to win", no predetermined path of optimal builds and essential wonders you must have. Religion was fantastic - I just loved founding Judaism, then being rewarded when the religion spread to each new city with a chant that raised the hairs down my back and of course granted me 1 Gold piece per city. The AI leaders looked like real people and even more seemed to behave like real people - you came to love or hate them with the same passion you have for real world Mandelas or Pol Pots. The difficulty level was drastically ramped up - deity was no longer for poseurs like me; I struggled along at Prince, one notch above the default supposedly balanced difficulty level.

But then I found it was all part of the narcotic that is Civ. What I had experienced was just the initial hook. Soon the game become almost as unfun as Civ2, although just as addictive. I now try to keep it in a jar on my shelf, labelled "poison".

[DisruptorX]

Well, I remember absolutely loving 2, but I haven't played it in years. I loved 3, and I like 4, too. I think I like 3 better than 4, though, they don't seem much different besides that 4 seems faster, and that 3 has much better graphics.

I don't really know what to vote, they're all good.

[Avicenna]

Only played four and hated it, frankly.

[Kekvit Irae]

SMAC - the ability to customize your units, factions that all played very differently, the storyline. Loved it.


Oh, and Doctrine: Air Power

The Network Backbone and The Longevity Vaccine. I had many lawls watching those movies.

"Hey! Get off my land you peacekeeping son-of-a-..."
"Where do you want your node today?"

[frogbeastegg]

Tie between Civ4 and AC in Planetry Pack form.

Civ4 is fun, the first true civ game I've found that to be true of; the streamlining and tweaks have really made a difference, and most of the new features are good. It has the ancient and medieval settings I like so much. Best of all it learned from AC, unlike Civ3. Huzzah for pick and mix governments! Huzzah for some degree of unit customisation!

AC had so many great things! And so many fiddly annoying bits. So much care had gone into creating the sci-fi setting and factions. A sequel would be nice.

[Kekvit Irae]

I love the unit customization of AC. In Civ4, you cant give a spearman the mobility of a horse, the city attack of a swordsman, and then give him the ability to be invisible to other units. In AC you can, with the respective pricetag.

[Slyspy]

I voted Civ2, but thinking about it I would probably say Colonisation instead.

The series is dead regarding new ideas.

[Ituralde]

Played Civ II to IV and loved every one of them. No matter what people tell about III.
Played MoO II to death also, but really wouldn't compare it with the Civ games that much.

I clearly voted for SMAC though, if that game didn't have the science-fiction story it might be my all-time favourite game ever. It had so many great things, that even now, so many years after it has been published have rarely been reached by any other game, be it a Civ clone or not. The Diplomacy is the best I have ever seen in any game. Cease Attacking that faction was great but somehow never made it into the Civ game, same with the Protectorate things. (Don't know if that was their original name).
And the story was glorious. Although I could not keep myself playing SMAC for very long, because I somehow couldn't relate to the technologies anymore I did anyways just to know what would happen to the Gaians and what they would find out about the Locusts and Mindworms.
Not even mentioning using them in battle.
It was really a great game with unique factions that all played out differently.
Loved it!

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i brought alpha centauri for about £5 three years ago and i still play it occassionally, and i then got civ3 which i loved until i brought civ4 but didn't like since i felt it was pretty much civ3 but with pretty graphics... so i voted civ3 + alpha centauri

[Mount Suribachi]

Yeah, I regularly use SMAC as an example of how diplomacy should be done in the TW series. And like froggy sez, all those different government settings were great.

[Midnight]

SMAC, no contest. Social Engineering was great, diplomacy was great, the factions were well thought out, the setting dripped with atmosphere (a rare quality), and it had, IMO, amazing longevity. I'm still playing PBEMs now!

[Mount Suribachi]

Oh, and it also had the best fan-guide I've ever seen written (yes, even better than Froggys, if such a thing were possible).

And 2 of the best pieces of Fan-fiction I've ever read (the sadly unfinished "forgotten faction" was one of the funniest things I've ever read.

[DukeofSerbia]

I never played Civilization. Don't like that type of games.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Master of Magic. I still don't get why noone try to make MoM2...

Louis,

[Geezer57]

Master of Magic. I still don't get why noone try to make MoM2...

That was a great game, so you're not alone in your opinion. I keep an old Pentium II DOS box around just to be able to play some of the old classics like MOM, the original MOO, XCOM, etc.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

i dont play Civ. what's so good about it? is there any battles?

[Kekvit Irae]

That was a great game, so you're not alone in your opinion. I keep an old Pentium II DOS box around just to be able to play some of the old classics like MOM, the original MOO, XCOM, etc.

I want a remake of MoM. Nothing flashy or fancy, just better updated to run on the newer Windows versions without having to resort to DOSBox.

i dont play Civ. what's so good about it? is there any battles?

Combat yes, battles no. Nothing like MTW or RTW. Think along the lines of a board game like Stratego or Risk. The part where Civ really shines is the city building and empire building

[Husar]

Civ III, easily.

I think I have that lying around somewhere from a magazine, even played it for quite some time, but I was greatly put off by the AI building roads and railways across the whole map. Units would just beam from anywhere to anywhere else. That ruined the fun for me and apart from that I have only played some demos but never bought a game.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

Combat yes, battles no. Nothing like MTW or RTW. Think along the lines of a board game like Stratego or Risk. The part where Civ really shines is the city building and empire building

sounds pretty interesting...

[econ21]

sounds pretty interesting...

One of the best things about Civ-type games is the AI - it tends to be pretty competitive. There's often a frisson of excitement when you first encounter Shaka or Ghengis. The AI is often very aggressive and what's more, often aggressive "in character" - meeting Ghandhi does not lead to the same fear. The AI threat is often backed up by lots of AI resource bonuses, tech cheats etc but the cheating is not that obvious. TW could learn quite a lot from civ in terms of creating a single player challenge and modelling AI personalities.

The combat is heavily stylised, but that in Civ4 is pretty neat and involved (units get special powers, can be upgraded to higher tech, there's a rock-paper-scissors thing going on, there's a tension between stacking and being dispersed, terrain plays a role, inner lines of communication - especially railways - are a major advantage etc etc).

The main weakness, IMO, is the end game can really drag on and on. You can have long periods where nothing happens but you tweak your build orders etc. and war, far from livening things up, often slows it down even more.

[English assassin]

Units would just beam from anywhere to anywhere else. That ruined the fun for me and apart from that I have only played some demos but never bought a game.

I don't know, it introduces a new element just when things can drag, and it models, abstractly but nicely, total war in modern states. It also strongly favours the defence over the attack, but that is no bad thing. Generally Civ III massivly toned down the benefits of being aggressive (no more looting tech, citizens of different cultures, etc). Possibly its toned down a bit too much, but then I generally find I get bored of a game of civ some time around the beginning of the modern era and give up, so it doesn't actually make that much difference to me. I'm not sure if have ever played a game to the end. Once you've done the land grab and got a competitive empire the interesting challenge is over.

[Abokasee]

i got 2 GalCiv II (love the ship design) and Rise of Nations (Elimate another civ and you can demand quite bit off over players)

[Geoffrey S]

Alpha Centauri. Not only is it brilliant, but those times when I was travelling by train with a laptop it was perfect to play in brief spurts. Every game was different; what I also loved was that although in theory each faction had the same potential buildings and units, each faction distinguished itself not in what it could build but in its own distinct character. I really felt like I was fighting Gaia, the Spartans, or was personally allied with Morgan Industries.

What I'd really like would be to find Alien Crossfire (for mac), though whether that's healthy when I should be studying? Fact is, it is the most addictive game I've played and what I wish modern largescale strategic games would aspire to (listening, CA?).