Civilization vs Total War

[gollum]

Originally posted by Durango
For someone who didn't like Rome in its vanilla state, is EB worth a try? What are its greatest changes and merits in your opinion?

Yes and no. The mod has many features that are perceived as pluses by certain people and as minuses by certain other people.

For example its true that its richly detailed and immersive, yet also of cumbersome slow pace, but these are the two sides of the same coin.

In the end you really have to try for yourself and see.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Not for me. For me, the comparison depends on what games we're talking about. MTW and Civ IV are very, very close for me, probably a tie. Civ IV easily beats RTW and M2, as I no longer found the battles to be any fun. My views on Empire are still rather incomplete.

What about EB? Have you tried it? You should, it is obviously free, so you have nothing to lose but your chains...ermh, sorry, that was my inner Lenin speaking in me. What I mean to say was that you have nothing but a bit of your time to lose to try out EB.

[gollum]

Yeah, EB fans qualify as communists in mentality at least...

[Beefy187]

NO!!!! never set your workers to Auto, it's the quick route to destroying your civilization!!

It is damn boring micromanaging them all though,, I must agree!

I set them on build trade network which doesn't seem to harm me.

But thats only after I get Railroads. Until then I Micro Manage.

4 workers are enough for me unless I am forced to have more after capturing a few cities.

[seireikhaan]

What about EB? Have you tried it? You should, it is obviously free, so you have nothing to lose but your chains...ermh, sorry, that was my inner Lenin speaking in me. What I mean to say was that you have nothing but a bit of your time to lose to try out EB.

Yes, I did give it a brief stint. However, it came back to the same thing- I simply couldn't lose battles, period. Plus, the AI is still so nonsensical on the strategic level its baffling. This is not the fault of the EB team at all- I commend them for doing so much with so little and having such commitment to a project of which they do not charge money. Fact is, the core of Rome was totally rotten for me- just not enough to work with to make a game I could enjoy.

[gollum]

Originally posted by Shinseikhan
Yes, I did give it a brief stint. However, it came back to the same thing- I simply couldn't lose battles, period.

Thats because EB balance on the battlefield wasnt made for this purpose. RTW in fact is not completely beyond redemption even from a MTW perspective in SP. However i agree with you the game is far far inferior from the first two incarnations.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Yes, I did give it a brief stint. However, it came back to the same thing- I simply couldn't lose battles, period. Plus, the AI is still so nonsensical on the strategic level its baffling. This is not the fault of the EB team at all- I commend them for doing so much with so little and having such commitment to a project of which they do not charge money. Fact is, the core of Rome was totally rotten for me- just not enough to work with to make a game I could enjoy.

Heh. You sound just like me when I am critiquing M2TW or ETW. RTW is my favourite however.

[Axalon]

Ever since some freaking stone-age boy defeated my aircraft-carrier (or was it battleship?) I stopped playing the game that instant. I have never played Civilization since after that incident (this was Civ. 1 or 2 mind you - it matters little to me). I am just unable to take any of it seriously after that little miracle. I just cant....

It's as serious as Tom & Jerry being presidents of China or calling yourself "Darth hamburger" or something of the like that... So, for me there is nothing to discuss in regards to the stipultated topic of this thread. To me, Civilization have always been just a lot of Mickey-mouse after that event.


- Cheers
----------
I did however have great time with Alfa-Centauri thou, which is essentially
is the same thing in concept.

[Beefy187]

Ever since some freaking stone-age boy defeated my aircraft-carrier (or was it battleship?) I stopped playing the game that instant. I have never played Civilization since after that incident (this was Civ. 1 or 2 mind you - it matters little to me). I am just unable to take any of it seriously after that little miracle. I just cant....

It's as serious as Tom & Jerry being presidents of China or calling yourself "Darth hamburger" or something of the like that... So, for me there is nothing to discuss in regards to the stipultated topic of this thread. To me, Civilization have always been just a lot of Mickey-mouse after that event.


- Cheers
----------
I did however have great time with Alfa-Centauri thou, which is essentially
is the same thing in concept.

I would bet for the Stone Age boy if he gets on the Air Craft carrier for rampage.

I never played Civ 1 or 2 but I'm guessing land units gets bonus against navy if they are right next to each other.

In Civ IV you don't get to attack navy with the land force so don't worry

[Axalon]

Hehehe.... Well, when Tom & Jerry assume the presidency of China I'll be playing Civ IV. and pray to Lassie the dog that "stone age-boy" will leave my carriers alone. Or whenever I decide to call myself "Darth hamburger" around here, whatever comes first man, whatever comes first....

[Aemilius Paulus]

Ever since some freaking stone-age boy defeated my aircraft-carrier (or was it battleship?) I stopped playing the game that instant. I have never played Civilization since after that incident (this was Civ. 1 or 2 mind you - it matters little to me). I am just unable to take any of it seriously after that little miracle. I just cant....

Yeah, they fixed that issue with the ancient units being able to defeat modern units in Civilization IV. Still, even with that glitch, I liked the Civilization games. That is what made them unique, was that provided you were smart enough, you could win with a weaker army, provided enough defensive bonuses pile up.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I set them on build trade network which doesn't seem to harm me.

But thats only after I get Railroads. Until then I Micro Manage.

4 workers are enough for me unless I am forced to have more after capturing a few cities.

Actually there's a guy at the Civfanatics forums named The Me In Team who autos everything. He autos workers and uses the governor feature. He plays Emperor level I believe. His argument is that in the early game micro workers, but as the game gets along he autos them, and as long as you use it with the governor feature (i.e. emphasize x), then they'll work terrain how you want it. Also he's one of the fastest players around, completing the average game in about 2 to 3 hours.


Also, Civ 4 and EB are about the same for me. It really depends on what I want to do and how I'm feeling. They're two of the only games I actually play nowadays, so there's plenty of room for both of them.

[Beefy187]

Actually there's a guy at the Civfanatics forums named The Me In Team who autos everything. He autos workers and uses the governor feature. He plays Emperor level I believe. His argument is that in the early game micro workers, but as the game gets along he autos them, and as long as you use it with the governor feature (i.e. emphasize x), then they'll work terrain how you want it. Also he's one of the fastest players around, completing the average game in about 2 to 3 hours.


Also, Civ 4 and EB are about the same for me. It really depends on what I want to do and how I'm feeling. They're two of the only games I actually play nowadays, so there's plenty of room for both of them.

I never quite got if I should build a farm or a cottage. Most forums tells me theres a terrain where farms are completely useless if I build on them so its far better to build a cottage.

Maybe I should auto it

[mlc82]

Yes, I did give it a brief stint. However, it came back to the same thing- I simply couldn't lose battles, period. Plus, the AI is still so nonsensical on the strategic level its baffling. This is not the fault of the EB team at all- I commend them for doing so much with so little and having such commitment to a project of which they do not charge money. Fact is, the core of Rome was totally rotten for me- just not enough to work with to make a game I could enjoy.

A few things:

If you happen to have RTW Alexander laying around, the "Alex" mods for EB improve the AI a LOT! It can still be pretty stupid at times, but nowhere near it's usual level, and has at times given me battles that felt like playing Medieval 1 again.

2. Try out the "Darth Formations" minimod for EB. In my experience it helps the AI maintain their formation at least until contact in battle, instead of tending to attack piecemeal. The EB formations do this decently as well, but from my experience the Darth formations make it even tighter.

3. EB is a must-roleplay kind of mod. There are hordes of threads about this on the EB board, and it REALLY makes a big difference in the fun factor, along with providing some challenge vs the lackluster AI that feels a little less like deliberately handicapping yourself. Things such as low-end generals can only lead a single legion (as Rome of course, and there is a breakdown on the EB forum as well of what units a single roman legion should consist of, it's nowhere near a full stack). I've even worked on a set of rules for an "extended general cam" mode, just haven't posted or put them in practice yet, but trying to make EB play a little more like the "Take Command" tactical games, though you'd need some serious self discipline to stick to it!

[seireikhaan]

A few things:

If you happen to have RTW Alexander laying around, the "Alex" mods for EB improve the AI a LOT! It can still be pretty stupid at times, but nowhere near it's usual level, and has at times given me battles that felt like playing Medieval 1 again.

2. Try out the "Darth Formations" minimod for EB. In my experience it helps the AI maintain their formation at least until contact in battle, instead of tending to attack piecemeal. The EB formations do this decently as well, but from my experience the Darth formations make it even tighter.

3. EB is a must-roleplay kind of mod. There are hordes of threads about this on the EB board, and it REALLY makes a big difference in the fun factor, along with providing some challenge vs the lackluster AI that feels a little less like deliberately handicapping yourself. Things such as low-end generals can only lead a single legion (as Rome of course, and there is a breakdown on the EB forum as well of what units a single roman legion should consist of, it's nowhere near a full stack). I've even worked on a set of rules for an "extended general cam" mode, just haven't posted or put them in practice yet, but trying to make EB play a little more like the "Take Command" tactical games, though you'd need some serious self discipline to stick to it!

1. No, I never got the Alexander expansion. Only BI.

2. Never heard of that particular mini-mod, but the "piecemeal" attacking was not my top concern. My top concern is the fact that the AI runs itself to death going around in circles whenever I'm attacking, and defending is so easy it wouldn't matter if they did or didn't either way. Fighting fatigued troops with fresh ones every single battle got ridiculous.

3. That, unfortunately, is just not my kind of thing. I don't get much satisfaction from a war game by role playing it. I do not get attached to my generals or emissaries or any of the such. For me, they are simply tools. That's just the kind of person I am when it comes to games.

Again, I commend the effort put forth by the EB team; I simply can't imagine how much research, development, testing, and creativity it takes to make such a mod. However, the restrictions put in place by the Rome engine simply make it impossible for me to enjoy the game. Equally a pity is the fact that the time period really is quite interesting.

[Owen Glyndwr]

I never quite got if I should build a farm or a cottage. Most forums tells me theres a terrain where farms are completely useless if I build on them so its far better to build a cottage.

Maybe I should auto it

Well, that really depends on what you're doing. If you run a CE (Cottage Economy), i.e. you generate commerce in the cities which are run through multipliers and through the slider which converts to beakers, then you want to have just enough food to keep the city growing and just crank out the cottages. Ideal cities are FP (flood plain) for the +1 commerce and +1 Food, and riverside grassland tiles. Also in a CE you want one food heavy city (i.e. several food sources in the BFC) to serve as a Great Person Farm, which converts the food to specialists to crank out the Great People, especially scientists. Ideal trait is definitely the Financial Trait, and ideal civics are US and Emancipation (?). The benefit of the CE is that it creates the best research rate of the three, however it is very slow to shine through due to the long time it takes for cottages to mature into towns, and is easy to use. (The cottage is the worse upgrade, but town is the best)

If you run a SE (Specialist Economy), however, the strategy is to farm everything to get the cities as High pop as possible and covert the excess population into specialists which directly create beakers for your research, allowing you to run the slider at 100% wealth for the whole game. Here you look for food heavy areas and just farm. However, specialist the idea is to prioritize. If a city has a lot of hammers, you turn it into a prod city which churns out your units. You have science cities to generate beakers, and you usually have your best few science cities become commerce cities (or is it the other way around?) The ideal trait for SE is philosophical, and a good strategy is to get the Pyramids early (Unlocks all Gov. civics) to run representation early (All specialists earn beakers) Another good civic is Caste System (Unlimited Merchants, Artists and Engineers (?)). The Specialist economy is strong in that it is versatile, by altering specialists you can do what you want, however it is very weak until you get Representation, and the beaker output is slightly lower than a CE (The SE is slightly more popular among high level players)

The final major economy is the HE (Hammer Economy) In a hammer economy, your cities look for hammer heavy cities, and just workshop everything not a hill. Using the "build x" feature (Wealth, Research, or Culture), you convert hammers to your research. The Hammer economy doesn't really take off until you get the State Property civic with Communism, leading many HE advocates to play a CE or SE until Liberalism (Free tech for first to discover), and then beeline straight for Communism. If you have a heavy lead, you may even be able to take Comm. with Lib. The advantages of an HE is that it is very easy to set up, very easy to manage, and allows you to basically build whatever you want (Making you very strong on the military front). Also, there are some who assert that due to the nature of an HE, your economy is basically uncrashable (I.E. expand too quickly, dropping your slider to 10% or lower, sending your tech pace to a crawl) when in one. Because of it's ease of setup, a lot of players will play an HE in their late game gains through war. The disadvantages of an HE are that it's potency in terms of beaker output is the worst of the three, making it only truly viable on it's on in large empires, Also it is essentially horrendous until you get SP (Workshops earn food), and the fact that you're tech rate will drop when you transition into war as some of your cities are no longer generating beakers for you.

Now a lot of people don't like to get into discussions about which economy is the best as they are all equally viable, and very strong when used in the right situation. A growing mentality in the CFC is to simply not be identified by the type of economy you play. A lot of people will run a mixed economy, and build improvements in cities based on what they perceive would be the best route in each city.

I really hope this helps as this is a very general overview, and if you go to the CFC, you'd see strategy articles on each type of economy which run in the tens of pages.

[Beefy187]

Never quite got how to do great person farm till now.

Thanks heaps Owen Glyndwr

[Noncommunist]

For me, it depended on what I wanted to do at the moment. At times, I got tired of the near useless diplomacy in MTW2 so I started playing Civ 4, other times, I got tired of the less controllable combat in Civ 4 so I went to MTW2, both have their advantages. Right now, Civ 4 has the advantage of working on a Mac as XP hasn't been reinstalled on it.

[wumpus]

well, i've tried several civ games and their mods, and i've tried almost all tw--but i don't think an ordinary joe can try any number of the tw mods there are for him to say he has played most of them-- and there's a big difference. in tw, you build up your economy to buy some troops, and when you're ready to battle you'd have a fair chance of victory--the more warriors (of whatever kind) in relation to the enemy, the bigger is your propensity of winning in combat and at the same time you could suffer less casualties. in civ, you build up your economy to buy some troops and when you think you've enough and start to do battle--why the troops that you have fight one after the other and not all together as a team they slug it out in individual combat until one or the other "dies," then it's the turn of the next individual, etc., until either you or the enemy runs out of troops! in tw, you have a general or family member, you can develop him to be a tyrant or a benevolent ruler; in civ, you unrealistically shift government styles from monarchy to communism or fascism to democracy or whatever else (this won't happen to ANY kind of real-world people who have cultural sentiments, traditions, family ties, etc.) so, my point is--for me, there is no comparison between tw and civ, as there is nothing in common between fantasy and the real world.
but oh, of course, i DO play quite a number of civgames, and continue to do so--only i don't feel it's anything real, and i don't play civ for a substantial length of time. in fact, i feel the AGE OF EMPIRES games would be more realistic-feeling for me, than civ is (although, get me right, i don't consider AoE to be "very" realistic," only they're that closer to being realistic games than civ games are). and, by the way, i truly appreciate Sid Meier's talents at game-making, for example his very amusing PIRATES.
Hawooh.

[Maximus The Bruce]

I played the latest Civilization games, and they beat TW to a certain extant. I think stat tracking wise, it does. But overall, with the battles and such, Total War is so much better.

[Ariovistus Maximus]

Wow; I was wondering how many guys on the forum play civ. Neat to see there are so many.

Well, campaign mode RTW, MTW, or ETW probably can't compare to Civ. I know from experience RTW doesn't even come remotely close. Civ IV especially raised the bar with the diplomatic points system. In RTW, an alliance is like a "declare war on me in 5 turns" pact. Although, that might be intentional, because diplomacy in ancient times wasn't the most honest business either. The Gauls, for instance, revolted against Rome practically every year!

Another big thing about Civ IV is you can play a lot of different ways: diplomacy, economy, technology, or warfare. RTW only gives you the warfare. All economy and diplomacy is for the purpose of making warfare easier.

And Civ has a wide range of difficulty levels, which means you will almost always have a challenging game. My first win on CivIV on Noble level was the most exciting game ever.

Plus, of course, to have the range that civ does, you would have to have a TW game that could transition between RTW, MTW, ETW, and somehow incorporate modern times. Obviously impossible.

Civ IV also mostly corrected the spearman-killing-tanks problem. :D

But needless to say, TW battles (especially rtw eb or rtr) are excellent. In Civ IV sometimes warfare became pretty monotonous (sp?): spam macemen in your key cities, move said macemen to enemy capital, capture and repeat. And I never got really good at diversifying my playingstyle. After playing basically the same game 10 times, it got kinda blah. But that was because I didn't branch out into new methods of playing.

And like Aemilius said, they aren't really comparable. Civ IV can't have the depth that RTW does, because it depicts all of human history; conversely, Rome can't have the scope and strategic gameplay of Civ.

Anyways, that was a rather cumbersome dissertation about a couple of games, but there you have it.

[ShadesWolf]

Civ was one of the first game i really got into back in the 80/90's.

I have always loved the game and the later versions. Some of sids games are my all time favourite, Pirates and Colonization spring to mind :)

However, I must say that no series of games can come anywhere close to the TW collection. I have one small fault with them though, its you have no control over where the cities are sited. This for me is a nice feature and is a very minor drawback with TW.

but apart from that TW all the way

[Mediteran]

yeah it would be nice if you could colonize in tw!

as for me, i only play tw games nowadays

[Pannonian]

I'd like to see the social engineering concept in SMAC present in more games. The switch between different societies was such an integral part of the gameplay, and the choices made it enjoyably flexible, as well as suggesting such a detailed background that inspired so many great fanfics. The unit workshop was nice too, although MOO2 did it better. Speaking of MOO2, I liked the faction attributes that started every game, and the hireable merc leaders.

[wumpus]

Civ vs. TW? You may have your own opinion, but I say there's no comparison. Civ is worlds away down there--I got almost all Civ versions (except ver 1) but I seldom play them. TW games, I play very often. That's how I enjoy TW games. And that's in the many versions and mods (like the latest AmazonTW and TroyTW). Now, maybe if you compare Civ games with Age of Empires, I'll say AOE games are slightly better than Civ; but Total War games is way, way better than AOE games. For just one point (and there are many) about it, why should I suffer to micromanage the units in Civ who are stupid in war anyway? And if I have a Phallanx unit (sic), I send it with several other units in a stack, the stupid beings would attack the enemy (or defend, for that matter) ONE UNIT AT A TIME!! You won't have that in a real battle. If I had a real army of, say, 15 Hoplite companies, of course all 15 units (except those which I'll hold in reserve) would fight at the same time. I would be a terribly idiotic general to send only one unit first, then when it has been annihilated (yes, because Civ units ARE annihilated, each in its turn), I would send my next unit alone to its death, and so on until my last company. Or the gameplay would sometimes send a cavalry unit to attack a pikeman (!?!) Or the player would have a monarchy one turn, to easily turn into some other political system the next (???) Or build a Pyramid beside the Taj Mahal surrounded by the Great Wall (??)
Well, the only reason that I still have Civ games in my PC is because I bought them, and it'd be a waste to throw them away. If somebody had given me a Civ game without cost, I would have uninstalled it long ago and threw away the install disk.
And then you say you play Civ because you have already been fed up with battles when you play TW? Well, if you don't like the battles, why not get mesmerized with a game of Zuma or Free Cell? Civ also has an element of combat in the game, doesn't it?
Be happy and have a nice day.
Hawooh.

[Aemilius Paulus]

How about Mount&Blade vs TW? Both have strategy maps and relatively large battles for their own genre. I am currently playing M&B, so I thought it would be fitting (not really) to bring this up.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

Mount & Blade is good at individual level, but it sorely lacks the kind of unit and formation work essential for a big battle, so all you have are big brawls instead.

[White_eyes:D]

I AM an accounting student for a reason...

Funny....I am too and Civilization 2...back in the day...I think it was 1998? or was it 1999? was my favorite game....problem because back then, I had never played such a complex game....Now days..(Civilization 4) after finishing said accounting courses...I feel something is wrong if there is no money-crunching

Overall, I love both games about the same....Total war series, is more battles with nice grapichics...Civilization games are more about tech races and LONG-term managing.....(I think I had one game on there, toke me about....one year to finish.... yeah...should have set that map to a large land mass...rather then a whole bunch of Islands....takes a lot longer to win if you let the Island Nations build up on World Domination...)

[Aemilius Paulus]

Hmmm, so no one cares about Mount and Blade, huh? Well, from what I observed, great amounts of people here play EU-type games (Europa Universalis, no the other EU, for all you smartasses). How about comparing EU and TW?

[johnhughthom]

Hmmm, so no one cares about Mount and Blade, huh?

Check out the Arena, there is a 50 odd page thread on Mount & Blade.