Sorry that its not the instantly gratifying constant slugfest that most RTS games are. This is more of a thinking mans game here and not all of it is war. You can win by many different means than just military conquest.

Set it on one of the easier levels for your first dozen games or so. That'll help throw you a curve as the computer won't attack and that sort of thing. If you start in the midlevels like most of us veteran Civers have done, the other civs will bring it to you, whether your ready or not. Once you get to that level you'll cherish and beg for all the free time you can get between wars to keep your country and your military together.

11/5/2005 9:54:32 AM

well it would help to have a really serious tutorial for the game - i can't remember if i saw one in game or not.

being completely new to the series, when I started just a pickup game, i couldnt figure out anything.

11/5/2005 10:22:37 AM

i would try clicking "Tutorial" from the main menu.

And if you want more info theres the massive manual.

11/5/2005 12:06:22 PM

i suggest reading the massive manual

11/5/2005 12:18:17 PM

Shit I have owned every game in the series and I still read the manual while I was installing and had started my first game. I skipped the tutorial, but there is one there.

11/5/2005 10:10:05 PM

I like the throwback to the original civ:


[Edited on November 6, 2005 at 5:38 PM. Reason : img]

11/6/2005 5:38:08 PM

Ok, I have a question

Civ IV or Age of Empires III, I am new to both games - which one would you reccomend and what is the major difference?

11/7/2005 3:01:25 PM

They're both entirely different games.

Personally, i like Civ IV better. AOE games have always been the typical run of the mill RTS games.

11/7/2005 3:42:56 PM

i never thought id say this

but i played that shit til like 3am

11/7/2005 3:43:27 PM

That shit is addicting as mess!!! Yay for Civ4!

11/7/2005 4:34:34 PM

Yea I ain't even gonna drop down for AOE III. I also have gotten into the doldrums with respect to RTS games. The series develops a little something new each time, but it ain't really worth it to me. This game is a huge advance over the previous version, whereas it doesn't seem like AOE3 is that big of a jump in the series.

11/7/2005 7:10:19 PM

The interface of Civ IV isn't as good as Civ III. The underlying game seems much better, but because of the 3D there is an unnecessary extra element of difficulty...

11/8/2005 9:12:51 AM

^ agreed. even on my p4 2.8/128/1gig the thing gets clunky after a while. civ3 interface was quick, if not incredibly pretty. thing I miss is the mastery of micromanagement.. I really used to whore the hell out of my cities coming up with the shields when I needed them to get those wonders built. now I have to learn a whole new city interface.

11/8/2005 9:54:36 AM

yeah the ui just makes everything feel sluggish

11/8/2005 11:23:54 AM

I can't play it anymore, swearing it off. I'd take it back if I could.

Too many rule changes, hell, too many rules/loopholes.
"Can't chain irrigation without beurocracy" what crap!
Not to mention the unit strength issues! I can no longer just look at a unit to see if I should win the battle or not, I must hover to find out which "upgrades" it has.

11/8/2005 6:14:11 PM

^I personally like the fact that they tied more of the improvements and things to new technologies. Gone are the days where you learn techs that do....absolutely nothing. I seriously hated the building block techs you had to get that when you had them, great you gain nothing from this. I think it adds a level of difficulty to the game, which I greatly enjoy.

Most the times my newer units have been able to massacre the older ones. The upgrades do help out a lot, but I like the little bit more unpredictability inherent in the new combat system. Sorta like in real war, shit happens. Sometimes you benefit, and sometimes you don't.

11/8/2005 7:58:46 PM

^^ ill take it off your hands

11/8/2005 8:09:23 PM

^ Sweet! how does $35 sound? That's $15 off the retail price ($10 off what I paid).
PM me your address and phone number and a time I can come over on most days to perform the exchange.

11/9/2005 2:39:09 AM

How is the multiplayer action?

11/11/2005 1:23:56 PM

^^^^ What I've found really useful is to turn on the health bar in the options and then use that to determine the odds in combat. When you select a unit, the health bars of all the visible enemy units will grow or shrink depending upon the various defense and upgrade multipliers (fortifications, amphibious assaults, +X% against Y, etc.). There is also a second, transparent bar tacked on after; I believe that's the bonus the unit gets for defending (and shouldn't be considered when you're planning to attack). So yeah, just pick the unit you want to use and then compare its health bar to potential targets and go from there.

The bar also shrinks as the unit's strength is weakened by continuous combat. It goes from green to yellow and red as well, making it easy to look at their strength.

I've still lost the occasional tank to a grenadier, but I've dramatically reduced the number of stupid casualties my forces suffered.

11/14/2005 3:05:56 PM

^^ Multiplayer via Gamespy over the Internet worked pretty well for me, but it starts to drag towards the endgame.

11/14/2005 3:06:36 PM

So where is the best place to buy this or is it a wash across all retailers?

11/17/2005 8:57:55 AM

crickets

11/17/2005 3:32:22 PM

I think Walmart prices are usually the best. Thats where I end up buying most of my video games.

11/17/2005 3:35:01 PM

Quote :

"Most the times my newer units have been able to massacre the older ones."

and thats how it fucking ought to be. Civ3 pissed me off with that. I'd have a fucking tank going up against a spearmen (yes, spearmen) and 9 times out of 10 the fucking spearmen would survive. I'm like RTS THAT BITCH AND RUN HIM OVER!

But yeah, the UI is a bit shoddy. It take FORever to make my building queues, and I've got a pretty decent setup, considering...

Oh, and ABANDON CITY anyone? So fucking annoying... What else... Oh, the game is too short. I must just be used to "accelerated production" from Civ3, but it just seems that when I finally get to the point where I can actually start kicking some ass, the game is already over. I might just be a bad player, but I can't seem to get enough troops to actually start wars until around the time tanks show up... It'd also be nice if the religions themselves actually had pluses and minuses like the civics do. As it stands, I can't seem to find a difference between islam and christianity as far as gameplay goes, so...

Only other thing I'd like is the ability to actually start, you know, far away from your fucking opponents. It seems like no matter the world size, the AI is always 15-20 tiles away. That always pissed me off in Civ3, too. I'd have a huge ass map (100x50 tiles or something) and I'd go out exploring and damned if the AI isn't just past the quickie mart two blocks away.

11/17/2005 5:07:14 PM

Use your experienced units for defense.
Let your green units get slaughtered, so long as there are some units left so weak that the rest of the pack can off the wounded survivors, then put them in the back of the lines so they can heal.

[Edited on November 17, 2005 at 7:29 PM. Reason : .]

11/17/2005 7:27:15 PM

Quote :

"As it stands, I can't seem to find a difference between islam and christianity as far as gameplay goes, so..."

They did that intentionally (actually wrote a paragraph in the manual about the reason why). Generally speaking, they didn't want to start ranking religions one way or the other because that would have caused neverending controversy.

11/18/2005 3:09:17 PM

^ next time just say RTFM

11/18/2005 11:21:09 PM

Holy fuck how have the rest of you not noticed this game being buggy?

It crashes once every 30 minutes or so.


I hopped out of the game quickly just now and looked at the task manager and it was using over 500mb of memory?!!?!

11/19/2005 3:06:15 PM

So it only crashes on 7 AI's with huge worlds near game end.

I wish there was a little bit more control and power over what a city builds. Like if I want to produce Modern Armor every turn I should be able to configure that. When I am going for a domination victory and have 30+ cities (going up every few turns) then I want to be able to let it run automatically and not have it produce settlers and shit.

11/21/2005 7:46:17 AM

It's disasterously buggy, but I have faith they'll fix it. Makes you rethink why the distribution was so fucked up.

11/21/2005 3:03:37 PM

Hmm.

I avoided this game but Civ III had the same issues.

11/21/2005 3:10:40 PM

http://brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=371339

12/9/2005 4:26:29 PM

hmm...interesting...I've run Civ IV for 24+ hour games without closing the program and not once has it crashed (touch wood) ever....


and i haven't run into any bugs yet (that i'm aware of)

[Edited on December 9, 2005 at 9:04 PM. Reason : fda]

12/9/2005 9:04:03 PM

Yeah, I have a lot of issues with the game crashing every time it plays an in-game video of a wonder being built. There's a few that will always crash it for me (Oracle, Space Elevator, etc), so I just don't build them

12/9/2005 11:19:07 PM

maybe its your computer

12/9/2005 11:23:40 PM

oh that actually is the only bug i have...when it plays wonder videos its a bit choppy with the sound, but the game runs perfectly fine...doesn't crash it or anything...just can't fully enjoy the wonder video.

12/9/2005 11:47:20 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, I have a lot of issues with the game crashing every time it plays an in-game video of a wonder being built. There's a few that will always crash it for me (Oracle, Space Elevator, etc), so I just don't build them"

Are you using a nVidia card? If you are, you might want to try updating your nVidia drivers. Initially, they were crashing for me as well, but when I upgraded them, they ran smoothly. I believe it is a known issue.

12/10/2005 12:13:53 AM

The gameplay has improved incredibly due to the latest patch. If you gave up on it because of its issues before I recommend you check it out. After turning everything to low and tinkering with the config file it runs pretty damn well on my 1.8ghz/32mb vid card/512 ram laptop.

1/4/2006 9:32:51 PM

Or you could just go out and do like I did, get a new computer. Athlon 3700+ with 1 gig of RAM and a Geforce 6800 GS later, and I have a lot less problems.

1/4/2006 10:50:34 PM

It's never crashed on my PC.

I'm not incredibly impressed by this one. CivIV is certainly not the huge leap foward that I thought CivIII was. It's still an awesome game, though.

1/5/2006 12:06:23 AM

I like the unit upgrades and the fact that you don't have to build settlers continuously until about 1960. I also like the way Wonders are built and that you are compensated. I have yet to master, though, "specializing" cities in a certain task such as building units or culture. I can see myself playing this game for a long time and still not mastering it. I have just moved on from Noble, which I can dominate around 75% of the games.

1/5/2006 12:14:50 AM

I can't even figure out how to manage city population. The new city mode is completely foreign; it's probably my biggest beef with Civ IV.

1/5/2006 1:45:58 AM

The more I play this game the more I like it.

2/2/2006 12:17:17 PM