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I wasnt enjoying much CIV III (GalCiv was much more fun)
I hope CIV IV is different
Any first impression welcome here

Did they make a demo yet?

1st Impression: Wait 6 months to buy it, it will be $29.99 or less.

I bought it without waiting for 6 month
So far I like what I see
but still some might prefer civ II to civ IV
but civ IV is definite improvemnt from civ III

I also bought shattered union-turn based panzer general feel game or advance wars in game boy advance
I dont know whether I will like it or not at the moment
It is not a wargame , or at least it seems not to be a war game to me

Just picked up Shattered Union today. It's a very, very, VERY light wargame, more like RISK than anything. I paid full price for it, and I regret that. It's not a bad game, but it's not worth full price...

I bought all of them:

my 2 cts:

Advance Wars DS - good for a few turns in your coffee break or while sitting in a bus, train... whatever. Not overly complex, but also not boring. I would buy it again

Shattered Union - worthless. I regret buying it -> Ebay

Civ 4 - performance problems, some bugs, needs some balancing - but I love it. Will buy two more copies for my family to check out the multiplayer

*edit*

The musical score of Civ 4 is fantastic!

Pop Top soft ware...
you disappointed me with Shattered union
Rail road tycoon 3 or tropico was way much better than this
I paid too the full price of it
For this I should have waited

Just got Civ4 last night. It's OK. I kinda like turn based games though.

1) The pieces blend into the map colors just a little bit too much for me, and this might lead to some eye fatigue. I only played it for 3 hours or so...

2) The AI no longer moves pieces across your border unless "at war" or "open border treaty" conditions exsist. I found it anoyying in previous games when the AI kept moving the same units in and out of my territories, and I had to eject them each turn, leading to a downward spiral in relations each and every game.

3)Graphically, the pieces and map now look a little more 3d, but can be a little more of a system hog feature. I am kinda neutral about it so far.

ORIGINAL: mlees

Just got Civ4 last night. It's OK. I kinda like turn based games though.

You saying civ 4 isn't turn based or you mean it is and you like turn based?

1) The pieces blend into the map colors just a little bit too much for me, and this might lead to some eye fatigue. I only played it for 3 hours or so...

Not good news, if theres a problem in discering things have to wonder then if it would be hard on my aged eyes..

2) The AI no longer moves pieces across your border unless "at war" or "open border treaty" conditions exsist. I found it anoyying in previous games when the AI kept moving the same units in and out of my territories, and I had to eject them each turn, leading to a downward spiral in relations each and every game.

Gee nice... You would think that they could have done same in civ 3/conquests,
that they could have even patched it so AI doesn't..

[quote
3)Graphically, the pieces and map now look a little more 3d, but can be a little more of a system hog feature. I am kinda neutral about it so far.
[/quote]


Hate system hogs...

You saying civ 4 isn't turn based or you mean it is and you like turn based?

Civ4 is a turn based game, and I prefer turn based games. Sorry for the confusion.

Some folks prefer the "Command and Conquer" style Real Time. Civ4 is not that.

Hate system hogs...

It's most noticable during the "Wonder Movies", and not so much during the regular turn play. However, the pieces have animation sequences when moving from one space to another, and when they fight. I think you can turn this off in the options menu (I haven't checked yet) to reduce system hogging and to speed up the overall time required to take your turn. For pieces that move more than a few hexes per turn, it can start to get a little tedious when a piece takes 1 1/2 to 2 seconds to move to an adjacent space.

It seems all the talk of CivIV has suddenly ended for a while. Wondering if players have got tired of it so quick?

Been playing on and off for a few days. Had a few lock ups and seems like a resource hog like the bases in WiTP. [:'(]

ORIGINAL: Pippin

It seems all the talk of CivIV has suddenly ended for a while. Wondering if players have got tired of it so quick?

Well Pippin, it's still CIV even if it does play differently somewhat from the rest. It's a welcome change from CIV III, but, it's still not all that as far as the feeling one got with the origional CIV or even CIV II.

I've gone back to playing GTA Vice City (never finished it) again, in between games of it and other games I have of course.

For anyone "new" to the series they are in for some real fun and challenge. I'd have to say this has the most challenging "options" in any of the series to date. You really can make it into the type of game you like to play from warmongering to just peaceful empire builder. But, for me, I put so many hours into CIV I & II, that III and IV just aren't different enough not to give the same feeling of basically same ole same ole. Rush to the modern age, build the spaceship and score another victory. Of course it has other victory conditions, but, the space race has always been the easiest victory condition I think.

Hows the tech tree? Anything innovative there like perhaps alternate branching, or neanderthal branches to dead end technologies. Or is it still Pike to musket to rifle to tank ... yawn.

I was not impressed with the repeat performance of the linear technology tree in CIV 3. Why couldn't we have For example: chinese fireworks + physics = rockets + flight = rocket plane (comet) There you have air power by 1800 without combustion, but the tradeoff being being the very late arrival of tanks (combustion).

Think of all the possibilities with steam leading to rail guns or parallel steam powered vehicles.
There is more examples but my point is I'd like to hear about the tech tree, I got all the previous civs including the activision ones but won't get civ 4 unless it has more cool features that sets it apart from the previous

ORIGINAL: bartholimew


Hows the tech tree?

Have you explored the "smooch-brassiere hooks-jeans zipper-lick the important stuff" line of development?

Personally, I'm really, really disappointed. Some nice ideas, especially religion but the game is very poor in comparison to CivIII and even CivII.

Some of my gripes include:

Map size. They are tiny. Even on a large map I only had room to build nine cities and the globe was mapped out in no time at all.

Game length. Finished in just a few hours. Hardly any time to appreciate some of the periods it passes through.

Graphics. Very poor. Gave me a headache too. The map is now square on which means with the zoom you end up with an overhead map which is just wierd. I thought the graphics of CivIII were much more crisp and better presented overall. And the new borders shading has to be seen to be believed.

I know some people like it and its a matter of taste but its back to CivIII for me.

I played original Civilization and then Colonization so much I got sick of it! NEVER AGAIN!

Or was it: Never say never again [8|]

ORIGINAL: bartholimew


Hows the tech tree? Anything innovative there like perhaps alternate branching, or neanderthal branches to dead end technologies. Or is it still Pike to musket to rifle to tank ... yawn.

I was not impressed with the repeat performance of the linear technology tree in CIV 3. Why couldn't we have For example: chinese fireworks + physics = rockets + flight = rocket plane (comet) There you have air power by 1800 without combustion, but the tradeoff being being the very late arrival of tanks (combustion).

Think of all the possibilities with steam leading to rail guns or parallel steam powered vehicles.
There is more examples but my point is I'd like to hear about the tech tree, I got all the previous civs including the activision ones but won't get civ 4 unless it has more cool features that sets it apart from the previous

Basically what you want is in fact in CIV IV. From the very first of the game you can click on Space Flight and the tech tree will follow the most direct path to it bypassing all the epochs (requirements of older CIVS) to get to it as quickly as possible. I really don't like this type of teching. For one thing it moves getting modern tanks etc more quicker than before, though with fewer settlements that one can get it slows it down somewhat since having 15 cities plus on regular size maps isn't really an option. There's no settler rush since there's no way to quickly build them anymore. And as was stated most maps are completely settled pretty quickly anyways since the size of them is about 1/4 what they were in previous civs.

When they said streamlined, they meant streamlined. All the ways to play the vanilla game are quick and too the point. To get the more strategic and thinking mans games out of CIV IV you will need to modify some files. It is there though, so, it's not a total loss. Just the vanilla game is geared toward the younguns, those that have short attention spans and want instant satisfaction or at least within a very minimal amount of time.

ORIGINAL: Freddy Fudpucker



Map size. They are tiny. Even on a large map I only had room to build nine cities and the globe was mapped out in no time at all.

Please check the following site:
http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4_walk_1.html

Huge terra seems to be bigger than huge map in CIV III

BTW, the web site link above was written by aka sulla
I am familiar with the name...Was he visiting matrix website?
His walkthrough of CIV IV is very interesting and well done

Saw no map's just text story/walkthrough