[PC] Civilization IV

Just got this game a week ago and I can say it's probably the best Civ incarnation up to date... once you get past some of the early bugs in the first release. Either way, the options that they've put in have been pretty fun to play around with, most notably religion and Great People. It's also put a damper on some of my favorite strats from previous games like rapid expansion.

So far, I've managed to graduate up to Noble difficulty and am getting my ass handed to me by the Mali and their tech lead in the space race. At least I was able to take out the Aztecs. :P

It definitely puts the "one more turn" syndrome back in full force. What does everyone else think of this game?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It's quite addicting, though I tend to only play for 4-6 hour sessions. I've been trying multiplayer now. I haven't had much sucess in the latter.....

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Im still new to the game.. I've gotten past settler, trying the next difficutly, (warlord?) I still tend to take things slow and fall behind sometimes, (not making a new settler in time, etc..) and recenty I've been starting in some really bad locations. No resources, no workable terain... just auful stuff. And to top it all off, I get barbarian towns near me and they pillage all my stuff.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

I haven't played much Civilization IV so far, when compared to the previous incarnations anyway. And that's a good thing. Not because the game is bad, far from it, but simply because everytime I fire up a Civilization game, it'll litteraly consume days of my life at a time. This isn't such a good thing when you have other things to do. I'm actually fairly proud I didn't spend 5 days in a row playing Civilization IV during spring break.

Still, for the few games I've played, I've found it to be harder than before. That's mostly because I tend to play with "Conquest" being the only victory option enabled and it seems harder to take over the world by force now. Not only have they removed tactical nukes, one of my favorite toys in Civ3, but tanks also seem to be less effective now. Plus I seem to have trouble teching up as fast as before, and you can't completely eliminate unhappiness due to war. In the end it makes my usual "nuclear blitzkrieg" more challenging. And I just hate those gunships that keep blowing up my tanks!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I played that for a while when it first came out. Now I've switched over to Galactic Civilizations 2. While it's not as in depth as Civ IV (which isn't really a bad thing since Civ IV is very comprehensive), it's still pretty fun and it gets really involved once you play the bigger galaxies. The ship builder is awesome too.

As for Civ IV, I stopped because I could never get that good at it. I would always lose even on regular difficulty either because the other races teched too fast or because I got outproduced with regards to military and got overwhelemed. Awesome game though and I'll probably reinstall it sometime assuming Oblivion doesn't take up all my time when it comes out.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by YeOldeButchere

Still, for the few games I've played, I've found it to be harder than before. That's mostly because I tend to play with "Conquest" being the only victory option enabled and it seems harder to take over the world by force now. Not only have they removed tactical nukes, one of my favorite toys in Civ3, but tanks also seem to be less effective now. Plus I seem to have trouble teching up as fast as before, and you can't completely eliminate unhappiness due to war. In the end it makes my usual "nuclear blitzkrieg" more challenging. And I just hate those gunships that keep blowing up my tanks!

Yeah, I still have a bad habit of massing up on one type of offensive unit. It's still hard getting used to the fact that every unit seems to have a counter to it, and building one of the same unit allows the opposition to just build one unit in order to counter it really effectively.

I also find air strikes to be annoying as all hell. Nothing worse than when the computer declares war and begins sending airstrikes, destroying all of the terrain improvements that my workers have worked so hard on in order to build up.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by zzeroparticle

Yeah, I still have a bad habit of massing up on one type of offensive unit. It's still hard getting used to the fact that every unit seems to have a counter to it, and building one of the same unit allows the opposition to just build one unit in order to counter it really effectively.

I also find air strikes to be annoying as all hell. Nothing worse than when the computer declares war and begins sending airstrikes, destroying all of the terrain improvements that my workers have worked so hard on in order to build up.

Its quite possible to keep al the cpu's friendly towards you. Every so often, give each of them one of your early techs, get open border treaties going, send religion people to convert them, or adopt the same religion as them...

When they contact you and demand that you stop trading with so and so, decline but then before closing the window, give them a gift. A tech and world map if you have it.

Keeping them all pleased for friendly towards you makes winning a diplomatic victory (Through the UN) much easier. And if that doesn't work, by that time you should already have 1, if not 2 cities with legendary culture status, or close to the space race.

FELIPE NO