Civ 3 with expansion was the last time I spent a heavy amount of time with a Civ game, and what you describe are the thoughts I had when I tried playing Civ4. I especially hated how the graphics regressed compared to 3, and how the screen was suddenly absolutely filled with way too much information. I just couldn’t get into IV as a result. I didn’t spend much time with 5 either, but I did like that they went back to more of a Civ3 art style. At the very least a Civ game should be easy on the eyes damn it. If I’m going to spend hours upon hours with it, I want it to look pleasant.
Anyway, to me it’s like the Mario Kart series. Your favorite Mario Kart game is going to be the first one which you played with family and friends. After that, it’s just an iteration on the same theme over and over and you’ll likely never re-capture that same magic again. But that’s okay, because whatever new version of Mario Kart is out there will be the first one that someone else plays with their family or friends. It might not be for you, but that’s okay.
Same with Civ.
With that said, I did love Civilization Revolution on the xbox 360. It honestly felt like Sid got rid of the busywork and did a proper trim and had the courage to just throw a lot of the accumulated baggage away outright. It was really great as a result.
While this certainly seems true across a lot of game series, I don’t think it has to be true. Personally, I started with original Civ, loved it, loved Civ 2 even more and played it obsessively, and then loved Civ IV and played both it and eventually the Fall from Heaven mod almost as obsessively as I’d played Civ 2. So I think that later iterations can recapture the magic of earlier ones. That said, my sensibilities for “what makes Civ good?” were certainly shaped by my experiences with each of those games.
I bought Civ 1 the day it came out (and remember downloading a patch a few months later by dialing up long distance to the MicroProse BBS). Loved it. Then Civ 2 came out, and I think I put 300+ hours or more into it over the years.
Civ 3 was a bitter disappointment. Just couldn’t get into it. And then Civ 4 was a revelation. Just a magnificent piece of design all around. It felt like it was pointing in new directions while remaining a Civ game to its core.
And then Civ 5 and Civ 6 came out, and those were games that were released that people could buy and play.
I followed the same trajectory with Civ1, then Civ2, then Civ3. Though I kept going with the Civ3 expansion that made it much better, I think it was called Beyond the Sword? It really filled in the gaps and made the base Civ3 game much better. But yeah, after that I fell out of love when Civ IV came out.
But hey, can a brother get some backup on how good CivRev was for going back to basics? @Nightgaunt?
I missed Civ 1 entirely but it’s definitely funny to see others reiterating exactly my experience with the rest: 2 was amazing, 3 was so off-putting it actually lead me to discover Europa Universalis (so it’s hard to bear it too much ill will, really) and 4 back to being amazing.
Interesting, that isn’t my experience at all. Civ4 was my favorite Civ out of the six and EU4 and HOI4 have been my favorite iteration of those series. Battlefield 2142 (not 2042, the latest one) was my favorite of that franchise and that was neither the first or the last.
My nephew is 21 and he recently asked me if I’d ever played Civilization because he had just discovered and gotten into it. This, of course, made me very happy! He grew up on Minecraft and Rocket League but I think Civ VI is his first deep strategy game.
I think there’s some truth to Rock8man’s observation. The first time you experience this brilliant concept is pretty special. Of course, Mario Kart is playable by much younger gamers so its audience recycles every 7 or 8 years. Civ games need about twice that long for a new breed of strategy gamers to hatch.
You might be misremembering? The final Civ IV expansion was Beyond the Sword, the first expansion for Civ IV was Warlords. For Civ III, the two expansions were Conquests and Play the World. Beyond the Sword really did fill in the gaps with Civ IV because of its emphasis on later game units. Conquests for Civ III was fine, but nowhere near as significant as what Beyond the Sword was for Civ IV.
I do remember in Civ IV turning OFF espionage. I don’t remember how espionage worked, but I do remember it reducing my enjoyment of the game.
Also, one Civ game that doesn’t get enough love was Civ II: Test of Time. I have to say, being able to play multiple layered maps was pretty cool. Yeah, a little cumbersome, but it broke the mould of Civ a lot for its time. The art work was awful for the traditional game, but I played the heck out of the fantasty and sci-fi versions that were included with it.
Yes, sorry I got the names mixed up. I definitely meant one of the expansions for Civ3 though. It filled in the gaps of the tech tree, and post-launch they added a good Earth map, which is my favorite play to play Civ from the beginning. I always preferred it to playing a random map. I love starting as Egypt or India or America on the Earth map.
I really wish they’d do something very different to shake up the franchise a bit with Civ VII. I love what Old World did to make each turn have more potential without relying on the constant march of building, researching, and moving units around to fill in the space. They definitely need to breathe something fresh into it; after the heights of Civ IV, and even though I enjoyed Civ V & VI, it all just feels like more of the same with a new coat of paint.
I hope there will be modding potential along the lines of Civ 4. I sound like a broken record on this, but I played Far From Heaven 2 and Dune Wars (and Revival) far more than the base game + expansions.
I am not expecting much since it’s Ed Beach still in charge. I liked parts of VI a lot, but the city layout thing was so tedious it killed the game for me. They do need to do something fresh with it, but I think it’s just a big name cash grab anymore.
Always, for me. Civ IV is completely brilliant but it was one of the rare things in it I didn’t like and preferred to play without.
Sometimes I feel like the historical setting has held it back post Civ IV. Although Old World shows that there’s really a lot of room to change up the formula even in a historical setting.
The trouble is that when espionage is turned off, all your buildings that generate espionage points make culture instead, which is rather imbalancing. So I generally play with it switched on but ignoring it as far as possible. The governor does love its spy specialists though; at least great spies can become golden ages.
It was characteristic of the one disappointment in Civ IV to me: the expansions added a fair bit of bloat in terms of not particularly great systems to interact with (espionage being the worst of them), but you couldn’t just skip the expansions as they added a load of content and balance tweaks that really improved the game.
That trend has continued (but worse) in more recent Civs, and they started from a much weaker base point. The expansions also sadly didn’t do anything to fix their most glaring problem (the AI not being either competent or particularly fun to play against).
