Civ II hasn’t aged particularly well, and there are a number of quirks that drive me mad these days, which is just as evident when I sit down to play Alpha Centauri that lifted a number of game rules from Civ II. But Civ II also had this nice little simplicity about it and game difficulty was evident when moving up in levels. It improved on the original Civilization in every way. Civ II also had some interesting wonders (hello Leonardo’s Workshop) and space race victory was a choice of how big to make the ship vs how fast to get to Alpha Centauri. There is a Civilization Test of Time version out too which was essentially Civilization 2.5 that is worth looking at. There was a pretty good fantasy and space game in that release that incorporated multiple worlds, and units could shift on the Z axis between worlds. Unfortunately, they changed the look of the basic Civ II game to look more darker, the art style was horribly unappealing.
Civ IV. For one, I wish people would stop trying to say “Get Civ IV then get FFH2.” While the FFH2 mod is really good, the game, with Beyond the Sword expansion alone is more than adequate to get a decent Civilization experience. The game emphasised smart gameplay. The slavery civic for instance had a whole strategy around when to whip the population to maximise production. And off the top of my head, there was a strategy that involved relying on farming everything in the early game to develop great people points and using them to push your civilization forward as opposed to a gold economy from building cottage improvements across the land. There was significant thought investment into how to best place a city in order to specialise effectively. The game severely punished major expansion and there was no point in building everything in a city. The downsides to Civ IV were the espionage system as well as the Feudal contracts that defeated Civilizations could sign. The latter created large power blocs that I didn’t really like.
Civ V - not popular on this forum, but after the first expansion that gave it some legs, then the second expansion that made me play it a lot, it became a somewhat decent game. Part of it is that Civ V has some modern trappings or features that improved the Civ franchise. For a start, I believe cities being able to defend themselves without the need for a garrison of troops was a fantastic addition to the game. The second feature was no longer needing transport ships to establish an invasion force, now units can embark straight onto the water. But the caveats with Civ V, as has been said many times, is that diplomacy is dysfunctional and the AI is a bit of an imbecile. Why I think I prefer Civ V over Civ IV these days though is that I don’t have as much time to devote to a game of Civ IV anymore. Once upon a time, a game of Civ IV could take 20-30 hours to play through because of my emphasis on playing marathon speed for a few important reasons. The primary reason was having a game with a decent early gunpowder age where musketmen and macemen stand side by side. With Civ V, the game felt much faster.
It has no idea how to achieve any of the victory conditions (except religion, which should not work against any human player)
The whole tourism system is needlessly complex so the AI is hopeless trying to be effective there.
I have no clue why it can’t achieve a space victory. Even when they’re 2 whole tech generations ahead of me and have enough production for 4 space ports, they never go beyond The Eagle has Landed. I’ve never seen any AI complete a single Mars module.
And yeah, I loved Alpha Centauri to death but there are just too many modern Civ features missing that it’s relatively unplayable today (lack of borders being the main thing).
But damn if Firaxis didn’t peak artistically with that one. The quotes, the personalities, the touches put into the narrative details, and especially the wonder movies. Why don’t they put a fraction of that effort into any newer Civ titles?
I just played my first game since playing a handful at release. It was OK. The end game was pretty dull as I was just pressing end turn to get my space parts build to launch for the victory.
I only had 1 war - I attacked Rome because I just wanted a little more land. People denounced me a bunch of times, but never declared war, even with my stiff warmonger penalty.
On the one hand I like districts and building up cities. On the other I don’t like that I can’t plan how my cities should be developed because I don’t remember what districts get bonuses in what situations, or where are the best places to build wonders with their requirements.
I’m also not a fan of the culture stuff - great works and digging up artifacts to put in museums - boring busywork. As much as I like getting to play with new systems, I’m wondering if Civ IV still holds up the best.
Still, I think I prefer this series to Endless Space.
In our MP game. Spain parked himself in a tiny bit of land between three of my cities since I was having a hard time figuring out spacing… we’ve never been friends. I attacked him before he could cause trouble up there. I’ve been declared a warmonger for around… i think we’re up to 500 years now. They don’t have a prayer taking me out. My military power is so far ahead of everyone else it’s ridiculous. For a few turns, I had a chance to declare a colonization war against England because she was two era’s behind me.
Anyway, every 10/15 rounds one to four of them denounce me… only one of them even shares the continent with me, and I have i think 10 city states under me.j
Despite all that… the thing that annoys me the most is having to go into Civ pedia constantly instead of just being able to click on the map and get what I want.
Yeah, that warmonger penalty takes a long time to go down. I’d check every once in a while and it was a couple points lower than the last time I checked.
I think I enjoyed the pre Civ V versions of Civ more because I think I spent more time taking territory. At the time I liked being at war. With the change to 1UPT, I tend to find war more of a hassle, so I do a lot more ‘end turn’ just to wait out other victory conditions. That’s not to say I didn’t hit a point in Civ IV where I did a bunch of ‘end turn’, but I think it took up less of that game than it does now.
Yeah. If you’re not going to have great core gameplay at least you should have great fluff. And the wonder movies, the leader personalities, and all that were so great in SMAC it didn’t matter if the tactical AI was only so-so. And it’s still infinitely better than the AI in Civ V and VI.
Can anyone comment on Civ V with the community patch and how competent the AI is? I am not a great strategy game player but found Civ VI fairly easy, would this present me with a greater challenge at the middle difficulty levels?
The community mod makes the Civ5 AI much, much, better! I really disliked Civ5 mostly due to the AI, and that modpack finally allowed me to enjoy the game. I had a lot of fun with it.
Historical low at the steam summer sale. Is it worth it at this point? I’ve played all the Civ games, with 4 being my favorite although 5 was also not bad.
If you put most of your current Civ playing time into 4, I’d probably pass. If you like 5 enough that you return to it often, 6 may be a nice fit for you. It adds a lot of cool features, although (as with 5) the AI isn’t really good at utilizing them.
If you don’t have XCOM 2 already, buy the bundle for only $5.84 more (note that this bundle won’t come with DLC for either game, however)
As someone who played every entry in the series (except maybe 1?), Civ 6 was the end of the line for me of the Civ series as day 1 purchases. They stumbled with Beyond Earth and stagnated with Civ 6. The AI is now officialy the nail in this game’s coffin for me.
However if I had a regular gaming group interested in mp civ 6, things may have been different. What little I played of MP yielded the best mp civ experience yet.
FWIW I was a huge fan of the innovations of 5 (hex, no stacking).
[quote=“Nihm, post:2812, topic:78555, full:true”]
As someone who played every entry in the series (except maybe 1?), Civ 6 was the end of the line for me of the Civ series as day 1 purchases. [/quote]
Same here, I’ve bought and played every one of them extensively and with 6 the series officially became dead to me.
Thirded. Civ 7 will be a wait-and-see now because of their absolute failure with Beyond Earth and the actively-stupid AI of Civ6. I don’t know know how to properly judge the features of Civ6 because of how terrible the AI is. But I’d much rather play Civ4 or Civ5.
