3997

Okay @SorenJohnson that was great. :)

I think I need to fire them both back up. Other than religion I don’t really remember at this point the major differences beyond 2d -> 3d.

3998

I can see an argument for any other (even VI), but who has III as a favorite? Is Nichols savvy enough to know he’s trolling here?

3999

From the sounds of it he didn’t have a problem with 4, it just didn’t have the long term 1 more turn feeling for him.

4000

Tom Nichols doesn’t recognize the genius of Civ IV? What kind of filthy casual praises III as the pinnacle of the series? He’s dead to me now.

-Tom

4001

Yeah, it looks as though he has an off by one error. Which means it’s probably best if we keep him away from the nuclear codes just in case of integer underflow.

4002

Yeah, reading through his response, it seems like it was the one he spent the most time with so that’s why he has the most fondness for it. It reads like he didn’t really have the time to learn IV when it came out, so that’s why he never took to it. Which, fair enough.

4003

Mourn for me, oh forum, for 'twas civ 5 that was my first ever civ.

4004

Is there a version of 4 that works on a Mac with Catalina or later?

4005

I still have a soft spot for 3 and I see it as the culmination of the first two games. If I go back and play it it’s for nostalgia, I hate ICS too much to play a hard game of it. The graphics on 4 are just tough for me to look past now even though it’s my favorite in the series.

4006

Civ 3 had some great ideas, but 4 really refined it all.

These days I’m inclined to think that Through The Ages is a far superior design than Civ though.

4007

I don’t remember why anymore, but I thought III was mostly a letdown after Civ II. It is probably my least favorite version.

4008

Oh no doubt. I’d pay $50 for a Civ 4 remastered.

As a competitive game telling the story of a civilization from ancient to modern times this is absolutely true. But as a single player experience, it doesn’t scratch all of the 4x itches.

4009

Even more than most computer strategy games, the Civ design has massive scalability issues. The beauty of board games is that they boil down the essential ingredients to give you varied strategies and experiences within a very limited complexity budget. TTA stretches those complexity budgets to the limits of what is possible in a non-computerized game, but still abstracts over the things that simply don’t scale well, like army, city and map management. It’s not a coincidence that a game such as Old World, where the original Civ IV designer attempts to improve on the Civ concept, ditches the ‘all of history’ aspect and borrows ideas from TTA.

I would like to try to create a TTA-version of Civ some day: a game with a map, but one where TTA’s abstractions help deal with the scalability (and frankly realism) issues.

4010

Quite possibly the micro-management? Corruption mechanic in particular, and was the reason why ICS dominated. The other possibility could have been the strength of getting artillery on the field, and related units which could shoot two squares away in a game that respected the stack of doom.

4011

I would be all over that.

4012

My favorite will always be 2. It’s the one I spent the most time with and have the fondest memories of.

4013

I can still remember my first time playing both Civ 1 and Civ 2. I don’t have those memories for the rest, so yeah, I still have all kinds of nostalgia for the early games.

4014

Civ 3 was my first Civ and in some ways it did things more interestingly (if not better), but when I tried playing it again it was too obsolete at this point.

Honestly Civ 3 players should probably move to Civ 5 even though they’re completely different macro strategies. Civ 4 players should probably go to 6, though I feel 6 has got its head far too up its own game.

4015

Why do you hate Civ4 players?

4016

Heh. I’ll admit that Civ 6 is a “deeper” game than 5, as 5 has lots of issues. But the early game for 5 is just so much more engaging. Of course i don’t think i’ve ever actually finished a game of 5 because its late game is so mediocre…

None of the games really match Civ 4 as a robust product, but Civ 4 had the advantage of unit stacking, which is a much, much easier problem for the AI to solve (literally, just put everything on the sandwich).