4017

I bought the frontier pass during the xmas sale…say what you will about 6, but its my go to game…we all have a go to game

and after playing a bit, the games gotten harder…NOT smarter, just harder…it may be because of all the new shiny bells but I’m having to think more

I hated 5…I never finished a game of 5 but I’ve finished 4 games of 6…that means it has held my interest all game long

4018

Similar experience here, although I normally play half a game of 6, loving the early eras but just declaring victory around the end of the industrial era and starting over.

But yeah, they have done some things to make the game a bit more challenging.

4019

Civ 3 was my first as well but I don’t have any particular fond memories of it. I would say that if you like Civ 3 then you should like Civ 4 even more. I appreciate that Civ 3 brought the series into more UI user-friendly territory which helped me wrap my brain around it. I was a fan of 1UPT but looking back I can definitely see the advantages of stacking. I wouldn’t mind seeing the next iteration going back to stacks (but perhaps not stacks of doom?) or some sort of compromise between the two. Anyways, i figure we’re probably 4 or 5 years off from a sequel, aren’t we?

4020

The release dates so far:

  1. Sep 1991
  2. Feb 1996
  3. Oct 2001
  4. Oct 2005
  5. Sep 2010
  6. Oct 2016

Remarkably consistent really, and we should be due Civ VII this year or next by this sequence. I’m not expecting it for 3 years or more though as they’re clearly trying to keep VI running rather longer with this season thing.

4021

Oh my goodness, I had no idea Civ 6 had been out for so long.

4022

I did that too. The lure of the Heroes and Legends and Secret Societies pulled me in. Heroes and Legends is fun, although they might need to tone down Sinbad.

4023

What’s the current consensus on expansions? I have the base game in my Steam library, somehow, but none of the expansions. Are they necessary?

4024

I don’t regret getting Gathering Storm. The addition of environmental effects and climate change along with revamped diplomacy made it very worthwhile. Plus, as a Canadian, I had to get it because Sir Wilfred Laurier and Canada! I did get Rise and Fall because it had Genghis Khan and I love the idea of rampaging across the world as Genghis.

From the Frontiers Pass, I do like the Heroes and Legends, as well as the Secret Societies providing an added wrinkle. I tried the Apocalypse mode but didn’t find very fun. I have not tried the Dramatic Ages mode yet mostly because I’m not a big fan of the regular ages thing introduced in Rise and Fall.

4025

That is practically my exact reasoning for getting the expansions for Civ VI, and the pass. First game I played with Gathering Storm was as Laurier/Canada. Haven’t been playing it much, though, but I’ve had a Civ installed for the last 16 years straight and know I’ll get back to it.

4026

necessary? No. If you like vanilla civ6 you’ll likely enjoy the expansions. As Bangorang2003 says above they play differently. I don’t think everybody likes all of the new additions with the frontier pass, but they are interesting changes to the game.

4027

Civ 3 was overall not good, but it made it impossible to go back to 2 after adding strategic resources.

Much like how I think Alpha Centauri still has the best aesthetics and feel, but it’s impossible to go back to a Civ game without the culture borders and having to suffer opponents plopping down cities right inside your yield areas and not being able to do anything about it short of war (although you could exploit elevation terraforming by sinking their cities).

I also have the same agonizing experience in what’s still my favorite 4X game: Imperialism 1 & 2. Both have imperfections that the other one solves, and it’s maddening they never combined the best features of both into the perfect game.

4028

Civ 3 was Soren Johnson’s testing ground for ideas, but it was half-baked. Civ 4 was pure perfection. Soren took the best ideas from Civ 3 and some of the best from Alpha Centauri and improved them.

4029

Kublai Khan, Vietnam and more next week.

Yeah, the strategic resources really changed the game for the better in a fundamental way. Plus the Diplomacy changes was the same, a fundamental change that made going back to Civ2 impossible. That was partially tied into the Strategic Resources, of course, since you could embargo civilizations together, and keep them from getting key resources.

4030

I haven’t played Civ4 enough yet to judge the gameplay, but it was a huge step down compared to Civ3 in terms of the art/look/feel/graphics. I’m glad they went back toward that type of art style for Civ5. I hope they go back to that type of art style again in Civ7.

4031

I think it looks decent. It was their first 3D strategy game and used the same engine as Pirates!. The textures and models were a bit low-res, but on the upside, it runs on a potato as a result.

4032

There was nothing wrong with it at the time, but it’s rough to look at today.

4033

One thing I completely forgot about with Civ IV was the animal barbarians in the early game. Don’t know about anyone else, but I actually liked them. It gave the early world a bit more of a wild feel to it.

And speaking of the strategic resources in Civ III, one issue that could be had with them was the awful, uneven distribution. I had maps where Oil or SRubber would have maybe one space. It did set up an interesting dynamic admittedly for warmongering.

4034

Yeah, and strategic resources were absolutely necessary in Civ III, as I recall. In Civ IV quite a few units were resourceless, in particular the most defensive units for each era. Strategics let you build units that would be good on the attack and provided discounts elsewhere. Very valuable but you weren’t out of options without them.

4035

One of my favorite Civ4 features was its modability. I loved Fall from Heaven and also had a lot of fun with the Dune mod.

4036

Civ4 has so much good stuff: the civics from Alpha Centauri; units lumped together into army stacks countered by bombarding units that hurt the whole stack; solid, transparent diplomacy; cultural borders from Civ 3; real choices w.r.t worker units; competent AI; diplomatic rifts generated by religion; city building maintenance removed and changed to a fixed per-city maintenance cost.

The only thing I think civ 4 could use is a little (but not too much) of the district system from 6. Specialization of cities is encouraged somewhat by 4 but not nearly as much as 6. With 6, the game becomes fully about the district optimization puzzle and very little about anything else.