ravinhood
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Joined: 10/23/2003
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Due to having friends/neighbors in the software/video/music industry I've been able to take a more hands on approach to my look at CIV IV now.
And you all know by now how critical I am about most games. heh It's shockingly amazingly good overall.
The problem many are having and I had myself was getting used to the new interface and the fact it's a whole "new" game and the icons are so small. Except for the fact it's a Civilization type game, it's not the same anymore. In fact they took some of the aspects of Alpha Centauri (Civics) and threw them into this one. I like this, you aren't just stuck being Republic or Democratic or Communistic, etc. You can mix choices from five different Civics with 5 choices in each Civic to make the type of government more to your type of play style.
The AI on it's "normal" difficulty "NOBLE" this time around if you use the advanced option of "aggressive AI" is amazingly active and good, Monarchy a level I usually easily beat in the other CIVS is very very very hard and this is with "minimal" cheating now compared to older versions. I found myself in 3 front and 4 front wars very early into the game, being able to play "ancient wars" again like in CIV I was simply great fun.
Barbarians are much tougher and appear more often and can even build up an empire if left be. Yeah, they can even become an empire. lol And if you use "Raging Barbarians" well let's just say I feel sorry for you. lol
The Diplomacy is much easier to play with now and everything is right there on the screen, so you don't have to put some CIVS in the background and bring others up to the front to ask for diplomatic trades like you had to in CIV III if you played with a lot of civs, passage (open borders, this is new), and trading technologies, etc. All of the CIVS are right there at the bottom right of the screen, small though they are you can read them if you aren't blind and just click on them and it opens up the diplomacy popup.
The AI's have a "memory" and a decent one this time around. If you are really nice to a CIV the whole game they will trade with you, open their borders and even come to your aid in times of war. And you won't believe the size of some of these AI stacks this time around. I've seen em as large as 12 units in a stack. India just pulverized the Americans with a 12 stacker of WAR ELEPHANTS (they're back!!) and Longbowmen. I didn't have enough money or anything to trade with the Americans when Peter of the Russians attacked me, but, since I was "PEACEFUL" with the Americans I asked them to help me out of the goodness of their heart and THEY DID!. Then when France attacked them and they asked me for help, I refused, lol, and they went from Peaceful to Friendly. lol
Customizing your units with this new "experience" leveling up is NEW also, you can even make "MEDIC" units this time. I'm not so sure all the choices make that much difference, I usually just took the strength bonuses, but, the city defense bonuses are nice also if you know you are going to leave a unit in a city to defend indefinitely. Archers and Artillery get a "1st strike" feature, it ain't all that, but, it makes sense, even though they still usually end up getting pulverized. heh
The trade advisor is a welcome one. Now it not only shows you which CIVS have goods/resources for trade, but, which ones they will trade to you. This makes it much easier to find the CIV that has something you want, click on their name and make the deal. Although, there are sometimes if they are Annoyed with you they may not make the trade even though it shows they will trade the item. In most cases they will trade though if they are Cautious or above.
This one supports up to 18 civs on the map at once, and this was the area with some drawbacks and where it met disapproval with me until someone directed me to the XML files. The vanilla maps are very small compared to other CIV maps past. BUT, in the XML file you can make these maps HUGE and this is what I did, I like to play HUGE PANGEA maps and made one 80x60 (I believe one can go as high as 120x80) and I played with 14 Civs, I also adjusted the amount of turns and the research times to make the game last "longer", thus, even though the vanilla game does in fact play much faster than any of the other CIV series, with just a few changes of some numbers you can play your favorite slow and long playing games. So far in my latest game I've put in over 20 hours and haven't even reached 1ad, thas the CIV games I remember. ;)
Back to the interface, everything is micro small, but, there's an icon on the main screen for everything you need information about. It's even streamlined you can click on one of your cities name boxes and then select what you want it to build without having to go inside to the main city screen.
You can click the show resources icon and it will show on the "main" map what the resources are just like in the city screen and you can tell your settlers where to settle just by seeing that and also your workers where to work and what to build.
Now, here comes some of the kickers and something many aren't pleased with, and many are. You have to research "everything" this time around, you can't trade with other civs until you research it (only thing you can do is open your borders). You can't irrigate until you research it. You can't mine until you research it, you can't build a farm until you research it. Basically if it's something you can do in the game, you can't do it until you research it. Even having to research everything though, the timeline and when you tech up is fairly on target for the "normal" game, it just doesn't take as long to tech up as it did in previous versions.
But, on the otherhand you are no longer restricted to an epoch until you complete it as the old CIVS had, you can click on the Apollo Program from the very beginning of the game and your scientists will start doing the teching right down a straight and narrow timeline directly to it. Many don't like this as well and many do. I'm iffy on it so far, it invites exploits I believe and a bunch of gamey tactics in MP.
You can no longer settler rush either, you'll be lucky to get 5 cities by 1ad in most games, unless you play on the huge Pangea maps. Of course these are vanilla games and maps and as I said you can fix this easily in the XML files. In fact, the quick and nomal game speeds are very "boring" to play for me. You spend most of your time just pressing the end turn button because there is little or nothing to do. When they said a game in 8 hours or less they weren't kidding. If you want the long slow games of the past you'll have to do a little editing. But, it's easy.
The way they stopped settler rushing is because your cities no longer keep building up in population when building a settler or worker and the cost of settlers and workers is pretty extreme at 25 and 15 turns respectively with a city size of 1, at city size 2 you might get lucky to get a 17 turn settler, mostly 20's and at city size 3 or higher of course it gets a little lower, though not that much. Also with the maps being smaller in land mass, you will encounter other civs much much faster than before, unless you get lucky and get an island of your own, then you're gonna be lucky to get 2 or 3 cities max on it. Oh you could play the 30 city game you say on a small island? HAHA NO you can't, they now charge you a "maint fee" for extra settlements after a certain amount and the futher away they are away from the capital. Some could cost you 4 or 5 maint a turn each. :)
Religion seems to be basically for another source of income and happiness overall. It also helps or hurts during diplomacy, the AI's change face depending on your religion as well as other things in the game and something else that is NEW, when you open the diplomatic screen when you mouse over their picture you can see exactly where you stand "numerically" with them whether it be positive good standing or negative bad standing. Even so, those that are furious with you, you can still bring back inline if you treat them right after you've taken half their cities. ;) That's NEW. lol
So you say you're gonna get an open border agreement and then get next to their capital and then backstab them? No you ain't. hehe When you start a war, all your units in that territory are immediately put back to the nearest friendly square and you have to march in from there, or, if you move into their territory without an open border agreement this is automatic war as well. They have done a good job of eliminating all the cheesy and exploitive tactics of players from the past.
Spearmen still beat tanks from time to time, but, surely most of you are mature enough to understand this is "numbers" behind the pretty pictures that determine the outcome, not the picture of a spearman stabbing a tank that decides. lol We all know from our early wargaming days there were those times when we just got a bad roll and lost a superior force to a weaker one, this is no different.
The 3D graphics for many is causing lag and slow down in the later game. I don't seem to have an issue with that and for the 40 hours or so I've put into the game so far I haven't encountered one bug or CTD or slowdown, etc. It's merely eye candy, it's still not really necessary, but, it is pretty. For most I believe it to be an optimization issue with their systems. My system isn't even a power machine and I have no issues, yet, people with hot rods with latest vid cards are having the most issues. lol And at launch many with an ATI card couldn't play it at all. Black screen of death and all that. They fixed that pretty quickly though.
In conclusion what I see in this CIV is a conglomeration of all the other CIVS and the player has the ability to make just about any kind of game out of it they want. Short, long, large, small with many many many options to create the kind of game each individual is looking for. The only thing will be having to get used to the smallness of the interface icons, they aren't much bigger than the font of this message in most cases. There are hotkeys though if you want to play using the keyboard like the good ole days. ;)
As much as I'm against buying repeat games at full retail prices, I'm going to break my rule on this one. It's really that different from the others and it works out of the box (amazingly for me). It gets 2 thumbs up from me (I only got 2 thumbs) lol
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