Is Civ 4 worth picking up?

Yes, I would suggest buying the game. I enjoyed Civ III and find Civ IV to be even better. But if you didn't like III then...

Civ 4 is an awesome game, and I'm a newbie, but it is excellent,

It was surely the leader that inspired Stardock to steal the crown.

Have a look at Civilization Fanatics website and maybe you'll be convinced.

Don't take my word, like I said, "Civ newbie" but hopefully there will be people more on ball to help you,

If you like turn based strategy then it's a high class game. One of the best.

PS, ES. posted in the time i was writing so, you proved my point.



I haven't played civ 3, so great timing,, Like i said, many more worthy opinions. lol

I'll put myself in the No camp. I've played all the games you mentioned above except EU3 and I have all the same opinions of them.

I've played every version of Civ and I find the SMAC/Civ II versions to still be the best. The game/play style things I didn't like about Civ III seemed to just get a touch worse with Civ IV...Plus it's a memory hog.

I like Civ IV. I love all games with alot of modability, allows the game to become popular from modifications as well as the original. Civfanatics.com is a good website for modifications. A new expansion pack is comming out early June, by the way: "Beyond The Sword".
I can't make a comparison from Civ II to Civ IV, never playing Civ II.
However, i've played Civ III. There are some differences, there are :
-Less units, no defense/attack just "strength". You can upgrade units from experience to get % of defence and attack, though.
-More freedom in governments. You can select up to five civics for five different sections of government. They all have pros/cons except for the starting governments which are just cheap.
-AI are more intelligent
-Less bugs. Tanks can kill spearmen   .

Too lazy to list any other changes, go to a website and find a review if you want more. I suggest you buy it if you like turnbased games, but it is a game made for multiplayer, so it can be repetitive. Although random events are added in next expansion.

Civ IV was a pretty decent game. I played it for a couple of months, then GC2 happened and it hasn't seen the light of day since   . I have II-IV and found them all worthy of the purchase. IV should be discounted by now which only sweetens the deal   

I've played Civ 2 to 4, and I wasn't very impressed with Civ 4. Its seems to be far too complex. Not only that, but the civopedia in Civ 3 was much easier to navigate, and easier to find information.

I can list other reasons, but I have better things to do than to remember a game I didn't like.

I prefer Civ 3 better, but you may want to get Civ 4 if your looking for eye candy.

Civ4 has gotten good reviews, but I lost interest pretty quickly. What was infuriating and what eventually made it selfware was its tendency to crash or simply...stop...after mid game. My PC was well within its recommended levels and the patches didn't help. Maybe I’m spoiled by games with well designed and interesting factions (SMAC/X comes to mind), but the Civ4 factions all seemed one dimensional and I had a hard time caring enough to spend the time to make the game work.

GalCiv2 is a gem by comparison to Civ4.

Hydro

I think civ 3 is better than civ 4.

Four is just eye candy and un necessary complexity.

I would reccomend to buy civ4.It is a lot better than civ3 under any point of view, warfare,diplomacy,economic model and so on.Considering that civ4 will get also a new expansion in July which expand even more gameplay you'll get probably the game which is more near to the jewel which was SMAC.

I'd go with recommend, although I would wait until the most recent expansion comes out (Beyond the Sword), as I'm sure there will be a gold edition out (with the other expansion as well).

I've played all the civs and smac, and 4 is by far the best. They stripped out the non-fun stuff (corruption anyone?) and concentrated on the good stuff (combat, resources, diplomacy). I find it hard to agree with anyone who says 4 is more complex. Sure there's more stuff, but its a whole lot easier to handle than some of 3's weirdness.

It is a memory hog, but the graphical update is worth it (zoom capabilities, on map descriptions of what cities are doing, etc). Plus it has amazing mod support and an amazing mod community. Check out Fall from Heaven II, an original fantasy TC that just has to be played.

I've enjoyed civ4 more than gc2 actually, as it seems a bit more repetitive. But I'm playing gc2 now since I got civ first

Gee, I sound like a PR guy. Hope that doesn't throw you off.

I too would recommend the game. I've played all versions of Civ and this is by far the best one. I felt the same way about Civ 3 that you did but that all changed once I started playing with version 4. It's much better than it's predecessor.

Civ3 isn't really better than civ2 by very much. However as somone who loved being able to bombard incomming enemy units with artillery in civ3, i was very dissapointed with civ4. Just try bombarding ground units outside cities in civ4 and see what happens

Did they change the game engine from 3 to 4? I tried 2, and I think 3, not sure, but I hated the game engine with a passion. Worst I've ever played.

What do you mean by game engine? If i remember correctly the AI probably dousn't put up much of a fight once you get strong in civ 2 and 3. However i will credit the AI in civ 4 as being a tough competitor right through the whole game. It is especially funny to see a stupid AI cavalry unit manage to kill one of your tanks! A bit unrealistic but it keeps you on your toes.

I was never able to get Civ 4 to run for any length of time on my PC. I finally lost interest and it is now shelfware.

From the little I played, I did not like it. I loved Civ2 and Civ3 though.

Civ4 seemed to be targeted to multiplayer - and I really don't care for multiplayer. To me, the game seemed 'dumbed' down in a lot of ways...it was smaller in scale compared to Civ3.

On the plus side, a lot of people love it. To each their own...but to be honest Civ4 left a bad taste in my mouth as far as support goes. I'll think 4 or 5 times before I ever buy another Firaxis product.

I thought Civ 4 was a pretty good game except for the memory leak. I would basically have to set the game to auto save every 3 or 4 turns because it would lock the entire computer and need to be rebooted to clear the ram.

Since then, I have 16gig of Page file and 4gigs of ram, so it doesn't really bother me now. I don't have much time so it can't fill the memory up.

Anyways, the game play was great, despite the revamp of the combat system.

Combat in Civ 4 dumb with an overcomplicated RPG-inspired "promotion" system. Apart from that its ok.

Civ IV have the same CIV II "feel" witch CIV III lacked.

CIV III was actually a quite modest and simple little game witch offered very little variety or depth.

In CIV IV matters are entirely different. Entirely and fully.
If you enjoyed CIV II then you will probably be most pleased with CIV IV.
You will have tons of options in how to deal with your empire and theese options are actually all valid and working! (compared to CIV III were you in fact had nothing beneath the clothes)
In fact, CIV IV will feel even better than CIV II as the A.I this time around is really able to play the game and thus make up for a real challenge.

In short, I have been around since the time of CIV I and can honestly say CIV IV is the best of them all while CIV III beeing the worst in the serie.

Compared to CIV II and III, CIV IV plays out a little bit differently (for instance due to changes in how combat works) so it will take some time to get used to how to use military effectively for offense and defense.

Also, since cities are more specialized and buildings less effective and more expensive, not all buildings should be built everywere witch changes the game quite a bit for the builderminded player who needs to decides what a city will be used for before starting improving it.

The changes made to how the game plays, are not all nessesary appealing the first time you play the game! Once you get used to it, however, the game will just continue to grow on you.

I bought civ4, liked it enough to recommend it, then abruptly stopped playing it. I don't recall why I stopped playing it, off hand. Maybe it just didn't have enough long lasting fun factor. One thing I disliked a lot of Civ 3 versus earlier versions was the compensatory research system where techs became cheaper and cheaper for other civs to get as more civs had the tech. While realistic, it really cut into the point of going research heavy, which was my preferred playstyle.

My biggest gripe with Civ III and IV is it's so SLOOOOOOOOOW. I can play Rise of Nations:Thrones and Patriots, and the game's over in 30 minutes. In Civ IV modern age, that's one turn. And Rise of Nations is basically a RTS version of Civ, that's all. I pounded my RoN game to bits, but Civ4 has been sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

Galciv has that same problem with being slow, but it's not as bad. You don't have to play on Gigantic/Abundant/Abundant settings all the time.

Well I dont know if someone told you this in the post but gonna say it again.
If you do like GC2 then I really recommend Civ4, its a very good game with some flaws like any other game. The only flaw in my opinion is the speed at which you go from one era to the next, never actually enjoying the eras.

Well if you plan on buying it I recommend you to quickly download the total convertion mod FFH2-Fall From Heaven 2. It is an absolutely new amazing twist to the game. Of course there are other mods that would interest you but I recommend you FFH2.

You can buy a new edition that was created some time ago that I think includes all Civ games including Civ4 and its first expansion pack.

Civ 4 is a great game. Compared to Civ 2 and Civ 3, Civ 4 got rid of some exploitable and micromanagey tactics, and replaced them with new features that allow a wide variety of different effective strategies. For example, in previous civs, to make a lot of money you'd build roads everywhere and switch to republic, but in Civ 4 there's a big debate about the relative effectiveness of specialists, cottages, trade routes, and religious shrines for making money and research. Each of these methods can be a strong way to drive your economy, even at the high levels.

I think Civ 4 and GC2 are both good in different ways. GC2 has more in-game customization, especially with the ship designer. It gives you more freedom in picking your civ's abilities, in your path through the tech tree, and in diplomacy. And GC2 makes it easier to create and control a large empire. But I think Civ 4 is balanced better, and more challenging. The rules are more restrictive, but there really aren't any easy tricks you can use to run circles around the AI; you really have to play all parts of the game well to win on the higher levels. The strategy can be subtle, but there are lots of tough decisions where each options has pros and cons and no easy answers. Civ 4 also has more potential for modding, and there are already some good mods that drastically change the game. I haven't had any technical problems since the first patch.

I play on Marathon level and with 1200 turns and it still goes by too fast. Obviously a turn based epic type game isn't for you. Alot of people like that sort of thing though.



Not even close, the two are vastly different from each other.

Different?? but they both run on computers rite? and all computers use electricity... so they must be the same rite??

hehehe, sorry, just havin a bit of sarcastic fun.