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Addicting

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: April 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Start playing and before you know it the kids will be asleep on the couch, the pizza in the oven is burned, the dog has pooped on the carpet, and your wife is leaving you notes about needing to talk about "your relationship". Make sure you set aside 6 hours for Epic play because you wont want to stop once you start.

More addictive than heroin

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: January 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

WARNING: My relationship with my girlfriend has suffered severely as a result of this game. In the three months since buying it, I have repeatedly woken up early on weekends, stayed up late on weeknights, and ignored whatever movies/TV shows we were supposed to be watching at the time to play it. If I were single, I might never leave the house except to go to work. That said...

After a long hiatus from my addiction to strategy games, namely Civ and Master of Orion, Sid Meier has me hooked once again. I've been playing Civ since the early 90s when the first one came out. The first edition revolutionized strategy gaming forever with its creativity, scope, and variety. The second version added new layers of complexity and variety. While third added further complexity, it felt essentially like the second with better graphics and a few new, but underdeveloped game concepts. (Or maybe I just had too much of a life at the time.)

The latest Civ installment has improved upon these concepts, implemented new ones (such as Religion and Great People), dramatically improved the flow of the game, and enabled players to employ a far wider variety of strategies than in any previous edition. Each empire feels unique to a far greater extent than before. Not only are there more options in terms of what to build, but there are a wider variety of overall game strategies available depending on what the map looks like, what other empires are doing, what the strength of each individual empire is. Every military unit can be customized to serve a particular purpose as it wins battles and advances.

The one problem with the game is that my laptop was not designed to handle this level of graphics. Toward the later parts of the game, it runs so slowly, even at the lowest level of graphical detail, that I'm afraid to play in larger worlds. I've heard other people have had this problem as well. I'm considering upgrading my graphics card, but I'd rather not make the investment. (I think my girlfriend would kill me.)

Overall, this is one of the best games I've ever played, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who likes strategy games and has the patience to learn a new one.

Endless frustration

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 31
Date: February 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I've played the earlier civs and enjoyed them, but the last few are worthless. The basic levels are fine, but anything beyond that is just ridiculous. Focus on military and it beats you with other civs being more technologically advanced. Focus on science and the other civs will crush you with sheer numbers of their less advanced military force. Try to balance the two and it will engage you in wars of attrition where you spend all your resources trying to defend your territory and some other civ speeds by you in technology. Try to be nice to other civs, and trade technology or resources, and they use it to arm themselves against you. The "probability" score is meaningless (anything under 90% and you'll probably lose.) After a while, the whole tanks-losing-to-rifleman bit gets old (and yes I did apply patches.) I suppose it might be more enjoyable if I wanted to spend the next two months studying strategy guides, etc, but there are plenty of other more intersting games out there.

Civ 4 for newbies

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: September 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Civ 4 is a "conquer the world" type strategy game that can be very addictive. A previous iteration, Civ 2, was the first computer game that caused me to experience the "Just one more turn..." syndrome. Basically, that's when you promise yourself that you will stop playing after the current turn... then after the next current turn... then after the next one... and so forth. Before you know it, many many hours have passed.

The thing that hooked me in Civ 2, which is a large part of Civ 4 as well, is the technology advancement. Every so often, your civilization discovers a technology. Technologies allow you to produce better military units, better city features, more trading options, special "wonders of the world", etc. So, what you can do at first is quite limited, but you rapidly expand your options by advancing technologically. Thus, you're constantly telling yourself, "in 3 more turns, I'll discover Banking, and then my current financial woes will be a thing of the past," or, "Next turn I'll finish building the Statue of Liberty, won't my neighbors respect me then?" and the like.

Luckily, with Civ 4, they fixed some of the serious game-play issues that plagued the previous two iterations of the Civ series, Civ 3 and Civ: Call to Power. Civ 4 is a very well-balanced and fun game.

Civ 4 keeps the innovation of "resources" from Civ 3 (or maybe it was Civ: Call to Power, I get those iterations two confused). Some military units require your empire to contain, or to trade for, particular resources before they can be built. Additionally, some resources can increase your cities' happiness, or prosperity, or things like that. Some resources help you build "Wonders of the World" faster.

Civ 4 also keeps the innovation of "culture". Basically, your sphere of influence is marked on the map, and you can expand it either militarily or culturally. To pursue the cultural option, you can build buildings which promote your culture, and you can even get cities of your opponents to spontaneously convert to your culture. In Civ 4, you can even win the game by establishing three cities of "Legendary Culture"--so conquering your opponents is not the only way to victory!

Civ 4 adds a new innovation to the game: religion. Religion mostly impacts the game in two ways: (1) If your civilization has a different religion than an opponents', you won't be as liked as may otherwise be the case. That opponent may demand more trade concessions, may be more likely to declare war on your, etc. (2) A city with a religion, or with multiple religions, can build religious-type buildings, which can really help the city's culture--and hence the culture of your empire. You can wait for religion to spread spontaneously, or you can create missionaries to help the spread--to your own cities, as well as to your opponents'. It's an interesting addition to the game.

All in all, it's a very complex game. I played it for a couple of weeks before I felt like I had a good grasp of practically all the ins and outs-- and I had played all of the previous versions! But it's great fun, and well worth the time investment (well, to the extent that any computer game is, anyway).

Crashes at the worst time

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 16
Date: November 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Let me add my voice to the multitude and say this game crashes at the worst time. The frequency of crashes seems to be related to the size of the world and the number of units you have going at once, so just when the game is starting to get interesting with lots of armies moving around, it crashes to the desktop in spectacular fashion.

I'm fed up with game developers pushing crap out that doesn't work. Just by the number of people complaining about this you can tell this is something that should have been caught in testing. It takes all the fun out when you play a map for two hours and have it bomb out.

"Stunning Graphics" = Black Screen

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 19
Date: November 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have got ALL of the requirements that are listed for optimal, recommended gameplay. I can start the game, but instead of "beautiful graphics", all that appears is a black screen. I can only see the units (settler and worker), but obviously i don't know where i'm moving them to.
A lot of gamers are having these difficulties, the web is full of frustrated reports about this game right now.

What a waste of money!

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME...DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 17
Date: December 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this game for my wife for Christmas. Figuring this game would be a great "upgrade" from Civilization III, I installed the software thinking the requirements would be the same as the other three. SILLY ME!!! After spending hours on Christmas day fumbling through the user-unfriendly support website of take2, I was finally able to get hold of the manufactuer who said that it would not work because I have an Intel Graphics card. Thanks buddy. Even though Most manufactures have these cards in their computers, this company decides to take out half the market (most have Civilization I, II & III) by making a product that is not compatable. NO, I am not going to buy a new graphics card for a Dell computer that is just 6 months old. Get your sh** together take2 cuz I am taking my business somewhere else.

Hard to install, still harder to get to work!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 17
Date: September 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If I had went to the fan sites and read the fix-it list I would have never bought this game.

The recommended hardware/software requirements are the bare minimum.

Buyer Be Aware!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DOES NOT WORK!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 40
Date: December 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have played CIV since version 1.0 and have loved the game.. so as soon as the game was available at the local store I picked up the copy.. also picked up the latest and greatest video driver so i could enjoy the game...
Do not buy this game at this point!!! it does not work!!! you will end up rebooting your system after 2 or 3 moves!!!! nothing but frstration...
The game needs to be taken back to the drowing board and completely redone...

It will crash constantly and along with that crash your system ... does not matter what you do...!!!!!

Refuses to run

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 29
Date: June 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

So, I finished installing this game, but now it flat out refuses to run.

After doing a little research, I discovered that the game is purposefully designed to not work if the user has any virtual drive software on their computer. Presumably this is to ward off software copyright infringement, but in this case it is simply preventing someone from using an honest copy of the game.

Be warned! This software is purposefully crippled and may not run at all, depending on what other programs you have on your hard drive. I cannot recommend it to anyone.

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