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a bit of balance

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: December 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm not sure I can add that much, but as a devotee of the series since its inception, I thought I'd chime in, after having played the game for a few weeks.

First, here's my experience with the technical issues: I've had none, even without the patch. Hence, I was quite surprised to find all the negative reviews here. Clearly, there were, and still are, problems. I think that posting systems is about the best that can be done for potential buyers, so here's mine: ASUS A7N8X-X, Sempron 2400+, 1.5 GB PC2700, XFX 6600GT 128MB. This system is by no means high-end, or even mid-range, except for the video card, but it has been running the game pretty much flawlessly for nearly a month. I also installed it on another A7N8X-X system, with 1 GB PC 3200 Kingston RAM, Barton 2500+, and believe it or not, an MX 440, 64 MB card. The game did not run well smoothly, but with the grapics turned down, it did run. So bottom line: I don't think it requires high-end systems, per se. It's more a matter of particular combinations. (For what it's worth, off-topic, my better system also runs the demo for AOE III flawlessly, tho' I've not purchased the game). I hope this info will help a potential buyer, because I really do think the game is worth it. (You might notice I'm an ASUS and Nvidia fan!)

Now about the game itself. If you've never played CIV, you will probably find the learning curve pretty daunting, but I think Firaxis has done a pretty good job of trying to make the game accessible. In any case, CIV is often acknowledged as one of the very best computer games/series of all time, so by all means, join the club.

If you're a long-time CIV fan (like me), then I suppose much of what you will think is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, it's a lot like CIV III, and, yes, some great things about CIV III are gone. Like others, my negatives are largely about things I miss from CIV III, not things that are wrong with CIV IV. Here's a short list:

1. The advisors: As someone below mentioned, the advice in CIV IV lacks personality.

2. Gratuitous changes in wonders and buildings: I would have preferred more wonders and buildings, while leaving many of the older ones alone.

3. Government types/revolution/anarchy/civil disorder: I may actually be the only person who LIKED civil disorder and the period of anarchy that accompanied a revolution (unless you were religious). This added dramatic turning points to the game, and made it more like "real" history. (I make this judgment as a university history professor, btw.) Changing governments was a real decision with real risks. Keeping public order, the whole purpose of "government," took some real thinking. All that is gone, and I miss it. What was problematic was how the game dealt with these events in terms of management. I wish they had fixed that problem, instead of nixing an element of the series that was there from the outset. I find the new civic system to be pretty lifeless.

4. Resource concentration: Again, let's go to the map. Oil is NOT located everywhere, nor is iron, uranium, ivory, etc. etc. The uneven distribution of resources in CIV III makes it much more historically accurate. Some of that dynamic remains, but one of the supposed selling points of CIV IV is that resources can be found pretty much all over. I think this removes a major strategic element and reduces some of the fun.

5. The tech tree: The new one is much more flexible. That's fine for getting rid of the blockages in the old system, but again, it takes some of the drama out of the game.

Now, all this said, I still like CIV IV. Played at the low difficulty levels, it might not look like much has changed or that all the strategy has been sucked out of it, but at even the level-with-the-AI difficulty setting (Noble), I think it's more "strategic" than before because the main changes actually do make the game better. Why?

1. Religion: It doesn't seem like much until you understand it, but there's a big difference between all your cities having state religion and just a few, for example.

2. Great People: Generating and using great people, as opposed to their stock appearance in CIV III, adds an important planning dimension, and it affects how you plan cities. I'd say this is by far the most imporant and best alteration.

3. The new combat/border system: It's not true that the Tank v. Spearman problem is gone, but I think it has been much alleviated. And if you are someone who tries to keep units alive instead of wasting them, then the lengthy promotion system makes for very interesting game play. I've always been much more of a builder than a fighter, but I'm actually enjoying the military part more than ever before, even defensive wars. And the open/closed borders element is a nice, realistic addition that takes away the annoying problem of the AI parading stacks of units throughout your empire.

4. The cost system: I always hated the way cities far from the center were basically worthless. Now they are not; they are just costly. Over the long haul, this has huge effects on city siting and general stategic development, and it makes the decision to seek an overseas empire a more subtle and realistic one.

5. The health system: This actually makes a lot more sense than previous versions of "growth." It reproduces the historical importance of empires (like the current U.S. one)and their access to food resources. It would be even better if rice, for example, did not grow just anywhere.

There are many other positives (the music, the "living" map), but I won't make this too much longer.

The reason I give it 4s is probably because of high expectations, and most important because to me it's now less of a historical simulation and more of just a "game." But if that's what's need to grow the fan base and keep the series going, then I say more power to Firaxis!

Civ 4 is best strategy in long while.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: December 04, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is awesome. No other word can be used. The game may have been released not quite ready just over a year ago, but a few patches and the release of the Warlords expansion disk makes this game a must have. Everyone will be able to find a level of play that is comfortable with them.

The game is very customizable, choices of maps and scenarios that come along with the game will keep you busy for a long while. Then add in all the additions made by fans of games and the fun never ends. Playing against the AI is fun and challenging. Playing multiplayer is great and also easy to do.

This game is such an upgrade over Civ 3. The graphics, the elimination of tedious chores from previous versions means more fun to play the game. The great person addition to the game adds more strategy as well. There are so many strategies and styles of play you can learn, you will want to try all civs in a game.

(STILL) a HUGE Ripoff!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 26
Date: November 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've already vented most of my spleen on the review I posted under the "pre-release" version of Civ 4, but I want to do everything in my power to get the word out to as many as possible that this game DOES NOT WORK!!! If your video card has a Radeon chip your chances are much less than 50/50 of even getting the game to load (which is where I currently am), let alone play. By the way, I have a 9600 256 mg card. The problem is NOT hardware or drivers; the problem is the terrible programing of this game.

Do yourself a favor and WAIT FOR THE PATCH (and check the "Civ Fanatics" site to make sure it works) before you purchase. Fraxis/2K has put a Beta version out in the market for us to waste our $50 on. Actually, this isn't even a Beta version yet, since Betas usually WORK...

Shame on Fraxis for relasing an unuseable program!!

ONE STEP FORWARD . . . TWO STEPS BACK

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 16 / 24
Date: June 01, 2006
Author: Amazon User

That's generally how I feel about this game overall: They made a few improvements but at the same time they neglected some aspects of the game that would have made it more playable.

PROS:

1) I love the 3D globe! Here's a feature that I was dreaming about when I played countless hours of the first Civilization game and Civilization II. It's nice to be able to see all your cities at a glance and what they are currently building, what their defense bonus is and watch your cities sprawl over the countryside.

2) No more "cavemen defeats battleship" syndrome. If you played the first Civilization, you know what I mean. Basically, the combat is more realistic when two different units fight.

3) Religion. I must admit, this added a whole new dimension to the game.

4) More automated commands that come in handy when you don't want to micromanage every little unit or city.

CONS:

1) WHERE'S THE FUN? I'm sorry, but I've played 3 or 4 complete games of Civ IV on Epic timeframe and I find myself getting bored by the year 1900 (which is when things SHOULD be getting more interesting). This boredom never happened to me with the first Civilization. Here are some possibilities why this might be:

2) If you build a city the VERY first turn it will then take you a whopping 38 TURNS to produce a "Settler" unit. But here's the kicker: 38 turns means 1500 years have elapsed. Oh PLEASE! You can't be telling me that it takes 1500 years for some cavemen to learn how to put some twig buildings together (the cast of Survivor could do better than that!). In short, EXTREMELY unrealistic unit production times.

2) In the first Civilization, I accepted the fact that each city can only work on one project at a time (build a barracks, train a diplomat, etc). But seeing as this is the FOURTH game in the series, I find it unforgivable that a city of half a million people can't MULTI-TASK (make a barracks AND train a unit at the same time, sure would be nice!).

3) The enemy AI is suspect. I remember playing Warlord difficulty in previous Civilizations and having a breeze of laying waste to my enemies. Now . . . It seems that every time I get ahead the enemy is not too far behind me or even ahead of me, technologically.

4) As a result of the long unit production times and the fact that cities can't multi-task, I found it rather pointless to build large armies (you could do it, but your cities wouldn't have any vital buildings to speak of). Therefore, combat simply wasn't fun, I was too busy building harbors and other stuff to improve my city so I could in turn improve my economy, my military . . . vicious circle.

5) I researched COMPUTERS but I couldn't go further until I researched something as ridiculous as HORSEBACK RIDING. The progression of research is deeply flawed, in my opinion.

OVERALL: One thing I'd like to add: I did not have any installation problems with this game or any other bugs or glitches--I would have rated it much lower if it did. But even being a fully-working product, this game just didn't deliver. I would get bored by the year 1900 and would start wishing I could be playing the original Civilization or the second one.

It is a buggy mess. Don't Buy It!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: November 09, 2005
Author: Amazon User

1. Most users whose computers meet the software's minimum stated requirements cannot get the game to work properly. [...] It requires a lot more ram and a much better video card than advertised to run. It either crashes or the entire map is black. No fun.

2. The tech support leaves a lot to be desired. I was told the problems I was experiencing were due to my video card, even though according to my box the game is supposed to work with GeForce 2 or better (and mine is a GeForce 4). The tech support person told me I had to buy a new graphics card. Unfortunately many people who have followed that advice wasted even more money because the game still won't work on a lot of graphics cards.

3. I just wasted $50 and have to wait until the makers of this game release patches to fix the bugs.

Do yourself a favor and wait 6 months before buying it. Buy a newer build.

A Step Backwards

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: November 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off, if this were a "normal" game, I'd probably give it three stars. But this is supposed to be the successor to the Civilization games, with the original Civilization 1 being one of the best computer games that has existed. Because of it's aspirations, and because it fails to meet them so badly, it's getting one star.

There are a lot of good ideas in the game, but ultimately they're compromised by the poor implementation of everything else. And every bit of game play is plagued by extremely bad performance, even on a fairly high end machine that runs every other game around with no problems at all.

For an example of the performance, start up a new custom game. It sits and spins for about a minute, then it says it's done. But then it sits for at least three or four minutes on that screen without moving. Finally it displays a prompt asking to play, and you click on that and then you wait another minute or two.

Likewise, loading a game takes forever and ever and ever...

I also have a big gripe about barbarians. If you don't turn them completely off, they are persistent and annoying even on the easier levels. That might be OK, but your units no longer level up for defeating barbarians beyond a couple of levels, so you don't even get rewarded for fighting them off continually.

There's also supposed to [roll over] help on all the screens, but it's missing on the configuration screens. And they're not explained at all in the manual, it just says to [roll over] them to see what they do. So you have to experiment and hope that you can figure them out. There are also a couple of adviser screens with the same problem - icons across the top with no explanation and no [roll over] help.

I went to their web site to see if they had a forum or other help explaining all these things, or maybe a patch. But you can't access the web site without Flash in your browser. I'm on a satellite hookup with limited download capacity per day, so I have to leave Flash off to keep from going over my capacity. So I can't access the web site at all - most companies provide another way to get to their content, not everyone has or wants Flash.

To summarize, I'm very disappointed and I'm very annoyed. It seems like the publisher rushed this out for Christmas without really testing or balancing things, and without finishing a lot of things either. It doesn't stand up to the its predecessors, and I'm surprised Sid Meier would let them put his name on it.

I didn't pay $40 to beta-test Civ 4

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: December 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I am angry that Firaxis released Civ 4 with so many bugs. If you buy this game expect: terrain turning pitch back, units dissapearing, and trees dissapearing.

I wish I'd have spent my $40 on a completed version of Civilization 4 rather than this beta work-in-progress mess.

LAG

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 21
Date: November 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The graphics on this game is sooo slow. My system is not great, but this it shouldnt matter for this type of game. I have a nVidia 5600 512 RAM 1.7 gig pentium, with it i've played many 1st person games with mild lag on occasion, but this games is slow everywhere.

Start off with the initial map page, move the mouse off the map and the map lags as it moves, then is slows to a stop, so i have to wait for it to stop before i click an icon. Push F1-9 for advisers and it LAGS just for the pop up screen. Sure zooming close is great for graphics but u cant plan ur stratagy for the map, zoom back and icons are so small u cant tell what they are, zoom a bit more and the icons are gone. I can barly tell a hill from a plain without rolling over it with a mouse. The information section on the bottom of the map takes up 2 much room. Lucky I have a 19 inch LCD and i still complain. Man imagin with the 17 CRTs. I have more complaints about the "map" page , but its mainly lag.

Also game interaction is bad, a lot of mouse work which is ok for the first hour, but by the 3rd hour.....Ok now the city view. First of all the buildings or units u want to build have no name under / next to the icon so u have to mouse over it or remember, also these icons are Huge and take up so much space which they could have put a name in part of the space and save space so u dont have a scoll as much. And u cant select a custom list to build, u pick 1 after its done u pick another. I think it was in Call to Power that u could make a list for the city to build. 1 more lag issue, the city map uses a white circle to represent a worker working the field of that city ( a freeking circle ) but to pick up this worker / cicle and put it down somewhere else takes a full 2 seconds due to lag ( it should be instant ).

This is a turn based game and a lot of little things to do to fine tune every aspect of ur Civilization (especialy in harder modes) , but every step takes a second for the graphics to catch up. I can care less about the graphics, i want good stratagy and good game play. There are many more game interaction problems with this game dont care to mention. Be warned about this game. I am so angy at this game for wasting my money and also for hyping me up for another legendary Civ game, guess i better stick to the REAL SID MYER games

Great game, will not work on most computers

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: December 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is a big improvement over Civ II and III. I can tell that much by playing at the lowest graphics resolution. It took me hours of fussing around just to be able to do that much. The publisher should be embarrassed that this game was released with so many bugs. So don;t buy this unless you have the latest computer and are pretty savy about the settings. It is a real shame, because I love the previous versions and I know I would love this game.

Fanboy Antarean, you got it wrong!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 19
Date: March 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love the Civ games, but I hate the companies that released this one!!
Have been playing Civ since my Amiga 500, and every one since..
Although I have a less than 6 mnth old PC, and a high spec one at that, I cannot play maps larger than "Large" for more than 20-30 turns @ a time, and forget Multiplayer...
I got this game on release date... that was more than 5 months ago...Despite all updated drivers, and the latest patch, there are still graphical glitches!!
And as for modifying ini files, Antarean, why the hell should I have to do that for???
I bought a god-damned game, why should I have to play around with SYSTEM files to make the bloody thing work??
And the patch?? The fanboys have been saying "soon" for 3 weeks now...
You don't buy a car, and then 5 months later, are still tweaking the ECU/gearbox/motor etc etc to make it drive for more than 50 Km without dying!!
Get a grip, fanboys.. Or are there Firaxis/take2 PR people lurking here??

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