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This will be a fun game...once they finish it

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 18 / 25
Date: November 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As many other reviews say, even though it has been released, this game is NOT DONE YET. I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't get crashes, but:

Half of the hover tips don't exist and the only documentation for these options says only "for information, read the hover tips".

The box saying how much hurrying production would cost only shows on the zoomed-out view.

The network code is trash. If ONE PERSON IN A GAME is firewalled, nobody else can join (or rejoin after a crash) unless that person leaves. They promised a "persistent turn-based server named 'Pitboss'" but cut it at the last minute for a gamespy lobby (which scrolls faster than one can click and has no ignore button for spamming idiots).

On a high-end system with graphics all the way down, it's SLOW SLOW SLOW. I lose a minimum of 10 seconds per turn to computer chugging, and on the settings most people use in multiplayer there's only 30-60 seconds per turn.

In short, DO NOT BUY THIS until 1) a patch is released and 2) people say the patch works. This has obviously been rushed to be on the shelves for the holidays and needs another 1-3 months before it is ready for release.

Very addictive, a few major bugs, but avoidable

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 19 / 27
Date: November 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Like all of Sid's games, I have that "just one more turn please before I go to bed or work" feeling. This is both good and bad. I am very happy that Sid continues to produce such immersive games despite what the rest of the greedy industry is doing: making violent console games or shipping games on PC that are half finished.

Civ4 is superb. It is 99.88% there. Most of the sequels to games leave me wanting the old days (example is Empire Earth II).
But Civ4 makes me not want to go back to CIV3. It's super.

Now here is the only bug I had. Yes, I was a little upset to see how many reviewers were saying it makes there machine crash and how they were "shelving it until a patch comes out".

I ask them - is this the only game on your machine?

See, although this game at first glance seems to be a turn based strategy game, it really is doing quite a bit beyond the scenes. For example after you load a saved game it takes a minute for the the game to "settle". You will see this as soon as the AI (computer player) takes it first turn after the save game load.
After you see this you realize it is predictable.

I have a high end system of sorts: 1Gig of RAM, P4-3ghz, Geforce 4 (256MB). Runs every game out there even shooters. This game on my machine used half of the memory: 483MB. So I believe if you have only 512MB in your machine, which is what the publisher suggests, you should stay away from 'huge' maps and limit the AT to no more than 6.

Now on my machine I turn the graphics detail to medium. I notice no difference to my eye. I turned on the "solo" checkbox so I see just one warrior on the screen not 3. (why do they show a group of warriors when there is only one?)

And it runs like a champ. Ran it so far three six-hour sessions, not a problem save one.

And its not bad. Here it is:

When a Wonder is about to be completed, SAVE. When a wonder is done the game will try to show a cutscene that for some reason stutters and jerks and starts off all purple staggered lines for some reason. Well, this wonder-completion (the Pyramids, The Great Library) always makes a short animation play. This is when my game crashes to desktop. The way to avoid it is SAVE before the wonder is completed or just learn to expect until the patch is out. IT IS THE ONLY TIME IT CRASHES.

A little humor, once I had 3 wonders all completed in the same turn. I saw the first animation, the second was jerky and I was amazed it went so far. The third animation made my system reboot! (????).

So this game is 99.998% there.

If the game publishers (Sid and the gang) could just tell us how to turn off the Wonder-completion Animation I could live with that. I don't need the animation. (And by the way my system plays DVDs and all kinds of other DirectShow or DirectX media-to-screen content). I think it is because they are trying to do the animation in a popup instead of full screen.

Thanks, Sid. Keep them coming.

Buggier than a bad case of lice.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 27
Date: November 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game may or not be good. It crashes non stop and tech support is non existant.
I build gaming computers on the side for extra $$$ trust me, my machine can handle any game I throw at it... except this one.

Do yourself a favor and do not buy this game untill they release some patches to fix the serious issues this game has.

Civilization, just a smidge short of Greatness.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: December 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First there was CIVILIZATION. A simple but suprisingly addictive game. Build a nation, conquer your peers. As you progressed, and met certain hurdles you were able to upgrade your throne room. There was some silly space program thing, but it really didn't matter because you were busy sending a fleet of B-52s to drop a little diplomacy on your neighbors.
Then came the long awaited Civilization II. Same game, with some new twist. You could tweak your governing a bit, better City Control. However my absolutely favorite thing was having my neighbors BEG me not to crush them. I really loved the begging part.
Then after a longer wait, we got Civilization III. Same game, only now you had advisors that popped in occasionaly to help you. When you met your advisaries they were animated and dressed at their level of technology. As you progress instead of a throne room, you upgraded your castle. Also you could view your city as it would look (more or less) in real life. The only real downer was when you started to nuke your neighbors everybody else would get froggy. That meant fighting everybody at once, this took quite a toll on my modern Armor.
NOW WE HAVE CIV IV. Lets take a look.
Pros:
-Great Graphics.
- LEONARD NIMOY DOES ALL THE NARRATIONS!!!!!!!!! Mr. Spock himself, how cool is that!
-Terrain is much more useful. Some mountains are impassible, making good barriers between you and others.
-Religion, still exploring the different aspects of this. So far the best thing I like about it is that any city that you have spread your religion too, you can see around it (like troop movements) and know how many units are in that city. I think that if the city next to yours is the same religion, that it makes it easier to take over.
-I have heard a lot against the interface, but I liked it. The City interface isn't as good as Civ III, but it does the job. The unit interface is very good though.
-Worker actions. I love the "Build a Road To" function. This means you don't have to micro manage workers building roads between your cities. You can also set them to work near a specific city on auto, rather than setting a worker to auto, then have him go to the other side of the map.
-Cottage/Hamlett/Village. You can build Cottages, that evolve into Hamletts, then Villages. These generate income, and productivity. Very cool, a place that normaly was dead production wise, could be made productive by building Cottages everywhere.
-Resources. There are more resources, building certain wonders makes you able to build things faster with certain materials. For instance, if you build a certain wonder that is mostly Marble. All projects that are built with marble will be built twice as fast.

CONS:
- NO PALACE OVERVIEW!! Man I loved it whenever I was allowed to upgrade my throne room or Palace. It served no purpose, but it was like a little suprise treat during the game. I can't believe they did away with this Civilization main stay.
- No Advisors. After Civ III I had grown accustomed to having advisors to rely on. Now my advisors are graphs that I have to make sense of myself. I liked having the advisors pop in to tell me things during game play, even if they were a tad repetitive.
- A guy with a bow and arrow can still beat a tank. Look, I don't care if the guy with the bow is a genetic combination of Robin Hood and Rambo, you are not destroying a Abrahms Tank with a long bow.
- Can't trade Technology for resources. Often in this game, even if I own 75% of the land, the one resource I need is in somebody else's back yard. So it's time to do some Tradin' However in CIV IV you can't trade science for resources. Often these guys are desperate for science, but could care less about my resources. Probably closer to reality, but it is a royal pain.
- Mech Infantry (my favorite Unit) is now so weak that kids with rocks can defend against it. It is only a defensive unit really. Before it was an excellent quicky attack unit. Mech Infantry is an offensive unit, but they have made it a non-mobile defense unit.
- Religion, There is no way to absorb another nation that is completely converted to your religion. I was disappointed that I couldn't be Iran to the Computers's Iraq.
- Wonders have been watered down even more than they were in CIV III. I remember when building the Great Wall of China meant that nobody would attack you untill Gun Powder was made. Now in CIV IV, building wonders is mainly done for the cultural benifit.

Overall I think Civilization is one of the best game series ever made. When CIV V comes out, I'll be first in line to buy it. Civilization is addictive, and you even manage to learn a thing or two while playing it. (No really). So Civ IV gets a thumbs up. Could it have been better? Sure, but it is still one of the very best games out right now. I say buy this game.

Don't buy this game......yet

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: November 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have been an aficionado of Civ going all the way back to Civ II and this continues this continues the legacy but DO NOT BUY THIS GAME........YET

Cons: The game has crashed on me several times when either saving or autosaving. It does not autosave every turn so I have lost a few hours of gameplay already. In addition if you save over an existing file, and then it crashes, that file is corrupted and unusable anymore. Grrrrrrr. Windows seems to attribute this to a V Memory problem. The load times are also fairly long.

There are also some sounds bugs chiefly when playing the Wonder Videos (which are back after an absence in Civ III)

When it is the computers turn, I get these various error messages saying "{Blank} file could not load". Who knows what I am missing. --Also the messages go by very quickly informing you of what is going on and I have not found anyway to see a historical list.

The Civlopedia is not as organized as it should be and was in prior versions. I am stuck trying to find what I am looking for by going through unalphabetical images rather than names. The attached poster and the spiral bound guide do not have the unit information there either.

Sometimes the city adviser suggests you to build something that you have just started building in that City (although you can turn this off but you would think they would catch this in testing).

If you are not at war with someone you can sit on the same square as them. So you see your unit on top but do not realized that there are 3 other nations troops underneath you. You can see it if you highlight the box but usually I just move around

The disc that is labeled play disc is NOT the play disc.

Pros: The 3D Graphics are actually an improvement (I was worried about a 3D shift). When you zoom out it basically goes to a 2D view again if you like the old school view.

The fight scenes between units are much improved where you can actually see the units fire at and hit each other. The experience (XP) that you can use for promotions is also a nice touch.

Alliances-You can now set fixed alliances from the start of the game which is very cool. It is excellent playing a 6 on 6 on 6 game(no more than 18 players allowed)

The AI is much better and the directions spell out the advantages given to the computer on the harder levels. It is not like the old Civs where they just cheat constantly outright. The autoworker AI is much better too.

Music-Nice scores which change as time goes on an each nation has their own theme anthem.

The graphics run fine on my 3ghz machine (256 GeForce). There is some stuttering when I zoom in and zoom out.

Comparing this to Civ III, the trade is much improved and can now go by river or ocean rather than just road. Another comparison is that the tiles are now boxes rather than the parallelograms that all the other Civs were. It is a bit confusing at first but it is actually am improvement overall.

They also fixed the very annoying trespassing component that existed in Civ III. The computer will not trespass at all unless you allow them (or are at war of course). No more spending every turn kicking people out of you territory.

Bottom line is this game is in desperate need of patching and to buy it now would mean you are a glutton for punishment. In 6 months I will probably rate this a 5 star game as they are know for releasing plenty of patches after a game is shipped.

Not as good as previous titles

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 16
Date: November 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've been looking forward to this game. I've played all the previous Civ titles and expansions so I had high hopes for this one. Most of these were not lived up to. First, 3D graphics are nice, but they do not make a game, and in some cases they make it worse. In Civ 4 the maps do look nice, but many of the units are downright cheesy (tanks for example). The combat system is also more-or-less the same as every previous title. Sure, they've added a new experience system to units, but actual combat goes the same. This was fine back in Civ I. I was hoping for more by Civ 4... The other big pain with 3D graphics is that they are resource and computer intensive. As numerous other reviewers have said, Civ 4 is buggy and slows your computer. I have a fast and current computer and still have some troubles with Civ 4. Bleck. I'd rather be playing the game than troubleshooting it.

Second, gripe. Diplomacy isn't much fun. They have made it possible to form longer lasting alliances, they've added religious favoritism to the mix, and they have fixed some of the exploits from earlier games, but they haven't done much to make this exicting. It is mostly just the same old Civ, with if anything fewer options. Also no more advisors.

Third, gripe. The techs play through too fast. At many point you will find a unit made obsolete after only producing a few. It really feels like the game plays too short. In Civ 3 one looked forward to teching to swordsman or knights or tanks and then running a little war. No more. By the time you have 5 tanks built they are obsolete. Ho hum.

I find it hard to believe after all the countless hours (weeks? months? years?) I've soaked into previous Civ installments, but I find this version boring. Doubt it will stay on my computer longer than a month.

Enough griping though. The game is playable (on some computers?) and is probably still cheap fun at $50. Just a bit underwhelming for someone who hoped for so much more from Civ.

Ever Dreamed You Were Trying to Run in Quicksand?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: November 14, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you were trying to run in quicksand? Or trying to run while stuck in mud, or in waist-high water? That's exactly what trying to play Civ IV is like.

It's as much fun as prior editions of Civ, but not more. Essentially what they've done is bog the game down with excessive cutesy-pie 3D graphics, rather than advancing the gameplay. And I'm getting really sick of Leonard Nimoy's voice-over.

The game has never actually crashed or locked up on my computer, as it has for others. (My computer exceeds Civ IV's requirements.) But after twenty or thirty minutes of gameplay, when the map gets more complicated and more and more stuff gets built by the various civilizations,it gets so bog slow that I generally bail out and surf the internet instead. We had better get word of a patch very, very soon.

Perhaps it will take a class action lawsuit to get game software companies from releasing unfinished titles such as this one. Aren't they, like, *ahem*, taking our money and giving us a broken product? Any attorneys in the audience?

All frustration, no fun

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 18
Date: December 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game a few weeks before Thanksgiving and have not been able to complete a game at any of the more advanced levels since. THIS GAME IS UNPLAYABLE.

This version was rushed to market, is full of bugs and glitches, and will only deliver FRUSTRATION, not fun. If you are confused by some of these reviews, check out any of the Civilization fan sites and read the message boards:

-- http://www.civfanatics.com/
-- http://www.1bcciv.com/
-- http://www.apolyton.net/

In addition to explaining the fun of the Civilization franchise, they clearly discuss why you should NOT buy this version and wait for Firaxis and 2K to come out with a complete product.

My machine is a Pentium 4, 3.3GHz, 1024 MB RAM (76% unutilized), GeForce 6600, 256 RAM, 40 GB free on C: drive -- WELL ABOVE the "Recommended" system design -- yet this program still freezes, displays random blocks of color or blanks, and eventually crashes to desktop.

The fan sites are full of horror stories with folks tweaking .INI files, overclocking video cards, trialing 4 and 5 generations of video drivers, changing screen resolution, etc., etc., in an effort to get this game to work. Do you really have to be a gaming programmer or electrical engineer just to play the game???? All frustration, no fun.

For experienced Civ fans, Civ IV is a radical departure from past versions and has a completely new interface. There are many new variations to try and paths to explore. In the early stages of the game it is as much fun as all previous versions and just as addictive. (Now they give you a clock and alarm feature so you can get to sleep!) However, you never know how well your strategy is, because the game can never be completed.

Civilization is clearly one of the great game franchises out there, along with the likes of Sims and Grand Theft Auto, with a huge embedded fan base. There are legions of loyal fans that will keep this title a million-plus seller for as long as they can keep improving it. That is what makes this version of the game SO frustrating. There's no improvement.

Save your money and wait for Firaxis and 2K to get their act together and solve the glitches with this game. With huge numbers of fans screaming, hopefully it won't take too long.

Unless you like frustration...............

Two steps forwards, three leaps backwards

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 15 / 20
Date: November 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I can't say a lot more than what has already been said. My sincere hope was that Civ IV would be an evolution of Civ III, but they have tampered too much with the good, made some bad choices, and some downright ugly changes.

The good: The graphics are sensational. The landscape has a nice 3D feel too it, and looks much more realistic than Civ III. They use a lot more color and shading for enhanced realism. I like the non-deterministic aspect of goverment types. You can custom build your government type using different combinations of civics. It is also nice that it takes only 1 turn of anarchy for a government change, so you don't languish 8 turns for the duration in Civ III, unless you had the religous civilization trait. I really like the fact that the barbarians aren't just mindless drones that attack relentlessly with no hope of victory, and the fact that they can actually build cities and gain advances the same as human and AI players. They will also conquer cities instead of simply trashing them and stealing gold. Troop promotion is a nice improvement over the conscript/regular/veteran/elite levels of the old. The best part is that the promotions are not lost when the unit is upgraded. The nicest overall improvement is that the play level is more balanced, so you don't go right from a setting where you would totally totally dominate the AI to one where you would be dominated by the AI.

The bad: Some of the animations are downright cartoonish, specifically naval movements. The effect is analogous to the USS Enterprise going into and coming out of warp 9 in one second. There are a lot more wonders than Civ III, but some of the best ones are missing completely, or have a less consqeuential effect. For example, gone are The Statue of Zeus and and Knights Templar. They were of tremendous military benefit early in the game. Also gone are great wonders such as Leonardo's Workshop and Smith's Trading Company which were invaluable monetarily with cheaper unit upgrades and reducing maintenance costs. The military advisor is completely worthless. In Civ III, you could view your units by city or type, and you could simply upgrade or activate them from that screen, but now you have to zoom to the unit and do all that one by one. Also missing is the input of the foreign advisor during negotioations where he would tell you how likely you are to put forward an acceptable trade. Instead, it's ceaseless trial and error unless you propose a "what would it take for " trade. There are many, many other negatives, too numerous to mention.

The ugly: They have taken out some of the BEST miliatry features of Civ III. What happened to armies? I used to fall over myself to do some early combat to create a great leader to build an army, but that doesn't seem to be an option here. Where are the TOW infantry or guerilla units? There are no air drop units (paratroopers, transport helicopters) in this game. How can you have proper combat without dropping paratroopers or other non-mechanized unites from helicopters behind enemy lines? What happened to the nuclear submarine with tactical nuke capability? Why take out the Aegis Cruiser? It's odd to have nothing but battleships and destroyers in modern naval warfare. Also missing is the cruise missle. I sure hope they add these back in with an expansion pack. If you try to play a "huge" world, good luck! It takes minutes to load and the game play speed & response degenerates to the point where you just have to stop after a few hours. I run a 2.4 GHz Athlon XP with 2GB RAM, and Nvidia 6800 video, so far be it from state of the art, it's not exactly a minimum specification system. I won't even get into the whole compatability debate, as it is well covered.

My sense is that if Civ IV is your first foray into the series, you are likely to love just about everything about this edition so long as you can run it effectively on your system. However, if you're a Civ III or earlier junkie, I think the annoyances will wear you down. I played this for about 3 weeks, and went right back to Civ III, inferior graphics and all. If only they had reworked the Civ III graphics and called that Civ IV, I would have gladly paid $50 for it, and given it a double five-star rating.

Don't buy it for Christmas...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: November 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

...unless you want a disappointed or even angry relative.

This game works very well on my machine. I have not had any of the loading and playing problems that other people have experienced. My problem: game-play balancing and re-loading time.

Game-play: the "evenly balanced" setting is called Noble in Civ IV. Yet it corresponds more closely to, say, the King or even Emperor level in Civ II, for example. You are supposed to be evenly matched against the AI. Yet, the barbarians are relentless (building huge quanties of military units, far faster than you can do) and advance in technology at least as fast as you do. Wave after wave of barbarian tribes start to hit you after you have about three cities established. You absolutely cannot send a settler out without military protection (the AI will sense the lack and send barbarians against you). You are hard-pressed to build beyond five or so cities. If you have chosen to have few AI civilizations on your map, you may never get a chance to meet them. This is *not fun*.

There is also no facility for weakening an overly strong barbarian onslaught (in Civ II, there was the option to tone it down in the custom settings). Your only choice is to turn it off, which is *not fun*. Oh, yes, you can play at a lower level, but then in every other respect of the game you will be treated with kid gloves. More *not fun*.

Re-load times: I could live with the not fun game-play if I was free to reload whenever something bad happens. This is how you learn the sometimes awful quirks of any game and eventually start having fun. Unfortunately, Civ IV actively discourages this strategy by (I believe, artificially) slowing the re-load time to over four minutes. It takes more than a minute just to get the sound files back on! I have never played a game that was anywhere this slow on any typical machine. I have been playing all kinds of games for about 11 years now. Over four minutes is simply...not a valid release of a game. It is very much *not fun*.

Clearly, they were either in a rush to get it out the door for Christmas, or, perhaps, were simply very misguided in their design philosophy. I suggest waiting until after Christmas (there are other games in the Universe) to get it. Perhaps they will release a version that addresses these problems.

As for the patch? It doesn't work (and least it didn't for me). It corrupted my good install of Civ IV and I had to restore WinXP to before the patch. These people really are having problems.

Too bad because the graphics and many elements of the game are top-notch. I feel sad for them. I feel sad for my 80 bucks, too. Wasting money is *not fun*.

Don't buy it yet.

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