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The best Civ game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 35 / 173
Date: October 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is the best Civilization game. It has a very good multiplayer component, as it was designed from the start as a multiplayer game.
It is much tougher this time to expand your civilization. It's the best civ game I've ever played. I would recommend it to anyone.

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 542 / 604
Date: October 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you’ve never played Sid Meier’s Civilization and are thinking about buying for the first time, I recommend you read some of the reviews from the previous version Civilization III to get a glimpse of how exciting and breath-taking this game, its concept, and artificial intelligence truly are. If you’re a veteran at Civ, THEN LISTEN UP!!!

I ripped open this package as soon as I got it, told my friends & family not to talk to me until Thanksgiving, and basically put my life on hold.

Right from the opening, you are blown away by the higher-grade graphics, details, sounds, and more lively persona of the game. Although many game elements have changed, you will not need to read the manual (who does?) to play. Right away you’ll figure out the new console and controls. Starting off, you choose map style, map size, climate, sea level, and the civ – just like Civ III. These are the civs you can play for now (I’m sure there’ll be expansion packs later):

Americans
Arabians
Aztecs
Chinese
Egyptians
English
French
Germans
Greeks
Incans
Indians
Japanese
Malinese
Mongolians
Persians
Romans
Russians
Spanish

Unlike Civ III, most of these civs have two leaders that you can choose, which allow another dimension of play. The movements and landscape are incredibly better with 3-D effects that are more colorful. Even down to the borders of the countries, the lines are more creatively contoured.

It’s harder to over-expand or quickly expand your cities. In Civ III if you were Chinese, you could beat everyone virtually by getting your population to the point of overwhelming others in production capacity, units, and wealth. Therefore, you have to be more judicious with each city’s focus, research, and commitments.

There no longer is a government angle like democracy, fascism, or monarchy. You achieve the governments as part of your research toward civic choices. Similarly, you research pacifism to get towards one of the religions. The religions seem to play a much more incorporated component to the game, but a subtle. The religions are: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism. So, for example (and I apologize that this isn’t politically correct), if Christian Napoleon fights the Persians with Islam, there seems to be a slight difference than Christian Napoleon fights the Taoist Persians, to the extent that religion plays a role. I've tried that combo a few times and continue to get similar statistically significant results. However, certainly for those civs that are keen on religion, you’d better go for it asap!

New military units are all over the place. I played Americans my last time and I noticed the Navy SEAL. That was pretty cool. Also units can now be promoted so their attack rate or defense can be incrementally improved over time. Figure a swordsman beating a Navy SEAL? Also, there are less worries about micromanaging the Workers.

Overall, the game speed is about 2X faster. In other words, what took me 6hrs to achieve in Civ III takes around 3hrs. That makes it more intense playing. You’d better keep you eye on everything.

In short, Fireaxis has done an incredible job. Hands down, the best game ever (ever). Sid Meier, if you’re reading this, you are absolutely a master game developer and please NEVER retire!

Absolutely Awesome

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 43 / 54
Date: October 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Wow. That's really the only word to describe Civ 4. The graphics are amazing and if you were lucky enough to get the collector's edition as I was with the soundtrack CD it's terrific. The game designers, with input from a number of fan-created websites, have made some major changes to the game and most are for the better. Here are some of the changes / additions:

First, if you loved the micromanaging of the first three you will be disappointed here. The monotonous game turns, especially with workers, late in your civilization are gone. Many units have much stronger automation capabilities allowing you to focus on whatever you personally enjoy about the game. Workers also have more things to do than just create farms, mine or cleanup.

Second, researching has been sped up and fragmented into smaller discoveries rather than having to wait hours for a big dicovery to move your civlization forward.

Third, the game has a great narration by Leonard Nimoy. I can see where that might get annoying two or three years from now, but his voice is a perfect addition to the game.

Fourth, the etched in stone government structures are gone and have been replaced by smaller changes you can make in how your civilization is run. You can pick your nation's religion while remaining a representative state or have no religion in your depotism. The choice is now yours.

Fifth, an absolutely brilliant soundtrack. We're talking Grammy-worthy music throughout. Not only does each civlization have its own music, but most of the leaders have their own theme. The real find here, though, is Baba Yet, the African choral main menu theme.

Sixth, a much better battle system. That warrior isn't going to take down a tank anymore. The damage levels are calculated at a much more realistic rate.

My favorite change: for some civilizations you can now pick your leader! No longer are you bound by Abe Lincoln for the American empire, instead you are allowed to choose between Franklin D. Roosevelt and George Washington, with each cilivilzation's leader possessing different attributes that will benefit his or her nation. Picking your leader will impact how your nation grows and advances.

There are many more changes, but the best way to experience them is to play the game and get a feel for it. This is by far the best Civilization yet and well worth the money.

I would be remiss if I did not address a complaint many people have raised about the game: the system requirements. One big problem with system requirements is no one reads them and then blames the manufacturer for not telling them. You HAVE to have a good video card. This is not an option for Civ 4, it is a REQUIREMENT. If you don't, the game will crash on you because it needs a tremendous amount of video memory. If you don't have a 128 MB video card or a Direct 7.0 sound card wait until you do before getting the game.

Civ 4 does not dissapoint

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 35 / 47
Date: October 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I'm not gonna take all night writing a review because i need to get some work done so i can play again. So basically this game expands all of the previous Civ concepts and adds awesome new ones. Everything is better looking and easier to use. Simply placing the cursor over anything tells you what you need to know. A new concept knows as civics allows the player to adjust the government, legal system, labor system, economy, and religion of your civ... and it only gets better from there. Combat systems are easier and more realistic in nature (no more spearman damaging a tank). Combat upgrades allow you to groom specialized units (i.e. +25% when seiging cities, +10% strength). Countless adjustments have been made to increase the relevance of alliances. This game has too much to list. I'm a poor college student and even i can afford the $50 release date cost, and it was worth it.

One gripe, and the reason for 4 stars instead of 5: This game badly needs a patch. It has crashed 5 times already in a 5 hour period... it could be my comp, but it happens the same way each time. No other game or program I own causes fatal system errors like this.

Check Your Hardware.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 67
Date: October 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Don't be fooled. Civilization used to be a great, low-needs game that could run on every system.

Bugs are galore, landscapes and leaders won't render, and wonder movies will crash the game.

Make sure you have a souped-up desktop and CHECK THE RECOMMENDED REQUIREMENTS. Horrible job educating people about this.

Other than that, the gameplay is immersive, soundtrack is sweet, and love the new features. If only the developers and distributors were a little more conscientious in educating the consumer about the system requirements...

I'm disappointed

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 63
Date: October 27, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Civilization III is my favorite game of all time. So I admit I had high expectations for this game. I'm sorry to say I was rather disappointed. The graphics are good, but what I liked most about Civ III as compared to other similar games in the genre such as Age of Empires was the arial kingdom management and the fast pace. Compared to Civ III, the game seems much slower and heavier. It's harder to micromanage and control from the overall big picture. It also drags on my computer, which is fast and high on memory.

Best turn-based strategy game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 338 / 375
Date: October 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

If you have never played a "Civ" type game:

Civilization 4 is a turn-based strategy game - the action freezes while you decide what to do (compared to Real-Time-Strategy (RTS) games where things keep happening). Turn-based games typically offer much more depth than most RTS games, whose complexity is limited by the frantic pace of the game, and the 1-2 hour target duration of the RTS game.

People who love the Civ type games typically share two qualities. First, they are good at seeing the "big picture" - this game is more sophisticated than a game of chess, as the cause and effect of game decisions are often subtle, and not clear cut until much later. Second, the best players make a lot of good decisions, similar to an air traffic controller. You have a limited number of resources to do more things than is possible (do I build combat units to fight a war, economic structures to support me, or pursue a religious strategy at the risk of weakening my military?). The program allows you to automate a lot of decisions, but you can usually coordinate things better to your grand strategy if you do them manually (especially production decisions).

While the graphics and sound are excellent, these are not the focus of the game - instead, the entire gameplay experience is. Civ4 is extremely addictive due to the many decisions you make, and the way your decisions affect you nation (hopefully in positive ways). Civ4 is a game that is fun to start and restart over and over looking for an "optimal strategy", although this strategy will change based on who you are (different nations have different strengths; i.e. the Mongols are better at combat, while the Egyptians are better at religious development).

If you buy one game this year, get Civ4.

For FOLLOWERS of the CIV series:

Civ4 is the best. There are a lot of changes to the game that enhance play, but don't make it more difficult to play. First, many of the things that used to waste your time are gone or reduced. For instance a city with too many unhappy people no longer goes into revolt, but just slows down. Allowing any unit to automatically explore makes life easier as well. Your tax rate is slightly automated, defaulting at 100% science. If you are spending money on other things, the science rate automatically goes down as needed, rather than dismantling improvements.

Civ4's developmnent of religion revolutionizes the game as much as culture did to Civ3. Religion allows cities to use specialists, which are the main way to generate leaders. These leaders can still accelerate research or wonder production, but they can also improve a city's production (production, culture and commerce). There are 7 religions, and the founder of a religion (the first to research the tech for that) gains advantages: spies in all cities with the same religion, and income from all cities with the same religion.

You no longer have settlers running through your territory towards open spaces unless you agree to "open borders". Opening your borders increases your trade, and allows you to spread religion (and vice versa). Religion provides a lot of ways to make your people happy, but it is better to use your own religion, than join someone else's.

The government changes are much more discreet - instead of 6 or 7 types of government, you have 5 areas of civics, with up to 5 selections each (which become available as you research different techs). Changing one attribute of your government requires only one turn of anarchy. If you have the techs, you can fine-tune your government: do you want to maintain more military units, or produce more culture? Would you rather trade openly with all, or refuse trade (mercantilism) and develop more specialists? The possibilities along with their development curve allow a multitude of different grand-strategies.

Combat... attacking cities can be dangerous. As a unit wins combats, it gains experience, and can gain "levels". With each level, a unit gains abilities; from +10% combat strength, to bonuses in different situations (i.e. +25% defense in a city). The effect of this makes it difficult to take more than 2-3 cities in a flurry, unless your empire is huge.

Technology advancements are more flexible. To advance, you need any one prerequisite, instead of all prerequisites. This means it is easier to focus a research strategy to an endpoint, and also easier to find an unnused tech to trade.

The diplomatic trade interface is more flexible and useful. Things the other side won't ever trade are in red, so you know not to bother. Additionally, the game tells you why your relations are at a certain point (it lists modifiers based on religion, open/closed borders, current trade agreements, any many other events). If a nation is hostile towards you, you'll know exactly why.

The one drawback of the game is the new interface. Civ3 took me about 15 minutes to feel comfortable and forget the old. Civ4 took about 2 hours (after I used the zoom-out 4 times, turned units onto solo figure, and turned on the health-bar). The payback is worth it though - the strategic component and the addiction factor are much higher than Civ3 once you get used to it.

If you enjoyed civ3, Civ4 is a mandatory purchase.

Possibly the best game ever made!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 39
Date: October 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have been a Civ since the first release in 1991. Every version has taken the game to new hights and exceded my expectations. This newest release is no exception. To all you married arm chair emperors out there- You will be up all night much more than your emperess would like.

Best Civ game yet

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 32
Date: October 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is absolutely amazing. The grahics, gameplay, and narration. It is ten times bet than the civ III. I love the reduction in mircomanagement, so much for time for expanding my empire. But the best is also my favorite, Spearmen aren't defeating Tanks anymore!!!!!!!!! The new combat system rocks. If you love startegy and don't buy this game...well, just buy the game. Its worth it

this sux

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 68
Date: October 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

big civ fan, but not so much with this version. i dont have any problems running the game. graphics are nice. i enjoyed the new combat animations, except for armored vehicles, which looked cartoonish. unit promotions were a nice touch. there is way too much going on to keep up with and the game does not keep you informed of whats happening very well. theres a small text box that reads off world events, that you'll ignore or miss 90% of whats happening. as one person stated, micromanaging is a pain at best. the biggest gripe is that the game has an entirley different feel from all other installments, but that stems from inovations to the game. overall a few of the new features were nice, but this game is a step down from civ3, at least for me. i forced myself to complete one game. my suggestion is buy the game and have a go at it, you might like it, but there's always ebay.

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