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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!

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.

The Decline and Fall of Civilization IV

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 46 / 52
Date: November 25, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Do not believe the glowing praise of corporate shills - the marketing of this game is based on deception.

First, scroll up and look at the two pictures next to the game description; see that detailed little city? In actuality, when you play the game, this city will be smaller than a postage stamp on your screen. Wonders and buildings will appear on the map? Sure they will, but they will be a quarter the size of your units, and so small as to lose all character. That is what has progressively happened to this series: it has lost its flavor and become more bland and less grand. Maybe the genre is just tired, but more likely those who made this game have just run out of fresh ideas and are busy trying to address the micromanagement issues that have always been a problem with turned-based games. Here is a secret blockheads: people will gladly micromanage a game if the payoff is good.

But that is not what we have here. There is simply no payoff for sitting through a game of Civilization IV. So where has the payoff gone?

Wonders are still there, but they have become practically useless. Instead of a couple dozen world-changing wonders that really make a difference to you civilization (think free granary in all cities, double production/research where built), we now have six dozen wonders that give benefits like +2 to great person build rate, +1 health in city built provided availability of clams. Gone are the animations where we see a little story about the importance of the wonder couched in its historical context, now we have animations that show the wonder being constructed like a claymation tinker toy set. Get a clue: we don't build wonders for architectural aesthetics, but for the benefits they provide!

In a normal game, you simply will not be attacked by other computer players. This is fine because should you dare stop building your National Monument to Aardvarks (+10% city defense vs. burrowing mammals) and actually build military units, the computer players will surge ahead of you in all other fields and still have time to raise a massive army. The military promotions that you are promised are useless as well because you will watch your well-trained iron age legionaries that took 200 in-game years to construct be wiped out by marauding cougars.

A functioning religions system is overdue, but is so poorly implemented and has such a tacked on feel that it will basically be ignored once the religions have been discovered and your culture has a least one of its own founding. In order not to offend anyone's religious beliefs, no religion offers benefits over any other, so the only real effect of religion is that it makes people with the same religion friendlier diplomatically. Since those with close borders will often share the same faith, they won't attack each other, which leads back to the whole issue of no wars. Another hint to the designers: you didn't have to use actual world religions, you could have said: animistic, polytheistic, monotheistic, reformed, fundamentalist, meditative, and so on, then given benefits and detriments to those broad qualities of religions without offending anyone. It would also avoid the awkwardness of Saladin appearing with a Muslim crescent on his head while demanding I convert to his state religion, Buddhism.

Like most games that try to solve the micromanagement dilemma, the answer for Civilization IV is more automation. Take a lesson from the disaster called Master of Orion 3: when you make the player ancillary to the decision making process in order to facilitate your poor game design, you have failed and must start over. People don't want to play on autopilot, they are willing to manage even the most complex tasks if the reward they get gives them a feeling of satisfaction.

A note to those who already bought this product: If you are having trouble with this game, just let the computer choose what you build, what you research, where you place cities, and what improvements are built around your city; you really are not necessary anymore, you already wasted your 50$, that's all that was required of you.

A Review for Existing Civ Players

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 27 / 27
Date: November 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Civilization 3 was devastating for me personally, professionally and academically. Every game was a 24 hour commitment and it was borderline impossible to save and stop mid-game. I would go days without sleep, skip classes, nod off at work. I missed a midterm. I was a zombie, and all I could think about was getting home to finish off the French.

Apparently Sid et al. recognized that their game was ruining lives and worked hard to make the game more time managable. Unfortunately, this is by far the biggest change in gameplay between Civs 3 and 4.

Whereas a game of Civ 3 rarely clocked in at under 20 hours, I completed a NORMAL length timed victory of Civ 4 in just under 6 hours! I couldn't believe it. The gameplay has been severely shortened - and with disastrous consequences. For starters, to accomplish this, the maps have been greatly reduced in size. A massive part of the strategy is now "choking" enemy civs by putting up cities with impassable borders in narrow stetches of territory to stop your enemies from expanding. As such, border-negotiations are now an insanely crucial aspect of the game.

Furthermore, it now often takes hundreds of years to wage a war (or to capture one city even) making military conflict ridiculous. I often found that, between attacks, my entire army had become outdated and required replacement. The unit building to tech development ratio is incredibly off (by the time my army of Aztec Jaguars were mobilized and en route to France, I had already developed the tech for cavalry). As such, the fundamental military aspects of the game have been utterly marginalized. Culture and religion are now much more reliable ways of colonizing other civs - which, though cool-sounding, is in fact... well, boring. Twice now Ive just stopped playing because I was bored of grinding it out by building wonders and buildings for culture without any conflict for millenia. I had to wipe my hard drive to stop playing Civ 3...

There is simply too little time during each era of the game. They've essentially taken the entire structure of Civ 3, added civics and religions and crammed it all into 1/3 to 1/4 of the play time. There's no spare time to empire-build, wage war or conduct diplomacy anymore.

This may seem like a petty detail to some, but it has honestly made the game much less fun (atleast for me). The added features (which are basically: better graphics, civics and religion) are in fact all fairly insignificant, superficial tweaks that do not offset the duller, faster gameplay.

Good game - but be warned

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

I have always loved the Civ games, right from its very earliest incarnation. This is a fitting follow-up and does almost everything right. I like a really swift game so I found I had to wind down a few of the bells and whistles on the larger maps so I am not waiting too long for all the AI players to take their turns.

But here's the caveat emptor: Do not even THINK about buying this game if your PC is on the bare minimum specs. Even with 1GB of Ram, (and absolutely no other apps running), a spiffy quality 256Mb video card, and the latest monster patch from the company, I repeatedly was maxing out my video memory when playing the "Huge" map, towards the end of the game when everyone had heaps of cities and units. The game would just shut down with an insufficient video memory error message, mid turn, no chance to save, nothing. Splat.

So I have learned from this: either go get more than 1Gb of RAM or don't even bother playing a large map during gameplay (which is a pity, as it can be a load of fun). For this reason alone I am lopping off another star from my mark.
I am not saying don't buy the game -- do -- but be warned, you may be disappointed if you don't have a high-end machine to experience it in all its glory. You have been warned.

Since writing the above I have found out the game has a "memory leak" according to Civ forums, explaining why you can start out with a hefty chunk of RAM free and end up with so little by the end of a long, bloated game -- ultimately crashing due to lack of video memory. Some enterprising technically minded gamers are even posting patches for it. Doubtlessly Firaxis et al will follow too. So it's not your machine that's lacking the specs -- it's them, sucking them all up!

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.

Wait for the patch on this and all 2K games

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 25 / 26
Date: November 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As I mentioned in my review for Civ3, I've been playing civilization in one form or another since the original game came out. Every new edition has something about it that is enjoyable, and something that you miss from previous versions.

On the whole, Civ 4 has many new and enjoyable features. Animations are nice, game play is balanced, and the AI is very good when compared to previous versions. In-game movies are back when you build a wonder, there are many options for simplifying or complicating game play based on your personal preference, and Leonard Nemoy does many of the voices on the game. New civics model lets you customize your government more than in past ones (want a government filled with god-fearing Christian communists? You can do it!), and the introduction of religion allows for some interesting subtleties...a fleet of missionaries can be as powerful, in the long run, as a fleet of battleships. When the game plays, it is a pure joy.

However, like many other reviews have noted, playing the game is an exercise in frustration. While some folks seem to have no problems, other folks have nothing but problems. My experience has been to load it on three separate machines, one with NVIDA video card, one with ATI, and one with Intel. Intel didn't work at all, really, but it should be noted that the machine barely met minimum specs. The other two machines did very well, although they were well above minimum specs with 128MB video cards, 1Gig RAM, and dual 3.2GHz and 3.0GHz processors respectfully. Also, OS was Win XP SP2 and Win XP media respectfully. Both machines had late game crashes to desktop that got worse as game complexity increased (increased number of cities, increased land improvements, increased visible map, etc), to where crashes were reliably (occurring on maps greater than standard size) every turn. Smaller maps improved performance (up to 4-5 turns before crashes) but still crashed.

All of which brings us to the take home point. Gone are the days of solid testing before a release. Understandably, games are more complex, and home computer systems provide a nearly infinite range of configurations, so a perfect game on release will probably never happen, especially when one throws in business concerns. The sin here is not that the game is full of bugs -- as noted, this is really to be expected anymore. The unforgivable sin here is the total lack of customer support (or failing that just a bit of empathy...heck, I'd settle for just a bit of respect to their customers) by 2K games. Again, as noted in this review and on many web sites, this aspect is totally lacking. Given the aforementioned conclusion that any game should be expected to ship with bugs, the expectation is that the customer service and support folks would be there for the people that spent their hard earned money on their yet-to-be fixed game.

Bottom line, save your money until the patch is out for this and all future 2K games. You can't trust the company to do right by you. However, once the patch is out, by all means buy this game!

Can anyone say RECALL?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 25 / 27
Date: November 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Someone mentioned the words "class action suit" in reference to this abominably bug-infested pupae of a game, and while I'd attest that that's going perhaps too far, I can second the sentiment, and assert myself that a "recall" might be in order.

Imagine, if you will, waiting for your dream vehicle, and while driving it home, it conks out. You call the dealer, and get no word of support or repair being forthcoming, and then are given (through secondary sources on the web) some arcanely detailed directions as to how repair your vehicle using spit and chickenwire. It is only when it conks out yet again that you realize the thing is a lemon.

The gameplay -- in between hard crashes, reboots, and meltdowns on my slightly above spec computer -- is brillant and addictive as ever. However, this product is defective, and the technical problems will drive you to frustration. I actually got it to work and have played two whole games --- maybe a total of 9 hours --- since getting it two weeks ago. The rest has been spent in repairing what it has done to my computer's memory or fiddling with reboots to get it to work. Ther ehas benn almost zeronsupport or acknowledgement of all these problems from the producers. Supposedly there will be a patch and all will be better? For now, it inevitably crashes and creates much woe. I avoided all the video card problems other users are having, but trust me they are many.

I hear it works perfectly for some. Lucky them. Will you be one???

Heavy Graphics and Buggy Code

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 27 / 31
Date: December 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I understand that support received over 5000 calls the first day that this game was release. I can well believe it from the chatter in the support forums. Even with top of the range PC's and Graphic cards, this game may not work and/or be sluggish. A fix was released (1.0.9) late in November that at least resolved some of the black screen issues.

My overall issue with the game is the extremely heavy reliance on graphics. This is a turn based game. There really is no need for all the enhanced graphics. I have set all my graphics options on low and it is still graphic heavy. I mean, do we really need to see the white rapids of the small rivers in a game like Civilization?

As others have stated, it is extremely buggy and was obviously rushed into the stores for the Christmas season. Download the demo and make sure it works on the intended PC before you buy it.. and certainly do not purchase as a gift unless you first have access to the intended PC.

Update: A major update has been released (12/21). The main focus of the update is for computers that are close to the min spec of the game requirements and also to address memory and speed issues. So far, it looks like a major improvement..

Be patient until first patch

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 40 / 53
Date: October 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Now, obviously not everybody is going to have technical difficulties with this product. However, I have a slightly older desktop computer that, when playing, produces a black map and all of the "advisors" in the game are gross floating eyeballs and mouths. The map problem, however, renders the game unplayable.

So I installed the game on my virtually new laptop; P4 3.06 GHz, 768 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 9000; etc. This yielded new problems such that the main menu to begin the game doesn't even load and, before I re-installed my video card driver, couldn't even get past the load screen. I've worked with many others on fan sites with similar and other problems. I'm sure the game is wonderful if it works (hence why I refuse to give it only 1 star -- but I can't honestly rate it higher since I can't play it).

Until a patch is released, I recommend waiting to purchase if you can stand it. Neither of my two computers could play it. No reason to waste your money until you are more guaranteed the ability to actually play it. Check out other Civ IV fansites to see the many other problems that exist.

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