Explain to me without bullshit why Civilisation IV is the 'most complex' Civ game

[machtstunt]

Civ3 has probably the most severe penalties for city spam. In Civ4 more cities just cost more money upkeep, and that you can handle. But in civ3 you get severe production penalties for city number, which makes cities after certain number nearly worthless.

After a point cities are place holders until forbidden palace and then communism. I'm too much of a casual to know the math on whether they are worth it or its better to just focus on your core cities.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

After a point cities are place holders until forbidden palace and then communism. I'm too much of a casual to know the math on whether they are worth it or its better to just focus on your core cities.

So getting round the Corruption involves both complexity and alternative game specialisations then, to which it's so complex you don't even know the extent of its worth. Is that what you're saying in the context of the thread or did you just resurrect an account/alt to post shit ratings at me?

 

[agris]

For playing a random game, not campaign, what's the best Civ4 version? Educate me please, I always used Warlords with the Blue Earth graphics mod. Not interested in the modern BTS stuff.

 

[an Administrator]

For playing a random game, not campaign, what's the best Civ4 version? Educate me please, I always used Warlords with the Blue Earth graphics mod. Not interested in the modern BTS stuff.

Beyond the Sword is cool.

 

[agris]

For playing a random game, not campaign, what's the best Civ4 version? Educate me please, I always used Warlords with the Blue Earth graphics mod. Not interested in the modern BTS stuff.

Beyond the Sword is cool.

Good to know. I need to properly dig my teeth into the 'regular' time period before jumping into industrialization tho.

 

[JarlFrank]

Civ4 is the most complex Civ game because it has the Caveman2Cosmos mod.

 

[machtstunt]

After a point cities are place holders until forbidden palace and then communism. I'm too much of a casual to know the math on whether they are worth it or its better to just focus on your core cities.

So getting round the Corruption involves both complexity and alternative game specialisations then, to which it's so complex you don't even know the extent of its worth. Is that what you're saying in the context of the thread or did you just resurrect an account/alt to post shit ratings at me?

Getting around the corruption means either stop expanding or accepting that after a certain point your extra cities are placeholders with 1 shield production until you research an advanced government, communism probably being the best for sprawling empires. Couthouses don't make a huge effect iirc. Either way it leads to a game where your only productive cities are circled around the Palace and the Forbidden Palace until later. In Civ4 it affects gold and there are more ways (options) to make extra money than there are to reduce corruption in Civ3 from my casual knowledge of Civ3. I've only began to play again in the last couple of weeks.

I'm a lurker who just pays attention to the strategy forum and I was inspired to post for the first time by your OP.

 

[Sranchammer]

Realism Invictus kicks my ass

 

[machtstunt]

For playing a random game, not campaign, what's the best Civ4 version? Educate me please, I always used Warlords with the Blue Earth graphics mod. Not interested in the modern BTS stuff.

Been a while since I've set it up but I my preference was always: BTS, espionage disabled (results in extra culture), BUG, BAT and BULL w/ Better BUG AI and the Blue Earth graphics.

 

[Snorkack]

Which stems from a Civic entitled 'Slavery Civic', which, as I have said on the other thread and will repeat here, is something you can do in previous games under certain government types, you consume city population to finish buildings and units, it's hardly revolutionary, unless there's some detail you're deliberately holding back then I'm not seeing how this make the game 'more complex' than other titles.

Overflow. Thanks to stacking overflow and production bonuses in Civ 4, you could pull of amazing gambits like building a wonder the very turn you gained the according technology.

 

[Tigranes]

So I'm sure the rest of you enjoy simulating a discussion with that 5 year old kid who says "why?" to every question, but can we instead talk about what civ 4 mods are amazing and which I should try kthx

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

dune wars revival
master of mana xtended
rise of mankind / realism invictus / a new dawn / caveman2cosmos in raising complexity/number of useless features and buildings order.

 

[baturinsky]

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhye's_and_Fall_of_Civilization

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Overflow. Thanks to stacking overflow and production bonuses in Civ 4, you could pull of amazing gambits like building a wonder the very turn you gained the according technology.

There are many ways and means to acquire a Wonder the very turn you gained the technology in previous Civ games. I get what you mean though, because it's a system which integrates a few options and gives a sense of a specialised plan then it is more complex and involves more complexity to perform something, an enhancement of a previous system. I'm happy to accept that the Slavery focus in Civ4 is a genuinely improved complexity. I don't think it's an interesting new complexity, but that's just IMO, obviously. I never pop-rush in the older games either, just one of my things.

 

[Urthor]

So I'm sure the rest of you enjoy simulating a discussion with that 5 year old kid who says "why?" to every question, but can we instead talk about what civ 4 mods are amazing and which I should try kthx

FallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeaven rest can wait for the 100+ hours you are going to invest in this

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

My main problems with Civ4 are:
- That horrible cartoony color/art scheme. Seriously, going from CivII's more somber and realistic art-style to this cartoony shit was decline.
- 3D. Do we, really, need 3D? The answer is NO!
- Its a slow game that uses way more processing power than it should, courtesy of Gamebryo engine. Its a pity, because the modding is fantastic. Wish someone made a mod that makes it optimized, it would be the ultimate 4X then.
- Stacks of Doom are still there.

 

[Snorkack]

So I'm sure the rest of you enjoy simulating a discussion with that 5 year old kid who says "why?" to every question, but can we instead talk about what civ 4 mods are amazing and which I should try kthx

BUG for better interface
BAT for improved AI
Rebalance the Realms for multiplayer balance
rhyes and fall for historical reenactment
Fall from Heaven for Lotr-style total conversion
Caveman 2 Cosmos for huge research tree and more... granular? gameplay

 

[Brotherman Bill]

It's more complex cuz it got more stuff to do. Said stuff is also meaningful and balanced with is a massive bonus. And OP if you think it's somehow too easy feel free to try it on deity, upload results here.

TBS is exactly right though, the interface is horrible and the graphics are bad. It can get really cumbersome when dealing with large amounts of units. Still the graphics are much more functional than newer CIV's.

 

[Grimlorn]

No. In Civ2 Tech was more important than number of cities. The best way to get good tech was building lots of cities, but ICS was only an issue for the more extreme difficulty settings.

You manage to contradict yourself twice in 2 sentences. Not making much of a point there, good sir.

Incendiary Device

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

No. In Civ2 Tech was more important than number of cities. The best way to get good tech was building lots of cities, but ICS was only an issue for the more extreme difficulty settings.

You manage to contradict yourself twice in 2 sentences. Not making much of a point there, good sir.

Incendiary Device

Hah, yeah. It was a very badly worded explanation. But it came after a day of people flinging micro-points and a combination of exhaustion and a desire to deal with points quickly. I'll try to explain it better if you like, not that it even matters, of course, because even if make the point make sense to Civ4 fanboys then I'll still get crap ratings, because... fanboys. I've also made the points before and the fact that they don't sink in are pretty demotivational to a detailed reply as well.

It was a reply to a criticism that older Civs were 'just' ICS and Civ4 was supposedly incline because it ended ICS. This is similar to the complaint that instigated 1UPT when the same 'just' morons wouldn't shut-up about Stacks Of Doom being somehow problematic.

I'm not an extreme difficulty player, never have been, never will be. If I feel like playing a more complex Civ game then I'll accept that shitty start location that a min/maxer will just reload away from. If I feel like min/maxing then I'll try to get a top score on a more regular difficulty setting (yes, I have Hall of Fame results for regular level Civ3 games). If I want a more interesting game then I'll select more interesting starting parameters, such as different world sizes, more inhospitable terrain, Raging Barbarians, etc etc etc.

So, for me, I never used ICS in Civ2. I could create a neat, tight, awesome core of cities that would provide what I needed to have the kind of game I liked. What I'm not very good at in Civ games is the every-turn stamina requirements of managing too many little things. Take Domination Wins, for example, I have no end of games where I stop bothering to play them when I have over 66% population but still only about 55% land, I just cannot be arsed with the constant repetitive routine of finishing off that last 10% of conquering, it feels like my job is done and I'm completely burned out from moving 40-100 Units every turn. So when I create my core empire, I also like it to use the least amount of cities required to do the job.

In Civ2, because Units have power ratings instead of RNG you can man your smallish core of massive cities with just a few top Units and the underdeveloped AI cannot take your cities, no matter how big their stacks. So, for me, neither ICS nor Stacks of Doom were ever a game issue, everything about how I played already rejected those concepts as not physically possible from a player stamina perspective. I never went onto the extreme difficulty setting for the same reasons, its just more stamina work without much change in how the game plays out from a variety perspective (managing 8 cities requires the same choices to be made as managing 80 cities, you're just repeating something 80 times instead of 8 times), in exchange for a very slight increase in 'challenge'.

I have played higher difficulty games, such as Emperor or even Sid in Civ3 and survived and even got Hall of Fame scores, but I didn't 'enjoy' it from "Civ is my time-filler game while I reboot for something a bit more immersive" perspective. The joy I get from a quick regular game is just as nice, or even nicer than the emotion I get from completing a higher difficulty game (which is more of a sense of relief). ICS was only relevant for min/maxing on higher difficulties, and it was the kind of people who only care about playing the game to the 'end of the difficulty line' and then getting bored that made an issue out of this. No doubt the huge level of stamina they put into each game burned them out far quicker then the people who just liked playing quick games but with world set-up variations (not all, obviously, someone will say, hey, I did both, I'm talking about you're majority 'whiners' here, the kind of people who think regular levels are unplayable because winning the game is their only objective and they cannot help but min/max themselves every second, thereby burning themselves out quicker, you know, the more autism-inspired personalities).

Now, moving onto Civ3. I tried to replicate this approach in my first game. I built up a solid core of cities and aimed for the Spaceship. I soon had each of my 8 cities at size 18+, at least half a tech age of tech superiority and at least 3 Infantry guarding each city with all the added defence combos of being fortified in a Metropolis with Civil Defence. It was awesome. Then suddenly an AI civ declared war on me. Hah, I thought, that backward numbskull wont get far. How wrong I was! The AI's cavalry marched in by the bucketload and tore through my Infantry defenders like they were butter. Game over. I'll put the stats here for you to fully digest:

Infantry: 6 attack, 10 Defence, 1 Movement + 100% Defence from Metropolis, +25% from being Fortified, +50% for Civil Defence = Unit has a Defence value of 27.5

Cavalry: 6 attack, 3 Defence, 3 Movement +zero bonuses to attack = attack value of 6

Holy crap, this is some 'different' shit going on here...

But Civ3 introduced Corruption. The purpose of Corruption was to prevent ICS, to try and limit players to just a core of strong and powerful cities (the way I always played anyway), but has completely shafted this concept by a change in another system which completely contradicts and works against just playing with a small core of cities, that of no Unit being a secure defence, the numbers are suddenly pretty meaningless in short stacks and only have relevancy when taken as a mathematical equation of huge numbers, like rolling a 10 sided dice for each battle, but 1-2/9-10 automatically result in a lost hit-point like some kind of critical miss/hit.

Because the game relates number of Units allowed to number of cities, the best way to have your (now more crucial than ever) Stacks of Doom was to spam cities for no other reason than it increased your army size and Diplomatic respect (you also get harassed less the more land you own, such as no declaration of war after refusing to give Montezuma Iron, for example). On top of this, Civ2's Tech could be mastered to the point where you could learn 1 Tech per turn (the ultimate aim of ICS), completely unnecessary unless you're going for an autistic maximum, but there nonetheless. For me I was happy if it took a whopping (! lol) 2 turns, or even 3 and one was just a bonus etc etc. So Civ3 introduced a minimum 4 turns per Tech, even if you were producing enough beakers to learn the tech in 1 turn then it'd still take 4 turns, thereby slowing down the rate at which you could 'get ahead' of the AI, resulting in a further requirement to keep more troops on hand to deal with any potential threat, meaning more cities to have more free Units.

And these were the concepts that Civ4 carried on with and even enhanced; greater economic punishment for building lots of cities while also greater requirement to have more cities because of RNG, Diplomatic pressure & Cultural Border expansion, and less zoomable Tech tree et al. Ironically, on the more extreme difficulty levels, people still recommend building lots of cities, the only difference really being that on the regular difficulties it's now actually less compelling to just go with a core. And this is why we got Civ5, because the autists couldn't help themselves in Civ2, as in, couldn't help WHINING about ICS... (and then Stacks of Doom).

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Different point regarding Tiles:

Mountains:

Civ2 - You can build cities on them or work them. Later in the game you can 'chop' them down into hills.

Civ3 - You can no longer build cities on them and you can no longer 'chop' them down later in the game.

Civ4 - Mountains you can do fuck all with.

Another example of visible of a game feature I liked.

 

[Johannes]

So I'm sure the rest of you enjoy simulating a discussion with that 5 year old kid who says "why?" to every question, but can we instead talk about what civ 4 mods are amazing and which I should try kthx

FallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeavenFallFromHeaven rest can wait for the 100+ hours you are going to invest in this

Tried this once and it seemed like shit. Early construction and research is slow as shit, there's high powered ANIMALS roaming the land that prevent your dudes from exploring, so you're just sitting on your ass for dozens and dozens of turns seems like. Maybe it gets better but that retarded start didn't give me faith that the designer has any clue what he's doing.

 

[Urthor]

Fall From Heaven's earlygame isn't as slick as Civ 5&6 but it's par for the course for the Civilisations of that era. Civ 2/3/4 weren't that much better, by any stretch, don't go rose tinted classed on them, those games (well not Civ 3 and 2 & 4) were good for their mid-lategame, but the early game Firaxis has continually improved as the series progresses.

 

[Johannes]

Fall From Heaven's earlygame isn't as slick as Civ 5&6 but it's par for the course for the Civilisations of that era. Civ 2/3/4 weren't that much better, by any stretch, don't go rose tinted classed on them, those games (well not Civ 3 and 2 & 4) were good for their mid-lategame, but the early game Firaxis has continually improved as the series progresses.

Wtf are you smoking... Civ5 had shit early game with nothing happening for long times also, though not to the same extent as FfH. Civ4 has much more happening early than Civ5 or FfH.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

well, it's a fantasy setting, wilderness in fantasy is per definition extremely dangerous. but anyway, some times you're unfortunate with map creation and you're spawned with very powerful roaming/villages nearby. shit happens.