Tell Me About Civ 4

[Ranis]

Civilization 4 complete pack with all of the expansions is on sale right now for only $25 on Steam, and I have heard good things about the series but never played it myself. Can anyone convince me one way or another?

I know basics about the game, like that there are several ways to win such as killing the opponent, space race, or having a better civilization than another player. I also know that there is turn-based gameplay. Past that, I don't know much. Any information past what I know would be beneficial, thanks for everyone's time.

[Zovc]

I'd say that's $25 well spent.

Well, before a game starts, you decide what kind of world you're playing on. This can be a spherical world like the planet we live on, or it can be a 'map', one that doesn't wrap around. Once you decide on the basic shape of your world, you decide on a few other things like map size, climate, and temperature. The game will randomly generate a map for you to play on fitting the defined specifications.

You then pick your civilization and your leader (aka your 'character'). For example, the American Empire civilization has George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

Each civilization has its own unique unit (UU) and unique building (UB), and each leader has two traits. America has Navy SEALs (replacing the "Marine") as their unique unit and the Mall (replacing the "Supermarket") as their unique building. George Washington is Expansive and Charismatic--very well suited to making a bunch of cities. Franklin D. Roosevelt is Industrious and Organized, he'd probably be good at having a bunch of cities kept happy with 'Wonders.' Abraham Lincoln is Philosophical and Charismatic, his civilization will produce great people faster than others, and he's also better than most at having multiple cities.

Check out these two sites for a lot of information on the game:
Civfanatics' Civilization 4 page. (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4) (Note the "Civilization 4" section of the 'bar' on the left feel free to get overwhelmed by the Civilopedia section.)
civ4.wikia.com (http://civ4.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page)

[Squark]

Definately a good buy. Also, we have succession games (Where a group of people take turns guiding the civilization, sort of like a real government) going on right now on this forum.

[Winthur]

This is a TBS with a rather good multiplayer mode. Of course, playing with living people, tactics are more important and you don't have as many options as with the AI (as someone said, "In multiplayer, you can't go through the entire game just by paying 10 gold to your opponents").

It definitely is addictive due to the Just One More Turn syndrome. "Wait to finish that wonder. Next few turns. Finish that war. Next turn. Set up this, set up that. Holy cow, I'm going to be late for school. :smalleek:"

And it requires quite a bit of focus, thought and micromanagement.

It's also rather customizable, as in, there are a lot of settings you can define upon your game, and there are mods all around the internet (and a lot of good mods shipped with the Beyond the Sword expansion).

[Eldan]

What you do in the game is basically this:

After choosing your civ and leader, as described above, you start in the year 4000 BC or something (I don't remember the exact time), with a single settler and a warrior, at stone age tech level.
What you do, from then on, is building cities with your settlers, commanding them to build certain buildings and units in these cities, doing research towards higher levels of technology and generally advancing your civilisation towards modern technology.
The entire game is very abstract: turns represent many years. Your cities, no matter how huge they get, take up one square on the map. Buildings are just built in it, you don't have to choose locations or the like, as in many strategy games. Units are moved across terrain and then pulled over an enemy, where they fight it out according to the terrain they are on and a single strength value.
Still, because of this abstraction, the game can be incredibly huge. There are literally hundreds of units, technologies and buildings, and you go from stone age to the modern age, fighting and trading with others.
To win, as mentioned, you have several victory conditions. Control the world economy. Conquer everyone else. Unite the world under your leadership by diplomatic means. Win the space race to Alpha Centauri.

[Inhuman Bot]

Well yeah, same as the above posters said.

Also, though, you had to manage your cities happiness and cleanliness, by building things such as hospitals, in addition to your economic, diplomatic, and millitaristic needs.

You can also have Barbarians roam around to attack you and your enemies, if you'd like.

I'd say it's definately worth 25$, and you should look into the mod called... Fall
From Heaven, I think it's called, if Fantasy is your thing.

[Eldan]

Fall from Heaven 2 is the one I'd use. It's awesome.

[Miklus]

It is one of my favortie games, even if I just lost bigtime today!

Let me try to tell a little about my latest game to give an idea what it is about. I play the romans. It starts out good, I expand and place a few cities around Rome. But pretty soon I run out of space. There are Aztecs to the north and Mali to the west. I have to consolidate a bit until I can research iron working and build the romans unique units...the pretorians AKA legions. These are really good units and I uses them to "solve" my lack of land. :smallamused: The Aztecs are getting steamrolled. I burn most of their cities as I think they are in stupid places and build some of my own instead. Appearenty, I also burned the jewish holy city in my haste. Whoops. Now everybody hates me. Oh well.

The war drags out and unhappiness begins to spread in my cities. The Aztec leader (I forgot his name) refuses to even speak to me, so no chance of peace. I figure that the war will end if I take all his cities, and it does. Rioting and starvation has taken its toll on my cities, but now comes a time of peaceful building. The roman culture and science are doing good.

But that Mali guy is causing trouble. He is attacking my greek friends. If he conqures them, he might become too powerful. He also have some nice resources that I would like...He has furs and wheat and other goodies that would make my cities happy and healthy. I wait until I have researched gunpowder and build some cannons. Cannons are good at attacking cities. You can guess what happens next. Well maybe not, because it turns out that he is quite a bit more technologically advanced than me. My guys are using front loading rifles, his guys are using uzis! It does not help that a large part of my army is made up of leftover legions from the Aztec war. There are even some catapults in there...

The initial attack is a massacre of my troops. I have to fall back and go on the defensive. He has better tech, but I have more production power. Back and forth the war goes. And it drags on for 500 years or more. Mr. Mali rules the seas with his destroyers, my boats have oars! So I get no fish or trade on the coast at all. I manage to get the upper hand using my raw production power and take 6 of his cities. Meanwhile, the roman empire is falling apart. People are tired of the long war and things are getting out of hand. In the end I have to pay Mr. Mali 500 gold and a tech just to end the war. The border between our empires are a real mess. Some of the cities I have just taken are completely cut off from the main empire and have no land to farm. The people inside are starving.

I manage to organize the empire and build up a fresh army and this time I'm going to finish Mali off. This time I got better guns and the govenment is facist and everything. Big mistake. He has allied with two other civs. They are even more advanced than him. They have helicopter gunships and lots of them! :smallfrown: Long story short, I got pwned.

In hindsight I should have done more for science and culture instead of just cranking out units and attacking everyone. Better luck next time.

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Definitely recommend it. I started playing back when there was just civilization 2, and they have just gotten better each time. Its pretty much the standard I measure turn-based strategy against.

[Vitruviansquid]

The best thing about Civ 4 is that there are barely any decisions you can make that are completely meaningless.

For instance, in the beginning, even if you have an idea of whether you want to research for religions or hard science, you still have to make decisions on when to grab Bronze before you get swarmed by barbarians or how much resource/food tech to get in order to keep yourself in the land grab race. Every city you build is also a decision of which tiles to include, whether it should be on a coast or river, and whether it should be balanced or specialized, and so on.

If you like turn based strategy or empire building, Civ 4 is definitely one of the deepest, most playable, and most REplayable games you can find.

[shadow_archmagi]

Civ 4 contains the line

"Your stealth bomber hits the Redcoat! 33% damaged"

What more did you ever want from anything

[Ka-ther Fangfoot]

Actually, I like it better when you don't get lines like that. I prefer to have a real challenge for my army to crush. Which is one reason I like Civ 4 better than the earlier ones. The computer is better at keeping up research-wise, or so it seems to me. Maybe I just play on harder difficulties in civ 4, which with its more friendly design, is more practical.