View Full Version : Why the silence?
Civ4 is out now for a couple of months and the last patch seems to have improved a lot. (I couldn't tell as bugs don't strike me. You must have blood like honey. [tongue])
Why aren't there any PBEM's going on now? Is everyone still playing Civ3? Hattrick and the like? Too busy with work? I'd like to play a few more PBEM's than just Ignition and DDCP (which hasn't even started). But I don't want to start them all myself.
bed_head7
22-01-2006, 13:20
Once I get my CD back I will probably get a PBEM going.
Socrates
22-01-2006, 13:48
Why aren't I starting Civ4 PBEMing now ?
- It is currently being heavily patched, so that the gameplay isn't stable. For games that last a few months, this isn't fitting nicely.
- I'm still discovering the game, I don't feel like dueling with anyone right now. Heck, I don't even understand the concept of religion.
- Yes, I should try to limit myself in Civ involvment, so I will start games with care. Don't want to get to the dreaded burnout in a few months' time.
- Don't worry, maybe we'll have some time discovering the MP fun in a few weeks, at a certain LAN party (hoping to hear from that too).
I'd love to play (and am playing a lot), but I still do not have the game, so MP is still a nono for me, unfortunately. Once I have it, I'd love to take up the challenge and play a game Matrix.
A new patch will be released within a few weeks.
Matrix--Tubby and I started a PBEM but got sidetracked by pitboss. The pitboss game was AW with 4 civs with one AI partnered with us. It was a lot of fun. We were able to finish in two sessions when I resigned last night. I made some blunderous mistakes but the lessons learned were huge.
Lessons learned...
--I took Moscow from the AI but didn't raze it. It was too hard to defend based on distance and Tubby attacked the city with axemen and Jags are no match for axemen attacking a city. Very different when the Jags were on forest tiles.
--Forest chops are huge for cranking out either workers, units or settlers.
--Happiness was a major issue for me but not Tubby who researched religion.
--Forests and forest hills are nearly impossible to attack. Woodsman I and II were very powerful in this game.
--Hook up your iron or copper. I totally spaced out and didn't road my iron. Huge blunder. Tubby chopped axemen and eventually took over Moscow.
--Research path. The frontline techs are important. Getting the ag, military and it seems religious techs were huge. I went for metal casing to get forges and because of the research time it set me back big time. As a note, the AI partner can be told what to research. When you are both researching the same tech the research time is cut in half. It may have made more sense to have my partner to research something different since metal casing was a long cycle even with both of us researching.
I must say pitboss is pretty cool for session play but really didn't seem good for PBEM like spoilers unless we took a break.
For some reason the game didnt really grab me. Been spending my very limited game playing time on hattrick and WoW. Dont suppose that will change soon.
I find the 3D graphics to be slow and on top if that they make the AA units hard to distinguish. Doesnt help either.
Ginger_Ale
22-01-2006, 19:23
For some reason I just don't like the game. I can't really pin it down...I don't like the gameplay as much.
It might be something like this: in Civ3, there is sort of a 'formula' to win. Settler factory, expand fast, conquer enemies, etc. So in Civ3, you could keep going to perfect your strategy and formula. In Civ4, there isn't such a way...and thus, I don't feel a compelling reason to play it.
RegentMan
22-01-2006, 20:18
I've been playing Civ IV single player for some time now. I've finished three games (a time victory, a space race victory, and a conquest defeat) and am currently moving up to monarch... er prince. I'd love to try a PBEM once I learn the game some more.
IMHO, it is not patched to a playable level yet but the patch is on the way apparently. It does not make sense to start games now since the saves might be incompatible with the previous versions. The memories of C3C 1.15-1.22 jump problems are still fresh and many games died because of this. Also, I'still trying to move up to regularly win on Immortal (Emperor is more or less figured out) and Deity without much success yet except with Caesar on Pangea. And the single player games take quite some time to play to the end, for me it is much longer than it were in the case of Civ3.
Kingreno
22-01-2006, 20:48
No, I do not like civ 4. It is too slow and the things that made civ 3 fun are more or less gone. I guess the main 2 reasons are the lack of empirebuilding due to corruption and the carryover of shields/cash to the next unit/tech.
Socrates
22-01-2006, 22:38
quote:Originally posted by akots
IMHO, it is not patched to a playable level yet but the patch is on the way apparently. It does not make sense to start games now since the saves might be incompatible with the previous versions. The memories of C3C 1.15-1.22 jump problems are still fresh and many games died because of this.
Yup, that's why I stated this first in my previous post. When the game is finished with creation, we can start thinking of long PBEMs. But things change every week or so at the moment. Fortunately, games can be played quicker now, so we'll get to play a lot in the future.
@ Ginger_Ale : Based on how many games ?? I think I know what you're talking of, but I still don't have the answer myself, since I'm still trying to make up my mind on that. The last thing I want to do now is to deliver my conclusions that Civ4 isn't a good game, after just a few games. I don't want to make the (negative) show. ;)
@ Kingreno : The building of large empires a la Civ 1/2/3 is almost gone, and for good, for me. I tend to take as much time for my games in Civ4 as in Civ3, but instead of MMing hundreds of cities that won't have an impact on the game, I'm now using that time for more interesting things. And while still being a MMer, I like the hammer/beaker carryover a lot. That, combined with the inability to swap projects in a city with the carrying-over of hammers to the new project makes for a more interesting game, methinks.
I must agree to a certain extent with Kingreno here. Civ4 is a pretty dull game overall imho. It plays very similar to 5CC in Civ3 to a certain time point. Once you are past this point, it does not matter, since the game should be pretty much already won. On the other hand, 5CC is rather winnable on Deity level in Civ3 and AI in Civ4 is not stronger. It has more bonuses though, both declared and hidden. That makes the game somewhat less attractive and more routine while indeed it is somewhat easier to win imho. But this is a rather personal opinion formed so far based on about a dozen games, some finished and some abandoned. The way the patching process goes, there is essentially a new game to be learned after every patch.
Well, I'm definitely in the other camp than some of you as far as the level of intriguement the game offers is concerned, to me the game is far more exciting that the ever-repeating standard games that civ3 had to offer in SP. I also do not agree there are more bonuses for the AI (and yes, plenty of bonuses are present for it in civ4 I know), especially compared to sid level of civ3, and I most certainly do not agree that playing large immortal, (let alone deity!) maps is easier to win than any challenge civ3 had to offer (especially considering we're dealing with civ4 vanilla here).
But most of all, I think that continuing to compare everything the game has to offer with what civ3 used to do (thus staying inside the safe boundary of entertainment that people were used to see in a game of civ) is already starting off with a mindset of not being willing to appreciate what civ4 might have to offer. Nothing wrong with that as civ3 was truly a great game, however civ4 is much more complex, and I think the way the AI is able to handle these added complexities (and I do recognize there are lots of flaws to be found in the AI as well) deserves a big hats-off to those responsible.
Some people might always like civ3 better, after all still people are playing and declaring civ2 as the best game too... but whether it is easier to win or that civ3's AI was at the same level as civ4's AI is, in my opinion, greatly unjustified.
That is confusing but I must agree with Kemal here as well on many points. At least there is a decent try to make AI more intelligent in civ4 compared to civ3 with more options which are more logical. Still some features of the game are very annoying and make it somewhat less playable for me personally compared to civ3. I'm also rather clueless as to how MP/PBEM is supposed to be played except that may be on the continents map. It seems based on my very limited experience here (a few MP games) that whoever builds the second/third warrior first and gets to the rival's capital basically has won the game. Same is true apparently for higher difficulty levels. I bet on Emperor and above AI can just walk in into any human capital for an instant kill around turn 20 or so and in many cases the city would be undefended. It seems that AI is just forced not to attack the human player early in the game. Civ3 had some pluses here because it was actually possible to play always war on Emperor level on continents/pangea maps.
Tubby Rower
23-01-2006, 02:29
Pitboss is my new favorite way to play. Assuming that the players can get online at the same time. Whomp & I only played two sessions before Whomp surrendered.
As a note, I also learned a lot from that game. It allowed you to progress through the game just slightly slower than a solo game. but it was against a human.
-> chop forests around your cities in AW games. The defense that the forests allow (especially on hills) is something not to be reckoned with. I had all of my forests chopped around my capital (which I normally don't do). Peter didn't and Whomp took Moscow.
Since Whomp didn't raze the city, I used the forests to get within 1 tile and then just slammed him with 5 axes.. I lost two but the other three killed his three jags defending.
I don't know if Whomp saw this but you can also tell your AI partner to attack a specific city which would have been nice if Peter wouldn't have been building a settler with 5 of Whomp's jags surrounding Moscow right before he took it
Darkness
23-01-2006, 09:09
I'm not really trying to compare Civ4 to Civ3, but for some reason the game just doesn't appeal to me as much as Civ3 did.
The game is slow and very similar (to me anyway) each game, so that SP Civ4 very quickly lost it's "newness" to me. I realize that this game can be played with a lot of different styles, but that would require a large amount of time being put into it to learn to play like that. Unfortunately, I don't have time to spare, and even if I did, I would in all likelyhood not invest it in Civ4. So, I haven't played single player Civ4 since before christmas and I doubt I'll take it up again any time soon.
MP is more fun, but that fun mostly comes from playing against another human. The gameplay is still the same -> boring. In my game against grs it's now 600 BC, and I get to move maybe 5 units each turn. Maybe I'm just a louzy player, but moving five units doesn't exactly make me feel like I am building an empire or something like that.
All in all, I am quite disappointed with Civ4. I had expected more of it. :(
digger760
23-01-2006, 10:43
quote:Originally posted by ProPain
For some reason the game didnt really grab me. Been spending my very limited game playing time on hattrick and WoW. Dont suppose that will change soon.
I find the 3D graphics to be slow and on top if that they make the AA units hard to distinguish. Doesnt help either.
I find tracking Enemy AI movement to be the biggest annoying factor. It can be very hard to spot a small coloured flag amounst all the other bells and whistles on the screen, and the units themselves can be even more camoflaged than the colured flag. Units can land and be moving though my land and it could be several turns before i notice them. Warning message appear and dissappear on the screen way to fast to know what happened. It drives me insane[saiyan].
As for PBEMS...i can't see myself ever committing the time to these again. I still hav'nt finished my first solo civ4 game yet...i've been playing the same one since November
I know the feeling. I finished one game, then started on the second one, but couldn't find interest to finish it. Then I played RTW again for a month or two, until I thought "let's Civ4 another shot!" I played a game at monarch level, lost, prince level, lost as well [sad], now at noble again, and am winning, barely. I'll try prince next time again and do find it fun again and challenging to search for the possibility to win!
Think about this: there are a lot of experienced Civ-players who have beta tested and still play the game thoroughly, trying to get the highest score possible. Who do find Civ4 fun, game after game. And I thought I'd seen it after one game, but 'refound' it. Perhaps you should give it another try as well. ;) (Unless you want to perform optimally at school/work. [mischief])
Tubby Rower
23-01-2006, 13:11
I find civ4 fun. I like the randomness that each game offers. If you want predictablity, you prolly won't like civ4 ever. I never realized what Darkness is saying about not building an empire due to a low number of units/cities. But you are able to develop the cities more and not just have a bunch of cities with irrigation around them with a bunch of specialists in them as you do in civ3.
I won't try to defend civ4 because I think that it's really not for everyone.
'course not, but I'm afraid people judge the game too soon, based on just one game e.g.. Civ4 is quite different than the older versions, with less discrete concepts and more concepts/systems working concurrently, making it altogether harder to grasp. We all knew Civ3 like the back of our head, but now we basically have to start all over again.
Indeed, Darkness, that takes time. However, you learn automatically. It doesn't cost much effort, just time. Or at least, the will to put effort into personal improvement will come automatically. ;)
grahamiam
23-01-2006, 22:43
I'm waiting for the patch situation to stabilize. However, the way Whomp and Tubby describe thier MP experience, I may try some pitboss games soon :)
Darkness
24-01-2006, 09:47
quote:Originally posted by Matrix
'course not, but I'm afraid people judge the game too soon, based on just one game e.g.. Civ4 is quite different than the older versions, with less discrete concepts and more concepts/systems working concurrently, making it altogether harder to grasp. We all knew Civ3 like the back of our head, but now we basically have to start all over again.
Indeed, Darkness, that takes time. However, you learn automatically. It doesn't cost much effort, just time. Or at least, the will to put effort into personal improvement will come automatically. ;)
Maybe I am judging the game too soon. I don't know. I've just played about 10 SP games so far. But that's how the game felt to me.
I guess I'll have a slow learning curve then, based on two PBEM's ;) , considering I have no extra time at all (for the game anyway) until at least the end of february...
10 SP games?! That's quite a lot, actually...
I was thinking the same thing... I've only managed to complete 5 full games myself since the game has been on the shelves. Then again, I've been known to be a somewhat slow player.
Darkness
24-01-2006, 16:30
quote:Originally posted by Matrix
10 SP games?! That's quite a lot, actually...
I kinda had a lot of free time in the first half of december... :D
They were mostly tiny map games though. I figured if the games were shorter, I'd get to play more different strategies. Never got past noble level though. Not because I thought I couldn't, but I just never felt like trying...
I think part of the problem lies there already. After all, who'd play civ3 on chieftain 10 times and think it is a great game when there is no challenge in winning? (since you said you could handle noble pretty well. Give it a few shots on monarch, and perhaps you'll like the game after all? :)
Darkness
24-01-2006, 16:55
I played one game at warlord level, just to get to know the mechanics a bit. Then I moved up a bit. I think I played 6 or 7 games on noble, and I got all victory conditions at least once. After that, unfortunately, my interest in the game faded... Maybe I'll start a higher level SP game in march or so (if I can find the time... :()
Besides, the PBEM's I am in are on prince and monarch level, so who knows? Maybe I'll like the challenge...
Then again (if you look at my spoiler for the ignition game), maybe not... ;)
romeothemonk
24-01-2006, 18:11
I like civ4. I actually prefer it to C3C. It fits my play style much better.
I was able to jump in skipping over a lot of stuff and moving right on up to emporer.
Unfrotunately my oscillating war strats don't work so well on C4. I really like/hate the relations and trade screen. I like the fact that if you raze someones city, they just won't deal with you for dang near forever.
I still play some civ3, but that will end when my 2 current SG's are up.
Civ4 looks to be awesome for multiplayer, and I may have to try out pitboss once the latest patch comes in.
Pastorius
25-01-2006, 11:02
quote:Originally posted by Kemal
Well, I'm definitely in the other camp than some of you as far as the level of intriguement the game offers is concerned, to me the game is far more exciting that the ever-repeating standard games that civ3 had to offer in SP. I also do not agree there are more bonuses for the AI (and yes, plenty of bonuses are present for it in civ4 I know), especially compared to sid level of civ3, and I most certainly do not agree that playing large immortal, (let alone deity!) maps is easier to win than any challenge civ3 had to offer (especially considering we're dealing with civ4 vanilla here).
But most of all, I think that continuing to compare everything the game has to offer with what civ3 used to do (thus staying inside the safe boundary of entertainment that people were used to see in a game of civ) is already starting off with a mindset of not being willing to appreciate what civ4 might have to offer. Nothing wrong with that as civ3 was truly a great game, however civ4 is much more complex, and I think the way the AI is able to handle these added complexities (and I do recognize there are lots of flaws to be found in the AI as well) deserves a big hats-off to those responsible.
Some people might always like civ3 better, after all still people are playing and declaring civ2 as the best game too... but whether it is easier to win or that civ3's AI was at the same level as civ4's AI is, in my opinion, greatly unjustified.
Especially agreeable part bolded by me.
And I more or less agree with the rest as well.
Shabbaman
16-05-2006, 12:59
Well, I must say, I think I'm officially hooked. I have a day off, and I couldn't get away from civ4 to get me a cup of coffee... for two and a half hours!
It's hard to say what did it, though. While I'm playing, I can't even recall what civ3 played like differently. And that must be a good thing, considering the time I've spent at civ3. My current game was interesting from start to, well, finish, though I haven't finished yet. I just found out I can't build the space elevator in my capitol, because of the large latitude... who thought of that?
digger760
16-05-2006, 15:53
quote:Originally posted by Shabbaman
I just found out I can't build the space elevator in my capitol, because of the large latitude... who thought of that?
Yeh...just discovered that myself..but have you got any other wins other than space race or Time win.
I tried to go for Diplomatic win, but with 18 civs on the map i can seem to get the votes needed to be secretary general, there just way to many civs to suck up to.
I actually wanted to start a thread stating I am now officially hooked too, for the first time since Civ1! The last days if I played in the evening, I just went on till about 3 to 5 AM. (The record is 5:45 or so...) And the weird thing is: I still have a very boring game to finish, which made me stop playing Civ4 for about two months. Then I thought let me just start a a new game: huge map, 18 civs. Now that's a kick! [yeah] I did have to buy extra memory (I had just half a GB, now 1.5GB.) in order to let it work decently.
I said "if", because I have no problem leaving Civ4 alone when I am home. Plently of other things to do. But once I'm on the roll... [rolleyes]
well if your loving it so much come join me against romeo in my PBEM! :D
Socrates
16-05-2006, 18:04
There's a voice in my head that keeps telling me not to play anymore. Dunno if it's a rational or an irrational voice down there... [crazyeye]
Pastorius
16-05-2006, 18:51
Must..resist. AHHH
A rational or irrational voice down there? Sounds dirty
Anyway. I dont think I am addicted. I hardly miss playing, and I dont work hard to fix the computer that runs civ4 smoothly...
im not really addicted tbh, i enjoy it but with exams coming up im going to have to stop playing as much.
I'm very much with Matrix, for some reason 1.61 got me hooked. But similar to being hooked to other Civ versions. There always is another day to play another turn (most of the time ;) }
Yes, indeed 1.61 is a completely different game with somewhat improved balance. It is a big step forward. Still there are very many very odd things happening and imho, really bad is the initial phase of the game including horrendous costs of the first early units. It just does not sum up to acceptable level and this is one of the major drawbacks of the game imho. What I mean is that there is no multiplayer (and slightly better in single player) balance in barbarians, city growth, unit cost is hammers, worker and settler costs and civic and unit maintenance costs. This whole thing has to be re-balanced significantly so that the game is more enjoyable. There are means to counter this but these means are weird especially in single-player games, type of farmer's gambit that were in Civ3. Now it is science gambit (specifically Civil Service and Academy gambit).
whats the academy gambit?
Having Library built in the capital and hiring 2 scientists so that you can get a great scientist there as soon as possble. This comes at expense of production and growth but you can get early Academy which gives +50% science.
Ah right ok, is it usefull though?
Academy with +50% science along with cottages = Power.
vBulletin® v3.7.3, Copyright ©2000-2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.