Civ III vs IV

[LizardWizard]

Makes you wonder how Firaxis developed III after SMAC. Hard to believe it was the same developers.

As already mentioned, Civ 2 was Bryan Reynolds design, same for Alpha Centauri. Sid made millions off Bryan's genius. Don't get it twisted.

 

[Tiger]

Anyway CIV 5 is better than both !

Is the right answer.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Civ 2 > Civ 3 > Civ > Civ IV - then never played any of the others. Just ignore them all and play AC if you prefer sci-fi anyway.

 

[Snorkack]

IMO Civ 4 + Beyond the Sword + BAT&BUG Mod is still the undisputed pinnacle of non-space 4x.

 

[spectre]

The combat system was always the thing that made or broke a Civilization game for me.
Whenever I think about revisiting Civ 3, I am reminded about the craptastic combat system in which a lone spearman valiantly defies a horde of barbarian horsemen. On the other hand Civ 4 has it's share of inanity, like suicide catapults vs. stacks of doom,
attackers getting wiped out when assaulting with a 99% chance to win. At least it lets you predict the results of combat to a degree and for the first time spells out the modifiers.

Civ 4 also brings new quality to city management, where you actually get to do some meaningful choices instead of sprawling a network of cities over as large an area as possible. A lot of the improvements and new systems feel a bit like a Civ game
that's picked a thing or two from SMAC, which is exactly what it needed.

Then there are the mods. Really no contest. Not sure which ones are still maintained and up to date, but I reckon this thread will be a good place to ask. I had good fun with Rhyes and Fall, but there are many more,
some even changing it into a totally new game.
Vanilla Civ 4 + BTS is playable on its own and is a good introduction to the series and means you never need to play any other civ game (apart from SMAC, perhaps try Civ 1 or 2 to see how it began, then Civ6 to see how it went to shit).
After that, you decide if you'd rather mod it with minor fixes, more depth or try a total conversion.

 

[Eyestabber]

Civ IV + Fall from heaven. Check my sig.

 

[McPlusle]

If those are your only two options, then IV. SMAC > II > IV > III > I > blasphemy > SMAX > death itself > V

 

[attackfighter]

Graphically, Civ 4 is a lot worse. The overly intricate 3D graphics make it difficult to observe at a glance what the layout of my empire is. I'm playing Realism Invictus right now, and while there's much that is good, the graphics make my eyes hurt. It's much easier to tell where all the roads are in earlier Civ/4-X games.

Realism Invictus is by far the best way to play the game. There's some odd AI behavior: for instance, playing on Immortal difficulty, the AI factions in my game waste so much money on unit upkeep that they have none whatsoever left over for research, and their research sliders are thus set at '0'. As such, the game is currently really easy, and if it wasn't for the novelty of seeing the tech tree pan out I'd have already quit. But despite its behavior, the AI is still miles ahead of vanilla in its competence and is probably the best I've seen in a 4-X game, sad as that is to say. Diplomatically its really good! Also noteworthy is the ancient era soundtrack, which is rocking. I replaced all future eras with the ancient era soundtrack, which alone is custom made.

The design is better than vanilla. It's a fuller game, and more coherent. However, there are some flaws. The pastoral nomadism civic, for instance, is hugely overpowered, and the lack of 'whipping' (hurried construction with population) makes the game less interesting, as well as serves as an indirect nerf to pastoral nomadism's competing alternative, subsistence economy.

Whether vanilla Civ3 is worse than vanilla Civ4 is irrelevant, since there's no reason to play them that way. As far as modding goes, Civ4 has better overhaul mods, and is the better game overall, but I do have fond memories of specific scenario mods I played back when Civ3 was out. I wouldn't recommend playing them today, however, as the game has aged poorly and the UI especially feels clunky. I tried but I couldn't go back to it. So I'd suggest Civ4 with Realism Invictus, best of all mods. And stay far away from Civ 6, at best it is overpriced. Civ5 is okay for a few playthroughs in my view, but I wouldn't pay more than two dollars Canadian for it (so, like, $1.50 USD).

 

[Eyestabber]

Every time someone buys a copy of Civ 5 a baby panda gets cancer.

Srsly, don't buy the game that killed the civ franchise.

Also, saying II > IV => rose tinted glasses. Civ II is simplistic af when compared to IV depth. Not to mention there is no way to fix the brute force AI of civ 2 , yet there is decent ai for civ 4.

 

[coldcrow]

Pastoral Nomadism is strong for certain nations and starts, but quickly loses power. It's probably the best for conqueror civs if you rush your neighbours quickly.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

What makes Civ II worth playing for someone who has already experienced III, IV, and V?

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

What makes Civ II worth playing for someone who has already experienced III, IV, and V?

In Civ 2, when you go'a'conquering, if you capture their capital city then the rest of their empire fractures in two via a civil war, you then won't be at war half their empire & can even ally with them to finish off the target.

In Civ 2 you can build cities on Mountains.

In Civ 2 you can terraform tiles via the worker upgrade unit called the Engineer, so you can convert Mountains into grassland eventually & even put land bridges between islands.

In Civ 2 the RNG of combat is dramatically reduced. A high tier military unit will not take any damage from any amount of attacks by a severely underpowered unit. Also, stack will all die at the same time, so be careful with your stacks.

In Civ 2 you can get to the point of learning one new technology per turn if you specialise that way.

Civ 2 also has trade caravans, which are actual units on the board that you can move around and plan physical trade routes.

Amongst many other things.

 

[spectre]

What makes Civ II worth playing for someone who has already experienced III, IV, and V?

Fundamentalist government with fanatics and animated advisors.

Also, iirc, having Democracy can actually be a pain in the ass instead of the natural best endgame choice.

 

[Agame]

amazing 3D graphics

(And yes clearly IV is best.)

 

[attackfighter]

Pastoral Nomadism is strong for certain nations and starts, but quickly loses power. It's probably the best for conqueror civs if you rush your neighbours quickly.

Quickly?? I found that with happiness and health thresholds being what they are, the benefits of having livestock over farms persisted for a very long time, well into the classical age. And the difference between starts with livestock and without was very massive -- I'm talking 50% extra hammers with industrious trait and maybe 10-20% more food. I could see it maybe being less good on lower difficulties where wonder whoring at start is more viable, but early wonders aren't that good anyway, and even so the extra hammers you get almost compensate for the production malus.

 

[coldcrow]

Well it's certainly very good on the earth map. Animals everywhere. On random maps without rerolling maps to get 2+ animal resources it is less good. Sure if you play that Industrious mongol leader on the earth map you will take nomadism every game

PS: I usually choose Nomadism aswell, but mostly for the initial landgrab or to bully neighbouring civs. Usually do I switch over around classical era or if there are really many animal resources, medieval.
You will lose worker turns, which is the main drawback imho. Spme starts just don't work with it (new world on earth, egypt, etc) and if you can land the pyramids/stonehenge/statue wonder trifecta you probably do not want it either.
But I agree that on higher difficulties it is probably necessary since you have have to gear up fast. It is also somewhat realistic.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

http://www.freeciv.org/

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

http://www.freeciv.org/

I took a peek but saw nothing really interesting.

Is there any good total conversion, preferably something with a strong thematic like fantasy or sci-fi?

 

[index.php]

http://www.freeciv.org/

http://www.c-evo.org/

 

[Eyestabber]

What makes Civ II worth playing for someone who has already experienced III, IV, and V?

Funny advisors.

 

[rezaf]

My main gripe with CivIII back in the day was it's severe, SEVERE ICS (infinite city sprawl). The AI was hellbent on plastering the map with cities, placed them in every nook and cranny. Damn that way annoying...

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

They all do that from Civ, through 2 to 3. It's like that old routine that effects most game series, change the good thing but keep the irritating things.

 

[Beastro]

My main gripe with CivIII back in the day was it's severe, SEVERE ICS (infinite city sprawl). The AI was hellbent on plastering the map with cities, placed them in every nook and cranny. Damn that way annoying...

It's better than the alternative with Civ1 where the AI was so stupid if often never expanded. I hated taking one city in the Industrial Era only to realize I'd thus wiped out an entire civ. Others weren't much better with only 4-5.

Given how few civs you had to play against back then, it really fucked the game up beyond the point of easy.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

That was not my experience with Civ1, but I didn't play much. Every game I loaded had Civ1 trying to crowd out my area of interest from the word go.

 

[rezaf]

Yeah, I don't remember the AI building SO few cities in Civ1 either - they often didn't build enough of them, though.
And I didn't think it was better than the alternative. It really soured me on Civ3. I was so disappointed and mad - I'd even purchased the Collectors Edition for what was quite a bit of money for me back in the day. (everyone has their gripes, I guess. I hear some people really take issue with stacks of doom...)

I tinkered with the game and found a balance where it kinda sorta worked for me (I modded the rules and made settlers cost MUCH more production and more population) and I just never offered open borders to anyone. But I never enjoyed Civ again like I did with the older games.
CIV rekindled my affection for the series, but the nearly limitless modding possibilities afforded by the very powerful "SDK" played a major role in this.

Then came CiV with the 1UPT nonsense and all the system changes required to TRY and make it work properly - of course it never did - ... but I disgress.

Back to III vs IV, the main sin committed by the latter, IMO, is the graphics. Don't get me wrong, I don't think they look bad or anything, it's just that the move to 3D and animations and stuff had severe consequences. It slowed the game down greatly, even if you disable everything you can CivIV plays much slower than it's 2D predecessors.
It also made modding much more difficult - it takes much more skill and effort to produce rigged 3D models than to just cobble together some 2D artwork.
Though, by virtue of the game being so versatile and good (and thus popular), enough skilled people found their way to CivIV for all those wonderful mods to be made.
If you compare the new games' modding scene, it's not even a contest.