Best Civilization iteration

[someone else]

IV is my fav. III should be avoided.

I love the videos in the second, esp the military guy.

Civilization 2 - Ancient council::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6LC7ape_jg&feature=related

Civilization 2 - Middle Ages council::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbITxO4RmO0

Civilization 2 - Modern council::

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCFLh372jOM&feature=related

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor]

Civilization 4 has the best gameplay.

Civilization 2 with the Test of Time expansion would be second best, due to the huge variety of multiple-map scenarios made for it.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Civilization 2 was the only one I actually liked. The attempted humour in 4 was enough to drive me off, can't remember why I didn't like Civ 3.

 

[deshields538]

Back in the day I really liked Civ 2 for the Council of advisors.

Civ 4 is probably the best but I wish they'd brought some of the features of 2 back into it like if you have a Republic as your government sometimes your Senate overruled you on decisions. Then you get sick and tired of your Senate, have a revolt and go back to being an absolute monarchy, it was awesome.

 

[Lyesmith]

*SMAC in the face*

 

[ricolikesrice]

Civ4, alone for Fall from Heaven 2.

 

[Satori (original)]

Alpha Centauri is teh best one. After this game Meier started to slowly go down the drain with Civ3 looking like a mess and Civ4 being a mediocrity full of gimmicks. So Civ2 is a Top2.

Funny thing is Meier had nothing to do with 2, 3 OR AC! In fact the only thing he actually did was just port the Civilisation board game to the computer and reel in the rep by tagging his name on the sequels.

 

[NOVD]

IV > II > III

Never played I. SMAC was probably better than IV, but it's not really a blow out.

 

[CarnivalBizarre]

Civ4, alone for Fall from Heaven 2.

yes, Yes, YES!

 

[ChristofferC]

4 BtS > 2 > 1 >>> 3

 

[Panthera]

Alpha Centauri is teh best one. After this game Meier started to slowly go down the drain with Civ3 looking like a mess and Civ4 being a mediocrity full of gimmicks. So Civ2 is a Top2.

Funny thing is Meier had nothing to do with 2, 3 OR AC! In fact the only thing he actually did was just port the Civilisation board game to the computer and reel in the rep by tagging his name on the sequels.

None of this is true.

 

[caliban]

This poll fails. All white, heterosexual men know that Alpha Centauri was the best Civ game.

/thread

 

[JarlFrank]

4 was my favourite, although 2 was really awesome for its time too. I like 4 for all the new features, and for the shitload of good mods that have been released for it. Can't wait for the next game in the series, wonder what new things there are going to be.

And adding AC would be like putting Hitler into a modern election. Only retards and jews would vote for the other candidates. (If you wanna vote AC, just vote the kingcomrade option, no?)

 

[nekkerbee]

Civ4, alone for Fall from Heaven 2.

Well, not FFH2 alone, though it's arguably the best reason. Civ4 + expansions is a terrific game, and two mods in particular - Rhye's and Fall of Civilization and Rise of Mankind - really elevate it to the best historical 4X game so far.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Alpha Centauri >>>>>>>>> Civ 2 > Civ 1 > Civ 3 > Civ 4

Alpha Centauri was far better, as it made terraforming interesting, as the unit design feature was a huge success and the setting was much better, and managed to keep the gameplay interesting longer into the late game, because of the more varied options.

Civ 4 for me was epic fail.

I always felt pressured into a route of 1-2 quick wars then peace mongering for however many hundreds of thousands of turns. And terrraforming in the civ games has failed to get any more exciting, nor does building a bank in each of my 20 cities.

Nothing seemed to happen in the end game and war mongering seemed costly and unproductive compared to the above mentioned strat. So I was just hitting build bank, build build bank, build bank, end turn while my workers auto build according to the boring terraforming system.

Civ 3 didn't stagnate this badly although it was overall shabby.

Civ 2 and 1 the game was more fresh and war was more beneficial, later on, when you weren't playing a world conquest game.

 

[LittleJoe]

I've played Civ 2, 3 and 4, and of those I like 2 the most.

I also like the Call To Power games.

 

[spectre]

I played them all and it always felt that each installment invalidates the previous. Number four easily wins them all because of the expansions and mods.
Vanilla was a bit meh, but I still felt it was better than 3 - no more tedious land grab, golden ages felt like they made more sense, and finally the combat system felt more predictable (once the patch with estimate % chance came out).

The art direction was a bit bland, but later mods that gave units ethinc diversity came out... and I kinda gotten used to it.

Finally, with mods such as Fall from Heaven and WolfRevolution I now have my ultimate Civ4.

 

[hakuroshi]

First one is my favorite, it still plays like a breese in spite of all flaws. Which probably should have put it at the end of the list.
Second is almost perfect, but map is shredded bands which always annoyed me.
Third had nice ideas, but boring gameplay.
I've played fourth only once and before all expansions. Seemed like a solid game and could be actually the best, but can't say for sure.

 

[J1M]

In 3 there was no benefit to expanding off your starting continent. SM:AC felt like a sequel to Civ 2 (I did play it after civ4) because it feels like the narrative extension to a Space Race victory. Honestly the added elements: living planet, diverse AI personalities are only wonderful additions to the typical 4x experience.

Wel probably because IT IS a sequel to Civ2! The original colony ship is sent from Earth by the winner of Space Race. GAAARGH didn't anyone read the nice novel they wrote before game release which explained all that?

I did! It's more of a short story than a novel and was free online from their website. A much better way to set up factions than where someone was born and fairly plausible how such factions could arise.

 

[Makabb]

I gotta try 4, it's on steam with all expansions for 5$ right now

 

[eXalted]

Any recommendations for Civ IV mods (not total conversions like Fall from Heaven) ?

Something that fixes balance and stuff? Bonus points if it fixes the Stacks of Doom....seriously.

 

[coldcrow]

Any recommendations for Civ IV mods (not total conversions like Fall from Heaven) ?
... fixes the Stacks of Doom....seriously.

Build more workers. And have some knowledge about who is going to attack with what and when.

K-Mod if you like vanilla. Also, stacks are one of the bases of Civilization 4 gameplay.

 

[Snorkack]

Rebalance the Realms is a good multiplayer rebalance mod by the Realms Beyond guys. Haven't tried it against AI.
Also I don't have a clue how one would 'fix' the stacks of doom without a total conversion.

 

[rezaf]

Bonus points if it fixes the Stacks of Doom....seriously.

Here's a challenge for you:
Play a Civ4 vanilla game. Expansions allowed at your leisure, but no fancy AI mods or any of that stuff. Any world setting you like. Normal sized map. No marathon. Max. Prince difficulty.
Now just play. When you encounter your first true stack of doom, i.e. one so large you find it impossible to beat even if ferrying in troops from neighboring cities, post a screenshot.

In my copy of Civ4, SoD were an extreme outlier under such circumstances, however you 1UPT guys always make it sound so common. I wanna see it with my own eyes...

 

[MilesBeyond]

Any recommendations for Civ IV mods (not total conversions like Fall from Heaven) ?

Something that fixes balance and stuff? Bonus points if it fixes the Stacks of Doom....seriously.

You might be interested in Realism Invictus. It's generally just a massive expansion for the game. Adds a whole bunch of new techs, units, and concepts. Most notably, it adds in Logistics, which determines how many units you can have in a stack. If the amount of units in a stack exceeds your Logistics number, the entire stack begins taking combat penalties, which go up if you put even more units in the stack. It also has a combined arms thing, where you get combat bonuses for having units of different types stacked together. Pretty cool.

For "Don't touch my vanilla Civ just improve it" mods, K-Mod is definitely the best out there. Massive improvements to the AI, and some pretty cool minor balancing.

Also, I don't know why someone necro'd this thread, but I'm kinda glad they did. Maybe my least-liked (because I enjoy all the Civs) Civ game is 3. It tried a lot of things that just didn't really work. The Golden Age and Great Person mechanics weren't super great, the diplomacy was awful and open to all sorts of abuses, and the AI... A game of Civ 3 was essentially considered over by the time you hit the Industrial era, because the AI wasn't able to wrap its head around the importance of railroads and factories. Civ 3 is also notable for having expansions that arguably made the game worse, and at the very least didn't make it much better. LOL lethal bombardment.