Civ4 - Review & Trailer

[Blarg]

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I just got this. Looks good, but is there any way to speed up the gameplay? I don't care for the animations and I'm sure some of the pauses could be removed.

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Do a search for the civ thread I started, after this one was made. There are a few tips there. You can edit most of the settings in notepad, like a regular .ini file. Just be sure to save it in notepad txt form of course. Also, under options in the game, both before you start and when the game is really going, you can adjust all kinds of things, visual, speed wise, etc.

That's one cool thing about the game, you can mod the hell out of it without really knowing jack. Like if you want an age to go faster or slower(say you want to spend more time in ancient before rushing up to modern), well, you can do that. You can do a lot with it.

I'm having fun with the game, but I have to admit the combat model disappoints me and I wish it weren't so rudimentary. But I think cultural, diplomatic, and domination, and space race victories are all fun. Military I just kinda put up with.

Oh, and I still suck at it. Some of these guys on the civ boards stepped into it and achieved mastery almost immediately because they've been playing the old civ games for so many years now. This is a game with a ton of stuff to learn about, so it'll be a long time till I'm even halfway decent, if I even get that far.

I've been playing everything standard, but might try for some quick games too. Sometimes an hour or two sounds pretty cool but five or six hours sounds lame.

[Ogre]

I just got this game. I havent played any civ for a few years. somebody send me a PM if they wanna pwn me or teach me how to play.

[astroglide]

a lot of things aren't clear after playing the tutorial. i'm not takling about tech tree stuff, which will be fun to explore or whatever. it's more like, 'why can't these guys join up with these guys?' and 'why do these guys attack twice?' and that sort of thing. and i'm not talking about upgraded units, just the dumb joes you first get with a barracks. i don't feel like reading the bible just to figure this stuff out, and it's the sort of thing that drives me nuts even if it doesn't seriously affect me. so i haven't played outside of the tutorial and i wonder if i ever will.

[Hamish McBagpipe]

God, your STILL going on about this game. I am so over the Civ 4 hype. I pwned this game 2 weeks ago. When's the expansion module coming out. Sick of you damn nublets.

[ilya]

IMO there's not enough of a payoff to compensate for the ludicruous amount of detail & the incredibly slow pace of these games. That's why I'll always prefer abstract games like chess & go. & poker.

The overworld screenshot is pretty, though.

[Ogre]

i cant get this stupid game to work! i installed it and while i was launching it it said, "your movies are not installed correctly" wtf is my problem

[Blarg]

I agree that chess and go and poker are much better games. I've seen some fans say that Civ 4 is like chess or go, but more complex, and think...whaaa? Not hardly. What it has is tons of detail, but not enormous complexity. Huge difference.

I agree that the pay-off for the complexity doesn't rank it up there with chess or go or poker, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have some virtues. The slow pace can be enjoyable after a teeth-gritting session of poker or a mind-frying game of Go. It does take a great deal of patience to learn all the little things about it, though, and I think most people wouldn't want to bother. Or they'd just play along happily more by the seat of their pants, like I do.

People should try the strat section of the civ 4 fanatics website. Here's a thread I found really useful, for starters:

Early rush strat

As to time frames, you can speed up the games so they only take a couple hours. That's really not too bad at all. A standard sized map at normal speed takes around 6 to 8-ish hours.

This might be one where it's a lot more fun played against others, too. Many computer games play almost like completely different games once you are fighting humans instead of the computer AI's.

[Blarg]

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i cant get this stupid game to work! i installed it and while i was launching it it said, "your movies are not installed correctly" wtf is my problem

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Like almost all video games, they rushed this one out prematurely, and it is getting notorious for having problems with LOTS of video cards, especially ATI Radeon's. Check to be sure you have all the latest drivers on well, everything.

I'm running it great on an ATI 9800 128 meg vid card with drivers dated April 2004, but some are having trouble with much more recent cards and drivers. It seems to be kind of a matter of luck.

P.S. Check out Sulla's walkthrough on the Civ 4 fanatics site.

[ChipWrecked]

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i cant get this stupid game to work! i installed it and while i was launching it it said, "your movies are not installed correctly" wtf is my problem

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Like almost all video games, they rushed this one out prematurely, and it is getting notorious for having problems with LOTS of video cards, especially ATI Radeon's. Check to be sure you have all the latest drivers on well, everything.

I'm running it great on an ATI 9800 128 meg vid card with drivers dated April 2004, but some are having trouble with much more recent cards and drivers. It seems to be kind of a matter of luck.



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This has been a problem on every Civ generation released. Alpha Centauri was notoriously buggy as well.

[Blarg]

Unfortunately, a very high percentage of games are released this way now. The review sites and mags have for the most part given up on even mentioning it for the major games, who are also their major advertisers, so releasing betas instead of finished games has become the norm. This is why I'm rarely an early adopter on games.