Customer Reviews

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

5 star:		(123)
4 star:		(61)
3 star:		(57)
2 star:		(43)
1 star:		(107)

 

 

[5th version of my review - March 1]

While I can edit this review, I can't updating the ratings above; if I could, then I'd change them to 5 stars for 'fun' and 4 stars for 'overall' with the 1.52 patch installed.

I stand by my earlier contention that 2K Games pushed Civ4 out the door a few months too early. Civ4 should never have gotten through SQA (software quality assurance) and been declared 'golden' (ready for commercial release) with these kinds of defects. I suspect this was done to increase Christmas sales, but the net-wide flap over the Civ4 problems likely had just the opposite effect.

Since then, 2KGames had released patches to fix most of the technical problems. Because of that, I've deleted the section I originally had in this review regarding installation and graphics driver problems; just be sure to download and install the current Civ4 patch (version 1.52, as of this updated posting) from the 2kgames.com web site before playing.
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That said, I am quite happy with the changes and expansions made to Civ4. My highest praise goes to the actual game design changes, to wit:

--Faster gameplay. I typically play with a huge world, but I finish a game a lot faster than I could in Civ3. (That's not saying too much; I've still had a few all-nighters.)

--Reduction or elimination of a lot of the micromanagement. I am _so_ happy not to be dealing with riots; in virtually every game that I've played, I've never had to open up a city and reallocate who was working where. Also, automated workers are a lot smarter (and have more options).

--The improved terrain modeling and the increased improvements options; again, it makes things more interesting.

--The combat unit "promotion" track. I tend to go for non-military victories, but this feature may make me play around more with actually conquering my neighbors. It also makes barracks more valuable.

--The "civics" and "religion" aspect. Both are interesting and fun, and both appear to be well-balanced.

--The "culture borders" concept. This allowed me to stake out territory while minimizing incursion by other nations. However, be aware that keeping your borders closed irritates the AIs after a while.

--The "great leaders" concept. There was a little of this in Civ3, but this new implementation makes it a far more vital part of the game. I managed to trigger two (2) golden ages for myself in one game (one by building the Taj Majal, the other by using several great leaders), and I also kept a few Great Engineers on hand to hurry some major wonder projects towards the end of the game. And Great Artists are very useful for 'culture bombing' neighboring cities or pre-emptively staking out large amounts of unclaimed territory.

Most of the complaints I had (UI response, lack of right-click menu features, raging barbarians) appear to have been fixed or, at least, improved by the 1.52 patch. Here are a few that remain:

--The "Show Friendly Moves" option does _not_ include units that are automaticly exploring (scouts, galleys, etc.)--which is where I used it the most in Civ3. Indeed, there appears to be some overall flakiness in both the "Show Friendly Moves" and "Show Enemy Moves" options--it's hard to tell at times whether Civ4 is paying any attention to those options.

-- Even with the 1.52 patch installed, when you complete a game, it's best to exit Civ4 before starting a new game. I've had one or two abrupt crashes when I've tried to go from completing one game to starting a new one.

All this said, Civ4 is a major improvement (in game design and graphics) over Civ3. It is very addictive, and I've spent far more time playing it over the past several months than I should have. ..bruce..

Why the ridiculously low three-star average rating for this fantastic game? Only because of angry one-star reviews from a minority of customers who have encountered technological problems, which have since been patched. I play Civ IV on a laptop and have had no technological problems whatsoever. Civilization is the greatest strategy series ever invented, and Civ IV has improved by leaps and bounds over its predecessors. Result: a gaming sensation, which is easily the best strategy game ever made.

The game is so good it is hard to know where to begin. The dynamic 3D graphics, soundtrack, presentation, interface etc are all absolutely AAA. You can zoom in and out at will, and the graphical detail is absolutely astonishing. The music is also great and atmospheric. It changes to match the era, catching the mood nicely. All that is absolutely top-notch, yet it isn't even the major reason why I would recommend this game.

Of course, strategy games stand and fall by their gameplay, and here too Civilization IV does not disappoint. If you've played any of the Civilization series, then you'll know just what an addictive, "one-more-turn" experience it is. And I mean addictive. It's all too easy for me to skip meals and sleep because I am so completely engrossed in planning my next strategic move.

This much is familiar from the days of Civilization II (which I spent literally hundreds of hours playing in the old days). I'm pleased to say that the latest installment has successfully captured all of the old feel of the classic Civilization. I say this, by the way, as someone who never got into Civilization III, which meant that I certainly had my doubts before getting Civ IV. These doubts were quickly dispelled. The new features which have been included in Civ IV, such as religion and great people, add whole new layers of strategy to the game. At the same time, they all combine elegantly with the basic game system of old.

What's even more important is the radical effort that has been made to streamline the amount of micromanagement. This was always the Achilles' heal of the previous versions of the game. I could find myself spending an hour on every move, painstakingly moving grains of corn from one tile to another in city after city, in order to avoid the waste that would otherwise occur. The great news is that the designers have at last woken up to the pointlessness and tediousness of most of this micromanagement.

For example, now surplus production points do not go to waste (as they used to in previous versions) but instead go towards the production of the next item you want to build. This "roll over" of production (which also applies to food, scientific research, etc) means that you can concentrate on managing your empire, instead of managing every single tile every single turn. At the same time, the cities have also become much smarter at managing their resources, and there is a nice array of options (all very easily accessible in the city display) which enable you to guide a city's production priorities. Whether you choose to automate, or pursue a more hands-on approach, it is all very easy to manage.

As a result of these changes, the game now moves along much faster, while still containing a more-than-satisfying amount of thinking and strategizing every turn. This means I can sit down to start a game and reasonably expect to finish it within a week or two of intermittent playing. Sadly, the same cannot be said for many other strategy games on the market, which are often so long and complex that they are essentially unplayable.

What else? As a veteran of Civ II, I was pleasantly surprised to see what a challenge the game has become. Now, an effective military is just as important for defence as it is for attack. If you are weak, the AI will show you no mercy, and it can mount remarkably effective invasions. In general, warfare is now much more challenging and realistic. Pillaging has become a far more effective strategy than in the past, which means that fighting no longer revolves entirely around the capture of cities as it used to. The added emphasis on combined arms means that much more thought has to be given to the composition and deployment of your armed forces.

Really I could go on and on lavishing praise on this lavish game. But what am I doing? Why am a wasting time writing this review when I could be getting on with my next move?

Like previous Civilization games, Civ 4 is a turn based strategy game that gives you control over the development of your civilization. Without going into all the features, I will point out the strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths:
While some will complain about this, the overall game has been redesigned. Unlike previous games which encouraged the building of as many cities as you could in the early part of the game, Civ 4 goes to a more strategic approach, but also gives you something to do each turn(instead of setting production and waiting several turns for what you want to build to finish). The game now eliminates the "corruption" system of previous games, and goes to a system where there is an expense that the city places on your government. So, you start with one city, and you need to build a bit slower, at least in the early game.

The graphics engine is now 3D, and with a decently powerful video card, you can see all your city improvements from the main map. You can zoom in and out as well.

Cultural boundaries are based on the culture output of your cities, and you can use culture as a way to expand your borders and capture border cities.

Religion is a system that allows the founder(s) of the different religions certain extras. If you are the founder of a religion, and you accept that religion as your "state religion", you can see all the cities that contain that religion. Religion can spread on it's own, or you can help it by sending out missionaries.

The game is open for mods, and there are many out there that you can download to tweak the game in different ways.

Replay value is high due to multi-player, as well as the random factor in map generation. There are some static maps, but there are also a number of random maps that can be adjusted based on your preferred play style. If you prefer there being only one continent, or higher or lower ocean levels, or a larger or smaller map, you can start the game with the settings YOU prefer.

There are also different game "speeds", which decide how long each game will take. A marathon game on a huge map can take over six hours, but you don't need to play on marathon.

Each of the AI civ leaders have their own personalities, with some being more warlike than others.

With the Warlords expansion, you have both unique units for each civilization, as well as unique buildings. These unique buildings and units replace a "standard" building or unit.

There are many more positives, but no game is without it's negatives, even though I don't really consider many of these to be real flaws.

If your video card does not support directX 9 in hardware, the game won't look as good, and you will need to turn off certain graphics options. That is due to the video card not being able to handle certain graphics features. Even with DirectX 9, if you have a low end video card, including integrated video in most laptops, you may encounter some graphics issues. Intel video tends to be the source of many problems, but older laptops with DirectX 8.1 or earlier graphics chips tend to be the source of many display problems.

Even with a reasonably fast machine, video, CPU, etc, if you play on a huge world with 17 computer controlled civilizations, you will find that you need to wait a bit between turns(as the AI civs get their turn). This can make it a little annoying, but again, the choice of playing on a huge world with an older/slower computer is yours.

The AI at times can be a bit...slow. This is why multi-player is a good thing, because you can play against other humans. There are some mods out there that help with this. The next expansion(Beyond the Sword) has improved AI as a feature.

If you prefer a game that lets you win or lose based on thinking, and less on reflexes, then Civ 4 should be seen as a great game. If reflexes and fast gameplay are what you look for, then Civ 4 is NOT for you. Warlords and the second expansion(due out in July of 2007) add(and will add) to the base game. There are also a lot of elements in Civ 4 that will appeal to those interested in history, since there are references in the game to real life leaders, cultures, and world wonders.

I've been playing Civ since 1992 and it's amazing how, even with all the ripoff games in the same vein, it remains a leader and innovator. While some folks like the insane action of RTS, Civilization allows one to be more thoughtful about gameplay -- more like chess.

The presentation is just marvelous -- with great graphics that even with all settings turned to the max, are snappy and just right. The wonder movies are astonishing as well although I did find some sound glitches in them.

Finally you can zoom all the way into your cities and every city looks different based on the choices that you've made through the game. Developed tiles around them slowly turn into suburban sprawl and the whole effect is very realistic. The animation on the ground is also very good and adds alot of beauty to the map.

The sound design is amazing with a wonderful soundtrack. The main menu music is just for color but i find myself sitting on the screen to let it play. The music choices are interesting and varied and suitable for the period. Mozart and the classics are to be expected. What I didn't expect was to hear clips from the opera "Nixon in China". Amazing to hear.

Units animate much better and combat is the pretty much the same "dice roll" type that has always been in the game. While it is more balanced than before, with city defenses a group of archers can still defeat units with guns. What adds a nice "RPG" feel is the upgrades through XP that you can give your units. This takes units to a whole new level and encourages combat.

The resources are much more developed and make it more fun. Workers now have many levels of duties they can do. While this is fun for while -- like old games once you have 20 workers going you just automate them and don't think of them again. This is a strength and a weakness. It's great not to micromanage but why have something the computer is going to play for you? I wish there was more decisions that needed to be made in that respect that could affect how your game develops.

And as with previous versions this is an overall problem. The later stages of the game do bog down in popup clicking and choosing what to build. In the earlier phases it has alot of importance and if you are a warring nation it does. Being a peaceful, powerful nation is pretty boring though. Decision making is not as imporant or complex. Discoveries are nil and the game gets repetitive.

Battle though is pretty fun though so the best way to combat the above is to... well, combat.

The A.I. on the level I played was pretty weak. Asking someone to go to war with you gets no coordinated effort. In fact the other nation didn't do one thing except move their units around. One time they even captured a city after watching me do all the work! This area could use alot of improvement as there is really no strategic reason to do it.

The Wonders are back although later in the game they don't really add a whole lot. Mainly they will increase your culture. Only at the very end did any cities convert to my nationality due to culture. Occasionally a Wonder will afford you the ability to build something.

New in the game is the "Great Person" concept which adds another layer of choice onto what to do with your city. I wish they would do more than they do. After awhile it is a bit repetitive. Plus there is no explanation on who that person is so you can at least learn something. Mainly each category of person does the same thing.

The Civilopedia is back but doesn't seem as helpful as in previous versions. It's sad to see it actually get worse and less helpful. Also in that category are the "advisors" which are pretty useless here. Luckily other parts of the game provide insight so you don't need them quite as much.

It might seem like there are alot of negatives but there is alot of good stuff and it is definitely the best version of the game yet. Highly recommended and still as addictive as ever. But... the replay value is lacking as once you do it a few times, it doesn't vary enough to really warrant much repeating. The higher levels basically allow the other civs to "cheat" by getting things faster. I haven't tried but one level so that remains to be tested.

Overall, thumbs up. Go buy it.

I got this game for Christmas. It's now January 9th, and I'm shelving the game. It feels closer to Alpha Centauri than any game in the Civilization series.

The design enhancements don't seem to be a significant enough improvement to make this game better than CivIII, while most of the problems still exist or got worse.

For example, new leader units have been added to allow you to customize your Cities/Civilization more than you could in CivIII. You can assign these leaders to be super workers, or to give you a free technology. They're not necessary for winning, and their absence would not cause you to lose.

Also, military units gain custom abilities when they win enough battles. This is probably the coolest feature in the new game, but again, it doesn't have a huge impact on gameplay. I found that even though I could choose to upgrade my units a little in their ability to attack cities or give them combat bonuses on different terrain, the units themselves were not long lived enough for those bonuses to have a significant influence on overall gameplay. I'd either lose the units in battle before they got too specialized, or they'd just become obsolete. Either way, I didn't get more than a couple "promotions" before the unit was lost. Not much of a value add for me.

Also, worker units have a lot of options for what they can build on a tile. It's not just irrigation and mining anymore. This can be great if you want to sit and crunch the numbers and figure out what will optimize your city, and then change what's on the tiles as your city's needs grow. On the other hand, it's very confusing if you don't want to make a science of it because each tile can have up to five different options. And be careful, once you chop down a forest, it's lost forever. And there are some tiles that can never be improved. I never really understood why that was.

Where I think CivIV is actually a worse game than CivIII is the fact that automatic city management has become less complex, at the user's expense. I can no longer tell a city to "only build buildings and don't bug me until you're done". The city governor, can only be turned on or off, not customized. If you turn it on, it starts producing a slew of military units that I don't want and am frustrated to have to deal with.

Further, it's less obvious to me in this game what the other civilizations on the planet are up to. I found it hard to get a handle on what their level of technology was without invading them and seeing what units they were using to defend their cities. Also, I had no idea what wonders of the world they were building until I got a message box telling me that I could no longer work on the one I was building because it was built elsewhere.

Also, it became very difficult for me to see events that happens on the enemy turn, such as their attacks on my cities. They all seemed to happen at once, so that I couldn't watch the results of their sieges if they had more than one happening on a turn. It was dizzying and frustrating trying to use the first half of my turn scouring my territory to figure out what might have changed from the previous turn.

Lastly, there are significant technical defects in the game. A lot of other reviews go into great detail in this area, so I won't spend a lot of time, but there are three things that really annoyed me. One, the mouse cursor had a hard time figuring out what tile you wanted because of the 3D interface. It was a pain to sit there and wiggle the mouse around until it got it right each and every time I wanted to do something. Two, The UI was painfully slow. I wanted to queue up some buildings in my city's production queues, since I have to do that manually now, and I would click wait ten seconds for it to catch up. Then I could click the second building in the queue and wait ten seconds for it to catch up. Then I could click the third, etc etc. My computer is decent. There's no excuse for that bad performance. Third, the graphics engine would get confused and render incorrectly, which then would confuse me. For example, if a tank moves, it leaves tracks. About half the time, the tracks were drawn such that they came from a completely different tile than the tank. At first I thought it meant something was shooting at me and leaving black trails in the air, but then I figured out that it was just bad game code. Shameful and disappointing.

There are so many great game play enhancements that could have made this game so much better. For example, an explorer unit that could claim territory so that you had a little time to put down a city before someone else moved in and took it out from under you.

The two biggest improvements that I was looking forward to being added that were are a "no city razing" option that you can turn on when you start a custom game, and no pollution on map tiles which is a part of every game. Great! Unfortunately, compared to the other detractors and lackluster improvements, it just doesn't feel like enough to keep me interested.

All in all, this game is a great disappointment for me. I've played and loved every Civ game since the original Microprose DOS Civ. I really wanted to love this one too. It took too many steps backwards and not enough forwards to satisfy me. I'm heartbroken.

As a long time fan of the Civilization series I can only say that I was somewhat disappointed with the release of Civilization IV.

The main gripe I have with this game is almost nothing happens military wise between opposing AI players. 90% of the time they sit there and demand that you cancel trade deals with one another. But rarely start any kind of larger war with one another. Unless you happen to be nearby then it's break out the troops and stomp headlong into the motherland.

Let me share one of my recent epics through Civ IV. I was the Spanish, carefully minding my own business on an island I shared with the French. Throughout the entire game there were no wars, except for when Civ's captured the barbarian settlements and when the Aztec's decided to obliderate the Russians. (Because they are so aggressive the Aztec's are the only civ that will go to war with another AI civ. As a friend of mine once stated "If the Aztec's could have a civil war they'd do that too."
But other than that nothing else happened except at one point the Chineese, The Romans and The Americans all decided that my Civilization was a threat to international security and simultaniously decided to invade. That's it. No other wars took place (even though I turned on AI aggression) - I even checked the logs at the end of the game to make sure.

So other than not declairing wars the Civilizations main goal is to build the rocket ship to go to Alpha Centuri as fast as possible and failing that they'll try to build a superior culture.

The really only other thing I don't like about Civ IV is the new government system. While it is a neat concept to be blending in different concepts such as a communist state with free speech and universal sufferage most times it really doesn't feel like you have a government at all.

I was a big fan of the old government systems, mostly because being the poli sci dork that I am I liked creating my own back stories to the changes in governments and interactions between civilizations. (In the year 1600 the Myan revolutionaries successfully over through the Smoke Jaguar dynasty and established a democratic state. With the singing of the Constitution of the 1600 in....) You see the point. For me it just seems like Civ's are on thier own islands in the world not really doing anything except scientific research.

That aside though the game is beautifully polished and fireaxis games has cut down on a lot of the tedium of Civ III. Most notably getting rid of some of the unfun things like riots and polution, and significantly speeding up the game play. A game of Civ III could take as long as 24 hours or more to complete from begining to end. While a game of Civ IV can be completed in less than three.

The multiplayer aspect of the game is probably it's best feature.If you play with a number of human opponents the game takes on a feel of what should have been evident when one plays with the computer.

Although I have not played the expansion pack my only hope is that the it address the AI nonagression problem. Otherwise despite the long game play I will most likely revert to playing long draw out games of Civ III to fulfil my global governing ways.

Civilization is a great series of strategy games, and Civilization IV doesn't disappoint in that area. Players who are experienced with previous games in the series will probably find that the general play style feels very similar to those games.

Casual gamers will be happy to hear that this similarity applies to their experience with Civilization as well. If you just want a few hours of doing something *just* difficult enough to keep your mind busy, but not have to expend a lot of mental energy, you'll do just fine with Civilization IV. While many games stick to easy, medium, and difficult modes (with some throwing in "god" modes), this one throws in a long list of difficulty levels that will allow you to fine tune the experience to be exactly right for you both in your first game, and as you naturally improve over time. It also retains the ability to select which paths to victory will be treated as valid (I don't know about anybody else, but for some reason I've always just found the space race victory to be obnoxious, so I keep it turned off).

There are changes that have an impact on gameplay, naturally. The addition of religion is one of the bigger ones. In some ways you can largely ignore it, if you prefer (at least at the lower difficulty levels, naturally as you move up the ladder you have to start taking every possible advantage). One of the big places where it affects your play in a way that you can't ignore is that other nations will adjust their opinion of you based on whether you share their state religion (in the case that you have one, in the later eras of the game "free religion" becomes an available civic setting and selecting that eliminates state religion).

The biggest change to the game in general is in the visuals. The user interface is much more visually appealing than prior games in the series. The main game screen works very well, though I sometimes find the interface to manipulate cities in detail somewhat awkward. Fortunately, unless you're playing on the higher levels where you'd have more need to micromanage, you don't have to enter the city screens very often.

What you absolutely must do when you play this game, above all, is install the patches. The early releases appeared to have memory leaks (that means the game needs more and more RAM the longer you leave it running, because it isn't properly keeping track of what it's using). In bad cases, I would find that after a couple of hours the game would become progressively less responsive. The most obvious sign that this effect was happening was actually watching the water move up and down along the shores. After a while, instead of a smooth up and down motion it would start jumping from place to place. Installing the patches to update to the latest version fixed that, which was a big help because without them I found the need for periodic restarts to be extremely annoying.

One small complaint about the way patches are handled: to install the patches from inside the game you have to go through the advanced menu from the main screen. Patches to a game, repairing bugs and fixing performance issues, can be so vital to having fun. Since "advanced" is usually a tag put on features that no one should touch unless they know EXACTLY what they're doing, because they could otherwise cause problems, it just doesn't seem like an appropriate place to put a function that ALL players (even the ones who aren't very confident with computers!) will be needing to use.

Let me start out by saying, I have experienced the joys as well as the keyboard smashing hardships with Civilization IV. Let me explain, I have 3 computers that I had to run this on (Dell, Gateway, and Self-built). Never in my life have I seen a game as unexpected as this when it comes to installing or running it. Now this is the key point, you do not need a super computer to run this game, but it won't run on any single computer as well.

I bought Civ4 when it first came out at my local bestbuy about a year ago, supprisingly they haven't lowered the price. There seems to be a reason for this: The people who produced Civilization IV seem to want to get every single penny out of it.

This is the first problem: After a long anticipated wait, Civ4 was released...way too early. As soon as it ran, the title screen wouldn't load. The leaders of the civilizations didn't have any skin either, it was both funny and sad. There were many people out there experiencing the same problem, so about 2 weeks later, they released a patch. Sadly, my gateway still seemed to slow.

Moving on to the Self-built computer. This was a joke! I tried installing it, and it froze. I tried a second time, blue screen of death! I tried about 5 more times and finally got it to settle on my computer. But alas, when I tried playing it, I recieved an error. This error was basically written on to their software which bsically said: Look, we don't trust you, so I'm not going to run. It seemed like the people behind Civ4 decided that their game was so revolutionary, that they'd decide to put the most thorogh, infuriating security device onto their disk. This is a proven fact, and was even mentioned on a popular video game review show.

Even on the Dell, I had many of the same problems, but in the end I could run it, and found that the gameplay was in a sence fun. I still laugh at the fact that the "Install" Disc is the play disc, and the "Play" disc is the install disc. It's just these small problems that show they did not care that they were putting out an unfinished games. Sure, some bugs are exceptable (look at World of Warcraft) but it was this huge collection that made it seem outrageous. At least the people at Blizzard encourage people to change certain things about the game to make it either more enjoyable, or to have something to ban.

On a final note: The Gameplay was fine, but the lack of customer service and their ability to give you an ulcer encouraged me to uninstall the game, take the discs, and toss them out the window. No game, in my oppinion, should be released with this many problems and definatly sways me away from buying any other games from them.

Civilization is like a bad date. Sure its pretty on the outside, but on the inside, it just frustates you; blocks any attempts for you to interact with it; and steals the $50 that you paid for it... :P

IMO it seems the problem is that Firaxis had too many artists and animators, and not enough expert game testers. After installing the 1.61 patch, I had no problems with crashing - though I had the graphics/animations set to minimum.

My specific complaints were thus:

1. Too much eye candy that I couldn't turn off - it interfered with a quick understanding of what I was looking at. Although it's great art, I don't really want complicated art when I'm playing. I want a situation display that's easily comprehensible! I really liked the 2-D display back in Civ II in this respect.

2. All the animations and detail bogged down the performance of my PC. I have a 3-year old AMD XP 2000 system (3/4 GB RAM, 64MB AGP card) which runs other strategy games just fine. This game is NOT worth plopping down the bucks for a new PC.

3. The underlying rules make my standard strategy of an early game ruthless land grab prohibitivly expensive. Why not assign initial borders then? Racing your opponents to settling (and defending) the valuable real estate was a big part of the fun of the earlier Civ II. In this game each city becomes progressively more expensive; you can afford many cities only if most of them are well developed.

4. Technologies can't be obtained through conquering cities, a real weakness. You can't play "Genghis Khan style" because when your nation is geared towards cranking out military units and no techs come in from conquests, your hoard quickly becomes obsolete. This leads me to think the play testers did not play many full-length games: on a large or huge map, a military victory strategy must begin early in the game to have a chance of succeeding.

5. Settlers are twice as fast as the defensive units that would be used to escort them? Come on!

6. "Neutral" nations will allow third nations to attack your nation through their territory. If you don't have "open borders" with the neutral country, you may have one heck of a problem with your flanks. Gee, you'd think there'd be at least a diplomatic penalty for that kind of thing. Look at how much trouble the USA goes through in real-life to get basing/transit rights when prosecuting a war. The "Open borders" relationship is way too binary - there needs to be graded system, such as:
A. Border is closed.
B. Border open to scouting units;
C. + open to settlers, workers, and traders/trading;
D. + open to missionaries;
E. open to all units with prohibitions on attacking 3rd parties;
F. open to all units with NO prohibitions (passive ally).

7. Most civics are unable to hurry production via an infusion of cash. What's the point then of having built up a big pile of gold?

8. Seige units have no safe "stand off barrage" mode to use against a stack of enemy units. It's bad enough your seige units will probably get killed during the opponent's move phase (range of only 1 square in all cases); to almost certainly get killed while bombarding an enemy stack is double jepordy.

9. Mechanized units are only as fast as horse units?

10. Unit attack strength and defense/hit points are the same thing. Even Civ II was more realistic than that...

What I liked about this version:

1. Wonders are no longer (since Civ II) game-breaking.
2. The "Great person/leader" system.
3. Stacks are treated more realistically than Civ II, though I'd like to see some kind of combined stack attack/defense mode.
4. The workers in automatic mode are relatively smart.

If I had bought this game from a $5 bargain bin, I wouldn't have felt too bad. It was engrossing for a couple of weekends before I stalled out on its agravations. I'd give it an overall 3 stars for all the graphics wizardry, but that doesn't make it fun to play!

This isn't a kid's review. I just didn't feel like creating a profile.

I've been playing Civilization from the beginning and had high hopes for IV. Had.

I had to return my first purchase, bad disk 2. Got the second to install and downloaded the patch. Everything runs fine.

I've been thru 10-12 games so far and have no complaints about the interface. I like the new graphics (which is why I gave it 3 stars overall). My complaint is regarding the AI. I have yet to see one conputer controlled civ attack another computer controlled civ. If I happen to be in an inferior position they are quick enough to turn on me. But to get them to attack each other, never happens.

I've completed a couple of games that went the duration WITHOUT ANY WARS WHATSOEVER! How realistic is that? 7 civilizations living side-by-side for millenia and no conflicts!

In previous games you could always count on war, somewhere, between someone. You could side with the dominant one to carve up the underdog, or side with the underdog to bring the big boy down to size, but you could always count on there being a war.

Every game that goes the distance (where I'm not wiped out early), is just a space race. Every game becomes a land grab and a tech race. Unless you want to be the agressor your military is only there to keep you from looking weak.

I'll give Civ IV one or two more shots, maybe disable some victory conditions or change a mod or something. Then I'm uninstalling and going back to III Conquests.