Am I crazy or is something wrong with Sid?
Am I crazy?
I was wondering if I am totally alone on this or if a lot of others feel the same way. I have been playing Sid Meier’s games almost since the beginning. (Hellcat ace in the 80’s) And the CIV games are some of my favorite games of all time. Yet both his latest Railroads game and CIV 4 just aren’t enjoyable to me at all. I have tried both and frankly I just can’t get into them. They just seem cartoonish and shells of the former games. I can’t seem to put my finger on exactly what part of the game isn’t working for me but I know it’s not like before. With Civ 4 I think it might be that I can’t build as many units as before and core of the game seems to have shifted to culture rather than force or research. Railroads seems as if its time factor has been massively altered. I barely had a train or 2 up and running and like 10 game years or MORE had gone by. At that rate the game would be over in an evenings play. Also without some of the options of the original (stock market, more detailed options) it just feels like a shell of the original. Am I totally off here or has firaxis totally changed game play to appeal to the younger less intense audience?
Does anyone else feel this way?
While I can understand your concerns on Railroads, Civ 4 (especially with Beyond the Sword) is by far the best iteration the franchise has seen.
Presentation concerns aside, the gameplay is deep and awesome.
I havent tried the expansion, when the org came out I shelled out the 50 for the limited edition and even pre ordered. I was so disapointed by the game I sold it on ebay. (and I collect civ games!)
Does the expansion do a lot to make the game play better?
I have to say I am surprised. I thought civ 4 was fantastic!
There were somethings a little less "intense" but overall I found it to have more interactions than previous versions. The beyond the sword expansion just makes it even more interesting.
If you don't like civ4 vanilla the expansion won't do anything for you though.
I do agree with you about railroads, I particularly missed the advanced financial stuff.
The newest pirates was great though.
Eh, I didn't like Civ 4 at all, but I played it like for 20 minutes. And the new Pirates! that came a few years ago was pretty boring after a while.
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I've played every version of Civ, and I think Civ 4's easily the best iteration of the series. I really don't get the complaint about the number of units in Civ 4, since I found myself having to make far more units than I did in any other version.
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Interesting... One of the first games I played I could only muster about 5-10 armor units. Most of my normal civ3 games by the time I get to mech inf I can easly field 30 or more units of just armor. I found the game to cut my unit building by 2\3 or more. I might have to fire up my copy of Civ 4 I got with the collections package I purchased the other day and see if its any better after the patches
Also I wish I could opt out religion since I cant specifiy what religions are in my nation. (just a preference reason)
I dont count Pirates as a newer game since its 4 years old. But that one was a homerun in my book. Perhaps better than Pirates Gold was....
There's a setting in Civ4 (I believe it's the time setting) that basically slows everything down or speeds everything up. At the epic choice, you have a lot more time at the various tech levels. I don't personally play with it , but it sounds like it may be what you're looking for.
There's a civic that disables the spread of religions, and I believe they eventually added a setting that lets you pick which religion you found if you found a religion.
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Yeah, I can't go with you on the Civ 4 complaint. Though, how much of that was Sid and how much of it was Soren? I think Sid is a great collaborator, and one of the reasons his games seem really diverse is because of the talent he surrounds himself with.
Perhaps it's not that you like Sid so much, but that you liked the Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds team of Civ 2 fame more than that Sid Meier and Soren Johnson team that was Civ 4. After all, it was Johnson who was lead designer working under direction for Sid on Civ 4.
Either way, I though Civ 4 was genius, but I think Pirates! is the only pure Sid game we've seen in years. So that may be your answer there.
"I think Elysium has the right of it" - Certis
Sid and Brian did EXCELLENT work.
I think Alpha Centauri was an underrated masterwork.
I'm going to have to follow the crowd and say that Civ 4 is excellent. There are plenty of options for changing the game to how you like to play - you can turn on or off victory settings, slow or speed up the game, or expand the size of the map (to name a few).
I tend to love epic-length games played across massive maps, but I'm trying something new this time around. I'm speeding up the game (build faster/research faster) while keeping the map size huge. My theory is that my cities will be churning out tons of units and I'll have tons of cities. I think the end result will be battles on huge scales. I just started though, so we'll see how it works out.
1. You definitely need more units in Civ 4 than in other Civ games. I used to routinely guard cities with 1 unit, even recently captured ones. The AI is too smart for that now. Civ 4 AI attacks are also non-trivial now. Russia once attacked me with 50 Cossacks. Five Zero. It made me pee my pants a little.
2. Railroads sucked.
3. I wonder how much Sid is involved in actual development at this point and how much he just licenses his name out.
4. There may be no wrong answer to your question. It is entirely possible that there is something wrong with Sid and that you are crazy.
"All that time you waste dating and having sex could be better spent scouring the web for new game developer press releases." - Quintin_Stone
Thanks folks...
I think I will have to go back and play more with the settings on civ 4 to make it work. I kind of wondered if I was missing something that was why I asked.
In many ways I still think civ 2 was the high water mark for the series so perhaps what someone said about Brian is correct for me. With the new colonization based on CIV 4 frankly I am a bit worried so I hope I can figure out what I am doing wrong with CIV 4 so I will also enjoy the new Colonization
The fact that Railroads sucked really is a crying shame. That had the potential to be a great game.
If you're a huge Civ fan, it might just be getting used to how the gameplay has changed, mostly in a good way. I kind of didn't like it at first either, but that's only until I realized that I was failing to adjust to the fact that I couldn't rely on the same strategies I used on the previous versions of the series.
I would think the first rule of PR is to ignore forum people, because they vacillate between crazy and liar. - Elysium
The only Sid game that I played and REALLY enjoyed was Alpha Centauri.
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What kuddles said. Try playing on Warlord difficulty instead of Noble for a couple games to get your feet wet. So many things have changed from Civ II to Civ IV that it can be disorienting at first.
With the expansions, I think Civ IV has really become the shining star of the series, and the true successor to Civ II.
(I like to pretend Civ III doesn't exist.)
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I'm also with Kuddles (damned insightful, that one).
If you use old strategies, you'll die. They specifically adjusted the game to prevent the small city grid tactic and a ton of other overly-gamey tactics.
With religion, that's interesting because you can ignore it if you want - but your opponents won't. It actually benefits you with some civics, but doesn't with others. Just another gameplay choice, really.
The Civ 4 system is very flexible, you just need to get a few easy games under your belt and your mind will shift perspectives. It's a great game and reminds me more of Civ/Civ2 than Civ3.
I view Beyond the Sword as entirely mandatory, it's fantastic and adds a lot to the game. I have Warlords because I'm a completist.
But if you still can't stomach the game, get EU3 with it's two add-ons. Sex on a disk, man.
Extremism in the defense of liberty *is* a vice. It has been since the first Crown Loyalist was tarred, feathered and set afire, and it's no better now. It corrupts first the individual, then ultimately the institution it defends.
What I don't get about Railroads sucking is that all they had to do was take the gameplay from RT2, update the graphics and the maps, and they'd have a winner that everybody who bought RT2 would buy. Instead they dumb it down and bury the gameplay mechanics.
"All that time you waste dating and having sex could be better spent scouring the web for new game developer press releases." - Quintin_Stone
Railroads really was a tragedy.
"I think Elysium has the right of it" - Certis
So I guess the consensus is; yes, you are crazy.
Fear the flames...
I don't have a source handy, but I've read that the recent console version of Civ is a Sid game and that he even did a good chunk of the coding.
mcdonis, if you still have the Civ4 manual, there's actually an excellent designer's note in the back where Soren spells out what they were thinking and what they were trying to do. It's especially helpful/interesting for people who are familiar with the old Civ.
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Yeah, Soren Johnson mentioned that on his blog:
"However, a more important (and actually true) first is less often mentioned - CivRev is the first Civ since the original to be designed and programmed directly by Sid. Every line of game and AI code (and probably quite a bit more) inside the game was written by Sid himself, for all three versions: 360, PS3, and DS. CivRev is a rare chance nowadays to see one of our industry’s first great designers still making games the old-fashioned way."
The excellent visual style and practicality of Railroads would have enabled them to keep the complexity yet make it more accessible and manageable.
I think that it would have been not only a greater game in my opinion but also far more commercially successful. There is a huge market out there of people who love Civ games who played the demo and lost interest or even got turned off by the bad feedback and the "if and but" style of most good feedback. I don't think anybody who played and enjoyed a Railroad Tycoon game would make a blanket call that Railroads! is a better game.
Yeah, bingo for Kuddles. Just wanted to add that you can ignore religion, but that's a sh*tload of potential income you're leaving on the table.
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I'm not qualified to answer that, at least that's what the voices told me to tell you.
I've tried to get into Civ IV but it just never 'caught' for me. I think the biggest thing for me is I don't have the time I had when I first learned the Civ games.
I didn't like the graphics on Civ IV either but I had to remember that when Civ I came out I thought it was way too ugly to even play. It wasn't until I heard rave reviews that I gave it a try. Those bastards got me hooked.
What I think I really miss is the strategy guide that came out for Civ. It was about three times as thick as what they now call a strategy guide and had at least a page for everything in the game explaining what it it was good for and when you should be trying to use it. Maybe if I had that I would 'get' how you try and play in the new version. I tried to play it like the old version and it just wasn't doing it for me.
I tried Civ Revolutions and didn't see anything that would pry me away from Cataan.
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Yeah I agree with you on Civ4.
I thought it was all too much gobbledygook. It was bloated.
I mean Civ2 had a 200 page manual and then there's Civ4.
Plus when it came out it was so slow. The 3d graphics didn't help.
Civ2 with crisp 2d graphics and better AI/rules is about perfect. (Sort of the treatment Pirates got.)
I think I heard this on the GFW podcast, but it went something like "You need 2 people to create a great work of art. One to make it and the 2nd guy to knock the first guy over the head before he changes it again and screws it up."
In Civilization Chronicles (yes, I'm a Civ whore and proud of it) there is a also great essay by Soren Johnson about how he approached the design of Civ IV. Very insightful and helps understanding the game better if you've played the previous iterations. But I believe it is similar to that from manual, though.
If you have a problem adjusting to Civ IV (I know I did) I think it's because it's less, for a lack of better word, deterministic. You have to adapt your strategies far more often, you have much bigger choice, which - if you haven't thought out your overall stategy clearly beforehand - might be overwhelming. Once you make a long-term plan though, you simply find out that you can ignore some paths/advances/features altogether and concentrate on the important ones. Which I think is a boon, not a feature creep, it simply accomodates much more varied play styles.
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