Mentioned in another thread but deserved a thread of its own.

I had Civ 2 and along with BOTF 1, defined my early gaming experiences.

But I missed out Civ 3 really, played very little of a demo. Even though I still loved the series. Strange....why, Yes.

So now its time for back to basics with Civ 4 and BOTF 2 soon.

As I'm in the UK Civ 4 isn't here til Friday but a local gamestore gets most games in early so I'm hoping earliers.

Sounds amazing, although a bit buggy and A whole batch of US ones got sent out with French Tech Trees.

Can't wait and Ill be up for a multiplayer game as they sound amazing too.

Views? I'd be interested to see if anyone has it

I'm going to try it before I buy it, but I've had Civ III on my laptop for ages -- helps when i'm on campus with nothing to do inbetween class, why not conquer the French?

I've heard it takes "an above average" computer to play "smoothly", so I'll see what that means soon. Got a X800XL and a AMD X2 3800 (@2.75ghz), 1GB in my desktop, 1.8ghz Turion64 with an on-board graphics chipset in the laptop. Lappy won't be pretty, but it should run it, and the desktop definitely will.. I hope.. I like playing things at my LCDs native res, 1600x1200, but may or may not be able to do it.

Yes though, Civ 4 + BOTF II + Star Trek Online will cover all my gaming bases

That should be fine. It generally works fine if you have the minimum specs. Its just if you are unlucky to have a computer to which the bugs react with, but there are fixes all the time for it.

Civ IV has to be one of the greatest games really fun. Ive "aquired" it but will buy it when in comes out next friday. (couldnt wait that long :p)

Wonder if there will be a trek mod for it. Maybe we can use the models from this game.

Someone was making a trek mod for civ3 but never really got it done, really looking for a good trek mod for civIV.

There was a trek mod for Civ 3, I remember seeing updates for it. Never played it. Check on Civilisation Fanatics site

i'd wait to see wht the patch does before you buy it if i was you. the game is such a disappointment imo...

I've read a lot about Civ 4...soooo many bugs and general gameplay issues. I decided to wait until the second expansion comes out. Hopefully the bugs and gameplay issues will be fixed by then.

Here is a forum with more on Civ 4:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=144

I mean...if the game doesn't run on most graphic cards...I think I'll wait till it does.

Been a huge fan of Civilization for many years. Civ2 was my all time favorite game, played many online games through MSN game zone. Civ3 came out and i was disappointed so many releases and expansion for that game and still wasnt finished, then they release the gold edition. Which had all of them together for like 39$. Kind of screwed the loyal fans that had to pay 30-50$ for each one.

This is why i am holding off on buying Civ4. Though it looks good i also have heard it has many bugs and will not spend all the money for an incomplete game as i did for Civ3.

Sad really to see civ games being released like that after such a wonderful start.

Civ III was awful Civ 4 will have to go a long way from Civ III to impress. Civ CTP set the boundry and is still the best of all the Civ like games.

So what 's advanced from Civ3 - Civ4?

I got CIV4 yesterday, and im sayin it ROCKS. Its the sickist game I have played in a long time. I am a fanatic of Civ2, but i could never play online, since there is no one playing CIV2 anymore. But Civ 4 is just... awesome. It looks good, the gameplay is good, yes there are some bugs, but none that are serious or make the game look bad. Multiplayer is unbelievable.

Let me know if you want to play me someday.

I give Civ4 a 5/5

- Edit -

oh yeah... and I HATED Civ 3 by the way.

Sorry not allowed to play games online

I've preordered Civ4 though and the screenshots look great If there's a demo i might try it

something i wrote on another forum a few days ago -

ok, i've had the game for two days now, and i'm more than a little underwhelmed.

the whole 3D thing is just pointless, and you'll spend the vast majority of time reverting to the standard isometric type view of previous versions. although being able to click a button and seeing the world as an actual rotating planet is pretty cool.

the new interface... meh. it sucks and blows. not being able to right click on a unit/terrain/whatever to access the civipedia on it is major pain in the arse. it means you have to manually look for whatever it is you want to know about in the pedia.

there is absolutely no documentation whatsoever on whether the power plants (hydo/coal/nuclear) work a-la civ 2 or civ 3 style. you can build them all in the same city, only get the production bonus of one of them, but get the negative effects of all of them. this is further confused if you build the three georges dam (previously the Hoover Dam). all your cities are supposed to get a hydro plant with that wonder, and once built it each city does get the production bonus, but you can still build a hydro dam in said cities anyway. this makes cities spread across two continents very difficult to manage in terms of power plants. granted a little lightning bolt displays on the city in the main map, but that view is already cluttered as is.

find city is gone. you get a message abgout something happening in a city, and you have to manually scroll around the map to find it. lots of fun if you have a massive empire...

on the plus side, the unit system has been dramatically improved, although there are far, far fewer types (same with city improvements, not many at all when compared to previous games), although upgradin them is a major, major pain in the arse. that's because your 'advisors' are now just a single screen that you can hardly do anything from.

your domestic advisor screen allows you to change the production and unit in every single city in your empire - it is by far the most intuitive advisor screen in the game. the military advisor however will only point out the location of units. if you want to upgrade those units, you have to do each unit individually. tedious.

the fopreign advisor is beyond useless, although the diplomacy itself is a massive improvement. the diplomacy screen displays just why other empires like/dislike you, and they all have a pretty good memory, and behave as their character traits suggest they should. you can get up to some pretty devious sh*t, but look out if you get caught out, or outmaneouvred politically.

the government system is a major improvement, and is much more similar to the system used in Alpha Centauri. You don't choose a government per se, you select certain civics and that forms your style of government. heaps of flexibility, although unfortunately, and unlike AC, the varity in the civics isn't diverse enough, and all of the governments types are fairly similar when all is said and done.

religion is good in theory, but really ends up being nothing more than a means to accumulating culture whilst slightly improving your cities production and happiness, and slightly annoying foreign powers. the effect overall is fairly minimal.

and that leaves the worker units and the terrain. i'm still a little unsure about it. at first i didn't like the new system, but it's growing on me. it isn't THAT diffferent, you just have more options on how to work your tiles. the biggest problem is that the city squares are now visibly undefined, and it can be a little confusing when you've got a large number of cities trying to figure which tiles to improve. the AI 'helper' isn't much good, because it keeps recommending squares outside your cities radius for some unknown reason.

oh, and one more thing - the biggest bug bear in every single version of this game (and AC) is still present - the placement of cities by the AI. it is really annoying to have a massive metropolis bordering on foreign territory lose half it's squares because the AI builds a new city just two squares away. major, major, major pain in the arse, and it still happens.

this one goes down as a disappointment i'm afraid, but easily salvagable with a rather large patch.

I personally can't believe that so much of the game isn't working, is missing, or has been changed for bad, rather than good.

I was really looking forward to getting Civ4, but if it has all these bugs and things, i'll wait a while for some updates and expansions...I just hope it doesn't turn out like the Sims when it comes to expansion packs...

General_Nemitor, I still play on Civ 2, although I have the Test of Time version, not Civ2. I'm sure there are others out there that still play the older versions though.

TrekBoy, the main changes are apparently "3D" graphics, the inclusion of a 'proper' religious system, and other general 'improvements' on the series.

I've been following the games development on gamespot - they have a lot of gameplay movies and stuff that people who haven't got the game might like to watch. They also have reviews and stuff, if you prefer to read/have a slow connection.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civilizationiv/index.html?q=civ%204

*Edit - if you haven't seen it, I recommend watching the civilization addicts anonymous video - it hilarious!*

really how many times do i have to tell you no mention of cracks or warez?
do it again and trust me it aill be the last. jig.

Never got into civ3 but cv2 was good i played a little of civ4 and i hate it no offence dont like it. But i like FPS and rpg so not very good at cometing on them.

What the hell has that got to do with warez?

Might get a cheap copy of Civ3 first then

I was on about the demo!

Unless there ilegal im sorry!

Since when has a demo been illegal if the devs make it, Billy?

If you're worried about people mentioning the forbidden, there was someone on this thread that mentioned the unspeakable, but it wasn't TrekBoy.

The one who mentioned the unspeakable will remain nameless, so read the posts again, if you're that worried. I don't wanna get people in trouble, particularly if it is a first-time offense.

Bring me into it why don't you Matress

TBC - said he might play the demo ok i said i know a place he can donwload it ok thats all and then i get people bitting my head off and i dont like it!

Look at my third to last post! so i cant talk about demo downloads!

He was only answering me question Jig - C_B_B never knew there was something wrong with putting a hyperlink to a perfectly legal download site

sorry coopa about this on your thread

get back to cv 4 i dont like it but i can understand why people would im hopeing it has nothing on BOTF2 though lol

Jeez boys, if someone want to mention the "unmentionable", let them. Firstly they are not doing anyone harm (he didnt tell everyone else to do the same did he?), second he might of just borrowed from a friend, and third, you guys arent moderators, so who cares.

Back to Civ, well I must say I'm dissapointed to hear all the negatives about it. I think I will wait for a colectors edition (where they have fixed some problems), or perhaps a big patch before I buy the game.

One last thing to add. I find it pretty funny when I read about a few people who loved Civ2, and hated 3. Personally I like Civ2 a little more than 3 (mostly for nostalga), but aside from the graphics, they werent that differnt

ok

From what I heard, there is a complete Civ IV SDK, so there would seem to be a lot of potential for modifications. If you're unhappy with the game for any reason, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to fix .

theres a free patch online thats legal, i think, that upgrades you to multiplayer. We should play a game some day. I do like CIV2 WAY better than Civ4.

Civ2 is so simple, that you can have tons and tons of strategy. The more complex the game becomes, the less thinking and strategizing you have to do. Thats why I hated Civ3. Civ4 is better, but Civ2 still takes the cake.'

ANYONE: Let me know if you want to play a game of either FreeCiv, Civ2, or Civ4. My user on MSN zone is General_Nemitor, and you can reach me either on Google Talk or Xfire. For those two names, you'll have to contact me.

I have seen that Jig edited your posts already. Please do not post anymore links to cracks, warez, or whatsoever. And back to Civ 4 now!

Okeey i think the game will be fun, only i'm worried that it will be boring to manage again, all your cities and towns. I liked civ2 most, i never played civ3. If i would buy the game, then i would surely mod certain points like religion...

Its strange, I think I have come to the conclusion that you either have Civ 2 fans who don't like Civ 3, and Civ 3 fans who dont like Civ 4

I still want to give it a go. It looks much better, and I'll get it as soon as possible. From what I have heard you can let the bugs annoy you or just ignore them and still have as much fun !

Guess who just bought Civ4? I couldn't wait, and it had some money off...as if I needed an excuse though...

It was worth the money just to see the opening movie...I was just stunned by the graphics. And then when you build a Wonder...I thought the Wonder graphics in the trailers were just something they had made to make the game look good, but I was wrong coz the trailers got it right! 8O

I'm a happy little Egyptian Romulan...

Ive had it for a week now, the main reason I havent been around here for a week.

And it is very good. VERY VERY good. I love it. So far I'm playing my own modded game (Yes it is easy to Mod)

Gigantic Map
and double the Turns in Epic (for the real epic experience)