Official Civilization Thread

[Cactus Drags]

anyone with Civ 3 know if playing online with dialup is a good experience or is it really slow ? never played an Civ online

If anything with dial-up was a good experience, we wouldn't have broadband...

I need reviews on CivRev. I'm not particularly patient, and my attention span isn't the greatest, but I do like a bit of turn-based strategy/war-type/death-mongering games every now and then. I played one of the Civ games, I think III, I remember it being on a console though. I enjoyed it, but didn't have the aforementioned patience after a while. A stripped down version for the consoles sounds ideal to me, but is it too stripped down?

[stokeriño]

I need reviews on CivRev. I'm not particularly patient, and my attention span isn't the greatest, but I do like a bit of turn-based strategy/war-type/death-mongering games every now and then.

Civ Rev would definitely be your game then. It's like Civ for the ADD market.

[Cactus Drags]

Awesome, I've got it on the DS, but it's kind of fiddly and makes you switch between stylus and buttons. The demo on the 360 seems alright though. How in-depth does it actually go? I read that your people never starve and stuff like that, I don't want it to be too hands off, what's the point otherwise?

[stokeriño]

Your people don't starve (but the city growth can be stagnant); you don't run out of money (at least, not that I've noticed); you don't have individual workers to control (city squares get improved automatically, but you still select which ones to use - and you pay cash for roads to be instantly built between cities). Those are the main 'hands off' bits, I think. Otherwise it's pretty similar.

Edited July 10, 2008 by stokeriño

[Cactus Drags]

Fair enough, ta. I'll see how cheap I can pick it up from work.

[Scott McFly]

Is it Civ Rev you've got on the DS Dragsy? I was thinking about getting it since the idea of Civ on the move sounds great, but would you recommend it over something like Advance Wars (if you've played it)? Advance Wars is more like chess I find, which is good, but I prefer building up settlements, cities, bases or whatever.

[Cactus Drags]

Yeah, I have it somewhat dubiously on the DS, and I switched it off after five minutes because I wasn't in the mood. It seems pretty much like a 2d version of the home console version, but with fiddly-bastard controls. I really, really like the Advance Wars series, so my opinion would be incredibly biased, but I guess if you're a Civ fan already, it'd be pretty good to have. If Advance Wars is missing anything, it's the sense of having your own proper bases and whatnot, rather than just random army units dropped on random map against other random army units. I guess Civ would remedy that, but as I said, I've not relaly played long enough to establish much of anything.

[King Ellis]

I had a run through on the DS version last night on Chieftan. It reall is easy. It was the 21st century and people were still defending their capitals with archers. Meanwhile I roll in with a tank and take over. Fiddly is right though, I had the last strains of the Mongolian army sat outside my capital on a little galley and I couldn't work out how to activate a battleship I had set to defence right next to the thing. I had to fly in a plane from the other side of the map to bomb it.

I had cultural, space age, technological and economic victories wrapped up for ages (though I doubt I would have been elected to the UN since I was at war with everyone) but got domination instead. I was only a move or two away from killing off the last player, China but the game ended it early. Damnit.

[Hobo]

*Plays CivNet*

'Cause I'm old school, bitches!

EDIT: I just saw on Wiki, that CivilizationIV: Colonization is a re imagining of Colonization coming out late this year

Edited July 10, 2008 by HoboObohHbob

[-A-]

It's strange, the original Civ looks pretty much as I remembered in the images on Wiki, but Civ 2 looks much worse.

I miss Alpha Centauri Not so much the storyline elements because they got oppressive very quickly, but the customisable units and well-created factions.

[stokeriño]

I had a run through on the DS version last night on Chieftan. It reall is easy. It was the 21st century and people were still defending their capitals with archers. Meanwhile I roll in with a tank and take over. Fiddly is right though, I had the last strains of the Mongolian army sat outside my capital on a little galley and I couldn't work out how to activate a battleship I had set to defence right next to the thing. I had to fly in a plane from the other side of the map to bomb it.

I had cultural, space age, technological and economic victories wrapped up for ages (though I doubt I would have been elected to the UN since I was at war with everyone) but got domination instead. I was only a move or two away from killing off the last player, China but the game ended it early. Damnit.

What difficulty were you on? Certainly on Chieften it really is a case of "oh lalala, now I must decide by which method I wish to romp to victory". It's like that on Warlord too...unless you're REALLY unlucky. >_>

[Scott McFly]

EDIT: I just saw on Wiki, that CivilizationIV: Colonization is a re imagining of Colonization coming out late this year

Colonization is geniunely one of my favourite games ever and I'm just hoping this remake will be awesome.

[apsham]

If you are still deciding on this game... buy it, buy it, buy it. Usually I give up playing games like Civ early due to lack of interest... but I can really say this is the first game in a while that I have been ADDICTED to.

[Liam]

Yeah, I love Civ Rev personally.

What are good tips to win via the Space Race. I've been in a position to win the other 3 ways, but never even come close with this one.

[stokeriño]

Whore science?

I'm always quite good for tech levels, so I'm not sure what 'advice' there is. Prioritise any techs/buildings/wonders that boost science level, provide you with ways to boost science level, grant free techs, or give you a Great Person for being the first person to discover (since you can then use them to research more tech). Universities, in particular, are obscenely overpowered in Civ Rev (in the past they've been +50% city science production, in Civ 4 it was +25%, in Civ Rev it's PLUS THREE HUNDRED PERCENT). Find Atlantis too, if you can.

Once you've got Space Flight, it's all about production. Use your three or four best producing cities to build the components (I believe the minimum requirements to launch are 1 x Habitation, 1 x Life Support, 2 x Propulsion and 2 x Fuel) and, if you can, throw most of your other cities into producing wealth, so that you can 'rush' the production by paying gold wherever possible.

It usually takes about 14 turns to reach Alpha Centurai after the ship is launched - then your only priorities are survivng and preventing a enemy Civ's win. In one game I declared war on Spain for this reason, since they were verging dangerously close to an Economic victory. Faced with warfare, the fools changed governments from Democracy to Fundamentalism. Oh sure, it gave their units attack bonuses, but they lost Democracy's +50% gold bonus in the process. Epic fail.

Oh - and one more thing I forgot - avoid war. War is no good to the science whorer. Once you've got yourself a decent number of cities, you're pretty much looking to sit back and research your way to the end of the game (or at least until you've launched your spaceship). Even if you've got one of those bastard civs who demand a free tech from you every other turn and declare war if you don't (usually the Zulus or Aztecs, I've found), just concentrate on filling cities with defensive units when the inevitable occurs, and you're usually able to pay them off with some smattering of gold later on anyway. Or hell - give them the tech they want. As long as you're still a couple of techs ahead of the pack, it doesn't matter.

Edited July 14, 2008 by stokeriño

[Kaney]

I know this might be a silly question, but I have my reasons. If the game AI offers you peace for an undetermined time (not like give me x for y amount of days, just general offer of peace) why would they still attack my capital city? :@

[Liam]

Because you can do the same?

Undertermined peace periods can be broken, ones with a set period on them cannot.

It's something I generally do, since it means they won't respond as you move from one of thier cities to another.

Edited July 14, 2008 by rvdwannabe

[Kaney]

Well, that sucks.

I had the fucking chinese offered me peace at the start of the round, then invaded my one city the second I moved my one unit out to deal with barbarians, something like three moves into the game. Still pissed off about that >_>

[Liam]

Yeah, on the whole, the AI does declare war on you before they decide to do something like that, but not always.

[apsham]

Kaney, tell them how I crushed you, you Russian tool.