Civ 4 or 5?

[Wardawg1001]

Surprised to see how lopsided this poll is. I enjoyed Civ5 for a while when it came out but the AI is really bad and doesn't really change things up much between games, so it got stale after a while. I went and check the civfanatics.com forums to see the status of mods and theres at least 2-3 that do some pretty major overhauls to the gameplay (including improving AI) but I never got around to trying them out.

All that said, Civ4 is an epic game, it has been fleshed out by 2 fantastic expansions, cleaned of bugs and game breaking imbalances, and supported by years of patches. Theres really no contest when it comes to which one is a better, more complete game. The mod scene in Civ4 is also incredibly extensive.

 

[Martimus]

While Civ 4 was leaps and bounds better than Civ 5, I wouldn't call it near perfect. Galactic Civilizations 2 was a much better 4X game than Civ 4 in most aspects. Even Civ 4 had major issues with the AI, although it was was still a fun game (it just got repetitive since the AI scripts aren't very complex.)

 

[gregoryvg]

I think Civ V is a good game. It does appear that the developer has abandoned it as there haven't been any updates since around April 2011.

 

[paperfist]

I think Civ V is a good game. It does appear that the developer has abandoned it as there haven't been any updates since around April 2011.

They do update it and are currently working on yet another patch. They also have something 'big' in the works with the speculation being a possible expansion.

 

[StinkyPinky]

They do update it and are currently working on yet another patch. They also have something 'big' in the works with the speculation being a possible expansion.

By "Expansion" they mean two more civs and a new building.

 

[rga]

So you guys are all going to probably laugh at me, but...

I download Civ4, and well, it's really complicated!! I'm not a genius, but I'm not an idiot either. It just seems like there is so much to manage: food, gold, production, various units and buildings, culture, etc. I only tried the tutorial, but by 30 minutes in I'd only built a farm, a mine, and a barracks. How much dumbed down is Civ5 compared to 4? I might have to try it instead.

 

[schneiderguy]

So you guys are all going to probably laugh at me, but...

I download Civ4, and well, it's really complicated!! I'm not a genius, but I'm not an idiot either. It just seems like there is so much to manage: food, gold, production, various units and buildings, culture, etc. I only tried the tutorial, but by 30 minutes in I'd only built a farm, a mine, and a barracks. How much dumbed down is Civ5 compared to 4? I might have to try it instead.

You'll figure it out, keep at it for a couple of hours, then you'll be hooked :awe:

 

[QuantumPion]

It is a damn shame they never made a sequel to Civ 4.

Yeah I wish they would make a sequel to The Matrix. Or Master of Orion 2 for that matter.

 

[QuantumPion]

So you guys are all going to probably laugh at me, but...

I download Civ4, and well, it's really complicated!! I'm not a genius, but I'm not an idiot either. It just seems like there is so much to manage: food, gold, production, various units and buildings, culture, etc. I only tried the tutorial, but by 30 minutes in I'd only built a farm, a mine, and a barracks. How much dumbed down is Civ5 compared to 4? I might have to try it instead.

The tutorial is pretty worthless. You might want to watch a couple let's play's on youtube such as TheMeInTeam's. I'd recommend for your first couple games, play on the easiest setting and automate all of your cities's governors and workers. That way you can get a feel for the pace of the game, and do things manually gradually as you learn them.

Also, here is a great beginner's guide: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632

 

[Rifter]

Civ 4, if you are even serious. I'm assuming you arnt cause its not even a contest.

 

[Uppsala9496]

Civ IV the complete edition is at amazon for $8.99. For $9 I'll give myself a christmas gift.

 

[Griffinhart]

I guess I am in the minority here. I enjoyed Civ 5 far more than Civ 4. I've always felt, as a player since the original was released, that Civ 4 was probably the weakest of the series. There is nothing wrong with complexity, but I felt Civ 4 was complex to be complex and didn't really add anything to the game play for me. I'm also one of those players that hated the stacks of death. The hex based, non stacked unit gameplay if Civ 5 made terrain use and unit placement more important than just stacking units did.

I'm honestly surprised there are so many people here that like Civ 4 over 5 as I have at least a half dozen friends that agree with me on the game.

 

[paperfist]

By "Expansion" they mean two more civs and a new building.

Haha!

Hopefully with the lead designer gone and cooler, more traditional heads prevailing we will actually seem something good come out. They have been plugging away with patches that do attempt to address issues.

 

[Craig234]

So you guys are all going to probably laugh at me, but...

I download Civ4, and well, it's really complicated!! I'm not a genius, but I'm not an idiot either. It just seems like there is so much to manage: food, gold, production, various units and buildings, culture, etc. I only tried the tutorial, but by 30 minutes in I'd only built a farm, a mine, and a barracks. How much dumbed down is Civ5 compared to 4? I might have to try it instead.

I would say giv Civ 5 a try, see how you like it.

You can get both Civ 4 and 5 complete and Stronghold collection all for $15 today:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00..._d_i00_details

You already have Civ IV, so Civ V alone if you don't want Stronghold and don't need Civ IV DLC is $10.99. I just found it 'friendlier' to have a fun game. You can go to IV later.

 

[StinkyPinky]

There's always Free Civ for those wanting something a bit different

http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Download

 

[Arglebargle]

Alpha Centauri is the best Civ game ever. Just saying.

Otherwise I'd go Civ 4, if only because the mod community has worked up some great alternatives. Civ 5 is still a bit underwhelming.

 

[JamesV]

I loved Alpha Centauri, which is pretty close to the Civ gameplay, but never really enjoyed any of the Civ games until 5.

I had fun with Civ 4, but the stacks and combat always felt off to me... how a warrior with an axe killed my tank or my 5 warriors always had me scratching my head. While I didn't mind stacks in AC, in Civ, I much perfer the single unit setup of Civ 5 - it feels like the combat 'fits'. In 5 a warrior attacking a barbarian camp is pretty much always a win, but in 4 one defender could somehow kill a stack of 5 troops...

The AI is of course the downfall of 5, but with multiplayer and simply trying different things, I've put about 200 hours into the game, compared to maybe 30 hours in Civ 4.

 

[SuperISD32]

FreeCiv also has improved a lot over the past years.
Contrarily to Civilization, FreeCiv is centered on multiplayer; for eg. Civ5 is totally unplayable on multiplayer because of bugs, instability, and poor design concept.
Freeciv has a branch called Greatturn (http://greatturn.org) specifically designed for organizing large multiplayer matches on extended maps, usually against 20÷30 other players. Matches last from 2 to 4 months because the game advances just 1 turn each day allowing people from different timezones to play together, whether for 10 minutes or 2 hours per day, depending on one's time constrains.

 

[_Rick_]

I know I'm posting in an old thread, but I've just started getting back into Civ 4 again, and the mode you describe is done even better in Civ 4 and 5, with the Pitboss server, where you can play both asynchronously, and synchronously, should everybody find the time to be connected at once.
Incidentally I failed to get one running in wine on a Linux VM, but in theory it's pretty ideal.