Civ 4 is here and I’ve had most of a weekend to play with it. The most obvious improvement is the graphics. I’m pleased that with Civ games, graphics improvements add to the gameplay and aren’t just there for show, like they are with most games. At first I didn’t see how the graphics added to the ease of play, but that’s because I was just so used to seeing things in Civ 3. Once you get used the look of the map and status screens you realize that you can get a bit more information just by looking.
One thing that I really wish were easier to tell at a glance is how many miltary units you have on a square. Even a little number abover their heads would be nice. Also, now military units from different civilizations can occupy the same square if they have open border agreements. This has led to some nasty words coming out of my mouth when my enemy is hiding in a bunch of troops from another civ. Even if I knew he was in there it doesn’t appear that I could attack him.
The other graphical gripe I have is that it’s hard to see at a glance what squares one of your other cities has in their resource availibility. I’m not talking about your cultural borders, but when you have a settler and are trying to place him just right so that you don’t steal resources from your other cities, there’s now line to show the squares the other city is using. You have to count out squares in your head. I swear it was better in Civ 3.
The gameplay is very much the same in general as it has been in previous Civs. It really just feels like a tweaked version of Civ 3 in that regard. The introduction of different world religions is interesting, but I’m probably underutilizing that aspect of the game. I like that when I found a religion I can see details about foreign cities that also have that religion. The civilization advance tree <em>feels</em> more balanced, but I can’t put my finger on why.
The biggest improvement I see in gameplay is the worker automation is MUCH better. I can automate workers now and not have to check in on them every turn to see if they’re doing something stupid. You can even check an option so that workers don’t mess with past improvements you made. In Civ 3 I used to farm the hell out of my land to get more people, and if I automated a worker he’d head straight back to the irrigation I just did and put down a mine. The workers have different types of automation too, which is awesome. You can tell a worker to just focus on connecting cities and resources. The cities are also much better automated at picking which squares to use, and have the options to focus production on food, shields or gold. Very useful. I can’t stress enough how much time these previously tedious tasks used to take up and how happy I am not to do them anymore.
They’ve once again tried to make it so that you have to have the darned CD in to play. The game installs from two CDs, one labeled “install” and one “play”. For some reason you have to have the “install” CD in to play. I don’t like carrying around my game disc in my laptop and I don’t think anyone’s created a good no CD patch yet, but when I went to GameCopyWorld I followed an ad link to a program called Game Jackal, and it works like a charm. I didn’t even have to patch / crack the game, it just asked me to insert the disc and start the game and now I don’t need the disc to start the game.
I’m really looking forward to trying out the customization modes that are supposed to be really open. As if I have time though. The multiplayer sounds like it’s improved enough to be worthwhile too. If only working and having a life didn’t get in the way of playing.
[...] This game is too much fun. I’ve played Risk with friends before and thought it was fun, but mostly because it was an excuse to hang out with friends, drink and shout, but that’s about the extent of board games that I’ve played in a long time. Settlers of Catan is just plain addicting. I think it’s a lot like Civilization IV on a board, made for multiplayer. [...]
Pingback by mmrobins.com » Settlers of Catan — January 23, 2006 @ 9:30 pm