Civ games [split topic]

[druss]

Civ IV. Still can't get into Civ V or VI but they sold much better than IV so unfortunately it probably won't ever be as good again. I like having big fuck off armies and conquering the world, not moving a limited number of units around what feels like a board game map. Doesn't have the same sense of scale anymore.

[Goldentony]

nah I spent basically all of 2023 playing Civ VI and getting the science win so you can stop these personal attacks directly on me

[Norton Canes]

SMAC or GTF

[Goldentony]

im sorry but fuck cyborgs, all cunts

[druss]

SMAC or GTF

To my eternal shame I have it but have never completed a game. I played the fuck out of Civ II back in the day and got SMAC when it was released but it never clicked.

[Ferris]

If you're playing anything more advanced than Civ3 you are a ghoul.

[druss]

Civ III has corruption which ruins expansion. Still a fun game but it was a broken mechanic.

[Mister Six]

I struggled with Civ II because the cities didn't look as cohesive as the Civ I cities when you started building them up and adding Wonders.

Stupid, I know, but there we are.

[All Surrogate]

SMAC or GTF

What do I care for your suffering?

[Chairman Yang]

Yeah, Alpha Centauri is OK

[FredNurke]

The original, III and IV are the ones I've sunk the most time into, especially IV. I played a bit of II and would happily play it again if it weren't such a pig to get running. I own V and VI but have barely played either (as in, 10-20 minutes of each at most).

However, the amount of time I've spent on the original Sid Meier's Colonization easily dwarfs the amount I've played all the Civ games put together. I don't really know why.

[superthunderstingcar]

Civ III has corruption which ruins expansion. Still a fun game but it was a broken mechanic.

Yes. Also the ease with which you could get a world with only a single solitary piece of coal in it made Civ 3 a big pile of shit.

Alpha Centauri was the business back in its day, with lore and design elements they still haven't bettered even to this day. Gameplay was looking real dated by about the time of Civ IV though. A modern version of it could be the best game ever, for me, though it would need to be a lot lot better implemented than Beyond Earth, which fell short of SMAC in several key ways.

Civ V is my personal favourite, so long as it has the expansions which greatly enhance the minigames, especially Culture. But I can see why those who liked the conquest side, like druss, might not have taken to it - the AI is terrible at using its military, and can only really succeed if it has weight of numbers.

[Mr Vegetables]

Civ is probably more depressing once you stop believing in the inevitability of human progress

It did get me into Women's Suffrage as a child, though, because I liked how the wonder looked in the original game and always built it. I made "Suffro-pogs" featuring it and bought them to school, and the teacher was really excited because she thought I'd had an enlightened feminist awakening

[Ferris]

Alpha Centauri was a really interesting game in hindsight, there were all sorts of mad ideas in there looking back. The disintegration of the human/UN order, mad mind melding with the worms and terraforming. I bet that's worth a replay really.

Rubbish post fuck it hit submit.

[shoulders]

Playing the WWII scenario on Civ II as the Russians is genuinely tense as fuck as you fortify the front lines, pour money into railroad building and for a while your only troops are unlimited riflemen. The game perfectly pitches when you are able to gain parity then turn the tables.

The later games are like watching new Simpsons episode, a feeling of shock and betrayal of something beloved being handed to people who have no idea why it was good, or how to make it good again, or even desire to make it good.

[Cuellar]

Never got beyond Civ II and frankly don't feel inclined to. Civ II is brilliant.

[beanheadmcginty]

Fucking love building granaries

[Mobius]

.. I like the newer civs

[Mobius]

arsed mate, civs

[druss]

It takes me about a dozen attempts to actually get a game going on Civ IV. I'm too much of a perfectionist that if the first 40-60 turns aren't absolutely perfect then I'll get angry and think I can't possibly win and restart. This might be true if I was playing on Deity but I'm only playing on Monarch. Sometimes I'll restart right after I settle the first city if I think I should have moved the settler before settling or vice versa.

I just had a word with myself and said that no matter what I must play the next game even if it's the worst start. Ended up with Gandhi at the South pole with no food and room for about 3 cities. I quit again but I might just try it next game even if it's equally bad, I guess it's boring if you win with a great start. It's more trying to allow myself a few mistakes in those first forty turns that's the problem though, it's becoming a mental block.

"Oh your worker had to wait a turn for animal husbandry to pop and didn't have anything else they could do, can't possibly win now, restart". It's bollocks when I actually read it back but it feels hopeless in the moment.

I'm going to use this thread as accountability even if I just end up talking to myself, next start is FINAL AND I PLAY TO THE END EVEN IF I FUCK UP WHICH I WILL.

[FredNurke]

I don't think I've ever played any Civ game on higher than the third difficulty setting. Any higher and it becomes impossible to blind myself to the fact that it's basically a nice-looking longform spreadsheet.

[bgmnts]

Indeed.

Also I haven't played a Civ game where the middle third isn't rather dull.

[druss]

Right, I've done a standard size random script map with 6 other civilizations. Put my civ as random too and ended up with the Chinese, lead by none other than Qin Shi Huang.



Fairly middle of the road in terms of traits with industrious being decent and protective being quite poor. Good starting technologies of Mining and Agriculture and an interesting unique unit of the Cho-Ko-Nu, a crossbowman who does collateral damage. Unique building is the Pavilion, a theatre that generates extra culture. Combined with the industrious trait, this makes a cultural victory quite attractive. Let's have a look at my start...



Very good! Food is key in Civ IV and whilst I would have liked stone or marble to create some cheaper wonders, 4 food tiles including fish (which can end up with six food) is very good indeed. I also will probably settle on the plains hill I am starting on which gives an extra production hammer.

I'm going to keep posting in here about this game every 50 turns or so as it means that I'll force myself to play it and report back even if I fuck up. Not going to play the first turn until tomorrow.

Hopefully I don't have the notoriously psychopathic Montezuma as a neighbour...

[Pranet]

Played so much Civ 2 it kind of put me off playing computer games to a large extent.

AC was ok.

Tried some of the later Civs, think I got them in a humble bundle, but tbh I don't think I could be bothered to learn the more complex systems.

It was a bit of a marvel though the early Civ games, the range of things they could simulate. I remember invading a rival civilization once and realising the game had basically come up with D-Day spontaneously from play. 

[Agent Dunham]

Civ II or III for me. Can't get into the later games. I've always had a game of Civ III going that I would come back to, but I've been off gaming the last few months.

There's a good Civ III YT channel that does live matches as well as having lots of tips for the game.

[ros vulgaris]

I still play Civ III sometimes on Steam although that's mostly because my desktop is a potato now. I might see if I can get a freeware download of Civ II to see if it holds up.

Civ V looked the best but I felt like the the later games lacked agency and you were basically micromanaging to fit a set narrative. The best playthrough I remember was as Venice, building a trading empire with the city states and basically buying a victory.

[Pink Gregory]

nah, sorry, I can't go back to army stacks, just feels dumb. 

Civ VI I do like, but most games do seem to go the same way, sometimes I wish it'd really funnel you down a particular path - once you've got good production and reasonable access to luxuries you can basically go for any victory you want with not much of a difference between them.

[Goldentony]

I fucking LOVE flying to space in VI I think I did it in under 250 turns or something stupid once

[FredNurke]

Hopefully I don't have the notoriously psychopathic Montezuma as a neighbour...

Was it Montezuma in Civ IV who had the alarming habit of sticking his eyeballs through his eyelids when he was really pissed off? Frankly I was on Cortez's side. I once had a great game where it was just me and him fighting over a series of archipelagoes. Unfortunately for him, I got air power first, so I bombed all his mines and then made damn sure I got the one uranium source first.

[druss]

nah, sorry, I can't go back to army stacks, just feels dumb. 

Civ VI I do like, but most games do seem to go the same way, sometimes I wish it'd really funnel you down a particular path - once you've got good production and reasonable access to luxuries you can basically go for any victory you want with not much of a difference between them.

One unit per tile feels dumb to me! It's meant to be a map of the world, not a small battlefield.

I can see why some people would have a strategy preference for that type of game but it doesn't make sense in the context of the type of game that Civ is and there are so many other levels to the strategy side of things in Civ IV. Sid Meier spoke about having interesting decisions to make when playing a good turn based strategy game and every game going the same way doesn't align with that for me. Apparently the AI can't play properly on one unit per tile either.

I'm obviously in the minority if you look at the sales figures and to be fair I haven't given Civ VI a real chance, played 13 hours of civ V before going back to IV but have only dipped into VI so maybe I'll give it another chance at some point. V felt so boring to me though and I didn't feel like any of my decisions really mattered.