9 ms·

I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was my favorite, especially since it had the best music. I sing old music professionall

I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was my favorite, especially since it had the best music. I sing old music professionally, and it was such a treat to enter a new era and hear some of the best musicians in the world singing actual music of the era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g7jOKLUus8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g7jOKLUus8 (the music in that video is by John Sheppard, a decidedly Renaissance composer (not Medieval, as indicated by the game), but the music is so good that I can absolutely forgive that inaccuracy). Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late game. Even at the fastest setting, a full game seems to take at least 10-20 hours. Sometimes I just want to go through the tech tree in a different world without having to spend such large amounts of time on it.

hangonhn 6y ago
I'm sure you probably already know this but for people who don't follow music as much, Baba Yetu, was the first song from a video game to win a Grammy. It was originally sung by a Stanford a cappella group ( http://www.stanfordtalisman.com/ http://www.stanfordtalisman.com/ ). The composer, Christopher Tin, recently just released a new album called "To Shiver the Sky" ( https://christophertin.com/albums/toshiverthesky.html https://christophertin.com/albums/toshiverthesky.html ). Check it out if you liked the music from Civ 4 as much as we did!
- 29athrowaway 6y ago
  Baba Yetu is a great song and is now a phenomenon beyond Civ. Unfortunately it was no longer used in the expansions (Warlords, Beyond the Sword).
  - gota 6y ago
    In one of thr updates for Beyond the Sword they introduced an option to choose the menu. So you can have both the additional features and Baba Yetu! (While you're at it make sure you disable the enhanced espionage mechanics, for better gameplay. But that may be just opinion!)
    - 29athrowaway 6y ago
      Espionage and random events can be rather annoying.
      - gota 6y ago
        Right? Nothing better than having a lategame make it or break it wonder sabotaged 1 turn away from completion by cave people that you smashed to bits two and a half thousand years ago because they have been accumulating espionage points against you since the dawn of history /rant In all fairness I feel like there is a core of a very interesting mechanic there. It just doesn't gel with the fun stuff that is the rest of thr game. And don't get me started on spawning a Great Spy instead of a Great Engineer or Scientist...
        jdkee 6y ago
        "Nothing better than having a lategame make it or break it wonder sabotaged 1 turn away from completion by cave people that you smashed to bits two and a half thousand years ago because they have been accumulating espionage points against you since the dawn of history" This quote won't age well.
        gota 6y ago
        I don't get your comment Is Civilization IV going to change? I'll welcome any update that fixes this
  - Sophistifunk 6y ago
    In Civ Rev it's playing in some of the villages, which is a nice throwback.
- CocaKoala 6y ago
  Christopher Tin also did the soundtrack for Offworld Trading Company, an economic RTS. The soundtrack is, if you haven't heard it, utterly amazing. I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqNtBAukbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqNtBAukbg edit: I'll also note that "economic RTS" doesn't quite do justice to Offworld Trading Company - it's a real time strategy game, but the only warfare and combat is economic. You place structures which mine resources: water, iron, carbon, and so on. These resources can be purchased and sold on the open market, or you can refine them into more advanced resources (which requires having the structure to refine them) and sell the advanced resources for a larger profit. But of course, the price of resources will constantly fluctuate based on supply and demand. Do you need to sell glass to make a profit, or can you just sell silicon to the person who wants to make glass? If your opponent has gone all in on producing steel, why not just buy all the iron on the market, corner the supply, and sell it back when the price goes up?
- nine_zeros 6y ago
  Baba yetu live is so so so so so good!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noneMROp_E8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noneMROp_E8 And so close to the original. As an appreciator of good composition, the goosebumps with this had me sold and feel lucky to be alive!
- haberman 6y ago
  I did not know, thanks for sharing!
- Thorrez 6y ago
  The first and (so far) only to win a Grammy. It was also the first (but not the only) to be nominated for a Grammy.
dragontamer 6y ago
Civ4 was highly flawed IMO, because the tactics revolved around setting up giant "death stacks". There were a few units that could attack a whole stack, but ~20 musketeers in the midgame was practically impossible to defend against aside from having your own stack of ~20 musketeers. Civ3 and Civ2 had the right idea: Kill-stack the entire stack if you group your units together like that. There was much richer play of combat in Civ3 and Civ2. It was non-intuitive, and players complained grossly about kill-stacks... but lets be frank: the game was better with kill-stacks. ---- Between Lenard Nemoy as the narrator and the incredible music, I'd think 4 was the best production value of the entire series however. Civ6 comes in at 2nd place, pretty good music and Sean Bean is pretty decent too. Just not as good as Civ4 IMO. ------- Civ6's issues is the "flattening" of the entire tree. Nothing feels different until you reach airplanes. Riflemen are just reskinned Musketeers, who are reskinned Swordmen, who are just reskinned Warriors. Tanks are just reskinned Knights, who were reskinned Chariots. In Civ6, there are basically only the following units: Anti-city Siege (Catapult / Bombard / Artillery), Warriors (Warrior, Swordmen, Musketeer, Riflemen, Mech. Infantry), Heavy Cavalry (Chariot, Knights, Tanks), Light Cavalry (Horsemen, Cavalry, Helicopters), and ranged-units (Slinger, Archer, Crossbowman, Field Cannon). Eventually, airplanes take over the siege and ranged roles (Biplane / Fighters ultimately play like faster Archers, while Bombers play like better Catapults). But otherwise, there's not much difference to combat through the ages. ------- Furthermore, Civ6 doesn't allow any exponential growth strategies. Aka: Wide vs Tall, or whatnot. In previous games (Civ1 through 5), buildings provided multiplicative bonuses. So Library was +100% science for the city (or some other multiplier, depending on which version of the game). This means that Libraries had a "threshold", where they were useless for small cities (+100% science on 1-Sci base production is just +1 science), but powerful for large cities (+100% off of a city with 20 science is +20 science). But there's none of that "play" in Civ6. Its wide-wide-wide for the win. Sure, Civ6 has increasing costs for settlers / builders to try and make the "wide" strategy weaker... but that just slows down the player. It doesn't actually change the fact that wide is the only way to play. ------- Builders only can make 3-improvements before they disappear (unless you have Feudalism or Pyramids: increaasing the limit by +2 or +1). In contrast, Civ3 through Civ5 had Workers (and Civ1 / Civ2 had settlers) that can continuously upgrade your city throughout all the ages. Workers vs Military was a key balance throughout the game. While in Civ6, its basically "Builders until they become too expensive", and maybe "Play Feudalism Card every now and then to cheat some extra improvements out of your builders". There's no depth to the decision.
cableshaft 6y ago
I've noticed that too, I only play one game a year over a couple of days in a single weekend, usually, because of the time commitment. How long of a CIV game would you like to play? What do you think is worth streamlining out of the experience? What do you think absolutely needs to stay in to get the feeling you want from these types of games? (This goes to anyone who feels it's too long, btw).
- dragontamer 6y ago
  You don't play a long-form game in one sitting. Take "Axis and Allies", a long-form boardgame that typically takes ~12 hours to play in my experience. I usually play it broken up between three different weekends when I whip it out. There's been a renaissance of long-form games recently. D&D is the most popular (5th edition. Pathfinder, Etc. etc.), but also Gloomhaven, and other "Legacy" games. I do realize that long-form games aren't in everyone's cup of tea. But its no different from say... trying to watch Game of Thrones together with a group (or Sports-ball games). Its an excuse to form a regular social gathering with your group of friends once-a-week for months (or years) at a time. The secret to long-form games is that the group-gathering is the primary goal, the gameplay is almost secondary. But having a good game helps (much like how a Game of Thrones watch party is better while the show is good).
- bllguo 6y ago
  I don't mind the length, but I think a lot of things are tedious and worth streamlining. Two that immediately jump to mind: Worker micro is not very fun to me, I don't like the Civ 6 system. At least in Civ 5 they didn't have limited uses and could be automated. The biggest thing is combat. It's mind-numbing having to move all the units and work out the positioning. It's so _slow_ both in real-time and game-time (should it take decades to move across the empire?). Maybe my roleplaying perspective is flawed, but if I'm supposedly the leader of the nation, why do I have to micromanage army tactics? Ideally a lot of that would be abstracted away
- Florin_Andrei 6y ago
  I recently realized Civ is perfect for playing during long transatlantic flights.
stereo 6y ago
I felt the same! Probably the first and last computer game to have music by Josquin Des Prez.
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
I play Civ 5 without any DLCs. I'm interested only in the growth phase, so the first third of the game is intensely fascinating, the second third is mildly interesting but I'm invested in the outcome, and by the final third I usually get bored - too much micromanagement indeed.
alasdair_ 6y ago
I still haven't played VI, despite both owning it and the Civ series being one of my favorite games (all the way back to I). I really hate micro (ADHD and tedious repetitive tasks don't mix well) and usually automated my workers as quickly as I could. I heard that this isn't possible in VI. That, along with the huge time commitment increase and the terrible AI have so far made me unwilling to bother playing. Is it worth a shot? I'm torn between finally playing that, and the fact that CK3 just came out.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  I would definitely say yes. It's extremely well made, and the core mechanics are extremely well polished. You do still get the "big empire" management issue, but for worker in particular, I find that it's really spread out. You only have a little bit to do with workers at a time, but that little bit is pretty consistent over the course of the game. Two of the changes that affect this are: every worker action only takes one turn, and workers don't build roads. (The "worker charges" mechanic also allowed, I think, for things like roman legions to one-time drop forts, which is awesome) The unstacking of cities is mostly a good thing, although I do find that I spend a lot more time planning cities (Due to all the different adjacency bonuses and requirements between districts, terrain, and wonders).
- laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
  NO! I've played VI 6 after it was free on Epic store. It is the worst game experience i have ever had! You can play in full 3D (lame as hell) map, or strategic (2d map). Both of them give you a really bad view of the map, no matter what. The UI is full of bugs and things you need to click twice, and full of pitfalls (pressed space but an event was just jumping on the screen? too bad now your worker just moved next to that barbarian and will be lost next turn) The graphics completely destroy your GPU even though it is a freaking Civ game! no matter if you play on 2D view, your GPU will smoke just the same. no idea how they screwed that up. Then, even without considering graphics performance, my i5 top of the line was taking a whole 30s between unit moves in the later rounds of the game, and a full 3+ minutes for the CPU players turns. Avoid that game like the plague! unless you have a multi thousand dollars gaming PC. then just play it to laugh at all the times Gandhi will declare war on you on first contact. Edit: oh and i tried to play on the Surface. Despite being impossible because of performance, the UI is unusable without mouse over, and there's no way to show the mouse overs windows with the touch mode. Complete disaster of a game. I'd be ashamed to have my name on the credits. edit 2: I actually had lots of fun with https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv on the surface. and for newcomers to the series, play the original ones or even the Nes one on an emulator.
gota 6y ago
May I strongly suggest an alternative that just might scratch that itch? Try the Through the Ages game app in your Android (possibly Apple?) device. Matches last one hour with single player (or knowleadgeable multiplayers) and you still get the civ-building feeling. While it was, and is, originally a boardgame by a renowned author I find that it translates beautifully to a digital platform. No finnicky moving pieces, automatic accounting, automatic randomization, automatic rule accountability... it all benefits greatly! Thr strong points of the port, to me, are the good interface they came up with; the strong AI (seriously - I play this as a single player game 99% of the time. And I lose a lot.) and a great tutorial. (Not affiliated to the folks who made it in any way. Just a 5-star review)
- RangerScience 6y ago
  Seconding: I view "Through the Ages" as the spiritual incarnation of Civ in board-game form; it produces the vibe one seeks from Civ, although the mechanics are hugely different. The designer, Vlada Chvatil, makes amazing games. Others to check out are "Dungeon Lords" (which is to Dungeon Keeper what TTA is to Civ) and "Original War" (a fascinatingly different RTS). The mobile game for TTA is solid, and has a set of variant challenge modes for single-player play that are pretty fun.
JonathanFly 6y ago
>I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was my favorite, especially since it had the best music. >Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late game. You may be interested to know that the lead designer of Civilization 4, Soren Johnson, is directly attacking that problem in his most recent game. The TLDR is you have a fixed number of actions you can do each turn which you choose to spend to move a unit, rather than each unit having one action every turn no matter what. So turn times do not increase exponentially like in Civ games. "Perhaps the most interesting resource in the pool, and the one which makes Old World stand out most from the 4X genre as a whole, is Orders. In most expand ‘em ups, you move each unit once each turn, and that’s that. In Old World, you have a pool of orders (replenished at a variable rate each turn depending on parameters such as your ruler’s legitimacy, the technologies in play, and dozens more), which you can split at will between your units. You might choose to blurt all your orders to a single scout, moving them three or four moves across the landscape until they hit their fatigue limit, or you might focus your whole order pool on a few military units fighting war, or you might go hard on workers building improvements. It’s a novel way of breaking a tradition, and offers flexibility while keeping turn times relatively snappy." The game is playable now in Early Access, if anyone is interested. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/14/preview-shape-nations-and-annoy-kings-in-old-world-the-new-4x-from-civ-4s-soren-johnson/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/14/preview-shape-na...
- bcherry 6y ago
  interesting! This same mechanic is used in the "A Game of Thrones" board game, and really adds unique strategic depth there.
- haberman 6y ago
  I like that idea!
- lostdog 6y ago
  How funny. I have always hated the "orders" mechanic in war games and other board games. How does it make sense as a mechanic? Ok, I can't move this infantry unit because two other infantry units already moved this turn. It's such a strange restriction. There's plenty of constraints in battle, but this limit is so strange.
dwighttk 6y ago
yeah, for me the "late game takes longer" isn't just stuff I have to do on my turns, but the computer simulation of turns starts grinding and grinding so I'm just sitting waiting for them for too long.
juniper_strong 6y ago
What settings are you playing on? A game of 4 on normal speed usually takes me 3 or 4 hours, and that's usually for space race, domination wins would be quicker. I don't micromanage everything unless I'm trying to hit a record early date, usually I'm paying to attention to one aspect of the game at a time, trying out different strategies. And you can always just play the openings, usually everything is pretty much decided in the first 50 turns and after that it is just a matter of how much sleep you want to lose playing out the inevitable.
spiralx 6y ago
I upgraded my Atari STE to a whopping 1Mb of memory in order to play the first Civ. It's a toss-up between that and Civ IV as to which version I spent the most time on. Civ III was the only one that disappointed me.

hangonhn 6y ago

I'm sure you probably already know this but for people who don't follow music as much, Baba Yetu, was the first song from a video game to win a Grammy. It was originally sung by a Stanford a cappella group ( http://www.stanfordtalisman.com/ http://www.stanfordtalisman.com/ ). The composer, Christopher Tin, recently just released a new album called "To Shiver the Sky" ( https://christophertin.com/albums/toshiverthesky.html https://christophertin.com/albums/toshiverthesky.html ). Check it out if you liked the music from Civ 4 as much as we did!

29athrowaway 6y ago
Baba Yetu is a great song and is now a phenomenon beyond Civ. Unfortunately it was no longer used in the expansions (Warlords, Beyond the Sword).
- gota 6y ago
  In one of thr updates for Beyond the Sword they introduced an option to choose the menu. So you can have both the additional features and Baba Yetu! (While you're at it make sure you disable the enhanced espionage mechanics, for better gameplay. But that may be just opinion!)
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
    Espionage and random events can be rather annoying.
    - gota 6y ago
      Right? Nothing better than having a lategame make it or break it wonder sabotaged 1 turn away from completion by cave people that you smashed to bits two and a half thousand years ago because they have been accumulating espionage points against you since the dawn of history /rant In all fairness I feel like there is a core of a very interesting mechanic there. It just doesn't gel with the fun stuff that is the rest of thr game. And don't get me started on spawning a Great Spy instead of a Great Engineer or Scientist...
      - jdkee 6y ago
        "Nothing better than having a lategame make it or break it wonder sabotaged 1 turn away from completion by cave people that you smashed to bits two and a half thousand years ago because they have been accumulating espionage points against you since the dawn of history" This quote won't age well.
        gota 6y ago
        I don't get your comment Is Civilization IV going to change? I'll welcome any update that fixes this
- Sophistifunk 6y ago
  In Civ Rev it's playing in some of the villages, which is a nice throwback.
CocaKoala 6y ago
Christopher Tin also did the soundtrack for Offworld Trading Company, an economic RTS. The soundtrack is, if you haven't heard it, utterly amazing. I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqNtBAukbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giqNtBAukbg edit: I'll also note that "economic RTS" doesn't quite do justice to Offworld Trading Company - it's a real time strategy game, but the only warfare and combat is economic. You place structures which mine resources: water, iron, carbon, and so on. These resources can be purchased and sold on the open market, or you can refine them into more advanced resources (which requires having the structure to refine them) and sell the advanced resources for a larger profit. But of course, the price of resources will constantly fluctuate based on supply and demand. Do you need to sell glass to make a profit, or can you just sell silicon to the person who wants to make glass? If your opponent has gone all in on producing steel, why not just buy all the iron on the market, corner the supply, and sell it back when the price goes up?
nine_zeros 6y ago
Baba yetu live is so so so so so good!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noneMROp_E8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noneMROp_E8 And so close to the original. As an appreciator of good composition, the goosebumps with this had me sold and feel lucky to be alive!
haberman 6y ago
I did not know, thanks for sharing!
Thorrez 6y ago
The first and (so far) only to win a Grammy. It was also the first (but not the only) to be nominated for a Grammy.

dragontamer 6y ago

Civ4 was highly flawed IMO, because the tactics revolved around setting up giant "death stacks". There were a few units that could attack a whole stack, but ~20 musketeers in the midgame was practically impossible to defend against aside from having your own stack of ~20 musketeers. Civ3 and Civ2 had the right idea: Kill-stack the entire stack if you group your units together like that. There was much richer play of combat in Civ3 and Civ2. It was non-intuitive, and players complained grossly about kill-stacks... but lets be frank: the game was better with kill-stacks. ---- Between Lenard Nemoy as the narrator and the incredible music, I'd think 4 was the best production value of the entire series however. Civ6 comes in at 2nd place, pretty good music and Sean Bean is pretty decent too. Just not as good as Civ4 IMO. ------- Civ6's issues is the "flattening" of the entire tree. Nothing feels different until you reach airplanes. Riflemen are just reskinned Musketeers, who are reskinned Swordmen, who are just reskinned Warriors. Tanks are just reskinned Knights, who were reskinned Chariots. In Civ6, there are basically only the following units: Anti-city Siege (Catapult / Bombard / Artillery), Warriors (Warrior, Swordmen, Musketeer, Riflemen, Mech. Infantry), Heavy Cavalry (Chariot, Knights, Tanks), Light Cavalry (Horsemen, Cavalry, Helicopters), and ranged-units (Slinger, Archer, Crossbowman, Field Cannon). Eventually, airplanes take over the siege and ranged roles (Biplane / Fighters ultimately play like faster Archers, while Bombers play like better Catapults). But otherwise, there's not much difference to combat through the ages. ------- Furthermore, Civ6 doesn't allow any exponential growth strategies. Aka: Wide vs Tall, or whatnot. In previous games (Civ1 through 5), buildings provided multiplicative bonuses. So Library was +100% science for the city (or some other multiplier, depending on which version of the game). This means that Libraries had a "threshold", where they were useless for small cities (+100% science on 1-Sci base production is just +1 science), but powerful for large cities (+100% off of a city with 20 science is +20 science). But there's none of that "play" in Civ6. Its wide-wide-wide for the win. Sure, Civ6 has increasing costs for settlers / builders to try and make the "wide" strategy weaker... but that just slows down the player. It doesn't actually change the fact that wide is the only way to play. ------- Builders only can make 3-improvements before they disappear (unless you have Feudalism or Pyramids: increaasing the limit by +2 or +1). In contrast, Civ3 through Civ5 had Workers (and Civ1 / Civ2 had settlers) that can continuously upgrade your city throughout all the ages. Workers vs Military was a key balance throughout the game. While in Civ6, its basically "Builders until they become too expensive", and maybe "Play Feudalism Card every now and then to cheat some extra improvements out of your builders". There's no depth to the decision.

cableshaft 6y ago

I've noticed that too, I only play one game a year over a couple of days in a single weekend, usually, because of the time commitment. How long of a CIV game would you like to play? What do you think is worth streamlining out of the experience? What do you think absolutely needs to stay in to get the feeling you want from these types of games? (This goes to anyone who feels it's too long, btw).

dragontamer 6y ago
You don't play a long-form game in one sitting. Take "Axis and Allies", a long-form boardgame that typically takes ~12 hours to play in my experience. I usually play it broken up between three different weekends when I whip it out. There's been a renaissance of long-form games recently. D&D is the most popular (5th edition. Pathfinder, Etc. etc.), but also Gloomhaven, and other "Legacy" games. I do realize that long-form games aren't in everyone's cup of tea. But its no different from say... trying to watch Game of Thrones together with a group (or Sports-ball games). Its an excuse to form a regular social gathering with your group of friends once-a-week for months (or years) at a time. The secret to long-form games is that the group-gathering is the primary goal, the gameplay is almost secondary. But having a good game helps (much like how a Game of Thrones watch party is better while the show is good).
bllguo 6y ago
I don't mind the length, but I think a lot of things are tedious and worth streamlining. Two that immediately jump to mind: Worker micro is not very fun to me, I don't like the Civ 6 system. At least in Civ 5 they didn't have limited uses and could be automated. The biggest thing is combat. It's mind-numbing having to move all the units and work out the positioning. It's so _slow_ both in real-time and game-time (should it take decades to move across the empire?). Maybe my roleplaying perspective is flawed, but if I'm supposedly the leader of the nation, why do I have to micromanage army tactics? Ideally a lot of that would be abstracted away
Florin_Andrei 6y ago
I recently realized Civ is perfect for playing during long transatlantic flights.

stereo 6y ago

I felt the same! Probably the first and last computer game to have music by Josquin Des Prez.

Florin_Andrei 6y ago

I play Civ 5 without any DLCs. I'm interested only in the growth phase, so the first third of the game is intensely fascinating, the second third is mildly interesting but I'm invested in the outcome, and by the final third I usually get bored - too much micromanagement indeed.

alasdair_ 6y ago

I still haven't played VI, despite both owning it and the Civ series being one of my favorite games (all the way back to I). I really hate micro (ADHD and tedious repetitive tasks don't mix well) and usually automated my workers as quickly as I could. I heard that this isn't possible in VI. That, along with the huge time commitment increase and the terrible AI have so far made me unwilling to bother playing. Is it worth a shot? I'm torn between finally playing that, and the fact that CK3 just came out.

RangerScience 6y ago
I would definitely say yes. It's extremely well made, and the core mechanics are extremely well polished. You do still get the "big empire" management issue, but for worker in particular, I find that it's really spread out. You only have a little bit to do with workers at a time, but that little bit is pretty consistent over the course of the game. Two of the changes that affect this are: every worker action only takes one turn, and workers don't build roads. (The "worker charges" mechanic also allowed, I think, for things like roman legions to one-time drop forts, which is awesome) The unstacking of cities is mostly a good thing, although I do find that I spend a lot more time planning cities (Due to all the different adjacency bonuses and requirements between districts, terrain, and wonders).
laksdjfkasljdf 6y ago
NO! I've played VI 6 after it was free on Epic store. It is the worst game experience i have ever had! You can play in full 3D (lame as hell) map, or strategic (2d map). Both of them give you a really bad view of the map, no matter what. The UI is full of bugs and things you need to click twice, and full of pitfalls (pressed space but an event was just jumping on the screen? too bad now your worker just moved next to that barbarian and will be lost next turn) The graphics completely destroy your GPU even though it is a freaking Civ game! no matter if you play on 2D view, your GPU will smoke just the same. no idea how they screwed that up. Then, even without considering graphics performance, my i5 top of the line was taking a whole 30s between unit moves in the later rounds of the game, and a full 3+ minutes for the CPU players turns. Avoid that game like the plague! unless you have a multi thousand dollars gaming PC. then just play it to laugh at all the times Gandhi will declare war on you on first contact. Edit: oh and i tried to play on the Surface. Despite being impossible because of performance, the UI is unusable without mouse over, and there's no way to show the mouse overs windows with the touch mode. Complete disaster of a game. I'd be ashamed to have my name on the credits. edit 2: I actually had lots of fun with https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv on the surface. and for newcomers to the series, play the original ones or even the Nes one on an emulator.

gota 6y ago

May I strongly suggest an alternative that just might scratch that itch? Try the Through the Ages game app in your Android (possibly Apple?) device. Matches last one hour with single player (or knowleadgeable multiplayers) and you still get the civ-building feeling. While it was, and is, originally a boardgame by a renowned author I find that it translates beautifully to a digital platform. No finnicky moving pieces, automatic accounting, automatic randomization, automatic rule accountability... it all benefits greatly! Thr strong points of the port, to me, are the good interface they came up with; the strong AI (seriously - I play this as a single player game 99% of the time. And I lose a lot.) and a great tutorial. (Not affiliated to the folks who made it in any way. Just a 5-star review)

RangerScience 6y ago
Seconding: I view "Through the Ages" as the spiritual incarnation of Civ in board-game form; it produces the vibe one seeks from Civ, although the mechanics are hugely different. The designer, Vlada Chvatil, makes amazing games. Others to check out are "Dungeon Lords" (which is to Dungeon Keeper what TTA is to Civ) and "Original War" (a fascinatingly different RTS). The mobile game for TTA is solid, and has a set of variant challenge modes for single-player play that are pretty fun.

JonathanFly 6y ago

>I've played every Civilization since the first one, I believe. I think 4 was my favorite, especially since it had the best music. >Lately I've been wavering from the series though. My biggest complaint is that every game is so long and requires so much micromanagement in the mid-late game. You may be interested to know that the lead designer of Civilization 4, Soren Johnson, is directly attacking that problem in his most recent game. The TLDR is you have a fixed number of actions you can do each turn which you choose to spend to move a unit, rather than each unit having one action every turn no matter what. So turn times do not increase exponentially like in Civ games. "Perhaps the most interesting resource in the pool, and the one which makes Old World stand out most from the 4X genre as a whole, is Orders. In most expand ‘em ups, you move each unit once each turn, and that’s that. In Old World, you have a pool of orders (replenished at a variable rate each turn depending on parameters such as your ruler’s legitimacy, the technologies in play, and dozens more), which you can split at will between your units. You might choose to blurt all your orders to a single scout, moving them three or four moves across the landscape until they hit their fatigue limit, or you might focus your whole order pool on a few military units fighting war, or you might go hard on workers building improvements. It’s a novel way of breaking a tradition, and offers flexibility while keeping turn times relatively snappy." The game is playable now in Early Access, if anyone is interested. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/14/preview-shape-nations-and-annoy-kings-in-old-world-the-new-4x-from-civ-4s-soren-johnson/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/04/14/preview-shape-na...

bcherry 6y ago
interesting! This same mechanic is used in the "A Game of Thrones" board game, and really adds unique strategic depth there.
haberman 6y ago
I like that idea!
lostdog 6y ago
How funny. I have always hated the "orders" mechanic in war games and other board games. How does it make sense as a mechanic? Ok, I can't move this infantry unit because two other infantry units already moved this turn. It's such a strange restriction. There's plenty of constraints in battle, but this limit is so strange.

dwighttk 6y ago

yeah, for me the "late game takes longer" isn't just stuff I have to do on my turns, but the computer simulation of turns starts grinding and grinding so I'm just sitting waiting for them for too long.

juniper_strong 6y ago

What settings are you playing on? A game of 4 on normal speed usually takes me 3 or 4 hours, and that's usually for space race, domination wins would be quicker. I don't micromanage everything unless I'm trying to hit a record early date, usually I'm paying to attention to one aspect of the game at a time, trying out different strategies. And you can always just play the openings, usually everything is pretty much decided in the first 50 turns and after that it is just a matter of how much sleep you want to lose playing out the inevitable.

spiralx 6y ago

I upgraded my Atari STE to a whopping 1Mb of memory in order to play the first Civ. It's a toss-up between that and Civ IV as to which version I spent the most time on. Civ III was the only one that disappointed me.