Poll: What is the best Civilization game?

[lacktheknack]

I do like Civ V's combat, it lets you make blockades and other stuff that makes warfare very interesting. However, my problem with that game is the borderline insane and bi-polar AI.

Insane, bi-polar and cheating AI is a staple of the series.

The main difference for Civ 5 is the AI doesn't send a stack of 551 elephants over your border after it declares war out of left field.

Ghandi still nukes you at the drop of a hat though, so all is right with the world

Fun Factoid: Here's the personality table for the game.

<spoiler=Bad res, sorry><img width=800>http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/5966/civ5personalitiesv13.png

Basically, it shows a tendency of each Civilization AI to do different things, from a preferability from zero to ten, zero meaning they don't care, to ten meaning high priority. So if someone labels "growth" at 10, they will do all they can to make as many people as possible, while a "0" means any population growth is incidental.

Notice something unusual?

Yep. Gandhi's Nuke probability is 12.

Make of that what you will.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yep. Gandhi's Nuke probability is 12.

Make of that what you will.

Nukes are the ultimate form of passive resistance!

I...want...need...must...

There's a certain dullness to the hard wired personalities in Alpha Centauri. You're going to find yourself dragged into a war with the same factions every...single...time, because "doing war" is just their thing.

 

[Skratt]

I am a huge fan of Civ Rev. But, I've playing playing Civ 5 and to me, version 5 got rid of *most* of the crap that got bloated into Civ 4. That being said, I am not the typical Civ fan (as you can plainly see by the poll results).

I say, if you had a blast playing version 5, get version 5. Version 4 just doesn't cut it IMO and I think you might be disappointed trying to step backwards.

 

[lacktheknack]

Yep. Gandhi's Nuke probability is 12.

Make of that what you will.

Nukes are the ultimate form of passive resistance!

I...want...need...must...

There's a certain dullness to the hard wired personalities in Alpha Centauri. You're going to find yourself dragged into a war with the same factions every...single...time, because "doing war" is just their thing.

There IS a "Scramble Personalities" button, which shakes things up a bit, but I haven't gotten bored of it yet.

 

[Skratt]

I do like Civ V's combat, it lets you make blockades and other stuff that makes warfare very interesting. However, my problem with that game is the borderline insane and bi-polar AI.

Insane, bi-polar and cheating AI is a staple of the series.

The main difference for Civ 5 is the AI doesn't send a stack of 551 elephants over your border after it declares war out of left field.

Ghandi still nukes you at the drop of a hat though, so all is right with the world

When I play against Ghandi, I target the shit out of him and never knew why. Now I know - I was preempting his aggression with my own.

I really think the AI in all the civ games is fucked up. I mean it is supposed to be everyone vs. everyone, but it really boils down to everyone vs. the player all at once in a giant digital gang rape. And then Ghandi nukes you. That kind of shit will make you bats.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I really think the AI in all the civ games is fucked up. I mean it is supposed to be everyone vs. everyone, but it really boils down to everyone vs. the player all at once in a giant digital gang rape. And then Ghandi nukes you. That kind of shit will make you bats.

It's completely fucked up. Civilization has one of the worst, most gratuitously cheating AI's of all time. Total War's vanilla AI isn't much better, but that game is a lot more honest about its long term intentions of total war.

I think one of the most interesting things about the Civ series is how fucked up and broken it is on so many levels, and yet it remains compulsively playable in spite all of this.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

Civilization V in my book mainly because I hated fighting wars in the other Civ games because the stacks of doom took most of the strategy out of combat and all the enjoyment. Civ V stopped by habit of just going for UN, space and time victories as combat was so much more enjoyable. That said there are things missings in CiV that where in Civ IV like religion, corporations, espionage and proper UN resolutions. Although looks like the upcoming expansion will deal with some of them issues and hopefully the rest in another expansion.

However if mods and scenarios are important to you, Civ IV has some of the best in the series, something that hasn't really happened yet with Civ V. I still waiting for a Civ V version of Rhye's and Fall of Civilization mod. Seriously if you have Civ IV play Rhyes and Fall it also came bundled in the Beyond the Sword.

captcha: tea with milk

Yes and two sugars please captcha.

 

[thiosk]

I'm sorry, without Civilization 2: Test of Time included on this list, this can only be for the second best civilization game.

Civilization V in my book mainly because I hated fighting wars in the other Civ games because the stacks of doom took most of the strategy out of combat and all the enjoyment.

If you posted this one one of the civ forums, theyd probably hop all over you for a strategy vs tactics discussion.

Anyhoo, even worse than the stack of doom was that they took away zone of control in civ 4, so there was simply no benefit to holding the high ground with an inferior force-- the stack could walk right past you unimpeded. No need for forts, because anyone can just walk past them.

 

[Bostur]

You should definately give Alpha Centauri a try. I find that the terrain is a little boring being mostly dirt, rocks and alien fungus. But it's the only successful attempt I've seen at creating a story in a 4x game. It has loads of videos and narrated bits of plots that is really good at suggesting the setting. There is plenty of room for your imagination to fill in the missing spots as well.

I tried it again not long ago, worked very smooth on my 64 bit Windows 7. After some slight fiddling with the ini file I even got it to run in 1920x1024 resolution.

 

[Inkidu]

PS - And Civ 4 is going to run away with the poll.

Yeah, seems that way. Looks like it's the fan favorite.

I thought Civ 4 would run away with it, but it's pretty close so far.

My recommendation would be Civ V for the simple reason of tactically deep combat. Oh and no goddamn stacks of doom.

Combat in any Civ prior to V is just a matter of attrition, whoever throws the most units at it wins. In V, a small force and a little tactical knowledge can go an awful long way!

Yeah I like V better sure they cut some elements I liked to toy with but no more stack of doom makes up for it so hard. Now it matters what you bring to the party and not how much.

Like if you're going through a ton of hills to combat someone you might not want to bring horses or tanks. They have issues with hills. Also they're better outriders smashing siege weapons or archers and not hitting cities or whatnot. I think it has better give and take.

 

[Inkidu]

I do like Civ V's combat, it lets you make blockades and other stuff that makes warfare very interesting. However, my problem with that game is the borderline insane and bi-polar AI.

Insane, bi-polar and cheating AI is a staple of the series.

The main difference for Civ 5 is the AI doesn't send a stack of 551 elephants over your border after it declares war out of left field.

Ghandi still nukes you at the drop of a hat though, so all is right with the world

When I play against Ghandi, I target the shit out of him and never knew why. Now I know - I was preempting his aggression with my own.

I really think the AI in all the civ games is fucked up. I mean it is supposed to be everyone vs. everyone, but it really boils down to everyone vs. the player all at once in a giant digital gang rape. And then Ghandi nukes you. That kind of shit will make you bats.

I remember playing V on a fairly hard level. It basically boiled down to my Roman nukes and GDRs verses his GDRs and nukes. It was the closest I'll ever get to see a post-apocalyptic future mod. Though I couldn't touch him in Asia and he couldn't touch me in the new world, but poor fucking Europe and Africa. Holy crap. Nukes, gets, GDRs. The occasional infantry skirmish. I basically won space race because it was a nuclear hellhole.

Good times.

Fucking Gandhi.

 

[woodaba]

There's a certain dullness to the hard wired personalities in Alpha Centauri. You're going to find yourself dragged into a war with the same factions every...single...time, because "doing war" is just their thing.

It's more the story aspects I was nergasming about, though, TBH, i'd rather have the "default" setting be specific personalities, rather than Civ V's being "We're all totally insane and out to murder you. Yes, i'm a pacifist. Yes, I just nuked you. Whatu gonna do about it, *****?" Though, I suppose that adds to the charm.

 

[Nibblitman]

Alpha Centauri was probably my favorite game of the series. But that is probably because I always just bought peoples city's once I had enough money I would just buy them down to one city then wreck them over and over.

So in retrospect maybe not the best game.

 

[Ashannon Blackthorn]

I never have a problem with Gandhi. In all my years of playing Civ games never once has Gandhi dropped anuke on my ass. Granted it cause i play gandhi and drop the nukes but it's all the same.

Anyways, civ 5 is the best for potential, 4 is the most polished, AC is the quirkiest and the other have the old school charm.

I'd honestly say wait till the G&E epac for 5 comes out and then judge.

 

[Vrach]

So, i've got some bob in my pocket, and after playing the Civ V free weekend over steam, i'm hooked. However, i've heard conflicting reports on it's quality, so, here I am. What Civ game, out of these, should I get? Don't restrain yourselves to just the ones on the list, if there are other games in the series I should look at, suggest them!

The problems with Civ 5 are:
- Unstable as fuck - you'll see this if you play long games on big maps. In late turns, it starts crashing like crazy, my latest game crashes after almost every turn and crashes when loading sometimes. The optimization is quite terrible as well and on big maps, you'll feel lag even with stronger machines.
- Bugs - farms becoming invisible, unit icons overlapping in cities, making them hard/impossible to select and so on.
- Retarded AI - you'll see this in war and diplomacy. They don't know how to utilize their units correctly, so a decent player can whoop entire armies with a few units. In diplomacy, they're just batshit crazy, they never accept a "Discuss" suggestion from you (from my experience and I've tried a fair bit of times) and unless it's something as simple as trading one luxury resource for another, it's probably over their head.

Other than that, it's an excellent game. A brilliant game, but one that's quite literally been released as a finished product when it was something that most studios would label as a beta stage product (and a bad one at that). They've sorted out a number of bugs and added some promised features (hurray for Hotseat, not so much for the 8 player limit), but even now a year and a half later, the game is still in much worse shape than it should have been on release.

OT: Honestly, hard to say. Because of all the issues, I have trouble saying Civilization V, but it really is my favourite in the series. The game is brilliant as a concept, it's just unfinished, but I'm still able to enjoy it enough. Civilization 3 is an "oldie but goodie", being what I'd say is a perfect game for when it was released and still very much playable and enjoyable today.

I have to admit though, I've let Civ IV slip through my fingers. When it came out, I was displeased they took the graphics to 3D and found it a bit overwhelming, so I never got around to trying it out for real. From what I hear though, it's supposed to be the best game in the series.

 

[illas]

Civ IV is the most "complete" experience, in my opinion, but Civ V is the most pleasurable to actually play.

 

[Zipa]

4 is by far the best, they hit the mark right on with it, even if the ai is a cheating bastard.

Civ 5 is too simplified, they removed all the things that made 4 great (things like religion ) and are now selling them back as DLC. The only real improvement was the combat. It wasn't just build a stack of death and destroy everything

 

[Andrew_C]

Personally I liked the Stacks o' Doom, mainly because I was usually the one delivering them.

Any version of will be Civ good, I've played them all except Civ 5. Civ II, Alpha Centauri and CTP are my favourites. My favourite civ unit is the ecoterrorists from CTP.

 

[Yopaz]

I have only played Civilization V so far, but I love that game. However I don't feel like I'm in a position to vote.

 

[Saladfork]

I really wish I could have a civ game with the management compexity of Civ IV BTS combined with the hexes and combat mechanics of Civ V.

As for the question, when I feel like playing a management game, I play Civ IV, and when I feel like playing a war game, I play Civ V.