The best Civilization game?

[Gota]

There are now 5 civilization games, and although they all are in the same genre and have a lot in common civ players can definitely distinguish between all of them and tell you which one they like best...

I really liked the 4th one.
It did have its problems especially with multiplayer but it was very fun and i spent many hours playing it...
I also loved civ 2 which is just a classic ...

I tried the 5th one and was very disappointed...
It looks very nice but it seemed to have less of everything and while thats not nessesarily a bad thing it also introduced the city states and made osme other very bizzare changes that made the less fun...

Anyone played civ 5 a lot?

[Licho]

Best one is Alpha Centauri.

Civ5 is ok but AI and multiplayer sux (too laggy)

[dcore221]

civ3 is my fav

[RogerN]

Anyone played civ 5 a lot?

I'm enjoying a lot of civ 5 right now, though I still haven't tried multiplayer. There was a patch semi-recently which had a huge effect on balance. I think that helped a lot as there are now many more viable strategies.

My biggest beef with Civ 5 right now is how empire-wide happines affects conquest. Your citizens were perfectly happy during 100 years of war, but then you actually *won* the war and captured the other guy's cities. And now your own citizens are all upset for some reason. My experience from previous civ games was that only the occupied/conquered cities would get upset, which made sense. But now conquering cities can get you huge empire-wide production penalties, which really sucks.

Anyway, that issue slows down my favorite "conquer the entire world" strategy by quite a bit. I have to raze cities frequently because I can't afford the happiness penalty of owning them.

[HectorMeyer]

1: A classic. Surprisingly good for its age and all in all very polished, fun, interesting and playable.

2: Expanded on the first very well. Added a much needed proper battle system. I played it a lot. Recommended.

3: Never played it, made a bad first impression to me somehow.

4: I think this is the best Civ game. Really good, balanced gameplay. Very complex. Complicated, intricate techtree. Warfare pretty well designed too. Very difficult to figure out how to properly build up economy and wage war. Excellent AI, love how it launched, big, well prepared attacks on you all of a sudden, just like a human player would. Would have been the perfect game if it wasn't for:

- Bad comic artstyle killing atmosphere
- Pointless, slow 3d graphics, looking buttugly in the late game. Isometric ftw.
- One of the worst soundtracks i've ever witnessed in any video game. Baba Yetu my ass, and all the other uninspired boring contemporary pieces. Look at Paradox or Total War games for soundtrack done right.
- Lame diplomacy, no real infamy system. Lack of options.
- Lame "civics" system. (should have used the one from Alpha Centauri)
- No real politics, diplomacy and trade. Game consists too much of moving stacks around.
- I think it's unrealistic and boring that, especially in the late game, everything is still based on the resources near the city grids. Wealth should be based more on trade and politics as the game progresses. Embargos should cripple you in the late game, deficits/surplus should play larger role, see USA vs China. Large wars should be made almost impossible because of ecnonomic havoc.
- high difficulty levels frustrating. Actually I am just too stupid, there are a lot of people who can beat deity on a regular basis
- Not really suitable for multiplayer, it simply takes too long. I also hate how there are no replays and no spectating. But you can connect with a pirated copy to the official servers.
- Tech trading is stupid and kills gameplay (but can be disabled)

5: Didn't play and don't intend to. Seems to be simplified a lot and the hexagons look super ugly. Even more focus on unit micro isn't what civ needs. I rather play Europa Universalis or Total War


6: Honorable mention: Alpha Centauri. Imo the best game because it has actually different fractions and a great "social engineering" system, allowing for lots of different strategies. Also, the ideologies behind the factions are really fun. Had quite a few nice multiplayer games with it.
Downsides: Incompetent AI, Supply Crawler and Punishment Spheres, tech trading break gameplay.

[Pxtl]

Civilization Revolution.

[Teutooni]

6: Honorable mention: Alpha Centauri. Imo the best game because it has actually different fractions and a great "social engineering" system, allowing for lots of different strategies. Also, the ideologies behind the factions are really fun. Had quite a few nice multiplayer games with it.

+1

It had so many awesome features civilization games lacked - floating cities, pollution, planet bursters (they make civ ICBM's look lame)... The best part was the brilliant unit system, with different chassis types and all kinds of combat modifiers. Loved the video/audio clips you get when finishing a wonder or a building for the first time or researching a tech. The indigenous life thing was cool too, my favourite was going all in on xenotech and conquering the world with locusts. :D

[SinbadEV]

Civilization Revolution.

The console version? Yeah... I liked the demo... it was nice to play a Civ game that didn't take over an hour to play a match.

[pintle]

Freeciv

[SinbadEV]

Galactic Civilizations II was awesome except for it stops being fun after about a month... so depending on how you assign value to entertainment you may not get as much bang for your buck as one would need to like it.

[SirArtturi]

Probably Civ 3 is my absolute favourite. Civ 5 could have potential. Yes, both of those fail a bit with the balance and some strategies are too op, but still they have the most essential civilization feeling(though civ1 is the most essential ofc) which is more important for me.

[Pxtl]

Civilization Revolution.

The console version? Yeah... I liked the demo... it was nice to play a Civ game that didn't take over an hour to play a match.

Yup. I played it on the DS, which from what I've heard is a pretty close representation of the big console gameplay. It nicely stripped down Civ to the core essentials and streamlined the speed, but still kept all my favourite parts.

The only frustrating part is that it's *really* porcy, and that the AI is, as usual, ludicrous - erratic, stupid, and able to build massive stacks of units that it fields miserably.

[Gota]

I wish someone made a realtime civ like strategy game...
Like what sins of a solar empire did to 4x turn based games.

[SinbadEV]

I wish someone made a realtime civ like strategy game...
Like what sins of a solar empire did to 4x turn based games.

Civ 4 had a mode where everybody got to take their turns at once and it mattered who clicked attack first... which was close... and then there are a myriad of online games like ikariam, civony/evony, ceasary that do this pretty well but focus more on city management and raiding then expansion...

if you want to make one that really is real-time civ I would totally play it...

[Sabutai]

Empire Earth was a little like a realtime civ game.

[SinbadEV]

You know what would be REALLY nifty would be if there was something that gave the "Desktop Dungeons" treatment to the civ genre... making the entire world map fit on one screen and have matches take 10-30 minutes... hmmm...

[Regret]

Civ5 is ok but AI and multiplayer sux (too laggy)

How does a turn based game lag in multiplayer?

[SwiftSpear]

Galactic Civilizations II was awesome except for it stops being fun after about a month... so depending on how you assign value to entertainment you may not get as much bang for your buck as one would need to like it.

If you like Gal Civ 2, you'd probably like Space Empires 5. It's a spectacular 4X. It's especially impressive with the Capitan Kwok's mod.

[Regret]

If you like Gal Civ 2, you'd probably like Space Empires 5. It's a spectacular 4X. It's especially impressive with the Capitan Kwok's mod.

He could probably play both at the same time since in SE5 it takes ages to load after you press next turn.

[Licho]

SE4 was imo better than SE5, but still not very good, AI failure..
AI failure breaks most games
Even total war games have poor AI .. even MOO2 had poor AI (I actually think that MOO1 was more fun)