The best Civilization game?

[SpliFF]

Alpha Centauri and Civ 3 + Conquests.

Alpha Centauri had the best wonder movies of any Civ game (though the rest of the graphics are dated now).

My favourite game of AC ever was when I was playing as the science faction and I undertook a huge terraforming project to transform my island into a massive energy sink. I had beaten every AI player into submission and had an awesome supply of planet busters, I couldn't lose.

Then, out of nowhere the planet went FUCKING APESHIT and threw wave after wave of mindworms at my cities. Some of the mindworm packs had 40 or more units of the most powerful type. My entire civilisation was completely obliterated in about 10 turns.

I wasn't upset, just extremely impressed that the game designers (Fireaxis) had taken into account what might happen when you fuck with a sentient being that's the size of a planet.

My biggest gripes with Civ 5 is:

* Steam. I dislike Steam in general.
* You can't stack units. This is extremely annoying especially for garrisons.
* Unit experience. I honestly can't be arsed assigning those XP bonuses to every unit and keeping track of who has what.

I suspect there will be mods to change both aspects of gameplay so I'm going to wait 6 - 12 months and see what comes out of the modding community. I've got Shogun 2 to keep me occupied until then.

[momfreeek]

"Call to power 2" had some nice things in it like limited size unit stacks (12), multi-unit battles (the whole stack fights as one army), no-workers (you assigned production to public works to spend on improvements) and sliders to assign city population to the best food/production/money spots. The game was simpler to play without losing the depth. Civ4 micromanagement is painful and Civ5 just simplified the base game (never played civ3 tho).

For me its always AI thats the limiting factor in these games. Old games have crap AI and in new games the AI still never provides a challenge for long.

[Pxtl]

@Spliff - unit experience was the big drawback in Civ Rev as well. If you failed an assault on a city, that city was then invincible because its pikemen were now superhuman.... and yet if you had a stack of superhuman tanks, you'd often find they die spontaneously easily.

XP in Civ is a complete misfeature. The game is complicated enough already.

[SinbadEV]

@Spliff - unit experience was the big drawback in Civ Rev as well. If you failed an assault on a city, that city was then invincible because its pikemen were now superhuman.... and yet if you had a stack of superhuman tanks, you'd often find they die spontaneously easily.

XP in Civ is a complete misfeature. The game is complicated enough already.

Just the fact that your unit survived and your opponent's have not seems like it would be a fair reward?... I tentatively agree.

[Gota]

It's just too simplistic.

I think call to power 2 was a good game and especially with the community modding it its a very solid game..
Even at release it had several major improvements over civ and some very interesting ideas and units.

[Caydr]

Civ 5 is pretty nice in concept but even now it's still buggier than a Baltimore whore's ass. In another 6 months it'll probably be release-worthy. If you're familiar with the Civ development doctrine, you should be used to this.

[Gota]

buggier than a Baltimore whore's ass.

Oo ha?

[Caydr]

Is that Yiddish? I want you could translate it for me?

[Gota]

Yiddish?


You know, I have a feeling that somewhere deep inside you secretly want to convert to Judaism.

[Neddie]

Civ II is still my fav, but I haven't played IV or V. AC and Civ II both leave a bitter taste in my mouth, as Brian Reynolds is now at Zynga shoveling their titles.

[Caydr]

Oy vey... the kids these days with their buttons, I want a bagel. Oyga boyga.

[Jools]

I've played all of the civ games from 1 to 5, and I must say that 1 is still by far the best one. Reasons:
ÔÇö More realistic diplomatic dialogue (events are reported with a proper source, like "travellers report that...")
ÔÇö Best movement and battle function. All civs except 5 allow stacking, but in civ 1 you can kill the whole stack if it's not in a fortress. Civ 5 makes movement complicated because roads are costly and units can't stay on same tile.
ÔÇö Civ 1 had nice pictures and animations when discovering techs or capturing cities. It also had nice random events.
ÔÇö Of course it lacks a bit in graphic (hey it's 15 years old), but that's not the important part: your mind fills in the rest, like reading a book. Civ 1 is a bit too easy though, and the AI is quit bad.

[SinbadEV]

I've played all of the civ games from 1 to 5, and I must say that 1 is still by far the best one. Reasons:
ÔÇö More realistic diplomatic dialogue (events are reported with a proper source, like "travellers report that...")
ÔÇö Best movement and battle function. All civs except 5 allow stacking, but in civ 1 you can kill the whole stack if it's not in a fortress. Civ 5 makes movement complicated because roads are costly and units can't stay on same tile.
ÔÇö Civ 1 had nice pictures and animations when discovering techs or capturing cities. It also had nice random events.
ÔÇö Of course it lacks a bit in graphic (hey it's 15 years old), but that's not the important part: your mind fills in the rest, like reading a book. Civ 1 is a bit too easy though, and the AI is quit bad.

How close is freeciv to civ1?

[KaiserJ]

master of orion 2

[Gota]

Remember being able to look at your city? and the throne room....

[Pxtl]

Remember being able to look at your city? and the throne room....

Not your city, your palace. Seemed more impressive to do improvements to the palace than just the throne room.

I also remember how painfully slow the images would load in the dithered animation for showing new parts of your throne room in Civ 2.

[Jools]

I played civ 1 on an amiga 1200. It was slow yeah, and you had to change disks (there were 4 of them).

And Civ 1 was also buggy.

[SinbadEV]

Lookit I Found : http://www.freeciv.net/

Browser based port of freeciv apparently.

[Gota]

Thats brilliant

[Jools]

Remember being able to look at your city? and the throne room....

Not your city, your palace. Seemed more impressive to do improvements to the palace than just the throne room.

I also remember how painfully slow the images would load in the dithered animation for showing new parts of your throne room in Civ 2.

You could also look at your city. In civ 1 if you clicked the city, you would see a image of it with all the citizens lined up. I liked those.