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I was thinking about picking up a Civ game and am not sure which I should start with.

I used to have Civ III but cannot find it, it's only $5.49, and was hoping for help into which has the best game-play and enjoyment value for the money.

Any help would be appreciated.

Matt

Hmm. I don't think you'd gain all that much by starting off with III. Most things it did well were done well by IV as well. Well, I think so .
V changes a LOT, and in many ways it's a personal preference. I prefer V over IV, but then again, I preferred II over III.
V is more streamlined, and in some ways eased down. You lose some options and methods. I, for one, really like the non-stacking of units, while a LOT of people hated it.

I've only played II, and not for very long before MoO/MoOII stole my attention and never gave it back.
As I understand it, IV is the culmination of the game's original incarnation, and V sort of starts a new tack.

--Patrick

That was my understanding as well.

II, is the best version, but good luck finding a version to play.

I like 4 because of the stacking.

Definitely Civ IV. I love V, but Civ IV is just... damn. It was the perfect Civ game. I recommend getting the expansions for it as well, if they're cheap. I've invested hundreds of hours into both IV and V, and IV is by far my favourite (though it's currently uninstalled so I've been favouring V).

The introduction of religion, and usefulness of the 'stack of doom' (which can get comically unfair on easier settings), as well as the variety of cultures and attributes makes every single game unique.

V has the wonderful hex - as opposed to square - grid, and transforms how various mechanics work: for instance unit stacking (almost none), city defense and naval warfare are all radically changed. I love it, and the more I play, the more it grows on me, but Civ IV will forever be my gold standard Civ game.

EDIT: as for III, it's fine, but IV does everything better.

City Defense and Naval Warfare are the big changes in V and it really makes playing on island heavy maps a lot more interesting when you hit the age of sail. City Defense (as it is) is something that should have been integrated a long time ago. My main complaints against 5 are that you NEED all the expansions to get the most out of the game. Gods and Kings gives you religion (as underwhelming as it is) and Brave New World revamps the social policy system into something more nuanced and useful. Worse, these expansions are still expensive... even on sale they usually don't go below 50%.

Started on Civ 1. Fun! Civ2 a great improvement on it. As was Alpha Centauri (you can find it on GoG).

Civ III made me stop playing Civ for YEARS. F'n hated it. I was so "afraid" of what IV would be there's an unopened copy on my shelf that was a gift from somebody. My wife started playing civ 5 and liked it enough to persuade me to try. And I liked it. VERY different, but I liked it.

The moral here: whatever you play, don't play III. It may make you hate things forever.

Eriol said:

Started on Civ 1. Fun! Civ2 a great improvement on it. As was Alpha Centauri (you can find it on GoG).

Civ III made me stop playing Civ for YEARS. F'n hated it. I was so "afraid" of what IV would be there's an unopened copy on my shelf that was a gift from somebody. My wife started playing civ 5 and liked it enough to persuade me to try. And I liked it. VERY different, but I liked it.

The moral here: whatever you play, don't play III. It may make you hate things forever.

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I never played 4 because of 3. I need to find a way to get Civ II to run on my Win8 machine.

grub said:

I was thinking about picking up a Civ game and am not sure which I should start with.

I used to have Civ III but cannot find it, it's only $5.49, and was hoping for help into which has the best game-play and enjoyment value for the money.

Any help would be appreciated.

Matt

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I never got around to 5, but from what I have seen it looks interesting as well. I have fond memories of Civ 3 gold ("Wise man say, only fools rush in with no luxuries... King!"), but honestly, once I found you could tell Civ IV to use map hexes instead of squares, I think I liked it better.

If you want an interesting civ clone with a twist, though... I recommend checking out Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes.

Shit, Gas! That game came out in 2013 and it's still $40 on Steam!

Dave said:

Shit, Gas! That game came out in 2013 and it's still $40 on Steam!

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Really. That's interesting, I got it on Steam sale for less than 10 bucks. Ah well

It's a Stardock game. They don't price drop (outside of a sale) unless they have a new version of the game out. So wait for Fallen Empress 3.

I started with Civ IV and the expansions and loved it. V was alright but it never held my attention like IV, that one kept me up till 4am and beyond a few times, once or twice till 7-8am.

Civ IV with all expansions was great. Civ V with all expansions is also great. Tough call. I play V moreso as that's just what I have loaded up on Steam and I'm used to the changes now. Fantastic workshop mods available for it as well.
Also going to agree with GasBandit; Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes is great. Check out Das24680 on YouTube, he's got some good Let's Plays.

Now for my personal favourite: Crusader Kings II
Love, love love this game. One of the most indepth, rewarding, frustrating at times but worth it games I've ever played. Most people care for Europa Universalis 4 moreso than CK2, but those people are much smarter than I am as I get lost in that one.
You control a dynasty (real one, or create your own) and guide it from (depending on which dlc you purchase) 647 - 1493 AD trying to expand your families lands, power/influence and wealth. Backstabbing, Political marriages/maneuvering, religion... so much, so well done. Also, fantastic Game of Thrones total conversion mod available in addition to many other great steam workshop mods. Great reddit threads available on the game, as well as Let's Play's on YouTube. I suggest Arumba as he's got aCK2 tutorial series. Also on sale right now I believe, base game $8 cdn, or a dlc pack and game for $45 cdn. Get Old Gods, be a viking. Raid, pillage, capture, sacrifice prisoners to Odin at a Blot.

Now that i've ventured completely off topic: Go Civ5. Simply because the workshop allows you so many options. ....CK2

A wild @Soupy appears!

CK2 is... wow, so very very detailed and in depth. The learning curve on that game is STA-HEEEEEP but if you can get your head around it, it's an amazing game.

I've completed Civ V with the Celts and I immediately restarted playing with the Scandinavians. Will also play through as Americans, Shoshone, Iroquois, Swedes for sure.

Civ 3 is okayish. I haven't tried Civ IV yet.

Null said:

I've completed Civ V with the Celts and I immediately restarted playing with the Scandinavians. Will also play through as Americans, Shoshone, Iroquois, Swedes for sure.

Civ 3 is okayish. I haven't tried Civ IV yet.

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It really depends on what type of victory/civ you like. I'm personally very partial to Korea, Babylon and the Dutch.

Bubble181 said:

It really depends on what type of victory/civ you like. I'm personally very partial to Korea, Babylon and the Dutch.

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Yeah, the Hwa'Cha and Turtle ship look formidable.

Null said:

Yeah, the Hwa'Cha and Turtle ship look formidable.

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The Hwa'Cha is quite fantastic, the Turtle ship *can* be strong is but is an incredible handicap on some maps: they're both units that also LOSE a strong point of the unit they replace. The Trebuchet's bonus vs cities isn't that big a deal, but the Turtle Ship can't access oceans...Which limits mobility something fierce.

Null said:

Yeah, the Hwa'Cha and Turtle ship look formidable.

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The strength of these Civs isn't in their units... though the Hwa'Cha is quite nice. It's in their Science production.

Babylon gets a free Great Scientist when they discover Writing. This might not sound like much, but it triples their science output at that stage of the game, giving them a strong early lead that can be hard to overcome. They also get Great Scientists 50% faster, meaning it's easy for them to compound this further. Combine this with a decent defense unit in the Bowman and it's no wonder that Babylon is usually considered a top-tier Civ. Just don't upgrade TOO fast because it's possible to fuck yourself if you suddenly need a resource you don't have to build a basic unit.

Korea works similarly: They get extra science from Great Person improvements, Science Wonders in the Capital, and specialists. This isn't as fast as Babylon's science growth but this is fine: you have more time to focus on other units instead. The Hwa'Cha is an excellent way to complete destroy early units too. This makes Korea more of a slow burn, but you also get more flexibility.

Yeah, there have been a ton of times where I'm stuck with basic units because I don't have iron or horses.

The Celtic passive - free faith from intact forests - let me accumulate more faith than I ever dreamt of using. In fact, I am fairly bad about buying improvements and units when I more than have the resources.

Null said:

Yeah, there have been a ton of times where I'm stuck with basic units because I don't have iron or horses.

The Celtic passive - free faith from intact forests - let me accumulate more faith than I ever dreamt of using. In fact, I am fairly bad about buying improvements and units when I more than have the resources.

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See, the problem with this is that faith can't buy you GOOD units and you have to keep your forests undeveloped. You also NEED forests to get it to work: you end up on a desert and you're fucked.

I really never understood the Faith game. It always felt like I had to bring in the military to wipe out another religion anyways.

AshburnerX said:

See, the problem with this is that faith can't buy you GOOD units and you have to keep your forests undeveloped. You also NEED forests to get it to work: you end up on a desert and you're fucked.

I really never understood the Faith game. It always felt like I had to bring in the military to wipe out another religion anyways.

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Once you complete the Piety path, faith can buy you a Great Person, though.

I rarely had problems with other religions, other than them getting annoyed when I'd send my prophets to spread the faith in their territory.

Null said:

I rarely had problems with other religions, other than them getting annoyed when I'd send my prophets to spread the faith in their territory.

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Yeah, but have you managed a Religious Victory? You need to wipe out the competing religions, which you can't do with missionaries alone. You have to destroy their Holy city... and at that point, how is it different than a military victory?

AshburnerX said:

Yeah, but have you managed a Religious Victory? You need to wipe out the competing religions, which you can't do with missionaries alone. You have to destroy their Holy city... and at that point, how is it different than a military victory?

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Oh, hadn't tried for that. So far I got a time victory, but I'm so far ahead of the others in that one that I could play it out for a military victory or space victory.

I always liked going for Space Victory, personally. Military can be fun but I always end up spending too much time on other stuff to keep people happy over building my offenses.

For some reason, I have a hard time achieving a space victory, even with a science civ. I usually end up with culture, because I like going that way, or diplomatic, since....well, lots of science buys lots of money, which leads to good standing with the city states, because I want them on my side anyway, and then suddenly I have a majority of the vote (I tend to have more than the suggested amount of city states and less civs on any given map, though, which helps in this way )

I always pick the Americans and then I win space or military because MURKA

I generally do Space because the conditions basically amount to "Stay alive for a set period of time".

So I'm playing through as the Danes, and the Celts and Polish are right next to me on the landmass. They were initially a bit stronger, so we've all been at peace. It's now the dawn of the industrial era and I realize all I've fought all game are barbarians.

Edit: Eventually went to war with the Poles in the early 1900s and took three cities before they asked for peace in 1920. In 1997, Harold Bluetooth of the Danes was elected World Leader.

I love 4 with all the expansions. I could never get into 5. I tried but its not for me.

Playing 5 again, this time as the Americans, and by some quirk, where I started was full of Wine groves. Using the liberty social policies I'm able to quickly establish several cities, and before long I apparently have the market cornered on wine. No other civilization, including the Huns, have crossed me because they are all desperate to trade for wine. The extra square of vision for land units is very handy when you're playing on a random map that's basically one large continent.

Null said:

Playing 5 again, this time as the Americans, and by some quirk, where I started was full of Wine groves. Using the liberty social policies I'm able to quickly establish several cities, and before long I apparently have the market cornered on wine. No other civilization, including the Huns, have crossed me because they are all desperate to trade for wine. The extra square of vision for land units is very handy when you're playing on a random map that's basically one large continent.

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Damn that's lucky.

Chad Sexington said:

Damn that's lucky.

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Seriously. Every few turns it's like, "Hey, Washington, want some more gold and iron and horses? We'll trade you for that wine." "Will you take this silk for wine?"

So basically all of my cities control luxury and or utility resources. Washington has 3 vineyards. New York has a vineyard, marble quarry, and copper. Boston has deer, stone, and iron. Philadelphia has spices and gems. Seattle has bananas, silk, and gems. Los angeles has whales. Portland has ivory. Chicago has spices, bison, furs, and iron. San Francisco has horses, gold, and ivory. Houston has wheat and tobacco. Khalid, which was ceded to me by the Huns, has cotton. There are frequent "WE LOVE THE KING" days.

Of course, since everyone wants their vino, the second longest war I had was like 5 turns against Rome, who is across the map from me. Their exploring warrior attacked the same barbarian camp as I was. I was attempting to retrieve a worker the barbs had taken. Rome kill-steals the encampment and takes the worker. Their warrior wanders off, so I have my warrior take the worker back. Rome declares war, we ignore each other for a few turns, then Caesar goes, "Have some money and a peace treaty." Later on I joined with Poland to fight the Huns. Cost me a unit of warriors and a unit of spearmen, but when Attila asked for peace, he gave me a city, so that was a win.

Legendary Heroes: Fallen Enchantress is in the humble bundle, currently. No minimum to get LH:FE.

Civ5 Complete is on sale on Steam currently as well. $13.74 cdn.
I've been messing around with some more mods, 3rd and 4th unique component mod that add some more options for vanilla Civs, in addition to a lot of the modded Civ's featured on the Reddit AI battle. Awesome fun.
Stupid Age of Wonder's 3 expansions on sale as well this weekend... so much fun... so little time...and little money.

And bought

So, anyone know enough about Civ 5 mods to recommend some for me?

These are some extra civs with a variety of flavour, as well as some big map options, more luxuries if you're interested among others.
This guy has a wide range of great civs and mods, and is heavily involved on the reddit/ai_battle scene. Some good collections as well with various mods, this one especially. Even better, he/she made a pretty wicked Canada civ.
3rd and 4th Unique Component Mods give Vanilla Civ's a nice kick.
Info Addicts is beautiful if you love the extra information... I do.
Communitas is a community created expansion pack designed to enhance some of the game systems. I tend to use it from time to time for something different.
R.E.D. Modpack is also pretty nice for visuals.
Best advice I can give is take a peek at some of the links, install the ones that intrigue you and try them out on some maps. I've had a blast with the Cree and Inuit civ's lately. I had an Israel civ that bugged my UI however so it went bye bye.

Thanks, checking them out, already downloading some.

Holy crap that 47 mod list.

So with teaching work extremely slow lately, I've had some time and recorded some Civ 5 videos and threw them up on YouTube. I'm extremely new at doing anything like this so there are definite audio issues, though I think the video quality is pretty good. I made my first 6 videos with nVidia Shadowplay recording both my audio and video in the same raw file. Since viewing r/letsplay I've found people advising to record audio separately so I've downloaded Audacity to give that a shot. Also went out and got a table top microphone (Blue 'Snowball') so I won't be working with a headset mic; less creepy breathing. You won't find any amazing strategy or optimal play with me; I've always played pretty safe down at the Warlord/Prince difficulty level and I'm hoping to work my way to Emperor and figured I might as well have some fun and record my journey and share it.
So yeah, anyway, it's a game with some mods, I have them linked in the video description and I'm playing as Japan in the first series. If you have the time, go have a look and laugh.


*new Avatar because @Dave*

I don't have time to "game", but I have been running through Civ Revolution 2 on the iPad. It is so scaled down that it's a bit silly. It's fun, but not as satisfying as the PC versions of Civ. It's like Decaf-Civ.

Hi everyone, I've completed the first Let's Play with Japan and I felt that it went pretty well. My goal was to become a little more aggressive in my play style and go for a domination victory. Some mistakes were made however I feel that overall I stuck to my goal. Take a look and if you have any comments or critiques let me know; always looking for good advice.

Here's the link to the playlist.
Link to the main channel if you're interested.