Excuse me if there's already a thread like this, I didn't see one.

I got Civilization 4 Complete yesterday, and wanted to see if anybody else wanted to talk about it. Eh? Eh?

What's wrong with Civ 5? And if you want to fight someone really good at civilization games, then I know someone. . . My mom, seriously, she is really amazingly good at it,

Any game really. I have Civ 5, but Steam is being crappy.

And my mother is good at it too. Amazing.

I play Civ IV a fair bit, got it in the last Steam sale. It's really good but I svck at it.

I get addicted to civ 4 from time to time. The game is great but it kind of annoys me that there is no substitute for force when trying to conquer another nation. I've tried the culture route where you assimilate other cultures just by being culturally superior, but to get anywhere with that, you have to pour alot of money into it which leaves your military protection lacking (if you sacrifice your military instead of the more important technology), and open to invasion. Maybe im just playing it wrong.

Anybody got Civ 4 Warlords?

That's because the other victory conditions don't involve conquering nations, but building up your own nation.

The cultural thing is very hard to do, but I try my best to keep the peace with everybody from day one so it's something I have quite a lot of experience with. It's very long winded though and I can't say it's generally worth it, wars are harder, but they're a damn sight quicker.

And I have both Warlords and BTS. I do like the additions both games made. I have Colonisation as well, but I can't get into it the same.

I missed the aerial view of the city from Civ 3 in number 4

That was one of my favorite things, along with the palace creator.

Wanna play online sometime?

I started playing this series with Civilization II and I loved it. I loved Civilization III, as well. I bought into Revolution and was sorely disappointed and, thinking IV would be better, I also bought it. It certainly preferable to Revolution, but I don't like, for some reason. I can't quite put my finger on it, but maybe it's because it seems there is less map space and are less total cities I can build or take (My favorite thing used to be watching my empire grow and staring in awe at the cities and map space I owned, but it seems there are less cities and land in IV to own, to me. ). I also dislike not being able to view my city and overall, I think the series I loved kind of died after III. I never bothered with V. Does anyone else feel the same way? I don't know. It just doesn't feel quite right.

I have Civ 4 on discs, but ugh I just hate installing discs these days. Why Steam, why won't you let me register it!!

I started with IV and while it's fun, especially cooperatively with at least one friend, that extremely restrictive diplomacy system (Really? I can be nice or be a jerk, and then I get a bunch of static trading options?) and the mandatory religion (With I believe like..six religions or so?) completely turned me off. It would have helped if the civs all felt completely unique, but in the end, Egypt barely felt any different from America. The only ones that truly differed were the ones that focused more on diplomacy and the ones that just conquered everything. Yay, two ways to play a strategy game. Two.

From what I've read about V, it has improved combat, but half asses everything else from IV, and I just explained why I felt IV wasn't all that impressive of an experience for me.

Civ V fixes most of those problems. It's not as bad as people say it is, I like it a lot better than IV.

Yes that was awesome, my people love me, I get to build my house.

You knwo what rocked harder than any Civ game, Alpha Centauri. That game was sicktastic.

I have both Civ 5, Civ 4 (BTS, Warlords), Civ 3, and the other 2 are somewhere but I don't knwo where, adn Alpha Centauri.

They are all quality games.

I have problems with Civ Colonization, it keeps crashing when I start the game. Anybody knows what happens?

IIRC I had the same problem and in my case it was a network card who was the culprit. Are you using a network PCI-card?

Love the series. I got hooked on the original Civilization as a kid, probably my favorite game in those days along with Masters of Orion.

Civ4 and Civ5 are both great games.

The transition to 1 unit per tile has not been easy for the A.I. to handle, so unfortunately the devs resorted to massively nerfing the player and boosting enemy nations. Still a great game, and I have had my ass handed to me when playing against humans in ladder games on Steam.

I find Civ5 to be a superior game to Civ4, but Civ4 Complete is "better" since it has no DRM and comes with Colonization.

I like the switch to the hex grid and the one unit per tile rule (except on small maps). I also like the way non-luxury resources are handled (each node provides a different amount of the resource which is "consumed" when you build things that need them).

Civ5 is on sale now for $12.50 via Steam.

Really amazing deal if you don't have this game yet.

I bought Civ V, and to be honest - I'm regretting it. Civ IV just feels like the better game.

bah,newbies. call to power is the thing, eventually freeciv in *nix

I can understand where you're coming from. It seems the devs had a tough time programming the A.I. to handle one-unit-per-tile effectively, and to compensate players were nerfed and the A.I. was massively buffed. I haven't played for a few months, but I understand there have been some recent patches that improve the A.I. and address some of the other issues.

Never played Civ4 multiplayer, but I had a chance to play some Civ5 one-on-one games with friends and family members and it was a lot of fun. I really like the concept of one-unit-per-tile; however, maybe it was a bit too ambitious.

I grew up playing the original Sid Meier's Civilization and Masters of Orion, and years later I discovered Civ4 and played the heck out of that game. I've probably played Civ5 for a few hundred hours since launch, and so far I haven't gone back to Civ4 yet.

EDIT: here is a great article describing a mod called "Civilization NIGHTS" - which attempts to fix the AI problems with Civ5. Has anyone else tried this one?

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/09/mods-and-ends-civilization-v-nights/#more-73124

Some highlights:

• It would be bold and incorrect to say that Civilisation NiGHTS eliminates all the problems with the AI but it does a damn good job. While there are still issues, over an entire game I find opponents to be more unpredictable, more difficult to box in and more believable.
  
• There are seven branches now and over a 100 policies to choose from. Although you have to start from the bottom of each branch, they’re all open and picking one will never lock off another.
  
• Each tree unlocks 2-3 Governments at various points, and as you get further down each tree, they unlock special synergy abilities that boost a variety of buildings from the Renaissance Era onwards. This is to ensure that as you progress through the game, buildings in later eras feel powerful compared to their early era counterparts.
  
• In the mod, citizens actually generate happiness. Expansion and militarisation take it away again.

Download link and installation instructions: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=399510