Civ 4 - Excited? [UPDATED pt.2 - Game is out & now PATCHED! Share your thoughts.]

[Gulla]

They postponed the European release by a week. I'll have to wait not 3 days, but 10 days longer than the Americans. It's not fair, I tell you.

And the only pre-order company shipping to Norway estimates 8-12 days delivery. So I'll just have to wait for my locally preordered copy

(Yes, I'm excited, if you couldn't tell)

Håkon
who reinstalled Civ2 and got a mild case of one-more-turn-isites yesterday

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

How large are the maps going to be? I've always enjoyed the long games on big maps, although wars that take 500 years to resolve get me down...

How is espionage handled?

 

[Simplicity]

So many changes. So much for my insto-polluting cleanup crew, no longer able to travel via rail across the continent in 1 turn
I like the space race, I'll still have to give it a go my first play through, harder or not.
I DO like how they made those strategic resources more abundant. I HATED that about Civ 3, where I needed coal to make my railroads, and the greeks had it all. Then I gotta take 1 city and hold it, while trying to back out of the war

Indeed, so much for that crew. Especially since there's no pollution to clean up anymore.
(Except in the case of nuclear attack, I think).

 

[Simplicity]

How large are the maps going to be? I've always enjoyed the long games on big maps, although wars that take 500 years to resolve get me down...

How is espionage handled?

The largest map is slightly smaller than the largest in Civ3. The game is meant to be quicker to play this time around, but there is still an "Epic" mode for those of us (myself included) who like the looooong games.

Espionage is one thing the beta testers haven't talked about yet. But I do know that there are invisible spy units that you can move to your enemy cities. So it's handled less abstractly than it was in Civ3.

 

[DaveMage]

Thanks, Simplicity!

 

[John Crichton]

The first review is up. I watched the video review and read the print one and I'm really pumped for next week. The game looks awesome visually and 95% of the improvements are things that I've really wanted - even if I didn't know I wanted them.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/660/660495p1.html

It is IGN so expect a certain amount of gushing. The Gamespot review will probably be a high 8 or low 9. I haven't played it yet so that's just going on history. IGN gives out more 9+ in general than Gamespot (who I trust more).

Final Note: The customizable government sounds and looks great and will change my playing experience the most as it was the most troublesome and restricting thing in the past. Being able to essentially create my own should be really fun.

 

[Staffan]

Final Note: The customizable government sounds and looks great and will change my playing experience the most as it was the most troublesome and restricting thing in the past. Being able to essentially create my own should be really fun.

Not like it's a new idea, we've been able to do that in Alpha Centauri since, well, 1998 or so.

 

[John Crichton]

Not like it's a new idea, we've been able to do that in Alpha Centauri since, well, 1998 or so.

It's a totally new idea to Civ and a welcome one as the government structures have always annoyed me in an otherwise enjoyable gaming experience. I've never played AC, so this is a big deal to me. Having a feature available in other games, no matter how close they are to one another, doesn't really mean too much when all I really care about is the newest iteration of this one.

I've heard/read great things about AC (first off being that it's sci-fi and better version of Civ2) and I would be first in line to pick up a sequel but this is as close as we're going to get for now.

 

[KenM]

Latest Best Buy ad in today's (10/23) paper says Civ 4 will be here Wendesday. I'm going to pick it up. I never played the older ones. Sounds fun.

 

[KenM]

IGN has a review up: http://pc.ign.com/articles/660/660495p1.html