Comparison to Civ IV

I like the animated heads, and lenord nemoy rocks...

but I stopped playing civ 4 the monent I got gal civ 2....

I played civ4 for 6 hours and got bored like hell... I wasted my money on that game.

I think galciv2 is superior, except for the political-culture system. But that's all.

Played Civ4 3 times then got fed-up, it's basically a same-o-same-o game and has a bent type of reality that even the best imagination cant paint over. Archers kill tanks, grenadiers kill gunship’s and so-on. And just as the game starts to show any promise 'what's this' you have 99 turns left.
The addiction quality of Civ 4 is very much diluted because one game plays very much like another and I found myself falling asleep while playing. Where as a new game of Gal Civ 2 gives you the feeling of a brand new scenario, also Gal Civ 2 injects personal aspects such as ships and planets become your personal property , a definite game winner.

Played Civ4 3 times then got fed-up, it's basically a same-o-same-o game and has a bent type of reality that even the best imagination cant paint over. Archers kill tanks, grenadiers kill gunship’s and so-on. And just as the game starts to show any promise 'what's this' you have 99 turns left. The addiction quality of Civ 4 is very much diluted because one game plays very much like another and I found myself falling asleep while playing. Where as a new game of Gal Civ 2 gives you the feeling of a brand new scenario, also Gal Civ 2 injects personal aspects such as ships and planets become your personal property , a definite game winner.

I couldnt have said it better

I found Civ 4 to be a step back from Civ3 myself. I also found it to be bloated. Could someone please explain to me why A TURN BASED GAME requires such high minimum requirements? Yeah, it looks pretty - but I don't need a turn based game to look pretty . It also seemed to lack the ability to turn off some of the bloated make me pretty content.

As for Game Play, well I got bored of Civ IV pretty quick. Maybe when my new computer comes next week I'll try it again. As for Gal CivII it also looks pretty -and includes the ability to turn off some of the features I don't need or are killing my poor decrepid old computer . Also the military combat I find to be a better model. So I give Gal Civ II the win at the moment.

I have played both as well. Both are great games.

For some subjective reasons I tend to prefer civ4. The first reason is purely subjective: I prefer historical settings rather than scifi. I somehow feel that the "play through the ages" of civ4 is the core of the gameplay, and that is lacking in galciv2. The other main reason I prefer civ4 is also subjective, or rather, of personal nature: I can (and do) play civ4 with my friends.

On the other hand galciv2 has an excellent and ever-increasing AI. Also the transparency of the company and the patch policy is of course superior.

I guess if this question is asked in civfanatics you will get a very different set of answers. It would be interesting to compare.

I LOVED Civ4.

That is, until I realize that, no matter what difficulty level you set the game at, the AI will not and cannot do anything differently. Going over one xml file after another, you discover just how many handouts and freebies the AI must be given just to be able to not be completely wiped out by an experienced player. So basically you play the game on monarch(or medium difficulty), or the computer cheats like an over-caffeinated CS junkie.

I think for a game as refined and polished and complete as civ4, this is almost unforgiveable. In a day and age when "cheating AI" is such a no-no I can't believe firaxis got away with it. And really playing GC2 really made this fact even more of a game-killer than it was at first. It just cannot be reasoned why a game that took so many years to develop, with such a history and financial backing could not acheive even half the results with their AI that an indie game like GC2 achieved is beyond me.

Anyways I am sure I will love Civ4 just as much when some uber-mod comes out to rectify this and several other glaring faults. Whennever that may be. Until then, GC 2 leaves nothing for modders to pick up the slack on and that is why I LOVE THIS GAME

As a major fan of the first 3 Civ games Im dissapointed in the fourth. Its mostly the pacing, which seems hurried in the early stages, also I don't much like the great person and golden age business. It just seems like its got too many knobs on...

I really do like the terain and having to work it to reap the benefits.

Air sea and land units all battling together is pretty cool too.

I prefer GalCiv2, but there is something I think is more fun in Civ4: You get to choose where to build your cities, and it actually matters a lot where you choose to build them. The different terrains that offer different bonuses, and may be impassible for certain types of units are a good thing as well, IMHO. I understand that these things wouldn't make any kind of sense in space, but they do add more fun and strategy to the game for me.

I like the tech rating system in civ4, when you're trading techs..
This way it's very easy to select your techs, matching the opposing tech offer.

In GalCiv2, you just get an alfabetic tech list;
so you need to know the tech tree very well, or play around a lot with different offers to make a good deal.

This would make a big improvement in gameplay for the next patch imho..

I wasted a long period of my life on Civ4, and am now wasting as much of it as I can on GalGiv2 between exams.

I like both and don't know if I would want to start saying one is better, but one thing Civ4 wins out on is richness - like Darkfyre says the world is not just pretty but the terrain and all adds much to the game. This would not be impossible to add in GalCiv2 - there is already a watered down version in those little gem-like startbase resource points. The technology tree is also imho much better - it actually feels like you are discovering real things as opposed to laser II - laser III etc.

Civ4 still has better AI, and Firaxis team seems more experienced in killing exploits, especially diplomacy ones.
Also Civ4 had almost no gameplay bugs even from release (I won't comment compatibility or graphics bugs, that's for other topic).

On the other hand GalCiv2 is a fresh thing, and that's what was really needed in 4X types of games.
I enjoyed them both a lot.

Each game certainly has its pros and cons. Right now I lean toward GalCiv2, but I still consider Civ4 a high quality game. Below are the categories/reasons in which I think each is superior.

Civ4: Civilopedia, economy/production model, resource trading, animation, sound track, exploration period more fun, research tree more realistic (due to the interlacing of techs & bonuses), government pros & cons

GalCiv2: AI !!!! (Civ is such a cheater), personalization of units/races, units don't become obsolete as quickly, no diplomatic victory (I'm talking about the UN election victory here; cheapest way to win/lose EVER!), even when the chips are down and you're about to be raped by the Iconians (or whoever) you have a decent chance of turning it around and throttling them.

Don't get me wrong, some of these items are due simply to the setting and what works best for that setting, but each could be improved by borrowing from the other.

The only Civ game that comes close to Gal Civ 2 is an older Sid Meier title called Alpha Centauri. Like in Gal Civ 2, in Alpha Centauri, you can design your own ships and vehicles. The tech trees are similar. You do not have the ability to customize your race, so if you want to play as a Business Tycoon, you have to pick the Business Tycoon. There are many interesing moments in the game - random events, etc. To be truthful, it may be the last interesting Civ game Sid Meier put out. Gal Civ 2 is more like that game, than the bloated Civ III and Civ IV. For some reason, in the Civ III and Civ IV games, it is hard for me to get engrossed, like I did with Alpha Centauri and like I do currently with Gal Civ 2.

compaire it to SMAC, thx. The game is literally smac in space. I would post a compairison like you did but every category would be the same besides the fact that SMAC takes place on an alien planet where this is in space.

After reading this, booted up my Civ4 old save and give it a another go, and it was boring, so boring I uninstalled it. More room for Gal Civ 2 saved games now.

True, that was also my first thought when I read the initial post: he should have made the comparison with SMAC instead.

I liked smac and ToT but Civ3 was such dissapoinment that buying Civ4 wasn't even a question.

GalCiv2 is superior. Only annoying thing is starbase placing and redundant diplomacy. While it was too easy to sway AI's mind to war in Civ3, it is almost impossible in GalCiv2. No way to trade planets, starbases, resources. Fine balance would be nice.

Yeah, and influence was better implemented in GalCiv1.

Played Civ4 3 times then got fed-up, it's basically a same-o-same-o game

Sums it up quite nicely I think - although I think I got half way through game 4 before falling asleep at the keyboard at just after midnight. Never got the "just one more turn" feeling with it, wheras I'm regularly up to 4am with GC2 - much as I was with GC1, SMACX, Stars!, & Civ2.

When you take into consideration the development budgets each game had, there can be absolutely no question as to which is the greater achievement.

theres a galciv 4????????????????

Hi,

System Requirements: GC2 wins big. I bought my laptop in 2003 and cannot play C4 on it. There's no reason for this, other than bloat.

Graphics: C4 wins big. When playing GC2, I have to zoom out so that I don't get the wonderful graphics, because I find it hard to tell anything apart. The crummy icons are much easier to disambiguate at a glace than the glitzy graphics. I find it hard to tell ships apart, even one race from the next. Planets too. C4's graphics are pretty, yet I immediately know what everything is.

UI: C4 wins big. GC2 has a wretched UI. C4 is hardly marvelous, but in this contest it doesn't need to be.

Support: Tie. Both companies release patches that actually improve the game. Stardock calls these things "bonus packs," as though fixing bugs is above and beyond the call of duty. Orwellian marketing hype aside, the developers of both games fix bugs and tweak the game based upon user feedback.

Genre: N/A. Both are turn-based "4x games," but different. If you like spaceships, C4 won't do much for you. If you don't....

Compared to best in genre: C4 wins. I consider MOO2 to be the best interstellar game, and GC2 simply isn't as good. GC2 has more micromanagement, less effective graphics, less atmophere, less strategic variability - -every race plays differently (though GC2 does have some interesting stuff going on), and I'm not even sure the AI is better, in terms of the challenge it poses. I find C4 to be better than C3, and perhaps better even than C2.

Micromanagement: C4 wins slightly. Ironically, this is because of the centralized economy screen in GC2, which demands tweaking every turn, based on the production of an increasing number of planets. It does not help at all that each planet can have a focus. It helps even less that the economy sliders don't always slide, and don't always slide in the expected direction. Populations caps and morale also need watching. C4 isn't great in this regard; population growth is not always allocated as expected. Still, the production queues and especially the use of production overflow goes a long way toward reducing the necessary umanagement and its attendant frustration.

Unit design: GC2 wins big. You simply cannot design units in C4, and their use in combination is relatively simple. However, the GC2 AI isn't very good at unit design or combining them effectively.

AI: C4 wins. I find the C4 AI to be quite challenging on its default level. It has flaws, and cannot learn to correct them, but does not tend to make Big Blunders. I play the GC2 AI on Tough, and from my very first game outdid it in everything every time. The AIs cannot even seem to manage their economy, which always tanks early into the game. The equivalent level in C4, where the AI is on equal terms with the human player, really is a challenge.

Tech Tree: C4 wins. The GC2 tech tree is staid and uninspiring. The C4 tech tree offers more choices that have strategic impact.

Diplomacy: C4 wins. The AIs in GC2 do some very strange things. The C4 AIs are less strange, and much smarter.

Empire Development: C4 wins. The terrain in C4 is far more varied than in GC2. The things one can do with terrain is also more varied, as are the strategic choices. Both games have essentially the same basic resources: Food, industry and commerce/economy, but use them in different ways. There are more ways to get these resources in C4 than GC2. Expansion is a no-brainer in GC2, even in 1.1; C4 expansion requires more thought: It is easy to lose the game by overextending.

Trade: GC2 wins. Sending out freighters is an important strategic element in GC2. C4 trade just happens. Civic choices affect this, but less thinking is required.

Victory options: C4 wins. Culture victories in C4 are hard, while influence victories in GC2 are too easy. Conquest is, well, conquest. When a human player is ready to steamroll, no AI can really stop it. Getting there in C4 is harder, however.

Racial options: C4 wins. GC2 races have more variability, but C4 races have more interesting variables! The civ unique unit and two leader traits can utterly change the way the entire game is played, from civ to civ.

Governments/Civics: C4 wins big. C4 has five civics, and five choices in each. No single combination is best; the choice depends on strategy.

Music: C4. Great music for most epochs! Not original, but who cares?

Replayability: I don't know. I stopped playing C4 after playing a game as Rome and finding that my Praetorians were just *too* awesome. But after playing GC2 for a while, and comparing the strategy discussions on the two sets of boards, I'm beginning to think that C4 is a much deeper game. I intend to install the latest patch and find out. Alas, unlike GC2, C4 will not run on my laptop.

Anyway,

Ken

Civ 4 is a very good game, but for me these two quotes sum it up:

Played Civ4 3 times then got fed-up, it's basically a same-o-same-o game

I also found it to be bloated. Could someone please explain to me why A TURN BASED GAME requires such high minimum requirements? Yeah, it looks pretty - but I don't need a turn based game to look pretty . It also seemed to lack the ability to turn off some of the bloated make me pretty content.

Civ 4 simply hasn't the "one more turn" feeling for me. But I can understand if it's the same for other people regarding GalCiv 2, since the two games have a different feel and setting.

Hi,

Strange that I haven't quite found the same in civ4, regarding repetitive game play. Do you go for early rapid expansion, or do you forgo that for an early tech grab via Oracle? Early warmonger versus builder? Cottage spam versus great people? Steal AI workers for early net advantage or maintain good relations? Each of these and other choices results in different games, I believe; different civs demand different strategies.

I have some problems with C4, most notably that the game is overly bloated and cannot run on my beloved laptop. Here, gc2 wins immensely , astounding, astonishingly big.

Anyway,

Ken

Long live to civilization 1 and 2

Did anyone tried colonization ? What a great game too...

Hey Ken Kofman, if you are a hardcore fan of civilization 4 it's maybe because you didnt played the first and the second one enough to understand civilization 4 has nothing exceptionnal. In fact, Civilization 4 miss so many things if you compare it to the 3 others ones...it's a regression.


CIV4 IS A GAME DESIGNED FOR KIDS. IT'S NOT ONLY ABOUT GRAPHICS, BUT IN THE WAY YOU MANAGE YOUR CIVILIZATION TOO.

When I played this game, I had the feeling of playing theme park on a console, not the feeling of a true civilization game.


Sorry no personnal offense, I just had to say it.

ManOWar2,

Or maybe I played quite a bit of both games, and others besides. Maybe if you had read what I wrote you'd have noticed that I said that I don't love c4. Typing in all capital letters went out of style with FORTRAN; I exclude trolls as an exceptional case. I expect sentences in all caps from them.

BTW, only exceptionable spellings of "exceptional" have more than one "n."

The same is true of "personal."

Personally, I find a lot of exceptional things in c4 not present in c2. Diplomacy is more interesting; civics are far more interesting; the AI is better; early game strategic choices are more profound; Great People are neat; different civs demand different styles of play; the correct build for a given tile isn't always obvious. I profoundly miss the advisors: you know, the Elvis impersonator and the guy who shouts "Build City Walls," even though doing so tended to be really dumb.

Anyway,

Ken