Rank the Civilization games?

Oh man, Civilization is one of my favorite series, I still have the box for the original...on 5 1/4" disks.

I also have Civ Win, Colonization, Civ 2, Civ 3, To T, CTP, SMAC, Civ IV, and yes, Civ V. I'll even count the Master of Magic game. Awesome all of them.

I won't bother ranking them, with the possible exception of CIV 5, the series has progressively improved, and 5 I still like. There are things I love about each of them, and things I hate. My favorite Civ Moment is still filling the entire hall of eliminated civs in one epic game of original Civ. George Washington was the last to die to the Viking (Greek) hordes! Bwa-ha-ha!

Shout out to the guys who made the Fall from Heaven mods for Civ IV. Awesome work there. And to the folks behind Free Civ. I can't say I like playing it, but I do appreciate the work.

I forgot to give a rank.

I rank them all: AWESOME.

edited 7th Apr '11 4:27:30 PM by blueharp

I played Colonization even before Civilization and it was (well, and is) nothing short of awesome. I craved a new game since years, but when it finally came, I found it... rather underwhelming. Maybe it's Nostalgia Filter, but I find the original better.

It also has better music. Or had, until Civ IV pulled out Baba Yetu.

Anyone else play the old "Fantasy" version of Civ II that came with some versions of the game?

Or, more to the point, anyone remember what it's called so I know what to look for?

I'm listening to Civ III music now. It's definitely the best part of the game... which admittedly isn't saying much, but still... the Modern Era music is just plain dynamite.

edited 8th Apr '11 1:01:46 AM by KnownUnknown

That was the Midgard scenario. An improved version was in Test of Time.

If you have Civ IV tho, try Fall from Heaven.

edited 8th Apr '11 9:00:44 AM by blueharp

NVM

edited 9th Apr '11 3:47:19 AM by KnownUnknown

Now to find a place to get Test Of Time for Mac OS X... between this and Sim City 2000 I've got a good search on my hands.

I'll try the IV one once I get back home to my PC.

edited 9th Apr '11 3:58:59 AM by KnownUnknown

I think you're going to have to run it through an emulator or whatever lets you run Windows programs.

Boot Camp.

^Huh?

This.

My own personal ranking:

1. IV. Just barely beats out II for the top slot, mainly because it's fairly easy to pick up and play and you don't have to do a lot of tedious micromanaging (at least not as much as in the past) and it adds some things I had been wanting many, many years ago. I also think that the SMAC-style Government options and the
2. II. This might just be the Nostalgia Filter at work, but II is what I consider to be "classic Civ." It's easy to play but difficult to master, and it smooths over a lot of the rough spots from I. It also had the best combat model until IV came out; you only rarely got "Spearmen Beats Tank" situations, and those usually in extraordinary circumstances.
3. I. The original. Also the first one I played. Absolutely had me hooked until I got II.
4. III. This game disappointed me. I tried so hard to get into it, but the Magic just wasn't there, for whatever reason. I loved the ideas of Culture and Unique Units, the new diplomacy model, and the different scenarios in the Conquests expansion, but I hated the new tech tree model, and the new system for handling unit XP and HP was a step backwards in my mind.

I refuse to play V on principle (and therefore to rank it) because it makes entirely too many changes I'm uncomfortable with. I don't think any less of the people who play and enjoy it; it just doesn't feel like the Civ I knew growing up.

You should try it, it really isn't that different. In some ways it is an improvement, in other ways it isn't, but it still retains the flavor.

Holy necro, Batman! I hope you got that out of your system!

If Civilization II is to believed the future doesnt seem so great for us

Wow. I disagree, to say the least. I'll write up my own list, although I'll admit that it is in part a response to what you listed.

1 - Civ 4: You may have said that it merely took Civ 3 and added useless stuff, but you underestimate a couple of things. Firstly, wonders are useful if you actually know what you're doing with them; they were key to my cultural victory. Secondly, religions. Yes, they don't act much like real religions, but as a game mechanic they can be a major factor in who's winning; what you described earlier sounded more like Corporations... which I considered as being useless modern-age 'religions'. There was no way I was going to pay money for such paltry gains.

2 - Civ 5: Okay, so I haven't played this much. But if there's one thing I can say for it, it is this: It made Civilization interesting. Also a bit more realistic, too. (The old Civ games having no city-states made no sense to me, for instance.)

3 - Civilization: Maybe it's nostalgia, but there just something so "classic" about the original.

4 - Colonization: The only reason this doesn't beat out the original Civ is because Colonization games tended to have worse pacing.

5 - Civ 2: What you seemed to have seen in Civ 4, I saw in Civ 2; this game seemed to have only added inconsequential things to what the previous game didn't have. It was an okay game, but I found little to no replayability in it. Test of Time helped, but only because of the mods it came with. That's not Civ being good, it's the mods being good.

5.5 - Master of Magic would fit in here somewhere. It was good, but all those bugs made it seem so... incomplete.

6 - Civ 3: This game was a sort of anomaly. Maybe it deserves a spot better than 6th, but I've found that pretty much whenever I try to think of this game, I end up thinking about Civ 2 or 4 instead. This game just seemed so... transitional. I also didn't particularly like the expansionist playstyle it encouraged more than any other game, wherein the more cities you had, the better. To pretty much no limit.

7 - Call to Power (and CtP2): Too derivatory from the actual Civ games. The second game deviated a bit more, sure, but still not a game I liked.

Oh, and I've never played Alpha Centauri, so that doesn't get a place on my list.

So any victory condition other than military is also out of place? Because of the eXterminate? Good to know that Civilization's been dropping the ball since at least Civ 2 (never played the first one).

Anyway, sounds to me like you're just too emotionally attached to the old formula to look at things objectively.

edited 9th Nov '12 6:38:03 AM by Clarste

One of the things I liked about Civ Revolutions is that it's relatively easy to get into. With time I would probably have preferred Civ IV but for the time I actually spent playing both games I actually had more fun with Revolutions. Just speaking up for a game that might be maligned in some circles. It's pretty good for Civilisations newbs.

Well that explains why we disagree so much. I prefer my expansion to be caused through conquest. I'll have half a dozen or so cities I built myself, but for me, taking cities from the enemies is similarly important. My preferred win condition is conquest, with domination coming next after that. Culture victories are hard (yet boring), and thus next, with space race coming after that... in some of the Civ games. In other Civ games, being the winner of the space race is just as easy as a diplomatic or score-based victory.

And maybe you can tell, but Civ 4 is the one I've played the most.

Having only played ciV, but having seen enough, IMO, of cIIIv and cIV, to come to a judgement, I'll say that I like Ci V the best. I probably couldn't give you a hard, definite answer on WHY, but it just feels better to me.

That said, I do think the combat system in V is the best one implemented. Yes, I know archers couldn't shoot across the English Channel, but, mechanically, I feel it works best, even moreso after Gn K.

Never said it was an objective way of looking at it. Simply a personal review. Also, one does not neccesarily need to play a game to get a feel for it. You will not get the nuances and fine details, but the way the game feels isn't that hard to deduce.

I'd hesitate to call ciV independent from the series. Yes, there are significant mechanics changes, but it's a bit of a far cry to call it independent. Take social policies versus civics and government types. Yes, they are mechanically different (and quite so), but both are ways to pick a set of bonuses that help you best. In that sense, they're hardly different at all.

edited 12th Nov '12 6:51:15 PM by MetaSkipper