4X Games

Licho
Even total war games have poor AI .. even MOO2 had poor AI (I actually think that MOO1 was more fun)

KaiserJ

HectorMeyer
6: Honorable mention: Alpha Centauri. Imo the best game because it has actually different fractions and a great "social engineering" system, allowing for lots of different strategies. Also, the ideologies behind the factions are really fun. Had quite a few nice multiplayer games with it.
Downsides: Incompetent AI, Supply Crawler and Punishment Spheres, tech trading break gameplay.

Licho
Best one is Alpha Centauri.

Teutooni
It had so many awesome features civilization games lacked - floating cities, pollution, planet bursters (they make civ ICBM's look lame)... The best part was the brilliant unit system, with different chassis types and all kinds of combat modifiers. Loved the video/audio clips you get when finishing a wonder or a building for the first time or researching a tech. The indigenous life thing was cool too, my favourite was going all in on xenotech and conquering the world with locusts. :D

SpliFF
Alpha Centauri had the best wonder movies of any Civ game (though the rest of the graphics are dated now).

My favourite game of AC ever was when I was playing as the science faction and I undertook a huge terraforming project to transform my island into a massive energy sink. I had beaten every AI player into submission and had an awesome supply of planet busters, I couldn't lose.

Then, out of nowhere the planet went FUCKING APESHIT and threw wave after wave of mindworms at my cities. Some of the mindworm packs had 40 or more units of the most powerful type. My entire civilisation was completely obliterated in about 10 turns.

I wasn't upset, just extremely impressed that the game designers (Fireaxis) had taken into account what might happen when you fuck with a sentient being that's the size of a planet.

Neddie
Civ II is still my fav, but I haven't played IV or V. AC and Civ II both leave a bitter taste in my mouth, as Brian Reynolds is now at Zynga shoveling their titles.

the best of the civ clones. best ai(seti), aesthetics, easy to install, more of a strategy game than most civs. Has the best queue and, 2nd best after Power, settler automation. Has build your own AI, and ai tourney modes for fun.

Gota
I really liked the 4th one.
It did have its problems especially with multiplayer but it was very fun and i spent many hours playing it...

HectorMeyer
4: I think this is the best Civ game. Really good, balanced gameplay. Very complex. Complicated, intricate techtree. Warfare pretty well designed too. Very difficult to figure out how to properly build up economy and wage war. Excellent AI, love how it launched, big, well prepared attacks on you all of a sudden, just like a human player would. Would have been the perfect game if it wasn't for:

- Bad comic artstyle killing atmosphere
- Pointless, slow 3d graphics, looking buttugly in the late game. Isometric ftw.
- One of the worst soundtracks i've ever witnessed in any video game. Baba Yetu my ass, and all the other uninspired boring contemporary pieces. Look at Paradox or Total War games for soundtrack done right.
- Lame diplomacy, no real infamy system. Lack of options.
- Lame "civics" system. (should have used the one from Alpha Centauri)
- No real politics, diplomacy and trade. Game consists too much of moving stacks around.
- I think it's unrealistic and boring that, especially in the late game, everything is still based on the resources near the city grids. Wealth should be based more on trade and politics as the game progresses. Embargos should cripple you in the late game, deficits/surplus should play larger role, see USA vs China. Large wars should be made almost impossible because of ecnonomic havoc.
- high difficulty levels frustrating. Actually I am just too stupid, there are a lot of people who can beat deity on a regular basis
- Not really suitable for multiplayer, it simply takes too long. I also hate how there are no replays and no spectating. But you can connect with a pirated copy to the official servers.
- Tech trading is stupid and kills gameplay (but can be disabled)

SinbadEV
Civ 4 had a mode where everybody got to take their turns at once and it mattered who clicked attack first... which was close... and then there are a myriad of online games like ikariam, civony/evony, ceasary that do this pretty well but focus more on city management and raiding then expansion...

momfreeek
Civ4 micromanagement is painful

Licho
SE4 was imo better than SE5, but still not very good, AI failure..
AI failure breaks most games :(
Even total war games have poor AI .. even MOO2 had poor AI (I actually think that MOO1 was more fun)

SwiftSpear
If you like Gal Civ 2, you'd probably like Space Empires 5. It's a spectacular 4X. It's especially impressive with the Capitan Kwok's mod.

Regret
He could probably play both at the same time since in SE5 it takes ages to load after you press next turn.

SinbadEV
Galactic Civilizations II was awesome except for it stops being fun after about a month.

HectorMeyer
5: Didn't play and don't intend to. Seems to be simplified a lot and the hexagons look super ugly. Even more focus on unit micro isn't what civ needs. I rather play Europa Universalis or Total War

Gota
I tried the 5th one and was very disappointed...
It looks very nice but it seemed to have less of everything and while thats not nessesarily a bad thing it also introduced the city states and made osme other very bizzare changes that made the less fun...

Licho
Civ5 is ok but AI and multiplayer sux (too laggy)

RogerN
I'm enjoying a lot of civ 5 right now, though I still haven't tried multiplayer. There was a patch semi-recently which had a huge effect on balance. I think that helped a lot as there are now many more viable strategies.

My biggest beef with Civ 5 right now is how empire-wide happines affects conquest. Your citizens were perfectly happy during 100 years of war, but then you actually *won* the war and captured the other guy's cities. And now your own citizens are all upset for some reason. My experience from previous civ games was that only the occupied/conquered cities would get upset, which made sense. But now conquering cities can get you huge empire-wide production penalties, which really sucks.

Anyway, that issue slows down my favorite "conquer the entire world" strategy by quite a bit. I have to raze cities frequently because I can't afford the happiness penalty of owning them.

SirArtturi
Probably Civ 3 is my absolute favourite. Civ 5 could have potential. Yes, both of those fail a bit with the balance and some strategies are too op, but still they have the most essential civilization feeling(though civ1 is the most essential ofc) which is more important for me.

SpliFF
My biggest gripes with Civ 5 is:

* Steam. I dislike Steam in general.
* You can't stack units. This is extremely annoying especially for garrisons.
* Unit experience. I honestly can't be arsed assigning those XP bonuses to every unit and keeping track of who has what.

I suspect there will be mods to change both aspects of gameplay so I'm going to wait 6 - 12 months and see what comes out of the modding community. I've got Shogun 2 to keep me occupied until then.

Caydr
Civ 5 is pretty nice in concept but even now it's still buggier than a Baltimore whore's ass. In another 6 months it'll probably be release-worthy. If you're familiar with the Civ development doctrine, you should be used to this.

HectorMeyer
3: Never played it, made a bad first impression to me somehow.

dcore221 - civ3 is my fav

SirArtturi
Probably Civ 3 is my absolute favourite. Civ 5 could have potential. Yes, both of those fail a bit with the balance and some strategies are too op, but still they have the most essential civilization feeling(though civ1 is the most essential ofc) which is more important for me.

SpliFF
Civ 3 + Conquests.

Neddie
Civ II is still my fav, but I haven't played IV or V. AC and Civ II both leave a bitter taste in my mouth, as Brian Reynolds is now at Zynga shoveling their titles.

HectorMeyer
2: Expanded on the first very well. Added a much needed proper battle system. I played it a lot. Recommended.

Gota
I also loved civ 2 which is just a classic ...

HectorMeyer
1: A classic. Surprisingly good for its age and all in all very polished, fun, interesting and playable.

Jools
I've played all of the civ games from 1 to 5, and I must say that 1 is still by far the best one. Reasons:
— More realistic diplomatic dialogue (events are reported with a proper source, like "travellers report that...")
— Best movement and battle function. All civs except 5 allow stacking, but in civ 1 you can kill the whole stack if it's not in a fortress. Civ 5 makes movement complicated because roads are costly and units can't stay on same tile.
— Civ 1 had nice pictures and animations when discovering techs or capturing cities. It also had nice random events.
— Of course it lacks a bit in graphic (hey it's 15 years old), but that's not the important part: your mind fills in the rest, like reading a book. Civ 1 is a bit too easy though, and the AI is quit bad.

SinbadEV wrote:
Pxtl wrote:
Civilization Revolution.

The console version? Yeah... I liked the demo... it was nice to play a Civ game that didn't take over an hour to play a match.


Yup. I played it on the DS, which from what I've heard is a pretty close representation of the big console gameplay. It nicely stripped down Civ to the core essentials and streamlined the speed, but still kept all my favourite parts.

The only frustrating part is that it's *really* porcy, and that the AI is, as usual, ludicrous - erratic, stupid, and able to build massive stacks of units that it fields miserably.

@Spliff - unit experience was the big drawback in Civ Rev as well. If you failed an assault on a city, that city was then invincible because its pikemen were now superhuman.... and yet if you had a stack of superhuman tanks, you'd often find they die spontaneously easily.

XP in Civ is a complete misfeature. The game is complicated enough already.


Just the fact that your unit survived and your opponent's have not seems like it would be a fair reward?... I tentatively agree.

Gota
It's just too simplistic.

momfreeek
"Call to power 2" had some nice things in it like limited size unit stacks (12), multi-unit battles (the whole stack fights as one army), no-workers (you assigned production to public works to spend on improvements) and sliders to assign city population to the best food/production/money spots. The game was simpler to play without losing the depth. Civ4 micromanagement is painful and Civ5 just simplified the base game (never played civ3 tho).

Gota
I think call to power 2 was a good game and especially with the community modding it its a very solid game..
Even at release it had several major improvements over civ and some very interesting ideas and units.

Ran8 : Now Open source. PW over workers saves micro tedium. Addition of stacked combat and all the invisible resource thieves is misused. Ez to mod cause of its own script language and txt files.

pintle
Freeciv

SinbadEV
Lookit I Found : www.freeciv.net/
Browser based port of freeciv apparently.

thers also another civ clone called e-civ.net but i wont bother with it and Clash of Civilization is dead

oops on this is a 4d game not 4x