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[Japo]

Originally Posted by MonsignorGabriel

What would you say is an ideal tax setting?

As Kmonster said, as low as you can in order to cover your expenses, since what you get in money you could have got in science, or luxuries. Of course you'll want to keep a fund for rushing production during emergencies, but there's no good reason for your treasury to grow indefinitely.

[Abandoned Witch]

Civilization is one of my favorite games as well. I still love its gameplay. A great classic indeed.

[tristanzz]

Originally Posted by kmonster

So... What would you say is an ideal tax setting?

The path of maximum aggression, useful on hard settings and among neighbors, is to max science solely to discover The Wheel, and max taxes for a long time afterwards to rush out as many settlers, militias, and chariots as possible. Use settlers to build new cities and improve tiles (particularly with roads, which finish quickly and give both commercial and strategic benefits), and the settlers' food maintenance will keep the home cities from outgrowing the difficulty setting. On emperor you only get 3 content citizens per city, and less if you control large numbers of cities. Militias, the cheapest units, can be useful standing in town; each one renders an unhappy citizen content. Chariots explore the map fast and can capture rival cities.

Chariots simply cannot be over-praised. The highest early attack strength is a catapult, but chariots come much earlier and move twice as fast. If you look at all the numbers on attack and defense, it becomes clear that Civ1 favors attacking. When fighting a "defensive war" it's far more effective to actively roam the field and mow down your attackers with chariots than to build walls and defend. Spam chariots to attack rivals and defend large stretches of territory.


Good techs to look for, after you've expanded comfortably under 100% tax, are mapmaking (ships), trade (vans), bronze (colossus), the Republic, and Democracy (governments with massive trade yields). I recommend against researching and switching to monarchy at any point.

[Nuggista]

Probably the SINGLE most important game ever

[TheChosen]

I was playing Civilization 2 today when I realized that I havent played any of the other Civilization games, or either of Call to Power or Alpha Centauri spin-offs. Only other game of the series I have played is Colonization and like Civ 2 I like that very much.

So the question is, if you have played Civ 2, is the original Civ worth playing? Or considering there's now Civ 5, If Id have to get the next game should I pick that rather than go through 3 and 4 plus many of the add-ons released? Or should I just play all of them and try out and experience mechanical changes and video game history?

As for add-ons, how different are those compared to original? Alpha Centauri's getting pretty high praises, but Call to Power seems to have mixed opinions (I've heard both really good and really bad).

[Eagle of Fire]

Well... I'm pretty sure I'm counter current here but I'm going to go with what I always said anyways: Civ II is the worst game of the whole lot that I've played.

Civ I is really great if you don't want to spend to much time playing this type of game. You can easily end up a game in a whole day. The graphics are of course way too old for "modern" gamers, so it can turn many off.

Civ II was way too slow for me. Close to the original but with very little more to show up when compared to Civ. The only real difference for me was the graphics and slightly improved engine which was only natural because of the limitations of computers back in the time Civ was made. The only real plus side I have for Civ II was the cinematics when you research a topic but that's really only some unrelated fluff.

Civ III actually added quite a few new and well thought concepts. You can now win with a more elegant culture and border setting (which was initiated in Civ II but greatly improved upon) and it is really a great and well polished game.

Civ IV is to Civ III what I consider Civ II is to the original: nothing much to show up except graphic overhaul.

Never bothered with Civ V, really.

[Japo]

Well of course you should try them all, if you have the time and feel like it. A quick game with Civ1 should make it clear how identical it is to Civ2, only a lot older. Since I haven't played Civ4 or Civ5 I can't recommend you where to start if you don't want to go in order, other than sticking to Civ2.

I think all Civ games specially cause very positive and very negative reactions with many different people. Case in point EOF and I don't agree in the least. Features in Civ games are very much a matter of taste. If it were possible to statistically extract some meaningful information from reviews, it would still be faster to try them yourself. (And the later installments have demos available.)

I like Civ2 better than Civ1. It's totally true that it's a re-make with nothing new substantial to the core game, and the downsides of the original are due to its age. But it's very annoying how random battles are, that's fixed in Civ2.

Civ3 introduced a lot of new ideas, but the problem is that I didn't like most of them or how they were implemented. The only one I like without reservation is bombarding, but it's too weak in that game. Culture-mandated frontiers are political nonsense. Insurgence is too strong, no matter how many military units you try to use; the only solution is to exterminate the populace; again "culture" has an undue importance. The trade system is terrible in my opinion: there are few kinds of resources and they are ridiculously scarce (even horses for example); and Civ's trademark AIs who are never interested in co-existing peacefully make you grab them all as your only alternative.

Alpha Centauri is the most innovative. It introduces a lot of new features that I love, but were never revisited in any other Civ game. For example units are designed (and can be customized by you) as a combination of means of transportation, weapon, etc., which are what must be researched. And the infamous Gengis Khan AI of civ games is totally fixed in Alpha Centauri, it's possible to have long-lasting alliances.

I'm very curious about Civ5's strategic combat system. But again I haven't played Civ4 or Civ5.

Also (starting remarkably early in the series with Civ2) you can get additional fun with scenarios and mods. You can find lots in civfanatics.com. I have only tried Civ2 scenarios: the original game lets you build scenarios and design maps, but the expansions (Fantastic Worlds and Multiplayer Gold) allow more things to be modified, for example units, city improvements and technologies. It's amazing what some people have done with this. In particular I played a couple of Scenarios by a history buff called John Ellis and they were amazing, not only because of the historical setting: he takes advantage of Civ2's mechanics to improve them, and combat makes much more sense and is finely tuned. For example Cavalry has high attack and low defense, but also low hit points, meaning that if it doesn't happen to win the first charge it gets vulnerable and will probably be killed immediately. Infantry has similar attack and defense like in the original game, but also high hit points, so they're tougher to kill regardless of luck. Siege engines have, besides low movement, insane attack and firepower, meaning that only the heaviest fortification has a chance of not being destroyed, but very low hit points, so if they don't succeed at first they just break down.

[Mighty Midget]

As far as Civ2 is a remake or not of Civ, well, not entirely. For one thing, Civ 2 introduced the city's ability to "produce" money instead of units/improvements, something I missed a lot in Civ. In the first installment, after a city had all the improvements, and I didn't want/need any more units, there were no options to build units anyway only to discard them upon completion.

Another thing is how the wonders work. I never really appreciated how the pyramids enabled all govt forms. A granary in each city, well it's a whole less far fetched.

Last: Let's not forget how an axe man now stand less of a change of wiping out entire panzer armies, something that happened more than once in the original Civ.

Ok, so it might be a remake but one with some good improvements over the first Civ.

[TotalAnarchy]

I have only played Civilization I and IV. I must agree with EoF that Civ is a great game for a quickie, but it doesn't have as much to offer in terms of detail, so it might get boring for a person familiar with the strategy games of today. Maybe I haven't given it that much time, but it's definitely on my "must-play again" list, so I'm not giving it a final judgment. I thought it was a good game generally.

As for Civilization IV, I've played it at the time of release, and before Civ I. It's my favourite out of the two (doh). I didn't play them in a hardcore way, so I'm not able to tell you specifically what's great in Civ IV and is missing in Civ I, or the other way around. I have invested around 20-30 hours into Civ IV (that's not much by the standards of strategy games) and I had fun, even when I was losing. It's interesting actually. Civilization IV was not a game about winning for me, it was more about seeing my civilization grow or fall.

[TheChosen]

Thanks for the input everyone. Clears it bit up and I now know bit more what to expect from the games. I think Im gonna get myself one of these someday.

And funnily enough, someone decided to put Civ 5 free-to-play for this weekend on Steam. Cant run the game though but still, very appropriate.