Civilization Admission

[andrewducker]

I own Civ 4.

I think I played it for about 15 minutes before feeling like it was going to take days of feeling stupid before I reached anythign approaching "fun", as it looked like a board game designed by someone who had a fetish for producing infinite numbers of rules.

Did I get the wrong impression?  Is there an easy way to slide into the game without feeling like a complete idiot?

I'm so much of a casual gamer nowadays (playing for a few hours a week, if I'm lucky) that I need something that I can get to grips with fairly easily.  I don't mind playing long games in small bits, but I do need something I can enjoy without doing a course in it.  If this is possible with Civ 4 then I'll give it another go...

Comments

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

I love Civ 4, I have phases of playing it obsessively. Hmm, I wonder where it is...

...anyway, the way to do it that means you can finish a game in hours rather than days is to poke the settings till you're using the smallest world, shortest game options and then try to win via diplomacy or space race rather than domination.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

(the trick, by the way, is to build LOTS of cities REALLY fast in the early game and be very nice to everyone while pouring as much money as possible into science.)

[andrewducker]

See, this would help if I actually understood the game, rather than feeling I was staring blankly at a load of options I didn't understand...

[robhu.livejournal.com]

It seems obvious to me, but I played every Civ game as I grew up, so I guess that's why it seems so obvious.

[yalovetz]

Is there an easy way to slide into the game without feeling like a complete idiot?

I had i_ate_my_crusts teach me how to play...

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I suspect not. It took me a fair amount of getting in to, and I had played the previous editions heavily, and don't usually take longer than average to suss out new games.

The way to do it would be a combination of getting someone who knows it well to get you going, and being able to be relaxed that large amounts of stuff was going on in the game without you tracking it or even fully knowing what it was.

If that's not something you like doing (I certainly don't), then with your time constraints Civ 4 is not for you. It's not for me any more either, since I have even tighter constraints on my time and don't find less than a couple of hours' play rewarding.

Get a Wii instead and play some sillier things, is my advice.

(Just to be clear, this isn't sour grapes - Civ 4 is possibly my all-time favourite game.)

[andrewducker]

We've had a fair amount of play on Boom Blox and the like - if Civ:Revolutions was on it I'd have that in a shot!

Cheers for the advice.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

I has suggestion.

When we have a free night of not going out, we both install it, and we take time to mess around with it and compare notes :)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, Rob's also been trying to convince me of this. We'll give it a go :->

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

this is me and just about all games !

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

I have similar issues. I was obsessive with Civ 2 (and an expert as well), Civ 3 wasn't too bad, but was a bit clunky, and Civ 4 is a definite improvement, but it seems all to easy to get hammered by the AI which I find pretty disheartening. If you get any further into it, please post!

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

Civ IV is amazing. I grew up with Civ, I would gladly come round and spend an evening explaining how to play it (I have oodles of patience too).

I'm actually quite rubbish at it and have never completed it beyond the 3rd level of difficulty!

[henriksdal.livejournal.com]

also CivFanatics has some great info, particularly the strategy articles

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Aha! I was playing at the 3rd level and finding it the sort of challenging that isn't really much fun any more. I've now started back at the easiest level and I'm going to see if that brings the fun back.