Civilization IV or Civilization IV COMPLETE???

[cuthulu666]

ok, I'm am completely new to this type of gameplay but all of the great reviews have me intrigued. I'm on a MacBook Pro and my question is this:

Should I pay the extra bucks for the Complete Edition of Civilization IV or will the original be sufficient for the time being?:confused:

[Aesir Rising]

It's up to you, but some things to consider:

Civ IV alone is a large game with a lot of replay value. (I still play Civ III on my laptop, and Civ IV has more stuff...). The expansions, esp. Beyond the Sword, add a lot more. But you won't run out of stuff to do with Civ IV alone.

Some user-created mods require the full Civ IV set including expansions. Some of those mods are like new or different games, e.g., Fall from Heaven II. If you like mods or modding yourself, you will want Complete.

Colonization, a stand-alone game with a different gameplay experience is part of Complete. This helps offset the $20 price difference.

Civ V is coming out in September. You will not have fully-exhausted Civ IV by then (vanilla or Complete). You may wish to play vanilla until Civ V, then put your entertainment $$$ into that game instead.

They just ended a sale on Complete - for $7.50. It has been on sale a couple of times these past months. I hope - for the sake of the new Steam Mac Client users - that it goes on sale again... soon. I'd hate to recommend the purchase of Complete, and have it go on sale again right away. Unfortunately, I can't predict the near-future.

[cuthulu666]

Great response. Thank you!

Unfortunately, I let my impulsivity get the best of me and I went ahead and purchased the COMPLETE pack, much to my chagrin. Now I cannot, for the life of me, get any of the games to play on my MacBook Pro.

I have seen a lot of threads on this particular problem and apparently some people have resolved it but I have yet to find any recourse. I'm assuming you are on a PC so you may not know anything about this, but oh well.

If you feel so inclined, can you indulge me on what to expect from gameplay if I ever get it to work? I would certainly not call myself an experienced gamer but I'm no novice either. When it comes to strategy games, I have played my share of them in the past; mostly of the old-school Sierra and LucasArts variety.

I don't think I'll be messing around with mods anytime soon as I think there is plenty in the games alone, to keep me busy.

I liked your idea of holding out for Civ V but it's a little late for that now. Kinda pissed I missed the 7.50 sale. Was that for Mac?

[Aesir Rising]

First, do the Tutorial. :)

Civ is a turn-based game. So, don't feel rushed. Different people get different things out of it. I like the open-ended "sand-box" aspect of the game and rarely complete a game and rarely 'win'. I just play it. I pick a Civ, an Earth-like map, and try to build and expand cities, connecting them up for trade, avoiding getting my butt kicked and survive long enough to research cool stuff. I like spending time picking the perfect location for new cities, building each city up with improvements and civics and trying to balance expenditures with income and try (and often fail...) to keep my citizens happy so they're more productive.

No two games play the same way... And you have options at game start to decide the major features of the game (like if you want to play some specific scenario, or an open-ended game on a Earth map, or create your own random map, etc.). Some people play the scenarios and try to win the game like a typical TBS game. Some set specific win conditions and see if they can win based on cultural influence or scientific research (my fav).

For more stuff about the game:
http://www.civfanatics.com/


P.S., The mac install issue was reported fixed by Valve early today, and you may need to restart the Steam client if you haven't tried that already. Also, if you see duplicate links for the four games comprising the Complete set, those doubles were part of the quick fix they did to resolve that install issue - but if one doesn't work, try the other. Steam Play is new, the Mac Client is new, and Civ IV with Steam Play support is new, and Valve is having problems getting it sorted out. Hopefully you'll get to play soon. Also, don't have buyer's remorse. I hesitated about mentioning the sale, but I thought it worth mentioning since it may go on sale again before Civ 5 launches. Either way, you payed half what I did for the game, if that makes you feel better. :)

[cuthulu666]

Thanks Eiser. I was finally able to fix the issue by shutting everything down and restarting. There's one thing that still irks me though. I have a multi-button mouse that I have customized to my liking. I have to reconfigure it before I start every new game or else "right clicking" will not function properly within the game play. Is there a way around this? I did not see any menu option in the game where you can assign keyboard functionality.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the tutorial. The game itself seems rather daunting to say the least but I'm looking forward to the challenge!

[Aesir Rising]

There is a check-box option under Advanced | Options | Game "right-click menu", which enables use of right-click to bring up the context menu. This is off by default. Without knowing your specific mouse setup, you may wish to toggle it and see if whether your setup works better with that option off or on.

The game is highly-configurable, to the point where some mods turn it into an entirely different game. The down-side is that most of the customization options aren't through a GUI - they're through direct editing of XML files and what-not. I've not customized my keybinds, but here's a paragraph on what to expect:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/#Customization
The Flexible XML (eXtensible Markup Language) Files: All values of the data for the aspects of the game such as units, terrain, texts, camera controls, graphics scales, mouse and keyboard mapping, links to Python, audio scripts, and so forth are stored here. Game speed (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/#Speed) will also be Moddable through the XML files. A perfect example of this is that a player can make some units get build really fast, while making other improvements get built at a slower rate. There are lots of tutorials on the Web for this, so you may want to check out this sections notes and get prepared for it if you are enthusiastic about modding the game (as so many people are). Every art asset has a scale value is in XML, and it can be modified the way you like (these include buildings, trees, units, improvements, resources, etc). You can also modify terrain-specific movement just by doing a change in the XML file(s). An example is "Mountain Infantry". Also, through XML, players can add new unit or building types, change the cost of wonders, or add new civilizations. Players can also change the sounds played at certain times or edit the play list for your soundtrack. NOTE: You can have custom soundtracks simply by adding music to the custom folder. You only need to edit the XML in order to assign certain pieces to specific eras or remove certain pieces.

My last bit of free advice is to try not to get lost in learning how to play, and just play.