So I just ordered Civ IV from Amazon, are there any patches/expansion packs/mods etc that people think would be worthwhile to get?
It's worth pointing out as well that unless you want the scenarios that are in Warlords there's no need to get it. All the game enhancements (buildings, civs, etc) from it are also present in Beyond the Sword.
I should really pay more attention to what I order, the version I got comes with the two expansions What about mods, I read it has a map maker so I'm sure some people have made some pretty interesting ones?
http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/ - the official forum http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=144 - the civ fanatics forum If you like the in-game music, the MP3s are located in the installation directories. There's several hours of good stuff it that's your thing.
God bless Civ IV. Many a hour was wasted conquering the world... Nation by nation, continent by continent...
I'm late to this thread, but: It's good that you decided to get Civ IV instead of Civ V. You'll have a lot more fun with that. They managed to break one of my favourite game series with number 5. Although my favourite of the series is III, followed by II (and yes, I spent my fair share of time on Civ I too). My main problem with 5 is that they changed the tried and tested formula too much. The changes to the combat system were the most pronounced. For some reason they thought it wise to only allow one combat unit in each tile. I really enjoyed stacking 20 units in one tile while advancing towards my target! In it's own way, IV broke from the established formula too; a totally different strategy was required to succeed compared to the previous games. In the end, what I am trying to say is that parts I-III felt like an evolution of the same game, part IV was a somewhat successful re-invention, while part V sucked donkey b*lls.
I consider the 1 unit per tile restriction as being one of the best design choices ever made in a Civilization game and vastly superior to the dull, dull, dull stack warfare that began in Civ3 and got worse in Civ 4. Wars in Civ 4 required almost no strategy and were almost entirely dependant on logistics, while Civ5 strove to find a balance between the two. The combat system in Civ5 isn't perfect, and the AI still needs some improvements, but Civ5 has still provided me with far more satisfactory combat experiences than any of the other Civ games. The big problem with Civ5 is that some of the grand strategy elements present in Civ4 are gone and the game is more focused on warfare than the previous games. Diplomacy isn't intuitive, the diplomatic victory sucks, happiness is global rather than city-based, religion is gone, social policies are permanent, and so on. But I'm willing to put up with all of those short-comings in Civ5 because of how much better I find the combat to be.
I was talking to my friend about it and he said he loved V. So I might borrow that off him some way down the line. Civ IV finally came a few days ago, and yeah it's pretty addictive! I've only played 1 and a half games so far and on the easiest difficulty setting to get used to what happens through the years etc, although I will be raising the difficulty on my next game. First game I won by space race, and I was just building pretty much everything to see what buildings did what. This one I'm exploring the war a little bit more and trying to have cities for specific purposes. Next game I'll try I'll be purely militaristic. Then hopefully I'll be able to work through the difficulty levels and have larger maps and longer games.
Glad you enjoy the game. I can't really give many recommendations at this point. Check out the CFC forum for mods, maps, etc. Make sure patches are up to date. At a minimum, you don't need the CD to run the game in that case.