Friday 12 January, 2007

After playing the game for a number of hours (beacause i enjoyed playing and was slightly addicted) i discovered a number of new strategies, underlying complexities, and additional features i was previously unaware of in my initial playthrough.

as a game of emergence, gameplay focuses, for me at least, at the beggining, on discovering new strategies, and devising new ways to achieve the nummerous victory conditions. one thing that i might consider doing, though it would take a lot of time, would be to achieve victory using each victory condition, and see which one i have the most fun playing.

so in my initial victory, i would rate the fun-ness of gameplay as a 8 out of 10. the tactic i used (to achieve the victory condition of building a spaceship capable of reaching Alpha Centauri) was to maximize population growth in early game, collect many resources, ally with all factions, then focus on researching new technologies to out gun possible enemies and building the spaceship.

Try playing it online with friends. there is few games as fun as playing civ4 w/friends or against them, while having AI existant against you all. I myself play this game with my two best friends from my home town and since it allows direct ip conection i can host in SC and we have almost no lag time in the direct IP game. Try playing online with friends and AI because having a human aspect adds a lot to the game especially when you and your friends all compete for the same wonders and other such things. Also winning a Cultural victory is nearly imposible so if you are trying to get all different victories you may wish to skip that one.(you would need three cities with nearly all the world religions and wonders there).