Uncrackable activation schemes ...

> What do you see as the major improvements of Civ4 over Civ3?

This would require a paper, I'm not joking )

As they come to mind:

- Religion, his importance, and how it spreads (there are several real-world
religions potrayed, even if only the name changes: Induism, Ebraism etc...).
Religion is a factor in diplomacy and wars. There are "holy cities" now
(like the Mecca or Jerusalem in the real world) and their control is quite
important.

- Units get experience and can be promoted. With each promotion comes one
"improvement" of your choice: better forest fightning, better city-raiding,
better defenders and so on. Very experienced units may have many
improvements. Combat is more realistic and the "tech difference" more marked
(a problem that always plagued Civ.

- One of the expansions (the second one, IIRC) introduced the "corporation"
concept: basically, a form of religion for modern times (in terms of
importance, world expansion etc.). Very ironic - but true too.

- You can choose the game lenght, and the pace of the tech development will
be adjusted accordingly. You can have from "blitz" games to "epic
marathons" - a colossal map with 16 Civs and an Epic Marathon speed is
basically the history of the world at 1:1 scale )

- You can now choose how your government operates in five areas: Government,
Labor, Economy, Legal and Religion. For example, under "Economy" you can
choose between Free Marker, State Property, Mercantilism etc. - if you have
researched the appropriate tech, of course. Thus, your government style is
actually made by your combination of choices in these five areas.

- One of my favourites: the United Nations actually do exist (when created),
and do pass resolutions. According to your power, you have a certain number
of votes. Now, let's say that you are the uber-honcho, and want to build
nuclear weapons: if the other players manage to agree between themselves,
they can outvote you on the UN Council and pass a "no nukes" resolution. Of
course, like in the real world, petty bickering can ruin the best
alliances...

- Your Civ can give birth to "great people" like Einstein, Leonardo or Elvis
Presley. They help your Civ in variuos areas, according to their field of
expertise.

- No more corruption: now everything is rolled up in the "city maintenance
cost" concept. The causes-effects are basically the same, but the gameplay
is cleaner.

- No more pollution: now every city has an "health factor" tied to various
issues/techs/buildings - and pollutiuon is rolled into it. Again, much
cleaner than in Civ 3 while keeping the substance of the concept.

- The world is round: "down under" has a real meaning in Civ IV )

- *Everything* is moddable, and I mean *everything*, included the graphics
and UI. There are Mods out there that turn the game into something of
completely different - like a version of Master of Orion (islands are
"planets", ships are "spaceships" etc). Some of the best ones were included
in the expansions.

And *much* more. My advice is, if you decide to buy it, is to buy the whole
pack, with the two expansions: they do add a lot more to the already rich
basic game.

I have a fun story regarding Civ IV: I was invited in London for a press
tour to see the preview. It was a low-key affair: a dude in a room with a
big screen and us journalists on some chairs. The dude spoke and show things
about the game for the whole morning, and we all were really amazed at the
richness of the game. Then there was a pause for lunch, and while eating we
commented between ourselves how Civ IV was promising to be a very cool game.
We then returned to the presentation expecting some Q&A, and instead the
dude began *a whole second round of feature-showing* spending the best part
of the afternoon showing us what he hadn't the time to show in the morning.
I went out of the room, phoned to my chief editor on the spot with my
cellphone and said "Try to get the cover" (we did).

My question during the presentation was about "how much the game was really
moddable". The answer was "there is a bet at Fireaxis about what will come
out first: if 'The Lord of the Rings' total conversion or the 'Star Wars'
one" I admit I never checked: vanilla plus the expansions is still today
more than I can chew.

Regarding the requirements, yes: XP/2000 is the minimum. The others,
however, are not high. I play it fine on a laptop with 512MB RAM, a 1,7GHz
processor and a GeForce 6200 mobile - at the highest detail setting.

>> GalCiv 2 is simple to learn, deep, very
>>clean in design and has one of the best AIs ever. I have Space Empires IV,
>>but I never played it beyond some turns, since I like the GalCiv series
>>much
>>more.
>
> I intend to buy GalCiv 2; had it on my Christmas list but nobody
> bought it for me. I doubt that it will completely replace Space
> Empires IV for me, however, as a lot of the fun in SEIV is playing
> multiplayer games with my oldest son on our LAN. GalCiv is still
> single-player only, isn't it?

Yes. It is a conscious choice by the designer, Brad Wardell: he feels that
MP, for some genres, happens rarely, so he likes more to devote his
resources to the design and the AI. It would seem that you and your son are
an exception )

>>Regarding SEIV, however, do you have suggestions regarding some good Mods?
>>They tell me that some of the third-party works improve the game
>>dramatically, but I see that there are a lot of them and I do not have the
>>time to browse/try them all.
>
> I use my own homebrew mod that combines stuff from several others,
> plus a lot of my own custom stuff. (I'd be happy to zip up the
> non-graphics portions of it and email it to you - just a bunch of text
> files wouldn't be very big zipped.)

Thank you! My mail is the one on my header (reckall (at) hotmail (dot) com )

> TDM: I need to try this one sometime, as it is supposed to tweak the
> AI files quite a bit to make them more competitive.

This one interests me: since I mostly play solo, a good AI is vital to me.
CalCiv2 AI, at standard level (i.e. no one is advantaged) pulled more stunts
on me than I can remember - including betraying me as an ally during a war
and winning the war anyway (thanks to what it got from me). I'm still
stunned from that one.

>I just play
> solo or with my kids now.

I have the feeling that you and your kids could really enjoy Civ IV. In my
gaming experience, it was one of the biggest jumps from its "precursor"
since when Wolfenstein 3D become Doom. )