Episode: 4190
Title: HPR4190: Civilization IV
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4190/hpr4190.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:02:42

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This is Hacker Public Radio episode 4,190 for Friday the 23rd of August 2024.
Today's show is entitled Civilization 4.
It is part of the series' computer strategy games.
It is hosted by Avokon and is about 20 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, we start our look at the next game in the Civilization franchise Civilization 4.
Hello, this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio.
Welcoming you to another exciting show in our ongoing series on computer strategy games.
And last time in this series we finished our look at Civilization 3.
So it seems like time maybe we could take a look at Civilization 4, which is the next one in that particular series.
Now in 2005 it was time to do it again and produce another version of Civ.
You know, there's kind of a regular cycle.
They put it out and add content to it for a number of years and then it's time to do a new version.
So 2005 was when Civ 4 started to come out.
Now the team was led this time by Soren Johnson.
And as we've said before, well I think every Civ game will always say Sid Meier's Civilization.
Civ is now an executive of the company.
He's not the one sitting at the code desk if you know what I mean.
So they tend to rotate who's going to be the lead developer.
And so Soren Johnson took over on this one.
Now he had worked on the previous version.
So normally what happens is you have a subsidiary role in an earlier version and then you get promoted to be the lead developer if they like your work.
Now Soren did an article and there's a link in the show notes called One Civ Many Worlds where you know and I'll give a quote from that in a minute.
But it was his thoughts about what it is he was trying to do.
And he put it at the Civfinatics.com site.
In short, he played Civ in college.
Then he got a degree in computer science and wanted to work for game developer.
Well, having played Civ in college, he sent in his resume to the people who created Civ and then managed to get hired.
Now as lead developer, one of the things he did is he really dug into the online forums where the fans gathered in two of them in particular.
A politician and Civfinatics and I've got links in the show notes for both of these places.
And from the fans, he started to get ideas of what kind of developments they wanted and recruited a large group to be play testers.
Now the fan community is a major part of Civ.
I was recently at a rehearsal for a wedding and saw a guy wearing a Civ t-shirt.
And in no time we're having a great fans conversation.
And with fans, the biggest topics are usually what's your favorite version and what is your favorite Civ.
And in Civ 4, one expression of the role of the fans and how they are involved is that the game was opened to modders to the maximum extent possible.
As Sorn said, and this is in that article one Civ many worlds.
Early on in the development of Civ 4, we decided to make the game as open to modders as possible, trying not to hide anything behind the wall of the executable application.
Map and scenario data would be saved in a simple text format.
Game data would be maintained in standard XML files.
Map scripts, events and interface code would be handled by the Python scripting language.
And the game C++ code would be publicly released so that modders could create their own algorithms by compiling custom DLLs.
So this is a very interesting thing.
But I would have to say my impression is that the people behind Civ have kept this strong relationship with the fan base.
And that's one of the things that has kept them going.
Now Civ 4 keeps many of things the same.
As we've mentioned this before, things that I don't think will ever change.
You still start out in 4000 BC with a group of nomads settling down to found your first city.
And then you explore and you research and you build.
Now I doubt these will ever change in Civ they are the heart of the games.
Because of this if you've played a previous version of Civ you can sit down to a new version and start playing right away.
But to be really effective you need to know what has changed and each version brings in changes. Some major, some minor.
And earlier changes continue to propagate through the game.
Such as in Civ 3 we saw that they separated worker units from settler units.
That continued in Civ 4, Civ 5, Civ 6.
So it's a basic separation that they've made. I don't think that's ever going to go back.
So what are some of the changes from Civ 3?
The first change that I think people will notice is in the graphics. The game looks very different.
And if you look closely you'll see 3D animations all over the map. It's a very different look from Civ 3.
But the gameplay is where the really significant changes happen.
In all previous games of Civ there were really only two things you could produce on a tile you want.
You could build a farm or you could build a mine.
So in every tile you developed you would build one of those two.
But in Civ 4 you have other options.
Once you had discovered the right technology, which in this case would be animal husbandry, you could put your cows in a pasture and get food production from that.
And when you had animal husbandry you would be able to see horses on your map and build a pasture for them as well.
And you had to do that to get access to mounted units.
In earlier Civs 1 and 2 all you needed to do was learn the right technology and you could start building the units.
In Civ 3 you needed to have the resources well but one copy of the resource could build infinite units.
Now in Civ 4 the number of units you can build is limited by how many horses you have.
So you have an incentive to find more resources on the map.
Similarly where in Civs 1 and 2 you could build legions and swordsmen as soon as you discovered iron working.
In Civ 3 you need to actually own the iron resource in your empire.
Now in Civ 4 the amount of iron you have determines how many units you can produce.
Another major change is in production switching.
For instance if you are building a wonder you have to worry about another Civ also building it and maybe they get it first.
In earlier Civs you could take that stored production value and transfer it to a different wonder or even a different build project.
Now if it happens you lose the production although you do get a gold equivalent.
If you want to switch buildings or units you can do it but it means starting from scratch on the new building or unit.
Though you retain your progress on the previous building or unit and can return and complete it later.
This is particularly important when war breaks out and you need units quickly.
In earlier Civs you could quickly turn your production from buildings to military units and have them ready and a turn or two from the production you would store it up.
Now you have to build them from scratch.
That makes it important you have to maintain your military strength at least the sufficient level to deter aggression or you can get stopped.
A big change is the role of religion.
Now in earlier Civs religion played its part as so-called the opium of the masses.
You could build temples and cathedrals but what they did was keep your population happy.
In Civ 4 religion starts to matter more.
There are now 7 religions.
Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam and Hinduism.
Now there is no preference given to any one religion. They tend to all work pretty much the same.
In later versions of Civ they start expanding on that religion thing and then religions start to become different in different ways.
But in Civ 4 religion does affect gameplay.
Particularly in the diplomacy aspect since another Civ that follows the same religion will get along better with you while one following a different religion will be slightly more hostile.
Diplomacy is another area where Civ 4 advanced.
You can now do more things in the diplomacy than just a clear war or ask for peace.
You can trade goods with another Civ. You can form alliances. You can enact trade embargoes, promise military aid and so on.
Furthermore you can now see how your actions affect other Civs attitudes to you and adjust your decisions accordingly.
Your standing with them is on a numerical scale and you see that for example you lose points for continually to trade with their enemy.
Then you can decide if that's a problem and what you want to do with it.
And the United Nations can pass global treaties like nuclear non-properforation and it also opens up the idea of a diplomatic victory.
Now great people are an elaboration on Civ 3's great leaders idea.
Now there are five different categories though.
Artists, merchants, profits, engineers and scientists and each one grants bonus abilities.
In the victory conditions have expanded. There are now six possible victory conditions.
Conquest means eliminating all other Civs.
Cultural have three cities with legendary culture.
Domination have a 30% lead in world population and a 65% share of the world land area.
Space race build a spaceship and be the first to reach Alpha Centauri.
Diplomatic be elected as world leader in the United Nations.
And finally if you don't get no one achieves any of those others, whoever has the highest score when time runs out which generally is around 2050 AD.
Now there have been expansions.
The first one was civilization for warlords.
Now that was released in 2006.
So you know one year after the original game and that's not unusual.
Net brought in some added features.
One of them is you can have vassal states and that can happen if one Civ dominates another without actually conquering it.
The vassal state continues to exist but its policies including going to war are largely controlled by the dominant state.
And vassal states are counted as part of the dominant Civ for the purposes of a domination victory.
And there are the usual expansion items.
More new Civs in the game, some new leaders, some new techs, new units, new wonders and so on.
And of course new scenarios such as Chinese unification, the Peloponnesian wars and the Vikings.
Now the next expansion to civilization for is civilization for beyond the sword that was released in 2007.
So one year further on.
Beyond the sword introduced some new concepts such as corporations.
Developed the espionage aspects much further and adjusted a couple of the victory conditions for space race and diplomatic victories.
Of course like all expansions it added new units, buildings, leaders, technologies and so on plus the usual batch of scenarios.
Then there is civilization for colonization.
Now this is a complete remake of an earlier game.
Brian Reynolds, who we talked about as the lead developer on Civ 2,
well he was working at micropros before he did that.
And one of the things he did is he did a version of a game called colonization.
That was back in 1994 and now is using the engine from Civilization 1.
It has not aged well.
You can still find it but I don't particularly advise that you do.
So they did a complete remake of the game using the Civilization 4 engine.
Now since I never particularly liked the first version, I never really bothered with this remake.
It's there if you want it.
So summarizing Civ 4.
Civ 4 is in many respects a roadmap for how Civ would develop in the next versions.
Features that are introduced here such as religion and diplomacy will become much more important in Civ 5 and Civ 6.
So while they're not as fully developed here, they are signposts to the future.
Civilization 4 is the favorite version of many players, even now that Civ 5 and Civ 6 have come out.
So there is something good going on in this game.
If you know as I am saying this, we're all waiting for Civilization 7 because it's about time for that to happen.
We'll deal with that in due time.
Now where do you get it?
When I checked Civ 4 was available on Steam in what's called the complete edition.
That means it has all of the expansions for $29.99.
Or you can just buy the base game alone for $19.99.
I would say the complete edition is definitely the one you would want to get.
And when I play Civ 4, I always play the Beyond the Sword expansion because that's the furthest advanced.
You can get the complete edition as well from good old games.
It's the same price as it is on Steam.
For $29.99, you're getting a lot of gameplay. It's not a bad deal.
And this is perhaps a good place to discuss the Steam versus good old games.
I have games I've purchased on both platforms that each have strengths and weaknesses in my view.
Steam gives you all of your games in one fairly easy dashboard.
It is available on a variety of platforms including Linux, Windows, Mac OS, iOS and Android.
Now the game has to be compiled to run on your platform and many games are Windows only.
But if you're a Linux user, you can get Photon, which is something that lets you play Windows games in Linux.
And you know, that can get around some of this stuff.
Another thing about Steam, you can have it installed on multiple devices.
Now only one at a time can be actively in use.
And if you get a new device, it is easy to transfer your games by installing them from the dashboard.
The downside is that you have to be connected to Steam online to play anything.
But another plus is that many indie games, such as ones I've purchased through humble bundles,
come with Steam codes you can redeem to put the game on Steam.
And new games will almost always appear on Steam.
I've gotten every Civ 6 expansion on the day of release on Steam and I do it all from my computer and it just couldn't be easier.
Now good old games, a little bit different. They offer games with no DRM.
And there is no requirement for an online connection.
It's older games.
So I was able to get Civ 4 on good old games. I could not get Civ 5.
That may happen someday, but it's, you know, Civ 5 is not at this point a new game.
But they just, they don't have a license yet to offer it on that platform.
So that's one of the disadvantages with good old games.
Now you have to download the games to your device and install them locally.
Now that's basically what's happening with Steam, except Steam handles it all for you pretty easily.
Now since there is no DRM, you can install them on several computers if you wish.
But if you get a new computer, you have to go through downloading each game and installing it manually on the new computer.
So in summary, I have purchased games on both Steam and good old games.
I've generally been pleased with both.
Good old games has some things that I can't find on Steam.
They're older games, but you know, older games can be fun too.
Now I'm going to wrap up by saying I've put some other resources together, articles and YouTube videos, links in the show notes.
And with pretty much any of the episodes that I record, the show notes are an important part of that.
So, you know, if you have any interest in following up on this, do check the show notes.
So, this is Ahuka for Hacker Public Radio signing off.
And as always, encourage you to support free software. Bye-bye.
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