Should I play Civ 3, 4 or 5?

[Jay]

I've never played a Civ game, but right now I have the time to get into them a bit. Through Humble Bundle I got Civ 3, 4 & 5. Which one should be the one I play? Did the series evolve enough to say that I should get V and stick with that cause it's the best version and didn't have problems the others had? Did the new ones have issues that older ones didn't have? Which one is easiest to understand and get into?

Thanks for your help :)

[[NN]Natmeris]

All of them have differences. I guess Civ5 would be the easiest as they streamlined it and made it easier for newer players to get in. As far as the best strategy gameplay, that's civ3 and civ4 however.

[Eauxps I. Fourgott]

Civs 3 + 4 and 5 are really rather different experiences, from all I've been able to gather. Civ 5 just made a bunch of major changes to the core of the game, making some love it and some hate it.

I personally am a 3 + 4 person, so I would say that you should go with those. IMO, 4 is superior to 3, as it's the same core gameplay but fixes a bunch of issues that 3 had. But 3 is still fun, so you might want to go for that first and later move on to 4. As far as easiest to get into... I don't really know, honestly. I imagine that with the complexity of these games you could have a tough time with any of them. The good thing is that with the low difficulty settings available, you can have a lot of room for error. I've also found that a lot of the mechanics of Civ 4 can be managed or ignored at the lower difficulty levels without great consequences.

[SupTwo]

I would suggest playing Civ 5 first as I found it really helps teach you the basics of Civilization. As soon as you do get a good grasp of any of the games I would greatly urge you to get some mods... The vanilla AI is horrible in all three games and many mods remedy this. The best mods imo are "Vox Populi" for Civ 5 and "Realism Invictus" for 4. Don't know what's good for civ 3 as I couldn't really get into it

[ghpstage]

3 tends towards very heavy micromanagement.
Anything you produce above and beyond what is required in the current 'action' is lost
If a city requires 1 excess food to grow to the next size and you produce 4 per turn then 3 will be wasted, if your warrior is 3 shields from completion and your city produces 7 then 4 will be wasted, and similarly commerce spent on science that is beyond what is required to complete the next tech will be lost.
Similarly when a city has more unhappy citizens than happy ones then the city basically shuts down on the next turn, and this continues until it is fixed.

There isn't any warning for any of this, you have to do a heck of a lot of babysitting to do well, though some mods help.

On the plus side the maps are enormous, the artistic style is nice and a lot of the mechanics felt 'right'. If you are fine with the heavy micro then you'll probably love it.


4 is one of the few games that can claim to be an excellent example of meaningful streamlining.
Gone is the need to babysit everything as overflow simply rolls onto the next item, most of the mechanics that in civ 3 might have looked good but performed poorly have been replaced or polished, the GUI, while still in need of work reached the pinnacle of civ GUIs, and the AI performed most effectively.

However,
The new 3D engine necessitaed a wholesale slashing of map scale, the games unmodded sizes are tiny compared to civ 3
A lot of the polish focused on hard nosed gameplay, it works well but it tends to feel more gamey than in 3. Particularly jarring is the way seige was changed to become a throwaway suicide unit, which prevents the dismal AI performance regarding seige found in civ 3, but still feels wrong.
The games aesthetics and dialogues chnaged from being fairly serious to light hearted compared to 3. YMMV



I still love 3 but 4 is my favourite. The series ended there as far as i'm concerned

[kage1822]

I personally find civ 3 the easiest to play of those 3 options, just wish civ 3 had a steam workshop...lol

[Two Gun Bob]

3 has the best graphics for play IMO. It could do with an update for resolution, but after 3 Firaxis made the hexes far too detailed to make a smoothly viewable map, plus 4 was when it jumped the shark as far as a wargame, the inability to stack up armies pretty much ruined what would (for me) otherwise be a really in-depth 4X game.

If they would just allow stacking in the newer games, those two would be awesome. If you are just a builder and avoid large wars then you may prefer 4 or 5. If you like the global wargame aspect then TMMV.

[Klutch]

Civilization>Civilization 3>(All other civilization games)

[prince_of_arfon]

I'll always have a soft spot for 3, as it was the first game I ever bought with my own money and I played it a ton, with many fond memories from it. And I still love it's cartographic aesthetics. However, I find it a bit difficult to get into now, mainly cuz the AI is pretty bad, and quite unfair diplomatically. This is a problem in 4 and 5 too, but those games found some other ways to mitigate the problem.

So I'd probably recommend 4 or 5. Also worth considering are mods: 5 has a ton of smaller mods that can be combined in a single game, whereas 4 has some incredible total conversion and overhaul mods. I'd recommend fans get 4 if only for the Caveman2Cosmos and Fall From Heaven II mods. They're unique Civ experiences even today (although 5 does have a Forgotten Realms mod which is reminiscent of FFHII).

[IeShima]

Having played all 3 games mentioned ( Civ 3, 4, and 5) i would still say that Civ 3 is the best of the bunch. Civ 4 added a few new and interseting ideas, but it felt that the challenge wasn't really there anymore, and that i was playing a new game series. Civ 5, especially when it first came out, was a broken mess that i will never go back to. It was far to easy, and removed practically all of the previous games playstyles and mechanics so new players could "ease in more quickly". It wasn't anything that a Civ game, or even a Sid Meier's game should be like.

Civ 3, despite its age and its problems, is still one of the best strategy games i have ever played, and might be the best if not for some origional Avalon Hill board games i have (not the computer versions, i mean the ones with the little cardboard squares).

[Two Gun Bob]

Spoken like a true wargamer.

Like I said, if you are the tactical wargame type of 4X player then civ3 was the best of the bunch so far. If you are more strategic and for lack of a better word, 'builderish', I think you would prefer 4 or 5.

If you are a true civ fanatic you'll have all of them in your library and triple digit hours on them all anyhow. That's for sure.

[IeShima]

Originally posted by Two Gun Bob:

Spoken like a true wargamer.

If you are a true civ fanatic you'll have all of them in your library and triple digit hours on them all anyhow. That's for sure.

I learned how to play Civ 2 & 3 from my dad, on the origional discs, so i don't have triple digit hours logged on steam. But i certainly have hours logged into the 4 digit range if not more on the discs.

But by far and away my favorite stratagy game is Avalon Hills "Rise and Decline of the Third Reich". Talk about straining your mental capacity. A single "turn" in that game can take an hour if not more, not to mention handling all those little squares, and if you go up against a really good player, who has the whole game memorized, you. are. screwed.

[Two Gun Bob]

Brings back memories. An entire Saturday morning dedicated just to setting up for the first turn, and only getting a few turns in by midnight. I was a Squad Leader fan myself.

[IeShima]

Originally posted by Two Gun Bob:

Brings back memories. An entire Saturday morning dedicated just to setting up for the first turn, and only getting a few turns in by midnight. I was a Squad Leader fan myself.

Never got a chance to play that one, but i did enjoy Richthofen's War. Trying to command a flight of up to 5 seperate aircraft going up against 5 or more other enemies was a real challenge. One night, a buddy brought over his copy of the game and we had a 3 v 3 brawl on a double map.

I also have a pristine, untouched copy of France 1940, with all the tiles still on their sprues

[Boomer]

I enjoy civ 3 and civ 5. Both have their strenghts. Civ 3 is great on low powered devices like tablets and netbooks too

[UknowitsE]

I would recommend either 3 or 4, 5 is kinda meh, but still better than 6 is right now(i know you don't have 6 but just sayin). 4 is my fav hands down, I had like over 1000 hours on disc, bought on steam have over 1000 hours on steam, just can't beat 4 IMO. I'm just playin 3 now for some memories, ya it does have some micro problems im findin out, don't know how long ill play it, but I bought it for $1.24 so I figured what the hell. Learn on whatever you want and decide yourself, that's what life is about, but don't forget to try out 4(hopefully with all the expansions, maybe some mods after you try the "regular" game first).