Loading ...Civilization 4, one step forward but two steps back
Firstly I must slate the horrible 3D engine the boys a Fraxis have created. It looks lovely….and you can rotate the camera 45 degrees should you wish. One small problem, I don’t want to rotate the camera as that is confusing. I also want to finish a game without my computer crashing…and as of yet it has not happened! Why o why did they introduce the new swanky 3D engine? All it serves is to make the game completely unstable. Even with the patch my games still crash. Even more annoying is the fact that after my computer restarts and I load the save game……the game crashes again at the exact same point!!!!!!! The only way I have found around it is to change the graphics settings and restart.
Enough of the bad! The introduction of religion was a good move. I like the way Fraxis tip toe around the introduction of religion clearly stating that they do not wish to offend anyone! I have played several games where I have concentrated on religion, and religious expansion. I have found that cultural expansion seems to have taken a back seat to religious expansion. An excellent tactic I found is researching the technologies that reveal Hinduism and Confusism early on. If you are first to discover them…and you have at least 2 cities…you will get points for founding the religions and will own both holy cities for each religion. You can then build the religions wonders by using great leaders. You now gain income from every city your newly founded religion spreads to!!! You can build tons of missionaries and generate obscene amounts of cash…to spend on nukes!
So I would say…..buy the game and get the patch. Hav’nt tried the multiplayer yet…but you will hear about it when I do.
