Somewhat Civilized

I grabbed Civilization 4 a while back, and I've been playing it quite a bit recently. It's a very very good game, but it's quite challenging, particularly for someone like me, who never played any of the previous iterations in the series. I repeatedly got my ass handed to me, both in early and late games, and wasn't really having a good time at all. Early game destruction was preferable, since it meant I could get annoyed, curse, quit and start another game, hopefully applying what I learned from my defeat. Being strung along for ages and then cast aside is a bit too much like certain dates I've been on.

My Civ 4 problems were probably caused by my RTS experience, which is fairly simplistic. There are only a few resources to consider, a fairly limited tech tree, and streamlined, action-orientated combat. Civ 4 is far more complex, with culture, population, gold, production, research, health, happiness, great people, trade routes, diplomacy, religion and technology to be considered. It is exceedingly easy to mess up any of these, leaving your civilization languishing while the others develop sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads and raze your territory.

I have managed to improve though, by absorbing strategy from sites such as Civilization Fanatics' Center and getting kicked in the jewels over and over, and I'm starting to win games on Warlord difficulty. My end game is still pretty poor and I don't like going to war, but I'm not the punching bag I once was. I probably won't get to play again until I'm all settled back in Australia in a few months, but I'll definitely be packing the CDs. It's a game worth mastering.