Reviews - MeklordAporia

The king of strategy, without a doubt. More civs, new scenarios, all built on the best refined of the strategy engines out there. A game I played for years with much enjoyment, and continue to play with the new life that the fan mods added.

I always knew I enjoyed Civ IV, but its supremacy finally hit home when I started playing the open beta of Fallen Enchantress. Comparing it to the debacle that was Elemental: War of Magic, I realized that most of the improvements to the game had one thing in common: they made the game more like Civ IV. And guess what I was playing while waiting for Fallen Enchantress? The Fall from Heaven II mod, of course.

With Civ V, the existence of two mods tell the story. The Powers That Be is a Civ IV mod intended to incorporate the best of V (unique civilization powers) while staying uniquely IV. Meanwhile, Civilization NiGHTS is considered one of the best mods of Civ V G&K, again, because they made it more like IV. Frankly, the successor, in trying to be different from its predecessor, failed to reach the same heights.

Looking back, this strikes me as the Spyro 2 of the Civ series: starting to contain the elements that would make the later games what they were, but still the very rough feel of the old ones. Contrary to Rockhard's review, it did have traits that helped the later two: culture, strategic resources, unit maintenance in gold rather than hammers, and the separation of workers and settlers. It also made mistakes, no doubt, such as heavy corruption [and especially waste], which they thought would fight infinite city sprawl, but instead made it the only viable strategy. However, addressing these exact problems was what made Civ IV the best of the series.
The Conquests expansion pack also had the titular scenarios, all of which added great ideas to the game. The scenario "Sengoku: Sword of the Shogun" in particular is an excellent case study in what an overhaul mod should be.
Civ III probably had the best background music of any Civ. In fact, the Civ IV expansion packs borrowed a lot of it. I've been tempted to rebuy III just to get the rest. Graphics are deliberately minimalist but still pretty, even to this day. The battle animations still have their charm as well.
Overall, you could do a lot worse for as cheap as Civ III Complete is now, and the modding tools are fairly straightforward. But maybe I'm just skewed toward one of the games of my childhood.

At first, I thought this mod took itself too seriously, what with leader weaknesses and almost complete lack of alternate tech paths. But then I started playing it again. It's the largest mod to not include future-era stuff, which on second examination is a strength because it doesn't overexert itself. Most importantly, Invictus has the deepest combat system of ANY Civ game before or since. If we're lucky, Firaxis takes notes for Civ VI.

And War Elephants. Woe to whoever has to fight them off.

Manages to add plenty of new content without fundamentally altering the nature of BTS. A daunting feat to say the least.

I have to say, of all the mods I've played of Civ IV, this one truly surprised me. Sure, there have been Rome scenarios, but fleshing out the era into a full-size Civ game... an impressive feat, indeed. It reminds me of the Sengoku scenario in Civ III Conquests for all the right reasons. Full length, no major Civ components missing, and better still, and unlike Sengoku, actually allows random map. Basically everything I look for in a Civ overhaul.

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."