Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Always fancied giving one of these a crack - finally replacing my terrible terrible laptop (mainly to play online poker which is a bit sad but nevermind)

They have always struck me as similar games, is that true or am I missing the point?

Which one is better and why?

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

They're about as similar as Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grim Fandango.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

One is real time (Age of Empires) and one is a turned based (Civilization) so they're quite different.

I enjoyed the first two Age of Empires games a lot but both are very dated now. As for the latest one (3) while still a good standard mold RTS I didn't find as enjoyable since they've moved towards fantasy rather than having a semi historical background to the campaign.

Myself I prefer Civilization, the scope of the game is far larger, you run an entire Civilization over 5,000 years and the game has great replay value. The first two instalments were classics but around 10 years old and very dated now, the third is definitely one to stay away from but in my opinion (and I'm sure several people will disagree) Civilization 4 is brilliant and well worth getting, there's also a new expansion available which is a snip at £15.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I will. Civ II is the best of the series, Alpha Centauri is the best of "that" style of game.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

So you play in direct competition with CPU players? Otherwise where does the turn-based element come in?

Are they both still war / conquest based or to a certain extent just about building and managing ie Sim City-esque?

Like I say I have never played either but I have previously always enjoyed games like Sim-City, and Red Alert and I somehow got the impression that these two might be in some way a hybrid of those two?

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Civ 4 is definitely worth investing time in though, it's certainly the best civ game since 2, and i would put it on a par with AC overall (and I know AC very well). The new religion thing works very well, and the way they did culture in this game actually works properly. The rubbish corruption thing of civ3 is also gone, leading to you being far less crippled when you over-expand.

I read an interview about it, and it sounded like they got rid of a lot of the things that were really annoying for people while keeping the spirit of the underlying mechanics alive.

How much have you played civ4?

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I won't disagree that Civ 2 is the best in the series but these days it's very dated. SMAC is certainly be up there with the best of that style but in my opinion Civ 4 is an incredible game which has brought the concept up to a modern standard, I think it's up there at the same level as SMAC and Civ 2 both of which I played extensively.
Civilization is literally just turned based, you use your turn to build cities and structures, research technology and move your troops, you end your turn and then the CPU players (Up to 16 ?) do the same in their turns. Then you take your turn again and advance all the way from the primitive tribes to nuclear weapons. There's no real time aspect of it, when your units come in conflict with another players units the result is worked out mathematically. The great thing about Civilization is that while war and conquest is the most obvious option to win there are also other ways to play the game such as religion/culture, technology/industry and diplomacy.

Age of Empires on the other hand is building a base and moving troops around on the map just like Red Alert, nothing on a larger scale like in Civilization. A better combination of Red Alert and Sim City may be the Total War (Rome Total War is the most recent but Medieval II Total War is out next month) series. In the Total War games you build cities and move armies around on the tactical map but when armies come into conflict you can take charge of the battle yourself and move units around like in an RTS such as Red Alert.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

You are thinking of Age of Mythology, that has the fantasy units.

Age of Empires 3 is history based (i.e no monsters) and is set around the time of America being colonised. So you have European powers fighting each other with musketmen and cannons and lots of native indians around to "trade" with.

It's pretty good, although I preferred Age of Mythology.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

No, I did mean Age of Empires 3. One of things I loved about the first two Age of Empires games is you had those historical introductions to the battles and loosely re-enacted the battles that great leaders fought. With Age of Empires 3 campaign they came up with these invented characters and a search for the fountain of youth, which I thought was stupid. It also seemed that they chose the Americas as the location so they could specifically sell it to an American audience, I would have thought that a European Napoleonic setting would have been far better for the game.

I never really played Age of Mythology other than the demo, I was always told it was quite good though.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Oh, when you said "fantasy" i assume you meant monsters, not just changing history a tad :( I never played the campaigns anyway so I wouldn't know. Also I find the setting to be largely unimportant in games of this type, I don't think setting it in Europe would have changed the gameplay at all so it didn't really bother me. Wouldn't putting it in a European setting be just as much pandering to the European market as setting it in America was to the Americans in your eyes?

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Actually if this a strategy game recommendation thread, I've been playing Defcon since it came out on Friday. It's available for download through Steam or their Website for only £10, the IGN review is here and it scored 87% in PC Gamer.

If you've ever seen the film Wargames you'll love it. It puts you in charge of a six equal continents strategic defence forces (subs, radar, aircraft and silos) and Navy. The counter starts at Defcon 5 where you can position your forces and ticks down to Defcon 3 where fleets and aircraft and ships can engage one another and finally Defcon 1 where nuclear weapons can be used. There's a few scoring modes but the most popular gives you 2 points for every million civilians killed and -1 for every million civilians lost. The game is great fun especially online with 6 players and all the alliances and backstabbing that goes with it.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I'm downloading the demo

Does it actually have any graphics? I'm terribly excited at the prospect of there being a new strategy game that my computer might be able to run \o/

edit: upon closer inspection of the screenshots page, it doesn't appear to have any graphics \o/ \o/

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Just the tactical map like in the screenshots, it all moves in real time but you can speed it up to x5 real time (most games played at), 10x speed and 20x speed so long as all players agree. It's really simple but at the same time really complex and really fun to play if only to see "Paris Hit: 2.5 million dead" come up on your screen.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

age of empires is good.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I suppose you could play Age of Empires 3.

I suppose you could also play Civilisation 4.

But what you should really do is play something in between, ie Rise of Nations. It rocks :up:

Don't play the sequel though, that sucks (by comparison).

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

A fair amount, but it was when the game first came out so I don't know if they've fixed the things that made the game incredibly annoying to play like everything taking ****ing forever due to the animations.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Ever thought of maybe, just on a whim, checking the 'preference' settings MrL_JaKiri?

If not, I really understand. They were cleverly hidden on the middle of the main menu in-game.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

afaik they always had a "turn off animations" button.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I agree with both statements, but Civilization IV is certainly the most enjoyable at the moment because its up-to-date, has fun new concepts and is a better Multiplayer challenge.
It can be a bit heavy to run even with various graphics turned low. In MP the game would kinda freeze until the slowest player had loaded the turn. During the freeze you could move the camera around and give orders BUT the game seems non-responsive until the freeze stops (all orders given are then executed).


Rise of Nations was fun indeed, but imho only if u limited it to a max age. Cos the end game wonder thingies outbalanced the game. I played the second installment and have to agree that its much less fun.



About Age of Empires. I only really liked Age of Empires 1 with the Rise of Rome expansion. IMHO it only went downhill. (AoE II was much less fun and AoE III sucked)



Comparing AoE and Civ is kinda hard. They are different genres and there are a people who like only one, neither or both.

Civ requires patience and enjoying empire management and strategic battling (moving armies), AoE requires enjoying basebuilding and fighting battles (moving soldiers).

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Civilization is far superior to AoE. Play Civ 4 and don't expect to do anything productive for the next month or so.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

any and ALL civ. games were milestones in gaming industry.

any and all AoE games were milestones in gamin industry.

play them both. both series are fantabulous. I waste my life playing games :( but thats, i guess, what most gamers do.

After you are done with Civ series, do play Alpha Centauri. That game was also ace, and, if civ series werent out (wich would be impossible as without civ there would not be AC, same creator after all, but still...) it would proobably be the most prolific game of its genre.

Some of my personal strategy favourites:
Age of Mithology worth looking at.
Settlers series.
Heroes of Might and Magic series.
War/StarCraft (i do think noone can overlook theese tho)
Rise of nations is also good, i hear...

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I played the demo earlier today and just bought it.

Haven't played it much, but given the cost (14 euro), I think it's well worth it. I know I'll play it a lot the coming month at least.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Get Civ IV
Get Warlords
Get This

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I used to limit it to just the Enlightenment Age when I first started playing it. Then I realised I didn't need to do this. Instead I'd start my attack in the Enlightenment Age, then by the time the later Ages come along my opponents are way too busy trying to fight me off so they don't bother doing anything fancy like building wonders.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Only if you sat back and didn't attack for the entire game.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

i downloaded the free full demo version of that defcon game but the mouse is totally ****ing up on it, anyone else have similar issues? it's all laggy and the like

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

age of empires all the way

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I've never played the AoE series, but Civ II is one of the best games I've ever played.

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

Stupid Question: I bought both, do I install both (as in Civ IV and the expansion pack) and just play via the expansion pack or is it worth playing first on the original?

Cheers

Re: Age of Empires vs Civilisation
 

I'd just play via the expansion. Adds quite a bit to the game.