I Tried Civ 4 Again After 12 Years... and Got Humbled Quick

[@Taluien]

One thing about Civ4... that intro and theme are just timeless. Baba Yetu is just iconic.

[@ShadowOfCicero]

"Coronation" is underrated.

[@KarlKapo]

Intro is horrible

[@timeless9517]

uuuuuhhhh yeah because of this theme i began playing

[@BossClown9]

@@KarlKapo Do you hate humanity ?

[@sirrichiofawesome9617]

I've been playing the series since Civ 2. I never played the older games on high difficulty and seeing this has made me realize why! There are so many things from the older games which I miss, the crazy council and wonder videos in 2 and the palace/throne room upgrades in 3.

[@TheAndorianWarrior]

been playing since civ 1.....great to meet a long time fan :)

[@ironwolfnl7365]

As far as I understand from my time playing civ 4, the attacker usually has to fight the enemy with the highest strength calculation (so if you attack with cavalry, either you fight an archer unit with a lot of bonuses, or a spearman/pikeman, because of their +100% vs. cavalry units. This game has a special place in my heart and it's quite a lot of fun seeing you play it.

[@dargaronsoftsong3193]

Also, Pravus seems to think you do collateral damage when bombarding: if I remember my Civ 4 correctly, you do collateral damage when you *attack* with a siege weapon, not when you bombard a city. So the counter to a large stack of units is to attack them with some sacrificial siege weapons to reduce *everyone's* strength to a pitiful level.

[@McHobotheBobo]

@@dargaronsoftsong3193 Bombarding does do collateral but very little, siege attack does way more iirc

[@ShadowOfCicero]

​​@@McHobotheBoboBombers have that ability if you do airstrike, but I don't think siege weapons do outside of the Road to War mod.

[@MrJackassz]

I used 5 pratorians with 8 strength vs 5 archers with 3 strength against a lvl 1 city with no walls and 3 pratorians died. In real life those archers would be toast. The fighting is god awful in civ 4. The AI in every sim game made isnt great, as no civ would attack you being on the opposite side of the map while stronger enemies are right next to them?? We need difficulty based on how smart the AI, instead of giving them a major handicap.

[@ammarnapata2193]

That’s kind of dumb that they remove slavery. It’s such an important part of history. Another reason why civilization number four is the best

[@JaclynFox]

civ 4: Man, I hate stacked units, this sucks. civ 7: The ability to use a commander to temporarily stack units is really cool.

[@marjoh669]

1:30 Let’s go colonising! *You have been defeated!!!* -Aw dang it *You have been defeated!!!* -Aw dang it *You have been defeated!!!* -Aw dang it *You have been defeated!!!* -Aw dang it

[@bonanlin4972]

Gamblecore fan detected

[@karo5719]

I remember coming home after school in second grade and playing hotseat with my best friend, we had WAY too low difficulty level, so with strategy "I'll stack like 50-100 units on one tile and smash them against other cities" we had like 30+ cities each, it was great time

[@Mankorra_Gomorrah]

I’ll never forget how this game gave middle school me high blood pressure as it forced me to watch a barbarian with a club single handled destroy all three of my modern battle tanks because my tanks rolled low when they entered combat.

[@mk-ultraviolence1760]

Abandon human, embrace monke.

[@krausewitz6786]

Bollocks. That's more or less impossible.

[@YouTubePremiumDude]

Thats absolutely bullshit. No way you would have encountered barbarian warriors in the late game. You should be seeing barbarian axemen by the classical era, warriors are quickly obsoleted. Either false memory or flat out lying.

[@Mankorra_Gomorrah]

@@KZbinPremiumDude perhaps the use of “Barbarian” was inappropriate. They weren’t genuine barbarian units which, as you so politely point out, automatically tech up after certain conditions were met. They were clubmen from another player who hadn’t been upgraded the whole game. I could only speculate as to why they had never been upgraded. I referred to them as barbarians because they remind me of Conan the barbarian with the getup just with a big stick instead of a cool sword. The point of my comment was less about the spectacle of the battle itself and more about the deeper philosophical insight that only have 3 models per unit causes weird scenarios where the final unit represents a far greater share of the units HP and is therefore harder to kill leading to significant frustration.

[@GrumbleRumble]

@@Mankorra_Gomorrah I think your ammo stores exploded in all your tanks while the warriors watched, confused. Probability is small but non zero lol.

[@leoleboss9414]

You need to attack enemies with your catapults ( often killing your catapults so you need lots of them ) to trigger collateral damage , siege units are the key to fight doomstacks as well as cavalry units that can withdraw after the fight

[@159Revan]

Dude, Civ 4 was my favorite of the series. Thanks for sharing!

[@jamesweiksner3587]

You are playing civ 4 😮. Civ 4 is my favorite with Legends of revolution mod. The game was balanced. Barbarians evolve into a culture and a leader is randomly selected. They can capture cities and expand like a civilization. That is the best barbarian mechanic of all the civ games!!! I love Ruthless Al. The computer plays to win !!!

[@brianlempa]

I have a destinct memory of playing civ 4 with two continents, discovered the second one that was controlled entirely by barbarian cities that was taken from spain. If i recall there was no iron or something causing spanish and others to not able to build powerful enough units to defent themselves.

[@gentlesirpancakebottoms6692]

The things I miss most from Civ4 in more modern entries are the immersive elements like the world being a spinning globe, the very distinct era appropriate music (a bit weird to hear western medieval music while playing China though). More ages/eras which gave the world some more continuity. If a nation was lagging behind they usually didn't have arhcers fighting riflemen. But 1600s musket units fighting 1700s line infantry. Civ 5 skips right from mid 1500's to mid 1800s military technology. Also that borders expanded faster. It was always weird in Civ5 to having to traverse unclaimed wasteland and jungle when fighting a ww1 ish war. Borders in CIv4 clashed earlier and the world felt more inhabited.

[@FirkraagAurel]

"They removed slavery from Civ 5 for obvious reasons" And that reason beeing ignorance of 5000 years of history? Perhaps that's also why Civ 4 is the better experience. It doesn't push any political zeitgeist ideas on the player.

[@savejeff15]

Always great when history is denied when it's not nice history...

[@bruhbruh-us6gl]

Civ4 is really pushy (to a fault) with global warming and defying UN resolutions. No matter what you do, the entire world starts turning into desert if everyone doesn’t immediately adopt environmentalism the second it becomes available. Defying a UN resolution (Which is nothing of real consequence whatsoever in real life) smacks you with 5 points of unhappiness in every city you have.

[@uncletimo6059]

@@savejeff15 will civ7 remove warfare then?

[@sauluxville]

Ah, the best one, where difficulties mattered, you could not win Deity by rolling your face on the keyboard, and AI could actually win any victory condition.

[@Charles_Anthony]

It's taken me 20 years to reach Immortal on Civ4. I've mastered Diety on Civ6 in a matter of months.

[@wowwoawubbzy]

Love to see this! Civ 4 holds a very, very special place in my heart. :) Would definitely recommend checking out the mods for Civ 4, especially the Rhyes and Fall mod. Civ 4 has some of the best modding ever for a video game. Some mods feel like entirely new, great games!

[@leoleboss9414]

Let's trick Pravus into doing a full C2C playthrough

[@foreng3095]

​@@leoleboss9414A couple of years later.

[@seajaytea9340]

I started with Civilization (no numbers yet) back in 1991! Been there for the whole series and enjoyed the love affair for all of the years!

[@Potatoesop]

I’m laughing at the thought of Isabella of Spain being Buddhist

[@joecrowell7256]

@9:00 Just FYI to anyone watching--you should still build cottages early, because more gold means faster research. So even if you're not lowering the science slider to generate gold per turn, that additional gold is applied to your science and getting you techs faster. That's what makes the Financial trait cracked 🤙

[@whocaresaboutmyusername22]

Yeah that part was pretty misleading. You also need to consider possibly not over whipping in your cottage cities because every turn that tile isn’t worked, it can’t upgrade into a town.

[@quandaryn1231]

You definitely completely misunderstand how gold works. The gold yield coins on the map are actually called "commerce" and they can be converted into either science or gold depending on where you put that slider.

[@stevencass8849]

This game had the best Civ AI. Even at the normal level, where there were no bonuses for player or computer player, the AI was a challenge.

[@wowwoawubbzy]

May I ask why no expansion packs? They add so much to the game! :)

[@justhere4637]

0:55 The unbridled power of the sun.

[@replicant97]

MY EYES!

[@mythicalthezeraora1416]

Ah yes i forgot that Civ 4 had hostile wild animal npcs. Man i missed them

[@miroz0181]

Honestly my first Civ game was the Beyond Earth and dlc 😁 I love that game! Space Civ and radical cultural shift was fun ☺️

[@PravusGaming]

I honestly enjoyed that one, too. I know it never gained any traction, but the adapting to a new world with three competing ideologies was fun!

[@Ididtherightthing]

Yeah I think it could’ve been great if it had a little more unit diversity and some quality of life improvements (ie giving leaders more personality and implementing more ways to boost land unit movement).

[@Ididtherightthing]

Beyond Earth was also my first Civ game because I was a sucker for sci-fi ten years ago (at least way more than I am today).

[@sweoli16]

I love the fact that you are going back too more classic games. Id love too see more of this kind of content. Little pointer. The music was a little loud at times. As always top notch work love your content!

[@KasumiRINA]

I played Civ 3 as a kid and then jumped straight to 5 and 6, thanks for explaining the wacky things that are unique to 4, IIRC 3 already had you split money between earning, science AND happiness, but it had a very involved corruption/unhappiness mechanic that isn't in other games, otherwise it's similar to a point... until it isn't.

[@casperrozenboom6408]

Baba Yetu, that brings me back!

[@starlightsilverwing]

One of my first 5 games I’ve ever gotten into, I have fond memories of being completely locked out of most units because of a lack of oil on my first playthrough

[@tigeriussvarne177]

Best Civ imho, I started with Civ1, and I loved Colonization. Praise Pravus.

[@ShadowOfCicero]

Moreover, YOU NEVER USED THE PYRAMIDS! Both Hereditary Rule AND Representation would have helped you, but you didn't even look before Feudalism. Without that change, the Pyramids were not even remotely worth the production.

[@nathanspreitzer6738]

It’s quite a bit harder than the later titles

[@ShadowOfCicero]

It was long-time community member Sullla's famous boast that the Civ 4 AI "would beat an average player on Noble." In other news (as of July 31, 2024), Season Eight of his Civ 4 AI Survivor is currently underway.

[@sirrichiofawesome9617]

If I recall correctly, the stacks always defend with whichever unit has the best chance of success against the attacker. Which makes it really hard to defeat large stacks as wounded units move to the bottom of the stack and can heal up. This is one of the things I do not miss about the older games, it just made it hard to defeat enemies, or too easy if you are able to get a giant stack of your own.

[@Peachrocks5]

Minor pet peeve but the stack of doom mechanic is always misunderstood in civ 4. The catch here though is that siege absolutely wrecks huge stacks per hammer cost. Sure the first few catapults will lose but after the fifth or sixth, you start cleaning up. Then unit matchup and defensive bonuses don’t matter. The defender has an advantage not just because of defenders multipliers but because they can move freely on roads whereas the attacker cannot. Which means they will always strike first and do massive siege damage to a stack if they choose to. The best strategy is to keep yourself flexible. Of course against an ai with bonuses who doesn’t act intelligently, stacks of doom beats them fine but you try that on a competent human, you will get absolutely decimated.

[@Carewolf]

That is what siege weapons are for they cause massive damage to massive stacks. Civ 4 has counters for everything

[@jeffrysanders-n7u]

Hear Ye, Hear Ye...Pravus gets arse handed to him by Sid Meier's Civ 4...more on page 7 At least you gave it the old collage try, thanks for the entertainment.

[@gmv3354]

Long time Deity player here (10+ years playing on Deity). I can give some advice to you so you can go past the initial stages of the game, namely how to survive the barbs (which is the hardest part of early Deity for sure): - First and most straightforward: Build the Great Wall. Once built, barbs can no longer enter your borders. If that wasn't advantage enough, now because they can't invade you they'll only have the AI to invade, so double the advantage. - Second and easiest: Have 2 or more defensive units in all your cities (this excludes non combatant units such as workers or great people, the recon units such as scouts, or any planes or ships). Barbs are attracted to unprotected cities, which for them are cities with no defenders or a single defender. The problem with this approach is that barbs will still attack you, and if you start fortifying your cities, they'll instead destroy your countryside and sit there while more barbs come until they feel confident enough in attacking your cities again. - Third and cheesiest: Fill all tiles surrounding your cities with units and suddenly the barbs will mostly ignore your existence. This approach is usually expensive (due to the need of many units, which are extra expensive on Deity) but you can cut corners using water tiles and peaks to your advantage (as those tiles can't be crossed by land units). You can call this a glitch, but in any case it is abusing the AI's behavior for sure. The next stage to any of those approaches is to secure the strategic resources for the early game strong units (or rely on strong unique units) to then turn the barbs into free XP for your freshly trained units. And eventually barbs will disappear due to the free land disappearing as well.

[@gmv3354]

I just realized you're playing vanilla Civ IV, not vanilla BtS. These tips might not work, my bad. I haven't played vanilla Civ IV since 2006

[@gmv3354]

Ok, I finished the video. Your understanding of Civ IV is really good for someone who hasn't played for 12 years. Let me fill in a bit in the stuff that I saw you were confused about more at the end: - The rock-paper-scissors for Civ IV's stacks works in favor of the defender, always. So whenever you attack a stack, the defending stack will use the best available unit to defend your attack everytime (unless there's a unit attached to a general, but AFAIK those were only introduced in the Warlords expansion); - A good way to gauge how strong someone is is by checking their Power in the Power Graph that you can check through your advisor buttons. I guess in vanilla Civ IV you can always see the graphs of other players you met, but in BtS you need to spend some espionage points for that; - The defense from terrain in Civ IV is huge! If I'm not mistaken it's 50% for forests and 25% for hills (adding up to 75% for a forest on hills), but I'm not sure if these values are only for BtS or for vanilla Civ IV as well. Making cities on hills is game changing on Civ IV;

[@Chr1s_1986]

never played Civ 4 without addons tho i dont know if the Great wall is allready in the game but no matter if its there or not the better play would be to build the Mits with stone. He allready sattle his HQ wrong (should have found one to the left on the river for the gold) but the GP from Great wall isent good for the later scientists wish leads into way later lip and Philo bulbs which is really strong on Deity. With propper Fogbusting you dont need the Greatwall. 2 Units pre city is way to much in the beginning since you have to pay for them 1 unit is enough with propper Fogbusting and AI near you.

[@Daniel_12X]

Really nice try, you should try Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword for your next try and watch 1-2 videos of Henrik which plays this game at the highest difficulty. thanks for the upload

[@SkyHighCity]

Pravus is on a serious nostalgia trip

[@argentinianspotter]

Love the "come on!" at the third defeat.

[@MusingsofaMildManneredMan]

Okay, fatherhood has really settled in now, we are seeing Pravus yearn for a nostalgic period in his gaming life, lol. /jk I loved CIV 4 back in the day, but I'd not go back to it now, too much of a clunky feel even though the gameplay experience could be argued to be more superior than CIV 6.

[@McHobotheBobo]

There is a bit of that but the modding scene is still active! Maybe give the Dune mod, Fall From Heaven 2 (possibly with modmods) or Final Frontier plus would suit you :) FFH2 specifically has some cool story campaigns!

[@Charles_Anthony]

Clunky feel? That's a strange phrase.

[@Chr1s_1986]

Die deafeat editing at the beginning is really funny to a Civ 4 mainly Deity player like me xD. Civ 4 is not a noob friendly game (and yes i call everyone that thinks playing Civ 5 and 6 makes him good at Civ 4 noobs since civ 5 and 6 are easy as f).

[@tomasduchan8275]

shout out to those, who started with Civilization I, like me

[@mrgibbons9995]

The stacking mechanic could of been neat to keep if they had a cap on how many. Might of been helpful for the lag issues late game can have on 6 for example due to number of different icons on map.

[@ivantumanov1015]

A stone start with mining already researched is god. Research masonry and build great wall at double speed and you never have to worry about fogbusting ever again.

[@ivantumanov1015]

You want to park a military unit not because enemies can walk in and kill you, but because a military unit in a city gives 2 happiness on all government types. Or maybe 1.

[@predarek]

As someone with a micro YT channel similar to yours (not related to this user at all, not a promo), it can be soul crushing to re-record a video… so to do it 4, 5 times? Phhhew you have the patience of a monk!

[@DebugMaster1234]

You should try bellwright, it's a newish game kind of like medieval dynasty but more with a war aspect to it

[@Knightaxe]

oh gods this took me back to all the multiplayer games i've played in this game.. THANKS!

[@KvalitetSystems]

Mutiplayer still exists

[@Knightaxe]

@@KvalitetSystems yeah but my friends don't play it and neither do I ^^

[@all_the_moga]

Love to see you do Civ 1 :D

[@weltraumvogel2]

15:00 because of the rounding "errors" some people used to 100/0 science and cash every other turn

[@foreng3095]

Love Civ 4! If you could try mods for it, would be lots of fun. Also Old World by Civ 4 lead designer is real good too.

[@pyroshilov8474]

As a mainly Civ 3 and Civ 5 player it's remarkable to see elements of both games kinda mish mashed into Civ 4. Changing Research funding which was a thing in 3 and unique leader traits like in 5. It's like seeing what they improved on from 3 and the forerunner of 5. i'm glad this was made

[@iofaccioitubi]

best civ so far

[@erikpeter1142]

What version of the game are you playing exactly? You have desert next to rivers, that's a bug that was fixed at some point (it should always be floodplains).

[@cole-nq1ru]

What a classic. The good old days

[@McHobotheBobo]

Ten hours and not running Beyond the Sword? Madness! But yes, Civ4 is the best of the series still imo, if only for the awesome modding scene! Cause vanilla Civ6 is THE civ game for now... (Civ7 looking at your unreleased self...)

[@kevu2473]

Would love to see the newer civs too

[@pistacheboi7104]

A shame you didn't get that juicy free civic from The Pyramids, but the UI doesn't seem to remind you for some reason.

[@panterxbeats]

would love to see more civ 4 vids :)

[@anightwithoutacloud]

I played a lot of civ 4. havent played much of ci5+ in civ 4 on higher dif you should likely pick a starting civ with the financial trait. vikings are good, they have a combat trait as well also you should maybe try to found a religion early on.

[@Boofski]

What is the music around 6:20? Is it music from CIV IV because if so it’s fucking beautiful

[@Unmannedperson]

I don't profess to have a great build order, but one rule I always follow is to NEVER build a worker first. Gotta get that capital city up to 2 or preferably 3 pop, so it can work that extra tile or two for science while you're pop-growth-locked building that worker. Especially since often that worker is nerfed at the start by a lack of available improvements locked behind research.

[@Christina-g4s]

It really depends, sometimes worker first is your best option. Sometimes an early religion is the best start. Slavery though is the ultimate for expansion on condition there is decent food and river tiles. Worker first would be best in that scenario. Jungle starts I just reroll the map 😂

[@kingbeef5076]

Worker first is considered the best build 95% of the time. The boost you get from improving tiles helps way more than the temporary halt to growth hurts you.

[@chalsfo]

AWESOME start - you place the city on flodplanes !!!!! WTF!!!! NO!!!

[@KasumiRINA]

20:25 "Alexander embraced Judaism..." Mel Brooks as Rabbi Tuckman: we nip the tip! *snaps mini-guillotine*

[@FwendlyMushwoom]

25:37 BRUH HOW ARE YOU STILL IN DESPOTISM THIS FAR INTO THE GAME LMFAO Why did you even build the Pyramids?

[@dantgc8005]

Cant wait to see you play civilization revolution for the Nokia/xbox

[@TheAndorianWarrior]

Often fans of the series look back on 4 with tinted glasses..... They forget it did have one major flaw.....the combat was awful. Defence was studiedly OP in the game.....a city with a few longbowmen and a wall could defend agaisnt 20 units. It was absurdly over the top.

[@klemklemius5091]

Are you a Mechanical Engineer?

[@MrTreefoz]

The Civ game I started with too!

[@truckingwithatablet4489]

@pravus you should play either Caveman2c9smos or Realism Invictus. That would be fun to watch.

[@kauciontheboss]

I don't understand why civ 6 doesn't have workers like this 🤷🏿‍♂️ makes the game more interesting seeing movement civ was the best one to me stacking armies and just playing 5-6 not so much

[@studmuffin1217]

Omg Civ 4 and the AI Panzer stack arrrgh

[@ivantumanov1015]

Deity on civ 5&6 is noble on civ 4.

[@Christina-g4s]

So you had all that river, the pyramids, and you didn't build a specialist capital?

[@njalsen]

Watching this was just silly, Did you really play it in the past? Bare minimum is to leave a unit in your cities just for happynes buff

[@darrenatter4161]

Would be a nice series if you played a few more games off line, watched some good players (lain, absolute zero, henrik) to understand better how the game plays and then come back and show. It's a really good game with lots more depth and balance than you show here. Play Beyond The Sword version as the last official version. Its far better than original. Best not to play Emperor for a while or you just won't win!

[@HeroNotFound05]

Day 92 asking Pravus to please play Eu4 Anbennar

[@Draugo]

What do you mean gold is not a high priority until you are running out of money? More gold is straight up more research. 100% of more is surprisingly more than 100% of less.

[@Christina-g4s]

Gold and commerce in this game are different things.

[@Christina-g4s]

Gold and commerce in this game are different things. Unfortunately most commentators use the terms interchangeably

[@umutucar2146]

Baba Yetuuuuuuuu.

[@savejeff15]

Ah yes, civ4, the last actually hard civ with pretty good AI. Also if you get into it, unit stacking makes more sense than you think. You just to know how to defend/utilize it. Thwre are enough mechanics to stop doom stacks. Especially in late game with airplanes

[@littlebear274]

I could never get into Civ 4. Every single other numbered Civ game I have hundreds if not thousands of hours in but I only ever managed about ten in 4, there's just something about it that's weirdly and viscerally off-putting to me. I actually re-purchased it recently to give it another go and racked up a full 104 minutes of play time before switching back to 6. 😂 Civ 3 was my real happy place out of the older ones.

[@sakura7431]

Civ 4 is the best!!!!

[@chillphill13]

Series potential???

[@ImOnlySIeeping]

should have settled on the stone

[@Chr1s_1986]

makes no scene he should rather have settled on tile left with his HQ on the river tho he gets the gold.

[@wisedaddybear3804]

I think civ 4 diplomacy and ai are their best attempt so far but civ v and vi military is superior. Diplomacy just hasn't felt right to me since 4.

[@ramiel7666]

Oh...the doomstacks.....now I remember why I stick with 5...the doomstacks were annoying.....the game is still awesome though.....

[@foreng3095]

Haha, instead mid-late game Civ 5/6 Combat is moving 40-60 one unit stacks around.

[@spritemon98]

I've never played civ 4

[@misacza3697]

Please play Civ 4 C2C mod. A video of your first impression just seeing where the playthrough takes you would be awesome. There is dynamic difficulty in BUG option (green thingy top left) that you can set to automatically adjust both your and the ai difficulty every x turns to help make the playthrough engaging.

[@joaoaraujo9629]

Lol I never played civilization ever I always played MMOs my all life it is my preferred style in pc gaming MMO looooooool

[@BrigadoonZyphoon]

Cause it SUCKS. Its far more tedious than I ever remembered it being. The interface is extremely cumbersome, the tech tree is redundant at times, and now I understand why they simplified some of the research paths in the sequels as its very easy to accidentally not tech something you need early on. The way barbarians works, or how slavery is the only good policy, or how you basically just build workers asap really pigeon-holes you into one way of playing the same way with every Civ. Personally, its just outdated now, the maps feel so small, the AI is barely there most of the time, and it has the stack-of-doom armies which was stupid then and hasn't aged well. Too much fiddling about with every specific unit or promotion is just annoying.

[@dalibordupor3979]

I still think Civ 5 is better but that it's up to debate.What is not is that cartoon total crap Civ 6.

[@regulusstarseed1368]

Go online multiplayer you will get fucking obliterated people are hosting games on steam still

[@sculkwizard]

Why not civ 6

[@littlebear274]

Maybe when we're waiting for Civ 9 to be released and he realises he hasn't played 6 in over a decade he will.

[@nathanspreitzer6738]

It’s worse and much easier so less content

[@fugjewtube1822]

Try caveman to cosmos

[@Sockerfee]

will you be playing civ 1, 2 or call to power 2? played them so much in their day would be fun to watch you play them