Sid Meier's Civilization IV®: The Complete Edition

you can play as fu***** Ragnar Lothbrok, and of course, the mongols

Now that this game keep harassing me to rate it, I give it the lowest posssible rating for being user hostile

This or Civ 5 probably peak Civ. I do miss those stacks of doom.

To make long story short: I was expecting it to be closer to Civ 5 while it actually much closer to Civ 3. It's really good game, but unfortunatly I'm a dumb-ass casual

Let me start by saying that, as a longtime fan of the series, I firmly believe that there are no outright "bad" Civ games (at least in the main line of numbered entries anyway). However, there are definitely "weaker" and "stronger" entries in the series, and my personal experience with this one make me inclined to view it as one of the weaker ones. For starters, let me discuss some of the positive aspects of this game. The grpahics are excellent for their time, and still hold up reasonably well today. Likewise, the soundtrack is excellent, and might be the best CIv soundtrack of all time. Gameplay is varied and, I will admit, can become quite addicting. On top of the main game, there are a wide variety of interesting "scenarios" (essentialy shorter games with special rules) to choose from, with settings ranging from medieval Europe to World War II to outer space. All of this having been said, the actual gameplay has several issues that, at least in my experience, quickly turn the game into a slog in most cases. First off, scientific research, culture, income, and espionage all come from the same pool of points, and as such constant, irritating slider adjustments are needed lest one fall behind in any area. Likewise, city "specialists" and "Great People" must also be constantly micromanaged in order to consistantly get good results. Beyond the tedious economy, the game seems to reward war and rapid expansion over peaceful play and building, to the extent of almost railroading the player into frequent wars and reckless city building just to remain competative with the AI. To put it plainly, a game where you have to obsessively tweak sliders and move personel around, only to lose because Shaka or Ragnar steamrolled the entire map again is just not very fun to me. Some may call it "challenging", but I call it "furstrating". In conclusion, Civilization IV is not a "bad" game by any means, but it is one of the weaker entires in the Civilization series as a whole.