Sid Meier's Civilization® IV
BANGER · Strategy · 2006
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
A BANGER at $19.99.
- Length
- 13.6h
- Value
- $1.47/hr
- Reviews
- 92% positive
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Runs on Windows, macOS.
With over 6 million units sold and unprecedented critical acclaim from fans and press around the world, Sid Meier's Civilization is recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all-time. Now, Sid Meier and Firaxis Games will take this incredibly fun and addictive game to new heights by adding new ways to play and win, new...
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $2.99, set in January 2022. It has been discounted 51 times in the 14 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 9 weeks between sales. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 3 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 9 weeks.
Value puts it in the top 1 percent of the games it competes with. It is pricier than 93 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 97 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Sid Meier's Civilization® V ($29.99, scores 97) beats it on value, while it beats Sid Meier's Civilization® III Complete ($4.99, scores 81).
The math says it holds its tier up to $69.59, and you are being asked for $19.99.
Of the 409 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, none come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written April 2020 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 81 percent of the 357 reviews written there were positive, against 92 percent overall, and those are 13 percent of everything written about it.
Finishing takes 13.6 hours; clearing it takes 134, which is 9.8 times the campaign.
It came out 20 years ago and 620 were still playing it at the last check.
Players
620 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Civ 4 is the best Civ edition for many reasons. Always will be based on the downward trend of it's successors.
this is like hard drugs. You can't stop playing it. if you like games like risk then you'll love this game too much.
this game is awesome i haven't personally played much but one of the people i share this account with does and i love this game and find it fun so you can imagine how a person who probably put in 550 of the 556.9 hrs as of writing this loved this game i disagree because i love total war warhammer and conquest of eleysium but he says it's the best game of its genre
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
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Sid Meier's Civilization® IV scores 87/100 on the BANG Score (a BANGER). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/3900/sid-meier-s-civilization-ivThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 3, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.