Are you guys out of NDA yet ? What's the verdict on Civ 3 ? Great, indifferent, or just ok ?

*Big* thumbs up from me. I don't hesitate to recommend it. I have a review going up on Gamespot soon (tomorrow?).

-Tom

Great. Thanks Tom. I'm looking forward to hearing your in-depth look, but that's basically what I was waiting to hear...

Yeah same here. Tom's tastes pretty much mirror my own. If Tom says its good then I am buying it.

I'm looking forward to the review.

Big thumbs up from me (and all the folks here at CGM), too. I've had to lock up my copy of the game, to keep myself from playing so that I can get some work done. It's as addictive as ever...

My copy finally arrived today. Of course *today* my wife is at her clinical, I have a deadline for tomorrow, and tomorrow is my anniversary. I sat here reading the manual while Sesame Street was on, reading it sort of wistfully.

Sid (and the gang) are going to start causing me major domestic problems.

-Andrew

PS: Interestingly the manual's credits make no mention of Brian Reynolds. You know, that guy who was lead designer on Civ2, who designed SMAC, who worked on the first prototypes of Civ3... no mention whatsoever. That strikes me as being a little ... I can't think of the right word. Think of one and insert it over the ellipses.

Why should Brian Reynolds be credited? What's this "Worked on the First Prototypes" position? Was that his title?

Brian Reynolds has been gone from Firaxis for a long time. There's no reason he should be in the CivIII credits.

-Tom

Well, he's only been gone for 10 months.

Also the credits do mention that Sid Meier was the designer of Civ1, then they skip to the Civ3 team, neatly avoiding Civ2 entirely. Brian was responsible for at least some of the "new stuff" in Civ2, and I'm assuming a bunch of his Civ2 & SMAC idears made it into Civ3. (I understand why SMAC isn't mentioned at all, it being an EA game.)

Also take into account that after Brian left, Firaxis changed their corporate profile to omit him completely. Understandable, until you remember that Brian was a key founder and partner in Firaxis when it began and there's no mention of that.

I'm also assuming that they didn't scrap the game completely when he left. He probably had some influence on this design you've been playing, it's only been, after all, 10 months. Contractually, he probably forwent credit when he left (with a large portion of the team), but I'm speculating that he deserves some mention somewhere. Maybe his leaving generated more bad blood than we heard previously.

Anyway, I only said it was interesting.

-Andrew

"Anyway, I only said it was interesting."

Ah, so 'interesting' was the word that you were looking for?

I don't know why you're trying to dig up theories about bad blood b/w Reynolds and Firaxis. Name another instance of someone leaving a company and then ten months later getting their name in the credits.

-Tom

Actually, according to the co-designer of Civ III, they did scrap all of the code after Reynolds left and Jeff Briggs wrote a new design doc.

"Ah, so 'interesting' was the word that you were looking for?"

No, "interesting" was the word I used ("interestingly") as for the word I was looking for (over the elipses), please take that at face value. I really don't know what it should be because I don't have the facts.

"I don't know why you're trying to dig up theories about bad blood b/w Reynolds and Firaxis."

Hmmm... that's quite an assumption but I can see why you'd go there. I'm really not digging for anything. It just seemed to me like Brian deserved a mention (the only person with more impact on Civ than Brian is Sid).

"Name another instance of someone leaving a company and then ten months later getting their name in the credits."

Can't think of one. Wait... I suppose Romero at ID may even be an analogous situation, and Romero wasn't credited for Quake III. Ok Tom, point taken.

For the record I interviewed Firaxis and then Brian Reynolds when the latter left to for Big Huge Games. Both parties insisted the parting was amicable.

-Andrew

>Name another instance of someone leaving a company and then ten months later getting their name in the credits.

- Jon Kromrey from Pool of Radiance 2 a year before its release.
- Tim Cain and the Troika team left over a year before Fallout 2 was released.
- Ben Smedstedt left about 6 months prior to release of BG2.
- Ed Del Castillo left Ultima IX: Ascension over a year before that game's release.

Those are just a few examples off the top of my head (all RPGs, heh). I do think it's unusual to not mention Reynolds, but it may have been required by Firaxis' lawyers, to avoid giving him any claim to royalties or other entitlements beyond his settlement terms (which may have also required the redesign/recoding, as Mark mentioned).

Stefan

Wow, good job Desslock.
I think you're right about the lawyers being involved (certainly a more reasonable explanation than "bad blood") but your examples are a bit different than what I'm talking about. All of those guys worked directly on the game they're credited for. Reynolds contribution to Civ3 lies more with his previous games. It's a more tenuous contribution to credit, especially given Mark's revelation (to me) that they scrapped the whole thing after he left back in January.

But the Civ designs build on each other, which is why I think Reynolds shouldn't be, er... written out of history. Anyway, no big deal. The game itself is great thus far.

-Andrew

For the record, what involvement I had with the early versions of the game was pre-December 1999, nearly two years ago--in other words I left Firaxis a few months after the project started.

Since I left to start Big Huge Games--a company that although specializing in real time games is still a competitor to Firaxis--I don't think you need to read anything special into the fact that they haven't chosen to do my PR for me. :-)

Have fun! Tim said he was going to the store pick up some Civ3's for us...

Brian

But even if they scrapped Reynolds' game designs for Civ III, he was instrumental in building Alpha Centauri and Civ III is apparently using a hell of a lot of that game's code and rules base judging by all the preview/review coverage.

Bub's right...it is odd that there isn't some kind of credit for BR.

--Dave

Argh! You beat my speculation and theories by one lousy minute Mr. Reynolds! ;)

--Dave

Hello Brian,
thanks for ducking in here and posting. We're all awaiting your initial announcement. What have you guys been up to? Feel free to post it here first. ;)

Also a bunch of us are still playing your PBEM SMAC. You'll find a few threads here regarding that.

-Andrew

I mentioned this once before and it got no response. So, what the hell, I'll beat my head against the wall one more time: :)

No need to tell anyone here that a lot of games come out E3 hotly anticipated and for one (or several) reason or another turn out to be major busts. So far, Civ III seems to be the rare opposite. To the extent any participant at E3 commented here on Civ III at all, it was to diss it. Now the reaction seems to be a unvisersal thumbs way up. I'm wondering why that is. Did Firaxis do a poor job of previewing it? Or does the E3 environment not lend itself to noticing the strengths of this type of game?

"Did Firaxis do a poor job of previewing it? Or does the E3 environment not lend itself to noticing the strengths of this type of game?"

Both. Jeff Briggs was pretty vague when asked specific questions about how the mechanics were being changed and how this would affect gameplay, and the demo I saw at E3 didn't give any insight into this, either. The changes in Civ3 are fundamental changes effected by very simple tweaks of mechanics. That's very hard (if not impossible) to discern at E3.

I agree with Tom and Ben that Civ3 is an excellent game and well worth buying. I hope that this doesn't mean MOO3 will suck.

P.S. It's also quite possible that like the interminable GTA3 thread shows, simple changes to a fundamentally great game can result in another great game, even if the actual side-by-side comparison seems to reveal only minor changes like a graphics update. One thing Civ3 has taught me is that even if you've played a series to death, a new iteration can re-ignite all the passion you felt for its predecessors simply with a new splash screen.

"I don't think you need to read anything special into the fact that they haven't chosen to do my PR for me."

Hey Brian,

Thanks for posting. Only on Quarter to Three can you have such an Annie Hall moment, but with Brian Reynolds instead of Marshall McLuhan!

-Tom

La-di-dah.
La-di-dah.
La-la.

Oh yeah? Well I happen to have Marshell McLuhan right here....

And with that, I'm off to buy Civ3.

>To the extent any participant at E3 commented here on Civ III at all, it was to diss it

There was a similar reaction to Civ II, especially from the buyers at the E3. CivII is probably the most underordered game (in anticipation of its initial release) in the history of PC gaming. For some inexplicable reason, a lot of people in the industry thought it would be a "modest" success, instead of a big event. I definitely got the same sense leading up to Civ 3, so I hope it exceeds expectations as significantly.

Stefan

I only dissed Civ 3 at E3 because Infogrames plastered it all over South Hall then had it behind closed doors. That just plain sucks.

--- Alan

It could be that Civ3 (style games) are difficult to promote at a sturm und drang event like E3. They aren't flashy, they don't grab your attention right away, the real meat (what's exciting about the game) is far below the surface. Any flashy gilding they could show off would amount to just that... gilding. And Infogrames wasn't letting people sit down and tinker with it enough to get a sense of what Firaxis was doing. A game like Civ thrills in it's balance, playability, the real "game" part of it. Not the flash, more the pan.

Before I looked at it, I recall hearing most of the "dissers" remarking that it looked like warmed over Civ2. Which actually got me pretty excited personally. That and the fact that Sid Meier actually is notable for not ever putting out a game that wasn't brilliant in some way (though I never tried CPU Bach).

I'm just happy that I played today at Monarch level and got thoroughly trounced. This is pretty thrilling actually as I graduated to Diety Civ2 level and Transcend SMAC level a long, long, time ago. There's a lot that's different here and my only real problem with my (very) early impressions are my trying to play it like Civ2. You just can't do that.

Oh, the manual is pretty damn good too. But the Collector's Edition isn't. Flimsy cardboard sleeve, "exclusive" video in friendly CD format (sure to be on the net soon), tiny foldout tech tree, not much to justify the addition $20... though I do like the cookie tin a lot.

-Andrew

"Not the flash, more the pan."

Ouch. You might want to look into what that metaphor means. :)

"Oh, the manual is pretty damn good too."

At first glance. But after my first ten hours, I had a pretty long list of questions that I couldn't answer with the manual.

For instance, when you guys figure out espionage, let me know...

-Tom, playing on Regent level

Tom Chick's Gamespot review

Nice job, Tom.

Got my copy today (we had to buy it) and can't wait to get home and play it. On Chieftain level. If I can get myself to stop playing Stronghold.

"Not the flash, more the pan."
"Ouch. You might want to look into what that metaphor means. :)"

Oh my! Figured flash = style and pan = substance. But it's a gold metaphor isn't it? Er, strike that. Reverse it.

-Andrew

Oooooh, this is gonna be tough. DAoC? Civ III? Relationship? Might as well just put'em all in a hat. It should be noted that studying for CPA exam doesn't go in the hat. Tom, your review is hypnotic to a compulsive gamer like me.

ps. Go Celtics!

"But it's a gold metaphor isn't it?"

Sorry, that's not right either. It's a metaphor based on flintlock firearms, in which a pan of gunpowder is ignited to set off the powder in the bore that fires the shot. A flash in the pan was essentially a misfire in which the pan lit, but the main charge wasn't ignited. It means something that's a brief hit, but that has no staying power.

If you'll come this way, we have some lovely consolation prizes for you.

-Tom

Really? That's very interesting. I must've gone automatically to a panning for gold metaphor. A flash in the pan meaning something very good among the silt and sand.

Of course your story is obviously correct, given how the phrase is used nowadays.

Should have gone with the safer steak n' sizzle metaphor....

-Andrew

My first reaction-- sweet mother of God, why is the map scrolling so apallingly slow? And one would think that the turns could execute nearly instantaneously on a 1.4ghz Athlon system.
Mind you, I'm not talking about the epic five hour Reagan-era turns. I'm talking about the tutorial on the first few turns.

Guys, seriously. This is ass-like performance. It's bad.

Alright, so after a while of playing III, here's a SMAC/Civ II-obsessive's evaluation of the game:

Micromanagement tedium is reduced. You can't do the boring tundra->plains three step transformation anymore, virtually all terrain tiles have an optimum configuration, and irrigation can only be dragged to your cities in a road-like manner from rivers/lakes. I've noticed most SMACX games I spend virtually all my damn time pushing terraformers and debating which of the zillions of improvements (boreholes! solar collectors! Raising terrain! Augh!) to build; not anymore. It's refreshing. Is this an outgrowth of Reynold's leaving? Oh yes, no sea terraforming, either; this makes natural harbors a lot more usefully, strategically-like, as cities with too many ocean squares will blow.

Similarly, military units no longer having home cities to suck production and happiness out of is so, so nice. The old concept was tactically interesting, but mostly led to an assload of re-homing produced units; just having them draw from the national treasury is a definite improvement.

Most importantly, there's no goddamn worms-that-eat-your-size-20-city-down-to-5-for-building-Taco-Bells. Screwing around with the sea levels is gone, too. Maybe the increasing green party obsessiveness of the series (I agree policy-wise, it was just Majorally Not Fun) was a Reynolds thing?

I'm producin' content!

Yeah, scrolling is pointlessly slow. Maybe the increased turn time is being used for AI?

Was a technology chart supposed to be included in the non-super-tin version? I don't think my box had one.

Great review, Tom. Any game that gets a 9.2 from you is one I'll stand in line to buy any day. (Especially when it's Civ 3!!) I'm definitely looking forward to getting my hands on a copy in the next couple days, if not tomorrow.

My super tin version (it is kinda neat actually) does contain the tech chart. It's a wide banner type deal with "Civ III" printed in huge letters on one side.

The bonus Disc, appropriately labeled "video", is just 140mb of videos. The "making of" video is somewhat revealing, in that they trump up aspects of the game that.. well, really don't matter. Do I care that the sound effects are perfectly synchronized with the unit actions? That the avatars have "emotions" and their faces react to your diplomacy in (gasp) REAL TIME?

But I gotta go back to my main complaint: why is this game so incredibly slow? Good god. I'm totally enjoying Advance Wars, so it's not like I have a bias against turn based games. But why in the world does it take 2 full seconds to bring up the stinking F5 city status screen? And the massively slow scrolling is totally unacceptable. Is it too much to ask for a smooth, responsive 2D game in this day and age? Not exactly Giants material here.

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention. The two videos are "making of" (~7 mins) and "Sid's induction into the hall of fame" (~4 mins).

I'm debating whether I want to go back to playing SMACX instead. The scrolling/unit recentering is really that slow (2 seconds), and this is on an Athlon 1400.

Civ 3 apparently has some problems with the latest GeForce 3 drivers. If you're using XP, go back to the original XP drivers and there are no scrolling problems.

Can anyone confirm this GeForce3 problem? It's enough to make me wait for a patch, personally.

Maybe,
There's a tiny bit of lag, but it mostly occurs as a slight stutter when scrolling (not a constant problem) and a lag between turns hitherto unknown to Civ. This is likely a product of animated peice movement and I wonder if turning the animation off would speed it up?

I'm on a Radeon and I wouldn't call any of the scrolling problems "annoying."

-Andrew

"Civ 3 apparently has some problems with the latest GeForce 3 drivers. If you're using XP, go back to the original XP drivers and there are no scrolling problems."

I'll try that.. thanks for the tip.

"This is likely a product of animated peice movement and I wonder if turning the animation off would speed it up?"

I tried turning just about everything off in the video options, but it was still extremely sluggish.

Chris,

I'm using the 21.83 Detonator drivers with a GeForce3 and don't have a scrolling problem.

-Tom

Tom, I believe it's a Windows XP/Win2k/NT4 issue--he said "If you're using XP". Are you using an NT-kernel Microsoft OS?

While we're on the subject of minor-but-annoying Civ3 bugs...it has issues with multiple monitors, at least on Windows 2000. Makes it very hard to scroll in the direction that monitors are shared in. (that's what I get for trying to play at work :) )

Other than that, so far it's been golden. A couple of hours in, and it's clear that while the basics are the same, the game is actually played a lot differently from past Civs.

Civ 3 is a piece of garbage nearly as awful as GTA 3. It's just Quake with diplomacy -- and haven't we been down THAT path before.

No thanks.

One of my favorite things about Civ2 and Alpha Centauri is that I can do other things while playing it. I can take turns at my leisure. I read that civ3 won't run in a window and you can't alt-tab out of it. Can anyone confirm this? If so, I guess I'll stick with civ2.

>Civ 3 apparently has some problems with the latest GeForce 3 drivers

Pool of Radiance 2 had the same problem (still does), but I think that was due to the use of anti-aliasing functions on the card.

Stefan

Yes, you can alt-tab out of CivIII. If you have another program to alt-tab to. Otherwise, you'll have to use ctl-esc. Unfortunately, it seems to keep your desktop at 1024x768. :(

As for me, my GeForce3, and my detonator drivers, it seems I'm not getting scrolling problems because I'm not using WindowsXP. Hooray for 98SE!

After at least 30 hours (egads!), I haven't seen a single lock-up or crash in CivIII and I alt-tab a lot.

-Tom

'I read that civ3 won't run in a window and you can't alt-tab out of it. Can anyone confirm this? If so, I guess I'll stick with civ2.'

You can alt-tab out of it and run it under a window; I've done both.

Thanks to Tom and Jason! That's the last excuse I needed to buy it...

I'm using the 21.83 drivers on 2000sp2 with no scrolling problem. I'm surprised the inability to pick resolution/refresh rate from a menu isn't getting more attention.

I'd also like to hear Sid's opinion on the decision not to include MP and a full-fledged scenario editor - I can see these being hacked together soon.

The game is good, but since I've been playing SMAC MP and not civ2, there are plenty of little timesavers in SMAC they didn't bother to include (or implemented imperfectly). Maybe they'll fix some of these up in the inevitable patches.

I'm lightly a little annoyed that a world map only exists in the scenario options and apparently you can't have civs start in their historic location.

I can't begin to explain why, but over 50% of my Civ2 games took place on the real world maps with rivals in their proper starting places.

Imagine my surprise when I, as the Romans, started in South America... ah well, someone will figure this out. I can't be the only one who played the game that way.

-Andrew

I have a bit of a scrolling problem too with my home box; Geforce 2 MX on a Celeron 450, so it's a bit under the weather as a box goes. The new XP 1700+ will hopefully run a little faster. Will try it on the P3/600 at work and see what happens (it has a Geforce 2 MX too).

--- Alan

"I'm lightly a little annoyed that a world map only exists in the scenario options and apparently you can't have civs start in their historic location."

I agree - this blows. I hope there is a way to do it. Maybe it isn't well documented?

I don't think there's a way to force that situation, short of possibly creating a scenario on the earth map with capital cities already placed.

Amusingly, I just finished a random game with all the European/African powers on an eastern supercontinent and all the American powers on a western supercontinent.

"Finished" here being "having my ass handed to me."

"Finished" here being "having my ass handed to me."

Ain't that the truth. After consistently beating Civ2 and SMAC, I'm shocked to be consistently quitting games before the Industrial Age, as the clear loser. On, now, geez... the Regeant difficulty level. I'm not frustrated, I'm impressed. And now I'm studying the manual.

My problem comes from an economic collapse right around the move to Monarchy. Ah, I think it's that whole units cost gold thing. That and I still have that Civ2 aversion to setting your production queue to collect money. Now it seems necessary as you run out of things to build from time to time.

-Andrew

Back to the original question:

I think Civ3 is once again a game that is much more than the sum of its parts. There are going to be plenty of moronic web reviews out there from people who graduated from the "intro on history of game, describe graphics, describe sound, describe gameplay, describe multiplayer, conclusion" school of games journalism.

If you pull out individual features, like the graphics or sound, you can look at it and say "this is adequate, even decent, but not world-class." The sound, for example, is just fine, but nothing to write home about. Same with the graphics - it's probably the first game in the line you could call "attractive" but there are far prettier strategy games out there.

But to analyze the game in this way misses the point entirely. It's fun. It's SUPER fun. It keeps you up past your bedtime. And the reason why it's so fun can't be convienantly summed up with easy web-games-journalism standys like "the physics are neat" or "look at the awesome animations."

Apologies to everyone here who writes GOOD stuff for the web. I was just making a point. =)

"It's fun. It's SUPER fun. It keeps you up past your bedtime. And the reason why it's so fun can't be convienantly summed up with easy web-games-journalism standys like "the physics are neat" or "look at the awesome animations.""

To me, the key to Civ3 is that below the graphics, sound, animations, etc., is a very solid and balanced GAME. With gameplay rules that are balanced, run deep, yet Sid and Co., once again, have somehow made the game extremely accessible. I was thinking about this today. Civ3 (and the rest) are games that are very complex, turn-based, slow paced, yet, at the same time, they hurtle you forward by always giving you something to do, to build, to react to. A slow thoughtful game where you're constantly completing turns. Sid has a great quote that describes this, something about always having meaningful decisions to make.

And I love the music.
And I'm surprised how much I like the combat animations. The other animations I can do without and I miss the Wonder movies. My favorite animation has to be the Warrior's fortify and sound effect. "Ugn!"

Oddly they retained a weird sound effect from Civ2. Notice the cheer that goes up when you improve your palace. Anyone else hear a duck?


-Andrew

After enduring the very familiar pain of "another turn" syndrome I'd have to agree, hey, this is Civ and it's addictive as hell. I *finally* got a good game going after hours of banging my head against the wall. I'm behind in almost everything but I have a somewhat decent population, built 2 wonders, and even survived a rocky transition to monarchy, albeit late I guess (in the 900 AD or so).

I dunno if it's because my research is slow, but I find myself using the moneymaking as much as possible between new research and new units, even in the early going when it was hard for me to start up a treasury of any kind. The AI strategy is obvious -- build as many cities as early as you can. I think a good strategy would be let your major cities get up to 4, build settlers, then start the cycle over again.

Had a good game going before that, then a barbarian uprising occurred -- holy crap. The computer was stacking cavalary 12 deep in three stacks against my major cities and basically pillaged them to death. Stupid me, only have one defender ... but still. Jeez.

OH, and in case anyone is curious that doesn't have the game or hasn't looked, yes all there's a lot of text files for you to fool around with, as well as a scenario builder.

--- Alan

Okay well I bought it at lunch. Jason, how did you get it to run in a window? I don't see an option for that.

From the readme:

'*Video Mode=1792 / Video Mode=1600 / Video Mode=1280 / Video Mode=1152 - Force screen resolution to one of these settings'

It also works for 1024. If you set your resolution to 1152x864 or higher, you can add the above line to the Civilization3.ini file to make the game run in a window.

There's not all that much reason to, though, as it'll alt-tab out to other running applications just fine. The windows hotkey to minimize it also works.

-I will preface this with I have been playing on and off civ 3 for the past 8 hours. I started loosening up about 2 hours ago-


Worst interface ever.

I still play civ 2, i almost always have a game going. I hated CTP, after hearing everything i heard here, I expected a polished perfect version of civ.

This is not.

Some of the simplest interface issues are counter intuitive. When I pick what I am going to build, why not close the popup when I click on it?

Why is there no information on the build drop down? Sorry I don't have time to memorize the units - can't I get a hint? Much of the interface has this feel of thrown together at the last minute - wtf took so long to finish? The AI?

Why not tell me something about the city i am right clicking on? Oh! Its on a plain! Thanks. I hate games that ignore I own a mouse with two buttons, why delegate the right mouse button to one useless task? I don't remember who is red and who is blue - why can't you tell me so I can attack who just called me to war.

I admit - I have not read the manual. If that was required for a class, I would look for the copy that was already hilighted. Who needs to read that much crap for a game, am I really going to remember all that crap? Do I want to? So maybe there is a big secret, but in civ2 - with no manual - I could click on any advisor and it would be helpful. Its a big jumbly mess here.

Why if I am american, do i have the crazy racial mix of advisors? Besides sid's image as the science advisor, the white guy is the warrior. Yay! Even civ3 lets me know all white guys are nothing but violent brutes. Except of course for sid. If sid didn't put his own image in the game, I am sure he would have followed advertising's racially acceptable idea that all tech people are asian.

Why will the auto build never build a worker? Why if I automate my workers, will they run to and fro to complete tasks instead of saving turns and doing them in a logical order?

Get off the freaking abe lincoln fetish already. Yes, sid you are right - you are a better person because you think our country started when we freed the slaves, most of us think of George Washington as our founding father, but thanks again for the slam on our cultural heritage.

Who keeps moving the X from the top to the bottom of the screen? There is also some crazy graph I can't find right now that is, I guess, a new breed of graphs. Smudgy lines about everyone playing.

A few years ago i bought my niece a play kitchen. To fill it out I bought a a bunch of play food including plastic hamburgers in plastic buns. That is exactly what the 'villages' in civ3 look like. And why if you choose the default quick game is the begining nothing more than a hunt for the burgers?

Why can't I just play it in a window? Alt-tabbing is ugly. I am in that mode right now and nothing is wrapping in my browser. Edit a text file? Why don't I just install linux, some free c compiler and hack my own emulated version of civ 3? God knows it would be so uncool to just check a check box - run in a fucking window. I guess they couldn't spare the processor power that is needed - i guess - the game play speed is sporadic at best.

These points might seem minor - but play AOEII, the interface is perfect and intuitive. There are alot of nice touches to CIV3 that I like but it really does not feel like a finished product to me.

Chet

"Worst interface ever."

Obviously you haven't played CivII recently... ;)

I agree that there is room for improvement, but aside from the weird "double click on menu items to select" thing, most of it becomes pretty transparent after you play for a bit.

What is this Chet?
Is this your bid to challenge Jeff Atwood in the November primary?

Greetz...

-Andrew

Yes, because any pointed criticism of a game immediately makes you persona non grata here. Positive comments only, folks.

I do play civ2. Have you played it recently? While the new interface is different, I don't see it as an improvement.

Another weird change is the screen when you meet or negotiate with another leader. It doesn't have the same impact that you are talking to another leader, it just seems like another one of your multicultural management team.

On the save/load screen - instead of listing the period I am in and the name of the leader, why not list the date/time of the save? Similar to CIV2 it becomes confusing after a few started and abandoned games.

These are small things, but I find CIV 3 full of these things that take away from the overall game. Does anyone know, did they have some ship date they were forced to meet?

When I play AOEII, I think here is a team that is playing the games I am playing and fixing what annoys me about those games. CIV3 makes me think the team just isolated themselves and just thought they were working on a classic that should not incorporate improvements seen in other games in the genre.

Chet

'Worst interface ever.'

Whoa there. Ever play Rebellion?

The only annoyances I have with the game is the lack of a sentry command, the civlopedia isn't linked in quite everywhere it needs to be, and the governor's kooky auto-build suggestions that I haven't gotten around to fixing yet. Other than that, it's a slightly simplified version of Civ 2.

And one made much more complex with Culture. I'm engaged in a bloodless battle right now with the Persian cities on my border. I'm this close to converting both to my side....

Also, Chet, the military advisor is Jeff Briggs. Or it looks a lot like him anyway. I honestly don't understand why the multi-cultural advisors would bother anyone though, especially in this age of Powell and Condeleezza (or however she spells it)... And you got a problem with Lincoln? Heh, I'd rather it was Clinton. There's a face begging for that style of animation.

-Andrew

'And one made much more complex with Culture.'

Yeah, they basically took away the busywork complexity (terraforming, trade) and added high-level planning complexity. Ye ha, I say.

The more I play the more I think this is a dramatically different game than Civ2 (and SMAC). That isn't meant as hyperbole.

-Andrew

"I admit - I have not read the manual. If that was required for a class, I would look for the copy that was already hilighted. Who needs to read that much crap for a game, am I really going to remember all that crap? Do I want to? So maybe there is a big secret, but in civ2 - with no manual - I could click on any advisor and it would be helpful. Its a big jumbly mess here."

Thanks Chet, your review sold me on the game, and I bought it tonight. I couldn't wait to get a game with a decent manual! Although, I must say that at first glance I like the SMAC one better.

I have to say I've really enjoyed playing Civ III the last couple of days, it's really taken me out of the loop somewhat as I've lost about 10-15 hours without realising it. While it is definitely a great game, I have to agree with the niggles mentioned in here over the interface. Chet is right about the city building list not closing or allowing you to see what each building does, and I also can't understand why they took out the sentry option, as this was something I used a lot in Civ I & II. There are also other things, such as it no longer tells you that your trireme/galley has sunk because it is in deep water; it just disappears. You also have to keep an eye on your cities because they will build things without being asked, and I would constantly find myself having to disband unwanted warriors. I can't understand why they think I would want my production queue altered without asking me first.

The game now feels a little forced, as if they have decided that there is one way to play the game, and that is how you will play it. The earlier civs were much more free-form, this one feels as if you have to follow reality and can't have anything fantasy at all. I used to enjoy the ability I had in earlier civs to be able to build SETI in 2000BC, and bombard my opponents chariots with battleships in the dark ages. Now it is much slower paced, and you have to research all the techs before you move on, no disregarding feudal age until the 20th century. Ok, researching ironclads in Civ I without ever researching ironworking was stupid, but forcing you to learn techs doesn't seem right. It does appear, however, that they have removed the penalty that made already learnt technologies slow your speed of learning. I seem to be able to pick up loads of free techs without my time to next technology changing.

I think what has annoyed me most so far is the change to irrigation. No longer can you irrigate tiles next to the sea, nor hills or tundra, but only those tiles next to rivers and lakes. While this is more "realistic" it does lead to some very stupid situations. Playing on the real world map I find that none of Britain, Spain, France or Germany is irrigible, and yet I can get to work turning the sahara into a fertile paradise in 4000bc. In my current game I have had to take on a major irrigation project to turn my capital, Moscow, into farmland. This has involved chopping through three tiles of thick forest, and diverting water from the black sea, via the urals, a distance of some several thousand miles in reality. You'd think it would be easier to use the Volga...

And for that matter, has anyone taken a close look at the real world map in the editor? Either someone has hijacked my copy, or that map was drawn by a five year old. Europe is a mess, and Britain is only recognisable in its vicinity to the landmass that passes for Europe. Even on the largest size, Britain looks like nothing but a blob, and has this mysterious island off the north coast that doesn't appear on any map of the world I have ever seen. The only thing I can think of is that they thought the shetlands deserved its own blob, but that Ireland, an island 100 times its size, didn't. The "real" world maps currently have me baffled, so any explanations on how those work would be well received.

Don't get me wrong, I am really having fun with the game, but...well it could have been better.

Tim.

The real world map looks better if you use the HUGE one. But I agree with all your complaints except:

"I used to enjoy the ability I had in earlier civs to be able to build SETI in 2000BC, and bombard my opponents chariots with battleships in the dark ages."

You're talking about the old Cheat menu, right?

I'm still having major growing pains/problems with Warfare. I can't seem to get anywhere in war, I only achieve tiny goals and then lose them. Part of it is how you're slowed in enemy terrain, and can't heal (unless you get that late Small Wonder - Battlefield Medicine), and the other part is my forces are wrecked and can't always suppress dissidents... or enemy culture robs me of the prize too fast. Ah well, I figured out the economy, doubtlessly the key to war lies in heroes.

Btw.

A good learning tool/confidence builder is to play on a Small or Tiny world against two or three Civs. On a Pangea map you can theoretically carve out enough room for 7-10 cities, which makes everything more manageable, so you can concentrate on learning the game, and winning, without worrying about a rival building 25 cities and over-running you. Anyway, I'm winning at Regent now using this artificial system, but it's a peaceful Culture based win. All wars have been stalemates.

One thing I like (realistically speaking - maybe, maybe not gameplay speaking) is the sheer magnitude of war in the late game. When everyone has Pacts. Go to war in a border dispute and suddenly it's a true World War with everyone getting yanked into the fracas.

Ferdinand is dead; Europe is in flames.
-Andrew

Well, I'm going to echo my previous complaint. This game is SLOW. And I don't mean in terms of "it's a turn based game", I mean in lack of responsiveness to UI elements. Why does it take 2 full seconds to bring up every single status screen? It's like the whole darn thing is mired in molasses. I've tried updating video drivers, turning off every single option in preferences.. nothing helps.

I can't even remember the last game I installed that performed this poorly. Did the developers just decide to punt on the whole concept of responsive, quick resolution to turns?

Go backwards in drivers, Jeff. It's a Nvidia driver issue.

'There are also other things, such as it no longer tells you that your trireme/galley has sunk because it is in deep water; it just disappears.'

That's wierd, as it zooms to the ship and says "sunk" for me.

Jeff,
I'm just not finding it that slow. In fact it's much faster than most turn based games I've played, but admittedly slower than previous Civ games... which are much, much, older. (Civ2 '95, SMAC '99, and many would say those were well behind their time when released graphically).

Maybe it is an XP or Nvidia problem? As has been suggested before, I think, I wasn't really following those posts.

I will say this, and it may not be a consolation, Firaxis is very good about incorporating user suggestions as well as fixes in their patches.

"Did the developers just decide to punt on the whole concept of responsive, quick resolution to turns?"

Perhaps. Punt is probably a good analogy. They got the game working and balanced, which were key and they met their deadline. Now they're going to hopefully go the distance with better field position than a buggy, crashy, un-balanced game would allow.

-Andrew

The game seems just as quick as previous versions, and not unacceptably, or even noticeably, slow.

""I used to enjoy the ability I had in earlier civs to be able to build SETI in 2000BC, and bombard my opponents chariots with battleships in the dark ages."

You're talking about the old Cheat menu, right?" - Andrew

No cheats, honest, although I think my record for SETI was around 1200BC in Civ I in all honesty.

"'There are also other things, such as it no longer tells you that your trireme/galley has sunk because it is in deep water; it just disappears.'

That's wierd, as it zooms to the ship and says "sunk" for me." - Jason

I took the galley down to the antartic, so perhaps that is why it didn't work for me. Every civ release so far has had some kind of problem with the artic regions. The first one was incredible, as building cities on the artic would send it into an apoplexy, giving you cities with 255 everything, production, pollution, etc. I actually used to love all of the bugs, I guess there must be something wrong with me.

Another bug found. This one happens if you have >8 AI civs. Late game, after the map fills up and some cities have changed hands, in some cases trying to load a save errors out -- DataIO error in CITY or something ike that.

I just noticed a couple of other annoying things.

When another country contacts you for anything, including asking you to wage war - you can't pullup any intelligence screen, you can't compare the two countries, you can't even check the map to see where they lay. That is amazingly annoying, it is such a major oversight that I really do think they never play tested it.

When the popup asks you what to build, if you choose to change it and then decide not to, you can't hit escape to leave the menu. You have to reselect the item.

I do like some aspects of the game. I just wanted it to be right. CIV2 is my most played game by far. I thought CTP was terrible. I hated smac with its obscure tech tree. I just find that CIV3 is amazingly unpolished. For a game this long in development I don't see why it should be so bad.

Another minor personal thing. The new font sucks. It looks just like some plain windows font they used to make it easier to change the text in the game. At least in CIV2 they created their own font.

Chet

'I took the galley down to the antartic, so perhaps that is why it didn't work for me. Every civ release so far has had some kind of problem with the artic regions. The first one was incredible, as building cities on the artic would send it into an apoplexy, giving you cities with 255 everything, production, pollution, etc. I actually used to love all of the bugs, I guess there must be something wrong with me.'

Yeah, those old MOM-era bugs were so hilarious that half the time you didn't mind. There's an entry in the MOM faq about someone finding a hero with every special ability in the game, including Build City.

'Another minor personal thing. The new font sucks. It looks just like some plain windows font they used to make it easier to change the text in the game. At least in CIV2 they created their own font.'

If you want to, you can probably replace it; just do a replace on the LSANS.fot/ttf in the Civ3 directory.

This might be heresy to say... but though Civ 3 is pretty good... some of the aspects of CTP2 i actually like better. I dont know but i seem to like the endgame play of CTP 2 alot more than Civ 3's... the nuke wars in CTP2 near its endgame are cool, and the unattainability of the gaia project are cool aswell. Though, to be honest, i havent played too much Civ 3 yet... so not completely sure.

There is polish with the Civ 3 graphics which make it more appealing than any other civ type game.. but i really dont think this game has anything completely new, except the cultures which are cool.

so far, i like the game but am left a little lukewarm about it being excellent.

etc

I shouldn't criticize it to harshly as I am enjoying the game, and I haven't even managed to complete an entire game yet, as I keep starting new ones. The real acid test will be when I get to the late stages of the game, where I will see how they have remedied the mire that was the late games of Civ I & II. If they've made the late game nearly as enjoyable as the start, then they will have done a good job in my opinion.

What is interesting for me, is that my favourite change so far is the way the game handles unit support. Unfortunately that idea was lifted straight from Call to Power, which sucked lol.

Oh, when I exchanged maps with the Greeks in my first game, I got to see every city on the map, even new ones built by civilizations that the Greeks had never met. Is that a bug, or a feature of playing on the easiest level?

Tim.

'This might be heresy to say... but though Civ 3 is pretty good... some of the aspects of CTP2 i actually like better.'

Why didn't the steal CTP's public works model for terraforming? Does it really add that much to the gameplay to push the blasted little worker people all over the map instead of just saying "build me a road here?"

'Oh, when I exchanged maps with the Greeks in my first game, I got to see every city on the map, even new ones built by civilizations that the Greeks had never met. Is that a bug, or a feature of playing on the easiest level?'

The AI likes to trade maps among themselves. They always manage to uncover the entire map really early on; I've resorted to refusing to trade my map until I know they've ran all over my territory and have it anyway, as it makes a big difference in AI war-fighting effectiveness.

Why do some of my cities shift all my extra people (entertainers) to taxmen during a time of war? Nice way to screw my city, but is that based on some historical war fact I have never head of?

Also back on the annoying PC'ness of the game. Why are the only white guys in my entire city the tax collectors? I am America, a nation founded by white guys. I guess since sid has abe as the founding father, they figured he would have freed the slave and imported mexicans during the revolutionary war.

Why can't my workers find something to do once I developed everything but still have a problem with pollution? I am stuck either parking them all and then going thru the annoying stack click fest, of hitting space all the time. Also why will they all rush to go a long distance to get some pollution - knowing only one will clean it up at a time unless i control them - when they know more pollution will be appearing where they are rushing away from?

Which is another wacky problem. By the end the game it is sorta like watching an aquiarium. I am fine with that, the units are taking care of themselves, no annoying trading to have to keep moving around. But events like civil unrest, starving or my influence expanding are just skipped over as quickly as an enemy moving a worker. So instead of being able to look away from the screen while it takes the 2-3 minutes to perform a turn, I am forced to sit there with my eyes glued to the screen to see if something bad is happening. That sucks. That makes the game almost unplayable by the end.

Also the castle/reward building? That was cute back in the 30's but come on... They didn't spend their time on the graphics, or the interface - I see gaps in the AI - so was most of the time just gutting out what reynolds did and adding some nice PC touches?

I think Tom really missed the boat in his review. Simple things like having your enemy's colors appear while negotiating with him to remind you of what land he controls - to never being able to access any intelligence on a nation when you need it most. I am begining to hate this game - not only for not being that polished, but because of the things it does right takes away from my wanting to play CIV2. So CIV3 has somehow ruined 2 games for me. Yay!

Chet

For those of you who don't own civ3 and some of the above may not be easy to grasp.

Here is a streamlining of the interface for you.

Do you remember powermonger when you wanted to switch generals? You had to do the amazingly clunky task of clicking on another general. That was way back in the dark ages of gaming - way back 15 years ago.

Thankfully in the new age of gaming, when you go to your city screen and want some control, you want to go to the governor screen. They don't clutter the already stark screen with a picture of yet another minority - no - this task that you will access at least a few times everygame is accessed by hitting the G key.

Sure, I know - hitting the G key, how hard is that? How hard is it to make a screen that is pertinent to the current screen accessible thru a click? I am pretty sure that is covered in UI 101.

Obscurity is not functionality. This is only one small example of a game filled with such quirks.

Chet

>I think Tom really missed the boat in his review.

You have a few valid points, Chet, but you also need to RTFM. And you're high.

>Why do some of my cities shift all my extra people (entertainers) to taxmen during a time of war?

Turn off governor management of happiness.

>Why are the only white guys in my entire city the tax collectors?

Depends on which 'culture' you're playing. There are different ethnicities in the game, which have an effect on diplomatic predispositions. I've seen plenty of white folks beyond the tax collectors.

>Why can't my workers find something to do once I developed everything but still have a problem with pollution?

You can set parameters for what your AI workers do with different commands. Check the manual or the hot key list in the Civilopedia.

> So instead of being able to look away from the screen while it takes the 2-3 minutes to perform a turn, I am forced to sit there with my eyes glued to the screen to see if something bad is happening.

I fully agree. This is my main complaint: the turns during the end game are interminable, especially in times of war.

But you seem preoccupied with minutiae like the race of your tax collectors. What do you think of the way the map is used? The resources? The new combat model? The victory conditions? The better AI? The streamlined tech tree? The flexibility of diplomacy? The civilization attributes and unique units? The new graphics? The importance of rivers and roads? The right click functionality? The model for culture and national borders? The way luxuries modify happiness? The minor wonders? Armies? The advantages of cavalry and artillery? The new routines for air power and espionage?

If you play another civ, I think you'll find that most of your citizens are white. Then you might be able to appreciate the other elements of the game.

-Tom

"You can set parameters for what your AI workers do with different commands. Check the manual or the hot key list in the Civilopedia."

Or better still, let's take a step back and look at the big picture. How about getting rid of workers altogether? I think the whole concept of workers is clunky and tedious. The fact that you have an 'automate' option for workers speaks volumes.

"I fully agree. This is my main complaint: the turns during the end game are interminable, especially in times of war."

The end game? Hell, they're interminable after the first 100 years. You guys must have the patience of saints, or else have a LOT of time to kill. My turns can't execute fast enough. I want it to be damn near instantaneous. Is that too much to ask for a 2D game in an era of 2ghz processors? Evidently it is.

And I also think the interface is unnecessarily clunky, though I'm not as angry about it as Chet is. I understand the desire to simplify and streamline, but there are too many screens and clicks required to get to a lot of key information. If they made it MUCH, MUCH faster I wouldn't mind so much, but..

"Also the castle/reward building? That was cute back in the 30's but come on... They didn't spend their time on the graphics, or the interface"

Yeah, I agree with this one, to a point. I like the graphics a lot. I also miss the Wonder movies. Sure, you stop watching them eventually but I recall loving the little reward/break they'd provide. Plus, Mike Ely's SMAC Project movies were fantastic.

"I guess since sid has abe as the founding father,"

No, he has Abe as the leader. Why is this a problem? I mean:

Mao didn't found China, Joan of Arc didn't found France, Cleopatra didn't found Egypt, Hiawatha, Elizabeth, Ghandi, etc., Firaxis just took a popular or more recognizable figure. I mean, if they're going to use Bismark for Germany, why not Abe for America?

-Andrew

Is everyone but me playing huge maps or something? I'm in the 1550s on a completely industrialized normal-sized world now, and the turns only take about 5 seconds to calculate, plus animation time for moving AI units of about 5 seconds.

There's some annoying bits that aren't polished, Chet, but I can't think of any game, ever, that couldn't use a bit more. AOE II excepted, that is.

They're currently taking patch suggestions from the hyper-obsessives over on the apolyton.net forums, I think.

Tom - first I have read some of the manual now - but with any manual that large, there is a good chance you are going to miss what you are looking for, especially if you don't know what you are looking for (how am i supposed to guess the bizarre control scheme?) Also there are many things I do like, as I said, that is the problem. I do like the combat now, I also like the trade and diplomacy. The thing I always hated about civ2 was the lack of borders, I think they did a great thing with the culture and border expansion. The tech tree is okay, I am unsure if i like the age jumping or not, it is different and i can live with it. Air power definite improvement, espionage... maybe - okay.

But turn off the governor because there is a flaw in governor AI? Is that acceptable now? I would much prefer a game where the AI behaves sensibly.

I am half joking about the ethnicity of the characters, but I am not about the interface, the screens or the graphics. They are horrible. Horrible. Hell, Rollercoaster Tycoon handles some of these aspects better.

Not to put words in your mouth, but to me, you seem to be treating this as a game from a minor or small developer. If this was from a developers like stardock, I would think, good start, would love to see what they do next. As it is, this is not an AAA title from an AAA developer. That is what I expected. I did not expect a nice effort from a guy in his basement.

And how does a game get a 9.2 when by the middle of each game it is almost unplayable? What if in high heat baseball the game started to bog down by the 7th inning and the last two innings of each game were almost unplayable? Would that get a 9.2? That issue is not some minor point that can be ignored, it is a major gameplay issue that effects every single game you play of civ 3.

Chet

Chet,

"As it is, this is not an AAA title from an AAA developer."

I'm not sure how you figure this. Because of your issues with the interface, it's knocked out of AAA standing? I disagree. I like the interface. There are a about a half dozen things I hope they'll change, but overall, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

To my mind, CivIII is a mature and confident design from a veteran developer. I think it's a wonderful game, easily among the year's best strategy games. It's certainly a candidate for game of the year for me.

"And how does a game get a 9.2 when by the middle of each game it is almost unplayable?"

Unplayable? Poppycock! I do not consider the computer taking a long time to take its turn "unplayable".

-Tom

Ok, I'm thinking I'm going to start disabling "Diplomatic Victory" from now on. I won a game at it as the #2 of 3 remaining Civs (2 others had been wiped out). I built the UN and the timing was such that France was pounding the hell out of the Greeks, so they sided with me. I won, sure. But it was a cold victory.

The reason I'm going to turn it off is because there doesn't seem to be any balance to it. You can build the UN by 1860 (if you path towards it) and you only have to be the most powerful peaceful civ to win. The trouble, as I see it, is if you aren't quite as popular as you think the enemy wins and the game is over.

How is that fun?

Admittedly, it's a nice option for those wanting a shorter more decisive game.

On a side note I really think the modern era could benefit from an Elect Planetary Governor option. Bonuses, measures to pass, etc., I wish the AI would notice atrocities. The Greeks came in during a war, in 1943 in one game, and they RAZED TWO SIZE 10 CITIES!

The other Civs didn't bat an eye and that feels wrong. It's something they should probably fix.

In that light the UN Wonder should be that you get more sway to punish your foes. Maybe you could use the UN to force embargoes or even putative warfare coalitions. Much like the real world.

-Andrew

'The reason I'm going to turn it off is because there doesn't seem to be any balance to it. You can build the UN by 1860 (if you path towards it) and you only have to be the most powerful peaceful civ to win. The trouble, as I see it, is if you aren't quite as popular as you think the enemy wins and the game is over.'

Yeah, they need to do some more work there. It's highly silly; it's not as hard as it was in SMAC, and with the economic victory option you could try to take out their capital within 10 or 20 turns to make them have to try again.

'On a side note I really think the modern era could benefit from an Elect Planetary Governor option. Bonuses, measures to pass, etc., I wish the AI would notice atrocities. The Greeks came in during a war, in 1943 in one game, and they RAZED TWO SIZE 10 CITIES!'

Apparently the Civ you do it to hates you, but la-de-da. Sanctions once you reach the modern era sounds appropriate.

I checked the manual but the problem remains. If towards the end of the game you have developed all of your land, you either have to stack your workers, have them keep redeveloping the same land (this just seems stupid) or hit space bar as you wait to take care of pollution. There is no way to stick them in some limbo waiting for pollution. Auto just returns control to you. This issue existed in CIV2, I was just hoping with so many things being automated, they would have fixed this. Playing wack-a-pollution gets boring.

I am glad to see many of the issues that are breaking this game for me will be addressed in an upcoming patch. Hopefully this will not be a black and white delayed patch.

As for the length of turn making the game unplayable? For me it does. A game of CIV3 takes hours and hours. I normally play while doing something else. You cannot do that right now, you have to sit there and stare at the screen or leave the game waiting for your turn and come back to it. This has been mentione by the team as something they plan on fixing in the patch.

It helps to keep the world and enemy count small. The huge worlds with tons of enemies that I enjoyed in CIV 2 are not so easy now. Between the slow gameplay and changes in the rules, large expansive empires are very hard to manage.

Chet

I really see this game in two ways:

1. It isn't polished like SMAC. Its slow, not set up properly (no real map starting locs??), bereft of the wonder movies (I love those!), and a little obnoxious (the city sprawl of the AI is just annoying). The civs don't have the personality of the SMAC tribes (not even a little). There aren't as many things to do as there are in SMAC (where are my borehole equivilents? How about some sort of UN power as mentioned above?) It isn't SMAC. And it isn't SMAC.

2. I finally had a modestly successful game, and its fun. I've built the South American Roman Empire by mauling the French of Argentina/Bolivia/Chile. I did this because the Legionary comes a lot quicker than the muskateer. Now, as I approach the middle ages, I can turn my attention towards the rest of the world and start trading my iron, gems, and extra horse. The trade rules seem like they will be fun.

I hate to say it, but at this point number 1 is out-weighing number 2.

'There is no way to stick them in some limbo waiting for pollution. Auto just returns control to you. This issue existed in CIV2, I was just hoping with so many things being automated, they would have fixed this. Playing wack-a-pollution gets boring.'

Yeah, they need a "clean pollution and then sleep until next pollution" terraforming command. A single command to unfortify an entire stack would be nice, too.

Well, folks, the (mostly) obvious love of one of my favorite games has made me break my long-running taboo against buying a game before it's been out for a couple months. I backordered a copy of CivIII from Chips & Bits Saturday for $44 (around $48 after priority shipping). I was going to buy it at EB, but they wanted (!) $59 + tax for it. As is, C&B doesn't know exactly when they will get their replacement shipment, so it still might be a while.

I've really enjoyed the commentary in this thread, and look forward to a great game! Thanks for the info! See, you really can help the economy, heh.

After a few days play I'm finding many of my earlier problems have been solved by the manual or by changing my gameplay strategy. For example I was initially infuriated by the new corruption mechanism, which meant that a city in central africa, with its capital in eastern europe, could have 90% corruption even though the government was a democracy and their was a courthouse built. This was annoying at first, until I remembered to read the manual and change my strategy. Now if I want a massive empire I choose the communist government, and get an even spread of minimal corruption in every city and is perfect for late game expansionism. This is a nice change as communism was a totally worthless government in comparison to democracy in the early games.

There are still a few niggling little interface problems which they will have to patch, and the real world maps they shipped with it are horrible and look as if drawn by a five year old. Thankfully I've been able to download a Civ III update of the Civ II world map, which is a lot nicer...

Tim (aka Gx_Farmer)
http://www.mrfixitonline.com
(we now have a civ forum!)

'Now if I want a massive empire I choose the communist government, and get an even spread of minimal corruption in every city and is perfect for late game expansionism. This is a nice change as communism was a totally worthless government in comparison to democracy in the early games.'

Apparently in the very late game (1950s) the communism "ignore distance from capital" feature total breaks, at least for me. I can switch back and forth from democracy to communism and it doesn't change a thing. Maybe early when I was using wartime mobilization that somehow screwed things up?

Hopefully they'll fix this.

Tim,
Either send me that map or tell me where you got it...

[email protected]

Thanks,
-Andrew

Best post of stuff buried in the manual

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=civ3+establish+embassy&hl=en&rnum=1&selm=IPcF7.1073949%24si5.26690965%40typhoon.kc.rr.com

Lots of shift or ctrl right click stuff. Way too many menus not accessible except thru some bizarre combination of keys. If this is a sleek interface, Battle Cruiser had a sleek interface.

Chet

"Lots of shift or ctrl right click stuff. Way too many menus not accessible except thru some bizarre combination of keys."

Chet, you're high. All that stuff isn't "buried in the manual". It's listed on the hot key list. Check it out sometime. It's also all in the civilopedia under "Hot Keys". What's more, almost everything there can be reached in more than one way.

"If this is a sleek interface, Battle Cruiser had a sleek interface."

Good god, next you'll be calling Sid Meier a Nazi.

-Tom

"Good god, next you'll be calling Sid Meier a Nazi."

Hey, one of you guys (Mark?) has that Woody Allen stand-up album right? This reminds me of a joke from that album: Woody and his fiance find a rabbi to perform their inter-faith marriage. "He was reformed. He was very reformed. He was a Nazi."

--Jason (who found a very reformed rabbi to perfrom HIS inter-faith marriage)

Tom you are wrong. This is not listed in the manual's hotkey section, and since others missed it - I am not alone.

Right click on a city/stack of units/transport then shift left click on as
many sleeping units as you want to wake - much faster than doing them one by
one.

Also having almost everything, almost, reachable is worse than having everything one way or another. I like a good manual as much as most, but I do not want to be required to read the manual just to check on every screen to see if there are some hotkey combinations I need to know to access hidden screens.

I don't play as many games as you, but I cannot remember a game that used hotkeys to reach hidden screens - that I thought had a nice interface. To me that is the antithesis of a good user interface. I should not feel like I am looking for Easter eggs to find screens used in the game.

Chet

"Tom you are wrong. This is not listed in the manual's hotkey section, and since others missed it - I am not alone."

Oh for Pete's sake, Chet, what's not in the manual? Let's see, the hotkey for the Civilopedia is in the readme.txt. Otherwise, check p.197 of the manual for the hotkeys. Or open the relevant section of the Civilopedia.

"Right click on a city/stack of units/transport then shift left click on as
many sleeping units as you want to wake - much faster than doing them one by
one."

It's in the readme.txt. I'm guessing you didn't read it.

"Also having almost everything, almost, reachable is worse than having everything one way or another. I like a good manual as much as most, but I do not want to be required to read the manual just to check on every screen to see if there are some hotkey combinations I need to know to access hidden screens."

Hidden screens, my ass. What are you talking about?

Everything accessible multiple ways and it's all documented in the manual or in the readme.txt. As it should be.

I agree with your complaints about the computer taking long turns. Otherwise, Chet, you're high. All these screens can be reached by buttons, mouseclicks, or hotkeys. None are hidden. Unless, of course, you don't read the manual. I'll say it again: you're high. Not Wumpus-level high, but still high.

-Tom

Anyone else think that Tom has a problem with people who disagree with him? That he pretty much insults everyone who disagrees with him, in fact, and assumes they are on crack?

"I agree with your complaints about the computer taking long turns. Otherwise, Chet, you're high. All these screens can be reached by buttons, mouseclicks, or hotkeys."

A good interface should always have every option available through an on-screen button. Is this the case with Civ III? Can you reach every screen through some button or icon within the game? I don't have the game so I don't know.

Does the game still have the end-game, micromanagement tedium that Civ II had? That's what has really turned me off of the series.

I'm in a situation now where size 12 Berlin is just two squares from my border. 5 Chinese Riders are poised and I have the the Hero Genghis Khan with a load of Elite Riflemen waiting to take it. Berlin has three Wonders I want.

But I also know that Germany has a Mutual Protection Pact with Japan, who is on my other border, and Japan has Knights and, if I'm not mistaken, a handful of Infantry (Japan is ahead tech-wise). If I seize Berlin the world goes to war and Japan will come across and pluck a few of my border towns.

So, do I risk it all for the Wonders of Berlin, attack and hope I can fend off Japan long enough (and survive Germany's counter-strike) or do I wait, hoping for better technology in the future and waiting for that MPP to expire....

Decisions, decisions... excellent game. I'm really favoring smaller maps. I just can't stand micro-managing 25+ cities.

-Andrew

"Does the game still have the end-game, micromanagement tedium that Civ II had? That's what has really turned me off of the series."

Of course it does. How could it not? Spend 6,000 years building, conquering, and expanding and you get lots of micromanagment. It's the reward! Hell, sounds like I'm describing my office.

Heh, Mark, I'd say it's better/more manageable than before, but map size makes a huge difference. The Civ3 team said they wanted to de-emphasize Sim-Civ (100 size one cities dominating the map) by giving more power to Metropolises. They did the latter, but the AI still endlessly builds cities on every bit of stray unclaimed land it can find. It's kind of annoying (and unrealistic) to watch parades of Warrior/Settler teams stream through your empire like Joads outta Oklahoma, just to fin' a peice of lan'.

-Andrew

'Does the game still have the end-game, micromanagement tedium that Civ II had? That's what has really turned me off of the series.'

Yep. However, a "clean pollution and sleep waiting for more pollution" automation command would almost completely get rid of it.

"Anyone else think that Tom has a problem with people who disagree with him? That he pretty much insults everyone who disagrees with him, in fact, and assumes they are on crack?"

Aw, c'mon, it's just a good-natured ribbing. We're all adults here. We can take it.

"Does the game still have the end-game, micromanagement tedium that Civ II had? That's what has really turned me off of the series."

This iteration features an all-new BEGINNING game tedium. I swear, I don't know how you guys can stand to play the game in its current pokey form. They need to make the interface and the game about 3x faster.

'This iteration features an all-new BEGINNING game tedium.'

Eh? Consisting of what? It's seems exactly like the beginning of Civ II to me.

"Anyone else think that Tom has a problem with people who disagree with him?"

Rats, I've been foiled. Davey has exposed my master plan to convert the entire world to my way of thinking, one Internet post at a time. Too bad this Chet character is proving to be such a tough nut to crack...

"That he pretty much insults everyone who disagrees with him, in fact, and assumes they are on crack?"

I never said he was on crack. I said he was high. You're the one assuming it's a drug reference. For all I know, he's high on life.

-Tom

---

Quote:

This iteration features an all-new BEGINNING game tedium.

---

You guys really seem to be tearing this game up, and finding all the good and bad with fairly rabid enthusiasm. I'm curious, though. Has anyone given all of these pearls to Firaxis, so that they might consider them in an upcoming patch? What about that pollution automation=elimination of end-game micromanagement idea, for instance? Do any of the Firaxis folks hang out here?

There are thousands of posts on the Apolyton message boards. So many visitors, that they've stopped letting non-members in during the day. We can't even come close to that level of praise, suggestion, or criticism.

Oh, they've also got a mod that changes the culture advisor to a progressively fattening Elvis. But you can't download the files cause of server load.

-Andrew

'Oh, they've also got a mod that changes the culture advisor to a progressively fattening Elvis.'

BESTEST MOD EVAR.

Wumpus Quote:

""Anyone else think that Tom has a problem with people who disagree with him? That he pretty much insults everyone who disagrees with him, in fact, and assumes they are on crack?"

Aw, c'mon, it's just a good-natured ribbing. We're all adults here. We can take it. "

Wumpus defending Tom? What will those crazy kids come up with next?

---

Quote:

Best post of stuff buried in the manual

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=civ3+establish+embassy&hl=en&rnum=1&selm=IPcF7.1073949%24si5.26690965%40typhoon.kc.rr.com

Lots of shift or ctrl right click stuff. Way too many menus not accessible except thru some bizarre combination of keys. If this is a sleek interface, Battle Cruiser had a sleek interface.

---

The game offers very deep play, but I really do hate the interface. You can access the govenor screen by right clicking on a city and choosing govenor, but if you enter the city screen you have to hit g to get to the govenor screen. They also have nicely ignored any keyboard/mouse conventions that RTS games have developed for handling multiple units. The lack of info on units in drop downs sucks and clicking on most items causes a giant hiccup.

Has anyone tried to play on a giant map with all the other civilizations? Not only does the foreign advisor screen break down, the game gets insanely slow amazingly early. I am with bub that you have to play small maps with limited opponents. This is about the 5th change in play I have had to make to compensate for design flaws.

Maybe its in there but the hell if i can find it - once you enter negotians with someone the only info you can access is what your advisor spills out. No checking of intelligence like civ 2. Do you have to hit ALT-SHIFT-X-P-R to access it?

Diplomacy is the best part of the game, but I am already seeing patterns that you can exploit. I am hoping as I progess thru the difficulty levels the ai advances as well.

I solved one end game problem, I make sure to have happy enough of citizens so I don't have to look for civil unrest. Otherwise the 3-5 minutes it takes per turn by 1980 is unbearable.

I think this game defines mixed bag.

Chet

As fun as the game is, the shelf is calling until auto-and-sleep pollution-cleaning workers are added. There's no way I'm pushing 40 workers around (you need about 2 per city from late industrialism on) to clean up pollution (it takes somewhere above ten worker turns per square). If only the little bastards would just go to sleep and *wake up again* when pollution pops.

'I solved one end game problem, I make sure to have happy enough of citizens so I don't have to look for civil unrest.'

Once I've gotten past early industrialism or so, I setup the governor to manage all citizens for every city. End of problem, as it preemptively takes care of things (unlike in SMAC where the governor would only act *after* riots).

I have yet to see it, and if it is missing I will be bothered. Do the unhappy citizens ever split on what they are unhappy about?

There is some weird love of sim city where people are bitching about not having a new stadium and at the same time not wanting to pay higher taxes. The cities in civ3 seem like just one individual instead of a group of people. One action will always calm everyone.

While I understand the game is not sim city, sometimes civ3 feels like a collection of other games not done very well vs elements of many games/genres combined into one cohesive game.

Chet

One last thing. While I know when tom calls something a 9.2, we should respect the game - ignore everything that would make us high to call it missing... but more on the feeling of this being rushed.

Go to your game directory and open jackal.txt - while I have not complained about the lack of multiplayer, which is pretty standard in a game like this, it seems to have been yanked late in development.

In that same file you will also see this line of code showing the amount of time spent *cough* painstakingly creating this game,

The Alpha Centauri CD-ROM was not detected. Some game features will not function without the CD in the drive.

But don't be bothered by Tom attacking my criticism. If I had given this game a 9.2 based on its potential and not on the actual delivered goods, I too would be defensive.

Chet

Heh. Am I the only one who's enjoying this immensely??

I just love it when two intelligent adults get into a screaming match, boiling down to "IS NOT!!" "IS TOO!!"

Hey, Chet -- next, tell Tom that all that matters is that it's fun!!

"Go to your game directory and open jackal.txt - while I have not complained about the lack of multiplayer, which is pretty standard in a game like this, it seems to have been yanked late in development."

Yup, it's all in there. The Alpha Centauri bit is odd though, I never played with the CD in the drive, never got a message like that. Was I missing features when I played SMAC?

"Yup, it's all in there. The Alpha Centauri bit is odd though, I never played with the CD in the drive, never got a message like that. Was I missing features when I played SMAC?"

Not if you did a full install. Which reminds me, I found it a little irritating that SMAC let's you play without the CD in the drive, but Crossfire doesn't.

"But don't be bothered by Tom attacking my criticism. If I had given this game a 9.2 based on its potential and not on the actual delivered goods, I too would be defensive."

I'm not defensive so much as incredulous that you're having a problem with the hot keys, the lack of RTS conventions, the race of the tax collectors, and something about mulitplayer being pulled late in the development.

For the record, I agree with some of your criticisms. The late game micromanagement that has always characterized Civ is in full effect. But I don't find the game "unplayable". To suggest I "missed the boat" is silly. Downright Wumpussyian. Next you'll be telling me what I should have picked for Game of the Year.

-Tom

I don't even have this game....my computer doesn't even work good. I like reeding you're posts tho. they reed real good.

"Apparently in the very late game (1950s) the communism "ignore distance from capital" feature total breaks, at least for me. I can switch back and forth from democracy to communism and it doesn't change a thing. Maybe early when I was using wartime mobilization that somehow screwed things up?" - Jason

I have to apologise, I was in the throes of communist revolutionary zeal when I wrote that, and the dust had yet to settle on my new government. I'd read in the Civlopedia that communism spread a minimal amount of corruption evenly throughout the empire, but after I formed the new government my size 12 city of Kigali in Central Africa was still riven with corruption, with an astonishing 23 of the 24 production being lost, and a similar amount of commerce. It seems that either communism is bugged, or the description in the civlopedia is wrong.

I'm a bit disappointed, and they are going to have to patch corruption. There is a poll at Apolyton running right now on the subject, and something like 55% of people want it fixed, others, almost all non-expansionist players, think that it is fine and don't understand the problem. Some players have even gone as far as to edit the rules so that corruption no longer has this effect, which is cheating, but to be honest there is no way of having an expansionist empire in any stage of the game without having cities within only a couple of screens of the capital becoming near useless.

There are some fixes that can bring down corruption a little. First off is if you play an expansionist game, play a civilization with a commercialism bonus as this lowers corruption; France is a good choice as it has the excellent industrial bonus too. Secondly make cities happier, as this is far more effective than a courthouse. I managed to reduce the corruption in Kigali from 99.9% to 75% with a marketplace so all the citizens were celebrating "we love comrade" day. Other than that, there appears to be no solution if you play an expansionist game, because democracy, communism, and courthouses are all virtually inneffective.

Andrew, if you want that Civ II world map update, check this thread at Apolyton:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=7112d33007e34347e4df18df14c8c324&threadid=31606

If you can't get on due to excessive numbers of guests, just try later on in the evening. It seems to be particularly bad between 1200-1800 EST, but I have absolutely no problems at around 10pm.

Tim

Here's a problem, one that's left a bad taste in my mouth about starting another game.

Resources.

Here's what happened. I built a fairly large Civ easily on par with my rivals (15 cities). My problem comes from the fact that I never got oil and my opponents only traded it among themselves.

The result? I had all the tech I needed, all the way to mid-modernity, but when Japan and Germany declared war on me they rolled tanks in and I defended with... knights.

Needless to say I was rolled over and defeated. I'd make peace with one of them, and their Mutual Protection Pact would drag me back into war (that's another problem IMO).

Knights and riflemen were the best units I could make.

Seriously.

One could argue that had I expanded differently in the early game I could have take an area that might have gotten oil later on. Might have. Luck of the draw innit? I had desert squares in my borders but no oil. None.

So, this game was doomed for me from the start. Should that ever be the case?

-Andrew

I have yet to have a game where I couldn't trade for the resources I needed. It's occasionally pricey, but not game-losingly so. Trade is your friend.

I just now read the part where they wouldn't trade it to you. The only way to deal with that is invading when you have a comparitive advantage at a stage of the game, really.

I'm starting to think it's too easy to found cities. Once the ancient era is over, the cities in existence are usally it for the entire game. You don't get the nice SMAC effect of dropping some new cities in after fusion.

"The only way to deal with that is invading when you have a comparitive advantage at a stage of the game, really."

I did. I invaded until I lost momentum and the balance began shifting back against me. The result of that invasion was part of the problem Jason, the other Civs never forgave me and stayed Furious/Annoyed with me for the rest of the game (despite my generous gift giving). So, you could say I lost the game at 1100 AD by being aggressive, because that led to them not trading oil with me later.

I guess my point is, realistic or not, a situation where you're the tech leader, cultural leader, production leader, etc., shouldn't be a *losing* game because, largely, of the arbitrary placement of oil resources late in the game.

-Andrew

Well, it's always been that a bad starting position can screw your game from the get-go. No resources, all jungle, blah. Now in Civ III with specialized resources or whatever the hell they call them that it's even easier to get a bad start position.

On the average how many turns go by before you plop down your first city?

--- Alan

One turn or less, but that's not the point. Iron, Uranium and Oil are placed on the map after you gain the appropriate tech. So you can't place cities to find oil.

Civ2 was a game which was almost always winnable, no matter what your early error was. SMAC as well. Provided you played well you could still win. In that game I just lost I was ahead in everything save military and it cost me. I'm not complaining too much, it was realistic, but I should have gotten at least one oil square given how large my empire was.

"Now in Civ III with specialized resources or whatever the hell they call them that it's even easier to get a bad start position."

This is absolutely true and a severe flaw, IMO.

-Andrew

dear andrew,

isn't that the way it is in real life though? I mean, that's part of the fun, isn't it? if every starting place had a roughly equal chance of being victorious then you'd take fate out of it. I haven't played the game, like I said earlier, but maybe you just weren't meant to win that one and you should accept the will of the Civ3 Gods...

brian

I guess it's just random chance. Wierd, I've seen some people reporting that there's always one of each resource for every civ *somewhere* on the map. I've never had civs refuse to trade spare resources to me, either; did you raze a lot of cities or something? ;0

Heh, I didn't raze any cities and most of the problem was they were already trading those resources. They were at zero, so "refusal" isn't the correct term.

Really all I did was knock out the Indians (took five of their cities) and took two each from the Japanese and Germans, this led to their coalition and their undying hatred of me... and their eventual pillaging of my lands and people.

It was galling watching Japan raze three size 12-18 cities in a single turn. There really should be a consequence for that.

I tell ya, one oil resource and I could have fended them off. They couldn't out produce my factories, even in a 2-on-1 fracas.

-Andrew

"The result? I had all the tech I needed, all the way to mid-modernity, but when Japan and Germany declared war on me they rolled tanks in and I defended with... knights. "

Well, if you were playing Poland, that would be almost historically accurate, yes? Just sub in the USSR for the Japanese.

Seriously, I don't have the game, but that sounds very un-Sid to me. He always tries (it seems to me) very hard to make sure that you are always challenged, but not overwhelmed. I'm wondering if there's a loophole here that hasn't yet been realized.

I think the resource generation code is wonky. I won a Regent-level game the other night where the map never generated a single ivory resource. Highly annoying, as with a marketplace that 8th luxury gives you +4 happiness.

I don't know, Andrew, the situation you described sounds remarkably like real life. If you really need a resource, and you haven't got it, you've got to kowtow to those other civilizations like never before. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some coding in the diplomacy that made the AI trade for resources it didn't need, just to stop you from having it, if it were furious with you about an earlier invasion. My guess that in your situation, I would have tried bribing my way to peace, while attempting to overrun their culture in cities close to where they had oil, and steal it that way.

I guess the moral here is: don't make too many enemies early on before you know what you are going to get, or else be prepared to suck up to your enemies like they were your daddy :).

"So you need oil, President Bubb, well isn't that interesting...I don't suppose you recall the atrocity of Osaka, but let me tell you that we haven't forgotten! We tell our children stories about the evil Bubb monster to make them behave, and you think we will give you oil so you can destroy us with your tanks? Hahahaha!"

Burn, Bubb, Burn!

Agreed.
But I did suck up. I gave away money and techs, but they shared no oil. Perhaps I shouldn't have fought early... but what kind of excuse is that?

"while attempting to overrun their culture in cities close to where they had oil, and steal it that way"

Not possible.

And yes, I'm well aware of how realistic the situation is. But this is a game. It shouldn't be possible to win in every area but the one that's completely out of your control. This wasn't a flaw in Civ2 or SMAC. Try to imagine the feeling. You're in the game, you're winning, it's been 10 hours since you started, you're winning. No oil. Can't get oil. Tanks coming over borders. Appeasement not working due to Mutual Protection Pact. No oil. No tanks. Can only produce Knights. UGH!

But then again, this is likely a rare circumstance.

Oh, and it's "Bub."

-Andrew

Put me in the "Unfortunately, I haven't played this one yet but will as soon as reasonably possible" group. But, Bub, I feel for ya. I really do.

When did you say the map distributes resources? As you need them, basically? (I got the impression that it doesn't determine where oil is going to be until a civ needs oil -- is that right?)

Odd that it went so poorly. There's no telling how a civ is going to expand, so early on, there's no way to ensure that each civ has all resources, but if they don't distribute oil until someone needs it, and you were apparently the first to need it -- strange...

You're probably right, though -- it's probably a very rare occurrence, and probably one that will be fixed...

We'll hope, because that just shouldn't be.

'You're in game, you're winning, it's been 10 hours since you started, you're winning. No oil. Can't get oil. Tanks coming over borders.'

This happened all the damn time in SMAC. If you're weak on any of the air/sea/spying legs occasionally the AI will come in and absolutely slaughter you in what appears to be a game on the track to winning.

I'm sure it is annoying, Andrew, and in games where I'm playing against an equally matched human opponent I become particularly peeved when I get an uneven distribution of resources, or other vital game statistic. When it's against the computer I tend not to worry so much, as if things get too real and I start to lose, I can always start again and nobody is any the wiser. It's not like winning every game would be that much fun, and overcoming random and unexpected situations is much more challenging than approaching the same known and predictable scenarios over and over again. At least from my perspective.

Sorry for misspelling your name, btw.

Well, I can consistently beat the game at deity now (no "million dollar tribute" exploitation either). I hope they make the AIs a little more agressive after 1 AD, because as it stands now surviving past that point is enough to win.

On that note, I'll say that I do like the game a lot. Qualifier: it's CTP3, not civ. I really like the culture, borders, resources, and the other 20 good ideas in SMAC that they didn't pick up.

My biggest problems with the game is the poor interface, its 65% finished state, and corruption (which they boasted as being imp'd specifically to counter ICS -- now there's a sure sign FUN was on everyone's mind).

I'm ready for SMAC2.

'Well, I can consistently beat the game at deity now.'

Eh-heh. Sure. Alright.

Do you want your fun spoiled? I'll post a mini strat guide if you think it might broaden your civ3 horizons. It's really not very hard to figure out Jason, just don't go to war. The AI civs are easy to buy off for the entire game; play them against each other.

It'll be familiar to anyone who's played Morgan against strong players but easier since the AI is so weak tactically.

That will work most of the time, occasionally i have seen a nation become aggressive and attack me. I guess I may have come to close to their borders with military units, but only the most aggressive of nations every really does anything about it.

Trade a nation something it really wants and they will do a 180 in relation to you.

Also if you develop a non-military advance like music, sell it. But sell it to everyone who will buy it as soon as you can. It is an easy way to fund your more important advances.

I am still screwing around with it but getting less and less happy. Too many times the game pauses to let me battle or move a few military units and then flies around to come back to the rest of the military units in that area 2 minutes later.

Another weak point, late in the game you can manipulate the AI easily by leaving pockets between your older cities for them to build a city in that will only last a few years before you aquire it. Its almost comical how easy they are to play this way.

I am going to take a break and hope they fix corruption and pollution. Both really hamper your ability to play big worlds and both are out of wack to any real world comparisons.

Sid should hurry up and start sticking his name on other games while it still means something.

Chet

'Do you want your fun spoiled? I'll post a mini strat guide if you think it might broaden your civ3 horizons. It's really not very hard to figure out Jason, just don't go to war. The AI civs are easy to buy off for the entire game; play them against each other.'

Sure, go for it. I'm unable to regularly win with Morgan on Transcend in SMAC, either. Does this involve making them happy with regular small gifts?

"Sure, go for it. I'm unable to regularly win with Morgan on Transcend in SMAC, either."

I was talking about being Morgan against other humans playing (Hive,Belivers,Domai,..). It's a situation where your opponents are using their time as efficiently as you, but they have a production bonus.
Civ3 negates the idea of turn advantage by granting bonuses to the AI based on where a given civ is in the power rankings. This adds to the effect of removing any real strategy from the game. There are few interesting choices, and the biggest variables in the game are:
1) resources that happen to be in your borders
2) combat(->leaders->wonders)


"Does this involve making them happy with regular small gifts?"

It took me a few games to realize that tech has a less important role in civ3's system. As Chet noted, by brokering tech to every civ as soon as you get it you make enough profit to fund protection pacts and cause wars, and by having trade interactions every turn you stay in everyone's good graces. Meanwhile, you can try to race ahead with a couple SSCs to build a spaceship, or build a couple SCCs (cultural) to win a cultural victory. The AI gets giant bonuses to their research if the player manages to get out in front so it's a complete waste of time to focus on tech. AI production bonuses gradually decrease, although all civs get big discounts on any city improvements you've built. All you have to do is put a (long) list of these little things together in a way the computer is not programmed to counter.

Anyway, I think I have enough there to defeat your skepticism. Read the strat threads on Apolyton if you're interested in detailed discussion of the game.

Yeah Spam,
You're confirming some of my worst suspicions about how the AI... um... cheats. I've noticed no matter how far ahead you get, enemy civs never fall more than a couple techs behind. I believe this is called "catch up logic"? Perhaps Chet's High Heat analogy earlier is more apt than it appeared. (many suspected HH2000 had AI cheats that let the computer remain a challenge)

Interesting stuff.

-Andrew

'The AI gets giant bonuses to their research if the player manages to get out in front so it's a complete waste of time to focus on tech.'

Has anyone confirmed this? I think the system lowers the cost to research a technology based on how many other civs have researched, but that's just a guess.

'Civ3 negates the idea of turn advantage by granting bonuses to the AI based on where a given civ is in the power rankings.'

This is a very non-Civ thing to do also. Speculation?

I think I've only been barely keeping up with the AI because I've tried to use that democratic isolation thing from II.

'Anyway, I think I have enough there to defeat your skepticism. Read the strat threads on Apolyton if you're interested in detailed discussion of the game.'

I have been, and I didn't see anything about rank-based or tech-catchup AI assistence. Their forums exploded today, though, so no one can get in at the moment.

Is it just me, or is this sounding less and less like a 9.x/10 game?

Maybe after they've had 3-6 months to patch and tweak it. I recall the same sort of patterns for Civ II and SMAC-- people seem pretty happy with those games NOW, but at the time, it was like getting a free membership in the patch o' the week club.

"Is it just me, or is this sounding less and less like a 9.x/10 game?"

It's just you. So far as we know you're still stuck on minor problems like the turn time, scrolling lag, and minor interface problems.

Also, I don't recall Civ2 and SMAC having that many patches, and as Jason put it, Spam's interesting revelations are, so far as I know, speculation. It's totally unfair to blanket Sid's games with a "patch of the week" statement, unfair and untrue. Most Firaxis patches have been about adding features (like PBEM) and incorporating new ideas users have come up with. Not fixing bugs or crashes, like most companies.

I kinda regret my last post. Only because it may've been hasty. I'm sort of in the "test the balance and actively look for problems" phase of my review, so I'm actually trying to play the game using all kinds of strategies.

I am seeing some bizarre things though, even on Regent. Like enemy Civs in the very early game getting boats and settlers going alarmingly fast. Like within turn 10 they've colonized nearby continents with more than a few cities (effectively doubling the number of cities I have at that point). This could be because I'm too conservative, but the AI seems to be very good at trading among themselves, not to mention finding one another and shutting you out. I'm almost wishing for that old Civ2 Cheat menu, because it let you test and spy on what the AI is doing and how it's doing it.

Also, is it just me or is it extremely hard to gain more than one hero? I've conducted some heavy warfare with Elite units (on Rampaging Barbarian difficulty).

To me the most glaring flaw in the game is that, even at Chieftan, the game is daunting. To new players picking the game up that seems needlessly frustrating. I was able to play SMAC at Librarian (roughly King level here) with enough success, I can't imagine a newbie to Civ or 4x having much fun except at the wimpiest level. And worse, if you do win at that level the reward screen makes fun of you (with that silly carnival screen) and called you: "Mao the Worthless"

I felt sort of less than worthless with that victory damn you!

-Andrew

'Also, I don't recall Civ2 and SMAC having that many patches.'

SMAC had two patches for the regular game, and one for the expansion pack; not bad. Civ II had either 10 or 11, judging by the patch.txt file included in the 2.42 patch; very bad, although most of the fixes were gameplay tweaks, not significant bugs. Did I mention how much it creeped me out that I remembered the most recent version number for that game off the top of my head?

'And worse, if you do win at that level the reward screen makes fun of you (with that silly carnival screen) and called you: "Mao the Worthless"'

I *really* don't know what they were thinking with that carnival thing. It's like climbing into a time machine for 1992.

"I kinda regret my last post."

Yeah, I know the feeling. I regret all of your posts.

On the issue of Civ II patches-- you're misremembering. Here's a link to refresh your memory.

http://www.computergamers.com/patches/patchfiles/Civ2_242_Patch.txt

I like the new corruption rules. I seem to be pretty alone on this one, but I like the concept that a neolithic settlement a third of the way around the globe isn't all that interested in following my directives. Less effort to do some gathering and hunting. In the games I've played, I've either had my palace creep toward the center of my sprawling empire in a series of palace builds, or I've built the Forbidden Palace (in two turns) in a far-flung location using a leader. Alternatively, one can keep building tightly clustered cities until government type supports expansion. This prevents me from covering the world in my cities, making my play-style less "Zerg"-like, and more human.

I'm curious what this board thinks: What do people perceive as the difference between challenging and "not fun." I'm quite content if corruption means I can't beat the game on "Diety" settings. When it comes to civ games, I want to nearly always win on the easiest setting, and nearly always fail at the hardest setting.

'On the issue of Civ II patches-- you're misremembering. Here's a link to refresh your memory.'

I was looking at the same file. There's not a single crash bug or corrupt save game issue in there. The things fixed are annoyances most players never saw.

'I like the new corruption rules. I seem to be pretty alone on this one, but I like the concept that a neolithic settlement a third of the way around the globe isn't all that interested in following my directives.'

It's an interesting concept, it just seems to be an awfully central game point for the development team to barely document. That communism is currently bugged (doesn't equalize corruption in all cities as it should) is annoying, too.

"Yeah, I know the feeling. I regret all of your posts."

Yeah, heh, good one. You really turned that one around on me. Whoo boy.

-Andrew

"I *really* don't know what they were thinking with that carnival thing. It's like climbing into a time machine for 1992."

To be honest, I'm not so impressed in most of their decisions regarding the win/loss screens and the "cutesy" stuff. Having rivals say "All your cities are belong to us", "go back to Warlord", and "We mowed your lawn" (???) is plain odd. Even the diplomacy screens have too much... um... humor, that leaves me a little cold. It's a far cry from the much better writing/characterization found in SMAC.

Also the graphs at the end are a boring and uninformative (I prefered the one in Civ2) and the game summary is slooow.

I also wonder why the "Wonder Screens" (God I miss the movies) don't even tell you what the Wonder does. I see someone has "patched" that at Apolyton, but the screens don't even have the NAME of the Wonder. That seems weird.

-Andrew

The thing is, enkidu, that there is no government type that will deal with effectively with corruption in an even moderately expansive civilization. As I said before, playing on the smaller world map, I have a city in Central Africa, a couple of screens away from the capital in Eastern Europe and it is 99.9% pure corruption even under democracy with a courthouse. With luxuries jacked up to the hilt, I can get it down to only 75% corruption, but that is the best that I can do, and there are no ways of fixing it beyond that.

I may be able to win without having an expansionist style civilization, but that's not the point, I want to have an expansionist civilization, and why shouldn't I have it?

I'm still having fun with it, though.

Tim.

"Maybe after they've had 3-6 months to patch and tweak it. I recall the same sort of patterns for Civ II and SMAC-- people seem pretty happy with those games NOW, but at the time, it was like getting a free membership in the patch o' the week club."

One more thing here, what I htink is the most important thing. With Civ2 (and also in SMAC) what the designers did was build a system that was independent of the internal state...blah.

Let me try to put it another way. The game was such that the rules were the same for all players, human and AI alike. If you chose to play on a higher difficulty, the AI players received production and research bonuses, but they were more or less "fixed".

This game takes a different approach. It modifies the rules based on its picture of the internal state of the system (Human player X is Y! Do Z!), there are no hard and fast rules for AI players.

It's broke Jim.

They intended it that way, and never claimed any different. I knew it going to be like that months before it was released. They publicly confessed that the game was going to cheat -- at lower levels, it supposedly cheats in your favor -- and nobody seemed to care before. I don't see that it matters. ('Course, I haven't played the game...)

One of the difficulty levels, though I don't remember which one, is supposed to play it straight -- no cheating. Probably the middle one, I'd guess, but don't know for sure.

The last thing I want is a lengthy thread on game theory, philosophy, etc. I'm simply giving my opinion on why "it's not civ" and "it's not fun".

game
A competitive activity or sport in which players contend with each other according to a set of rules.
An active interest or pursuit, especially one involving competitive engagement or adherence to rules.
A model of a competitive situation that identifies interested parties and stipulates rules governing all aspects of the competition,

but we also have
An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime.

Has anyone noticed this. I have played for just a few hours but it seems that the AI gets the defensive bonus of the terrain while attacking. I have staged a couple one on one battles and it seems so. This is borked if true. Can anyone confirm or deny?

"I was looking at the same file. There's not a single crash bug or corrupt save game issue in there. The things fixed are annoyances most players never saw."

Well, that wasn't exactly my point (that the game is buggy). There were a bunch of adjustments to actual game rules in each Civ II patch up to version 2.42. And patching game rules is exactly what it sounds like Civ III needs, based on the discussion I've read here.

On the other hand, it is impressive that SMAC had only three patches.

It was brought up before, but all this talk about patches and the previous games made me head over to Firaxis website to look around. The design is really slick, but man, they just omitted any reference to Brian Reynolds when talking about SMAC or Civ. It sounds like he had nothing to do with either. Not only that, but the company profile makes no mention of this other founding partner. That's just plain wrong.

I mean really...though Brian says above in this thread that it's not surprising they aren't doing his PR for him, omitting the truth about these games doesn't make me any more enamored of the "Sid Meier's" designation having much relevance to any of these games anymore.

--Dave

Hmm. Considering the extremely large contribution Brian made to Civ 2, a masterful game by almost anyone's estimation, I thought it was kind of disrespectful to not give him any nod at all. I mean, CGW still lists Russel Sipe as the founder, though he's clearly nothing to do with the mag any more. Sometimes acknowledging the work of those that have contributed or gone before is just the right thing to do. That this is a game about building through the ages just makes that point all the more applicable in my mind.

Kazz, trust me. Brian Reynolds should be happy his name is not associated with the game. Why poison someone's reputation with this?

I tried once more, and now I really am just going to wait to see if they patch it. My new discovery of why the game gets to the point of taking 7-10 minutes per turn on my fast pc. I have given rights of passage to two other countries. They are at war with another country that they can only reach through my country. I get to watch every single exciting move by all three of these countries as they launch their giant war against each other.

I guess I should have changed my strategy to avoid this? I have. I am back to playing OpFlash. So far this strategy has seemed to being paying off handsomely.

Chet

"game gets to the point of taking 7-10 minutes per turn on my fast pc."

Woah! Wait a minute! Really? Is this an exaggeration? On Huge maps, in pretty much the exact same situation you're describing it takes *maybe* 20-30 seconds on my PC. Seriously. I'm starting to understand why you hate the game Chet... Jeez! 7-10 MINUTES?!? If that's what you and Atwood have been talking about when you say the AI is slow, well, I'm sorry I dismissed your complaints. I figured you meant 45 seconds per turn or something bearable like that.

-Andrew

Heh. You call yourself a gamer? I used to wait 15 to 20 minutes just for WW2OL to boot up. And then I had to wait a solid 7-10 seconds for each frame. Now thats what I call love of the game(s). :P

I talked to a friend of mine who plays the game on a PCI voodoo3-- he related his experience of the same choppy scrolling problems and slow turns.

I'm not sure I buy the "it's only you guys with your XP and nVidia cards" arguments.

I know I'd be a lot happier with Civ III (even in its current untweaked form) if they made the turns instantaneous. Or at least gave me a way, via the options, to turn off all the pointless graphical options so turns execute instantaneously. Again-- is this an unreasonable expectation for a 1.5+ghz computer and a 2D turn based game?

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Quote:

Or at least gave me a way, via
the options, to turn off all the pointless graphical options so turns execute instantaneously.

---

Wow, chet, 7-10 minutes per turn, I've not had to wait more than a few seconds in any game. I was going to make some tweaking suggestions, such as removing the animation on automated, friendly and enemy units, as well as discontinuing "Right of Passage" agreements, but with 7-10 minutes per turn there is something very wrong with your game.

Tim.

Firaxis has a suggestion page up:

http://www.firaxis.com/contact_gamefeedback.cfm

They've already stated corruption will be toned down in the next version; other than that, send those suggestions in.

It is not normally that bad. The 7-10 minutes was the extreme, and it is a hell of a war. I also have some satellite cities on other continents that add to the ugly. I am playing on the biggest map with the biggest land mass and the top number of civs. Yeah - painful - but this is the game I want to play - this is the game I should be able to play, I should not have to change what kind of game I can play due to bugs.

Before the war the time was around 1-2 minutes (i think I didn't time it, I did time two turns during the full scale war). Between all of my workers, everybody cutting thru and the giant war it is painful. Watching the ai square off in a battle is also painful, very odd strategy.

20-30 second turns on huge maps? I haven't seen it that quick once things get rolling. There are jumps to where i can interact and then odd slowdowns when clicking on any interface button. I hate that it sometimes will not cycle thru units you are controlling that are in the same area, it will jump around.

Also, I couldn't find any mention of this - has anyone sunk a ship with land based artillery? I can't. I only had 2 good examples, but both times it let me take the ship down to 1 but not kill it.

Chet

I can only say your extreme slowdowns aren't being experienced over here, and you honestly have my sympathy. Sounds excruciating. I have noticed the change screens lag on occasion, and some music stuttering, which might be because of the MP3s used in the game. Yeah, that's a sign of under-optimization.

"I only had 2 good examples, but both times it let me take the ship down to 1 but not kill it."

That's the way artillary works in the game. It's meant to soften targets up and destroy improvments. That's actually a Reynolds concept from SMAC and one of the reasons I rarely bother to build any.

One tactical recommendation, pillaging is often the best alternative to losing units in war. If a rival declares war on me (in a game I'm not playing for conquest) I often just move high defense units into his borders and hamper him to death.

-Andrew

'That's the way artillary works in the game. It's meant to soften targets up and destroy improvments. That's actually a Reynolds concept from SMAC and one of the reasons I rarely bother to build any.'

Artillery + anything or hordes of cavalry/tanks are equally effective at conquering cities. A big stack of artillery is really good for taking down enemy defenses on mountains or near roads. If every rifleman you attack with cavalry is at 1 strength due to bombardment, then you end up spending a lot less time hauling them back to cities with barracks to heal.

I haven't fought a war early enough to use catapults yet, though.

I could in a drunken frenzy excuse artillary not killing land units. In some sid love fest I could pretend that the land units could hide from the bombardment and you could never kill them all with artillary. (this being the only time units actually act in some manner as they might - otherwise how could you believe archers vs tanks? really good shots?)

But naval units? WTF are shore batteries for? I now officially hate this game. Goddamn this game for being so crappy it not only ruins itself, it ruins my all time favorite game of CIV2 as well.

As for slowness, i am begining to suspect my amd chip or is it my geforce 2 gts with 64mb? It seems most people complaining run athlon processors and some run geforcex with lots of ram - some don't. I guess the mysterious slow downs extend my gameplay value? Who knows, no other game has any slowdowns on my system. And at this point, I am begining to think, who cares. How much can i get for this on ebay?

Chet

"I could in a drunken frenzy excuse artillary not killing land units. In some sid love fest I could pretend that the land units could hide from the bombardment and you could never kill them all with artillary. (this being the only time units actually act in some manner as they might - otherwise how could you believe archers vs tanks? really good shots?)

But naval units? WTF are shore batteries for? I now officially hate this game. Goddamn this game for being so crappy it not only ruins itself, it ruins my all time favorite game of CIV2 as well."

I don't care if you hate the game or not, but your reasoning that artillary should be better at killing naval units than ground units is silly. Shore batteries rarely get the chance to pound a fleet to death. And it makes pretty good sense: if I'm the admiral, and I see my galleons going *poof*, then I give the order to "sail away". Its quite likely that a shore battery could beat up a fleet, but rarely sink every ship, or even destroy unit integrity. Personally, I think the same rule should apply to air units (but I don't know if they do). You gotta be there to finish the battle. If "Chets Magic Artillary" existed then World War I would have ended a lot sooner.

When taking down a naval unit to 1, it sat in my gun sites for 2 turns. I hit it a total of 4 times. It hardly just turned and ran. It was stuck. While I know this board is filled with people who love number filled accurate war games - that is hardly civ. If in world war I, one side had modern artillary, and the other side was just out of the stone age with wooden boats that they rowed up to my shore defenses, my artillary would look magical as it rained death down on them, and I could only hope they named these magical guns after me.

Also, to use the excuse that this is realistic in a game that regularly has swordmen battle tanks - give me a break. The entire rest of the combat is non-realistic, but this is? This is just a lame adjustment for a balance issue.

Chet

Odd, I've seen footage of Afghani cavalrymen on the way to the front lines. In addition to weapons, fuel and medicine, it seems we're providing the Northern Alliance with fodder for their mounts.

I know, I know, they probably don't charge with sabres drawn. They certainly just use the horses for transportation and not combat - aside from scouting perhaps.

We're talking about abstractions in any computer game but in a Civ inspired game we're talking about huge, boggling, abstractions that just need to be taken with a grain of salt. This is a product that's always been gameplay first with the trappings of history laid over it. Does it really ruin the game that a shore battery can't sink a ship? I don't know. How does this actually effect the outcome of that situation? Was the ship a threat? Did the battery reduce that threat?

Frankly, I've never been much in love with the level of abstraction in the Civ games as much as I liked many of the ideas in them. There was also a feeling of impersonal detachment to the entire experience that SMAC did somewhat remedy if at the cost of the familiar historical backdrop.

What I tend to look for in games are the interactive stories that can play out in that environment - Civ is a good example of this. Each game will play somewhat differently at some point and drama will arise from those unexpected developments.

I also look for a feeling of 'being there' - call it simulation, realism or just immersion. It could be the details of an F-16's clickable cockpit and my ears filled with radio calls as I search a radar for the unknown in Falcon 4 or the unpredictable advice from each of the clan Circle's members as I confront a shortfall in a harvest, restive Thanes who demand to seceed, and a mysterious haunting in King of Dragon Pass.

For me, Civ never quite delivered on that. I was always quite aware I was playing a game by a game's rules and not experiencing a world that related in many ways to the one I was familiar with.

If you demand the latter kind of immersion then Civ probably isn't for you. However if you're fine with pure, and often brilliantly designed, abstractions and gameplay then Civ is the classic everyone makes it out to be. I haven't tried Civ III yet but it sounds to me, from my particular perspective, very much like Civ II but with new rules that make the experience worth playing, and relearning, again if you liked it the first time around. If you didn't like Civ II or don't like relearning strategies then Civ III probably won't do much for you. If you don't like abstractions then you're totally out of luck.

That sound about right?

"Also, to use the excuse that this is realistic in a game that regularly has swordmen battle tanks - give me a break. The entire rest of the combat is non-realistic, but this is? This is just a lame adjustment for a balance issue."

I dunno Chet, comments like this make me wonder if you ever spent much time with Civ2 at all. If anything, unit to unit combat makes more sense here than it did there, where Pikemen could cream a Marine unit. I mean the ADM combat model has never been that realistic and that isn't the game's goal. Y'know, it's a game. Things have values and it's the math, not the units, that win the battles.

As for the lag thing. I'm on an AMD 1 gig and use a 64MB Radeon, if that helps narrow it down. Nvidia is a suspect, I suppose.

You'll probably get $30 or so at eBay.

PS: Jason, yeah, I oughta use arty more.
-Andrew

Bub - you are agreeing with me. Civ has never had realistic combat. I have no problem with that. But why insist this oddity of the artillery is that way because civ has realistic combat?

As for why does it matter. How do you stop a load of ships bringing in enemy troops from landing? One might think you would use artillary based on the shore. It is not so wild of a thought. I am not saying I want a pegasus to fly my troops over the moon and shoot lasers out of their eyes. There is some precedence for using shore artillary to try and stop a landing party. But then maybe that is only in my magical history and every shore landing ever done under fire in modern warfare is just part of my magical memory.

Chet

"But why insist this oddity of the artillery is that way because civ has realistic combat?"

Actually I didn't. I only mentioned that it was a Brian Reynolds addition to the game.

The way to stop sea landings, um... realistically speaking, is to block every square with artillary *and* troops. Like they do in "every shore landing ever done under fire in modern warfare," and to also use your own navy to form a blockade or kill ships on the way.
-Andrew

Chet, you seem to have picked up the wumpusian ability to morph your argument to defend every criticism. Wumpus does it better though.

Not only is Chet high, but I think he's trolling to boot.

-Tom

Christ, it's a gameplay mechanic, Chet. I'd imagine that if artillery units could kill enemies (the only thing they can currently kill is ships), then you could kill an empire with four infantry, two dozen artillery, and not a damn thing else, taking no losses whatsoever.

'As for slowness, i am begining to suspect my amd chip or is it my geforce 2 gts with 64mb? It seems most people complaining run athlon processors and some run geforcex with lots of ram - some don't. I guess the mysterious slow downs extend my gameplay value? Who knows, no other game has any slowdowns on my system. And at this point, I am begining to think, who cares. How much can i get for this on ebay?'

Have you rolled back to older nvidia drivers?

I have not changed my argument. You kids have presented your side and I find it silly. Next you will be telling me the poor path finding skills of my sidekicks in Daikatana had nothing to do with poor programming, but instead were a statement about minorities not being able to follow orders.

I am merely looking for consistency, you telling me artillery is handled realistically, while every other single bit of combat is not - that just seems silly. When I create my city on the edge of water - have modern artillery inside - a fortified city... it really does me no good against guys in rowboats. You guys are more the war buffs than me, so I will give you that one. I guess at some point in warfare they had magical rowboats that were the terror of the seas and land.

As for using older nvidia drivers, I will change my rules of play to fit a game, I will not degrade the performance of my computer on other games because one game is poorly programmed.

Chet

Chet and I are lovers. It's our terrible, dark secret. I'm the engine, and he's the caboose. Or vice-versa.

But seriously.

I think you're making too much of this artillery issue, Chet. If it was in SMAC then it's hardly a new gameplay mechanic. I don't consider "It's different than Civ II therefore it's bad" a valid argument. Most people on the board are coming at CivIII from both viewpoints (Civ2 and SMAC).

However, corruption bugs, ass-slow gameplay, and the host of other issues everyone guys brought up .. do seem like legitimate problems.

Besides, you guys need to get the hell off of Civ3 already and play some of the other great games that are being released. Give it a rest while we wait for the patch.

'I am merely looking for consistency, you telling me artillery is handled realistically, while every other single bit of combat is not - that just seems silly. When I create my city on the edge of water - have modern artillery inside - a fortified city... it really does me no good against guys in rowboats. You guys are more the war buffs than me, so I will give you that one. I guess at some point in warfare they had magical rowboats that were the terror of the seas and land.'

What on earth are you talking about? Choose artillery, shoot at ship. The ship will sink if you hit it enough times. It's tough to do until you get two-range modern artillery, but it helps to have a road network; you can move and fire artillery on the same turn. Defending a continent with a railroad-mounted stack of artillery is fun. You almost don't need your own ships, as the AI backs off on shore bombardment once you sink a couple.

"Besides, you guys need to get the hell off of Civ3 already and play some of the other great games that are being released. Give it a rest while we wait for the patch. "

I agree with this sentiment a lot. Civ 3 is bugging me because it isn't as good as SMAC, and I know there are some good releases right now but Civ tunnel vision has obscured them. I'm breaking free! The sad part is that it seems like the best games coming out now are all console games. I guess PC games are dead. ;)

I think Europa Universalis killed Civ3 for me. I haven't seen Civ3 but from what you're all saying, it looks like a revamped Civ2. Did Firaxis have a look at Europa Universalis? (Did RedStorm have a look at Operation Flashpoint?)

I hope Firaxis manage to create a new game, with new ideas. Again, I haven't seen the game but it looks like they only wanted to make it better than CTP. Sid could aim higher, well he has to aim higher to keep his Game God status.

I'll have a look at it though, while I wait for Europa Universalis 2.

Gunga

Good post Gunga.

I'm not sure why everyone likes EU so much. It was fun for a few days, but the interface problems in that one make Civ 3 look like a cakewalk.

That's ignoring the boardgamey style and retrofitted real-time nature of it, also, which drive me nuts.

'Civ 3 is bugging me because it isn't as good as SMAC.'

Give it a few patches. SMAC is the powergamers' upgrade to Civ 2, and Civ 3 is....everyone else's upgrade? Not sure.

Bub mentioned this earlier, and I wish they could patch it, but they can't. The diplomacy is sort of cheesy, tongue-in-cheek, and goofy. SMAC has such presence around it, all the so-serious quotes, the strong minded opponents, the movies (oh the movies!), the mindworm story. Civ III is just sort of goofy. It doesn't capture the flow of history very well (in my opinion of course). The city view is ok, but really not worth looking at after the first time (I can watch the Hunter/Seeker Algorithm all night long).

They can patch (if they wanted to) the, what I'll call "gamey", AI, but they can't fix the above unfortunately. I wish they would fix the gamey AI. I'm sick of them offering me blatently unfair deals, and building cities fricking everywhere, constantly. I'm fighting the Germans right? I destroy a city, and in 3 turns the Egyptians have put a new one in its place. Give me a break.

I was incorrect earlier: the governor in SMAC actually fixes drone riots before they technically occur, so you don't lose any production.

To think, all this time I didn't know that. #)($*#($

Jason - on the artillery, scroll back I was asking if what I saw was the norm or not. You posted it was, so don't attack me for asking a question and then believing your answer.

I wanted to see an end game, so I started it up again. And I have to ask. For the people with no speed complaints, are you doing nothing but playing civ3? When I have anything else running - not doing anything - just up. IE or a dev ide, it slows the whole game. I have 512mb of ram so that shouldn't be an issue. When I launch it from a clean boot it behaves much better. I just don't have the time to play a complete game of civ3 and do nothing else. I wish I did.

Also I noticed something else, sometimes when your trade deal ends the renegotiations screen pops up, other times it just tells you and you have to hunt thru all the other civs to find the person to trade with again. Anyone know why? The whole resource thing is broke. How are you supposed to guess what square will have oil appear on it and which will not? The resource lottery throughout the game really kills alot of strategy.

Chet

A normal sized map in the 1950s, in the middle of the space race, takes about 30 seconds to process a turn for me, tops. Geforce 3, Athlon 1400, 256 megs of RAM on Win2k SP2. This is with an annoying number of AI naval units patrolling around pointlessly, too. Running any number of things in the background doesn't affect it.

A huge map should take 3 times as long to execute, worst case, based on the difference in size.

'Also I noticed something else, sometimes when your trade deal ends the renegotiations screen pops up, other times it just tells you and you have to hunt thru all the other civs to find the person to trade with again. Anyone know why? The whole resource thing is broke. How are you supposed to guess what square will have oil appear on it and which will not? The resource lottery throughout the game really kills alot of strategy.'

I think if a Civ loses a resource by disappearance, loses control of it due to war, or pillaging, then the trade is automatically broken. More or less, if they don't even give you an option to renegotiate there's a good reason for it.

'How are you supposed to guess what square will have oil appear on it and which will not? The resource lottery throughout the game really kills alot of strategy.'

Resources appear based on the terrain type that was in the square at the beginning of the game.

'Jason - on the artillery, scroll back I was asking if what I saw was the norm or not. You posted it was, so don't attack me for asking a question and then believing your answer.'

Sorry, you sounded like you were engaged in Wumpus-style hyperventilating.

Found something odd. I admit this may be in the interface pages or readme or somewhere that I blurred over. Holding down the left shift key puts the game in hyperspeed mode, makes the game speed almost bearable.

One other oddity as I played so i could get the stupid kisses on the face screen shot at the end. If someone offers you any deal. Refuse it. Then cancel what they offered, and ask what they will offer for the same item. It is normally 2x-3x as good of a deal. I hate crap like this, it is just busy work that I have to do each time as some part of a faked forced barter system. Wow! The computer AI barters with me! What a smarty Sid is! The whole barter system sucks if you ask me.

Jason- i just asked the question, but once the wacky answeres started flowing, I wasn't going to let it go. So much love and protection for sid. I tremble in fear over what response I will get for daring to put the word sucks one sentence away from the holy word of sid. I am sure someone will point out that this method of fake bartering happens in the real world markets of some country in Africa, and if only I were only more open and accepting to strange cultures like sid is, I could understand the fun and love of his barter system.

Chet

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Quote:

Give it a few patches. SMAC is the powergamers' upgrade to Civ 2, and Civ 3 is....everyone else's upgrade? Not sure.

---

By the way: Civ 3 is $34.99 at Best Buy this week (if Chet hasn't made his case) :)

I still haven't gotten Civ III, but this repost on USENET by Christoph Nahr of someone else's post explains why cities are corrupted beyond a certain level.

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Quote:

here's the deal with corruption as explained by Jennifer
Schlickbernd in another thread:

On each map size there's a maximum number of cities per empire that
works as described in the manual. Any city past that will only ever
produce one shield without a courthouse, and two shields with one.
All other production is lost to corruption regardless of distance to
capital or government type. Apparently that's an artificial limit on
empire sizes imposed by the designers to prevent people from winning
by simply creating 100 cities ASAP and putting them on autopilot.

The good news is that you can change the limits. Start up the Civ3
editor, open the file civ3mod.bic in the Civ3 root dir (you should
probably make a backup copy of this file before you mess with it),
choose "Rules -> Edit Rules" and then the "World Sizes" tab. Now edit
the "Optimal Number of Cities (corruption)" as you like. I've doubled
the numbers for all maps which should be plenty in most games. Have
yet to try if it actually has the desired effect, though...

---

Chet,

Not once, not twice, but three times you neglected to capitialize the Great Sid's name. How dare you, sir! How dare you!

---

Quote:

I hate crap like this, it is just busy work that I have to do each time as some part of a faked forced barter system.

---

The resource lottery is only "broken" in rare circumstances. Like the tiny map I played where I didn't get any oil, which, after playing several more games I'm starting to believe is an unrepeatable problem.

Most resources (the starting ones) aren't needed (you don't NEED spice, for example, but it helps to trade for it). While key upgrade resources (iron/oil/uranium/horses) appear when you would naturally begin to look for them. (A primitive tribe isn't going to notice "Hey! There's uranium over there!"), for example.

Just wanted to make sure that was clear to anyone who hasn't played the game, yet wants to jump on any bandwagons pro or con.

I'm also starting to think corruption isn't "broken" per se. Spam is right about moving your Capitol, and it does seem reasonable that early Civs shouldn't be able to sprawl. It can be annoying, but I fear that fixing it might break the balance in other ways.

As a criticism, I will echo something someone astute wrote very early in this thread... moreso than previous Civ games, this one forces you along certain paths. This isn't necessarily bad, but it could explain why lots of Civ2 fans are annoyed they have to, often dramatically, change their playstyle.

Lastly, let me add that there's a simple way to find bad reviews of this game. They all include a line about this game being "Civ2 warmed over" or other such nonsense. After some 40 hours of play, this is a dramatically different game that only looks like Civ2/SMAC.

That's both a good or bad thing, but dismissively saying it's the same game as Civ2 is missing the trees for the forest.

-Andrew

Hey does anyone know if Tim Chown plans to write a review on CIV3? I miss his reviews and commentary since he left GamesDomain. I always liked his reviewing style.

Tim, you should register an account instead of posting anonymously.

Well, I loaded up my brand-new copy last night ands started playing the tutorial game.

I got to bed around 5:30 this morning.

I think in the automotive world they would say my "butt dyno" ranked this car as very, very fast...

'One other oddity as I played so i could get the stupid kisses on the face screen shot at the end. If someone offers you any deal. Refuse it. Then cancel what they offered, and ask what they will offer for the same item. It is normally 2x-3x as good of a deal. I hate crap like this, it is just busy work that I have to do each time as some part of a faked forced barter system. Wow! The computer AI barters with me! What a smarty Sid is! The whole barter system sucks if you ask me.'

Yeah, I agree; they're trying to pretend the AI opponents are people, instead of just reveling in their AI-ness.

It'd also be nice if the system automatically informed you:

Anytime a new resource you don't have becomes tradable from the AI.

Anytime the AI is the first Civ in the game to research a given technology, for acquiring/bartering to other civs.

Currently, I just try to ignore the aspects that are tedious like this.


Has anyone tried the deity skill level? The computer's able to found four cities in the time it takes me to crank out one. I have no idea how to win at this level, unless you resort to tactically manipulating the diplomacy AI.

Hey, much as it's nice to know I have one fan, even if he's ashamed to admit it, I'm still Civ-less as it's not out over here until Friday.

Reading the posts though it's interesting how Civ2 was slated for being "Civ1 warmed up", now Civ3 gets the same beating :-)

So, where the heck is MoM2, eh?

"So, where the heck is MoM2, eh? "

Dead as a post, so far as I can tell. Same with Microprose. The Microprose name doesn't appear anywhere on the Civ3 box, or even anywhere on it's own web site. Near as I can tell the whole brand is dead. Has Infrogrames started development on any Microprse titles? Or are the ones being developed now the ones that were being developed already when Infrogrames took over?

"Reading the posts though it's interesting how Civ2 was slated for being "Civ1 warmed up", now Civ3 gets the same beating :-)"

Kind of funny to see backlash get backlash.

Hey Tim
Nice to know your still ou there in the ether.
Hope you post a review to Civ 3, would love to
get your take on it before I plonk down the
scheckels for it.

I just played the Empire Earth demo, and had more *fun* with that than 8 hours of Civ3. I know, apples to oranges, but at least EE has a decent map of the world, and you can't beat the quirky and sprawling London. I think you may need a second computer plugged into your computer to run all the little citizens, but the scope of the game and all its little toy soldier type guys and effects looks to be a good time (especially mp). Come to think of it, the Civ leaders would fit into EE much better than they do in Civ3.

Ok, off goes Civ 3 from the hard drive until the patches arrive! Bring on AoE III!

More playing with Civ 3... its a good game, the diplomacy model is the best of all the Civ type games... theres a certain feeling to mid to late game modelling of other countries feelings towards your actions... but other than that, like i said before, i feel the game isnt much of an upgrade. Civ 2 was a major upgrade to Civ, Civ 3 seems like a graphical update to Civ 2 with added options from SMAC.

I've played 4 Civ 3 games to the end now, and so far I actually enjoy CTP2's endgames much more, it seemed more streamlined (but less good as a credible AI). anyways, I may be the only one who actually thinks CTP2 is "underrated". The lawyer and televangelist units were cool!

etc

While it's probably a good game in its own right, it isn't really what I thought I was getting when I bought Civ 3. It's too restrictive, strategy-wise. And now I feel I have to obsess over minutia to match the AI. Ugh.

I think it's going to go on the shelf soon.