Civilization III Is Out, And It Rocks

ruebarb writes "At 5pm last night, I proceeded to unwrap my shrinkwrapped Civization III box (purchased at EB) - I had spent the last two weeks broke and playing the old Civ II just for entertainment, so I've got the experience of that fresh in my memory. I went to bed at 3am 8 hours later...yikes." I've attached his review below - I've been playing it, and it is amazing. Not a revolutionary change, but definitely a big evolutionary change.

First off, this game is a major change in structure and feel to the Civ. series. Quite honestly, this is probably a good thing. All too often, updates or sequels to a game system are one or two more bells and whistles that justify a $49.95 price tag. Civilization II was such a flexible system to begin with. Dozens of websites with hacks, special units, mods, and changes created a game system that could pretty much be changed into any type of game out there. (I even saw things like X-Com mods where you were soldiers fighting X-Com Aliens) In order for this to maintain it's consistant high level of quality, some changes were required at the fundmental level.

Your cities with the cultural borders now work a lot more like an actual country, and not just a collection of city states. This is nice...I was always less then impressed with having cities and colonies scattered across the globe with no detrimental value. The changes to the Trade system require networks of highways and roads/harbors to cultivate commerce, so it's in your best interestes to keep those things close together...Finally, we're dealing with an entire culture instead of just city-states. And if you're a real monster, you can use the gigantic maps and pull up all 16 civilizations.

Armies can be more decentralized, and wonders of the world are useful, but there are fewer "Killer" wonders that can completely upset the balance of the game. For example, in the previous game, The Sistine Chapel created a cathedral in every city, which made it a prime target for large civilizations...now the advancement simply increases the effects of cathedrals, which forces each city to get off it's butt and develop it's own resources.

Espionage and Trade have been abstracted. Trade and Commerce are now dependant on roads and resources and money comes from trading with other civilizations. And no more of that horribly unrealistic plan of sending the spy in to destroy city walls before the invasion. (I mean, come on...destroy city walls?)

My favorite new aspect is the cultural assimilation of other cities. For example, if you have a strong cultural identity (basically, borders) - and you are close to cities that don't...they may rebel and join your side...much in the way that several cities/territories that once belonged to Mexico joined up with the U.S.

I haven't finished a game yet...I made the mistake of getting my spies busted one too many times...First one country declared war on me...then I attacked and a second one with a Mutual Aggression Pact came at me. Then a couple of them started trade embargos against me, then a couple of turns later the other two guys around me declared war, just like Russia and Germany did with Poland. I got beat up pretty bad and chalked it up to a learning experience...

I have a couple of minor issues....most of the menus are relocated and are kinda hard to find. And I never liked those advisors in the first couple of games..and now they're intergrated...but overall, it's been a long time since I've been pleased with a game like this...This is the game you feel like telling the /. community is worth buying a copy of Win98 for.

Can't Count :-)

[Tim C]

5pm -> 3am = 10 hours, not 8

Someone needs to brush up on their base 12 arithmetic ;-)

Cheers,

Tim

Difficulty?

[gergi]

Is it just me or is Civ3 incredibly difficult? I play Civ2 on King level usually (second-most difficult) and I lost last night in Cheiftan mode in Civ3 (the easiest). Has anyone else noticed this?

Mexico cities joining the US?

[Carlos Laviola]

My favorite new aspect is the cultural assimilation of other cities. For example, if you have a strong cultural identity (basically, borders) - and you are close to cities that don't...they may rebel and join your side...much in the way that several cities/territories that once belonged to Mexico joined up with the U.S.

Funny, I had the impression that the large piece of the former Mexican territory was either stolen or forcefully acquired from Mexico 150 years ago or something.

Re:Civilizations

[Pope]

I don't remember EVER playing as one of the included teams: I always customized the name of my leader / civilization depending on how goofy I felt that day.

After getting *far* too addicted to the original Civ on my 386, I was afraid of having the same thing happen with Colonization or Civ 2 so I ended up running them a couple of times to see what was different, then not playing them. My roommate gof sucked into Civ 2 so bad, that often I'd go out at noon on a Saturday for brunch and movies with other friends, come back at 5, and Moose would still be sitting there at my desk in his bathrobe, no lights on, stereo on but no music, transfixed.

That fear has now returned with 3! :)

Excellent!

[Spudley]

Great. I'm planning to buy this. My "one game per year". But I think maybe I'll wait till the premium price copies have been snapped up by the insanely eager.
It'll be cheaper in six months, folks! ;-)

(hmmm... and I wonder how long before FreeCiv catches up?)

Culture

[tycage]

The inclusion of culture will take some getting used to, as well as the rest of the changes.

I personally love the culture aspect so far. What a rush it was the first time a city asked to join up with me because they were so impressed by my culture. (This was on the easiest level, I'm still in my "learning mode" right now.)

I'm looking forward to woking my way up to the higher levels.

Re:Mexico cities joining the US?

[pacc]

Depends on who wrote your history book.

Re:Difficulty?

[Saige]

I discovered the same thing. I started my first game of Civ III on a huge map, with 16 civs. My Persiam civ started right near the French, Babylonians, and Zulus. It wasn't long before I was cornered in with only 6 cities and no room to expand, and started getting beat up pretty badly by the Babylonians.

My second game I started near the Zulus, Babylonians, and Aztecs. This time, they all teamed up and declared war on me. I was fighting them off, somewhat, then they razed two of my cities, and I gave up again.

The AI is incredibly efficient at getting their civ built up at the beginning, and they attack in larger groups of stronger units. I was never a big military player in Civ II until the modern age, and that's going to HAVE to change, I can tell.

Walls come tumblin' down

[dipfan]

"And no more of that horribly unrealistic plan of sending the spy in to destroy city walls before the invasion. (I mean, come on... destroy city walls?)"

Why not? It's not like spies need to literally knock the entire city wall down (although they might ruin it with a well-placed bomb). The spy's activities could include (in ancient eras) stealth move like opening a gate, finding out passwords ("Halt! Who goes there?") or bribing/subverting guards. In more modern eras it could be getting the defence's blueprints... all things that render a city's defences weaker. Think like the Trojan horse. A city wall or defence doesn't need to be destroyed to be compromised: one weak spot is enough. Half a city wall ain't half as good, it's next to no good.

AI maddness

[Anonymous Coward]

I know people want clean AI, so you could feel safe, that "they know what I know". This all relates to the intellectual fight a player wants, especially in strategy games.

But the fact is, that the AI field in gaming has not advanced that far. It is still hard to make anticipating AI opponents, which try to outsmart you, fool you and trickle with diplomacy and back-stabbing.

Of course it is easy as a gamer to demand challenge. It after all our right, and I have been seeing games going for this all the time (with this new processing power AMD and intel has been supplying us :). But when looking from the developer side, it takes -a lot- of challenge to create a compelling AI.

More yet, the purpose of AI is to provide fun game play. If the game play is too hard (ie. too hard AI, attacks you all the time with unhuman observing power), the game is not fun. The bottom line in producing most games is that they provide the player with entertainment. Cheating AI, while cheap a trick, is still viable, because it offers harder game play for those who find it fun, while offering fun game play for those of us who can't run governments in our heads.

I think this was probably a good solution all in all from Civ 3, and I will be expecting more in the future.

Re:I love CIV

[Greg W.]

Wouldn't it be a better idea for today's PC game development shops to distribute their own customized OS' with their games

This has been tried before. Some of the really old games, like Wizardry < VI, ship on a floppy diskette. The system requirement says "100% IBM compatible computer", XXX kB RAM, etc. You boot from the floppy, and the game loads.

I've seen a few people talking about bootable Linux-based CD/games that would work the same way. The problem here is the astronomical complexity of the "PC" hardware platform, with thousands upon thousands of different cards for video, sound, networking; SCSI vs. IDE; ATAPI vs. proprietary CD-ROM interfaces; etc. Your game would have to support all of that.

Also, people do not like to reboot their systems to play a game. If playing Civ3 meant I had to give up the rest of my Linux desktop (including xmms playing music for me), my distributed.net [distributed.net] client, etc., then the cost (hassle) of playing the game may be too high.

Re:Mexico cities joining the US?

[Dyolf Knip]

I read once that Mexico was mad at America, because we stole half of their country; and not only that, we stole the half with all the roads

The US took the least populated, least developed territories of 1840's Mexico. I doubt that that was were all the roads were.

THIS is why moderation sucks!

[Sleepy]

The above post was modded DOWN at 5PM EST US time.

There doesn't seem to be anything "trollish" about the comment. In fact it's even perfectly "on-topic", since Hemos asserted the American Southwest [voluntarily] "joined" the USA, and the poster merely pointed out the truth. What's wrong with that??

For moderation to work, it has to PUNISH outragously bad moderation. This moderator should be on "probation" or suspended since they can't handle the responsability.

It's not the posters fault that Hemos learned his history from Walt Disney movies (and for that matter, CT learned to spell from badly translated movie subtitles).

If people studied more at school...