Civilization III Is Out, And It Rocks 470
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.
Civilizations (Score:2, Interesting)
I love CIV (Score:3, Interesting)
What is intriguing is that they did not throw a few short movies and 3D graphics on top of this venerable turn-based classic and call it a new game. Some of the dynamics mentioned by the author make this sound like an awesome game.
So it sounds like the time for a new poll. I have a Win ME partition that I kept on my Dell 4100 just for playing games because VMware would not let me install Red Alert II from CD (the error is unimportant here but it related directly to the use of a virtual machine).
Anyway, the poll is how many people still have Windows machines for playing games? How many still have Winblows partitions for playing games?
How many people live comfortable running their games on VMware, Wine etc..?
Great game based on both Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri (Score:2, Interesting)
Civ III hearkens back to Civ I (Score:2, Interesting)
- Units to create tile improvements instead of the Public Works used in Civ II
- Full City screens detailing everything in one place
- Similar unit movement as in the first game (ie no linking units together into one force)
- No Zoom on the isometric view like the second had
- Critical message fly by like in the first rather than accumulate in a message queue like in the second
It seems to me that Sid discarded much of what was put into the second. Too bad, I liked a lot of those changes. That being said it's a very beautiful game.
IMHO, as per
J:)
Re:What's it like compared to FreeCIV (Score:3, Interesting)
The UI is pretty decent, although using the mouse to move units by dragging would be a nice feature stolen from AC
Re:Evolutionary ... but not much (Score:5, Interesting)
The computer doesn't throw one or two units against you either. It amasses troops and then attacks with all of them at once - just like a human would. It will also avoid well fortified points and go after weaker ones, again like a human. It expands very fast, will grab onto any point of land it can find, and will willfully corner you so you can't expand. They'll control strategic resources like iron and saltpepper.
Thus far I've only played on Chieftan, but Firaxis has stated that the "intelligence" of the AI doesn't change regardless of level. There's only a slight difference in aggression and huge differences in "cheating" (for or against the player) between the different levels.
The biggest complaint to date is the overbearing corruption. Firaxis has posted on this some as well, but I still suspect that they'll eventually patch the game to lower the corruption effects somewhat. (Or you can just change it in the editor if you want).
Strategic Resources Make Civ III Realistic (Score:5, Interesting)
Resource development is crucial, and it adds a touch of historic realism to Civ that wasn't there before. The luxury resources (silks, incense, etc.) make happy citizens, and if you can corner the market on, say, incense, you can trade those resources for other things you need.
But the strategic resources (iron, coal, saltpeter, etc.) are the most important. When I finally discovered gunpowder, I couldn't find any saltpeter for about 10 turns. But then, I spotted it, hidden in the desert in the no-man's land between the three civs. I quickly built a bunch of workers, and sort of force-built a road about 30 squares from any of my cities so I could plant a colony (and a fortress) on top of the saltpeter. It's the only source on the continent, and that means I'm the only civ who gets cannon (the Aztecs and the Iroquis are still building catapults). I had to do the same thing a century later in order to get a source of rubber (the only other source was right next to an Aztec city, and the Aztecs hadn't developed the tech necessary to see it yet.
The point of all this is that Civ III's emphasis on strategic resources needed to build certain units creates a stimulus to expansion and building colonial empires, mirroring what Western Civilization did to the rest of the world because we needed resources. Remember the story on African Tantalum mines months back? Civ III models this sort of thing in a way never seen before.
A new generation of failing undergrads (Score:3, Interesting)
First there was Civ and unto the world was brought great happiness for the tech-savvy masses who found it except when they were fired from their job, their wife left them without them even realizing, and his feet started sprouting moss.
The first Civilization came out just before my freshman year of university. I still remember the die-hard Civ fans in the computer lab, spending hours and hours mesmerized by this game. I also remember discovering the game, and becoming one of them, discovering Robotics at 3 am and unleashing hell on the Mongols with my new artillery units. I remember the running, clandestine battles we fought with the sysadmins to keep the game installed on their systems (and whenever we lost, the game could be reinstalled from two 3.5 inch floppies). I remember playing into the wee hours of the morning the night before a physics final ... it seems to me that most of us did poorly that year.
Here's to a new generation of freshmen, taking up the latest incarnation of the beautiful game. All you need to remember is: first year doesn't count, "D" means Degree, and everything important you need to learn in University, you can learn from Civilization.
Re:Evolutionary from CivII, or CivII-Call to Power (Score:5, Interesting)
As far as the Civ II/Civ III differences, yes, there are a LOT.
- AI is much improved. AI empires can spread and develop very fast, especially at the beginning of the game, and if you're located near them, they'll try and pin you in fast. The AI also is much better with the military. No longer does it send in a few random units, but large groups of stronger ones, using the terrain to it's advantage, and picking where it attacks more carefully.
- World sizes can vary by a lot. The smallest world is, I believe, 80x80. The largest that comes in the standard setup is 180x180 - and you can use the included editor to change that up to 255x255. And the amount of tech development varies based on the world size - the larger the world, the more science is needed for the same advances, to keep people from going through advances too quickly.
- And in that vein, advances seem to come more slowly. You can actually field armies of swordsmen, of horsemen and catapults, of knights, before they're all obsolete. In every Civ II game I played, a lot of those units were almost obsolete before I could build the first one.
- Trade is important now. Caravans were removed, fortunately, as they were obnoxious. But because resources are required for certain units, you'll need to either find, or trade for them.
- They've actually removed quite a bit. You no longer replace settlers (now workers) with engineers later on that can radically alter the terrain. Also, no supermarkets to create incredibly huge cities. A number of other advances and units are gone, and I believe the total number of wonders has shrunk.
- 16 civs can play on the world, at least on the largest maps.
- The other civs now no longer gang up on you - they'll ally with you against other civs, and such. It's no longer them vs. you.
All in all, it's definately a different game. As far as playing strategy goes, there's a bigger difference between Civ 2/Civ 3 then there was between Civ/Civ 2.
Destroy city walls (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mexico cities joining the US? (Score:2, Interesting)
Right. They declared independance because they had let too many settlers in from the US who they failed to obey Mexican law, revolted against the Mexicans, and declared independance. It was the US settlers who revolted, not the Mexicans.
So, it is just as forceful of a takeover as ever.
Re:Evolutionary ... but not much (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the game is much tougher (Score:2, Interesting)
Some of the more interesting changes are the "non-combat units". Any combat unit can capture these guys and use them (like workers or settlers). Additionally things that I'm used to being combat units are now non-combat units! Like catipults (I haven't survived to later technology yet
I've also noticed that the civilizations seem to be placed much closer together (either that or the maps are just smaller), as I find my self always in early conflicts.
One additional thing (inherited from MOO2 I believe) is that each civilization starts with different attributes. For example the Aztecs start with a Jaguar Warrier which attacks at 1, but moves at 2. When it attacks and starts losing, it will automatically retreat. Different civilizations start with different specialized units.
JimK
Built in Scenarios? (Score:3, Interesting)
Civ III thoughts. (Score:4, Interesting)
The game moves a little slower than is usual for, say, Civ2. Also, the music sometimes skips. These factors are slightly annoying, but not nearly enough to hamper my Civ3 experience in any significant way.
Things that I like about the game:
Strategic resources. (Yes!!)
Barbarians are now actual tribes. I
You can play against up to 16 other civilizations in a single game.
The expansion of borders: Brilliant.
Culture as a significant game factor: Brilliant.
The AI is
The diplomacy is
My usual Civ2 strategy is to expand my enemies to death -- expand at the maximum possible rate your civilization can tolerate. This is harder to do in Civ3, mainly because your rivals all have the same idea! (I've found that choosing an Expansionist civilization will help you get the edge in this area, though.)
Things I'd like to see:
Female rulers. While female rulers were historically uncommon, they were there. (Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, various European queens, the current president of Finland, Indira Gandhi, etc., etc.) I almost always choose to play female rulers in Civ2.
More options for civs. I tended to play Celts, Vikings, Carthagenians (sp), etc.
Multiplayer, but this is a given.
I agree with some of the posters above that Call to Power was horrible. I had originally purchased it, with strategy guide, around the time it came out. Within a week, I had returned both (for a full refund) because the gameplay was so awful.
Alpha Centauri was and is a great game, though.
I give Sid and company a big "Yay!" for CivIII.
Wonderful Stuff... (Score:4, Interesting)
My first game, as the Japanese, I've reached the tech level to start needing Iron to build the good units... and there is only one iron resource on the coninent I'm on! The Chinese are rushing their workers towards it, and I'm at peace and don't want to fight them (not without my swordsmen!), so I start a line of workers building a long road through the jungle towards the precious iron... I get there first, build a colony and start pumping out units, when the chinese build a city next to my colony and take all that beautiful iron away from me!
I went to war over _one_ square on the map.
I used horsemen to cut his roads to his capital and other good cities so he couldn't use the iron there (which was so cool, really), rushed my very few swordsmen to the fore and was finally able to take his city next to the iron. Just then I got chivalry, and it's sword swinging Samurai time! The tactical and strategic importance of the map is way beyond anything in civII or SMACX even.
What other games challange you to deal with a single point of failure in your road system?
So how's the micromanagement? (Score:3, Interesting)