Anyone else hate Civ 3 when they first got it (I’m a big fan of all the civ games, I have SMAC, TOT, Civ 2 and 3) and end up liking it a lot in the long run?
At first, it seemed really difficult and frustrating, and i still think it is, but at first I thought it was all silly, abstract and with no realism.
For a long time in Civ2, I played a very pacifist technologist style, until one day I just started playing extremely aggresive and managed to do rather well with that style.
But when I started Civ 3 I went back on that for a while, until I started a game as the Japanese, wherein I had a blast, and the game gave me a potent lesson in the weariness of running an imperial empire spanning the globe.
I managed to be rather lucky and got a realistic start on an island with a random map. Also I realized culturally linked starting locations meant, that China-Japan conflict would be part of the game. (Did I mention culturally linked starting locations is a favorite feature?)
I ended up conquering the Chinese, but not their continent. Bandits and barbarians were attacking my military and cities rather incessantly and I had to guard all important resources.
The main advantage of any conquest in Civ 3 seems to be special resources like oil and uranium and luxuries. By the end of the game, when I had fought everyone, one worry I didn’t have was unhappiness (I was in a monarchy, no war weariness). I had so many luxuries that the lucky Home Island residents could all consider themselves wealthy. I didn’t win the game by total conquest (which is common in Civ 2). I only managed to win by having the highest score when time ran out. This makes sense though, no one has ever succeeded in taking out every opponent in real life.
I was a great Civ2 (I always played as Communist - less impact of having an army) fan and rushed out to get Civ3.
I was certainly disappointed, after 5 years you’d think they would have put in more graphical improvements and touches.
For example, in Civ2, you had animated ambassadors from the other tribes, I just got a crappy bit of text in Civ3 - definately a step back.
I don’t know if it’s an acquiree taste or not, but if it is, I acquired right quick.
I’m a big fan of a pacifist approach, and the culture victory condition is a huge improvement over the previous Civs, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve yet to try the dominion victory, which is next on my list. Also, I really dig the different civs having different abilities and a specific, civ-only unit. It adds a new level to the game, and actually means that you’re not simply picking your civ based on the color of its units. (Or simply for its city names. I played America in Civ 2 exclusively because I couldn’t come up with new names for cities I’d conquered.)
I think you may be onto something. I played (and loved) both Civ 2 and SMAC. In fact, I keep both loaded on my laptop for when I am out of town.
I bought Civ 3 a couple of days after it came out, played it for about a week, and then promptly put it away. I didn’t like the initial land grab, the total agressiveness of the other nations, and lag time between rounds later in the game.
I then realized two things: 1) I needed a better computer, and 2) the computer was utilizing the exact same strategy that I used to become a master of Civ 2. Wow. That is pretty cool.
So while I do not play it as much as I played Civ 2, I have come to really enjoy the game. It is much more challenging than Civ 2 and SMAC and I will continue to play it.
BTW, did anyone pick up Play The World? Is it worth it if you don’t play online?
Cool thread - I actually achieved a diplomatic (UN) victory last night! To me III is a bit of an acquired taste. You can’t just mindlessly play like you could with I & II. You have to pay much closer attention to things like strategic resources, who are your allies, your reputation, CORRUPTION!, when do your trade deals expire, etc… For me it took about 3 games to even get used to the interfaces and different ways of doing things.
I also like the civ specific abilities. At first I couldn’t win at all without a militaristic civ but now I am getting better. Play as Babylonians and watch your culture meter go off the scale.
Do yourself a favor and check out www.civfanatics.com, especially the forums which are UBB so you will feel right at home:). What I learned there made playing the game much more enjoyable. Also do yourself a favor and read the ~260 page) manual cover to cover. Boring but informative.
I never play plain vanilla Civ III, I always play the patest patch of PTW.
The thing that frustrated me about Civ3 is that if you get more than 10 cities or so, by conquest or exploration, it becomes impossible to build anything. Corruption in the distant cities is so huge that you can’t build anything there, so they stagnate and wind up producing no science or income, while you have to regularly use the resources in your productive core cities to send units out to defend the worthless frontier cities. In short, it felt like the outlandish corruption on the frontier unbalanced the gameplay too much and made the administrative chores of the game boring.
As long as you can get it for less than $25 US then IMO yes. It comes with 8 more civs (see below) and has additional buttons at the bottom that make play a bit easier. IIRC someplace on-line had if for $19.99 recently. I won’t go into all of the technical aspects of playing PTW on-line because it is covered better at www.civfanatcs.com but it is not flawless. Do your own research before purchasing.
I never did much with Civ 2 but I love Civ 3, though I did’t play much at first because it took so long on my 450mHz system. My newest system has twice the speed so I can play a game of Civ 3 in half the time. I don’t care for the Domination victory, I turned it off after the first time I achieved it. Winning the game circa 1930 suprised the hell out of me!
Ol’Gaffer: the online system in PtW is reportedly so full of bugs that it’s only worth playing offline. I have it and my opinion is that you don’t need to bother if you have no interest in the additional tribes. I, of course, like being the Vikings.
Yes, you can turn it off in PTW but IIRC you can in plain CIV III as well, it is a game option selected at the startup of a new game. Sorry, I’m at work, if I were at home I could give a definite anwer. I think another option you want to turn off is ‘allow culturally linked starting positions’. That makes for truly random starting positions (where the Japanese can start near the Aztecs instead of always near the Koreans etc…).
Thanks for the info Opengrave and Jeff Olsen. I have seen it a couple of times for about $20 but I don’t have the time (or the connection speed) to game online.
I used to read the www.civfanatics.com forums as well as the ones over at apolyton.net. But that was before this damn place started to take up all of my time!
I agree with this completely; the absurd corruption, even in Democratic government, really turned me off the game. I think it would be workable in Civ II, but it doesn’t work in Civ III, because in Civ III you have to go the land-grab route because you never know where strategic resources are going to show up.
I’ve basically given up on the game, though if I could fix that one thing I’d probably keep playing it for months more.
Civ III is a work of genius, albeit flawed. I always play as the Americans on a huge map at the Regent level. I have won one geme in a year and a half, by space race. My gripes:
1- Too hard to conquer distant lands. You land a la Normandy, fight to conquer a city, and a few turns later they overthrow your governor and your troops are now their troops. Or you discover an unsettled island, plop down a settler, and it takes forever to build anything due to corruption.
2- The AI gangs up on you. They trade techs among themselves so you are perpetually in their dust tech-wise. Their idea of a fair trade with you is two luxuries for one. Forget about trading for a tech.
3- Advisors aren’t as much fun as Civ II. Having Elvis tell you “the people…they can’t help falling in love with you” was priceless.
Sua, agreed. If there was one thing about the game I could change it would be the corruption factor. I like/understand the concepts but the degree to which it is applied make the game tedious at times. You have to have a well placed palace and well placed forbidden palace to get anything worthwhile built. Far flung cities playing archipelego = a whole world producing 1 shield per turn each. If I could ratchet the corruption down by about 50% the game would be a lot more fun.
After extensive reading on the other forums I did learn that the only way to really survive on higher levels is as a ‘tech broker’.
Hint; always play on a Huge map. It reduces the effect of corruption (I realize that may seem contradictory, but it’s true. Corruption range is proportional to map size.) With patience and attention to the important things, you can overcome corruption. I always do.
I love Civ III; I believe it’s a really big improvment over Civ 2.
Technically, it’s not perfect, though. “Play The World” was a total fiasco, and even after several patches the MP feature doesn’t work…
Even on continents, if the computer plops you down in a corner or on a peninsula, you’ve pretty much got to build your capital there. Expand a few cities away and corruption starts getting unbearable, but you don’t have any other direction to expand in near the capital. I think the last game of Civ3 I played was one where I started out squished between the sea and another Civ. No real choice but to conquer the guys I was next to before they got too big and overran me. After investing the time in doing that, I was stuck with a too-big empire with a capital in one corner, and looking at 200 turns to build the forbidden palace anywhere other than right next to the capital. Whee fun.
Maybe I’ll go back to it on the “acquired taste” theory and give it another shot.
I don’t have “Play the World,” because I heard it was buggy. Nice to know others’ experience backs that up.
I love Civ III. Just plain love it. I play the Persians (scientific and industrious), and can win without firing a shot solely due to cultural influence (up to Monarch level; past that it gets tough).
Regarding the distant corruption problem, I’ve found that patience in building the Forbidden City really helps. If you can put together the initial group of cities while exploring the surrounding territory, and then send out a well-guarded settler to the most promising distant location where you’re likely to expand into, make the first big project you build in that far-off settlement the Forbidden City. If you can pull it off, it really keeps the corruption under control by the time you expand that direction.
Of course, in doing that, there’s the risk that the space between that city and your main city group will get filled in with other Civs, and you’ll lose your distant city. But that’s the fun and the challenge, right?
If you haven’t downloaded the patches from the offical website, you should do so. The insane corruption was a bug in the initial release and is fixed in the patches. Your distant cities may be corrputive, but courthouses and police stations will dramatically cut down on it. Also building a Forbidden Palace a strategic distance from your capital helps a lot too.
You can also turn off Culturally Linked starting positions in the start up screens
Yeah, the corruption was driving me crazy as well when the game first came out but things are much better now (I think that I’m on version 1.29).
I really think that the game has some great things going for it. I really like the way resources are used. I’m not sure if there is anything quite as frustrating as trying to build up that big army for the invasion of your neighbor when your supply of saltpeter/oil/aluminum/etc. runs dry and you are forced to cough up an arm and a leg to get some more!
And as far as the tech goes, I think that I remember reading on one of the other forums that the computer civs will immediately trade any new tech to all of the other computer civs, but not to you. This essentially forces you to do the same. So if you trade a tech, immediately contact all of the other civs and trade it to them as well. If you don’t, then the other civ will. Towards the end of the game this gets pretty frustrating as you end up trading great techs to civs that are way behind for 20 gold and a copy of their world map.
