Since my computer relaxation of choice is offline indefinitely (Curse you Sony and your inadequate security) I decided to pick up something to fill a few hours a week.
Saturday I finally created a Steam account and made my first purchase, Civilization V. It finished downloading at around 1pm on Saturday and when I logged out Sunday at midnight I had racked up 20 hours of playtime. I haven’t played Civilization since Civ II and I’d forgotten how engrossing it could be.
Is there any hope for me getting anything done or am I doomed to live in squalor while building new and stronger civilizations?
We were discussing our weekends this morning and my boss has rescinded my work from home privileges until I hand over my steam password. Meany.
So not much hope here but at least it’s not just me. It’s been a long time since a game has hit me this hard right from the start, I just completely lost track of time. Thankfully the only creatures I have to take care of are not shy about letting me know when their dinner is not in their bowls.
Of course then you’ll need some Europa Universalis to get you off that, followed by some total war, to get you off that, then some sins of a solar empire to get you off that… but a case of sins is really bad, so you’ll probably have to go old school with masters of orion to get rid of that…
Civilization III was kick ass once you had it patched up (which is true of every version.) If it’s the worst of the games all that tells me is how profoundly awesome a series it is.
I had some awesome Civ III games. I still tell tales of an epic war with the Celts where the two sides had like 100 armor and mech infantry each, stacked up on the border, plus dozens of air and naval units. It was a war for the ages, waged across two continents and drawing in every empire in the game in a 100-turn campaign of blood that finally ended when I cleansed the Celt lands with nuclear fire. It was so awesome.
It was indeed the worst of the civilization games according to most players. That said, it IS the best game series ever made, so the “worst” isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.
As far as I know, civ3 never patched the infinite corruption feature, which made conquering nations in the late game painfully tedious. That was my biggest complaint with the game, but there are many other issues. Another big one was how resources (like saltpeter) were handled.
See you on the other side, Moonlitherial. I recommend setting a timer to go off every six hours or so to remind you to eat. A box of Pop Tarts should do nicely.
The whole problem of the game summed up. Conquer? And you rapidly end up with an empire that has maybe a dozen effective cities and the rest of it is just deadwood. Not conquer? Then you probably wont control the crucial ressources needed (like salpeter) and rapidly end up with an obsolete army/empire.
CIV4 didnt really cure the problem of primordial ressources (any competing civ will ask for an unsustainable price for those, meaning you have to start a war to get your hands on it anyway), but at least it put the corruption problem under control. Though, one can only wonder how the playtesters of Civ 3 didnt notice such a big clog.
Civ3 introduced much needed concepts like territory, heroes, culture, population resistance to foreign conquest, and on… But, by God, was that game flawed (and I played dozens of hours of that shit).
Years ago I had an EverCrack problem, then a Civ3 problem. Now I have a Civ5 problem. I’ve logged over 1000 hours on Steam since January.
I scurry through the endgame play because I’m just so eager to start a new game. That early discovery phase is just so narcotic. What are my circumstances? What problems do I need to solve?
The biggest problem is keeping my life on track and still feed my Civ5 jones.
Really? I’ve never had a modern war against another modern nation. Usually, if I haven’t been crushed before the industrial era, by the time I get to modern armor, my closest competitors are just starting to get tanks. I’ll occasionally see mech infantry, but those are usually from the less militaristic civs, the warmongers having committed suicide-by-Marx centuries earlier.
Civ 4 solved the primordial resource problem by making basic units available in each era which did not require those resources. In civ3, if you had no saltpeter, you had to wait through the entire industrial era without any industrial units. No iron, and you might as well restart.
I got hit by Civ IV pretty hard recently… fortunately it came at a time when I was just finishing up a big stressful (non-game-related) thing, so it was okay for a few days that I was completely addicted. I too hadn’t played a civ game since 2, but I enjoyed the crap out of Alpha Centauri back in the day.
Anyway yeah, you’re doomed.
Incidentally, I saw some reviews of Civ V and was kind saddened that they appear to have dumbed down how culture and civics work. Is it bad, or am I just being paranoid? Cos I very much approve of the reworking of military movements and the use of hex instead of square grids.
They work completely differently. I’m not sure if I’d classify that as getting “dumbed down” - that’s just a popular insult when sequels change something in a way that the reviewer doesn’t like.
A number of Civ IV fanatics seem to hate Civ V, but it’s hard to estimate the real numbers in the internet where those who hate the most write the most. I liked it but YMMV.
