I finally won ONE game

ZWildstar · November 12, 2003, 15:25

Well I have had a few weeks off from work now, so I decided I was going to BEAT this sorry excuse for a Civ game.

Started Huge map on Warlord level (/sigh)

I had no map readers so I played a entire map till I knew where all the resourses are and then STARTED over at 4000 BC. (/sigh)

I raced to grab all the resources I could get or at least place a city near by so I could culturely overwhelm them.

I stayed culturely ahead the entire time. Became Republic and then Democatic

Pollution started early so made the 30 man clean-up crews (/sigh)

Corruption was insane, anything more than 10 spaces from either the capital or palace was a lost cause.

NEVER got a spy into any other capital, tried a dozen times per.

Air Force was a complete joke (glad the United States has not heard that airplanes are useless, 60% of the US armed forces are airplanes!)

Bombarment, did not even bother

During World War I, (is there ANY way of not having at least ONE war?) my mechanized troops were getting rolled by calvary units...AND a carvel sunk my battleship.

During WWI also, I was forced into it after it was raging for 5 turns (my tiny ally went to war and dragged me in) well 2 turns later my nation is disgruntle and no one else's cities are unhappy. I have the majority of the wonders including Women's Suffage and all "be happy" ones.

I finally won by Diplomatic Victory with ALL but ONE nation not voting for me.
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BUT
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NOT 3 turns later the WHOLE damn world declares WAR on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Since I owned most of the world's resources. Well I did not get to finish my spaceship since my people were VERY pissed that the world hates me.

I am up to a challenge BUT this game has way too many, err lets say "wrong coding", since they are not bugs, to be playable.

I started playing these games on my 286 in CGA graphics, Empires. (I see it is being re-released now) and played Civ (way too much), loved Civ II (except for stacking combat), hated Alpha Centuri, guess I should have realized the way Civ was going by that.

alva · November 12, 2003, 16:54

Quote:

NOT 3 turns later the WHOLE damn world declares WAR on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Since I owned most of the world's resources. Well I did not get to finish my spaceship since my people were VERY pissed that the world hates me.

Wouldn't you join up an AI if you saw he was going to win (soon). Look like the thing to do to me.

vmxa1 · November 12, 2003, 19:03

Sorry it did not work out for you. I think you must realize the AI has to at some point, come after you. If you have all the resources and land, it must try to expand. Sooner or later you are it, even if it has no chance. This is not an unreasonable concept.

If you want to beat CivIII, forget you played CivII, it a hinderance in the main. good luck.

PS a ton of decent strats are in the topped threads in the strategy section.

Bleyn · November 12, 2003, 21:24

Just a comment and suggestion or two. (My 3.278 cents worth... adjusting for inflation ;-)

Quote:

Originally posted by ZWildstar
I stayed culturely ahead the entire time. Became Republic and then Democatic

....

Corruption was insane, anything more than 10 spaces from either the capital or palace was a lost cause.

A suggestion for if you've got a fairly large empire in late game, with a reasonably well built up central region, and you are really trying to build up the outmarches. Try switching to Communism. The spread out corruption is going to slow down growth in the center, but it works wonders for speeding up the outer regions. At the very least it speeds you up enough to get your corruption reducers in place and make an attempt at Democracy more palitable again. Of course, the other option is to stick with Dem., shift your center to Capitalizing, and buy some of those improvements.

Quote:

Originally posted by ZWildstar
I finally won by Diplomatic Victory with ALL but ONE nation not voting for me.
.
.
.
BUT
.
.
.
NOT 3 turns later the WHOLE damn world declares WAR on me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Since I owned most of the world's resources. Well I did not get to finish my spaceship since my people were VERY pissed that the world hates me.

Uhm, I'm confused. If you won by Dip. victory, how could the rest of the world declare war on you three turns later? Unless you kept going after you won the victory. At which point, you shouldn't have just been unsurprised at the all-out war against you, you should have expected it.

Personally, I rarely see the point in continuing a game after an end has been reached. After all, its eventually going to come down to killing everyone else off, and by the very end of a long game, that just gets tedious.

Shogun Gunner · November 12, 2003, 21:27

good suggestions vmxa1

Also, even though the original posting is somewhat negative, its nice to see a positive responses alva and vmxa1.

Seriously, give it another try, or try a scenario. Once you orient yourself to the new rules and changes I think you might like it ZWildstar.

Faboba · November 16, 2003, 07:15

Quote:

Originally posted by ZWildstar
Well I have had a few weeks off from work now, so I decided I was going to BEAT this sorry excuse for a Civ game.

.....

hated Alpha Centuri, guess I should have realized the way Civ was going by that.

Wow. You must really suck. I mean I knew I was doing quite badly with a few very narrow wins on Prince but you must be really, really terrible.

You played a map through just to find the resources? Why didn't you just save it and find them in the editor instead if you wanted to cheat?

Seriously though, don't just blame the game. If there are elements you don't like they've provided you with an editor to modify 90% of the non-hardcoded game elements - maybe you should learn to use it? And before you hit out with the tired old 'but I shouldn't have to use the editor - they should have made the game 'right' from the outset' remember that not everyone has the same opinions as you do on how the game should run.

vmxa1 · November 16, 2003, 15:33

You can't load a save game into the editor, so that will not help ou find resources. You would need the scenario (bic/bix/biq).

Bleyn · November 16, 2003, 20:25

Faboba, I don't think ZWildstar's issues with Civ3 have much to with the things that can be tweaked. I suspect it goes deeper than that.

There are a few things that make me think Z really just doesn't like the modern face of the 4X TBS world all that much.

First, Z's comparison list of 4X TBS games is somewhat interesting. For the most part, the games mentioned are on the order of 7-10+ years old. The only semi-recent one mentioned is SMAC, and Z indicates a very strong dislike for it. What I find interesting in this list is that Z has indicated strong likings for Civ and Civ2, and strong dislikes for Civ3 and SMAC. Yet, to me at least, the similarities of the four games far outweigh the differences.

Take Civ2 and SMAC for example. Personally, I can only think of about 5 areas of real significant game mechanic difference between the two. One, the 'hidden' tech tree, can be removed via the game options. Another, the Planetform abundance, can be minimized in the map settings. And the other three differences in SMAC, it's customizable units, government/social engineering choices, and faction advantages/disadvantages are usually considered improvements to the genre.

Second, I note that several of the gripes Z produces about Civ3 are somewhat exageratted.

Pollution in Civ3 does not really start appearing with any frequency until the industrial technologies are available, and the attendent city improvements are being built. Which is about the same time that it happens in Civ2. And pollution is no easier or harder to deal with in Civ3 than it was in Civ2, at least in my experience. Admittedly, if one doesn't stay on top of the pollution, the terrain changes are somewhat more permanent in Civ3. But that is a minor issue.

As for corruption being a major hinderance, at Warlord, the only time it could possibly be said that beyond 10 squares from the center of ones empire everything is a lost cause was in the very original release. Everyone who's played with a newer patch knows corruption is not that bad anymore. Further as I've already pointed out previously, its not like there are not valid strategies for dealing with corruption already built into the game. Communism can do wonders for speeding the growth of remote cities in the mid-to-late game.

Also, unless one is providing almost nothing in way of luxury and entertainment to the cities, it takes far more than 2 turns of war at that difficulty to start seeing significant war warriness. I regularly fight wars of 20-40 turns or more before it becomes a real issue. And its not like this was any different from Civ or Civ2. There were always consequences to running a war too long. Who didn't hate having the Senate sign peace treaties behind your back the turn before you would have captured that enemy city you'ld been gunning for.

Third, the whole "wrong codings" thing and saying that Civ3 is unplayable to me smacks of someone who started playing Civ3 with such an idea fix about how a 4X TBS game should play that they never gave it a chance.

Either that or the whole post is nothing but a sorry attempt at a troll. And I wouldn't discound that possiblity either.

Faboba · November 17, 2003, 17:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Bleyn
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I stand in bewildered awe before your precise analysis.

Bleyn · November 17, 2003, 17:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Faboba

I stand in bewildered awe before your precise analysis.

*Shrug* It wasn't really that much. I was just pointing out some stuff I thought was obvious.

I'd still like to hear more from ZWildstar on the subject though. The fact that they have yet to post any sort of follow-up despite the several constructive replies from others 'twould seem curiouser and curiouser.

steven8r · November 17, 2003, 18:32

As far as Unhappiness goes.... Use the city Governor to 'Manage Citizen Moods'.

This particular strategy has helped me out quite a bit.

vmxa1 · November 17, 2003, 19:01

Man I had forgotten how much I hated the sentate stopping my plans.

Talk about unhappy pop, in Civ 2 they got upset with an engineer working tiles and your troops sitting in another city.

Alex · November 20, 2003, 10:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Bleyn

I'd still like to hear more from ZWildstar on the subject though. The fact that they have yet to post any sort of follow-up despite the several constructive replies from others 'twould seem curiouser and curiouser.

Perhaps he was just trolling, then...