First Impressions

[faded glory]

ya...does it matter tho? They both have funny city names.

[Ballz1998]

I cant wait till i get out of the dentist tomorrow and pick up my copy of civ3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then Im goin straight tot he puter and loading the game... reading the manual, watching the video and hopefully I'll get my arse kicked on prince level... it'll sure be a nice change from smacking the King AI around in civ 2

[FrostyBoy]

Ahh great, the AI seems tough, that will bring back memories of when I was playing Civ1. I would have legions, with 3 cities, and the computer would have 10 cities and flying stealth bombers over my land, completely ignoring me as if I was not worth worrying about.

ahh the memories of being patheic

[FrostyBoy]

wait.. I should tell you, this was when I first played the game

so it will be fun to have those memories back again

[The Negotiator]

I also remember the time when i first played the civ 1. Ahh the sweet memories..

I was just little boy then and didn't understand english well. It took months before i did win a single game. It was pretty tough because i didn't understand english enough to read the manual nor did i understand everything what the enemy leaders said to me.

[ElitePersian]

hhehe, the good old civ 1 memories, i remember those too.
when i first played, i didnt know my city would BUILD stuff, i thouht i had to save up money and buy it!

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by The Negotiator
I also remember the time when i first played the civ 1. Ahh the sweet memories..

I was just little boy then and didn't understand english well. It took months before i did win a single game. It was pretty tough because i didn't understand english enough to read the manual nor did i understand everything what the enemy leaders said to me.

Man! Now that's a handicap!

You actually won one?

What are you gonna do next? Cure Cancer?

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by The Negotiator
I also remember the time when i first played the civ 1. Ahh the sweet memories..

I was just little boy then and didn't understand english well. It took months before i did win a single game. It was pretty tough because i didn't understand english enough to read the manual nor did i understand everything what the enemy leaders said to me.

And i thought it was bad when i was defending my cities with cannons They worked well in Pirates, so i thought they would do a good job in civ... And i had a cannon i didnt know how to wake back up, so my cities were being overrun and my cannon unit was just sitting there sleeping... Arrgh!!

I did get better at the game

[LaRusso]

any comments or too busy playing?

[SonofDogbreath]

PLayed about seven hours last night
1) no crashes
2) my system bogged down late in the game (p3 450, 256) not bad but noticable. There were lots of AI cities.
3) interface takes getting used to, but doesn't seem bad. read the manual walking to work today and found the hotkey for diplomacy.
4) irrigation is hit or miss. if you have fresh water/river nearby it is easy, if not you're SOL. You can connect from other irrigation systems and I built a long chain of irrigation to get water back to my main area.
5) cities on rivers don't need aquaduct, this is a nice feature
6) takes a long time to get hospitals, so cities are stunted at size 12. Good time to build more workers!
7) AI is pretty good, they protect their settlers and workers and can give you a run for your money (at least while we are still learning the interface!!!)
8) played greeks on small earth, was surprised to find myself in florida! Nice map.
9) LE fold out chart is kind of weak. Small 6 inches by 36 inches. Some what hard to read. Will be useful once I know the symblos but not starting off. The symbols are also small and somewhat hard to read. (Might not be worth getting the LE just for this)
10) Palace screen is nice to have, but looks a little hokie. I think that I liked the one in CIV I better. They are the same style.
11) Haven't figured out how to use the que yet.
12) the game suggests items to build when you finish something. It does a fairly good job of selecting; even alerting you to new things while you are still building another (such as telling you that you need a hospital to grow and asking if you want to change to build that)
13) Music is OK, gets kinda old.
14) Graphics are nice.
15) Diplomacy is quite nice. I really likes the options that can be made during trading.
16) The resource and lux items are really nice additions
17) Wonder movies are just a picture, but we knew this already.
18) Never got a leader, but mostly fought border skirmishes.
19) I like the Upgrade ability!!! (Just make sure you know what can be upgraded and what can't)

and

20) I kissed my wife goodbye as it was loading and told her that I'll see her in six months. After playing 7 hours, it looks as if this was a good prediction!!!

[campmajor!]

Well, one advantage of getting the game later is that we are able to read the American notes of their stuntling...

Thanks, guys! It makes the waiting easier.

[campmajor!]

By the way, how good or bad is Chips & Bits concerning delivery times?

The postman did not have it with him today (now he regrets he did not... ).........

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by campmajor!
By the way, how good or bad is Chips & Bits concerning delivery times?

The postman did not have it with him today (now he regrets he did not... ).........

i cancelled my order with them after not being able to receive order number for 2 wks and managamannus posting that they had no clue when the game was out.....

[Boris Godunov]

Hey all,

I played around with Civ III from about 6 PM to 1:30 AM. I spent several hourse futzing with the editor though, just to see what I could do.

Installation went smooth as could be, though it took a little while.

When the intro started, I got nervous because it "auto adjusted" my monitor...and the movie was waaaay off to the left. So I hit the auto adjust on my monitor again...problem fixed.

The one gripe I have with the interface from first starting is the buttons. When you click on them, it doesn't do what you ask it until you a) click it again or b) click the green circle at the bottom. This seems silly to me.

I played as the Germans on a random, large map. The first time I started, my locale was so bad that I restarted.

The biggest problem I had with the program was that my music started skipping and became so garbled I shut it off. Since I normally shut off game music anyway, no big deal, I suppose. I imagine it's a hardware conflict that's on my end, though.

The game runs smoothly on my PII 400, 128 MB Ram. It's a little sluggish at times, but is fine. Of course, I've only gotten to 570 AD, so who knows what will happen in the future.

The interface takes getting used to. It's not 100% intuitive. It seems to me that a lot of game information, even in tutorial mode, takes some digging to get to. It took me forever to figure out how to buy an embassy with a civ. You'd think it would be on the foreign advisor screen or in diplomacy...but no, you have to double-click on the star next to your capital city.

Graphically, I think it's beautiful but simple. I am having some difficulty distinguishing the different units' nationality, as some civ colors (Egypt, Russan, English) are very similar. However, this is fixable via the editor, which allows you to change the colors. Also, when in combat, sometimes the HP bar of the units is obscured and can't be seen, which is irritating.

Oh and with the editor...you have to remember to save rules changes as a scenario and then when you start a new game, Load Scenario with your rules. It will still generate a random map provided you didn't save a map with the scenario. This leads me to wonder how one will change the rules and play on a world map...

Oh, and there are no scenarios that I can find. Just the 2 world maps. Anyone else find any? The editor looks very robust, but info on how to use it and what things effect what is scarce. It will take some playing with. You can't add new improvements, civs, techs, units...but you can change existing ones all you want. You can add as many new governments as you want, though.

The most annoying thing about diplomacy is that when you encounter a unit for another civ, you automatically "have contact" and an instant peace treaty...but you aren't told this! No advisor pops up saying "We have found the Russians!" or something like that, and often they won't contact you. So if you mistake that Russian for an Englishman (which is easy), you might not even know you've contacted the Russians for a while.

Now, those are the only quibbles I have so far, and I may be mistaken on a few, but that's the impression of the "bad side"

But the good side:

THIS GAME IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

The good far far far far far far outweighs the bad (thus far). I was addicted right away and found the atmosphere immersive as hell. I had the best one-more-turn-syndrome I've had in ages. The fact that I got to bed at 1:30 AM was a tremendous act of willpower and a desire to not be a quivering mound of jell-o.

I can't see playing Civ2 anymore...this replaces and surpasses it easily, and is just a terrific game. Best buy in gaming I've made in a long time. This is all pending further exploration of the later stages of the game, but so far it's terrific.

Cheers.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by campmajor!
By the way, how good or bad is Chips & Bits concerning delivery times?

The postman did not have it with him today (now he regrets he did not... ).........

I originally preordered with Chips & Bits. I called them after I heard the game was in stores yesterday, and the guy said they didn't expect to receive it until Friday. So I cancelled my order and went to EB and bought it.

Re leaders: I got one leader, Barbarossa for the Germans, after winning a battle with an elite archer against a Russian warrior in about 450 AD. I haven't used him yet, as I have to get him back to a city to make an army, and he's trapped behind enemy lines with my elite archer (who DID NOT disappear to make the great leader, as I thought he would!). Barbarossa looks like a fat king in long cloak, btw. He's very vulnerable right now and I'm worried the Russians will kill him before I get him back to a city. (apparently you can't make an army out in the field, must be in a city).

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

THIS GAME IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

I am glad to hear this. I hope to get my copy today.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


I originally preordered with Chips & Bits. I called them after I heard the game was in stores yesterday, and the guy said they didn't expect to receive it until Friday. So I cancelled my order and went to EB and bought it.

Re leaders: I got one leader, Barbarossa for the Germans, after winning a battle with an elite archer against a Russian warrior in about 450 AD. I haven't used him yet, as I have to get him back to a city to make an army, and he's trapped behind enemy lines with my elite archer (who DID NOT disappear to make the great leader, as I thought he would!). Barbarossa looks like a fat king in long cloak, btw. He's very vulnerable right now and I'm worried the Russians will kill him before I get him back to a city. (apparently you can't make an army out in the field, must be in a city).

boris, tried out any colonies?
how is AI? does it look clever and agressive enough?

[scientific civ]

Originally posted by Faboba
First in my defense I'd like to remind you all I really do love Firaxis and their new-born.

However the large savegame size gives two bad points.

1 : It's going to be a pain in the ass saving games. Probably take a minute or two.
2 : It's not going to be easy doing progressive/dynastic games anymore. I mean it takes me a good 10 minutes to get a file that size on my 56.

I don't think saving games will take 2 minutes. Deus Ex had savegames up to 20 MB, and that only took about 10 seconds

[Steve Clark]

GP: Don't speak for all vet Civ2ers when you say that they don't irrigate or build mines at the beginning. At Deity, you get two settlers, while your first city is growing and obtaining martial law, the second should first open a hut and then starting getting roads and irrigation around the first city (assuming it's a good site). That has been the typical strategy of Deity players.

But now with Civ3, it perhaps becomes irrelevant.

[markusf]

its not that good

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by LaRusso

boris, tried out any colonies?
how is AI? does it look clever and agressive enough?

Yes, colonies work well. And Barbarians and enemies will make it a point to get them, so if you leave them unguarded, they are toast. It's a bit of a pain to have to build a road to another civ's capital to establish trade, but it's realistic.

My German civ has no iron, so I can't produce swordsmen yet. I had to scramble to beat the Russians to a rare Horse resource in our continent. They have iron, though, so I may eventually have to trade or conquer.

The AI I saw was only chieftan, and it seemed far more clever than anything I saw in Civ 1 or 2. When I fought the Russians, they would send in groups of 2-3 warriors and would avoid my horsemen and try and sneak behind my lines to get at my cities. They didn't throw themselves uselessly against stronger units (I actually did that more often! lol). When I invaded their civ, they fought back respectably. Once I razed a city and had a good position to hit Moscow (they still had 5-6 cities, though), Catherine came and offered peace with a bribe. So it wasn't the stubborn "I will crush you!!!" line until they were down to 1 city, and then begging for mercy...she knew she'd lost and stood to lose more, so she sued for peace.

And, as I provoked the war rather aggressively, it did seem to sour my relations a little with other civs. France and England went from polite to cautious after I hit the Russians.

Cheers.

[Robert Plomp]

[quote]At Deity, you get two settlers, while your first city is growing and obtaining martial law, the second should first open a hut and then starting getting roads and irrigation around the first city (assuming it's a good site). That has been the typical strategy of Deity players.[quote]


what a waste of your 2nd settler !
Start building roads and iritation in an era that roads and irigation hardly matter !
Of course you should settle a 2nd city asap if you have a 2nd settler, and expand expand expand ! Later build settlers for terrain improvement !

you're sure that you're a deity vet ??

[Steve Clark]

CyberShy You know there are many ways of playing, even at Deity. I'm a perfectionist warmonger, I never ever build more than 6 cities before Democracy and then no more than 11 (until I start the war machine). I know others expand like crazy but both strategies prove very winnable, don't you think? I believe in the SSC and if the first city qualifies, then getting ahead start on trade bonuses would be the key to maximize tech turns and get the roads for caravans. Why are we talking about Civ2 strategy here????

[Boris Godunov]

Steve,

Just IMO, your signature is wrong. The graphics are nice but functional, not spectacular. It seems to me that Firaxis put its resources in the programming. There are some things that need to be ironed out, but the gameplay is very solid.

I think the scenario thing is a moot point. Given the editor and the huge Civ mod community, I'm certain they figured hardcore modders would be putting out terrific scenarios in no time, so why waste resources on it? User scenarios were always far better than theirs, and what's wrong with that? An integral part of the program is the editor, so let players go to town making the scenarios. For me, half the fun of scenarios was designing them anyway. Since scenarios aren't the majority of Civ players' method of play IMO, I think their decision was fine.

Cheers.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov

My German civ has no iron, so I can't produce swordsmen yet. I had to scramble to beat the Russians to a rare Horse resource in our continent. They have iron, though, so I may eventually have to trade or conquer.

Wow! This alone makes me want to play. Thanks Boris for the calm, rational, non-reactionist first impressions! It's great to see feedback from one of the sane people on the forum.

AHHH! My wife just called - she has Civ3 in hand. Now if only I could get out of work a bit early....................

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Stuie


Wow! This alone makes me want to play. Thanks Boris for the calm, rational, non-reactionist first impressions! It's great to see feedback from one of the sane people on the forum.

AHHH! My wife just called - she has Civ3 in hand. Now if only I could get out of work a bit early....................

Try faking your own death...I've thought about it!

I refuse to react like a lunatic to things that are mildly disappointing. Also, since I haven't finished the game, it's really hard to make a snap judgement call about a feature being bad, since you can't really grasp such things without the full context of the game.

The one thing I can say I don't like and can't change via the editor is on the pop-up notices for wonders and civ advances, it gives you NO info on what they do. You have click on a link to the 'pedia to get any description. I think it would be nice to have a brief synposis of the effects of the wonders/techs as we had before in the pop-up. It's a small quibble, but I think there is no such thing as too much information (well, mostly...).

Cheers.

[El hidalgo]

Thanks for the info, Boris. I wonder about the starting positions on the world map -- from other reports it seems no-one has been able to figure out how to start in the proper location of your civ's capital. Have you had any luck in figuring it out? This has me worried. It's certainly a bad sign for scenarios....

Also, how many cities can you fit in the UK/Ireland on the large (180x180) earth map? In a Firaxis screen shot of the small map I saw that there were 2 cities in the UK, but in another thread someone said you could only fit one there in the large map!

Thanks again for any info you can give!

[Faboba]

Originally posted by scientific civ


I don't think saving games will take 2 minutes. Deus Ex had savegames up to 20 MB, and that only took about 10 seconds

So THATS where my disk space went..... bye, bye JC Denton.....

I realise it won't take THAT long but with the autosave it will add on a little time every few turns.

I hope they do what Civ2 did with the file ancestry style back-up. That was a good idea.

[Spatzimaus]

My turn!

Got the game last night at about 7 pm.
Stopped playing at about 6 am, almost done with my first game.

Okay, here goes.
I'm playing the Persians (Scientific/Industrious, UU: Immortal (4/2/1 Swordsman)). Played on standard Earth map (8 players), and it started me on the U.S. East Coast (pretty close to Washington, D.C.). Also on my hemisphere were the Americans (started about where Seattle would be), Aztecs (amazingly enough, starting near Mexico City), and the Zulus (Argentina). Not wanting my Unique Unit to go to waste, I conquered all of them quickly; Spearmen and Impi are no match for elite Immortals. I've built every Wonder in the game (managed to beat the computer players to ALL of them! Luck, and the fact I have three times as many cities as anyone else), so I've got a massive advantage (they're using Bowmen, I'm about to upgrade to Modern Armor).
In my world, the Babylonians control Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa, the Iriquois control Australia and eastern Africa, the Germans have northern Asia (everything but the Indian subcontinent and Indochina) and southern Africa, and the English HAD the rest of Asia and western Africa. I had a small resource city in Africa, they attacked it with archers, I brought in tanks; it got ugly.

My impressions so far:
> The AI doesn't build enough infrastructure (mines, irrigation, roads). If he already has one of a luxury or strategic resource he might not bother linking a second one with is network, which makes it difficult to trade. Maybe it was just my one game, but it was a headache.
> Colonies: haven't needed any. Every time a new resource has appeared, there's always at least two within my borders.
> Governments are more balanced. I used to play Civ 2 as a Monarchy the entire way up to Fundamentalism. Now, I needed to go Democracy for the money and lower corruption. Makes me wonder how well the others work.
> It's really hard to get a beachhead now. Since you'll need a Harbor or Airport to move resources, certain continents become extremely hard to break into. Defense as a whole is a lot easier now; you can't see how many units are in a square (just the strongest) so cracking a city is a lot more uncertain.
> The Forbidden City is hugely powerful, but you need to be really careful where you put it; if you know you'll be expanding later you might want to hold off for a few thousand years, but unless you've got a Leader to burn you won't be able to put it too far from your capital.
> Air units are more abstracted; you don't actually move them any more, they're just like a mobile artillery strike. They're a lot less dependable; trying to use ten bombers to soften up the English capital, I ended up killing half its populations and destroying most of the buildings before the defenders were hit. This isn't like SMAC where all you need are planes/choppers and rovers.
> Armies aren't that good. It's like trading three units for one unit with three times the hit points; you don't get three attacks per turn, and I haven't seen an army gain any experience ranks yet. Their only real use is cracking a really tough defense, where you know you'd lose a unit otherwise (or MAKING a really tough defense).
> Love the graphics, hate the Stone Age music.
> On the world map, the resources have actually appeared in the correct places! Oil in Texas, Middle East, etc. Don't know how random this is.

Sigh. Now to go waste another day playing.

[Boris Godunov]

I haven't played on the World maps yet. I did take a look at the huge one in the editor, and was unimpressed. Yes, the British Isles were still small. I know nothing of the starting locales.

Some modder will have to create a decent World Map, IMO.