First Impressions

[johnpaul_riley]

My First impressions... Almost entirely positive...

The three biggest differences that jump out at me..
The quality of the AI, the trade system, culture and the
system of terrain improvements.

1) The AI expands aggressively. The build cities quickly
and early. In Civ2 I could carve out a small empire of
about 10-12 cities and become isolated, focusing on
tech. Doesn't work now! The AI will expand to the point
where you fall behind, even on Warlord level. I got
trounced on a regent game.

2) The AI builds wonders aggressively! How many times
was my wonder JUST nearing completion, when I get the
message that such and such a AI city finished it. GRRRRR
But, makes for a GREAT challenge.

3) The trade and culture systems are FANTASTIC as is the diplomacy.
I can't think of any way to improve either trade or
diplomacy, but I think it would add to the game to have
some culture only buildings. Maybe an art museum or
soemthing with free artistry. The cultural strategy plays
similarly to the tech race strategy. The trade
system forces you to interact with the AI players, nearly
impossible to play a strictly isolationist game anymore. And
embargoes HURT. I got smacked by an embargo alliance
against me, two AI's cut off two luxury trade items, sending
me into massive civil disorder.

4) With all the positive things in mind, I must admit to being
dissapointed by the terrain system. It strikes me as a
throwback to the original Civ. No more airbases, which
really confuses me.... I wish I understood the justification
for their removal. They would be even more useful now that
air missions have changed. Also, no more farming/supermarkets,
which I thought helped provide a need for development into
the late game. Now, it's just railroads do both again, like
Civ. I was hoping for more terrain improvements, such
as radar stations and other things. Though I am
dissapointed with the terrain improvement options, I like
that workers are very cheap, and it's easy to maintain and
support large numbers of them.

-JP

[Döbeln_2001]

This AI kicks butt! In short: Having built a nice empire, whupping some Aztec and English rear in the process, the Germans declare war on me in approx 1500 AD. As I have no land contact with the Germans, I don't give it much thought. Thus, I'm pretty surprised when several German ships show up on my coast and start unloading Knights, that capture one of my size 12 cities. Luckily, my Neighbours, the Iroquis are already at war with the Germans, so getting them onboard is a cakewalk - Iroquis units enter my territory and start dishing it out to the Krauts... Gotta love this game... No crashes so far, my only gripe is with the sluggish loading of the Civilopedia, could be my nVidia drivers and Win XP causing a problem.

/Döbeln 2001

[Döbeln_2001]

Crap, the Germans keep advancing, and another pop 12 city falls, I'm struggling to rush in reinforcements...

/Döbeln 2001

PS.
This is on regent, btw...
DS.

[StrategicKing2]

Ok instead of blowing these programers genitils, lets all ask the real question.."why the hell no multi-player"? It makes no sense at all. The real fun of civ is comparing yourself with the rest of the civ players and outwitting others.

[LarryM]

Originally posted by StrategicKing2
Ok instead of blowing these programers genitils, lets all ask the real question.."why the hell no multi-player"? It makes no sense at all. The real fun of civ is comparing yourself with the rest of the civ players and outwitting others.

Well, some people happen to like single player, and some people for various reasons don't play multi-player. As a single player game, its very successful. I agree that some people are going a bit overboard in their praise; the game does have its problems, and let's be honest, it was rushed out a bit.

That being said, the level of trashing that some people are giving the game is odd to say the least. If you live for multi-play, then don't buy the game. Reasonable minds my differ as to how good the single player game is, but I know this - its going to be on my hard drive for quite a while, and I anticipate many hours of enjoyable play.

[ASHBERY76]

I've been playing the game for 5 hours and i'm very satisfied it's a great game well worth buying.
WELL DONE FIRAXIS.

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by LarryM
(1) I gave up on two games at monarch (King) level; I'm now well into the industrial age playing the English at regent (prince) level. I'm doing okay - I have a nice compact, efficient civ of 12 cities. I'm think I'm headed for victory, but I'm nowhere near first place yet (the Aztecs are way ahead), and I was as low as 5th or 6th at one point.

I'm still playing my first game ( Regent ) and I was also 5th and sometimes 6th in the ancient era. Now around 1000 AD I'm 3rd, close to 2nd, but the leading Japanese is solid top. Enjoyable game, again Civ III meets my expectations and is etremly addictive. The AI is very good, and I can't wait for some thoughts by yin26 about it.....

"most of us will not play higher than Monarch for quite a while": I agree. The AI is stronger, the game's harder than the prequel, and even when I'll have hundreds of gameplay hours I don't see how yet I can reach Emperor/Deity if there's a significant difference between the highest levels.

So far the ++++: the AI ( yep !), the units design ( superb ) and sounds; the overall balancing .
The - - -: technical omissions like wonder movies and NO VOICEOVERS? ( Come on, even if you hate SMAC, you can hear at least a superb voiceover encoding for each of the 85 techs, each of the 50+ facilities, each of the 36 SPs ( wonders), +the anouncer every turn .) Perhaps to avoid a second disc since Civ III - without voiceovers and movies - is hardly compressed within the single one.

[Xeovar]

Well, we all know it's great, so I won't be repeating all good words

But after two days (and nights) I can say I found some bugs and some things that are definitively not good enough for a Civ.

1) Conceptually
a) I really hate workers :| 75% of time spent playing you move those morons around And I don't like setting them on auto. This is only thing I liked better in CTP.
b) diplomacy is a lot better, however it should be possible to "invite" more than one other civ to talks - for example you could build an alliance of three countries against other two. That would be cool.
c) AI does not respect borders - they keep walking on your territory regardless you gave them right of passage or not. That really sucks, especially when they settle just beyond border in a middle of your territory.

2) Bugs
a) I started huge map game with 16 civs and surprise - foreign advisor shows only first eight of them
b) In domestic advisor screen you can sort by different columns, but: you can't sort by what city produce (!) and after a few secs order gets back to usorted without even clicking anything

3) Glitches
a) advisors do not carry necessary information for real strategic management: it lacks some summaries, some tools for changing production for several cities at once, you can't get a right-click menu on unit in military advisor screen when sorted by city (if sorted by type you can (!)), no good summary for trade (who, what, for what), no good summary for diplomacy (foreig advisor suck, and there's no simple way of browsing diplomatic agreements)

I think that's all. It looks like a lot, but even with all this Civ3 rocks. However it could have been better.
I hope a dev will read this post, and get some ideas for patch.

Regards,

Xeovar

[Spatzimaus]

There's one thing I don't like, but only because it makes no sense.

In a 16-way game, you should be more than willing to trade fairly with your neighbors, because you both gain relative to the other 14 players. Playing the science broker was always entertaining in other games; trade 2 mediocre techs for one good one, then trade the same 2 for another good one to another race, and so on around the table.

With Civ 3 and its luxuries and strategic resources I was expecting to be able to do something similar. But, the AI players all want outrageous deals, and not just for techs. World Maps? They want my World Map, 600 gold, and a technology just for their map. Luxuries? They're not even happy trading 2 for 1.

I started with 3 silks and 3 incense in my territory, and I CAN'T TRADE THEM AWAY. No one wants it, even when the Foreign Advisor says things like "Babylon wants incense, maybe we should trade them some". I'm going to lose this game simply because there were no Horses in my territory and no one will trade me them (even a friendly civ that has 3). I'm about to start a very unfavorable war just to grab a city with horses, because if I don't I'll be crushed by the first civ to attack me.

This is on Regent level, BTW. And I know the AI players are trading with each other, so why are they so against trading with me?

[Provost Harrison]

I feel your pain Spatzimaus and agree with you. If an AI opponent has luxuries just laying around unused and so do you, it makes perfect sense to trade them. Both sides benefit. It doesn't make sense why they would be so belligerent...

[Comrade Tribune]

Just got the game!

As yet no comment, except: It did funny things with my graphics settings; shouldn´t change any settings on my system without asking me for permission!

Evaluation of the manual: Very soon!

Evaluation of gameplay: Not so soon. (I am planning to write a lenghty review that will stand the test of time!)

[gsunderl]

So far, I'd say it's definately civ, but with the difficulty ratched up some. I used to play civ2 about 40 hrs a week, though I haven't really played it in 3 or 4 years. Needless to say, I was quite excited about civ3. Civ2 was fairly easy to beat on diety, if you played a lot (you were in practice), expanded quickly, and was willing to micro manage EVERY part of the game (and was willing to endure the very long game of taking over every single city, moving countless howitzers around). My play style in civ2 was fairly xenophobic for most of the game, building up a strong economy and science advantage, leading off with spys to buy off most of the enemy citys (avoiding destruction of the city) and mopping up with howitzers and using the UN to prevent retaliation. That should give you enough of an idea of what type of strategies I used, which I assume was fairly common.

Civ3 keeps the over all feel, adds some new stuff, has better micro-management lessening features, and better ai. I started out on the 2nd easiest setting and got beat pretty hard when every single country in the world declared war on me. I started over at the easy level, since I believe winning gives the greatest insights on how to win over all. I ended up winning a cultural victory quite easily in about 1980 or so. I played on a huge map. I noticed a couple of things (which may be wrong, since it was only after my 2nd game):

--be very good friends 2nd closest country -- you don't want to fight multiple computer players.
--once the computer starts sending any troops in your territory, start building a military. War is inevitible.
--hitting hard and fast, taking a few cities, going for peace after taking 3 or 4 seemed to keep the internal riots down. Man, under democracy, the people are weenies.
--Make sure you can rush build a temple and courthouse on the cities you take. If you take a city over, the locals get very angry if you're at war against their native country.
--Coal is very rare. Make friends by getting them up to the steam engine so you can trade for coal to build rail roads.
--pollution is a major pain. You used to be able to get mass transit pretty quickly, now it takes a while. Have lots of workers to clean up the mess.
--Watch for rioting cities closely, it's easy to miss them.
--Trade low end techs for cash per turn. The computer loves getting tech, and will pay lots of cash for it. You make friends at the same time.
--Trade. You need friends. Give the computer a deal.
--Make good friends with all of the computer players that are far away, being popular may scare your neighbors. This may be wrong, but they may fear a 2 front war.

Like I said, some of the above may be wrong since it's only my 2nd game, but it's what I learned after playing one through the ages, and may help others figure out some strategies (which will inturn help me...)

Anyway, it's what I was looking for. It works under windows 2000 (big plus there, since I couldn't play civ2 under win2k, and I was jonesing for a civ fix). They added culture, which I really like, especially since I find major military takeovers to be tedious. And they made it so that I won't have to play at the hardest difficulty level (there's always a level that I can't beat, I assume anyway). And yes, I'm quite drunk right now, so that's why I'm rambling so much.

BTW, I really don't see how multi-player is going to work very well, since Civ is such a long game. The only way I can see would be for people to do peer to peer games (lan or net) that were pre-arranged amongst themselves. Please, if you have an idea, please mention it, because a good way to do multiplayer would be very cool.

[silverdrgn]

You don't want anyone to listen to anyone that HAS the game????

Well I have CivI and II, loved them. We still play the multiplayer version of 2. Guess what, I've got some work ahead of me returning CivIII. I didn't like it.

But since you want to waste your money before talking to people that HAVE played it, I'll let you continue in blissful ignorance.

Originally posted by BigBear
Damn my stupid ways and my ordering from Amazon.com. I want this game so BAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I dreamed that this day would come as soon as completed my first game of Civ2. And now its finally hear, and all I can do is read what other people think about it!!

On another note, I would not listen to the majority of people on these forums about the game. So many people here are pessimists. They are gonna find everything they can that is wrong with the game before they say one thing about the good stuff.

[silverdrgn]

Thats where you are wrong it. It is like Civ2. Some things are improved, others are not!

I liked what they added. Can't stand the interface, we are sticking with civ2 multiplayer..

oh don't forget no multi-player in this version. Are they waiting to stick us with another version (and another $50) for that???

Originally posted by faded glory
What GP is forgetting is that Civ3 is nothing like Civ2.

nothing.....

[Thoth]

My overall first impression is pretty good. I'm still working on my first game, but a few things struck me.

Overall feel is more like Civ 1 than Civ 2. (fewer improvements, railroads increase production and food, the combat system, and the overall feel is somewhere between Civ 1 on steroids and SMAC).

I'd rate it a definite buy, but there are a few things I'm willing to quibble over. Mostly interface stuff.

Civ 2 had a lot more information available to the player. I miss being able to look at the happiness analysis and know why a city was unhappy. There's no "Zoom to City" option for civil unrest.....it's way too easy to miss a city that has gone into disorder.

I haven't found a way to look at an enemy's stats (tech levels, city list ect) even with an embassy. I'm not sure if it's the game or the player.

The build queue is a nice addition to the Civ experience, but rather awkward to change on the fly.

I miss being able to zoom in and out incrementally, really close and really far out seem to be the only options.

Not being able to rush wonders at all (unless you have a leader).
I found myself looking for a fight anytime I wanted to build a wonder, just so I could try for a leader.

There were a couple of other things, but I was playing until 6:30 this morning.....which I think is the most telling factor.....the fun is there.

(off to soak up more coffee, and back to Civ III)

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by Thoth
Civ 2 had a lot more information available to the player. I miss being able to look at the happiness analysis and know why a city was unhappy. There's no "Zoom to City" option for civil unrest.....it's way too easy to miss a city that has gone into disorder.

Try right-clicking on an unhappy citizen head... you should get a "poll" on why the citizens are unhappy...

[Ballz1998]

Originally posted by StrategicKing2
Ok instead of blowing these programers genitils, lets all ask the real question.."why the hell no multi-player"? It makes no sense at all. The real fun of civ is comparing yourself with the rest of the civ players and outwitting others.

I'll tell you why no multiplayer. Infogrames said finish the game now. Firaxis said we're not done yet. Infogrames said you better get done quick or kiss the whole project good bye. So they had to choose between releasing a buggy SP/MP game and a stable pretty much bug free SP game... Personally im glad, very glad they had sense enough to do the latter. I would love to have MP but infogrames will probably sell it as an addon... the bastards. Companies that practice that kind of marketing don't gain any reputation points with me thats for sure.

[Libertarian]

Well, I don't have Ballz's direct line to Miss Cleo, so I have no idea why there's no MP, but I can give my first impression. I like it very much. It's quite a different animal strategically from Civ2, but that's one of the things I like about it. The challenge is back. At least for now.

[Ballz1998]

Originally posted by Libertarian
Well, I don't have Ballz's direct line to Miss Cleo. . .

That's just the way games are made these days... developers get paid to finish games to the producers specifications... if its not done, but the marketing gurus think it shipping at time X will maximize profits... it ships, period.

[Libertarian]

Right, but what's your point? That capitalism is bad or something? If it's so easy to make a game for free, why don't you go ahead and do it?

Firaxis couldn't have won this thing either way: ship late, gripe gripe gripe; ship on time, gripe gripe girpe. Tell me honestly, did you expect perfection on first release? If so, have you ever written a nontrivial computer program?

[TCO]

Originally posted by 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.

Only a nincompoop would irrigate under despotism. Only a wimpy bulder would irrigate when he could ICS (unless playing OCC).

[TCO]

Maybe that was a little inflamatory. What I meant to say was, "you would be in the definite minority of strong civvers if you did early irrigation/mining in Civ2."* When someone says the game is too hard (Civ3) and they haven't mastered Civ2, I take things with a grain of salt.

I recognize that it is completely possible to beat the AI on diety with multiple strategies...heck you can disband the settler and still win.

[EnderSword]

This game is good, despite it's best efforts to create a clutered mess.

I'll go through point by point stuff about gameplay and stuff.

1. AI opponents - The opponents expand faster, manage their science better, trade and deal with each other, they seem to attack cities wisely, weak cities first etc... and seem to know when to hold and when to burn a city. However, in a military sense their armies appear to randomly move around most of the time and they don't seem to use fortresses or arm their borders or chokepoints. Overall much better than Civ2 but could be better or atleast less random

2. AI self management - Obviously telling AI to run your cities sucks, but i do like the resrictions you can add to limit what they start building. And the Workers are a million times better than in Civ2, they balance out what they build, they incorporate resources and even clear forests and jungles when they think it's appropriate. That and the pathing is better, automated settlers in CIV2 would walk around the world instead of using the railroad.

3. Improvements - These suck, They're pretty much the same as Civ2, without being adjusted for the different game play. There's less emphasis on economy (stock exchange removed) but the entire system of research is now based on your income. Also new problems like War weariness and rampant corruption are hardly addressed at all.

4. Wonders - Also pretty much the same as Civ2, some new and more creative stuff could have been added, there's plenty of cool stuff in the world to build. The Essentials here are just the Pyramids...and thats about it.

5. Corruption - Holy Crap, Move away from your palace and The people just won't do any work for you at all, I have cities where i've lost upwards of 15 sheilds and 30 commerce to corruption, and that's in a Democracy. With this level of problems and no real way to solve it captured foreign cities far from home are pretty much useless.

6. Governments - Not exactly the most creative things in the world, did away with fundamentalism and didn't add anything like facism or any religious type of system...despite having Empires with 'Religious' Tendancies

7. Empire Traits - Kinda cool, let's you pick the style of play you want. I tend towards industrious and Scientific Persians, renamed Canadians of course. Also more importantly gives the AI certain advantages they can use to kill you. Also can be turned off, good thinking

8. Victories - 6 Ways to win, Most of them stupid. Conquest and Space Race remain kinda cool, either be the strongest or smartest. Cultural is also atleast sensical allowing you to dominate with 'influence'...like the US. However this could have been better by adding cultural improvements and Techs like TV or something strictly cultural. Domination is just conquest cut short, Diplomatic is really lame, it doesn't even take into account relative power like Alpha Centauri did. Also you have no choice when to be victorious, If you complete a space ship you launch it, no choice to wait etc..

9. Score - This is a horrible way of keeping score, based pretty much entirely on your population and territory. This is totally lame, no points for your Culture (other than how it translates to territory) , No points for Wonders themselves, or even points for victory type. i just got through completing the space race and Ta-da...Ender the Foolish.

10. Game Timing - Way Off, You get all types of Power Plants whin 5 techs of each other, No real strong offense until Tanks, My Cities hit population 12 about 200 turns before i can get sanitation and Build the neceassry hospitals. also the first part of the game goes so fast, it's 1500AD before you know it.

11. Units - I Like settlers/workers being split up. I find there's not much variety or anything in ground units and lack of airbases make air units less effective. Not very creative, no really special forces type things. I do like that they gain experience, makes sense.

12. Great Leaders - totally crappy. When I heard they were going to add Great leaders I thought they meant almost as a new type of wonder, create the proper conditions and Napolean is born, Starts golden age or Gives a benefit like Adds 1 to attack power of all units or like Alexander is born, All conquered cities have no resisting workers etc... something useful like that, possibly lasting only during the persons's 'lifespan'. Instead they reward constant attacking, meaning you can only get a great leader while fighting.

13. Armies - good idea, bad implementation. Only benefit is higher Hp. even 3 Modern tanks can only attack once per turn and there seems to be no attack of defense bonus or anything, maybe i'm just not seeing it. Seems like a waste of Attack units, but good for defense of cities.

14. Technology - Lame and the same, like most stuff in the game.

15. Diplomacy - It is much better at trading and negotiating, however three or more person trades would be cool. I'd be nice to be able to create multi-country pacts like Nato or Warsaw. I can sign mutual protection with japan and China, but it'd be cool to essentially force them to sign one with each other too.

16. Resources - Good idea, make land and terrain have a strategic value instead of just space for development. also makes roads/rail/ports more important. Luxuries making people happy is good.

17. Territory/Borders - Good idea, very necessary with no more ZOC, however I notice tough enforcement of other civ's borders, but they walk through yours all day and they don't even stop when you tell them to leave. They'll even found new cities in your land...You'll often capture them through culture...but still =)
You should be able to kinda of set a border policy, opened, semi-opened (civilian but non-military) and totally closed where the civ is sent an automatic warning.

18. World Council - Would be nice to have a functional UN that voted on global policy or something, like in Alpha Centauri.

19. Advisors screens - Poor...at best. No real help or info here, even when you try to sort cities by some criteria it resets it in seconds...useless. The advice they giving isn't that directive either, they just tell you things you know already. Military advice is a little useful since it can be sorted by type and city.

20. War Weariness - Very intangible, that sucks. Should have some sort of number associated with it so you know how to manage it better. Also some compensation should be made for victory, no one hates a war that is very sucessful and produces no real losses. Well, maybe hippies hate it, but they suck.

21. Game length - seems short to me, Even at cheiftan I only finished the tech tree with 40 turns left and had to hurry alot to comlete conquest.

22. Overall - In Total this is good, could have had more changes, even just superficial ones like changing the names of improvements, techs and wonders. It provides a new style of play but is lacking in a few major, major areas. Multiplayer might be good for this version since less micromanagement is required but as a whole Civ really is a SP game, unless you really want to take your time and take a few days to play against a friend or two.

23. Verdict - I like the game, I'm glad i bought it But it could have been about 1000 times better, especilly given 5 years to concieve of it. I assume they got bogged down by too many people making suggestions of impractical things or very specific things and forgot to make the game flow balanced and logical. It happens. I Like the game, I'll play it for 1-3 months probably thne switch back to a Warcraft 3/Everquest type game. But in a year from now when i want to play a game of Civ and build a cool empire and stuff I'll be loading up Civ2, not Civ3.


Well, that's my 46 cents, kinda long. Tell me what you think, maybe we can get'em to patch in a few changes

Owner of Civs 1-3, SMAC, CTP 1&2 and railroad tycoon:
Ender Wiggin

[Spatzimaus]

Something amazing happened.

Recap: 16 players, Huge map, one big skinny continent (except for one big island the Indians had all to themselves). Year is about 1300, most civs are just entering the Industrial Era. I'm Persians, located at the extreme end of the continent. I had a slight tech advantage but no horses. My two neighbors, Egypt and Greece, both had horses in border cities. Still, it wasn't looking good.

I saved the game, and tried attacking each in turn. Both chewed me up fast, it didn't go well. So, I had to come up with something new.

The world had been pretty quiet; only a couple wars in 200 years. This HAD to change. First, I traded a couple luxuries to Greece to let me use their Horses. Then, I picked two pairs of civs; one pair at the far end of the world (Iriquois and Japan), the other in the middle of the continent (England and France), and payed them to fight each other. (Technically it was a "military alliance" but I was so far away that there's no possible way I could get into it. It'd be like Argentina paying Germany to be their ally against France; you know who's going to take the brunt of the damage).

Next thing I know, it's World War I. Anyone read the Onion's "Our Dumb Century"? "Britain declares war on Prussia declares war on Hungary declares war on France... Britain almost declares war on itself". Next thing I know, it's me, Rome, China, Greece, England, Iriquois, and Russia versus China, France, America, Egypt, Japan, and India. Germany and the Aztecs were too busy having a war of their own to get involved, and the Babylonians were my ex-neighbors (heh heh heh).

By the time the smoke cleared 100 years later (i.e., when everyone got Infantry and railroads, which pretty much shut down the Cavalry), Egypt and Japan were down to three cities each (with me getting almost all of Egypt), India went neutral, and China switched sides and invaded England and the Iriquois at once.

Amazing. A gigantic war started because I needed Horses for my Cavalry, and it left me as one of the top three civs in the world. I love this game.

(Note: if you want an ally's help, remember to make a Right of Passage agreement so they can use your road network)

Once I get tanks, World War 2 will start.

[monolith94]

Spat, you are the MAN.

[Darkknight]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


With WinZip on maximum compression, my savegames usually compress down to a couple hundred Kb.

Dan

thats not bad I used to send 300-400kb CTP2 savegames unzipped with my 31K

[Stromprophet]

13. Armies - good idea, bad implementation. Only benefit is higher Hp. even 3 Modern tanks can only attack once per turn and there seems to be no attack of defense bonus or anything, maybe i'm just not seeing it. Seems like a waste of Attack units, but good for defense of cities

Be Germany, you'll find out that you can actually attack a few times with tanks. But of course that is inherent in their civ ability.

[Stromprophet]

5. Corruption - Holy Crap, Move away from your palace and The people just won't do any work for you at all, I have cities where i've lost upwards of 15 sheilds and 30 commerce to corruption, and that's in a Democracy. With this level of problems and no real way to solve it captured foreign cities far from home are pretty much useless.

Building the Forbidden Palace will help. Mistake I made was to build mine about 12 spaces from my existing capital. Doh! I think also in communism every city experiences the same level of corruption.

A big mistake I see is the lack of better governments, or more selection. What ever happened to nice old Facism?

[Stromprophet]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


I initially had a bad skipping sound in the music. Tech support advised me to set sound debugging in the DirectX contol panel to none or basic. None caused the freeze you described above. Basic left the skipping in. So I turned the music off--games runs beautifully without it.

Cheers.

Yeah, I have to change some sound settings still, I get the skipping, but my game will freeze no matter what the sound settings are.

The only way I can get past it, I CAN'T WACTH THE OPENING MOVIE!

I have to hit the escape button when the infogames logo comes up, otherwise it freezes.

[Stromprophet]

After playing half a game on King, and Half on Regent, and almost a whole one on Chieftan I have some reactions.

1. Regent and King are hard. To say the least, the computer spreads better than you, I suspect that they have seriously decreased production values and research costs. Or they are just plain cheating. I never lost a game of civ to the computer, on any level, any map, or any sad start. And I lost to this one. Not badly, but still. It was really tough.

2. The AI is smart. I will give them that. They remember what you did to other civs. They remember what you did to them. They talk with eachother and conspire against you. They also won't let you giev them any deals that are fair to you. That I don't like, I always have to give more to get what I want. I like the AI expressions, I find it hilarious. Abe was wearing a jesters outfit yesterday, hehehe.

3. I love 16 civ gameplay, let's hope we have this on MP, although I would strictly advise only cable players to try this. It's taking me at least 20 seconds for a turn to pass by now, and my system is pretty good. 16 civ rocks out, except one big issue, the Advisor screen, won't fit all 16 on the foriegn minister screen. So I can't talk to all 16 whenever I want. (Or I haven't figured this out yet, if anyone knows where to find all 16 people to negotiate with help me out)

4. I love the screen, I like the movement. It's not laggy at all, and I can move the units fast.

5. My sound sucks out. What's up? Have they addressed this yet, because I know a lot of people have had problems. Mine sounds crappy if it works, sounds choppy. I want to hear my music dang it.

6. I can't watch the opening movie, it freezes if I try. I have no clue what is up. It was working fine, then I tried to mess with the sound a little, uninstalled and reinstalled, no it's whacked out.

7. Scenarios dissapointment sucks. I'm really pissed about that. I was really expecting to get to play WWII immediatley. If anyone has noticed this game has to be directed to scenarios for it to be really great fun. Because the differences in time frames can be huge. Especially with the specialized units that make no sense after a certain amount of time. And the fact that tech floats by so fast you have no time to catch it. I think a scenario would be better where you have a set tech tree that is small enough to be effective.

8. Anyone notice a big difference between Monarchy and Republic? Everyone still think Republic is superior? I'm a monarchy guy, I love to warmonger, which I can't do in Republic.

9. I like the leaders, very cool. How they just pop up, a like the minor wonders a lot. Golden ages rock, I think this is going to be huge in 1v1 games. Any civ in golden age can beat the crap out of another civ, unless they are severely outmatched.

10. I think that horses are far less important in this game, there are not as many huts to find. I like Swordsmen. I think iron is huge in the early game. Elite swordmans take down spearmen, even hoplites. Very cool.

11. Anyone like a tech path so far? Philosophy bonus has been stripped, I still like going for monarchy first.

12. I like the fact that they have never tried to simulate the future in Civilization. Unlike CTP where we have units that are disturbingly stupid and completely bogus. Televangelist? What the hell. I'm glad that we have some units that have foundation as actual affecting history and we are not trying to guess the fututre.

13. Anyone know how to make civs fight eachother? Mine seem to be being far too nice to eachother in my game. It's making me mad.

All in All, I think I got my moneys worth. And I'll enjoy this game for some years to come.