First Impressions

[RobC]

Ok, I've had civ3 two days now and have gotten an average of about 3-4 hrs sleep.

Some impressions:

1) The AI is noticably better than in civ2, but not great. For example, it is often possible to quickly overrun a nearby civ in the early game by just building a handful of warriors instead of settlers or workers (the gain of a city and captured workers more than compensates) -- the AI sometimes doesn't do a good enough job of protecting its cities early on, keeping only 1 or 2 warriors in its capital even when it can see your 3-4 warriors only two squares away. Plus, it seems like when you 'eradicate' a civ in the early game, it will come back somewhere else on the map, but strangely they maintain all their tech (can someone confirm this?). So you can just contact them and demand all their tech and gold, etc. to sue for peace, and you have a huge boost right off the bat. I've consistently won on Regent(Prince) level when I am lucky enough to start off close to another civ who hasn't discovered bronze working.

2) One thing the AI does well (annoyingly well) is expand. Not necessarily in the very early stages, but definitely in the latter part of the Ancient Era as civs are competing for space and they are sending settlers escorted by spearmen all over the map looking for the smallest spaces around AND IN BETWEEN your cities/culture- borders to build cities. This forces you to decide if you want to space out your cities to accomodate future growth and risk another civ plopping a city down in between, or crowding your cities too much. Of course if you are like me, you just jump on every settler that comes by and get two captured workers out of them.

3) Colonies DO have an important role, as both strategic and luxury resources will often be stuck in inconvenient places for cities (e.g. iron in mountains, dyes in a jungles, etc.) Be aware that if you put a distant colony near another civ, it will eventually get taken over by that civ's expanding culture-borders (it's still worth it if that's your only source -- at least you get it temporarily)

4) The interface is fine, although I think in the attempt to make it streamlined they added a lot of 'hidden' or at least hard to get at commands and key combinations (like the right-click on unhappy head or CTRL-SHFT-whatever to clear terrain improvements and cities from the map view). I guess it's a reasonable trade off rather than having HUGE menus but it took me a while to find out I could just SHFT-click on a city to change production rather than right click and select from the menu. Also, in the foreign advisor screen, it took a while to find I could double-click to talk to the leader (I kept single-clicking and getting the civlopedia page on that civ)

5) Speaking of the civlopedia, does anyone else think it takes way too long to load up? I don't have much of a speed problem in any other part of the game, but for some reason opening the civlopedia takes several seconds.

6) Can someone please tell me if there is ANY way to disband a city? It doesn't seem like the program will let me capture an enemy city and then turn it into a settler or worker. Maybe I'm missing something...

[Raion]

I like the game! Saving resources for the end game is what it's all about. Pikemen were great in olden days, they could defend very well and wood is all it takes.
Irrigation only can be done around fresh water, as in a lake, then you can do it diagonally to the city that needs it. Anyway, cities just have no culture in the beginning and that is reflected in the way the game plays.
Embassies can be establish as soon as Writing is done, but you have to click on the star on the main screen in the info screen underneath your capitol city.
Only playing on Warlord level yet, but I think the game has great possibilities.
Instead of making all those settlers, maybe a 'not as good leader's civilization cities' can be taken by culture or war.
Get a city started somewhere for a different type of gameplay!
I am sure there will be other things in the game also!

It does crash coming out of it and I have to really restart my computer, it just does not restore to Windows right.
I need something done about the sound since, I had to wait for a patch even when SMAC/Alien Crossfire was out, and it looks just about like the same sound file, 'sound.dll' which I have to rename to 'sound.dl_' so I can play the game.
A few minor glitches in the manual, I adjusted the graphic accerleration down on my video card, because it may crash the game, I think, although I am not sure yet!

A few glitches in the game, but I think it will be very enjoyable to play and surpasses anything else I have played. Call to Power's interface was terrible, even though they said it was streamlined, it wasn't to me, so I never got into the game and never really played it.
But with CIVIII, the interface gets you into the game, especially when you can right click on the city and change production and other things with a right click.
All in all, I think its a great game and much better for what it is called "Create a Civilization that Withstands the Test of Time"
and that what the game is!

[RobC]

double post...

[Talenn]

Overall, my first impression is pretty favorable. I like many of the new concepts and ideas, but think that the implementation is going to take some more work.

I pretty much share the opinion of many of the people here about the corruption, the need to 'over expand' early in the game, the very random combat and the absolutism of resources. I think all of the above concepts (except maybe the overly random combat) are good ones and given time and tweaking, could be a real asset to the game system.

I'm very curious to see what Firaxis' take is on these issues in light of the players' comments.

[Raion]

If I remember right, stop the growth of the city, and make settlers or workers, then you will not use the disband. As I remember in Civ II, it was the only way to keep or make a settler out of a size 1 city. But first one has to stop the growth or the city may grow before the settler is built. Anyway, with changing the scenery later in the game, I just do not know if I will even go the work of 'dissolving a city' even if it's in the wrong place, depends on how you grow both cities near one another.

[Twig]

Originally posted by LaRusso

[...]

twig: you can do irrigation only near fresh water, until you get electricty

[...]

MY BUST! I now note that fact in the manual.

Well, I reckon that 'strategicly-located' city of mine is SOL...

In addition, my previous post was perhaps a bit too harsh regarding quality/bugs. New software has 'em. It's a fact of life. On a positive note, I reiterate my 'thumbs-up' regarding AI and the interface, adding that the new diplomatic options are neat too.

I'd have to sum up my first impression of Civ3 as it being evolutionary to the genre in a positive way.

Regards, Twig

[macrae]

...I still feel that I am playing a Beta...an extremely GOOD beta, but a beta nonetheless.

There is a slow memory leak, which consistently locks my system up after about 12 hours of gameplay (I had the last days off, and spent the last 3 playing Civ3). My system is high-end...Athlon 1.4, 512 RAM, with cards to match, I doubt seriously if it is my hardware...:-)

Not being able to upgrade units in armies is silly, as is not being able to remove units from them (even if only to upgrade them).

The timing for the appearance of military academies is too late in the game. Late Middle Ages makes more sense than Late Industrial Era, though I think that Early to Mid Industrial Era makes the most sense (adjust the tech tree a bit, perhaps?).

Cruise missiles need more range than Cannons.

Armies of pure Modern Tanks should keep their ability to attack multiple times.

Naval vessels should be faster...how much I'm not sure, as I'm a continental power, but as is there is no way to fight a holding action until your Marine Expeditionary Force arrives...the fight is long over by the time they get there.

It is very silly for Carriers to move more slowly than Destroyers...check out a Jane's Fighting Ships if you doubt me. This is just mistaken physics.

I love the way resources appear randomly (and regenerate randomly). I used up my only coal, and had to go to war to secure enough to finish my rail grid (my trade supply dried up). After finishing this bloodbath (just kept pouring the Cavalry in until I had the cities I wanted), another one grew in my old territories, so I ended up making money selling the surplus to the AI...:-)

The best part was that after having to scrabble for Iron, Salt-Petre, and Coal, I ended up with plenty of rubber, most of the aluminum, and ALL of the Uranium within my borders. The French paid me a Tech, their world/territory maps, and 300 gold per turn for some...:-)

This game is not for the light-hearted.

The combat model needs major tweaking. As is, you can easily have warriors killing off multiple units after the advent of gunpowder. I had Longbowmen take out Mech Infantry (Regular Longbowmen against Veteran MI, to boot).

The corruption seems a bit excessive. So much so, that I don't even depend upon the production capacity of cities outside of a certain radius from my capital/FP. I like the Mod v.1.5 idea of adding corrupption reduction to Police Stations, and will play with it next game. One hint for rushing production is bringing surplus tanks, etc., from the core cities and disbanding them in your new territory ones. One Modern Tank will bring the price of a Library or Temple WAY down.

I like the changes to Marketplaces, and the addition of Luxury goods, plus the way you can supply them from imports. The amount of cash you can make from exports is very satisfying, too.

The AI ignores many of the movement constrictions human players work under...this wil hopefully be fixed soon.

That's it after 48 hours of play...your mileage may vary.

later...Stephen

P.S.: I'm playing on the second difficulty level, on a random huge map (with average settings).

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by macrae
There is a slow memory leak, which consistently locks my system up after about 12 hours of gameplay (I had the last days off, and spent the last 3 playing Civ3). My system is high-end...Athlon 1.4, 512 RAM, with cards to match, I doubt seriously if it is my hardware...:-)

not a single crash on my 600MZ laptop and Dell 500 in the office. Both played up to 12 hrs. Yes, I am playing at work

[macrae]

My roommate and I have both suffered from similar problems which arise somewhere between 12 and 20 hours of gameplay...but he is between jobs right now, and I was off for 5 days straight (did I mention a lack of a social life?)...

He's a software engineer, and agrees that something needs to be done by Firaxis, et al.

His Win2k laptop runs longer than my 98se desktop before the problem locks us up, but that makes sense. I had 2k on the desktop until it came out that Everquest runs best on 98se.

Here's a test (I've duplicated it several tims now)...leave the game up on your desktop before going to bed, etc. (whatever will leave it up for over 12 hours)...we keep coming back to blue screens about lost memory addresses, etc.

Later...Stephen

[dingdatou]

My overall impression is very good.

At the first day I played the game, I lost very badly and quickly to the AIs on the regent level three times. Then I realized AIs' strategy of aggressive expansion so I adopted that strategy as well.

I am still playing at regent level as Chinese in the huge map with 16 AIs, this game has lasted seven days so far and I am getting average 3 hours sleep per night and the game still only at 1550 AD.

Compare to SMAC, I love civ3 much more. SMAC is a very polished game, it provides every little detail the gamer ever wants to know. However it is way too similar to civ2. I remembered when I played civ2 for the first time, I was just totally blown out by it. It was a total "WOW!!!" experience. It is such a big improvement over the original Civ! I do not experience that with SMAC, even the unit modification is disappointing, I was expecting something like in MOO or MOO2. But now the "WOW" effect is back for civ3!!!

I was very impressed by the AI. I still remembered in Civ2 all these poor AIs using tons of army tried to take down my phalanx at the top of the mountain inside a fortress. No more suicides missions in civ3! The AI is pretty smart at war. I have to build a 13 continuous grids of pikemans inside fortess to fend off the offense from Russian(a human great wall). No ZOC really make the fight more chanlleging and fun.

I also love culture! I have taken over about 6 cities now through culture. I no longer fear these little pesky citis AIs build inside my border. (Hmmm... more meat)

The diplomacy is also much better (except can not trade units). The AI is pretty reasonable at most times. And it is vital in the ancient time to gain the technologies. It is a real joy to see Russia is willing to give me all their cities except their captial for a peace treaty, I was desperate for that peace treaty as well since I am in democracy(I have to start the war since I have no coal.)

The new barbarian is also better. One time there are 24 horsemans attacking my city. The poor spearman after killed 13 of them. Died in honor!

The corruption is also cool. Although it gives me a lot of headaches. (Courthouse does not do a thing!) I think it is more realistic that way.

==============================================
But I do agree with a lot of other gamers here. It does feel like a beta!
My first surprise is that there is no world map. I know the arguments for not having one is valid since I played most of the civ, civ2, MOO, MOO2, SMAC with random maps. But it is a nice to have.

It is a little disappointment to see the wonder videos. Actually this does not bother me that much, not even compares to no world map.

No MP, no big deal for me. Just don't have time for that anyway.

The wait time in between turns in way too long! This is my number one complain, especially during peaceful times. It is really a waste of time to see 20 persian workers just shuffling around. There should be an option to speed things up and an event log for things happened will be a great help.(One of the SMAC strengths)

Also I am very surprised to find out there are so many commands I can do when I was reading the other thread on interfaces. A lot of the commands are just not intuitive at all. Couple things I find out such as using Ctrl+Shift+M to see only the resources and units on the map. Or on the diplomacy screen, since there are 16 (or 15) AIs, I finally figured to Ctrl+Shift+right click mouse to change AI civilizations. Or I have to use Shift+e to use my embassy and investigate the cities that are competing with me on the wonders. All those things are not intuitive at all. I really hope that all the above info is in the manual since I have not read the manual thoroghly (I want to spend evey seconds I have on the game itself). I really enjoy the clean screen. I just wished Firaxis include a comprehensive short-cut keys list. The list in the manual is not bad. But it is not complete. Another thing bugs me is that there is no civilopedia link from the city screen, right click on the units or the city improvements to show the civilopedia will be nice.

The other thing is about terrain. I kinda of enjoying in civ2 to transform desert to plain to grassland. Could I do the same thing in Civ3? Actually this brings up another point. The game does not provide enough detail information to gamers. Oh, I start to miss SMAC. I have all those questions but I am having a difficult time to find answer. First is how to start a queue. The manual talks about save a queue or delete a queue but not how to add to queue! Also since there is no way to rush wonders except leaders, I am trying to use the harvest the forest trick, but there is no way to tell whether it is working or not since there is no details on how many shields is already there for the wonder. And there is no event log. It is really easy to miss that tiny message on "harvest 10 shields to Beijing". Other questions such as can I have 2 leaders at one time? Why can not I build military academy? Why I can not change my production from factory to J.S. Bach Church but I can change it to Shakespear's Theater? There is spy, is there counter-spy?

And about AI. If culture is that important, than why the AI is so stupid to build that little city inside my border so that I can nicely assimilate it. Also right now I almost have no army units except workers and the AIs have swarms of armies, why do they not attack me. Also I can easily please AI by giving them 1 or 2 gold.

Also why do they take out firepower, it works pretty well in civ2. I heard the swordmans slaying a tank senario is appearing again, although personally I have not experience that yet.

Also for the score, wonders do not count. Peaceful times do not count. It does not matter that much, even lower than wonder movies. But it is a nice-to-have. I can not remeber what game it is. But the score for that game counts every little things such as victories in combat. It is nice to see evey little thing I did in the game has an effect on the score.

Couple more comments about the general gameplay: it seems that it really force the early expansing strategy. For a civ game, the essential is to pick and choose your game style, to be forced to do it in certain way is not a good idea. (Forgot about building wonders in ancient time except leaders). Also after a while, the game became too peaceful. Once English elimates German in 880 AD. There is no war ever since! And there is still 14 civs left! Very unlikely from the history perspective. I guess once I became democratic, all the AI is taking the same route.

It is a lot of whining. I know Iknow. But I trully love the game and the civ series. The only reason I whined so much here is that it is a good game (even already great) but it has so much potential to be truly great, truly long lasting.

Would I perfer Firaxis release the game later? No way! I would prefer this way, absolutely yes. So I can play the game NOW!

I just hope Firaxis can clean up release in the patch(Not another edition for more of my money, of course I admits I am probably one of the first ones line up to buy it. )

Great work, Firaxis! But still can be improved in a great deal.

[MrNett]

I have a 600 MHz PIII Notebook (192 MB RAM, 8MB 3D-Graphic Card), Win2k, and up to now: NO reboot since now!

My first game was at chieftain level. I realized, that this is just challenging enough (In Civ2 I usually played at king level, sometimes higher)!

I reached the diplomatic victory (well, first I had to convice most of the other civs to vote for me . First I did not know this and so Ghandi was voted for General-Secretary But thanks autosave function I repeat this turn and convinced most of the others to vote for me by giving them a couple of techs and money ).

Some people mentioned here several missing things, which I agree, too. But the game itselft is very good and funny!

Of course you can always improve some things, and of course there are bugs (which I did not noticed up to now ), but
generally speaking you will love this game!

[Deathwalker]

I must admight that after reading everyones opinion about the game I am a bit worried. We still dont get it here in England till the 16th.
But I would like to clear something up, in the past Fraxcis said there would be in the box scenarios and a world map. Have these really been dropped from the release
Also is it reallt worth bying it, I bougth CTP2 and hated it? So should I just skip Civ3 as so much is missing, even against what they said would be included?

[Grumbold]

There is a world map in normal and large formats, although many posters have been scathing about its accuracy. Apolyton posters are already producing alternatives. One major drawback is that starting location is random so the Americans may start in China, etc. There are no scenarios and the current game editor cannot be used to create them either becasue start locations, cities etc cannot be attached to the maps.

Can't answer whether you should buy the game since it is a personal choice. You might want to wait and see if Firaxis produce a patch before Christmas that seems to fix a lot of things, not just move the bugs around. That would be the most encouraging sign.

[Deathwalker]

You mean we dont have the ability to make scenarios any more. No Word War 2/Star Wars or any of the others I liked?
This sucks how the **** can they claim to listen to us yet lie about whats in it, and we dont even have tools equal to the scenarios tools we got in FW. Dont they want us to make scenarios anymore or what
This is ****, the tools first job should have been to make scenarios, this is because they gave us a beta release

[Casmyre]

Hello,

I'm getting the game in about 2 hours (if there are any copies left), and I've been /really/ looking forward to it. Based on your post, my expectations haven't changed.

I've never stopped by Gamepen, but if Jonah's points were intended as "negative", I now know to avoid his reviews.

Regarding the points made:

- Installation size: The bigger, the better. That typically indicates better graphics, audio, and AI matrices. Besides, harddisk space is cheap and getting cheaper.

- Intro video: I won't be buying the game for the intro video!

- Windows friendly: Just about anything is, these days -- if a system is well configured with decent hardware.

- Excellent music: Nice to hear, but at only 700Mb for a full install, it's probably not varied enough to prevent me from eventually graduating back to WinAmp & my own collection.

- Manual is big: The bigger, the better. Hopefully it includes tables, statistics, and other useful reference information. Or is that, as per modern doctrine, only available in the strategy guide?

- Saved games at 2.5Mb: And? Again, HD space is cheap. High RPM drives aren't much more expensive, and ultimately, a cleanly-configured machine means save-times will be unnoticeable anyway.

- Interface not 100% like Civ2: I hope not!

- Crash after 2 hours: Irrelevant. Could have been any number of things, most of which don't involve the game itself.

Anyway, I'm not trying to slam anyone or anything -- just decidedly frustrated with the number of negative remarks I've been reading, now that some people have their hands on it. Especially those comments based on hardware [requirements] that are all too subjective anymore.

I'm looking forward to this. And if the worst offending mark against the game is a 3Mb savefile, I know Civ3 will be the best thing since sliced bread.

- James

Originally posted by MarkG
Jonah Falcon (yes he is one and the same with the Gamepen reviewer), has given us some first impressions on Civ3:

- Typical(full) installation: 700MB
- Intro video is exactly the same as the one posted on Gamespot
- Extremely windows friendly(we have been chating on icq for over 2 hours while he was playing civ3!)
- Excellent music, amazing world setup screen
- Manual is really big, do read it before starting a game
- Saved games start at 2.5MB!!!
- Interface is not 100% like civ2, you will need some time to learn it
- After more than 2 hours of playing along with icq chating and screenshot grabbing, civ3 did crash. Not a serious issue though due to very smooth autosave feature, which goes unnoticed

[Tventano]

Having received the game yesterday (do not ask about total price with courier costs and taxes), and the LE box really looks nice. The manual is good, but the overview poster is disappointing. The CivII poster, which is still around here on my desk is really much better.

Starting up the game is good. The intro movie is certainly not better than the CivII version. Nice idea, but not so great. The game looks really good, reacts smoothly and I like the music, often special occasions are best recognized by some change in the music, very clear. Voice is completely missing, and after SMAC I was in fact expecting it, perhaps once they can make an expansion with a lot of voice in it.

I tried to get home early, but it was already almost five o'clock when I got finally home. I unpacked the game, and apart for getting something to eat and drink Im played continuously till about 4:30 am saterday morning. In fact I stopped not because the game was not good, but because I had hopelessly lost my first game at regent level. I will post in the Stories section about it. So this is a very good sign: the game is hopelessly addictive and quite different than earlier versions, it will take some time time to work out good strategies.

Some things did irritate me btw. The governors sometimes decide to build the most strange things. In the middle of a war they start building an aquaduct. In peace time a nice decision, but during war quite weird. Secondly he takes that decisions without consulting me and I did not found any preference that he should just always ask me what to build. As a default I would prefer what I just built, and not what he thinks is the best. He may tell me, and that with one click I can take the decision to follow his advice, but the default should be: continue as it was. He should act as an adviser, and only should be allowed to take decisions when the sovereign agrees on it.

It is difficult to see what units are in one stack. The only way I found is using the RMB. The current hitpoints of a unit I would have liked in the window at the rightbottom instead of only graphically indicated, which looks good btw.

Some options are quite difficult to find, and for some of them in the manual I could only find a key combination, if there is a button or menu for them I do not know.

So my final conclusion is that CivIII is definitely a very good addictive game and everyone should buy one. But at the same time Firaxis has some polishing to do and they have to do some userinterface testing, just based on analysis or design documents. They should check if all options can be found easily, and do work properly.

[4th^Horseman]

What can I say, I just downloaded Civ3 due to the gayness of the Australian release not co-inciding with the US (oh you important people) / UK release, but do not fear I have the game already on pre-order so as not to jip Sid etc. outta their hard earned dosh

My first impressions of the game are pretty good, but different in general startegy from Civ2. I been reading some stuff on the forums about choking points etc. and after a few unsucessful games I know what you mean
Resources I rekon are a ****en good idea, if you are in a war, chop off the arms and legs from the person (ie. kill their resources) and then beat 'em down easy style
anyhoo, thus far i'm impressed! Got other civs paying me money per turn (heheheh). Kick ass game

[playshogi]

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


Have you tried Clean Map (Shift+Ctrl+M)? It takes all of the terraforming and cities off the map, making finding resources much easier. Also, when the patch comes out, it will also remove units...

Great, but why do I have to scan the whole map? Can't my advisors just tell me X has 5 oil Y has 1 I have 0? Heck, I almost went to war for uranium not realizing my own guy was on top of one on a square in my own territory with no road.
If you make me scan the whole map, at least give me the choice to scan for only oil. I don't want to see silk and horses and ivory etc. when I'm looking for oil.

P.S. According the default rules, rubber is a resource with 0% chance of disappearing. Is that right?? Every other strategic resource except horses has a chance to disappear.

[Chowlett]

4th^Horseman - the UK release is late as well, don't forget. Don't lump us in with the US!

Originally posted by playshogi
P.S. According the default rules, rubber is a resource with 0% chance of disappearing. Is that right?? Every other strategic resource except horses has a chance to disappear.

That makes sense. I can't remember the exact list of resources, but horses breed, rubber comes from trees, and all the others are minerals, and thus finite, IIRC

[Ancientfool]

Well, I see a good game buried in here somewhere.... Besides the obvious fixes mentioned by others I think the following would be good.

An Editor option to allow flagging of units as destroyable via bombardment (for those who want ships, infantry or both to be blasted away).

Cultural city capture needs some fixing. I can see a 100ad german settlement being induced to join Rome due to superior culture but the german panzer divisions didnt give a **** about french culture when they took Paris. They didnt take one look at the Louvre and decide to denounce Hitler and start wearing berets. Cultural assimilation should have different effects depending on a cultures era (ancient, medieval, industrial, modern). Once you hit the industrial age you shouldnt see city defection from culture, at most you would see an occasional population loss (gained by neaby high culture civ). In the modern era this might result in a "brain drain" penalty where your best and brightest are being induced to leave for greener pastures.

But overall, 20th c. mexican cities dont defect to texas, individuals just migrate. Cultural superiority should have different effects in different eras.

[Solmyr]

On resources:

I do agree that they seem to be *too* scarce, even though I edited the game to make them more common. What's more, from what I've seen so far I have a suspicion that there's a hidden code which puts most strategic resources in AI territory, denying them to humans. I had a huge mountain range right next door, and was there iron in it? No, but the French had three deposits available to them.

So as a solution, make sure the resource distribution is really random. Plus, I would really like it if we were allowed to stockpile resources for future use. I mean, if you have 3 iron deposits, and aren't exporting them, you should be able to save some up in case you lose them at a later date.

[Zealot]

Finnaly, I got a copy of Civ3! And the excitement was really big! Was it was I expected? Did I like it?

Well, I have to say this is a new Civ game. Not Civ 2.5. It deserves the '3' mark.
I only played the tutorial, and I have to complain a lot about it. In CTP 1 (never played CTP2) the tutorial was really helpful. In Civ 3, it almost doesn't exist, because you get hardly any help. It said when to build a second city, It said that I needed to build colonies to get resources outside my borders, but didn't advise when or where was a good place to build a colony. So I haven't built any yet. Did see the russians with one on iron, though.

Another thing I have to complain about was that there was no online help to tell me that I could no longer make irrigations without being next to rivers or an irrigated tile. I presume you can't, but this makes coastal cities impossible to grow! I didn't discover harbors or anything that gives food, but it is also a problem to make "rural" cities. I think lakes should exist as rivers already exist. I also think workers should be able to build wells on grasslands and plains right from the start. And then some tech to allow them to build wells on hills and maybe deserts. This will be more fair to those cities that could be very far from any river.

Oh, one more thing:
Civ 3 is highly addicting!

[cutlerd]

Actually my first impressions having now finished a full game. I won't rehash what I posted earlier...none of the points from my original post have been changed.

I played a 16 civ warlord level game on a temperate, huge map, 70% water continental 4 billion year old world. I was the US and won the space race in 2006 AD by a hair's breadth (probably close to 5 turns) over the Greeks.

The game overall was FANTASTIC....probably the most draining and thinking-oriented gaming experience outside of face to face World in Flames WW2 board gaming.

Anyone who can should try a 16 civ game. The dynamics are amazing (use the HUGE map though). With 16 civs, you have to use the political system fully....I was wheeling and dealining, cringing and manipulating and backstabbing...sometimes to stay alive and sometimes to administer the coup de grace. And to my pleasant surprise, I found that the AI civs were never easy to take advantage of and they could be convinced to make reasonable trades when the timing was right. I even got other civs to give me 2 cities. Sometimes threats worked....sometimes not. I noticed that when a civ had a monopoly on a given resource (i.e. no others were available for trade...the price they offered for it rose considerably...great job!).

The resources I think are fine. They move the game and force conflict and don't allow you to park yourself on an island somewhere and race to a space victory. And if you are low on resources, you find yourself in situations that are nicely historical, like Japan in the first half of the 20th century.

Invasions in CIV3 are tougher, especially against a modern opponent. This because you don't have spies all over the place to really smash the opposition beachhead. Also, movement through enemy territory costs more than movement through friendly territory...even on rails. So simply invading an enemy land who is fully railed does not allow your armies to then run willy nilly through the enemy territory. Also, when you land from a transport, even with tanks, you stop for the turn. So you can be trapped on a beachhead if you are not careful. This makes realistic tactics like flanking paratroopers to cover the beachhead worthwhile.

I still have not seen too much of the Phalanx-kills-battleship stuff, though a few of those did happen. I personally think units more than 1 age removed should have almost no chance to do even minimal damage in combat, so I wouldn't mind a mod on this.

SOME ISSUES:

1. When you want to build a railroad, the railroad button says to type "R" when you move the cursor over the rail button. However, typing "R", while working fine for roads, would not get a single worker to build a railline. This is a bug I think.,

2. Corruption is a bit too harsh. I think corruption is necessary and I think it should be harsh, but not this harsh. On an island less than half the map away I had cities with 30 shields producing 1 a turn! 3% production is too much. Any city which is not in disorder and with courts and police stations should be always at 25% efficiency at least.

I do wonder though if replacing foreign population with native population (via workers) would help?

3. The maps need more rivers. If you want to say that you need rivers or lakes to irrigate pre electricity...that's fine....but either place more rivers on the map or allow hills to be irrigated (perhaps via an ancient civ advance called TERRACING). Otherwise, I had to restart a game as the only fresh water on the entire continent was a lake surrounded by hills and mountains. Not having any irrigable squares until electricity is a game breaker.

4. The AI civ fighters were well able to intercept my bombers....but I will be damned if any fighter or F-15 I had on air superiority ever intercepted a single AI bomber! Is there a bug here?

5. Like in CIV 2, units can airlift between cities with airports. It'd be really nice if it mentioned this in the pedia under airports or under a concept entry for airlifting. Unlike CIV2, for example, any number of units can airlift INTO a given city, but only 1 per turn may airlift FROM a given city. I am hard pressed to explain how a city can have such a limited capacity of planes embarking, but can theoretically handle 100's of units disembarking. I think the limit should be something like 3 units per airport coming and/or going.

6. The pedia has an error in the Man of War, giving it the same ratings as a frigate.

7. Some of the later war units need to come in earlier or the space race advances need to be separated from the later military units. For example, by the time paratroopers and aegis cruisers come around the game is pretty much over and most civs can be in space or so close to space that the new units don't affect the game at all.

Devin

[cutlerd]

Forgot one thing.

If you raze the city that built the Manhattan Project, no one can build nukes. Not a good thing IMO. Pandora's Box and all that. Certainly a bug.

Devin

[Brutus66]

5. Like in CIV 2, units can airlift between cities with airports. It'd be really nice if it mentioned this in the pedia under airports or under a concept entry for airlifting. Unlike CIV2, for example, any number of units can airlift INTO a given city, but only 1 per turn may airlift FROM a given city. I am hard pressed to explain how a city can have such a limited capacity of planes embarking, but can theoretically handle 100's of units disembarking. I think the limit should be something like 3 units per airport coming and/or going.

Nonsense- it should be unlimited each way. Think Berlin airlift, for example. There were SO MANY planes going into Berlin at that time that if a pilot missed on his first approach he had to return to where he came from and try again the next day.

[Chronus]

1. When you want to build a railroad, the railroad button says to type "R" when you move the cursor over the rail button. However, typing "R", while working fine for roads, would not get a single worker to build a railline. This is a bug I think.,

Do you mean . . . R? This works good for me.

[Saxman]

Something a bit different here. I've played a bit of Civ2, and was never very good at it, but enjoyed it a lot. I bought Civ3 after reading about it on the Web, and hoping that it would prove as addictive as Civ2 was, but with better presentation and more intuitive gameplay. So, the first impressions of a newbie:

1) Introduction? Waste of (disk) space. You want something that'll get the blood pumping, introduce a bit of drama. See AoE2 for a good Civ-type intro, even if it is combat-orientated.

2) Presentation is lovely - the animations may annoy some, but they make the map look a lot more lively, and give units character. Still graphics are good, but a little confusing - got horses resource without even realizing it!

3) Early game seems slower, perhaps due to less early technologies heading my way. Expansion is harder, probably because of the Settler and Worker population drains. Exploring is a lot more fun, although I keep heading towards rivers for the movement bonus. Klutz.

4) Combat is neat. Sound effects could use some more variety, but the unit animations really help. Haven't see the late game units yet, so we'll see how well they develop. Defendind cities seems harder, or maybe it's my imagination.

5) Lack of info on wonders and technologies is disappointing - load times for information screens seem slow on my Intel 1.5GHz 256 Mb RAM machine. Why? I may have to get the mod for info screens, but I can only download to floppy, and the file is too big. Sorrow.

6) Diplomacy is better. The foreign advisor helps for newbies like me, because you get a better idea of relative worth (e.g. maps vs. money vs. techs), letting you stand on your own two feet later on.

I haven't got past 500 AD yet (only played for 1 1/2 hours), but there's my first impressions. Knock yourself out.

Be seeing you,

Saxman

[sgrig]

I recently got Civ3, and have been playing it for a total of about 8 hours

I am still in my first game in 1650 AD (chieftain ( ), 16 civs, huge random map).

So far I have been really enjoing it! And so far I can say that it has been much more interesting and more realistic than a standard civ2 game.

Usually in civ2, even if playing on a large map (not huge), my civ got large enough to border some other civ by about rennaissance, so before that I was usually on my own and my units were just patrollling the wilderness looking for goody huts!

In civ3, however, even though the map is much larger, I met a few civs quite early on and surprisingly we could peacefully coexist until about 1400AD ! This would never be possible in civ2 - usually I ended up having thousand year old wars with my neighbours (when I had any!), which finished in the modern age with the destruction of them.

I am also amazed that declaration of war is more 'civilized' in civ3! I mean in civ2, the ai players would just sneak attack you, but in civ3 they either demand something off you first, or enter a military alliance with one of your existing enemies - no random sneak attacks. (However, this might not be a fair test since I always played civ2 on king, but in civ3 I'm on chieftain)

Also, another good point is that you can be quite successful without building large number of cities (I am quite successful so far... with only about 20 cities, half of them captured).

I also love the fact that you can capture workers! That's great! That's something civ2 really missed - enslaving enemy population.

I heard a lot moaning about unfair combat in these forums, but so far I can only say that people used to the civ2 combat might not like combat in civ3 just because it is different and something they are not used to. It can get a bit random at times (like a regular warrior defeating an elite knight), but it is nice to see that units in stacks fight one by one. However I was a bit annoyed when I thought I destroyed a stack of 4 roman legions, but turned out that I only killed one of them! This new combat system requires more realistic buildup of forces, as it is much harder to kill lots of enemy units with just one unit.

I really like the concept of culture - I actually 'culturally absorbed' 4 or 5 persian cities - which was great. Introduction of resources make the game much more challenging - like for example at one point I almost was in trouble because I lost my saltpeter supply when the French destroyed my colony and they destroyed a road connecting my cities to an iron supply! At that point my second iron supply ran out - so I had to resort to building spearmen, while a turn before I was churning out musket-men and knights!

So these new concepts - culture and resources really do add a new dimension to the game.

Overall I found that civ3 is (so far) more challenging then civ2 was, with a better AI and more multifaceted gameplay.

I am not even sure if I will win this game (which would really be embarassing - losing at chieftain - while in civ2 I got 640% at king), but I guess I just need more practice.

Ok, I should go back to the game!

[Darkknight]

(like a regular warrior defeating an elite knight)

That's very bad!
If the knight was attacking that is. on open ground the knight has a 99.34% chance of winning.
Unless you mean if the warrior attacked the knight?
There the warrior would have an amazing 0.93% chance of winning.
This is what was bad in civ and civ2!! aarrgh! not good to hear 10 hours before you buy a game.

[sgrig]

Originally posted by Darkknight


That's very bad!
If the knight was attacking that is. on open ground the knight has a 99.34% chance of winning.
Unless you mean if the warrior attacked the knight?
There the warrior would have an amazing 0.93% chance of winning.
This is what was bad in civ and civ2!! aarrgh! not good to hear 10 hours before you buy a game.

The warrior attacked the knight.

But don't worry - it was only once. Amazingly enough knights most of the time do kill warriors.

Sometimes it might get infuriating - but usually it's alright.