Civ3 First Impressions Review: Rushed

[Hutak]

Here are my firsts thoughts on Civilization III after my first three days of play, intended mostly for those still trying to decide if Civ3 is worth it and for non North Americans impatiently waiting for the game to get to their corner of the world. This is not intended as a full featured review (I'm sure we're all impatiently waiting on korn's opinions for that one), but more about what Civ3 feels like after a couple of games.

First of all, in an effort to shield myself from righteous Apolyton zealots (you know the kind, if you don't have X number of posts your opinion is worthless, Firaxis can do no wrong, etc.), I want to say that I *like* the game. I really do.

Here's my take of the Civilization series, with may help share some light on my thoughts below:
Civ -> v1
Civ2 -> v1.5
SMAC -> v2
Civ3 -> v2.5


Ok, here we go:

* The new graphics are sweet, but then again, what do I know, I liked SMAC graphics. I was worried that the terrain may look too flat, and it does a little, but you soon forget about it so it's not a big deal. A bigger deal however is the fact that there's no Wonder movies. Building a Wonder of the World should feel like a major accomplishment for your civilization, but the placeholder graphics are underwhelming to say the least. Was I the only one who was building relatively useless (from my faction point-of-view) wonders in SMAC just to get a movie I didn't saw yet?

* The new world-building features are great, even better than those of SMAC, and you can really create the kind of planet you like for you game. They only disappointment here is that you don't have as much control on the gaming rules as in SMAC.

* Some of us were worried about the new civ-specific attributes, units and the golden age concept. I'm glad to report, however, that those fears were not founded. You soon learn to respect the unique units (and for all of you who were dismissing the Jaguar Warrior, just wait until you're faced with an aggressive Aztec empire, you'll quickly change your opinion!) and the golden age is just powerful enough to make a difference without unbalancing the game. My only nit-pick here is with the American F-15 which seems to give them an unfair advantage, since it's the most powerful air unit in the game and the only special unit which isn't made obsolete.

* Thanks to leader animations, civ-specific attributes and different personalities, each nation feels much more alive than those of Civ2. Although, ultimately, they are not all that different and don't produce the kind of visceral, gut-feeling, love or hate reaction you had in SMAC.

* The A.I., while not great, is good, and that's more that you can say for the vast majority of games out there. I'm sure you've all heard the reports of players getting owned even at the earliest difficulty levels. The only caveat to put here is that the A.I. is at it's peak even there, the only change is that it gains reduced construction and research time at levels above Prince.

* Diplomacy and trade have been vastly improved compared to SMAC and are light-years ahead of Civ2. All the new options for alliances, trades and conflict are awesome. However, we find important things amiss or completely missing. You can tell at a glance how the other factions are reacting to you, but you can't tell what their relations to each other are, or how trustworthy they are. Is Russia in a Peace/Passage/Trade agreement with Germany because they're best buddies, or because Germany threatened Catherine of an invasion if she didn't agree? This would be important to know to be able to guess who's side Russia would take if you go to war with Germany. What about the Romans? Are they trustworthy enough to honour their mutual defence pact with you, or will they bug out half-way into the war? There's no way to tell. Why is the only way to check the specifics of your on-going trade agreements to contact the other faction leader? Shouldn't this be on your trade advisor screen? (It's hidden on the bottom-right of the diplomacy screen, for all of you still trying to find it.) Shouldn't the option to open embassies and to conduct diplomatic or espionage missions be found on your foreign affairs advisor screen?

* Culture, ah, culture! Truly one of the most important and enjoyable changes in this new version, it truly add a whole other aspect to the game. You can convert enemy cities into your empire, or have your own border cities deflect to a culturally superior opponent! But once again, there are problems. Since it is such a central issue, you'd think you would be able to get more feedback from it, right? Is one of your city one the verge of deflecting? Would you simply need a little more punch to your culture to absorb that Egyptian city on your border? There's no way to tell.

* You may have read in reviews that happy/content/unhappy citizens are tough to differentiate, and that's true. However, they are grouped from left to right on the city screen, so this really isn't a problem.

* The government system is really disappointing and I think it's what you're going to see the first mods on. Even leaving out the fact that there's no social engineering (some would have liked it, other wouldn't have), it's sad that there's only one true path to victory: democracy. In SMAC, all your SE settings were attractive, and made for though decisions; each choice offered different, but equally useful, benefits and drawbacks. In Civ2, even if democracy was a little above the others, fundamentalism and communism could be useful options. This is unfortunately not the case in Civ3. When you do the cost-benefit analysis, no government even come close to compete with democracy (if you're interested to see it, ask me to post it). At worst, if you're actively engaged in a full-fledged war of conquest and worried about war-weariness, you could change to the republic, but even then... The proof is in the pudding, as they said, and with one or two exceptions, I've yet to see an A.I. switch to anything other than democracy once it became available.

* Burn city burn! Yup, that's right, you now have the option to raze a city instead of occupying it. Really cool! But there's only one problem: it's instantaneous, regardless of the population. In one of my games where I was at war with the Germans, they sneaked up two transports all around the continent to attack one of my less defended city (the front was on the other side of the continent). Great AI move, which took me completely by surprise. My two valiant defenders fought bravely and managed to kill five of the six attacking units before succumbing to their blows. The lone remaining pikemen, however, marched into my size 16 city and immediately burned it to the ground! That single pikemen was more effective than 3 or 4 nuclear bombs!!! Something is seriously wrong here. Give the occupation forces the option to kill two or three population points per turn, but don't raze a complete city in a single turn.

* While we're talking about nuclear weapons, MAD is not in. While it may rejoice Ralf and people who share his philosophical view of the world, it was a huge disappointment for me. Compounded with the fact that the A.I. doesn't especially seem to mind them and you got a step back from SMAC planet busters atrocities to Civ2 nuclear war madness. Oh well, can't get everything...

* Infinite City Spawn (ICS) is now the name of the game. This is neither good nor bad, but just get ready for it, because the A.I. sure knows what it's doing. You can rest assured that before long all the habitable land in the world will be colonised, so get those settlers going before it's too late.

* Watch out for corruption! What was only a minor problem in preceding version is now a major civilization-shaping factor. The emphasis now seems to be on a moderate amount of well-build cities instead of a world-spawning empire.

* Warfare is also fundamentally changed: Zones-of-Control are gone, units now require gold instead of shields for support, combined arms tactics are a must... Over are the days of Civ2 blitzkriegs or SMAC precision strikes, now each conflict takes World War proportions with huge armies moving back and forth. Definitively one of the most important changes in Civ3, I believe it makes war much more enjoyable.

* You can’t see into stacks, which is mightily annoying. In SMAC, when you clicked on a tile, you’d get all the units displayed in a row at the bottom of the screen with all the information you could dream of: health, status, remaining moves, experience, etc. Not so in Civ3. If you right-click on a unit, you’ll get a text-only list with bare-bone (read insufficient) information. That, plus the fact that units placement in that list seems to be random (and change as soon as you do anything), quickly gets annoying when dealing with huge stacks, and that happens often.

* Holy #@$%!&* on a stick, the phalanx vs. battleship problem is still there!!! No, no, you're not hallucinating, you read that right. You'd think it would have been one of the first thing they fixed, right? Wrong. And the problem is only made worse with the new armies feature. Watch out for that Iron Age Swordsmen army or that Middle Age Cavalry army, your Mechanised Infantries are no match for them.

* You've got to give a thumbs up to anyone good enough to provide you with a 200+ page printed manual and a full-fledged in-game documentation system (Civilopedia). They're both really useful, but are not available everywhere (in the case of the Civilipedia) and are way more vague than necessary. Since corruption is such an essential concept in this version, how is it calculated? What is really effective to fight it, and what isn't? We don't know. Wouldn't the Civilopedia be useful in the city screen to get information about the troops or building you want to build, or in the diplomacy screen to get information about the technology trades you're about to make?

* The copy prevention on the CD (Safedisc) is quite annoying, resulting in load times near the one minute mark simply because it's trying to make sure your Civ3 CD is in the drive (the game itself only takes about 10 seconds to load).

* I'm sure you've all already heard the atrocious cries of despair regarding the editor, so I won't comment on it. It will probably be fixed in a patch, but that is not the right way to do things.

* No multiplayer. I don't think this will surprise anyone, but it still is disappointing. Civ3 is the kind of game that just screams for it.

* Overall, the interface is good, but is hindered by flaws that should never have gone through QA. Who, for example, thought that requiring double-clicks on menus would be a good idea? It's a slap in the face of U.I. consistency and serve no discernible purpose.


So, to sum it all up, what can be said about Civ3? Is it better than Civ2? Yes, in every single way. Is it better than SMAC? That, I don't know. Different, surely, but better? It's too early to tell. In the end, I'm glad I shelled out some cash to buy Civ3 and I can honestly recommend it to everyone else. It's a good game, but just not as great as we all hoped it would be.

-Hutak,
putting on her asbestos suit for protection from the self-proclaimed zealous defenders of the Holy Firaxis Faith (you know who you are)

PS: Yin, buy it!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Like the last comment .

Seems like a fair apprasal of Civ3, but it seems that your comments would say that it was better than SMAC (well it seems like that to me).

And did you think it wasn't as great as you wanted to be because of high expectations, or because of bugs/missed features?

[yin26]

First, I want to say that was one of the most helpful posts I've seen so far. Thanks. It looks like I will be giving Civ3 a try if Korn's review checks out. Some issues that concern me:

The lone remaining pikemen, however, marched into my size 16 city and immediately burned it to the ground! That single pikemen was more effective than 3 or 4 nuclear bombs!!!

Infinite City Spawn (ICS) is now the name of the game. This is neither good nor bad, but just get ready for it, because the A.I. sure knows what it's doing. You can rest assured that before long all the habitable land in the world will be colonised, so get those settlers going before it's too late.

You can’t see into stacks, which is mightily annoying.

Holy #@$%!&* on a stick, the phalanx vs. battleship problem is still there!!!

The razing city issue is just intolerable. I thought ICS was 'cured'? The stack issue indicates the 'rushed' side of things, it seems. And, Dear Lord, tell me there's a good reason for the mech. inf. getting kicked around?

[homegrown]

Infinite City Spawn (ICS) is now the name of the game. This is neither good nor bad, but just get ready for it, because the A.I. sure knows what it's doing. You can rest assured that before long all the habitable land in the world will be colonised, so get those settlers going before it's too late.

This is so very true. I'm up to the mid 1700's and pretty much the whole continent is settled and so the various rival AI's have taken to finding the one or tiles of land that still sit outside my "borders" and they build cities on them. Of course, the next time I get a "culture growth", the city switches over to my side and i don't want the stupid thing with 2 tiles and no resources.

[Zanzin]

Well, I guess the attack power of 4 swordsman combined beats the defensive value of one mech inf. Makes armies very powerful, it seems.

As for ICS - it's been "cured" from the players perspective, it seems. I.e. the player can't engage in ICS. The AI, on the other hand, from most reports, seems to be able to to churn out cities twice as fast as the human player....does this mean that the AI is only charged 1 pop point per settler or something?

[Leonidas]

I have found consistently abnormal AI city growth - they grow exponentially even on Regent level - and I try to play their game - but it is physically impossible to do for the human player (given the game's parameters).

Even if you are ready to spawn a settler, a disease will strike that city, effectively nullifying your attempt to get that settler.

[yavoon]

for the record, I approve of the phalanx vs battleship scenario. u might think it turns ur stomach w/ its lack of realism, but I think it adds significantly to gameplay in smoothing out the tech tree in general.

if these were abstract units that u coudln't equate to reality u would be complaining the exact opposite thing, that anyone with a tech lead could simply whipe out anyone that was even a step behind.

[Hutak]

Imran:

Seems like a fair appraisal of Civ3, but it seems that your comments would say that it was better than SMAC (well it seems like that to me).

Well, I must admit that, although I really did like Civ3, I tried hard to sound positive in a conscious effort to avoid getting flamed. Although it now seems that one can say that Civ3 is not the best thing to happen since sliced bread without getting hanged. How quickly things change!

And did you think it wasn't as great as you wanted to be because of high expectations, or because of bugs/missed features?

It's a combination of both, I believe. I guess I expected as drastic a change between Civ3 and SMAC as we had seen between SMAC and Civ2... and we were promised so much. But it's also due to the fact that it seems to me that for each cool feature added by Civ3, one cool feature already in SMAC didn't make it; that's why I came with the verdict "different from SMAC, but better?"

Yin:

I want to say that was one of the most helpful posts I've seen so far. Thanks.

Nice to hear you say that, I wasn't sure if anyone was interested in what my little self had to say.

The razing city issue is just intolerable.

Yup. Cool feature, badly implemented.

I thought ICS was 'cured'?

If by "cured" you mean "well, we couldn't fix it, so let's just make the A.I. really good at it", then I guess so, otherwise no. If you can't beat them, join them, as the saying aptly goes. Not that I really mind ICS, personally.

The stack issue indicates the 'rushed' side of things, it seems.

That or they though it wouldn't fit nicely in their UI. But in any case, it sucks.

And, Dear Lord, tell me there's a good reason for the mech. inf. getting kicked around?

Well, yavoon posited that it may be to prevent "anyone with a tech lead [to] simply wipe out anyone that was even a step behind", but I don't think that's really the case. I'm all for giving the little guy a fighting change and have no problem with Swordsmen beating my Musketmen or Riflemen from time to time. But we're not talking about that here, we're talking about Swordsmen vs. Mech. Inf., one of the first (ie. worst) attack units vs. the last (ie. best) defender! That's way more than a step or two in the tech tree!

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Hutak
* Infinite City Spawn (ICS) is now the name of the game. This is neither good nor bad, but just get ready for it, because the A.I. sure knows what it's doing. You can rest assured that before long all the habitable land in the world will be colonised, so get those settlers going before it's too late.

* Watch out for corruption! What was only a minor problem in preceding version is now a major civilization-shaping factor. The emphasis now seems to be on a moderate amount of well-build cities instead of a world-spawning empire.

Yeah, that seems strange that players cannot out-ICS the computer on a level playing field...or at least keep up.

Based on the reports from players running into large AI empires in the early game on levels where there are not supposed to be any AI bonuses, it would seem that the AI may not penalized so harshly on corruption, and may get an unreported boost in settler production.

Is there any way to check this - I wouldn't have a problem with a cheat in this area, but it would be nice to know if this was the case.

[stoff]

Originally posted by yin26
First, I want to say that was one of the most helpful posts I've seen so far.

To the point and very good, I agree. It seems that most of the issues can be fixed by tweaks in a patch. So not a reason to commit suicide in despair just yet...

Originally posted by yin26
It looks like I will be giving Civ3 a try if Korn's review checks out.

Great

I don't have the freak'in game myself - I live in Europe - but it escapes me why somebody that has invested so much energy in the list of ideas to Fraxis can rely on what Korn - all due respect! - feels about the game.

Sorry for the rant, but what is all these negative feelings towards a game one have never played about? That escapes me.

Have fun, Stoff

[mattcj]

* Culture, ah, culture! Truly one of the most important and enjoyable changes in this new version, it truly add a whole other aspect to the game. You can convert enemy cities into your empire, or have your own border cities deflect to a culturally superior opponent! But once again, there are problems. Since it is such a central issue, you'd think you would be able to get more feedback from it, right? Is one of your city on the verge of defecting?

If you were the leader of a group of people that was about to secede from a particular union and join another, would you be informing your current union that you were about to secede or would you just secede?

[yavoon]

ur not heating me. look lets take it one step.

do u think the swordsmen's attack value is fair? do u think the mech infantries defensive value is fair? cuz I haven't heard neone complain about either. all they're complaining about is the thot in their head that they've made these beautiful mech infantry and someone at some point lost a mech infantry to a swordsmen.

u seem to imply that there is something wrong w/ the values of either unit, when in actuallity u have the same complaint, u just dont like that its unrealistic. but I say it adds game value, to allow units from lower eras to beat higher ones, as is in normal accordance with their offensive/defensive values. and u shouldn't intentionally make units of advanced era's get some special bonus, just for being in that era, cuz it would totally jack gameplay.

[CyberGnu]

How about dividing the units up in their time periods?

Make it possible for ancient units to kill a dark age units if they are particularly lucky or numbersome. Let dark age units have a sporting chance of taking on a industrial age unit. But make it binary impossible for ancient units to kill industrial units (i.e. no attack vs. defense roll at all, just a immedite death of the ancient unit).

That would bring at least some realism into the picture, while maintaining gameplay.

[Jaybe]

Please remember that the issue was an ARMY of Swordsmen against a Mech Infantry unit.
Swordsman: 3 Attack; 3, 4 or 5 Hitpoints (HP) each.
Probably 3 or 4 of them. That's anywhere from 9 HP to 20 HP.

Mech Infantry: Defense of 18; 3, 4 or 5 HP.

3 divided by (18 + 3 + 2 for defending terrain) = 3/25
= 12% chance of Swordsmen inflicting a hit on the mech.

All the Army has to do is get it's 3-to-5 hits before it is hit 9-to-20 times, so it is quite conceivable that the army would win, though definitely not probable!

I think it would be quite encouraging if I had an army of swords that was able to knock out a mech infantry. But I wouldn't give my army much of a life expectancy either!

Note: I gave "+2 for defending terrain" because there is always at least a 10% terrain advantage to the defender (properly, +1.8).