(WARNING: Some of what follows is actually USABLE, as will be almost all of Part 4 -- author therefore disclaims all liability, use at own risk...)
You have played the middle ages now several times in a row, it seems, because in this first week you make a lot of mistakes and the truth is the AI kicks your a$$ before 1000 AD on regent level, and all right, you admit one of those times was Warlord, but the TRUTH is you saw the AI pull off a land-grab, which, in practice, looked something like the ten-thousand-wagon-train Oklahoma Land Rush in that bad Tom Cruise movie "Far and Away," OR the other thing you did wrong was you missed that one crucial move and found your worker staring at a foreign city built right on top of that iron deposit and somehow you just never got it back on track...
So, you marvel at the undeniable fervor of the AI, which is far stronger than that of any previous CIV, and you secretly delight that it actually IS possible to miss one crucial step -- and watch the AI turn around and execute that very step for itself as though it had ready your mind, saw your intentions and TOOK ACTION and you were actually upset about that. You thought that iron ore deposit in the mountains on your continent's eastern coast were perfectly situated -- you had already ordered workers to build a road there forthwith -- and the resultant colony could've been held by your regular English bowman against Roman incursion (although in truth you rely too much on veteran archers anyway and probably would have lost the iron in short order to the Roman Legion) so you focus on shoring up the borders you WERE able to carve out, careful not to start a war with your new neighbor who has the iron that you do not.
Instead, you become pals with Rome, augmenting your CIVilians' variety of luxury imports to great and happy effect, even as you focus on the cultural improvements you secretly hope will one day subsume that outpost Roman city -- with its iron so rightfully yours -- you become a wizard at negotiating. You almost always can counter-offer for 7 less gold and succeed, but not ten, but sometimes it varies, although, being not a great explorer at this time, you notice getting someone to show you their world map in Civ 3 is like, well, since there IS nothing harder than that it must be said that it's a lot like getting someone to show you their world map in Civ 3 -- you once try to trade your second biggest city to Rome (York, with ocean front property! a view on London!) and for this prime real estate you ask nothing in return but the Roman world map and Rome tells you to smoke it in your wet socks -- you wonder if Rome is crazy?
It must be said that by now you have to wonder if those who wonder why you can't trade units at the bargaining table in Civ 3 are right (and there are other things you wonder about the bargaining table but those will come up in Part 4) although it must be said that in other Civs (was it CTP?) you wondered why you COULD trade a unit to another civ and then you realize it is certainly possible to trade a city to another civ, and any units therein (you believe), so why not be able to trade a unit?
You lose yourself, then, in the contemplation of the cultural power of your new universities just now springing up on the shoulders of your sturdy libraries -- every now turn brings a message from one city or another as each completes a cultural improvement according to the order you specified -- and sometimes you DO wonder if those messages above the cities could be made to pause or hold a little longer -- but through steady handling of your Domestic Adviser and your production queues, you now have a profitable and contented, not to say ecstatic, population, to the extent that you envision your highly educated CIVilians, each one another Lincoln with the thoughts he's a-thinkin, taking over that Roman city on what you now FERVENTLY believe is YOUR iron deposit (although it isn't, it never was) because it is on a continent that, by your very strategy to expand said culture, you almost totally dominate.
You expect the Roman outpost city to switch their alegiance to England any year now, you just discovered gunpowder and you hear a dim warning growing louder and louder as you realize that, like iron, there is no saltpeter within your control, and you just finish doing a search by hitting cont-shift-M for a CLEAN MAP to discover to your great relief that your closest ally, China, has one extra and will trade (albeit for a price, which of course does not include their world map, but you have furs coming out every orifice so that's a break) and this is important because along with iron, saltpeter is essential to the reaon you CHOSE England in the first place -- to dominate the sea lanes with the new MAN-O-WAR unit, so that's half the battle and here you are waiting for the Roman outpost to hoist the Union Jack on that far mountain range when something happens.
Rome ferries by Galleon what must be a dozen knights into that mountain outpost harbor and immediately attacks.
End of Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 3 (Middle Ages)
(to be continued)
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 1 (Intro)
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 2 (Ancient Era)
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 4 (Industrial Age)
Raingoon's Unusable-but-Totally-Accurate Review Part 5 (Modern Age/The End Game)
Last Word & Final Score
