More First Impressions

[DickK]

The Bottom Line
Overall, I like the game but I have strongly mixed feelings about it. From anyone except Firaxis, I'd rate it as excellent to outstanding, but I've seen these folks do far better, so it merely makes it to the "good" category. In my view, Civ3 in its current form is much less innovative and creative than SMAC. Thanks to the legacy of Civ1/2 it will sell well, of course, and it's a game with lots of promising things in it. But it lacks the "wow" factor I expected and think is needed to capture and hold the interest of a large number of new players.

Open the LE package.
Major disappointment--$10 extra for this? Chart is small. No jewel case for the CDs. Looks cheap. Opinion not changed after checking the little content on the second CD--content is excellent but there's far too little of it.

Install the Game
Postive: Installation went smoothly and easily.

The Manual
Glanced at the manual, looks good but a bit dull on the surface. Looked up the section for experienced players, scanned it and started the game.

The Game (first couple of hours)

Summary: Mixed feelings. Some specific things I like a lot but overall I'm not impressed. Just didn't "grab" me. A real lack of any "wow" response to what I've seen. I'd expected/hoped to have an initial response like I had to the SMAC betas but that wasn't the case.

1. Unimpressive opening sequence compared to Civ2 or SMAC was not a good sign. Later thought: Does nothing to set the stage for the game, which it should; the "wow" factor is really missing.
2. Game setup: options and choices are very good and very easily understood.
3. Graphics: Unit graphics are excellent and enjoyed the animations of battles. Turned off the movement animation very soon tho'. Terrain graphics are okay--some are really good and some are not, e.g., jungle doesn't look like it and can be (at first) easily confused with forest.
4. Game plays smoothly and without problems. Immediately began to notice major differences in game play from Civ2, most of them positive things.
5. Diplomacy is immediately a positive impression--lots of options and some meaningful negotiations seem possible here.
6. Advisors are good but soon start noticing long load times to get to that screen, not a good sign for so early in the game. Still, the organization of information is generally very good.
7. The music is quite good, unobtrusive and effective. Unlike most games I didn't feel the need to turn it off almost immediately.
8. Hey--where's the "sentry/sleep" command! I consider this a major oversight. The inability set a unit so it will wake-up in response to an enemy move is a major flaw.
9. Game really, really needs a keyboard command card with the section in the manuals appendix.
10. Completed my first wonder--no movie?! Come on, you guys are capable of so much more. Just reusing the Civ2 video clips would have been better than this! It may not impact game play but it certainly impacts enjoyment--again, no "wow" factor, just a dull thump. Another disappointment in a growing list.
11. Apparently the only victory that gets an ending video sequence—another disappointment--is the spaceship and that one both uninspired and doesn’t establish a tie to SMAC (what an obvious but missed opportunity!).

Editor.
Continued my mixed feelings. As I explored it, it I was very impressed with the rule editor portion and discouraged with the map editor. The maps that are produced are better, by far, than those of Civ2--more reasonable climate, geography and geology. However, the inability to right-click on terrain to set the brush and the lack of a zoom make the map editor a huge pain to use. The inability to set player starting positions on the map really damage the editor's utility.


Later Impressions and Comments (~10 games partially played, 1 completely, ~50 hours total)

Things I Liked
1. Concept of strategic resources is excellent!
2. Culture concept excellent--the pervasive and often subtle effects of this aren't apparent immediately (good thing).
3. Diplomacy implementation is generally very good and really adds to the game.
4. The multiple victory conditions seem excellent.

Problems and Annoyances
1. Management of unit stacks is needlessly clumsy. The right click being the only way to select a unit is bad. #2 is related.
2. Interface issues and questions:
-- Constantly felt the need for the "v" functionality to allow you to move around the map to see what's there and have that show you what's in the stack(s) of units you have.
-- There seems to be no way to renegotiate or cancel a Treaty / Mutual Defense Pact. Needed functionality. Why not initiate a dialog on this if the user clicks on the line shown on the Advisor's screen?
-- In a number of cases, the Science Advisor's Screen didn't operate as documented--couldn't click on an advance to select it. In other cases, it did work but I couldn't figure out a pattern.
-- Minor bug: Science Advisor dialog pops up after a discovery. Click on the suggested advance and get Pedia dialog. Now hit return--focus has remained on the Advisor's Dialog so it closes--that selected a tech that I didn't really want. Suggest that all dialogs have the "Return" key close them--currently works that way on the advisor but not the Pedia dialog.
-- Once the UN is built I get a dialog about voting every turn. That's annoying and dangerous because the default is yes. Hitting return unintentionally lost me the game when the vote went against me! And how does the player know how the vote will go? Can votes be negotiated somehow?
-- Moving units is confusing because there's no indicator of how many moves remain--suggest adding a "remaining/started with" numeric to the unit box on the lower right.
3. Unless it is deliberately attempting to provoke the player, the AI really needs to respect the player's borders when at peace and the AI has reason to either fear or not trust the player. This business of annoying a powerful neighbor/ally who hasn't granted a right-of-passage agreement is silly. If they're strong enough, let them demand a right-of-passage or let them offer the player a deal too good to turn down. They certainly react strongly to any incursion on my part but treat the reverse very casually.
4. Destroyers can't spot subs--huh? Then why build them! A couple ironclads will do just as well and are cheaper.
5. Corruption levels, particularly for low difficulty settings, are way too high. Attempting to build cities any significant distance from the capital is extremely difficult--although the AI doesn't seem to have nearly the problem I do! Used the editor to add "reduce corruption to both Police Station and Banks, that seems to have reduced it to an annoying but not devastating level about where it should be.

Problem: Game Speed/Resource Requirements
System: Dell Dimension, PII at 450MHz,128MB RAM, 30MB HD with 50% free. Game: 9 Civs, Large map, eventually there would be 250+ cities. From the outset, I noticed some things were very slow and required several seconds of disk read/write, for example, getting to the advisors took 2-3 seconds at first, eventually would take 10-12 seconds. By 100AD the game was slow but tolerable. By 1500 the game map was full and turns now required 2-3 minutes routinely and sometimes much more. Going to Audio Prefs required 11 seconds with 6-7 seconds of that with an entirely black screen--first time I thought the game was dead! Loading a game save at 1750 now required 6 minutes and turns were 3-6 minutes each. Exiting this game when it was finally over involved over 5 minutes of continuous disk activity.
Recognize this issue may not be fixable, but I think anything over a standard map would be essentially unplayable on the documented "minimum" system required. On my system I'll be reluctant to play with these conditions again much less on a larger map.

Misc.
1. I liked the Army concept but why isn't there an equivalent Navy?
2. Need an naval unit 'escort' order -- unit so ordered will move to and then with the designated unit(s).