A UK review, 5 days in

[Grumbold]

Infogrames attempted to catch the fans napping with a surprise launch one day before all our intelligence officers had expected the assault. Quick as a flash, advance scouts reported the breaking news on Apolyton and I was hot-footing it down to the store having hastily negotiated a day off.

First impressions were mixed. Infogrames UK have defintely done a make-over, with the advertised European art and credits in evidence on the box and manual. This is a boxed release, no DvD option in sight. With the size and weight of the manual this is quite understandable - it would never fit into even a double DvD case. The rest of the contents were disappointing - a plain paper case for the CD and a flimsy Infogrames slip.

With nothing else to occupy my attention on the train home, I dove straight into the manual. Hallelujah, it has a table of contents and an index. The style is readable and informative. Unfortunately on some key technical details it is silent, like it never actually explains how you load troops into a leader and leaves you to discover that the load icon becomes active once you have converted to an army. Similarly the index is good but occasionally there are inaccurate page listings or you are led to a page where the concept is only mentioned in passing. The all important list of hot-keys is buried near (but not at) the back. This badly needs to become a reference sheet in any MGE style release.

Firing up my PII 450 I knew I was near the low end of the spec requirements, but I have 256 Mb RAM, a top rate graphics card and plenty of disk space to compensate. The install went smoothly until we reached the obviously patched in UK registration code, which was clunky and taking ages to draw its screens. Deciding not to go online and register I cancelled out of the process, which hung the PC in a fit of pique. With many other games containing CD protection I discovered on restarting that the desktop icons also failed to recognise the CD, so I resorted to the tried and tested method of ejecting and reinserting the CD. Sure enough, the autorun went smoothly and I was in.

I won't go into huge detail at this point about the games I proceeded to play (I just deleted 2 huge para's here and realised the whole thing was getting book sized) , except to say they have all been regent level games on standard civ random worlds with 8 players. The game has given me that 'one more turn/hour' feeling, despite some periods of intense frustration, for about 86 hours of play. The bugs, interface irritations and AI omniscence simply do not detract significantly from the experience. I'm going to be more than happy playing the current version until remedies arrive. I might have to play on a difficulty level where the ability to intercept enemy bombers is not a problem, but so be it. Here, not in order of importance, are some observations:

-The screen scrolling is pretty smooth despite the large tiles, except when a ship voyages too close to the poles. Then there is a sort of double jerk every time you move.

- The slimmed down interface is very graceful until you want to find an option you are not sure about. Then reaching for the manual is more awkward than hunting drop down menus would have been. Menu's at least allowed you to spot other activities that you might be able to do under other circumstances.

- Despite my initial reservations, the barring of road movement in enemy territory does make planning necessary for every attack and has led to some strategic battles. More fun than a single turn landslide assault for everyone except the rush-attack specialist.

- The science advisor always begs for increased funding even when we are the #1 science civ. It gets old, fast.

- Specialists are not very useful, but since every content citizen adds to your civ score, I suppose their function is now one of score boosting rather than establishing a super science or industrial city capable of immense output.

- Corruption in Commercial Civs is manageable on the standard map if you make the effort to move your palace around strategically once you have built the forbidden palace. You can't occupy everything but you can productively control a considerable area unless you went for an archipelago map. I am not looking forward to trying a non-commercial civ.

- The build queue shows and suggests building units that went out of fashion millenia ago. An option to only show the modern stuff unless you run out of resources would be nice.

- The AI has little idea of when to retire or upgrade its old units. The Egyptians seem especially fond of their chariots but they are no match for tanks. It amuses me when their chariots attack to capture workers when their far superior infantry are obviously tagged as defensive and only seem to want to pillage improvements.

- The AI is far too fixated on worker capture. It needs to recognise its numerical advantage and attack your units with bad defence in order to remove their threat first. Running round your units (receiving free opportunity fire) to get a worker behind them is suicidal.

- The AI will build a new city adjacent to 12 tanks of a nation it is at war with (that just razed a much larger city) and protect it with one rifleman. Can we say D'oh?

- If you knock out an opponent very early, they seem to get a better restart elsewhere. I wouldn't mind except the restarting civ remembers your ancient eradication and holds it against you for the rest of the game.

- The computer may not cheat but it makes out like a bandit at times. On the whole most battles go with the stated odds but sometimes it is just outrageous. I expect the problem is that the one in 256 chances are the ones we remember over and above all the average outcomes. Having once rolled a 1 in 46,656 chance personally in a boardgame I suppose I should not complain

- The turns do get long in big world war situations. Then again I should be thankful that the massive stacks I see moving around belong to my allies, not the enemy! Holding down shift helps but relies on your active intervention.

- Auto worker is fine in no-pressure peacetime situations. In wartime they are hopeless, running into all sorts of suicidal positions without a care for the enemy.

- I'm a bit surprised there is no B52 jet bomber to accompany the jet fighter. The standard bomber just isn't up to the job of tackling modern units and the stealth unit is designed for precision, not punch.

- My first complete game ended in a 4 way struggle to complete the spaceship. It actually had me loading up an armor laden convoy to go and "persuade" the English to back off, by nuclear means if necessary, before it became clear I just had enough tech lead to complete the final components ahead of the pack Not had that feeling of tension for a long, long time.

- The diplomacy is great. Learning how the opponents work out what to ask for, and how much, is great fun. It does make sense, but only when you work out why they think they can demand so much.

- The palace screen is lovely but is not recorded as part of your score credit like in Civ 1. It also seems to switch off if you resign a game then start a new one. It was 800 AD once before I noticed I still had a pile of rubble despite my position of world dominance.

- Late game manipulation of dozens of captured workers tackling pollution squares is not fun and it is not clever. Similarly massive lumberjacking stacks is horrible but a strategy too powerful to ignore in hard fought games where you need every advantage.

- The spying seems almost too low key. I was at least expecting a way of actively spending to heighten my internal security without having to manually mole hunt at intervals.

- Some of the diplomatic language is too dumbed down for my personal taste. I don't expect world leaders to be going "wazzup, dude?" to each other. I'm also commonly referred to by my advisors as "Mr.," when we hit democracy. Shouldn't that be my name, Prime Minister or President?

- The sleep/patrol button is badly needed for when you want your peacetime corps patrolling/CAP but not asking for instructions every turn.

- when you have groups of 8 artillery and 1 mech inf that always move as a team, an auto stack movement would be a godsend. Similarly for the 10 worker pollution hit-squads or a way to keep "auto-worker" turned on even when they can find nothing to do for a few turns.

- Oh, and the auto-shutdown to insist you get at least 6 hours sleep before your next 18 hour session really ought to have made it in, too

Just to recap, those above are minor quibbles about a fantastic playing experience. I won't be putting this one on the shelf until the patch comes out, let alone returning it to the store. I hate you for rushing the job, Firaxis, but thanks for releasing it!

[Grumbold]

*bump* for LaRusso

also

referring to my Sig, I have to say that I'm still disappointed about the fixed civ attributes but recognise that is part of its flavour. If the next version of the editor is good I may have a go at allowing all civs to build small wonders to add extra attributes to their civ, so everyone can "go commercial" in the late industrial age, for example.

[rid102]

Your points are interesting.

Please read my post over on the "First Impressions" thread (it's at about page 5).

(I too am in the UK and got the game over the weekend).

What do you think of:

- Culture?

- The new Trade model (everything is commerce)?

- Strategic resources?

- War Weariness?

I agree with most of your observations regarding the AI.

I don't think the interface and graphics are a great improvement as many things are harder to spot (e.g. happy/content/unhappy citizens in the Domestic Advisor overview display), although my eyes may just be too well trained for Civ2 and nothing else.

- If you knock out an opponent very early, they seem to get a better restart elsewhere. I wouldn't mind except the restarting civ remembers your ancient eradication and holds it against you for the rest of the game.

Sounds like a bug to me.

[Grumbold]

Ok, I've pulled over your comments. Here goes:

- It's certainly harder than Civ2 (the AI is more capable although seems to love building mines). AI is still a little demanding though (e.g. tributes/tech). Diplomacy in Civ3 is how diplomacy should have been from day one in Civ1 and Civ2. Overall, I'd say the AI is one of the biggest genuine improvements to the game.

Absolutely. Still dumb as a doorpost sometimes but much better than any previous civ game, excepting post-mod CtP. You won't be able to war with the whole world and win these days unless you already own all the resources and luxuries you need.

- Resources are a mixed bag and have drastically altered the game. E.g. you can have cities building Swordsmen and Longbowmen when you have Tank technology just because the city is not on your "trade network". Resources have been made into too big a part of the game (IMHO) as without resources Tech becomes worthless; the whole game really runs around strategic resources now. Take your pick as to whether this is good or bad.

One of the things I firmly intend to mod is the addition of no-resource units at each tech level to prevent the 2000AD longbowman syndrome.

- Trade is different; not necessarily better, just different. Some people may like it. Everything now runs off gold, which I don't like as it just doesn't seem right. The model implies that the government always taxes all trade at 100% but then buys luxeries for the populace and also invests in its own research. The old model wasn't broken and worked fine for Civ1 and Civ2, so why change it? Take your pick as to whether this is good or bad.

The problem was how to introduce something that didn't involve caravan units and didn't look like CtP. I think the system works becasue if yo uare doing the trades right you should never have to touch the luxury slider.

- War is too difficult to wage without having loads of civil disorder. E.g. someone declares war on you and cities go into disorder. Again, this seems to work a bit by magic and there's no obvious clear cut rules available to the player about how unhappiness during war works.

The 'hidden' nature of the war weariness is annoying but I have not found it too difficult to manage - it just takes luxuries so it models a tail off in your economic prosperity while prosecuting wars. Since many countries have gone effectively bankrupt fighting wars the effect could be accused of being too mild

- Bombardment is just silly and ineffective with the additional stats just making things more confusing. Units have A/D/M but now also B/R/F and HP in there somewhere as well. And I thought Civ2 was bad in adding HP and FP! IMHO this adds unnecessary complexity and detracts from the spirit of the game (Civ is NOT a wargame but war is part of the game).

I didn't find it complex but I admit I came to computer games via board and table top wargames so Civ looks very sparse without reams of stats, rules, exceptions and odds charts

- Irrigation is awkward to build until you have Electricity (why?) as you need "fresh water" and can't irrigate from sea squares. You don't need Bridge Building to build roads over rivers (AFAIK).

Since you only see the biggest rivers on the map, I think the irrigation thing is poor but have yet to start a game with no water whatsoever. There is a tech which instantly removes the MP penalty for crossing rivers but I forget which one it is.

- The interface is a lot harder to read and follow than Civ1/Civ2. Why are used resources/trade red? Red normally means "bad/in trouble" yet this isn't the case. Colours look a bit washed out (e.g. yellow food icons AND yellow commerce icons on a sand coloured background = weak UI). It's not majorly bad but does take adjusting to.

I agree the change in design takes getting used to and some of the hotkey combinations are dumb IMO. If only they had included a configurable key map....

- The graphics are nice but are so complex it's hard to spot resources on the map without scouring all over it. Personally, I prefer something less ostentatious and more functional (Civ2). Zoom in/Zoom out would be nice, though. As the game runs at 1024x768 by default and you can't switch it, it's headaches for anyone with a monitor smaller than 17".

I nearly started a war because I thought I had no coal. After 5 minutes of scanning the map I realised I had 2, both in squares not connected to my road network.

- Culture is nice but again seems to work by magic a little. There seems to be no real reference point for saying what levels of culture increase empire boundaries etc. Culture is an improvement to the game but it is a bit vague and ill-defined.

I think this was because it was something subject to last minute change so the manual had to be vague. The first expansion comes at 10 points. Waht is more "magical" is the cultural takeover of other cities. It seems that relative proximity of the two palaces are more important than the comparative cultural score of the two cities. I suppose this is necessary to stop a city see-sawing between nations.

I love the concept of culture but I think there needs to be more to it. Culture alone should not denote your national borders. There ought to be some way to "claim" territory that your cultural expansion will eventually encompass.

- The advisors popping up all over the place gives the game an improved atmosphere. You get more of a feeling that your empire is "real" and that you really do have an entire army of people overseeing the day-to-day running of your empire. Definitely an improvment.

I agree but some of their advice is a bit too dumb for my liking. Being urged to "Build more cities!" when I'm already at maximum density inside my outer corruption limit, for example.

-A last final wish would be for a way of achieving 100% pollution damping. It should not be cheap but global warming should not be an inevitability, which it appears to become at present.

[rid102]

Thanks for your feedback.

The problem was how to introduce something that didn't involve caravan units and didn't look like CtP. I think the system works becasue if yo uare doing the trades right you should never have to touch the luxury slider.

I find it very difficult (at least with my limited experience of Civ3) to manage resources and resource trading that effectively. Hence my prior comments about it being too resource oriented. I know that it is done globally in this fashion for reasons of game mechanics but I thought there would have been an easier way rather than overhauling the Trade/Luxery/Science/Gold model with Commerce.

E.g. I would have preferred trading on the grounds where you can trade quantities for goods rather than just a single resource in a way which still uses food/resources/trade rather than new "special bonuses" which are harder for the player to manage. Say you have City A with a Coal square being worked and City B with an Iron square, then you could trade your Coal and Iron for (e.g.) Wheat and Furs such that City A obtains the benefit of working a Wheat square (food) without needing an extra worker and City B gains the benefit of working a Furs square (luxeries) similarly. The civ you're trading with would get Coal and Iron squares (resources) "for free" on his end too. This gives pretty decent bonuses whilst retaining city-centric focus and staying within the food/resource/trade system.

Just my 2 cents, but I know pretty much everyone on here thinks they can do better etc..

The 'hidden' nature of the war weariness is annoying but I have not found it too difficult to manage - it just takes luxuries so it models a tail off in your economic prosperity while prosecuting wars. Since many countries have gone effectively bankrupt fighting wars the effect could be accused of being too mild

Yes, I agree totally. It does give war a pretty heftly economic impact (I find I need to increase happiness spending) but even on Chieftain with Democracy, I founding fighting against more than one civ for any length of time to be very difficult. My main gripe is just that I don't know how it works and so find it difficult to work with (I have to be reactive rather than proactice). Interestingly, I've noticed that War Weariness seems to have a much bigger effect if you're at war with a civ on the same continent.

I nearly started a war because I thought I had no coal. After 5 minutes of scanning the map I realised I had 2, both in squares not connected to my road network.

Yes, I've had the same occur with Rubber! Turns out I was sitting on a "Rubber Goldmine" of about 4 resources that weren't connected and so I didn't spot them. I didn't immediately realise either that you can claim any resource provided it has a road to it (I thought it needed to be in a city radius).

Waht is more "magical" is the cultural takeover of other cities. It seems that relative proximity of the two palaces are more important than the comparative cultural score of the two cities. I suppose this is necessary to stop a city see-sawing between nations.

Yes. Again, I can't see how it works directly (as it's not stated in the manual) and so I'm a bit skeptical of it. I like the concept though and it gives extra incentive to building Temples etc. earlier on (as well as Wonders). It is a step in the right direction but does need more work IMHO.

I agree but some of their advice is a bit too dumb for my liking. Being urged to "Build more cities!" when I'm already at maximum density inside my outer corruption limit, for example.

I didn't say I actually listened to them There is just an extra cuteness layer added on by the advisor changes, I think. E.g. "The best unit that the Romans have - that we know about - is X" and stuff like that which you didn't get in Civ2.

[Grumbold]

Yes the "best unit" stuff is good, especially if you were holding down shift so you didn't see his new tank patrol the border once among the 40 cavalry doing the same

[wal35]

Aha somewhere for us jonny come lately UKers to have a chat

I really like culture and the resource trading, although I'm constantly amazed at what the lesser civilizations consider a reasonable deal. Although I do wish there was some indication of how long strategic resource will last, one minute you have two iron deposts the next turn its all gone and you have to go begging to the French

Although lots have been written about the benefits of commerical civs I'm playing the Baylonians (sci/rel) and the vast culture you build up means that sudden appearance of resources is not so much of a problem as you can see them instantly

I can live with the AI "intuition" and ramapant corruption (until the patch anyway) but beware of trading territory maps, I did and a few turns later within a turn of each other 4 different civs landed on my continent and built 6 cities next to resources on my borders.

Which reminds me I must get back to teaching them the error of their ways

[Altuar]

Originally posted by Grumbold
- The spying seems almost too low key. I was at least expecting a way of actively spending to heighten my internal security without having to manually mole hunt at intervals.

- Some of the diplomatic language is too dumbed down for my personal taste. I don't expect world leaders to be going "wazzup, dude?" to each other. I'm also commonly referred to by my advisors as "Mr.," when we hit democracy. Shouldn't that be my name, Prime Minister or President?

- when you have groups of 8 artillery and 1 mech inf that always move as a team, an auto stack movement would be a godsend. Similarly for the 10 worker pollution hit-squads or a way to keep "auto-worker" turned on even when they can find nothing to do for a few turns.

These are the small things which annoy me to end, and due to their size (small) I know that they wont get priority treatment in the patches. Heck, Firaxis may not even be aware of the problems. Being the designer and looking at your game objectively is nearly impossible.

The last point in particular... I always have those stacks of 8 arty and ~2 infantry defending them, and when its time to move, I always end up getting stray arty in a wrong tile somewhere. And the auto-worker thing... not fun with pollution creeping up every other turn.

Hey, Sid, et al, I've just called your game NOT FUN! WAKE UP! (although I enjoy it immensely)

[Grumbold]

I agree. If anything were to change, I would hope for further attempts to reduce micromanagement. A good start would be auto-workers that stayed so when they were idle and were capable of avoiding enemy units in wartime. Second up would be the artillery stacks moving in one go.

[LaRusso]

Thanx for the bump Grumbold....a great review...I agree 100%!

[Kekkonen]

About pollution: last night my Russian civilization launched a spaceship in the 1980s. Then, on the civ rankings screen -- you know, the one that tells you that the average family in the empire has 2 kids and that the military service is 2 years -- I had "pollution produced = 0 tons". Yet, I had polluted squares popping up about every other turn (even though I had the Hoover Dam along with mass transit and recycling centers in almost every city). Doesn't really add up, does it; I wonder which one of these is wrong.

Global warming, on the other hand, may be damn near inevitable, because now the computer civs also produce pollution.

[Grumbold]

Thats the pesky thing about pollution. The stats screen seems to realise that you have done everything possible to eliminate pollution and credits you with a clean bill of health. The cities themselves, perhaps more realistically if annoyingly, tell you that total elimination of pollution from a city that has grown to a certain density is impossible. I could live with that provided the minimum level you have limited it to was low enough to avoid global-warming tile changes on your terrain or there were eco-discussions possible on the diplomacy screen. I want to give the whole world Ecology and Recycling and force them to use it (hello Kyoto)!!

[rid102]

The cities themselves, perhaps more realistically if annoyingly, tell you that total elimination of pollution from a city that has grown to a certain density is impossible.

May sound like a stupid couple of points but:

- Are you sure you're building Mass Transit and Recycling Center improvements in the problem Cities? (I assume, yes).

- Have you got either Hoover Dam Wonder (I'm assuming it still counts as hydro-power, i.e. no pollution) or Hydro Plants in the problem Cities? (again, I assume yes where appropriate).

- Even in Civ2, if you had a City over a certain size (quite large, high 30's I think) it would still produce a couple of smoke stacks in pollution. Although the problem was easily containable, you could still have cities which produce pollution despite having done everything possible to count it.

[xane]

I got this game Tuesday and only played it once due to lack of time, having this discussion (again) is good for me

The one striking thing is I feel the interface is not as "secure" as Civ2, and niceities, such as displaying your bank balance whenever money deals are made, are missing.

(okay the bank is always shown in the bottom right corner, but why not on the dialogue too, makes it easier ?).

The culture thing is going to take getting used too, but I like it.

As far as "war weariness" being partially "hidden", that's good for me too, I prefer games with a "fog of war" effect on formulated issues too, even if it is often just shielding the AI cheating !

The only part I dislike is the tendancy for the AI civs to be expansionist regardless of trait, placing remote cities on odd pieces of your empire not covered by the culture lines. Surely "remoteness" would be a consideration in placement ???

[Kekkonen]

Originally posted by Grumbold
The cities themselves, perhaps more realistically if annoyingly, tell you that total elimination of pollution from a city that has grown to a certain density is impossible. I could live with that provided the minimum level you have limited it to was low enough to avoid global-warming tile changes on your terrain or there were eco-discussions possible on the diplomacy screen. I want to give the whole world Ecology and Recycling and force them to use it (hello Kyoto)!!

Actually, it's not global warming that irks me in Civ3, it's the damn pollution. Managing those workers is tiresome. At the very least, I'd like to be able to have a pollution-cleaning worker squad that is continually on standby.

Of course, I'm yet to play a game with a large-scale nuclear war, so I may eventually come to a different conclusion about global warming. But as things stand now, having an occasional grassland square turn into plains isn't getting on my nerves. The continual pollution cleaning is.

And no, I'm *not* going to give away Ecology and Recycling for free. Foreign pollution only seems to spoil foreign squares, it's none of my friggin' problem.

[rid102]

The one striking thing is I feel the interface is not as "secure" as Civ2, and niceities, such as displaying your bank balance whenever money deals are made, are missing.

I feel as though the interface is very much for prettiness only. There isn't great emphasis on functionality. What's wrong with the standard Windows toolkit (a la Civ2)? You can do everything with that you need, and making your own stuff just makes things harder for the developers (they need to do more work).

Also, some things are difficult to spot clearly (I'm very surprised no-one else had complained about this). E.g. "commerce" icons look similar to "food" (same colour), happy/content/unhappy citizens are hard to distinguish (no colour coding), unit types are very difficult to distinguish from one another (especially at a glance) etc.

The culture thing is going to take getting used too, but I like it.

Culture seems good. It opens up additional tactics to use.

As far as "war weariness" being partially "hidden", that's good for me too, I prefer games with a "fog of war" effect on formulated issues too

The thing that annoys me is not that it is partially hidden, it is entirely hidden from the player. I want to know how to stretch my populace to the limit during a war while still keeping up near-normal production etc. As I don't know how war weariness works, exactly, that's very difficult to do. It limits my power. What factors affect how your citizens react? It's just not explained yet is a factor that affects how you run your entire empire.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by rid102
May sound like a stupid couple of points but:

- Are you sure you're building Mass Transit and Recycling Center improvements in the problem Cities? (I assume, yes).

- Have you got either Hoover Dam Wonder (I'm assuming it still counts as hydro-power, i.e. no pollution) or Hydro Plants in the problem Cities? (again, I assume yes where appropriate).

- Even in Civ2, if you had a City over a certain size (quite large, high 30's I think) it would still produce a couple of smoke stacks in pollution. Although the problem was easily containable, you could still have cities which produce pollution despite having done everything possible to count it.

Yes to all points. I even tried building solar power stations as well as mass transit and recycling to see if it did better than the Hoover hydro power. It seems any city of 15+ pop with a factory will produce 2 pollution even with all of these in place. Often two of the three are sufficient to get it down to 2 pollution and the third then achieves nothing except increased cost. I've yet to build a Manufacturing Plant that pushed it up from 2 pollution either when the measures are in place. It seems to be a hard to crack limit, a bit like the 4 turn per science barrier

[Patient English]

This post is largely a lift from the main "First Impressions" thread, but might be worth cross-posting here (if that doesn't get me banned! )

I have been playing Civ for a week or so, and my first impressions were very positive. Once I started getting beyond the first few cities, though, the famous corruption problem reared it's head. It was next to impossible (unaffordable) to rush build improvements in cities away from the starting continent, and building them 1 shield at a time would take 80 turns. 1000 years to build a courthouse. Hmmm. Overseas colonies without a nearby city with a harbour were also useless. It took 1000 years to build harbours, too. I can accept colonies/remote cities would not contribute much to the taxman for a long time, but they would be able to get on with building stockades, churches, harbours and so on - possibly with even greater energy than their stay-at-home countrymen.

The overall difficulty of maintaining a far-flung empire is one area where Civ III is definitely more realistic than its predessors, I would accept. However, IMHO it is also the main area where a little bit of unreality helps gameplay enormously.

It depends on your play style, I guess, but one of the things I always liked about Civ I and II was the ability to build up an empire, and associated outlying colonies. It WAS Civ, to me. OK, I didn't like to use huge Armour and Howitzer armies to conquer the whole world via a massive rail network, either (although the broken AI often forced you to do that in sheer self-defence).

IMO, Civ III penalises anything but ICS or a small, tight-knit, high-culture-high-tech group of cities. There is no middle ground that I can see. I have many other gripes about the graphics and the crazy combat system, but these are less fundamental. (Civ I combat was pretty broken in the same way and the base Civ I & II graphics were hardly beautiful).

The AI is better, true, but the "feel" of Civ has got lost, for me. No doubt I am too lightweight a player to examine all possible strategies to circumvent these problems, but frankly the game frustrated - and then bored - me too much to be bothered. Never thought I would say that about a Civ game! I think that the designers at Firaxis had another type of player in mind when they coded this game. As it stands, it is not for me. I'm sure many others will have fun with it 'though.

I have uninstalled the game from my hard disk and will go back to Civ II (scenario development and PBEM and online multiplayer). As and when Civ III has these things and has had a chance for some gameplay patches, I will look at it again - maybe.

I might have been totally seduced by Europa Universalis II by then!



John

[Grumbold]

Hmm, try a commercial civ. Playing as the Romans I could control a third of the entire playing surface with practically no cities in the 99% corrupution zone just by careful positioning of the Forbidden Palace then moving my Palace around to affect any new aquisitions. It is not perfect but you can control quite a lot that way. Later I fully intend to make the airport act like a mini forbidden palace if I can balance its cost-effectiveness properly. That should prevent curruption free ancient empires while curing the modern day malaise.

To build anything in a corrupt city (although there are some posts on the strategy forum suggesting you dont, you just milk them for tax) you need to lumberjack.

[Libertarian]

Grumbold, I just gotta say that yours was probably the most level-headed review I've seen. [...tip o' the hat...] In my opinion, you cited the critical issues in a civil and balanced way. I apologize for fawning all over you this way, and ordinarilly a balanced review would be no big deal, but after the past couple of weeks, well...

Suffice it to say that my already high admiration of the British has shot up yet another notch. Thanks.

I do like the stack movement idea very much. And I do believe that the air defense bug ought to be fixed and released immediately, since the late game is positively crippled without it. But all in all, I feel the same as you. It will be a great game after the patch.

(By the way, someone mentioned not being able to see the treasury during diplomacy. But it's there. When you click that option for trade, it will drop down.)

[Grumbold]

*blush* Aw, thanks.

There seem to be a lot of good extra features that turn out to be in the game when you know where to look, but this fixation about avoiding obvious drop-down windows or big buttons seems to have made them far too difficult to find. I know I read a post the other day about how to examine and cancel your existing trade deals but I can't find it now - or the way of doing it on the trade screen. No doubt the vital information is buried somewhere in the readme.