Got CTP2 (and Civ3) for Christmas!

[Miznia]

(I wrote a really long msg but lost it. I'll try to remember what I wrote, but it won't be as enthusiastic!)

I've been playing CTP2 more than Civ3, because there's more novelty to it, at least. There's also the fact that the Civ3 AI fills up the world too fast and kicks your butt a lot quicker.

CTP2 is the prettiest civ game, I think. Civ3 loses mostly because the mountains look like pegs and the units are puny and all the same color. I'm pretty fond of CTP2's graphics, except for the coasts and the farms. Has anyone made any improvements, there?

I was wondering, as far as modding goes, whether a few things are possible, easy, or already done:

Increase science production for all players. (It's already fast for me, having Gunpowder by 1AD on a small map, medium difficulty, Apolyton Pack, but small maps get filled up and a bit dull by 1 AD, so I have yet to discover all the techs. It would be a temporary acceleration.)

Increase the value of money, it's coming out of my ears. Trade is unnecessary and I rarely take the science tax slider off of max. One of my first games, thinking luxuries were probably really valuable, I was the Thai, and I spied a Hardwood resource on the Scots' continent, where they would inevitably expand. I raced, put all of my attention into getting a settler next to that Hardwood resource, and built a city. The Scots fairly quickly declared war before I was ready to defend the city (and I bought a cease-fire with 1/10 my treasury... this was without APack BTW). Now that was some real fun, the belief that Hardwood was valuable, and striving to set up shop there. Nowadays I don't bother with trading, though, because the production for Caravans is more valuable to me than the money from Trade. So Trade either needs to be more valuable, or money an awful lot scarcer.

Is SLIC capable of creating a status like "vassal state"? I wouldn't need a pretty icon for the F7 screen or anything. It's just that, on small maps with seven players, I don't want to kill everybody off, but I don't want them annoying me when I'm not prepared, either. Of course, that can be fun, too.

Are there any goods ways (in the game or through modding) of aiding allies in a war they're fighting, besides entering the war yourself and giving away your spare money? In another game, the Romans decided to declare war on the Koreans, but I didn't want the Koreans to get killed. I also didn't want to do any fighting, because I was trying to catch up in tech. Eventually I ended up fighting.

Could SLIC make AI attitudes towards each other more volatile? As it is it's pretty easy to guess who's going to hate whom, and it's not likely to change a whole lot. I'd like to see more fluid alliances.

I do think it's a cool game, and I'm grateful to all modders. I finished downloading Cradle and intend to try it this weekend.

Miznia

[Boney]

I am sure you will enjoy cradle. I find the big maps time consuming and easier to gain victory. But cradle is a real challenge.

[macaskil]

Civ 3 v CTP2

I got Civ3 at Xmas and have recently got CTP as well

In my opinion CTP's good points relative to Civ3 are

- more units, techs, improvements
- more future techs etc (if you last that long)
- more governments - and they have more effect
- better management screens - eg the build queue is great
- more stats to let you know how your civ is doing
- rules all in text files so can be changed more easily. You can also see the parameters that control the game - or is this a cheat?
- nice movies when you build a wonder
- more actions for units - eg franchise
- more terrain types and improvements
- city limits can extend more than 20 squares
- spoken warning when build complete.
- scenarios easier to create
- battle view screens - and opportunity to repeat

Civ3 is better on

- graphics. The CTP screen has bright colors which give me eyestrain! The terrain looks better in Civ3. The units are better too.
- differences between civs. In CTP the civs differ only in name, they have no "personality"
- generally, more of a challenge. In CTP I am in the 19th Century and no other civ has even threatened me.
- more realistic time scale. In CTP I was researching industrial age stuff in the 14th C!
- culture. CTP has national boundaries but I don't think culture gives you any chance of flipping cities
- civ3edit makes it easy to change the rules you are allowed to change!
- larger maps, more civs. Generally, takes advantage of high powered machines.
- city view screens - but these could be better.

If only we could have the best features of both in the same game!

I'm not sure about the combat systems - anyone done a comparison?

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by macaskil
- civ3edit makes it easy to change the rules you are allowed to change!

SLIC allows you to change the rules you shouldn't be allowed to change...

- larger maps, more civs. Generally, takes advantage of high powered machines.

Both possible in CtP2.
[/QUOTE]

[Sexus R Cerinus]

Civ3 loses mostly because the mountains look like pegs and the units are puny and all the same color.

Civ3 is better on - graphics. The CTP screen has bright colors which give me eyestrain! The terrain looks better in Civ3. The units are better too.

The above quotes contradict each other. Of course they can, they are opinions. IMHO the graphics and units in CTP2 are excellent. But not having CIV3 cannot compare. Anyone else?

To me graphics are a very important part of the game, as you are speding many hours glued to the screen This is the reason I didn't buy Zeas (city building) as the animations looked to cartoonish.

Sexus

NZ, home of the America's Cup

[Oerdin]

In your comparision of Civ3 vs CTP2 you forgot to mention that CTP2 allows for stacking of units and Multiplayer while civ3 does neither.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by macaskil
In my opinion CTP's good points relative to Civ3 are

Don't forget about stacks, combat (ranged, flanker, bombard), PW, slavery, MAD, multiplayer, etc...

The units are better too.

IMNSHO Civ3's graphics, especially the unit graphics, s*ck bigtime, almost worse than Civ2 (and that was already pretty bad). On this point, give me CtP and Civ1 (yeah, that's right, go VGA! ) over those games any day... Then again, just my personal taste...

- differences between civs. In CTP the civs differ only in name, they have no "personality"

Actually, there are 6-8 or so personalities in CtP2... But Civ3 is indeed better at this...

- generally, more of a challenge. In CTP I am in the 19th Century and no other civ has even threatened me.

Tried Cradle?

- civ3edit makes it easy to change the rules you are allowed to change!

Actually, a utility like that extremely limits what you can do, CtP's system is SO much more flexible and not all that harder to use...

- larger maps, more civs. Generally, takes advantage of high powered machines.

Actually, Civ3 does not take advantage of a machine's power, it outright abuses it. Running Civ3 on anything less than a PII 400 64MB is near to impossible, while CtP2 runs fairly smoothly on a P120 32MB (as long as you don't run the Alexander scenario) and that while the games aren't fundamentally different...

[macaskil]

Give me a chance, I haven't finished a game yet.

Graphics - my opinion is based on emprical evidence - I can play civ3 all night whilst I have to stop ctp2 after a couple of hours with eyestrain. Those day-glo colours are the problem. In civ3 only the orange-goo pollution has the same effect on me.

Performance - I have a 2.0GHz Pentium IV. I find civ3 performance is fine up to huge maps and 16 civs - if I ignore the ironclads performing square dances around my battleships and herds of Elephants marching along my frontiers for several minutes at a time.

With ctp2 I have found the game starting to slow down on a huge map, but with only 3 civs. I suspect the game is optimised for a less powerful CPU - hardly a surprise being 2-3 years old.

BTW I love both games, just wish the best of both could be comibined into the one game! I'm not a "civ bigot" by any means, though I do like the agressive AI in civ3.

On the other hand I'd like to interact with the citizens like in the Sims, micromanage cities like in SimCity, fight realtime battles like in Age of Empires.... unfortunately I think the industry is not in the mood to invest a lot in this sort of game.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by macaskil
I can play civ3 all night whilst I have to stop ctp2 after a couple of hours with eyestrain. Those day-glo colours are the problem.

LOL, some people have the same problem with Apolyton's default color-scheme. When this happens, you've been sitting in front of that computer longer than is good for you and you should get a life (j/k)

Performance - I have a 2.0GHz Pentium IV. I find civ3 performance is fine up to huge maps and 16 civs [...] With ctp2 I have found the game starting to slow down on a huge map, but with only 3 civs.

Actually, when CtP2 came out, the first 1GHz systems were already on the market (IIRC it was released 1 year and 3 months ago). I've tried CtP2 on both high- and low-performance systems and it worked fine on both. Might be a system-compatibility problem...

BTW I love both games, just wish the best of both could be comibined into the one game! I'm not a "civ bigot" by any means, though I do like the agressive AI in civ3.

I can see how people would like both games, nothing wrong with that (I don't, but that's just me - Civ1 was the last real good 'Civ' title if you ask me)...

On the other hand I'd like to interact with the citizens like in the Sims, micromanage cities like in SimCity, fight realtime battles like in Age of Empires.... unfortunately I think the industry is not in the mood to invest a lot in this sort of game.

Don't we all?

[Oerdin]

It is to bad that Firaxis and Activision can't come up with some sort of agreement like Micropose and Activision did. I'd love to see a "Civ3: Call to Power" like they did for Civ2.