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"While Civilization might have better graphics/sounds, that doesn't add much to the "educational" value."

When I was a director of a summer "Computer Camp" in the 1990s, we allowed our campers to play Civilization II. Within it was a plethora of information on historical figures, places, etc... to which the campers were actively seeking out in the "Civilopedia" as they played. Seeing this engagement across genders and ages, was a key reason why I sought out employment at Microprose after college. (Disclaimer: I'm currently employed by Firaxis; opinions stated here are my own.)

Civ5 has built on Civ; each version has pushed the level of graphics and sound which a few have argued do add educational value as it makes the content more compelling; I agree.

The last few versions of Civilization have offered a great deal of MODability. You too can change game rules, UI, etc... by modifying XML and the supplied LUA. As for the depth of what you can do, check out this awesome WIKI fans made of the MOD system: http://modiki.civfanatics.com/...

I've found in my experience that there is almost always some way to install anything legacy. Sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes not.

I haven't tried this but here is a way to get the old Civ 2 to play on 64-bit systems allegedly.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/...

That works fine until Civ2 reaches a point on a map where it just crashes. Repeatedly, consistently. The only way to keep playing is to start a totally brand-new map. Wish I knew why. :-(

I haven't tried this but here is a way to get the old Civ 2 to play on 64-bit systems allegedly.

Well, I'll try that patcher (for the onlookers, it's a patch for civ 2 gold multiplayer only) and see what happens... yes, it seems to work. There was a lonnnnnng pause before it launched, so long I thought it wasn't going to, and then it kicked off. I didn't copy any additional files from the install media. Maybe it was trying to play an intro. It's not even pinning any of my CPU cores, which is unusual for civ2. Thanks for the heads-up.

I've found in my experience that there is almost always some way to install anything legacy. Sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes not.

I haven't tried this but here is a way to get the old Civ 2 to play on 64-bit systems allegedly.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/...

There very well could be an alien species out there is just discovering radio while having already engaged in interstellar travel.

You can't be serious.

I don't know. In Civilization, you can discover the computer before you discover calendars...

http://www.civfanatics.com/ima...

Civilization IV "sucks" About 113,000 Results
Civilization 5 "sucks" About 3,160,000 results

I abstained from purchasing V, so I can't say from firsthand knowledge... but I followed and participated in numerous threads on civfanatics.com; had many conversations with long-time modders, and fans of CIV4 ... and watched countless threads on civfanatics devolve into haters vs defenders. The most amusing part being that the defenders would always claim that "this is how it always is when a new CIV is released ... people hate it" --- except in Civ5's case the hate didn't lessen or go away.

A couple searches on Amazon indicates that Civ4 has still sold better than Civ5. It'd be interesting to know the full numbers (from all sources), but its hardly in 2KGames best interest to release that - if in fact Civ4 has sold that much better than the 5th iteration.

This was one of my favorite (in-depth) articles about Civ5:

What Went Wrong with Civ5? (by Sulla)
------ And the discussion of Sulla's analysis on CivFanatics :: "The Bad Sequel": Sullla's Analysis of Civ5

If you do get it, Civ Fanatics is where all the mods and modding community is.

Much further. Civs, units, technologies and wonders can be changed via editing their respective XML files, there's an in-game world editor which can adjust terrain, cities, civs and units and import and export maps, Python can be used to customise the interface, write map generating scripts and script events in-game, and there's an SDK which allows you to modify almost everything else - the first big thing I saw it used for was a mod called Better AI which tweaked most of the AI's behaviour based on the strategies players used, made opponents much tougher, especially in the early game.

There are a whole bunch of different games based on CIV written with these tools, one I played was Fall From Heaven, and this was years ago, not sure what's happened in the mean time :)

The Spiral Minaret

The lyrics are slightly more than just the the Lord's Prayer translated: it significantly repeats some sections and alters the overall order quite a bit. Someone at Civfantaics put up a transcription with an OK translation, Baba Yetu
A native speaker later put up a a much better translation. of some of the sections.

That covers the song pretty well, so I won't re-tread that, but the the Swahili language Lord's Prayer I Googled didn't match up with the song, or the version in my bible, so here it is for anyone interested:

(Mathayo 6, 9-13):

Baba yetu uliye mbinguni:
Jina lako litukuzwe.
Ufalme wako ufike.
Utakalo lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni.
Utupe leo chakula chetu tunachohitaji.
Utusamehe makosa zetu,
kama nasi tunavyowasamehe waliotukosea.
Usitutie katika majaribu,
lakini utuokoe na yule Mwovu.

[The optional doxology, which isn't in the text follows,]
Kwa kuwa ufalme ni wako, na nguvu, na utukufu, hata milele.

The lyrics are slightly more than just the the Lord's Prayer translated: it significantly repeats some sections and alters the overall order quite a bit. Someone at Civfantaics put up a transcription with an OK translation, Baba Yetu
A native speaker later put up a a much better translation. of some of the sections.

That covers the song pretty well, so I won't re-tread that, but the the Swahili language Lord's Prayer I Googled didn't match up with the song, or the version in my bible, so here it is for anyone interested:

(Mathayo 6, 9-13):

Baba yetu uliye mbinguni:
Jina lako litukuzwe.
Ufalme wako ufike.
Utakalo lifanyike duniani kama mbinguni.
Utupe leo chakula chetu tunachohitaji.
Utusamehe makosa zetu,
kama nasi tunavyowasamehe waliotukosea.
Usitutie katika majaribu,
lakini utuokoe na yule Mwovu.

[The optional doxology, which isn't in the text follows,]
Kwa kuwa ufalme ni wako, na nguvu, na utukufu, hata milele.

Yes, it's a bad title: He actually won 2 Grammies: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=411886

"...Calling All Dawns is the winner in the Best Classical Crossover Album category. " -- which is a slightly bigger award than "Best instrumental arrangement..."

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=123680 :)

"Civ 5 seems to again be a step back. Beautiful graphics and a solid engine behind everything, but a rather crappy AI and some questionable design decisions (like non-stacking units which lead to massive sprawl late game). Not a horrible game, but in more than a few ways one that doesn't measure up to Civ 4."

After watching the debate in the online communities (mainly CivFanatics, the general tenor of which is summed up in Sulla's article about the subject) and playing almost 200 hours of the game myself, it seems that most of the problems in the game are related to depth. Which isn't to say that the game doesn't have depth, but that they did a great job on the basics while the underlying elements have flaws that aren't apparent at first.

I think that almost everyone who enjoys such games will love Civ 5 at first, all the changes they've made to the series will certainly provide a fresh experience. It's only as you spend more time with the game that you'll come to understand (consciously or unconsciously) the problems those changes have introduced. The amount of time it takes for that realization to happen will depend on how "hardcore" of a player you are. If you're a casual Civ player (though describing it that way is perhaps somewhat of an oxymoron) you can get a lot of fun out of Civ 5 before the problems drive you away in frustration or boredom.

The point is, we don't know where future technologies will grow out of. It isn't simply a matter of putting our minds to it.

What are you talking about? All you have to do is check an FAQ or something, and with the whole tech tree at your disposal, you can plan your future.

but I think the consensus was that Civ IV was a flop. The game got rid of some nice gameplay elements and expanded on others (diplomacy). That may be your kind of game-- after all, I loved the original Railroad Tycoon and intensely disliked the follow-up, but my opinion runs contrary to the masses there. But hopefully they've learned from their mistakes in Civ IV.

You could not be more wrong, actually. That's like saying 'I heard that Google project those guys were working on was a flop'

Ever been to CivFanatics?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/index.php

Anyway, there are a few people out there who liked Civ3 more, but

Like the other poster N0Man74 said, you could buy a cheap card a couple generations up. Here's one of the cheapest, most bang for the buck AGP 4x/8x cards, at $60:
ATI HD 3650 AGP 4x/8x

Meets the system requirements of a ATI HD 2600 XT or better. All priced out for you. 120 vs. 40 stream processors and 128-bit vs. 64-bit for about $10 more than the $50 cards. Might as well.

Yeah, you're better off long-term just biting the bullet and going PCI-Express but it's an option.

Civ 5 should be (Civ 4 + Beyond the Sword expansion pack + Giant Earth mod + 50 Civ mod). Pluss a lot more political tools like cross-civ organizations (UN, WTO etc) and unions (US, EU etc), sanctions, occupation, puppet leaders. Also in warfare there should be a tactical screen for coordinating units from different allied civs. It also wouldn't hurt if Firaxis teamed up with Monte Cristo and combined Civ and Cities XL into one epic world simulation.

See here for more details on the above mentioned mods.

There's a Civ4 mod called 'Planetfall' that you might be interested in if you already have Civ4.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=278

you can play by email....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/archive/index.php/t-199563.html

Have you ever tried Planetfall for Civ4?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252829

I just got BtS recently & haven't had time to check it out yet.

Civilization 5's success will ultimately depend on how moddable it is. If it is less moddable than Civilization 4, there is no way it will have any staying power.

Before you mod me down; I know, I mod for Civilization 4.t

Oh, God, we have yet another "Artists are perfectly willing to work for fun and for free" thread on Slashdot.

Bottom line: The majority of artists, programmers, etc. out there won't make something for fun and for free. Of, if they do, they will create it to a much lesser degree than they would if they were getting paid for it.

"Having a day job" and "Willing to work for fun and for free" are two very different things. I am sure a lot of your artists friends would find something else to do in their free time if they were told that they would never earn a dime making their art.

Why is it that the majority of video games out there are games people legally need to pay for to buy? With a very few rare exceptions, commercial games blow open-source games out of the water in terms of quality.

For example, let's look at Civilization-type games. If you go to civfanatics.com, you can see large communities playing Civilization II, Civilization III, and Civilization IV. These games are incredibly popular. The graphics are compelling, the games includes movies, and Civilization IV even has 3D graphics.

Lets compare this to the free Civilization clones out there: Freeciv, C-evo, and the abandoned Clash of Civilizations project. Freeciv doesn't have the compelling graphics the professional Civ games have, and its gameplay is as compelling as writing a spreadsheet. While there is a full-screen SDL port, it is incomplete and unstable.

C-evo is essentially Civilization I with Civilization II isometric graphics. It has a nice full-screen interface, but its documentation is sketchy and it has issues with being too difficult for a rank beginner to start playing and enjoying. There are no voice actors, no movies when you build a wonder, no engaging diplomacy, and the game for all intents and purposes can not be modded. Did I mention it's not truly open-source, since you need the proprietary Delphi programming environment to build it?

Clash of Civilizations died a few years ago. Its developers, quite frankly, did not have enough motivation to make a full game. "For fun and for free", the delusion Slashdot keeps bringing up over and over, did not work.

When people are being paid for their work, the result is a game with far more compelling graphics and gameplay. People, plain and simple, will not make the type of compelling music, games, and movies people have come to expect if there is no way people can be compensated for their hard work.

an occasional phone call, a cheeseburger, and surfing for a little porn

I dunno. I can only eat, chat, and fap so much. But I could play CivIII day and night.

While it's an interesting challenge in a game of Civilization, the reality of it is quite interesting. The people that these, "laptops," are intended for are a lot more like that tribe in 4000 BC. They are more concerned with hunting, fishing, and farming (and in some cases, learning how to do that), and other things like just living. True, a lot of these people have bits and pieces of technology that's been acquired at various times, and some might even have computers. But the vast majority of them wouldn't know the first thing to do with a laptop that's given to them.

Look at the Nigerians, for example. Somehow, they got access to computers and the internet. But their development of other (CivIV calls them "technologies") aspects of their culture, like basic ethics, is pretty far behind the curve. Hence, we get flooded with zillions of 401 scam emails per day! We need to be more aware of what these people's needs are and not necessarily compare them directly to our own. Just because a good percentage of Americans own computers and laptops (and that number isn't even 100%) doesn't mean that people in Africa need them.

Headmaster: Well... Well... Well, it's all got to do with the library, you see. We've had a lot of trouble recently with boys taking out library books without library cards. Your son was caught, and I administered a beating, during which he died. But you'll be glad to know... You'll be glad to know that the ringleader was caught, so I don't think we'll be having any trouble with library discipline. You see, the library card system...
 
Mr Perkins: I'm sorry...
 
Headmaster: ...was...
 
Mr Perkins: You beat my son to death?
 
Headmaster: Yes, yes, so it would seem. Please, I'm not used to being interrupted. You see, the library card system was introduced...
 
Mr Perkins: Well, exactly what happened?
 
Headmaster: Well, apparently, boys were just slipping into the library and taking the books!

I haven't read many strategy guides lately, maybe 10 or so in total, and I definitely haven't read any in the last couple years in either a seperate book version or print Computer Game magazine feature.

I've been disillusioned to them since I read the Diablo II strategy guide and like many I had read before it seemed to be a series of common sense suggestions, and a rehashing of in-game help & manual information. More importantly, it often suggested strategies, character builds, and skill combinations that were bad. The most annoying is information which is out of date or incorrect!

At least now I can go to gamefaqs or gaming websites if I want mediocre strategies and single-player walkthroughs (I generally don't).

I find a lot more useful information and effective strategies reading the most popular fan forums for the game in question. Yes, there is bullshit in the forums and information which is wrong, but the absolutely vital thing is that people usually get called out if the provide bad information, strategies that only work on 'easy', or are easily countered. People will sometimes (best cases) give hard evidence/examples/replays/game data to back up their claims, and will comment on whether patches have changed the effectiveness of any plan.

• Detailed information or strategy discussion -> Forums
• Walkthrough for an unenjoyable/unsolvable puzzle -> Gamefaqs
• Otherwise -> Enjoy the game unassisted

It's very possible I'm out of touch with most others and get more 'into' any game I play

Games I've played recently & best website I could find discussing them:
Civ 4 at Apolyton and Fanatics
Rise of Legends also Game Replays is a pretty popular site for Rise of Legends and other popular RTSes I don't play (C&C, AoE III, Act of War, Battle for Middle Earth).
Rise of Nations
Guild Wars
NWN Official Forums and NWVault
Ground Control II Official Forums
Age of Mythology
Diablo II

I've tried looking for a good place to find out about Star Wars: Battlefront II and Homeworld 2 but I haven't really found out what the most useful site for these games is.

Unit Commands - Workers (v1.17f)

• Automate A
• Automate, keep existing improvements Shift-A *** Very useful!!!
• Automate, improve nearest city only Shift-I ***
• Automate, nearest city & keep existing Ctrl-Shift-I ***
• Automate, clear forests only Shift-F
• Automate, clear jungle only Shift-J ***
• Automate, clean up pollution only Shift-P ***
• Build Road to square, then Colony Ctrl-B
• Build Road to selected square Ctrl-R ***
• Build Railroad to selected square Ctrl-Shift-R
• Build Trade Network Ctrl-N ***
• Irrigate to nearest city Ctrl-I ***

I usually have about 30 workers or so until right before the industrial age. About 10-20 turns before I get railroad I divert all my attention to building workers so I have 60-100 by the first turn I have railroad and use them to connect all my cities. Once every square has railroads, I'll use the excess workers to form human barriers at chokepoints or absorb them into the smaller cities but I keep 20-30 or so around for pollution clean-up duty.

Another article on the same topic:
article

Dolphins have been known to jump over nets in the open ocean.

See here for another discussion of the article in question.

other forum

No it isn't. The engine and the AI are written in C++. All of the game scripts (map generation for example) and interface is in python, all the game data is in XML, and it's highly modable.

The AI can be reprogrammed in C++ using their API. See Question 6. I'm not positive that it's been released yet though.

The patch is here:
http://209.174.48.134/downloads/harkfix.zip

Copying out what the author wrote about it:

You will need 3 files to be placed into your civ4 game folder
(where Civilization4.exe resides)

A single zipped pack is attached to this post (see bottom of the post), or you may visit this URL (thanks to phalzyr for this mirror):
http://209.174.48.134/downloads/harkfix.zip

Or you may want to download those files separately:
http://www.sampo.ru/~headden/zlib1.dll
http://www.sampo.ru/~headden/Patch.v...yHarkonnen. dll
http://www.sampo.ru/~headden/Patch.v01/Harkonnen.i ni

'zlib1.dll' just loads 'PatchByHarkonnen.dll', otherwise it was compiled from most recent zlib source from zlib.net

Note that it is necessary to download and replace zlib1.dll (either via .zip or solely), otherwise memory fix won't have any effect because PatchByHarkonnen.dll won't be loaded.

I recommend to turn AGP on (SMARTGART for ATi cards for example) and set AGP apperture size to maximum in BIOS (if you don't know how, just don't care). Your AGP setting might be off because it helped some people earlier to keep game non-crashing, so they still might have it off.

This patch is primarily for those who have at least 64Mb (better 128Mb) of video memory with preferably TnL card above GeForce2. You may give it a try even with lower specs - some people reported it had effect on very low-end machines.

First of all please follow these steps. Note that some steps are about decreasing graphics quality. This is not required, it is just to make sure that your first start with my memory-fix to be success, so you may increase graphics quality later when you get it running for the first time.

So, let's go:

1) Modify "Civiliation4.ini" - set "D3D9Query = 1", "DynamicAnimPaging = 0". If you have trouble finding/editing this file, don't care and skip to step 2.
2) If you have 1 Gb of memory or above, skip past step 9.
3) Run the game (if it doesn't run, follow past step 9)
4) Set it to windowed mode (not must-do, but preferable to get stable first launch)
5) Set anti-aliasing to 0 (also not 100% required)
6) Set all low/high settings on the left to 'low' (same as above)
7) Check 'Low resolution textures' (same as above)
8) Then you may check anything on the right, i.e. effects and animations.
9) Exit the game

If the game hangs during 'Initializing Python' step, just restart it and hold down 'Shift' key, so it updates its files cache. This thing is not about my patch, this is something about fresh python24.dll sources...

If you could do all of these steps, try loading some of your huge savegames. If the game crashed or graphics becomes damanged (main menu globe and sun), set 'insane_mode = 0' in Harkonnen.ini file and try again.

!IMPORTANT!

If the game crashes during loading (and crash comes from PatchByHarkonnen.dll if you click details), try recommendation from this post on this thread (post #50):
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...0&postcount =50
It says to turn off ATI Tray Tools software. RivaTuner appears to be ok with my fix (thanks to Kolyana for pointing that out).

Also, xFire coming with 1.09 patch is also causing this crash according to a lot of data sent by filterban per my mail requests. This will be fixed with the next release, and thanks to filterban for his help! It's enough just to quit xFire, no need to uninsntall it. And, again, it's temporary solution until next release of my fix.

!END-OF-IMPORTANT!

Subscribe this thread if yo

Here it is. Thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately the actual link to the patch is hidden inside some kind of forum which is down at the moment. If it returns to the world of the living I'll have to give it a try.

Besides the fan-made patch (which works pretty well for me), you can make the auto-saves more frequent - edit the AutoSaveInterval value in CivilizationIV.ini.

The patch is being discussed on civfanatics.com also. It seems to help a lot of people.

To Sid Meier:

When you make Sid Meier's Civilization V, you should make it more realistic by allowing America to convert to a Police State over the course of a few years without suffering a period of anarchy.

For those who don't play Civ IV: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/civics/

With Satellite, I can then research Composites or Fiber-Optics!!
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/techtree/

I usually play on Emperor level and probably win 1/10 games although most of the games I know within 10-20 turns if I have any shot at all. Some suggestions:

• Sadly, you need a good start. You simply must start at a good location - preferrably with flood plains or bonus food nearby.
• Expansion. A good fast-growing start allows you to expand quickly (although never as fast as the AI). Once all the land is "claimed" the only way you can expect your boundaries to shift is through miltary or cultural superiority. You need to maximize your area so that...
• Control of resources. Resources. Resources. Resources. They keep your people happy, let you build (or deny the opponents) cool things. Most importantly they are critical for diplomacy
• Keep your opponents happy with you so that their superior militaries don't steamroll you. This is achived through continuous trades of resources and techs. When you do trade a tech, always trade it to EVERYONE the same turn or else the computer will simply turn around and sell it to those you missed. Always trade dead-end techs but never trade techs that lead to important wonders or units (unless you are very near completion of the wonder).
• Avoid alliances as they will drag you into wars. On the other hand, there is nothing like having the AI waste resources fighting itself while you stay neutral and progress in peace. There are ways to encourage the AI to fight. For instance, if you acquire an enemy city that is not very useful to you, offer it in a trade to an opponent of the original owner. They will often start a war to reclaim their city. Oh, and when they do fight, always try to help the underdog. You want this fight to drag out as long as possible. Have settlers ready to move in to the unclaimed territory immediately as one civilization sweeps across another leaving "unclaimed" territory.
• Emphasize cultural production. The first things built in every city should be a temple and library. In my opinion, if you planned your cities very well, then they will grow so fast that they will hit a population limit rather fast in which case the granary isn't doing anything for you. (The exception is slow growing cities) Culture on the other hand is cumulative so it is imperative you build them as early as possible. Having superior culture may be the only way to expand your borders in the mid-game where you likely will still have an insufficient military.
• Prebuild. When a new tech looms on the horizon, start building a dummy improvement early so you can switch to the new wonder/improvement as soon as it is available.
• Use workers to pump up cities. When you run out of expansion room, you may still have some cities that are at max capacity but still have excess food. Use them to make workers which you then assimilate into your smaller cities to make them grow faster.
• Don't try to build every wonder or acquire every tech first. Be tactical. Make a break for philosophy first. If you get it first, you get a free tech. Use it to get to Republic first and change your government. Culture, growth and production will explode! Try to build the Great Library which will keep you on par with your peers in science through the early mid-game while you investigate paths they are ignoring. Make sure you get railroads and are ready with dozens of waiting workers to start building immediately. Switch to democracy at first opportunity and hold off on communism/fascism untill the end game when corruption is out of control.
• Save and re-try. I know it is cheesy but the best way to learn from your mistakes is to play though several different possibilites and find what works best for you.

As it looks right now, no, there are no limits. Most of the game appears to be completely customizable, at almost all levels. It will come with a Map Editor, unit data in XML files, a Python scripting engine for custom actions, and an AI SDK (to be released later) for customizing a civ.

I've only looked a little into this, but CivFanatics.com has put together a much more comprehensive FAQ, including a section on customizing Civ 4.

There is a short-game option. And a medium length, and a long length.

This is the best listing of game details I've seen to date.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/info/

The "significant additional bonus content" has already been reported to be jack shit.

1 of 9 collector's cards? Behinds the scenes footage? Who cares.

Meanwhile on the other hand Firaxis is offering:

Collector's case: Navy blue "leatherette" bookshelf case embossed with the Civilization IV logo.

CD Soundtrack: Containing original compositions by Christopher Tin (http://christophertin.com/news.html) and Jeffrey Briggs (composer of Civilization II), as well as classical pieces throughout the ages.

Keyboard template: A die-cut keyboard layout for quick reference to keyboard commands during the game.

Tech Tree map: A foldout poster that displays the tech tree for ease of reference. A tech tree is a path you need to take with your scientific research in the game in order to reach certain goals. The path you take helps shape the society you create and help shapes you as a leader. Here's an example: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/techtree/

Spiral bound manual: The 250pp+ manual is upgraded from the standard perfect bound to a spiral bound version, allowing it to sit flat while open.

All this for the low, low price of FREE if you preorder. Microsoft wouldn't know "excellent consumer value" if it kicked them in the nuts and punted their dog off a suspension bridge.

Civilization 4 will use Python and XML for customization. The system is supposed to be extremely flexible and be good for total conversions.
Could make for some neat mods. I'm hoping we'll see some kind of Master of Magic game come out of it.

The goal in Civilization isn't blurry. It's really quite simple. "Rule the world." The only catch is, you have to choose how to do it. Do you want to win militarily, or would you rather win the space race? Do you want to take over opponent's cities, or would you rather win them over with your awe-inspiring culture?

If you're really looking for a "there's one way to win" game in Civilization, go to civfanatics and try the game of the month or try to scenarios available in the game (at least in the Gold Edition) and online.

You can find more information about Civilization IV from http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=108 315/

Incidentally, Civilization IV is going to be moddable with Python

On civ3's easiest difficulty I find myself winning only about 20% of the time. I'm afraid to even try the higher levels.

You need to learn how to play the game, it is very different than Civ 2 and should not be approached the same way. Good pointers here.

As one example, even on the easiest level of CivIII, the computer players somehow, magically, know more about the map and areas they cannot possibly have seen (even by trading maps with each other). Only by clamping down on the computer players' ability to produce units/buildings does it rein in its knowledge. At the higher levels, not only does it know more about the map than a human player ever could, it outproduces you dramatically.

That's entirely the point of the more difficult levels of play in Civ III. The AI is not able to outplay a skilled player, so it is given production and starting unit bonuses to make the more challenging difficulty levels...well...more challenging.

Read more about difficulty levels in Civ III here.

Favoured Flight (Interview) has recently made some really good LotR scenarios for Civ2.

Despite the release of the craptastic Civ3, the Civ2 scenario-making community is still going strong. Spanish Civ2 Site has an excellent scenario collection; many of the more recent scenario can be found at Civilization Fanatics Centre; myself, I run the Scenario League resource for designers and can be often spotted in the Apolyton Forums.

Just FYI, of course.:)

Infogrames officially announced in a press release on October 30th that the Mac version of Civilization III will be available in March 2002. I saw the news over at Civ Fanatics. Nobody said anything official about a Linux version yet, but forum posts of insiders seem to indicate that they are considering porting it. (Working with Loki?) If someone manages to get it working with Wine, post your experience on /. please!

Civ3 has contoured maps. Elevations and terrain features affect strategies and combat. For example, positioning an artillery unit on top of a mountain will increase its range considerably.