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Civilization III Is Out, And It Rocks
Your cities with the cultural borders now work a lot more like an actual country, and not just a collection of city states. This is nice...I was always less then impressed with having cities and colonies scattered across the globe with no detrimental value. The changes to the Trade system require networks of highways and roads/harbors to cultivate commerce, so it's in your best interestes to keep those things close together...Finally, we're dealing with an entire culture instead of just city-states. And if you're a real monster, you can use the gigantic maps and pull up all 16 civilizations.
Armies can be more decentralized, and wonders of the world are useful, but there are fewer "Killer" wonders that can completely upset the balance of the game. For example, in the previous game, The Sistine Chapel created a cathedral in every city, which made it a prime target for large civilizations...now the advancement simply increases the effects of cathedrals, which forces each city to get off it's butt and develop it's own resources.
Espionage and Trade have been abstracted. Trade and Commerce are now dependant on roads and resources and money comes from trading with other civilizations. And no more of that horribly unrealistic plan of sending the spy in to destroy city walls before the invasion. (I mean, come on...destroy city walls?)
My favorite new aspect is the cultural assimilation of other cities. For example, if you have a strong cultural identity (basically, borders) - and you are close to cities that don't...they may rebel and join your side...much in the way that several cities/territories that once belonged to Mexico joined up with the U.S.
I haven't finished a game yet...I made the mistake of getting my spies busted one too many times...First one country declared war on me...then I attacked and a second one with a Mutual Aggression Pact came at me. Then a couple of them started trade embargos against me, then a couple of turns later the other two guys around me declared war, just like Russia and Germany did with Poland. I got beat up pretty bad and chalked it up to a learning experience...
I have a couple of minor issues....most of the menus are relocated and are kinda hard to find. And I never liked those advisors in the first couple of games..and now they're intergrated...but overall, it's been a long time since I've been pleased with a game like this...This is the game you feel like telling the /. community is worth buying a copy of Win98 for.
...Is when the Macintosh version comes out.
Nothing in this world is worth going back to Windows 98 for...
Who did what now?
Joystick101 also has a nice review which gives a good summary of the changes (couldn't verify yet, though).
will it run under WINE...that's what I want to know
5pm -> 3am = 10 hours, not 8
;-)
Someone needs to brush up on their base 12 arithmetic
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred last month, and now we're involved in a WAR and you people have the gall to be discussing Civilization III???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!
The bodies of the thousands of innocent civilians who died (and will die) in these unprecedented events could give a good god damn about Civilization III, your childish Lego models, your nerf toy guns and whining about the lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D fixation, the latest Cowboy Bebop rerun, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life" (here's a hint: watching Cowboy Bebop in your jammies and eating a bowl of Shreddies is *not* "getting on with your life"). The souls of the victims are watching in horror as you people squander your finite, precious time on this earth playing video games!
You people disgust me!
What are the system requirements? CPU? Mem? OS?
The ellipsis suggest it could praps have originally been "I went to bed at 3am 8 hours later than i usually would, yikes"
Just a thought ;)
--
Its friday, leave me alone.
I had spent the last two weeks broke and playing the old Civ II just for entertainment,
Really, just for entertainment?
Um... why else would you play a game? You a game developer doing research?
A friend of mine got civilization 3, and he has been bragging about it for days. He says the game is the best Civ game to date.
I wonder if Loki will do a port, and how long it will take to get one out if they do. This would be very cool if the did.
Also, it should be interesting to see how the new game may affect the goals of the freeciv developers (a very cool games).
I've played Civ3 a couple nights now since I got my copy. I knew going in that it was 'evolutionary not revolutionary', and that's definitely true.
But (and this is NOT a flame, just honest criticism), it's not even all that evolutionary. Most of the "new" features as compared to Civ2 were in SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) -- the borders, most of the enhanced dipolomacy options, and so on.
The AI -- I'm sorry, but if this is supposed to be new and improved, I'm not seeing it. Enemy empires will send forces willy-nilly into my borders (and I'm talking 10 or a dozen at a time). If I demand that they leave, they declare war. If I send so much as a _single_ unit into THEIR borders for a SINGLE turn, they immediately demand that I withdraw or they declare war. This kind of behavior is just too unrealistic, IMHO.
So, all an all, I'm not very impressed. It IS a much needed update to the series, but it feels a lot more like a status-quo release riding on Sid's reputation for sales, than an honest attempt to make a solid follow-on to this legendary game title. I'm much more interested in Master of Orion 3 (www.moo3.com), which while still a few months away, is daring to be Revolutionary in a time of Evolutionary games.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
I haven't played either one so can someone give me a quick run-down on the differences and is it really worth installing windows 98 or just compiling FreeCIV ?
Oh the excitement!
Is it just me or is Civ3 incredibly difficult? I play Civ2 on King level usually (second-most difficult) and I lost last night in Cheiftan mode in Civ3 (the easiest). Has anyone else noticed this?
Nosce te Ipsum
I heard that there will be a LINUX version of this game coming out soon from RMSCo. It will be known as Communistization III. I will wait for that one.
Does anyone know if it is available in the UK yet. I assume it'll work under Win2k, so there is still no reason to go back to win98.
I was quite disappointed to see that they've left the Celts, my usual choice of civ, out of the game this time. Any idea how they decide on what civs to include/leave out?
I don't own a computer which meets the game's minimum requirements.
I didn't have time for video games before I found a girlfriend.
It's single player, so there's no way I can make this a social expereince somehow.
So why, why, why am I so tempted to scurry out and buy this game after work?
Not a revolutionary change, but definitely a big evolutionary change.
I'm always a little confused when people use this analogy. Revolutions are abrupt and bloody and may kill lots of individuals... but evolution make entire species extinct.
Once WINE is good enough for me to run all my Windows programs, It will be awesome using LINUX. Also, they should get rid of X11 and replace it with something like Windows. Then LINUX would rule.
I played the original Civilization (was that almost ten years ago?) and found out that the first thing to do was to sell the palace to gain some capital for some more important things. If you did this during your first round, it was hilariously easy to beat the computer players. I hope they don't have this particular feature still in place.
-- Imperial units must die --
It is very exciting to see to see a new version of this classic. I have to respect said creator (Sid the Man) for doing other things like Alpha Centauri and Gettysburg (awesome game).
What is intriguing is that they did not throw a few short movies and 3D graphics on top of this venerable turn-based classic and call it a new game. Some of the dynamics mentioned by the author make this sound like an awesome game.
So it sounds like the time for a new poll. I have a Win ME partition that I kept on my Dell 4100 just for playing games because VMware would not let me install Red Alert II from CD (the error is unimportant here but it related directly to the use of a virtual machine).
Anyway, the poll is how many people still have Windows machines for playing games? How many still have Winblows partitions for playing games?
How many people live comfortable running their games on VMware, Wine etc..?
ACK
I picked this one up on wednesday, and sprung for the limited edition...
Its 10 bux more, but comes in a very nice tin box.. It also includes a foldout tech tree, and a making of video cd...
I'm not sure if the making of cd is any good, but the tech tree is nice.. And the box absolutely rules...
My impressions of it so far (after a VERY short play period)..
It feels like old school civ, but much nicer.. Very clean art, smooth animations, decent music.. The interface is updated quite nicely..
The inclusion of culture will take some getting used to, as well as the rest of the changes.. I think the tech tree is smaller than the older ones, or i've become spoiled with the gargantuan tech trees of Alpha Centauri/MOO2..
The only downside i've seen so far is that the mouse scrolling seems very choppy.. it scrolls using tiles, and the tiles are fairly large.. so its sorta chunks around when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen.. (This is on an 800 with 512 megs of ram)..
There are a few known bugs, mostly relating to the game trying to set an incorrect refresh rate in windows xp (Solution is to put xp into 98/me mode)..
Hoepfully this weekend i'll be able to get a better idea of the changes.. But so far it looks great..
I've been addicted to this game since I got my hands on Civ I the first week IT was out. Each version of the game has fleshed out what the others are lacking, and I gotta say: FOR ONCE THE DIPLOMACY ROCKS! Finally, the ability to trade what you want! The AI is much better as well.
:-)
Sid's cleaned up lots of the failings of Civs I & II, and the graphics are pretty, but not obtrusive.
I like the minor wonders (can be built, rebuilt...) and that the I especially like the Culture concept. That major wonders are only destroyed with a city makes sense, and that you can finally liquidate cities without going the "bleed settler" route is a big help.
I'm not particularly happy about losing my Diplomats and Spies as units, but it does make the gameplay different.
The best new improvement? The game is no longer "city oriented" but NATIONALLY oriented, so support for your units comes from the state, not each city. Much better.
BTW- To make your own civilization at startup, choose what "traits" you want (ie: Scientific, Expansionist) and click on the picture for that culture.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
So, my question is, is Civ 3 even all that different from Civ II - CtP, or just an add-on to it?
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
The problem with Civ3 is that all the ideas needed were tried out in Alpha Centauri. So if you like Alpha Centauri, you'll love Civ3 because human history is way more interesting than fantasy future techs. The blue/green Earth is also easier on the eye than the gloomy reds and blacks of Alpha Centauri. Overall, my feeling is that this is a superb game built using the experiences of previous games and that you only take from your own enjoyment if you start fussing about this tech was dome here before or that diplomacy was done that way before. Just play enjoy and try to remember to sleep.
1000s Warcraft Gold while you sleep
The one thing I didn't like about Alpha Centauri was how quickly everyone went though tech advances. It was a waste of time to implement anything but defensive units and a few fast striking combat units.
Is Civ 3 like this?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Dude. Smoke a cigarette. Do some push-ups. Get a new tattoo. It'll be OK.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Combine this with the strong story element of games like Ultima and the strategy/rpg of Command and Conquer, and we would have a winner.
imagine your sim goes to the airport to fly a plane, and you are instantly put into a flight simulation which is completely accurate. We haven't even scratched the surface of computer based entertainment!
Funny, I had the impression that the large piece of the former Mexican territory was either stolen or forcefully acquired from Mexico 150 years ago or something.
Great. I'm planning to buy this. My "one game per year". But I think maybe I'll wait till the premium price copies have been snapped up by the insanely eager. ;-)
It'll be cheaper in six months, folks!
(hmmm... and I wonder how long before FreeCiv catches up?)
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
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!
Civilization:Call to Power is not the same as Civilization. It came from a different development team.
Civ III owes more to Alpha Centauri than it does to Civ:CTP.
...if you stay up till 3am playing that game work will be hell tommorrow!
:)
I agree, this is a great update! Not without it's flaws but very good! I never played SM:AC, so there is much more new content for me then there is for folks who did!
Corruption is a HUGE issue now. Two things affect the amount of corruption. Distance from Capital and your number of cities. Even with the "enlightened" governments of Republic or Democracy, corruption can really sap the production of your outlying colonies.
I also like the special units that each race gets, let me tell you...don't [] with the Aztecs. Those Jaguar Warriors (2/1/2 I think) are nasty! They actually retreat from battle if they are losing making them a PITA to kill.
The new "mini-wonders" are pretty nice. For example you can build "Battlefield Medicine" if you have 5 hospitals. This allows your troops to heal while in enemy territory.
I like the idea of strategice resources as well! They don't show up on the map until you have researched the technology. You can't build units without it either! For example, Musketmen require saltpeter. You must also connect your cities to these resources via roads. If a city can't get to the resource via a road, it can build units that require that resource! VERY cool! Nothing like starting a war to take your neighbors only source of saltpeter!
call to power sucks, activision got pissed off when sid meyer wouldnt make another civilization game and so they decided to make thier own, the first call to power sucked, i have yet to play the second one
Avault's review gave it 4 stars. I hold their opinions higher than most, so this game is worth atleast a look.
e =civ3
Avault's Review
For those who are link wary:
http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?gam
-- Dan
I just wish they would have released more tech branches and more wonders. I've only started playing the game, but it looks like every single tech advance in the first "age/era" was also in civ3! And why'd they take the movies out? I built a wonder and only got a crappy picture of it for my efforts. You would think such an accomplishment would at least be worth one of the neat FMVs they had in the old civ. The culture aspect is a neat change of pace, and I like the idea of nationally supported units, but I must say I was slightly disappointed in how much similar it still is to civ2 overall. I was hoping for loads of new wonders and technologies like Call to Power added.
Magius_ARThere are several features of the new Civ that remind me of the original:
- Units to create tile improvements instead of the Public Works used in Civ II
- Full City screens detailing everything in one place
- Similar unit movement as in the first game (ie no linking units together into one force)
- No Zoom on the isometric view like the second had
- Critical message fly by like in the first rather than accumulate in a message queue like in the second
It seems to me that Sid discarded much of what was put into the second. Too bad, I liked a lot of those changes. That being said it's a very beautiful game.
IMHO, as per
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
Let me chime in with my love of this game also.
I'm thrilled that someone has finally made a sequel to a game that has the right balance of the old and the new.
I've played too many sequels where I can't even tell it's the same kind of game. And I've played too many where I think I'm still playing the original and I wonder why I paid for it again.
Civ3 has a good balance. I've not come across a change yet that I don't think improves the game. I admit it's still early, and I've only played at the easier levels so far to give myself a chance to adjust.
I think that overall this is a wonderful example of developing a game to make it better and not to just use the name to sell games (Civilization: Call to Power) or to rebrand the original in a new box.
This is the game you feel like telling the /.
community is worth buying a copy of Win98 for.
Yep. Kinda the same way I "bought" my copy of Win2K. ;-)
My favorite new aspect is the cultural assimilation of other cities. For example, if you have a strong cultural identity (basically, borders)
Borders, Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC - presumably there are a number of options that help impose your cultural identity.
For those that don't know, Alpha Centauri (and it's add-on pack) were ported to Linux by Loki and released earlier this year:
http://www.lokigames.com/products/smac/
:wq
The inclusion of culture will take some getting used to, as well as the rest of the changes.
I personally love the culture aspect so far. What a rush it was the first time a city asked to join up with me because they were so impressed by my culture. (This was on the easiest level, I'm still in my "learning mode" right now.)
I'm looking forward to woking my way up to the higher levels.
I have played a couple of games of CivIII now, although not to completetion, and I have to say that I'm not very impressed with the depth of the game as compared to CTP. Call To Power had so much more, it really felt like an extension to the Civ games, a real enhancement. Nice graphics, cool movies, deep tech tree, all the things a top notch release should have. So far CivIII feels like it's a five year old release. Cute graphics, but Age of Empires would give it a run for it's money.
The game engine however does seem quite improved, and having played all the previous Civ releases, Sid is right (surprise surprise). Old tactics just don't work. In both games I've got my butt kicked, or just barely survived. I'm learning that this is a much more realistic engine with regard to expansion and improvement. Expand too fast, and you spread your resources too thin.
I'm dissapointed that there is not more in this game, and that the improvements were mostly just improvements over an older game. However, having played a few days now, I'm beginning to feel the urge to come back that this game is generating. Although at first highly sceptical, I am now being won over by the subtleties of the new system.
M
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
Does anyone know if the Civ3 AI cheats at higher levels? In Civ2 I seem to remember the manual telling you how the other civs cheated at the higher levels. (Needed fewer shields to produce things, less science needed for new advances, etc.)
I'm not done with the manual yet, but the section on the play levels doesn't mention anything about it this time.
Has anyone heard if it just has a better AI this time at higher levels, or if it still cheats? If it does still cheat, I'm disapointed they weren't up front about it again.
My sim could go to school in the mornings and spend 7 hours (of wall-clock time) in a classroom simulation which is completely accurate, then he could come home and watch Cowboy Bebop reruns until the next day.
That is SO COOL!
n/t
Linux User #296508 Get Counted!
bet it doesn't happen on linux.
Please tell me! It's a perfectly valid question! I want to know too! I'm not going to install windows just to play this game.. ;-p
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I just wanted to say that it's very playable on my G4 DP533 running the VirtualPC 4.0.6 TestDrive for MacOS X. I run it with 128M dedicated to WinXP (faster than Win98 -- probably because no 16 bit tricks needed).
It's faster than my roommates PII-400 overall, but when the map refocuses -- his box beats me for redraw. The intro movie is a little jumpy too for me.
See the obligitary screenshot here, and if your bored, you might catch me playing it on my Desktop Cam
CTP2 also sucked.
Infogrames test department should be ashamed (or more probably the product manager).
This game crashes, locks-up and fails to display on far too regular a basis.
The portions of the game I have been able to play have been great (once I got over units moving onto the defeated opponents square). I just wish it was more stable (or would even run on some of my machines). Having to save out every other turn, just in case, is hugely irritating.
I tried the game on machines running NT, 98 and 95, with Radeon, GF2, GFIII, Matrox Millenium, ATI Rage and Voodoo 3 cards. The game screws up on every one of them. (Oh, and with a variety of sound blaster cards and drivers and a couple of Philips cards).
It is also full of memory leaks (watch the swap file behaviour).
I could have waited an additional month for these bugs to be fixed. I really, really hope a decent patch comes out soon.
Of course, test probably listed all these bugs and management decided to release anyway. If you are going to have a test department you should actually listen to them!
StrutterX
...and it didn't work that well with latest WineX release. I failed with the installation, but I'm VERY positive that it'll be able to run once that issue is resolved since it appears to be using OpenGL.
The game looks REALLY great anyway, still faithful to the old concept but with clean beautiful graphics!
Ciryon
I was have expecting to see all you other /.ers have the same problems I did with this game. I purchased it on Wednesday, got it installed Wednesday night, then all the problems began.
I installed DirectX 8.0a as instructed to my WinME machine (Celeron @ 450 MHz, 256 MB RAM), but I can't get the thing to get past the Firaxis logo on the startup screen without crashing with the sound turned on. Disable the sound and eveything's fine... EXCEPT THERE'S NO SOUND...
Don't think I have some ancient sound card, either. This is an ISA Sound Blaster AWE 64. There's got to be a few of these things around... Anybody else have it working on an ISA sound card? Sound works fine in all `dxdiag` tests. I even turned down or off the hardware accelleration stuff to no avail.
I tried running it on my brother's computer, and the sound actually worked... until about 1050, when it crashes with an illegal operation in sound.dll or something like that. This is quite possibly expected, given it was the cheapest no-name PCI sound card he could find. He's got a Celeron with about the same speed, but less RAM.
WTF?!? First of all, it's not working properly with very mainstream components. It's slow as hell. It's incredibly frustrating to spend $50 on a game that won't even run sound properly on mainstream hardware. (GeForce 2 MX video, btw.)
So is no one else having problems?
First there was Civ and unto the world was brought great happiness for the tech-savvy masses who found it except when they were fired from their job, their wife left them without them even realizing, and his feet started sprouting moss.
Time passed and the tech-savvy masses found a new wife, a new job, and cleaned their feet of all foliage.
Alas, it was not to be, for out came Civ2 and true enlightenment was brought forth to the world. Unfortunately, this resulted in the second wife leaving, the boss leaving a message on the machine indicating your jobless status, and the moss came back for all those tech-savvy folks.
Many years passed and though the masses found yet another wife, yet another job, and cleaned their feet for what they hoped was the last time, many bad things also happened. First Activision got up in arms and forced Microprose to allow them to create their own bastardized form, Civ2-Call To Power. Microprose then went bye-bye and up to the big software company heaven in the sky. The great ones (Sid and Brian) then struck out on their own, without rights to lengthen the TRUE Civ legacy. They did colonize other worlds in Alpha Centauri but it just wasn't the same to many.
Fortunately, the sun broke through and shined on the tech-savvy masses and Sid has brought a new Civ, true to the legacy...
In all honesty, just divorce your wife now, call your boss and tell him you aren't coming into work for a few months, and get some Tinactin for your feet.
Nosce te Ipsum
>5pm -> 3am = 10 hours, not 8
Actually, you're both right. Civ3 is so cool it morphs the space-time continuum.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Somebody oughta start a petition to get Civ3 ported to Linux to show them how much people want it. This must be the game Linux people want the most...
I got the game the other day as well, and after spending many hours playing, I can say that this is EXACTLY like the other Civ games, only a bit more complex... Here's why it's still the same (for me at least)
1)It sucks away hours upon hours of my time that I need to spend studying
2)In the end, it still soundly beats me to a pulp.
I wish there were more configuration options when starting a game, like setting default tech level... Dunno about anyone else, but I find it very hard to get up to the modern tech age.
Still a great game tho...
-Z
I can't even get civ3 to work! It tries to force my monitor to 120hz at 1024x768 which is absurd. The solution to this problem is: get drivers for your monitor. Sucks if you use an old monitor, and use windowsxp (shh, no flames, just testing it out, and got stuck in it because i have school-related material on here). Yea, if you don't have 2k drivers for your monitor, and have this bug with Civ, you can't play it! Why would a game try to force such a high refresh rate in the first place? Most game's i see force to 60hz on startup :/
They changed little bits here and there, but overall it's the same as civ2... Which was the same as civ1...
i would suggest gettting the empire earth beta if you'd like to try something different. i played it a few days ago and it is quite amazing.. go get the beta
What's the average game time for different sized games?
You could always count on finishing a Civ2 game in anywhere from 2 - 8 hours.
Rubbish. I've ordered it off Amazon a couple of weeks ago for delivery to the UK.
Call to Power and Call to Power II had nothing to do with the Civilization line other than the manufacturing company owned the Civilization trademark at the time. Sid Meier had already left and taken his name and ideas to Firaxis. CTP was just the companies attempt to mine cash from a cow they already owned. They did do a nice job, but CTP was not CIV...definitely different feel.
I picked up Civ III on Tuesday night, and I've been playing my first game (Chieftain level, Americans, random map with two other civs) ever since.
Resource development is crucial, and it adds a touch of historic realism to Civ that wasn't there before. The luxury resources (silks, incense, etc.) make happy citizens, and if you can corner the market on, say, incense, you can trade those resources for other things you need.
But the strategic resources (iron, coal, saltpeter, etc.) are the most important. When I finally discovered gunpowder, I couldn't find any saltpeter for about 10 turns. But then, I spotted it, hidden in the desert in the no-man's land between the three civs. I quickly built a bunch of workers, and sort of force-built a road about 30 squares from any of my cities so I could plant a colony (and a fortress) on top of the saltpeter. It's the only source on the continent, and that means I'm the only civ who gets cannon (the Aztecs and the Iroquis are still building catapults). I had to do the same thing a century later in order to get a source of rubber (the only other source was right next to an Aztec city, and the Aztecs hadn't developed the tech necessary to see it yet.
The point of all this is that Civ III's emphasis on strategic resources needed to build certain units creates a stimulus to expansion and building colonial empires, mirroring what Western Civilization did to the rest of the world because we needed resources. Remember the story on African Tantalum mines months back? Civ III models this sort of thing in a way never seen before.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
I really enjoy playing civilization, however, when I played call to power I was a little disappointed. It seems like the almost made it too complicated for it to be fun. By this I mean that there is way too many small things to keep up with when the game got large. If you have only a handful of cities it wasn't bad but if really grew your empire it got to be a drag.
Is there anybody out there that feels the way that I do that has played civ iii? I am really interested in a review by a person like that.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Too bad there isn't a (-1, Idiot) moderation...
You're not a *real* Civ fan! ;)
Hell, back in the day, I had Civ in my autoexec so I could crawl out of bed and boot into the game while I wolfed a bowl of cereal!
(No, that's not an exaggeration... *shudder)
The review on Adrenaline Vault indicates that there is no multiplayer option. If this is true I won't be buying the game. These days multiplayer play is an absolute necessity.
So, uh... anyone living in the UK is a member of a different race from those in the US?
My favorite new aspect is the cultural assimilation of other cities. For example, if you have a strong cultural identity (basically, borders) - and you are close to cities that don't...they may rebel and join your side...much in the way that several cities/territories that once belonged to Mexico joined up with the U.S.
Bad eample. That was the Mexican American War, where the U.S. pretty much were total bastards and liars and went in and took the territory they wanted. (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, southern parts of Utah and Colorado). Nothing voluntary at all about that. GO read some history...
-- John
What the heck? Modded down as flamebait? I thought it'd be interesting to other MacOS X folks that Civ3 ran for them.. hell, I bought VirtualPC just for playing Civ3!
Ugh.. I too have been a victim of moderation.
First there was Civ and unto the world was brought great happiness for the tech-savvy masses who found it except when they were fired from their job, their wife left them without them even realizing, and his feet started sprouting moss.
The first Civilization came out just before my freshman year of university. I still remember the die-hard Civ fans in the computer lab, spending hours and hours mesmerized by this game. I also remember discovering the game, and becoming one of them, discovering Robotics at 3 am and unleashing hell on the Mongols with my new artillery units. I remember the running, clandestine battles we fought with the sysadmins to keep the game installed on their systems (and whenever we lost, the game could be reinstalled from two 3.5 inch floppies). I remember playing into the wee hours of the morning the night before a physics final ... it seems to me that most of us did poorly that year.
Here's to a new generation of freshmen, taking up the latest incarnation of the beautiful game. All you need to remember is: first year doesn't count, "D" means Degree, and everything important you need to learn in University, you can learn from Civilization.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
What can I say, you didn't mention Linux 15 times- obviously not interesting enough on this lame site
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
Not only he says that CTP is better but he's even comparing Civilization and Age of Empires. Only a troll could do that.
Playing on a P3 450Mhz with 512Meg ram I found the scrolling under win2000 unbearingly slow. It does go much faster under winMe, but I hope they will put out a patch which makes the scrolling smoother. Anyone else found the scrolling real slow under win2000?
The quickest way to become an atheist is to study the Bible thoroughly.
since when has macintosh been the platform of choice for graphics designers? last time i checked, all highend 3d animation packages (3dsmax, softimage, lightwave, maya) run either in windowsNT, Irix, or both.
"It looks like you're staving off hordes of barbarians..."
Last post!
So it should work fine in an emulator. :)
From www.civ3.com:
The minimum system requirements are as follows:
Windows® 95/98/Me/2000/XP
Mac version coming soon.
Pentium II, 300Mhz
32 MB RAM
400 MB free HD space (this may fluctuate)
4X CD-ROM
DirectX 8.0a or better
Video card: capable of 1024 x 768 x 16-bit color
Sound card: DirectX 8.0a compatible
Don't answer me. Moderate. Slashdot is about moderation, not discussion.
"And no more of that horribly unrealistic plan of sending the spy in to destroy city walls before the invasion. (I mean, come on... destroy city walls?)"
Why not? It's not like spies need to literally knock the entire city wall down (although they might ruin it with a well-placed bomb). The spy's activities could include (in ancient eras) stealth move like opening a gate, finding out passwords ("Halt! Who goes there?") or bribing/subverting guards. In more modern eras it could be getting the defence's blueprints... all things that render a city's defences weaker. Think like the Trojan horse. A city wall or defence doesn't need to be destroyed to be compromised: one weak spot is enough. Half a city wall ain't half as good, it's next to no good.
I pre-ordered my CivIII from amazon.com to be delivered in Switzerland a few weeks ago and it has shipped today. But it's true that now amazon.com says that this product can be only delivered in the US. I guess they changed their policy but still honoured their previous engagements.
pre-order from us as its not getting released in AUS for at least another month.
PACKAGE PROGRESS Date Time Location Activity Oct 31, 2001 5:23 A.M. ONTARIO EXPORT SORT, CA, US HUB SCAN 2:18 A.M. LOUISVILLE EXPORT, KY, US HUB SCAN 1:43 A.M. GRADE LANE HUB, KY, US UNLOAD SCAN 12:57 A.M. LOUISVILLE INTL, KY, US ARRIVAL SCAN Oct 30, 2001 10:09 P.M. DALLAS-FT WORTH, TX, US DEPARTURE SCAN 9:20 P.M. DALLAS-FT WORTH, TX, US ORIGIN SCAN 8:05 P.M. US BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
bloody been sorting it for 2 days, cmon people sort faster !
If i have to install windows jsut to play civ3 i will, but has anyone tried getting this working under WINE ?
As far as the Civ II/Civ III differences, yes, there are a LOT.
- AI is much improved. AI empires can spread and develop very fast, especially at the beginning of the game, and if you're located near them, they'll try and pin you in fast. The AI also is much better with the military. No longer does it send in a few random units, but large groups of stronger ones, using the terrain to it's advantage, and picking where it attacks more carefully.
- World sizes can vary by a lot. The smallest world is, I believe, 80x80. The largest that comes in the standard setup is 180x180 - and you can use the included editor to change that up to 255x255. And the amount of tech development varies based on the world size - the larger the world, the more science is needed for the same advances, to keep people from going through advances too quickly.
- And in that vein, advances seem to come more slowly. You can actually field armies of swordsmen, of horsemen and catapults, of knights, before they're all obsolete. In every Civ II game I played, a lot of those units were almost obsolete before I could build the first one.
- Trade is important now. Caravans were removed, fortunately, as they were obnoxious. But because resources are required for certain units, you'll need to either find, or trade for them.
- They've actually removed quite a bit. You no longer replace settlers (now workers) with engineers later on that can radically alter the terrain. Also, no supermarkets to create incredibly huge cities. A number of other advances and units are gone, and I believe the total number of wonders has shrunk.
- 16 civs can play on the world, at least on the largest maps.
- The other civs now no longer gang up on you - they'll ally with you against other civs, and such. It's no longer them vs. you.
All in all, it's definately a different game. As far as playing strategy goes, there's a bigger difference between Civ 2/Civ 3 then there was between Civ/Civ 2.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I'll add to the chorus and tell you that Call to Power has nothing to do with Civ, Civ II, or Civ III.
I know people want clean AI, so you could feel safe, that "they know what I know". This all relates to the intellectual fight a player wants, especially in strategy games.
:). But when looking from the developer side, it takes -a lot- of challenge to create a compelling AI.
But the fact is, that the AI field in gaming has not advanced that far. It is still hard to make anticipating AI opponents, which try to outsmart you, fool you and trickle with diplomacy and back-stabbing.
Of course it is easy as a gamer to demand challenge. It after all our right, and I have been seeing games going for this all the time (with this new processing power AMD and intel has been supplying us
More yet, the purpose of AI is to provide fun game play. If the game play is too hard (ie. too hard AI, attacks you all the time with unhuman observing power), the game is not fun. The bottom line in producing most games is that they provide the player with entertainment. Cheating AI, while cheap a trick, is still viable, because it offers harder game play for those who find it fun, while offering fun game play for those of us who can't run governments in our heads.
I think this was probably a good solution all in all from Civ 3, and I will be expecting more in the future.
Will Loki be doing a port of this to linux? I was really looking forward to this game...
Any terrorist activities in this game? Perhaps a Ben Laden look-alike That we can wage war against?
Your info is wrong.
It's being released on the HURD initially, however since it's written in cross-platform byte-compiled Lisp, it will soon run on any box with a Lisp VM installed.
* We're sorry. This item cannot be shipped to your selected destination. You may change the shipping address above to an eligible address. Or you may delete the item from your order--just change the quantity to 0 and click the Update button below. *
That happens with a country of "England", "Great Britain" and "United Kingdom"
Software
If a software title can be shipped internationally, this will be noted on the item's detail page. Software titles can be shipped to the following countries:
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
China
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Great Britain
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
International Shipping Restrictions
Due to warranty issues and manufacturer restrictions, we are not able to ship all products to all geographical locations.
Toys, Games, and Video Games
Something tells me "Manufacterer restrictions" are in play, namely they'll sell it in the UK for twice the price, a month after the US
That's too bad... I have always felt that the AI was the weak point of all Civ-like games. If only the AI was better I would be satisfied with the features and graphics of the original game.
The next morning I wandered over to my friend's room -- no response to a knock on the door. I walked in and found him asleep, slumped over his keyboard, Civ running on his screen. Ha!
Helevius
True, but in Civ II the walls had to be rebuilt after sabotage implying they were destroyed outright.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
isn't civ so much better with a blue neon light case?
Yes, the US were bastards...as opposed to Mexico, which was led by the saintly Santa Ana.
I suggest people read up on the era from primary sources. Our actions weren't kindly, but those of Mexico weren't exactly cheery either.
I mean, come on...destroy city walls?
Well, I don't think the spies are intended to truly tear down the walls brick by brick, but to undermine confidence in the defences or recruit key guards to open gates. Troy fell with her walls up, becuase they were compromised from the inside.
As soon as my roomate gets a hold of this, I won't see him for months.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Racism is just a special case of tribalism: the tribes have different skin colors.
Tribalism is the natural, default, built-in social structure for humans and other pack-hunting omnivores. Think dog pack.
Tribalism is really just the larger-scale application of natural impulses to favor your own family (your shared genes).
It's not that racism = mother's love, but they do share a common evolutionary basis.
I bought the Limted Edition the day it came out and my impressions are mixed at best.
I spent over four hours trying to get the game running on my primary system, which has been able to handle any game I have thrown at it (it's an Athlon 1.3 GHz, GeForce 256, 512 MB of SDRAM). The game locks my system hard within 5 minutes of launch. So far, I have been unable to get any sort of response from Infogrames (the 48 hours they promised on the support web-site appears to be a promise made with fingers crossed) and the verious forums I have read show that I'm not alone.
I have been able to get it running on my laptop (PII/333, 192 MB SDRAM, integrated graphics), albeit a bit slowly. Also, my work system (PIII/866, 512 MB SDRAM, TNT2/64) runs it without complaint. Having run it, I can make a few comments...
1) The graphics are better than previous versions of Civ/SMAC. This is a minor concern for me. SMACs graphics were muddy, but the game was great (I'd rather have the game play well than look beautiful and be totally unplayable).
2) Some of the features I really liked in SMAC (the unit workshop being foremost among them) are not there.
3) No Multiplayer. Hopefully, when they get around to doing this (if they do it) it will be cross-platform (unlike SMAC).
4) The borders (in SMAC, but not as important) and culture aspects are nice and add a lot to the game.
5) The tech-tree is disppointingly small after looking at the trees in SMAC and Call to Power.
6) I may have missed it in the manual (I have not yet had a chance to read it cover to cover - got to play the game 8^)), but some useful information appears to be absent - what triggers the ability to build the various Small Wonders, for example. I'm sure that the in-game help might have this (honestly, I have not yet looked for it), but it would be nice to have it in print somewhere. The poster for Civ II was nicer.
7) The Limited Edition is not really worth the extra money. I bought it because the Tech Tree chart was only mentioned with the LE. For what I got, I could have saved the $10 extra. The tin is nice, though.
8) The differentiation of civilizations (a feature that first appeared in SMAC) is great. The unique units are good as well. I have not played the game enough to see if the countries that get their specialized units early on (Greeks, Romans, Aztecs) have an advantage (or disadvantage, for that matter) compared to those get their specialized units later on (England, America, Germany). I suspect it balances out somewhat except when you start right next to each other (which has happened to me each time so far!)
9) The revisions to trade are a major improvement. The old system never made sense to me and SMACs way of handling was too abstract to be meaningful.
10) Likewise, the resources are a major improvement - it never made sense to me that you could see resources in Civ II long before you would have had a reason to actually even understand what the resource could be used for.
11) The colony feature looks good, but I have not actually seen it work (though I have tried several times). I'm not sure if there is something I'm missing (ie a tech advance needed - the manual doesn't list one) or doing wrong.
All in all, it has promise. I miss some things from SMAC (and will continue to play it - the ability to custom-design units is just too cool and other features keep me tweaking my plans), but some of the new features look interesting enough to keep me playing. I just hope that a patch gets released soon to address the display issues (and that we don't get the finger pointing game that sometimes happens). Right now, Firaxis/Infogrames appears to be pointing at Microsoft (DirectX) and nVidia. nVidia and Microsoft don't appear to have taken notice of the problems.
It sadens me to say it, but I think Civ 3 is a downgrade from Civ2:CTP. In Civ 3 your back to the setter (worker) units that you send everwhere to build roads. Later in the game you have 30 workers sitting around with no work to do waiting for you to get the technology to get an improvement that will justify you waking them up. You could put them on Auto, but the AI for these units sucks. Even when theres lots to do they just move back and forth between 2 squares.
Secondly, when you need to build a lot of a certain unit, say War Elephants, you choose to build them in a city or two, and after one is built in that city, the game AUTOMATICALLY changes your production to something else on you. It does ask you. I just does it. I cant count how many times I've seen a new unit on the board and said "Damn it, I dont need any of those".
The combat system is annoying. They created the concept of bombardment, but it fails way too often to be at all usefull, and war units can much to often loose to an enemy that is weaker. As an example, I created a Frigate (war ship) and sent him to the enemy shores. The enemy sent a Galleon (Transport only) toward my shores. For 3 turns in a row, my ship followed him, bombarding at the end of each turn. Only 1 point of damage was done to the enemy (out of 3). To make matters worse, by bombarding that unit, it got promoted to elite status, increasing his hit points. After being powerless to stop time dropping off his units, I decided to just attack him by moving into the same space as him. Guess what- I lost! By then I had another Frigate in the area who attacked- and LOST! It seems that the best strategy in the game would be to surround your enemies with transports. This is just one example os SOOO many where a weak unit can take out a strong one (like a level 1 warrior killing musketeers in a city behind walls, and thus taking over the city). And, OMHO, the CTP model of joint attacks/defence is much nicer. Having 5 defensive units in a square with a defender should provide SOMEWHAT of a better defense than having just the defender and one cannon.
The last thing I'll grip about is the lack of creation lists. In Call To Power you could create a list of all the things you want to build in a city and in what order and whenever you create/conquer a territory you just specify that list. In Civ3 you end up spending every turn telling a lot of your cities what to build next (and very often you stop caring and put them on Wealth just to not be bothered anymore). Too much micromanagement that does more to annoy than enjoy.
In conclusion, if you haven't tried Call To Power, pick that up instead of Civ3. You'll enjoy it more
my attention span is too ... Wow! That sunset is a beautiful colour! What's for tea? What was I typing this for anyway?
42, thats it. That always answers my questions.
Is it time to go home yet?
check out apolyton.net.
I gotta great idea!!! i'm so fucking smart: CHECK THIS OUT---(HERE IT COMES!!)---> get someone from AMERICA (one of your trusted Cyber-Pals!) to buy the game, and then SEND THEM THE MONEY while they SEND YOU THE GAME. It may take a few extra days, but by golly, it seems like a solution!
Hmmm... or maybe 10 hours later?
Casual Games/Downloads
The hand that holds the iron rules the world.
The strategic battle for control of resources makes civ 3 a very interesting game.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
I'm not certain about the customization on Civ 2/III, but on my freeciv server I setup the bofh nation ruleset.... :)
some of the cities are
AhremAreff (if you don't get it, just say it a couple times)
Port Eighty
SourceForge, etc....
And of course the ruler should be Dave Null
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
Well, California was techincally it's own country before joining the US. So was Texes...
Is the CD required while playing? I'd like to play it on a laptop which doesn't have a built in CD drive. Thanks.
I picked it up a couple hours after EB shelved it. I was very unimpressed... after playing Civ2 for the previous week I almost thought I had accidentially clicked on the "Play Civilization 2" link on my desktop rather than the newly created link for 3. I exchanged the game for Dark Age of Camelot, which I must admit, is much more enjoyable (even if its a completely seperate genre).
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless." - Tao of Programming
Civilization: Call To Power is not an expansion or particularly a variation of Civ II, it's a different game by a different company. Some legal weirdness with Microprose allowed Activision to create a game with the Civilization brand (You'll notice CTP II has dropped the "Civilization" name altogether). Same time as that, Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds (creators of Civ I and II respectively) formed Firaxis and released Alpha Centauri, which most consider the legitimate sequel to Civ II. Civ III is by Firaxis, minus Brian Reynolds, who left Firaxis to form Big Huge Games, which seems solely dedicated to the production of press releases. I would imagine Civ III would include some features from AC, but if Sid is right about Civ II strategies (which worked perfectly in AC) not working in Civ III, it has to be quite a different game.
CTP was roundly excoriated as a buggy, poorly playtested game with sub-literate diplomacy and rock stupid AI (despite its configurability), but it did have a few good points to it, like the Public Works pool for improvements, and a plethora of covert units. It still couldn't make it a good game though.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Evolution is the next step... it takes something from where it is to a higher level.
Revolution is a drastic change... different from everything before it.
So while Civ III has some new features added on, it's nothing completely new and novel.
Inconceivable!
I had an entirely different problem. I picked up the Limited Edition ($59.99 US at CompUSA) yesterday at lunch, and decided to do a quickie install on my laptop (Thinkpad 600X, P3/500, 256 megs of RAM, several gigs free on the drive) to check it out.
No go. Page fault in ~DF394B.TMP, created by the game. Every time.
Ran through the usual suspects that cause game problems (video/sound drivers, free space, other programs running, yadd yadda), and no luck.
As an absolute last resort, I called Infogrames. After spending 10 minutes navigating their infuriating voice menus, I finally got a live entry-level droid on the phone that tried to walk me through the steps listed on their web page (the same web page you have to go to in order to get their phone number in the first place).
I realize it's his job to try to weed out the easy ones from Bubba McGillicutty that just jumps right to the live person, but please accept that some of us have been playing computer games for 20+ years and actually know how to troubleshoot these things...
30 minutes later, he announces that he'll send a message out to his other techs, and call me back with an update.
He hadn't called back by the time I left work, so the game got returned to CompUSA (getting cash back for software at CompUSA *can* be done, it's just not easy).
This morning I had a message on my voicemail that says the game is incompatible with the NeoMagic video chipsets used in many laptops, and he is unaware of plans for a patch to correct the issue.
I might pay $30 (US) for a game I can only play at my desk at home, but I'm not paying $60 for something I can't play while sitting in an airport or laying on the couch.
Sorry, Firaxis/Infogrames/Sid, maybe I'll buy it again in a few months when it's a LOT cheaper, but for now I'll stick with Civ 2 (the original, none of this CTP business).
-l
Something about tanks being defeated by pikemen and cruise missiles being shot out of the sky... by archers.
I'll keep on keeping on with SMAC until they get a patch out to address these blindingly obvious issues.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
At 5pm last night ... 3am 8 hours later...yikes
That is not yikesworthy. What scares me is that playing Civ III apparently takes away the ability to add mod 12. 5 + 8 = 1 (mod 12) but 3 - 5 = 10 (mod 12) Scary.
most seiges in history were won by spies destroying city walls. One example: When Hannibal took Tarentum (in southern Italy) his spied bribed men inside to open the city gates at night. His army then walked right in, through a gap in the city wall -- the front door.
Neat graphics and a good future civilization concept ruined by a bulky interface and poor game progression.
I can't believe I even wasted 30 bucks on it in the discount bin.
I don't agree that human history is way more interesting. I personally usually find it depressing to think about the past. I found that the factions in SMAC provided some interesting thinking about idealogies. I won't bore people to tears in an attempt to describe that to people, it was more of an experience than an overt mental process.
Overall, I play games to explore new ways of thinking or to have new experiences. I don't play them to re-live history. I do have to admit though that games like CivX, if they're historically accurate could be a valuable learning tool for real students of history. I certainly would have found history to be a much more interesting topic with the sorts of presentation that are possible in a simulation like CivX. But that's the crux of it for me: I don't consider realistic games to be games. They're simulations.
Now, I suppose I present an internal conflict here. Since "I play games to explore new ways of thinking or to have new experiences" and since I could not have possibly lived through all historical episodes (even with the possibility of literal re-incarnation), I might have to conceed that playing simulations might lead me to new ways of thinking and new experiences.
In this sort of introspection is why I hardly ever think out loud.
*sigh*
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
You'd better get to the library and re-read part that covers European history in 1938-39.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
UK release date is 16/11, I'm seeing UKP 29.99 for pre-orders, which I think is around 40-45 of that funny colonial money.
Regards,
Tim.
I think there are two types of Civ'ers: those
who played CTP2 and are left wondering, and
those who haven't played CTP2 and think its
great.
I'll admit, the game isn't bad, and the strategic
resource addition is very very sweet, along with
air superiority. But the interface on CTP2 was
far better for managing your cities. And having
to use so many workers again
my public works, honestly =)
Well, I've played the game a bit, and so far find
it only ok. *NOT* worth the ratings it has over
CTP2, though.
Maybe it's time to add some code for Xconq =)
Well, California was techincally it's own country before joining the US. So was Texas...
Texas, as part of Mexico, allowed U.S. settlers into Mexico/Texas on the provision they would abey Mexican law, and try to become citizens. When enough U.S. settlers got there, the revolted against Mexico and declared independance, and THEN the U.S. annexed Texas. Really, totally bad faith on the part of the settlers and U.S. So quit fooling yourself with the "but it was it's own country first" argument, that was solely because of settlers rebeling and kicking out and killing Mexicans.
(BTW, I am not of that ancestry, but I've read a lot about it...)
-- John
The test drive runs HORRIDLY on my g3 500 (it's an expensive laptop i haven't paid off yet, so i'm not getting a new one for a few years), so slow that the AD&D 2nd Edition Character Generator is unusable, while the original runs great under 9.2.1. I'm really bummed to hear that EVERYBODY isn't in the same boat as me.
Nice screenshot...love the Audion skin, i use that one meself.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I don't think Mexico has much of a leg to stand on considering how it was formed. The Pope wasn't really the best person to decide these things. Texas at least had some pretensions to democratic self determination, Utah was never settled permanently by the Spanish or Mexicans, Nevada was *empty*. Arizona was mostly missionary monks and natives, Cali is the only place that was true *fruits of war*, and the US would of out-settled the area if neccessary. The only group that has any basis for complaints are the aboriginal peoples or maybe Utah mormons.
How come there are so many negative USER reviews? I loved Civ, Civ2, CivNET. (Never got in to CTP by Activision).
On Gamespot, the "professionals" gave it a 9.2, but the average user review is like 5.
I originally was going to run out and buy the game this weekend, but I've seen so many negative reviews that I think I'll wait now.
I do have two questions... Can you still cheat like in Civ 2 from the menu bar (add gold, advances, etc)? Have they made it less tedious to manage your civilization as it gets bigger? (I found that once you had 15-20 cities and got into an industrial age, you produce items faster than you can manage them and also have more unrest than you can handle half the time.)
Any ideas/comments on this?
How will this game seem for people who skipped SM:AC and CTP? (I am going straight from Civ2 to Civ 3 when I buy it.)
And you're living in...well, somewhere else. Macs have always been the computer of choice for graphic designers, desktop publishers, musicians, artists, etc. And now movie makers are starting to make the switch. With the exception of the ultra high-end designers that have always used Silicon Graphics machines (and even some of them now...) Macs are the computer of choice.
Now, go ahead and tell how designers all love Windows.
By the way, you don't but a windows box because it is the best for games. You buy a windows box because the monopolists in Redmond have made sure that their platform is the most profitable one, though I must say it is the lowest in quality. I must concede that there are far more games for Windows than MacOS, OSX, or Linux, but quantity does not necessarily lead to quality.
Now, you may proceed to use you vitriolic MSTongue to tear me a new one.
Well, then they should've made masturbation a scientific discovery. Can you imagine the announcement: "After years of intensive research our scientists have finally discovered the wonders of masturbation. Humanity will never be the same again." Masturbation +1 happy citizen in every city while the population growth is halved
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I typically play (and win) CivII on diety level, so I started expeirementing with CivIII on King level (or whatever they call it, about the middle setting). I've been wiped out everytime. Being good at CivII has nothing to do with this new game.
;( You can't attack with catipults as you onece did, they now "Bombard", you press B and a target site appears and squares within range are highlighted. You pick your target and it fires. If any enemy unit attacks the catipult, it is captured!
Some of the more interesting changes are the "non-combat units". Any combat unit can capture these guys and use them (like workers or settlers). Additionally things that I'm used to being combat units are now non-combat units! Like catipults (I haven't survived to later technology yet
I've also noticed that the civilizations seem to be placed much closer together (either that or the maps are just smaller), as I find my self always in early conflicts.
One additional thing (inherited from MOO2 I believe) is that each civilization starts with different attributes. For example the Aztecs start with a Jaguar Warrier which attacks at 1, but moves at 2. When it attacks and starts losing, it will automatically retreat. Different civilizations start with different specialized units.
JimK
As a Texan, I know that some of that is true. However, the Mexican government refused representation of the settlers and consolidated the Mexican state of Texas with Coahuila, refusing them entry into the Coahuila y Texas state government. Taxation without representation... gee, where have we heard that before? Not to mention the imprisionment of Texan leaders for doing nothing more than going to Mexico City to ask for settlement charters. A much overlooked thing is that thousands of Mexicans in Texas also rebelled against the dictator Santa Ana. The Tejanos under Juan Seguin played a vital role in Texan Independence.
I refuse to say that Texans and the American settlers were correct for rebelling, but rebellions have been fought for far less. Santa Ana was a dictator, and threw out the Constitution of 1824 when he came to power, thus ending the rights of all who were Mexican citizens. The original intent of the uprising was to bring back that Constitution and to have an elected government, remaining a state within Mexico, but it was soon seen that couldn't happen. You apparently haven't read near as much as you thought.
Civ2 is(was?) my favorite game ever. I have been playing Civ3 for two nights, and have gotten to the end of the first era 5 times. This thing that I have noticed is that for 4 of the five games I played, I ended up in a position where my starting location put me at a serious disadvantage. I had games of Civ2 where this happened as well, but those were rare and tended to involve small islands. Does anyone else think that the terrain and resource rules add a big, and maybe too big, random element to the game? Or am I just lame?
That's just funny.
... Ye Olde Commando Raids. Fill a couple galleys full of pikemen and longbowmen and drop them behind enermy lines. Destroy all his roads on his iron squares. Watch his front lines crumble. That's so cool.
Open source means never having to say thank you.
Civ games have always had great gameplay, and horrible coding. You know, like getting more than 256(?) military units in Civ 1, getting more than 128 cities in Civ 2, more than 32,000 in gold (Come on, use a real int for once!), the "go-to" getting in an infinite loop, network code not working, and Civ2 always taking 100% CPU while just sitting there blinking an icon.
So.... how did they do on this one? I'll hate it if I have to wait for the first update before I can buy the game.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
They should have borg assimilations!
the weak AI in the Civ series has been its main drawback for me. all of them have this problem.
there is simply no way possible to keep peace with another nation. the game is desinged around world war & thats all it does.
many times ive tried outright carrying a nation just to keep friendly relations. giving them huge amounts of money, all the tech they could ask for, military units, wiping out whole other civilizations just to protect them. & still they will just walk right in & attack me for no reason whatsoever.
its a shame, such a good game ruined by such a small flaw.
Crackheads!!! Its payday!
USE WINEX, if you want this game Subscribe to transgaming and tell them!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Go ahead and further push the Linux user = Communist stereotype.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
No custom civs. I want to create my own, with their own name, but civ3 won't let me
I think i'll go back to civ2
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
This is true. However it doesn't excuse Texas' poor treatment of tejanos in the Republic and later as a state. Culturally, the Southern edge of Texas shares more with Northern Mexico than it does with other parts of the state. An Aztlan republic could claim grievances as severe as those of the early Anglo settlers.
Hahah it would be funny if when you changed your government type to democracy it would automatically implement an "affirmative action" wonder which would case productivity to drop 50%!
What's it got? Buncha programmers sitting in dim rooms tapping away at keyboards while occasionally minching on cold Pizza and Code Red?
:-)
Sign me up!
Stop, pay troll
I always loved the WWII scenario in Civ2, and the Greek one was pretty interesting too. Any good ones in Civ3?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Yeesh...
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
For the most part, Civ III worked beautifully on my desktop. (PII/450, 128 megs RAM, fairly old nVidia card.)
/like/ this. You now deal with Scythians, Huns, etc., etc.
/much/ smarter.
/much/ /much/ better than Civ2's.
;)
The game moves a little slower than is usual for, say, Civ2. Also, the music sometimes skips. These factors are slightly annoying, but not nearly enough to hamper my Civ3 experience in any significant way.
Things that I like about the game:
Strategic resources. (Yes!!)
Barbarians are now actual tribes. I
You can play against up to 16 other civilizations in a single game.
The expansion of borders: Brilliant.
Culture as a significant game factor: Brilliant.
The AI is
The diplomacy is
My usual Civ2 strategy is to expand my enemies to death -- expand at the maximum possible rate your civilization can tolerate. This is harder to do in Civ3, mainly because your rivals all have the same idea! (I've found that choosing an Expansionist civilization will help you get the edge in this area, though.)
Things I'd like to see:
Female rulers. While female rulers were historically uncommon, they were there. (Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, various European queens, the current president of Finland, Indira Gandhi, etc., etc.) I almost always choose to play female rulers in Civ2.
More options for civs. I tended to play Celts, Vikings, Carthagenians (sp), etc.
Multiplayer, but this is a given.
I agree with some of the posters above that Call to Power was horrible. I had originally purchased it, with strategy guide, around the time it came out. Within a week, I had returned both (for a full refund) because the gameplay was so awful.
Alpha Centauri was and is a great game, though.
I give Sid and company a big "Yay!" for CivIII.
That "only Texas can fly the state flag at the same height" thing is an urban legend.
The cake is a pie
I just bought it, and have been playing it about 30 hours in the past 2 days! Addictive! Yummmm.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
Anyways, I'm off to class now, bringing my laptop with me so I can play while my profs drone on about whatever they feel like talking about today.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
By now I'm sure you've all heard that certain resources are needed to build certain units. No big deal right? Well...
:)
My first game, as the Japanese, I've reached the tech level to start needing Iron to build the good units... and there is only one iron resource on the coninent I'm on! The Chinese are rushing their workers towards it, and I'm at peace and don't want to fight them (not without my swordsmen!), so I start a line of workers building a long road through the jungle towards the precious iron... I get there first, build a colony and start pumping out units, when the chinese build a city next to my colony and take all that beautiful iron away from me!
I went to war over _one_ square on the map.
I used horsemen to cut his roads to his capital and other good cities so he couldn't use the iron there (which was so cool, really), rushed my very few swordsmen to the fore and was finally able to take his city next to the iron. Just then I got chivalry, and it's sword swinging Samurai time! The tactical and strategic importance of the map is way beyond anything in civII or SMACX even.
What other games challange you to deal with a single point of failure in your road system?
How is contraception not a wonder of the world? Along with penicillin, it's done more to contribute to the quality of modern life than any other invention. Women's rights, population decline, disease reduction, and reduced child abuse are all direct results of its invention. Maybe the CTP developers are smarter than you are.
Obviously some other people have played SMAC, but it seems like everyone doing reviews has either a) decided SMAC wasn't a sequel game, which, in terms of gameplay, it most certainly was, or b) just never played it.
I played that game to death, and I'm very, VERY curious what the differences and similarities are. Obviously I can infer some of them, but I don't know what I'm missing.
Help!
Moo
Dunno if the limited edition will even be out here. If I want the game right now though, I have no choice but to get a warez copy. Doesnt seem to make sense, but thats big buisness for you.
The above post was modded DOWN at 5PM EST US time.
There doesn't seem to be anything "trollish" about the comment. In fact it's even perfectly "on-topic", since Hemos asserted the American Southwest [voluntarily] "joined" the USA, and the poster merely pointed out the truth. What's wrong with that??
For moderation to work, it has to PUNISH outragously bad moderation. This moderator should be on "probation" or suspended since they can't handle the responsability.
It's not the posters fault that Hemos learned his history from Walt Disney movies (and for that matter, CT learned to spell from badly translated movie subtitles).
If people studied more at school...
Realize that Call to Power (not part of the Civilization series, despite the trademark) was not designed by Sid Meier, so that's why the gameplay was all wrong.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Someone please tell me that Civ III gets beyond the Despotism/Feudalism/Democracy/Communism/etc. categories and colonialist values.
[pink beam of light]
I didnt used to mind ctp, i was pretty good at civ2 so i thought these skills carried over to ctp. Maybe it was just a civ fix though. I remember on the Aployton forums some hardcore civ fans started playing these games, were you try to win the game with only ONE city. You were not allowed to own anymore that one city, if you accidently got a city you had to destroy it. Off course you had to play on the hardest level.
I tried this with CTP, and it only took 2 games to win... disappointing!
The problem I had with Civ2, SMAC, and the other Civ-like games was that the scope of the management decisions you had to make didn't scale with the game size. Towards the end of the game, in order to stay competitive, you had to have zillions of cities, "engineer" units (settlers, terraformers, etc.), and possibly military units (if you wanted to wage war). You had to manage all this stuff yourself, and implementing high-level strategic decisions (i.e. the interesting ones) involved more and more tedious mouse clicks as the game went on. The AI-automated build queues in SMAC helped some, but it made a lot of bad decisions (such as building infrastructure whose maintenance you couldn't pay for, or tons of military units you didn't need), and there was no help at all for performing routine military operations like transporting a bunch of units across an ocean. Can anyone comment on whether Civ3 has made any progress in fixing this problem?
The collective mind of Slashdot has already determined that education -- especially higher education -- is meant to give you the skills to go out and get a job. Any of this meaningless crap about putting the present in the context of the past or scrutinizing received opinions is worthless crap in that it does not contribute to increasing anyone's starting salary or help in defeating the evil forces of those who do not wish to license all of their code under the GPL.
(For context, please see the relatively recent Ask Slashdot story where some punk brazenly asks why his computer science curriculum insists on teaching him how to think at the expense of learning the latest sexy languages and APIs.)
Yes I too once played Civ till 3am and thought that was extreme. Then one fateful day back in April this year I was introduced to Everquest and life has never been the same again. "The first hit is free" my friend said...
Nowadays I see the evil light of dawn break through the curtains before I am forced to retreat to my darkened bedchamber and wait the coming of night to return to Norrath.
If you caired about Linux you would not say these things. Why are you posting here? You should be posting on ILoveMicro$oft.com.
I bet you work for Micro$soft, loser.
...To 1) Buy a winPC, and 2) Buy win98, just to play one game makes me a "Troll" then I say "Troll on!"
Troll...pffft.
Who did what now?
"Yeah, directX sure does suck, doesn't it?"
Actually, yes, it does. And for your next song and dance, can you tell me how long it took MS to get it right? HOW many versions before it was even remotely usable? What was that? I thought so.
Sheesh.
What a lot of politically-correct brain-washed tripe.
More to contribute quality of modern life than ANY OTHER invention?!? How about mass production? How about anesthetics?!? How about electricity? What about simple things like microbiology? Good heavens.
No ma'am, you're not pregnant, but you're going to die because we don't know what causes food poisoning, and we can't build a refrigerator because we don't have electricity.
About half the people trying to edit scenarios are unable to change any rules, and I'm one of them; if I change *ANY* rules, or even if I just uncheck the "use default rules" option, the tech tree is totally destroyed - even though it all seems to be correct, and to have the same values you would expect.
One person reports being able to save a mod as the default ruleset and have it work. !
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
What's Gone
Fundamentalism: Government based on religious fanaticism is no longer an option.
Think that's kinda our governments' policy at this point, too
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
The only reason I use linux is because I support socialism. Apearantly you have NEVER read anything by RMS, you know the guy who wrote the GPL. Some GNU/linux users may be capatialistic pigs but you are being hipocrites by using anything under the gpl.
If you have any extra fonts or software on your system you may not be able to exercise all the diplomatic options.
Can you say "GetFontExtents()"
They couldn't.
The solution? Using "MSCONFIG" to turn off *EVERY* *SINGLE* piece of software loaded when windows starts *MIGHT* let you play. On my computer it doesn't. Go figure.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
anyone having good luck with ATI drivers/products? I personally have occasional problems, but it is really annoying when TV tuning gets so fudged up, along with recording especially... geez ATI, can't you even at least TRY to produce good quality products?
I thought that SURELY they would have a more realistic view of political positioning and corruption than the 'linear distance from the capital increases corruption'. Uhhh, ever hear of Washington D.C.? most corrupt place here, and NOTHING can get done around here. Especially IN the city. Plently of folks (citizens and workers) in the municipal govm't are overruled by the corrupt politicians that just absorb money. Hell, to make it more accurate, they should make corruption higher in larger cities, especially capitals, but also add 'lobbiests' that can actually use this to your advantage. Then you can have the liberal unit that claims to hate corporations, coruption and so forth, but yet uses a larger superset of the same corrupt tactics to get their way. Of course, then like all Socialist governments, your civilization will collapse under its own weight from lack of work, and complete economic collapse.
Actually Civ 3 has four level, you usually don't start with the lowest one. You can have conscript, regular, veteran, and elite.
Why is expressing humor at a funny post offtopic?
Oh well, its like any opinion... take it or leave it. I am always more interested in consistent and rational analysis that tells me what is good or bad. Especially when compared to other games.
Although what is very entertaining is when someone gives a very emotionally neutral view (backed by examples) that is concluded with a final bad rating, then people mod it down and get so angry... that tells me that they are offended that either someone has a different opinion or even more likely, they are suppressing internal strife. (in other words, they feel like a moron and a social butterfly)
dates are good, but the point is that regardless of the fact that pikes (and related weapons) where still used then does not mean that they could and did defeat armored units like tanks. However it is very accurate to say that an attacking army utilizing a mixture of armored units along with ground units could have their ground units crippled by pikemen. Isn't that why you have 'tank' units, and then 'conscriptions' and so forth and then combine them for a tactical advantage? (hopefully, that is :)
don't worry I will only attack the 'evil corrupt corporations' (TM) but ignore the even more present corruption in the short sighted and historically hating view of government helping the situation. Hehehe, what a joke. Here, let me break your legs, then when I hand you some crutches I fully expect gleeful thanks from you for my 'assistance'.
[glasshouse] "Yeah, Linux sure does suck, doesn't it?"
Actually, yes it does. And for your next song and dance, can you tell me how long it took the Linux Community to get it right? HOW many versions before it was even remotely usable? What was that? I thought so.
Sheesh [/glasshouse]