Slashdot Mirror
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.
Joystick101 also has a nice review which gives a good summary of the changes (couldn't verify yet, though).
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.
.: Pentium II 300mhz
.: 32 megs of ram
.: 400 megs hd
.: 4X CD-Rom
.: DirectX 8.0a vid. card
.: 1024x768 Req.
.: Windows
.: Mac coming soon
Will work for bandwidth
I'm just getting started, but Sid mentioned this in an interview. If you try to play Civ 3 using Civ 2 strategies, you will get your butt kicked. Despite the visual similarities, it is a different game. So far, I like it.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
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."
Revolution = Drastic (and usually sudden) change. It doesn't imply better or worse. A revolutionary new fashion design would be for everyone to start wearing aluminum foil helmets. Definately not a forward step in fashion, but revolutionary nonetheless.
Evolution = Slow (but not always needed) change, typically considered to be forward movement, though again that's not necessarily the case. An ape born with out the genetic sequencing necessary to produce arms is a evolution of the ape line, albeit under negative effect.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
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!
...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!
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
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
You refer to Call to Power as Civ II. If I'm not mistaken, they did not put the "Sid" label on CTP.
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
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
I think you're confused with Civilization: Call To Power...
...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
Acctually, they are upfront about it. But i don't remember where they told you. :)
-henrik
A game is worth spending money on if it's fun to play, you neurotic zealot.
According to Westlake Interactive (The porting house of choice for the Mac game world) it has reached first playable status. http://www.westlakeinteractive.com/projectstat.htm l
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
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.
1) no palace = no culture points until you build a temple. Until a city gets 10 culture points, they can only use the 8 squares around them rather than the normal 20.
2) Under a despotic govt, you can't hurry improvements or units with money anymore. So the extra cash doesn't even do you any good!
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?
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
disadvantages of the industrial revolution:
and now tell me that revolutions are still good. (even the French wasn't that good)
-- just a geek - trying to change the world
The problem is the latest nvidia drivers. You need to rollback to an earlier version. I had the same problem and used the rollback feature in XP and now all is well.
This bug with the 21.83 drivers is well documented on the comp.ibm.sys.pc.games.strategic or whatever you call it newsgroup.
Problems with Civ3:
1) No capability to set default "capital" city location. Image playing the world map as America and end up with Washington in central Asia. The map editor is still very beta.
2) No senarios included. I'm guessing it has to do with problem (1).
3) No Multiplayer and AI still has minor quirks. AI does not seems to account for culture, but does seem to cheat, especially in the beginning of the game, even in Price mode.
4) Other Game quirks... You still sometimes get ridiculous outcomes-- pikemen destroying tanks, etc. But it is much better than CivII. I think it probably just a simple bug.
Overall, it feels like a $35 game, and not a $50 game. I think many people are suspicious of firaxis. If they do give an upgrade with the above fixed up, I think it's worth buying now, but otherwise wait for the price to drop to what it's really worth (when compared to other games on the market). The problem is you get a "no comment" reply when you directly ask them that question.
Differences:
:)
Strategic resources. Present in Civ3, absent in SMAC.
Diplomacy. While better in SMAC than in Civ2, I think it may be better in Civ3.
"Barbarian" units. Civ2: Guys who all look alike and appear on the map according to some not-quite-random algorithm. (At high difficulty levels, they have a real knack for finding that one brand-new, as yet undefended city on the frontier.) SMAC: Mind Worms. Civ3: Guys with real historical names (Scythians, Sumerians, Numidians) with their own encampments.
Tech tree. SMAC has a nice, big, happy tech tree. Civ3's is noticeably smaller. (I miss big tech trees...)
Unit customization. A real nifty feature of SMAC, it's not as easy to apply to, say, the Ancient Era as it is to a highly advanced civilization in the far future.
Government/social choices and rivals' attitudes. In SMAC, if you were a happy, peace-loving democracy, the Hive might not be your friend. As far as I know, Civ3 doesn't incorporate this -- though it might be neat to see increased rivalry between Democratic and Communist governments, for example, or Democratic and Despotism.
Elite military units. SMAC had a full five levels of military ability for a given unit. Civ2 only had 2; Civ3 has 3.
Regional cultures: In Civ3, cultures from the same general region of the world (North American cultures, Mediterranean cultures, etc...there are 5 or so) are less likely to give you short shrift in negotiations.
Similarities:
Civilization/faction leaders have real personalities. This was obvious in SMAC. Not so sure yet where Civ3 is concerned, but the manual says so.
There was acrually a terrorist option in the game, but it was removed considering current events.