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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.
Joystick101 also has a nice review which gives a good summary of the changes (couldn't verify yet, though).
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.
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
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.
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
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."
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.
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!
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
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 was actually playing freeciv last night, its pretty good. I haaven't really played much civ II, but it seems pretty true to my sense of how civ should be (i've played more than my fair share of civ I, and alpha centauri).
The UI is pretty decent, although using the mouse to move units by dragging would be a nice feature stolen from AC
Need a Catering Connection
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
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
Acctually, they are upfront about it. But i don't remember where they told you. :)
-henrik
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!
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)
My second game I started near the Zulus, Babylonians, and Aztecs. This time, they all teamed up and declared war on me. I was fighting them off, somewhat, then they razed two of my cities, and I gave up again.
The AI is incredibly efficient at getting their civ built up at the beginning, and they attack in larger groups of stronger units. I was never a big military player in Civ II until the modern age, and that's going to HAVE to change, I can tell.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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...
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?