The game is fun but sloppy.

DonJoel · November 1, 2001, 15:32

The game is fun but it feels a bit sloppy and rushed.

Why?

1.The game constantly lags.

When moving units and open city screns there is a small but annoying lag, and when opening the council screen the game lags for about 3 seconds.
I the reason to this seems to be bad coding since the menues isn´t very graphic intensive

The scroll rate is also annoyingly low.

Its lag that makes you stop playing a game like this,
not minor interface bugs.

This would be understandable if you had a low end computer but a 600 mgz with 128 ram and a 32 meg graphic card maybe isnt the newest stuff around but it should be able to handle a game like civ3, hich has low resolution graphics,without problem.

2. The interface is not bad but it could have been improved.

All the counselors in the same menue is annyoing since it probably whould have been less lag if you loaded them separately. Im not sure on this one though.

Clickfeast. When you get a window in which you have to decide something you both have to first click "yes or no" and then klick "ok". This is annying since a simple thing such as mining a previously irrigated area or wanting to zoom to the city when you have built something takes a lot of extra time,
and you get distracted from the gaming experience.
It would have been easier if you just clicked "yes or no" without the "ok".

3. Few customizable options.

I want to be able to turn of worker animation but still having the combat unit animation (which btw, are very cool). Managing workers is tedious and gets even more tedious because of the unit animation.

I also wanted to play with the civ abilities but not with the civ special unit. You cant, which is anoying since it couldnt have been hard to add that option.

4.Bad balancing among the nations.

1 civ gets to have their special unit forever.

1 civ gets their golden age in the space race, effectively cutting the time to complete the spaceship in half .

In both cases the civ is Amerika.

I think that making America so much better was probably not a mistake as much as a pr decision (since the biggest market is the us) but they shouldnt had overdone it so much.

5. No wonder movies. Wonder movies was always a nice reward when boulding a wonder. I dont buy this "It would detract from the gaming experience" as Firaxis put it since it worked nice in civ2.

Bottom line: The game is still fun and Firaxis should feel proud about the AI. Clearly the best we have seen so far in any civ series game.
But it needs interface changes and some code improvement to reduce lag and it also needs better balancing among nations.

Multiplayer is of course something that is lacking but thats a whole other issue.

drake · November 1, 2001, 15:40

The game lags in sp mode on a decent computer

??

*shudders at the thought of playing civ3 mp on a dialup*

Orlando · November 1, 2001, 16:15

Being the Americans does not necessarily guarantee a late game Golden Age.

Last night I played a game as the Americans where I built the Pyramids and the Colossus. Gives me a Golden Age around 100 AD.

If you're building Wonders, you will probably trigger the Golden Age earlier on than the Modern Age.

Stromprophet · November 1, 2001, 17:15

I need some brief help, or something.

I don't know why, but now Civ III won't open? It was playing fine last night, now it goes to the infogames opening screen and then it freezes, I Crt-alt-del and then my screen is in 640X480 mode after I get out.

??? I have no clue what is going on. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. And is there any help for the adjustments in the readmetext. I'm finding this manual to be very vague and practically of little use.

FexFX · November 1, 2001, 17:28

Okay here are my impressions after 4 hours of play...(I have not had the kind of time I have really wanted yet...)

First let me say I really love this game!

It is definitely a worthy successor to the Civ name, but could have used some beta testing more for tweaking and feedback than for bughunting.

So Far I have encountered no bugs, but there are a few minor annoyances related to the interface which are mostly usability issues.

My biggest gripe is about the Q feature and its difficulty of use.
Holding down the shift key is annoying, but not my real gripe. My real gripe is that there appears to be no way to remove an item from the Q...The only work around has been to Q up something else in that slot..which is not the same as clearing the Q...which I can find no way to do.

The lack of more than 2 levels of zoom while a bit irksome is not a huge deal to me, but I can see where others might be very annoyed.

There Should be a button to take you to the advisors screen on the City screen, because quite often I find myself wanting to go directly from one to the other. There should also be a way to get to the Civlopedia entry for a Q item fromthe city screen which there is not.

I really like the whole national borders concept, but very often they are not visible to me because they are burried inder the miles of jungle that surround my cities...I like the graphics, but they are actually hindering my gameplay with this behavior...There should be a way to turn off terrain details so I can see my borders clearly, or a patch needs fix it so the National Border is drawn on top of EVERYTHING else.

These are really my only gripes so far. I like the concepts of the new interface, and find many of the new ideas to be wonderful (the new city screen is a great idea!), I just feel some of the implementation is a bit sticky and could be improved on.

So, Great game! Needs a bit of work to be perfect tho!

Elucidus · November 1, 2001, 17:42

To remove something from the "Q"(...Queue?), try highlighting it and then hitting delete. Hope this helps.

FexFX · November 1, 2001, 18:20

I was sure that I tried that...tho I may not have...hehehehe...
I hope I just bungled that badly...can someone confirm that this works before I get home from work (another ? Curiosity is killing me!

FexFX · November 1, 2001, 18:21

I was sure that I tried that...tho I may not have...hehehehe...
I hope I just bungled that badly...can someone confirm that this works before I get home from work (another ? Curiosity is killing me! and I have 4 hours left!)

Ralf · November 1, 2001, 18:43

Quote:

Originally posted by DonJoel
The game is fun but it feels a bit sloppy and rushed.

Did you pre-ordered that game from US? When did you get it, and how much did it cost you, with everything added?

Vault Dweller · November 1, 2001, 20:17

Quote:

Originally posted by DonJoel

1.The game constantly lags.

When moving units and open city screns there is a small but annoying lag, and when opening the council screen the game lags for about 3 seconds.
I the reason to this seems to be bad coding since the menues isn´t very graphic intensive

The scroll rate is also annoyingly low.

Its lag that makes you stop playing a game like this,
not minor interface bugs.

This would be understandable if you had a low end computer but a 600 mgz with 128 ram and a 32 meg graphic card maybe isnt the newest stuff around but it should be able to handle a game like civ3, hich has low resolution graphics,without problem.

Lag? What are you talking about? I put the game on my celeron 400 and my PIII 800 and zero lag both times (well the 400 lagged during the cpu turn when I had 16 civs in). I think there is something wrong with your cpu, you should scan, defrag, and clear some HD space.