I think this is the worst civ style game ever.

[tgs81q]

Im really very dissapointed with it. Out of all the civ games(civ, civ2, ctp, ctp2, and alpha centauri) this is one is the worst. Ive been playing it for a week and I wonder why they did some things. First is the lack of a decent earth map. The one included is absolutely terrible. My little brother could draw a better map of the earth. And why in the world did they remove fixed civ starting locations. Or go back to the original civilizations combat system and remove hitpoints and firepower that civ2 introduced. I cant see why they would take steps backward like that. Can anyone honestly say they enjoy playing earth maps so they can be the Romans in mexico or the Americans starting in india. Or have mobs of militia overun armored tanks. How bout battleships beaten by warriors thats always fun. Then there is the culture system which is WAY over done. Capturing cities is pointless. Its much more efficient to raze the damn thing and start over. Because unless your civ is vastly more powerful in culture and military strength there is no way you can hold the cities. They inevitable revert to there original owner faster then I can develop there culture to resist it. No matter how many units i station there. No matter how fast I quell resistors it always happens.

[Altuar]

Originally posted by tgs81q
Im really very dissapointed with it.
...
Then there is the culture system which is WAY over done. Capturing cities is pointless. Its much more efficient to raze the damn thing and start over. Because unless your civ is vastly more powerful in culture and military strength there is no way you can hold the cities. They inevitable revert to there original owner faster then I can develop there culture to resist it. No matter how many units i station there. No matter how fast I quell resistors it always happens.

Exactly how I feel, except for the dissapointment. There IS a great game hidden under the flaws, this is a vast improvement to the actual gameplay - its not just SMAC or Civ II done right, but more.

But, yes. Combat and Culture do have some implementation problems, even though the conception is fine.

Combat: It is much more technically streamlined, and the unit design and technology pacing associated with them is much better BUT the omission of a way to make sure next-age units overcome obsolete defenders is a major problem.

Culture: I felt your exact pain. There is simply NO way to defend against a city you just captured defecting to the other side. It feels like there was no testing done at all. And even having overwhelmingly better culture does not cut it.

[kimmygibler]

I can't believe all the people mad about the earth map. You gotta assume there will be immediate mods/maps/scenarios to deal with this. Firaxis might even do something themselves. Now you'll say "I didn't buy a game so I'd have to download mods! I'm taking it back, It's too different from civ2..." Yeah I guess, but I bet earth map will the first scenario/map that is made.

As far as the combat, how the hell does a warrior beat a battleship? Is this even possible for land units to take on battleships? Well I guess if you're only using a battleship to defend your city, then I'd expect a warrior to take it out. When a ship is in the city, it should be ineffective at defending the city. How is having a boat in the harbor gonna stop people from taking over the city?

As far as a warrior beating a tank, tanks have def 10 (I think). So each round, warrior has 1/11 chance of hitting. (1/11)^3=0.00751 Is this calculation correct? I'm not sure, but according to this the odds are very small. If this happens a lot, that is very lucky. Unless firaxis really uses a secret way to calculate battles that they aren't telling us about...

The culture problem. Hasn't affected my games at all yet since I have had strong culture so far. But if you don't like the effect of culture, tone it down. I'm sure it can be done.

[Altuar]

Originally posted by kimmygibler
The culture problem. Hasn't affected my games at all yet since I have had strong culture so far. But if you don't like the effect of culture, tone it down. I'm sure it can be done.

I dont know about toning down, but as for you not having any problems with culture try capturing a developed enemy city, even one that is right next to your culturally-advanced border and you will see that holding on to that city is impossible - and whats worse, when the city does revert, all your units in that city are GONE.

[Dida]

I have not been effected by cities revolting back to their old civ. But again, I have only been attacking civ close to my own. once I get deep into hostile territory, I'm sure it will happen quite often.

[Altuar]

Originally posted by Dida
I have not been effected by cities revolting back to their old civ. But again, I have only been attacking civ close to my own. once I get deep into hostile territory, I'm sure it will happen quite often.

Intresting - my experience is often otherwise. I'm playing on monarch, and my civ is culturally advanced, yet I still lose cities that I capture. The game should at least suspend checks for cultural revertion for 20 turns or so for newly captured cities. Cultural assimilation is a slow process in history, and while I understand that cities reverting back is an abstraction, it should not get in the way of gameplay.

[Zanteogo]

As for taking a step backwards.. the deplomancy in AC is much better. Only neat thing about CIV3 is the trading.. but even that is way one sided towards the AI.

As for cities reverting.. the thing I don't get is how your units go with the city. These are loyal units of YOUR empire.. they have no loyalty towards the peoples homeland.

My biggest problem of all are the long waiting times between turns on the larger maps. There is no reason why it should take so long on a modern computer.

[player1]

HISTORY NOTE:
In ancient & medivial times cities have been razaed as much (or even more) then captured. Why, just because the same reason as in civ3.
Corruprion, ressistance, cultural domitation. There were many revolts. Didn't there?

So, no more Blizkreig in Ancient are. It is a good thing & it's relistic.

---HINT------HINT------HINT------HINT---
Note to those poor civers: Keep many garrisoned units in conquered cities, at least until your culture goes up & resistence lowers (like in real world), not make those cities almost empty (1 or 2 units).
Remember these cities are OCUPATED, deal with them that way
---HINT------HINT------HINT------HINT---

Still razing cities in Modern era? I little to strange, I think razing should be limited to cities lower than 12 size (or at lest make it slower like 20 to 12, 12 to 6, 6 to 0)

[MarkG]

Originally posted by kimmygibler
Yeah I guess, but I bet earth map will the first scenario/map that is made.

there is already a converted civ2 world map
check the files forum

[Altuar]

Originally posted by player1
HISTORY NOTE:
---HINT------HINT------HINT------HINT---
Note to those poor civers: Keep many garrisoned units in conquered cities, at least until your culture goes up & resistence lowers (like in real world), not make those cities almost empty (1 or 2 units).
Remember these cities are OCUPATED, deal with them that way
---HINT------HINT------HINT------HINT---

Thank your player1. You can go back to Pacman now. Or whatever. Thats a joke on your nick.

Now, please understand that those OCUPATED cities, when they revert back, take your occupation units with them. And it does not matter how many units you have in there. So, deal with this.

[player1]

Just to note:
Reverting of cities DEPENDS of NUMBER of YOUR units in that city.
(of culture, ressistance, etc...)
Just we don't know exact numbers.
We'll just need to test this out or wait some new stratgety guide.

[Altuar]

Ok, I didnt notice you were from Belgrade, so it was not too nice of me to make fun of your spelling.

Anyway, the number if military units do not make a difference when cultural defection is checked. At least according to my experience, manual and civopedia. Note that while the last two do not explicitly state so, they do give a list of factors that affect cultural defection and no. of military units are not mentioned.

[yin26]

Soren also told us that the relative distances between your two capitals plays an important part above and beyond differences in culture points. Once you understand that part of it, you can appreaciate that it actually makes the game better, IMO.

However, some kind of warning instead of the Instant Unit Death thing would be VERY good. Somebody else suggested that if your units are to die, at the very least, half that city's pop should drop or something of that nature.

[yin26]

The number DOES make a difference. Look at the bottom of the occupied city and you'll see a garrisoned unit icon making a citizen not rebellious.

[TechWins]

My biggest problem of all are the long waiting times between turns on the larger maps. There is no reason why it should take so long on a modern computer.

Have you ever done any programming at all? You would know that the more complex the program is the longer it takes for it to execute it's commands. More commands = more time to execute commands. Since Civ3 is far more complex than Civ2 it takes far more amount of time for it to execute the program. Therefore, if you want to have a more complex (better) game than you will have to have longer waiting periods for the AI to finish it's turn. Although, yes a "modern" computer will speed up the process of a program, but the computer can't do it to a point where the program takes no (very minimal) time at all for the program to execute it's commands.

The only big problem I have with Civ3 now is the lack of infastructure the AI produces. How many 1 pop size cities does the AI really need? A little less expansion and a little more infastructure producing by the AI would be great.

[yin26]

Most of the wait times seem related to having to move units around. And since there are a TON of units in Civ3 during mid to late game ... If there were a way to have 'instant moves' that require less graphics time, we might be moving in the right direction. You can turn off animations, but you still see all the units 'warping' from square to square along a path.

Can't we warp them right to their destination/limit and be done with it?

[Ludwig]

I might be imagining this, but in my games it seems like it does a world of good if you make sure that recently-conquered cities have NO road or rail links to their previous Civ, and good links to your own.

Also, in medium or large conquered cities, immediately build settlers before you build culture improvements. Bring in settlers of your own ethnicity and have them join the city as replacements for the population points bled off in this manner. Move the "Displaced Person" settlers back to your own cities and have them join one of them. This leavening of the population is even more effective than cultural improvements in maintaining the loyalty of new cities. [At least, in my own experience].

[CyberGnu]

How about instead of a city just going over to another civ, some of the population is converted to soldiers (a la the draft)? The solders could fight it out with whatever unit is defending the city, just like a regular fight, except perhaps no defending bonuses.

In my last game I naturally found myself without oil. (while Firaxis statement that there is enough resources for every civ is true, it doesn;t really help when ALL EIGHT oils show up on the same part of the map... In the heartland of my mortal enemy.) Well, I loaded up my 10 infantry and 6 marines, added 10 ironclads and set off halfway across the world to grab me some oil, codenamed Arctic Storm.

Well, my first win went well, I grabbed on of his cities without much trouble. And kept it for a whopping four turns before it went back.

When I took his city my ironclads had reduced it to size 2. When it went back to him I had roughly eight army units stationed in it, plus ten boats and a few artillery.

Quite frankly, how would those measly 100.000 or so people in a size 2 city defeat ten regiments of troops? Especially since I reduced the city from size 13 to 2 prior to invading it! Or am I supposed to believe that my entire army lived in Babylon for eight years and then as a man decided that Babylon is so much better than the place they were born? Disregarding that they came from a place with electricity and plumbing, and defected to a country still in the middle ages...


Naturally not.


I instead reloaded the autosave from five years earlier, razed the city, razed its two neighbours closer to the empire center and finally took one of his fringe cities. I crashbuilt an airpoirt to fly out my oil (don't ask me about that one...), then a library to build up my culture...


If we translate this into Operation Desert Storm, we essentially have Bush t.e. nuking Basra and Baghdad prior to invding Quwait, just so that his american GI's won't be tempted by those devilish harem dancers...

Patch, please?


Oh, and Firaxis... You might want to try betatesting nxt time you release a game... would save us all so much trouble.

[Cougz]

Is there an advantage to taking out an opposing civs Capital? Will this have a big effect on the capture of their other, outlying cities?

I also agree, historically cities have been raised as much as 'captured' during war. Particularly previous to the last 100 years.

[CBH]

Am I the only one that thinks that as soon as he says that civ3 is worse than CTP or *shudder* CTP2 his argument loses all credibility?

[CyberGnu]

Well, a slight exaggeration... Since the only thing worse than CTP must be stabbing yourself repeatedly in the neck with a pencil...

But it is currently not as good as SMAC, and the jury is still out on Civ2, I think.

[n.c.]

Originally posted by kimmygibler
I can't believe all the people mad about the earth map.

And I can't believe that more people aren't furious! Think about the time they must have spent on largely irrelevant graphics, only to ignore this vital feature. Infuriating!

[Blackadar1]

I, for one, always played with random maps. To call this the "worst civ style game ever" is an absurdity, but Civ III is something of a letdown for many of us.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by n.c.
And I can't believe that more people aren't furious! Think about the time they must have spent on largely irrelevant graphics, only to ignore this vital feature. Infuriating!

yeah, SMAC had a lovely earth map

that culture thing is true, the more you station, the easier it is to quell the rebellion. i took beijing, stocked 10 soldiers (it was size 6), starved them one turn, they dropped to 5 and quickly built temple. occupation is the key and you can even quell a capital rebellion.
yin's idea about a warning or the other one (gnus) to fight it out also seems fine.

[Pyrodrew]

When I took his city my ironclads had reduced it to size 2. When it went back to him I had roughly eight army units stationed in it, plus ten boats and a few artillery.
Quite frankly, how would those measly 100.000 or so people in a size 2 city defeat ten regiments of troops?

that culture thing is true, the more you station, the easier it is to quell the rebellion. i took beijing, stocked 10 soldiers (it was size 6), starved them one turn, they dropped to 5 and quickly built temple. occupation is the key and you can even quell a capital rebellion.

CyberGnu had 10 regiments stationed & that failed to quell the CitySize 2 rebellion... yet LaRusso quelled a CitySize5 rebellion with 8 units???

My only guess what caused this difference was distance from capital & time - with enough time in the game the Culture Power must be so great that a size2 can overthrow 10 regiments - which is wrong (no matter how attractive & easy the harem girls are ). But if done early on in the game military can be effective to work. Anything else that would cause the difference between these 2 situations?

Regarding the EarthMaps... rather than spending time on making ANY EarthMaps they should have made a map converter. Then not only would we have better EarthMaps (and all they would have to do would be add resources), but more maps & a usefull tool.

[Qienchi]

Originally posted by CBH
Am I the only one that thinks that as soon as he says that civ3 is worse than CTP or *shudder* CTP2 his argument loses all credibility?

no, you're not the only one ...

what was CTP2 like anyway? compared to CTP1 ?

[CyberGnu]

Pyro, my rebellion was squashed the first turn after invasion. It was only size 4 or so, after all...

What happened to me was cultural assimilation. My entire army decided that going native would be fun because Babylon has so many temple... That you have to live without electricity is apparently not so much an issue.

Hmm, Bush must be worried now... What if Colin Powell realizes that Afganistan has a centuries old culture and decides to go live in the caves over there, taking all the US jets with him?

Quenchi, CTP2 was essentially like CTP1. New bugs, slightly more balanced.. Contained a few bugs that made the game unplayable (in the sense that a car without a steering wheel is undriveable), and Activision dropped the game before fixing them...

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Altuar


I dont know about toning down, but as for you not having any problems with culture try capturing a developed enemy city, even one that is right next to your culturally-advanced border and you will see that holding on to that city is impossible - and whats worse, when the city does revert, all your units in that city are GONE.

Hmm, are you sure you lost the city via culture or the fact that you failed to subvert the foreign national's that now occupy that city?

I'd hazard that you failed to quell the resistors and this is why the city reverted. I have had cities go both ways (joined my culture and the same city later reverted back) and the only city I ever lost was not due to rioters but because I didn't leave enough troops in the city to keep it stable until my natural population was greater than the population of the foreign people.

[Knight]

Originally posted by Cougz
Is there an advantage to taking out an opposing civs Capital? Will this have a big effect on the capture of their other, outlying cities?

I thought that might help too. In my current game, I fought three wars with England. In the second, I decided to stop nitpicking around and shoot straight for London, hopefully keeping the nearby cities from doing a culture flop (Also keep in mind England was "In awe" of my culture). So, I take London, and actually all the rest of the continental English Empire, down to the backwaters. But, there's one city, size 1, Richomond, that's on an island well off the continent. I decide it's too much trouble to take it, so I cut a deal with Elizabeth, getting all her tech and money in return for letting her live. Well, about 25 turns later, as I was trying to build Courthouses to offset the corruption in the former English Empire, the westernmost cities start to revert to England, taken over by the culture of size 2 Richmond, half way in the ocean. They actually snag three cities back before I get ticked and have my third war with England, taking back the reverted cities and finally sending a transport to Richmomd to knock the English out of the game. So, the answer is, taking the Capitol doesn't help. It seems that when you conquer a city, it's inclined to return to its original culture, no matter how pathetic it is in comparison to yours.

[kmj]

Hmm, Bush must be worried now... What if Colin Powell realizes that Afganistan has a centuries old culture and decides to go live in the caves over there, taking all the US jets with him?

No, we don't have to worry about that; the taliban helped us by blowing up those old budha(sp?) statues carved into the mountains...

About waiting while enemies move: someone else mentioned you can hold down shift while they move. Also, go to the preferences and turn off unit animation for other civs; that helps alot.

About saying this is the worst game because of some stupid world map: Bah, you're whining, that's all. It's nice to have a good world map; and someone will (did) already make one you can download. I don't want the fireaxis developers spending their time perfecting a world map. I want them working on real gameplay issues. They did the right thing: they made the game completely flexible; any problems with types of governments, units, etc. go ahead and do it yourself. They even created a nice little editor for you... (now if there are bugs in the editor, that's a different issue entirely). Scenario makers will worry about where people should start, and all that other stuff.