Am I the only one that thinks Civ 3 is better than Civ 2?

[Antonin]

I loved Civ2 but Civ3 is far, far better. Deep, challenging and a refreshing use of my free time.

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Th0mas


...That is true if CIV II was your first civilisation game...

In summary I think the whole Civilisation genre is a fantastic gaming concept, and your introduction to it (CIV I, CIV II, CIV II MPG, CTP, CTP II and SMAC) will frame your perception for all the new iterations. I cetainly believe this has been partially responsible for the level of friction on these forums.

I started with Civ1. A lot of the improvements in civ3 are appreciated, but are nothing compared to 2's upgrade on the original. Civ2 equalled or bettered number 1 in every single aspect, Civ3 has gone backwards in many areas.

[darthx86]

Civ 3 is an advancement over Civ 2 in one major way - Firaxis didn't fall into the trap of more stuff = better.

IMHO, simplifying some aspects of the game (no more Caravans or diplomats, fewer menus and dialog boxes in the way of the game map, slightly fewer techs, etc), and altering some of the major systems (trade, diplomacy, Great/Small Wonders), greatly improve the Civ experience.

The only major quibble I have is with some of the combat and combat units, but hear me out. It has always been the position of MicroProse/Firaxis that Civ x is not a military conquest game; that warfare was included because it was just one more aspect of recreating a civilization throughout history. To this end, I have made adjustments to all the Industrial and Modern Age units to improve their durability when combatting older units (I'm play testing this right now).

And does anyone really miss those Wonder movies? I haven't seen a single one since 1996! If you're confused about the Wonders, just install Che's patch in the files forum - very nice.

[Jurassic Joe]

I'm loving Civ3. I'm having a lot of fun with the resource system and the luxories. The diplomacy is way cool and the combat is better in that I don't just win every battle because I have more up to date weapons. The underdog has a chance and believe me, I'm the underdog a lot lately. I think that the AI is also outstanding. They are very aggressive about expanding and making deals (or just demanding). I have to just say again that this game rocks. I still like Civ2 but I probably won't play it anymore.

[Herder]

I liked the game until the late stages. No, that's a lie. I loved the game until the late stages...I stayed up all night several times to play and play and play. Everything else suffered.

The micro management blues with a crappy interface was just too much. No stacking, no viewing stacks without a click, no sentry mode.

I like the idea of needing to spend a long time on my movement turn but because of the need to strategize, not move stacks of airplanes, unfortify every unit, scroll around the map to remember to unfortify units because an enemy showed up (what sentry mode used to automatically do.)

Another frustrating effect of the crappy interface is the fact that when stuff happens (WLT_D, City Disorder, Enemy activity) is that after moving 500 units, checking each city, scrolling around the map *you forget* to go back to the cities and modify for rebellion or you forget to activate that unit that is fortified.

It isn't because I am stupid, its because I am overwhelmed by the tedium factors.

Finally, the Fighters not scrambling was the final blow. I took the software back and am hanging out here to see what improvements Firaxis is going to make.

If they just whitewash the patch and don't improve some of the glaring errors then I am perma gone from this game.

[Libertarian]

Herder,

I agree completely with your third paragraph, but am mortified by your fourth.

[Allemand]

Herder, good analysis.

Civ3 has some great improvements, but the game management system is a little weaker than Civ2. Weaker map editor, no list showing numbers of units, doesn't show where the pollution is when you use goto on a worker, doesn't stop to tell you a city is revolting, and some others.

I'm not ready to give up on it. Some things will never be fixed, but I'm hoping the patch will address the air superiority flaw and maybe help on some other issues.

[Miznia]

Th0mas said: I Just could never really get the same connection to CIV II, don't get me wrong I really enjoyed playing it..But not like CIV I.

The entire reason Civ2 isn't as cool as Civ1 is because there is no ocean animation.

I haven't played Civ3 yet, but I'm willing to bet the ocean is animated at the coasts.

[bahoo]

I don't think there's any questions as to whether CIV3 is better than CIV2....

People (like myself) are just angry it's horribly bug-ridden, and disappointed that it's not nearly what it could have and should have been.

Although getting rid of the wonder movies....what were they thinking?????

[Jolard]

Abosultely better. Love Civ III, there are a few bugs, but as others have said they are obvious and will be fixed (air defence, sea fortresses etc). Much better than civ2

[darthx86]

Originally posted by Allemand
Herder, good analysis.

Civ3 has some great improvements, but the game management system is a little weaker than Civ2. Weaker map editor, no list showing numbers of units, doesn't show where the pollution is when you use goto on a worker, doesn't stop to tell you a city is revolting, and some others.

I'm not ready to give up on it. Some things will never be fixed, but I'm hoping the patch will address the air superiority flaw and maybe help on some other issues.

Actually, there is a list of units, complete with a map/grid to show you where they are - much better than the "near Rome" status in Civ 2.

And they have mentioned for the patch stopping at the city both when a military unit is processed and Civil Disorder.

[Reverend Bob]

Originally posted by darthx86

Civ 3 is an advancement over Civ 2 in one major way - Firaxis didn't fall into the trap of more stuff = better.

Whilst more stuff doesn't necessarily = better it can allow for greater variety, and this is one area that nags about Civ3. The governmental choices are still surprisingly limited.

This is an oddity as it really shouldn't have been that difficult to implement governmental models such as Fascism out of the box, and the game might also have benefitted from even just slight variants on certain models. Maybe you want a European-style social democracy which delivers great guns in terms of cultural effects but the overheads are nasty, or a UK-style 'Third Way' democracy which leads to ultra-content and pliant citizens but fails to deliver on anything?

Yes, these are easily moddable and its a minor gripe but still.

Also, the lack of decent editing and scripting tools out of the box is criminal. Yes, we largely have iD software to blame for this demand that software developers allow us the humble user the means to totally re-invent their product and even just a few short years ago we would not have expected these toys, however Civ has always been a game that benefits greatly from what the community do with it. And when you consider that the real advance with Civ3 is the frankly impressive AI, access to the developers scripting tools is surely to be expected.

IMHO, simplifying some aspects of the game (no more Caravans or diplomats, fewer menus and dialog boxes in the way of the game map, slightly fewer techs, etc), and altering some of the major systems (trade, diplomacy, Great/Small Wonders), greatly improve the Civ experience.

The massively streamlined interface is nice, as we were fast heading towards a situation where the actual play area occupied only a tiny fraction of the viewable screen. However, some functionality that is critical is to deeply buried which has lead to all sorts of 'How do i do this apparently simple task...' type posts.

However, at times this desire to 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' has gone too far. Things such as the game not remembering your sorting preferences on the advisor screens and the lack of custom sorting is a niggle. Also, it's totally impossible to see at one glance the state of relations with all your fellow civs at once - you can only see how you interact with any eight other civs and can potentially miss an alliance that your enemies have formed as a result. Again, a minor niggle, but i like to be able to see these things...

Also, i get this nagging feeling that the in-game database has been overly simplified - even including the keyboard shortcuts in the Civilopedia (they may be there, but i ain't found 'em) would massively help, and it's bizarre that you can't quickly jump to the Civilopedia during diplomatic negotiations.

The introduction of culture and corruption have greatly altered the nature of the game, and definitely for the better. As has been observed by others, you should only go to war if you desperately need a strategic resource or to gain control of a strategic chokepoint. If you go to war for total domination then you may well end up getting your ass handed to you as cities rebel and your own population grow dissatisfied - much as real life - and the only way you can keep on going is to annihilate your enemies cities which makes you despised by virtually everybody else - again nice and realistic.

The only major quibble I have is with some of the combat and combat units, but hear me out. It has always been the position of MicroProse/Firaxis that Civ x is not a military conquest game; that warfare was included because it was just one more aspect of recreating a civilization throughout history. To this end, I have made adjustments to all the Industrial and Modern Age units to improve their durability when combatting older units (I'm play testing this right now).

And on this one, Sid, Firaxis et al are wrong. I don't expect Civ to become a war game model - it obviously isn't and never should be. That doesn't mean that there aren't aspects to the combat model that need massive improvement and change - CTP had the right idea with allowing grouped units to function as a cohesive whole, and it would make the nature of combat far more rational.

Also some of the bizarrer interactions between units need sorting
out - whilst these can be justified, they require some truly torturous logic to do so.

However, my only truly severe gripe is with the fact that the game still insists on treating your civilisation as if it is a discrete collection of city states a la Hellenic Greece rather that a (semi-)coherent whole. This *does* need fixing.

There are other minor things such as unit stacking where i should be able to move units as a group.

And does anyone really miss those Wonder movies? I haven't seen a single one since 1996! If you're confused about the Wonders, just install Che's patch in the files forum - very nice.

Personally, i'd rather they were there than not although it's not a major complaint, and they'd probably never live up to the sheer wonder of some of SMAC/X Special Project movies - some of which were cool enough to switch to the editor and watch on their own....

[Moraelin]

Why IS everyone comparing it to Civ 2 anyway? The whole point is that there have been a lot of games in the meantime. Even Firaxis had something called "Alpha Centauri". You may have heard of it.

Yes, I could make my own Pacman game and claim that whoppee, it's a huge improvement over the original Pacman. Now I have two maps instead of one, and a whole 16 colours. And I can animate a whole 5 low res ghosts instead of a mere 4. Big deal. So it can beat a game from AGES ago, and which was designed for a whole other generation of computers.

You see, the way things work in this kind of industry, everything evolves pretty fast. It's customary that games at least try to stay up to date, instead of insisting on comparing them to something from ages ago.

E.g., "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" is NOT a small improvement to the old low res "Wolfenstein 3D" that ran on a 286, it's a new game on its own, that everyone will compare to modern games like Quake 3 and Counterstrike. Noone would go "but it's better than the old Wolfenstein!" Question is whether it's better than the whole horde of games that have been available since then, not whether it's better than an old game.

Just one out of the many examples.

Is Civ 3 better than Civ 2? Well, yes, but not by all that much. Big deal. So it took, what, several years and at least an order of magnitude faster computer to get... what? Some stuff retrofitted from SMAC, a few minor tweaks (like that woohoo, now rivers are on a border), some quickly slapped together hardcoded stuff to keep the AI from being pathetic (like the research turn caps), AND exactly two things that could actually count as new: culture and air missions. Both shipped basically broken. One a case of untested design, one a case of untested programming. Gee, that's got to be a big step forward.

[cavebear]

I never played Civ I, so I can't comment to the interesting comparisons many people have made. I think Civ III is a very interesting game in conception, but there are really too many bugs. It should not have been released when it was.

However, it has been released and I have enjoyed it so far. I think it is harder to master than Civ II was, as the way the game operates is not as obvious and there are more factors involved in civ strength.

I like the improved graphics, I like the little animated battles, and I like the ability to predetermine several moves by a unit. I hugely enjoy the involvement of Culture as a factor in civ influence.

I am unsure about unique units and civ traits. They are intriguing ideas, but they cause problems (and here I am mainly thinking of future MP games).

I do not like the lack of defense and I really do not like the scarcity of strategic resources. The AI really will not trade them, and their lack causes hopeless games. In addition, I dislike the fact that the AI will only agree to trades that it would not remotely tolerate in reverse. I dislike that I can't get to the screens that show me the cities available to trade (as if I should be memorizing the location and size of every opponent city.

I miss being able to "cheat". Not to cheat to build up score (I don't care about score), but I miss using the cheat function of Civ II to understand what the AI is doing successfully in order to learn from it. I do not care about SP for itself, but only to prepare for MP games. So, for me, SP is just a tutorial.

I utterly despise the way that a weak unit can destroy a more powerful one far out of the logical A/D factors of the units. I'm sorry, but a 1/1 warrior should not ever defeat a 3/2 swordsman on even terrain.

On the whole, I will keep playing this game. Indeed, Civ II and III are the only games of the type I play. I'm sure some other games of this type are very good, but 1 or 2 of them are sufficient for me. But I just wish they had waited a few more months and put out a more solid product initially.

[Sarxis]

I too think CivIII is way better than CivII.