March 24, 2010
Fry's shipped my copies of Civilization 3 and Civilization IV yesterday. Fedex will deliver them tomorrow.
It's been a long time since I tried to play a game requiring that much mental concentration. I wonder if I can do it any more? (It's hard these days. That's one of the reasons I stopped doing serious blogging.)
I've never played either of these versions of the series. The last one I played was Civ II. So I know that as of Civ 3 they added a lot of new unit types. I assume there are more Wonders of the World. I'm sure the graphics will be much better. I bet the government types are more intricate now, too. I remember that for a lot of that stuff, the only real way to learn how to use them was to louse it up a few times. (Sid Meier doesn't design games for dabblers.)
UPDATE: That was pretty fast work by Fry's. I put in my order about 2:30 PM, and they shipped it same day.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Gaming at
10:27 AM
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I didn't think Civ3's graphics were all that much improved, to be honest. The rendering of leaders was really fugly, for example. Someone really needs to iron Gandhi's neck.
Lots of new units, wonders, etc. Civ 4 looks like it's tweaked the tech tree a LOT, including a lot of alternate prereqs ("you need a plus one of b or c to get d") for techs, new buildings, a fairly different system of religion, too. (I just started playing a couple days ago.)
I'd recommend doing a small amount of strat-reading for Civ4 because the little bit of research I did suggests there's been a lot of tweaks to make some old strats weak, for example, spamming cities isn't a good plan any more in 4.)
Posted by: RickC at March 24, 2010 10:56 AM (d5FDH)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 24, 2010 11:03 AM (+rSRq)
Gotcha. Well, depending on any quirks of your definition of "acceptable," it should be OK; my brand-new HP core i5 handles it, modulo a few weird things like the installer griping that I don't have directx 8 installed (that's meant to be a representative, not an actual, example, and is also what "Run As Administrator" and "run in compatibility mode" are for )
FWIW I have been playing Civ 3 about two weeks, and I'm starting to get bored--too much tedious MM. Civ 4 looks like it might be a big improvement in that regard, but I'm not sure yet.
Posted by: RickC at March 24, 2010 11:08 AM (d5FDH)
Posted by: Gothmog at March 24, 2010 01:35 PM (ANvHH)
I really hate games that does NOT allow me to 'spam' cities if I choose to, especially through brute force techniques. Pox on the developers' houses!
I like Civ3, though not as much as Civ2. The removal of the terraforming ability Civ2's engineers had, really irritated me. And the fiercer implementation of global warming - yeah, that really impressed me - NOT!
(And yes, I was one of those folks who actual bought the Play the World expansion when it came out. Good thing I never installed it.)
C.T.
Posted by: cxt217 at March 24, 2010 01:40 PM (O7B75)
Posted by: Mark A. Flacy at March 24, 2010 01:57 PM (Lbkvv)
1. Artillery units could be captured if not defended.
2. City flipping from culture: you'd go conquer a city, garrison it with enough to keep it from being retaken, and two turns later, the entire city WITH your army would flip over to the enemy's control.
3. Saltpeter, and the unequal distribution thereof. If you don't have any, surrender, because you can't build gunpowder units..
All that was fixed in IV, but it was much more graphically intensive.
Posted by: ubu at March 24, 2010 04:26 PM (cxiqH)
Oh, no. They included natural resources into the system?
Several people have written to me to tell me that Civ 3 was a disappointment. Maybe I won't keep Civ IV in the cupboard after all.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 24, 2010 04:49 PM (+rSRq)
ubu, if you're getting cities flipped you're doing something wrong. I'm not sure what but I leave a big stack on captured cities until I get notified the resistance is ended.
Steven: yes, there are a half-dozen "strategic" resources like iron, rubber, and so on, and if you don't have access to them you can't build units that depend on them. I'll admit to not having played a lot yet but i never was unable to find enough strategic resources to get by.
From the (even less) I've played Civ 4, strategic resources are more widespread yet; I haven't had any trouble finding them. Steven, you need ONE of any given strategic resource to power your entire civilization (that's connected by road to the resource. Getting your empire cut in half, when all your big production cities are on the opposite side of your empire from the one with saltpeter really sucks, heh, but it teaches you a lesson about the SHAPE of your empire. )
Posted by: RickC at March 24, 2010 05:01 PM (aXVvl)
Posted by: RickC at March 24, 2010 05:03 PM (aXVvl)
Additionally units gain experience in Civ 3. They go from Regular (3hp) to Veteran (4hp) to Elite (5hp). When it shipped the game was bugged so that Elite units were calculated as having no strength. That led to a single unit holding of hordes of barbarians as a Veteran, and then dying the moment it was promoted to Elite.
Civ 4 took all of the concepts in Civ 3 and substantially improved on them.
Posted by: Betelgeuse at March 24, 2010 06:06 PM (qMdAP)
Civ4 has a slightly larger selection of strategic resources, but they're not quite as important - there's more alternatives where having the resource is an advantage but not an overwhelming one. You can, of course, trade for them - each instance of the resource on the map will provide enough for one civilization, so if you've got three horses, you can trade horses to two other civs.
There are also luxury goods, and usually you'll get them in clumps. Each luxury is one happy person everywhere you have it available, so if you have a wide variety of luxuries, you have a much, much easier time keeping your cities happy and productive.
In Civ4, you also get a similar effect from religions - so you want as many religions as possible in your cities, and you want your neighbors to have the religions which you "founded" by being the first one to pick up the related technology. Not only does this ease diplomatic relations, but you also can get ancillary benefits (extra income, etc.) I've won more than one game by aggressively proselytizing with missionaries...
Civ3 wasn't BAD. It was a lot of fun when it came out. But Civ4 is substantially similar everywhere Civ3 was good, and with many refinements that make it even more enjoyable.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at March 24, 2010 06:32 PM (pWQz4)
Posted by: Wonderduck at March 24, 2010 07:01 PM (mfPs/)
Posted by: metaphysician at March 24, 2010 07:04 PM (DQ9zJ)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 24, 2010 07:58 PM (+rSRq)
Enclose all spoilers in spoiler tags:
[spoiler]your spoiler here[/spoiler]
Spoilers which are not properly tagged will be ruthlessly deleted on sight.
Also, I hate unsolicited suggestions and advice. (Even when you think you're being funny.)
At Chizumatic, we take pride in being incomplete, incorrect, inconsistent, and unfair. We do all of them deliberately.
How to put links in your comment
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