What Was the Best Version of Civ III? Vanilla? PTW? C3C?

[monkspider]

With a new expansion on the horizon that in some ways mirrors elements of Civ III's 1st expansion Play the World, let's have a discussion on the olden days for a bit.

When C3C first came out, it received near-universal praise. Tons of new civs, new wonders, cool scenarios. However, time has not been kind to C3C, and broken elements of the game eventually came to light more clearly. I have seen quite a few veteran players recently who have said that PTW represented Civ III at it's pinnacle.

Perhaps most famously, Civ IV beta tester Sulla wrote a lenghty article on where he believed C3C went wrong. He even went so far as to say that Vanilla Civ III was the most balanced version of the game, if not the most enjoyable.

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?t=146

I personally would agree with Sulla on most of his charges and add that I didn't like the new traits either. Interestingly, PTW was not the smash hit that perhaps Firaxis would have wanted, and in fact, reviews were pretty poor. However, time has much kinder on PTW than C3C and nowadays when I play Civ III (usually when I am away from home and on the laptop), it is PTW that I fire up.

How about the rest of you guys? What was the high water mark of Civ III?

[Son of David]

I got 98% of my enjoyment out of just the original Civ III.

PTW was disappointing, and Conquests looked amazing - until I realized that it didn't work properly.

Actually I had originally determined not to get Civ IV on the basis of Conquests being left unfinished, but Civ IV I must say is an absolutely AMAZING game that really does make Civ III obsolete in every sense.

[Arrian]

I actually think that fully-patched PTW was the best. Edit: in terms of BALANCE, anyway.

C3C had potential, but the kinks were never fully worked out. If you don't really care about the balance, though, Conquests has some added fun features (great scientists for instance).

-Arrian

[Will9]

Civ III was the first civ game I played. I only completed two games. The first game was as the Americans. I loved that map. In the southwestern side of the map were two 2.5 civ sized continets only one square apart at some places. In the northeastern side was a 5 civ sized continet. In the southeast was a group of islands occupided by the Russians. I owned the central parts of the southwestern continets. The northern 3/5 of the large continet was owned by the Eygptions. I never really warmongered, but I learned alot. I ending up losing a space race (the last time I turned that on until two weeks ago on civ 4), but I only found a map that I enjoyed that much a few more times. The other one was as the Indians. I learned how to wage war in this game. I ended up winning a cultural victory, but by the end of the Industral age my econemy had colapsed. The next game I finished was as the Greeks in PTW. This was one of the few maps I liked as much as the first. I won through time. I consider this game the first I won. I won many games C3C, but I rarly found maps I enjoyed. I would continuiosly have the map editer make continet maps, but none of them matched the one from my game.

[Lambiorix_be]

shouldn't this be posted on the CIV III forums? (by the way I chose conquest)

[fed1943]

To me civ 3 was the weakest of all the series, so

bananas (to not say, civ 4, civ 2 and SMAC).

Best regards,

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Lambiorix_be
shouldn't this be posted on the CIV III forums? (by the way I chose conquest)

My first thought too, but the "in light of the coming XP" part makes it a shady water.

[Harovan]

Fully patched PTW was the best, sad that the RCP fix was not in, otherwise it would've been perfect (in Civ3 terms...)

C3C was a bad expansion pack. It did have potential, but it was buggy beyond belief, and the 1 developer Firaxis had to spare (thanks Jesse, you did a great job but the bugs outnumbered you ) didn't have a chance to fix it.

I can see why Sullla sees plain Civ3 as the best and respect his opinion, but disagree with him.

[Dis]

conquests.

screw balance, I want fun.

[VonSharma]

I thought conquests was one of the best things I've ever come across. The scenarios were gorgeous.
Whenever i watch the History Channel's Engineering an Empire: Rome, or the HBO series, and all I can think about it while watching is my conquests into Gaul and Carthage.

[Provost Harrison]

I think I've completed twice as many games of Civ 4 as Civ 3 already, and it does indeed make any version of Civ 3 obsolete - from the first game I just got the feeling it played infinitely better. Civ 3 reached its best with conquest IMO, but was still not as good in terms of gameplay as its predecessors or successor...

[Adagio]

I didn't play the XPacks that much, and now I've already forgotten all about them