C3C REVIEW thread - Post yours here

[dexters]

Im on the same boat with vmxa1. The bonus disc is nice to have, just for the high-res unstamped artwork.

The mp3 tracks are also nice. I'm under the impression these are uncut tracks and are longer(?) than the ones you year in the game. not sure though.

[Dis]

As I said in my other post, I'm hoping the game will be short and sweet with the scenarios. I see someone's game was under 11 hours. Which isn't too bad. I like to finish a game in one day. I guess I don't have the attention span I used to.

Damn, I think I'll go out and by this game now though.

I just want some more confirmation that the scenarios are short and sweet, and the editor is good enough in that anyone can create scenarios just as good as the ones that shipped with the game.

[Dis]

Here's a link to the amazon page.

The first review user review isn't so hot

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009THFF/002-9355781-2672038?v=glance

[WarpStorm]

Of course the 6 of the other 8 reviews there all gave it 5 stars and one 4 star.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Dissident
As I said in my other post, I'm hoping the game will be short and sweet with the scenarios. I see someone's game was under 11 hours. Which isn't too bad. I like to finish a game in one day. I guess I don't have the attention span I used to.

Damn, I think I'll go out and by this game now though.

I just want some more confirmation that the scenarios are short and sweet, and the editor is good enough in that anyone can create scenarios just as good as the ones that shipped with the game.

The mesopotamia and mesoamerica are quite short I've found, maybe a couple hours each.

My middle ages game is nearing the 3/4 mark and I've been playing it actively for probably 6 hours.

[Dis]

well I went ahead and bought it.

I am having a problem with the game text for some reason. I'll post that in the game bugs section.

Civ3 has always been so unstable on my system. Easily the most unstable game I have ever played.

I'm thinking I might regret this purchase.

[Tiberius]

I have never got any stability problems with civ3 (except for freezing my system for a few seconds when I quit the game).

[protista]

Possible Solution for Instability

Long ago, when I first installed the original Civ3, I had some instability problems, occasional lockups, graphics anomalies, being "bounced" back to the Windows screen, and the like.

Try the following steps with your Civ3/Conquests:

1.Delete both programs

2.Delete Infogrames (or whatever folder contains Civ3/Conquests). If you have other games in this folder, you will have to delete the Civ3, PTW, or Conquests folders.

3.If you have the so called "Intelligent Keyboard" running, close it. Set the program to remain off or inactive.

4.Change your graphics to 1024X768 32Bit True Color.

5.Reboot

6.Run Norton (Symantec or some other brand) speed disk (Defragger).

7.Reboot. Check to see your graphics mode is still 1024X768 32Bit True Color.

8.Install Civ3

9.Install Civ3 Conquests

This will take some time and effort, but I am certain you will have no further instability problems. I have never had any problem since performing these steps myself. I had the HP "Expanded Keyboard" which had a program running in the background which took almost 20% of my system resources.

[doronron]

I'm gonna lose this one...

It's my fault. I underestimated the new AI. I'm playing the mayans. My start point was a region of mixed jungles and marshes. It didn't take me long to figure out I was sitting on an island roughly half the size of Australia.

Thanks to alphabet, I had access to the early curraughs. Built one and sent him around the island to see if there was land nearby. I was happy with the position I was in -- and I found shallow water access to more land. Mayan exploration went quickly, using the curraugh to start exploring the coastline. Fun, but not as fun using a seafaring civ to circumnavigate the globe in one of these things. I quickly met Europe on the new, much larger continent to my west. We had England, Russia, France, Portugal, Spain, Celts, Scandinavians. Not a bad cluster -- all europeans. France had strong culture around her coastal capital, so my curraugh sunk on her final leg home to avoid war. Didn't matter, though. I knew where they all were. I spent the early portion on a build infrastructure build to clear out an entire island's worth of jungle and marsh. It hurt my time. However, once cleared, the territories were doing quite well. Population was straining because of the agricultural trait. I set my capital to building settlers for about a hundred years or so. It never dropped below three pop points. Hit the middle-ages. I had horses and iron, but no saltpeter. That meant no good boats beyond the galleon, and a resource rich, tech trading Europe was right at my heels in the race. I was also starting to feel a little lonely at this point, wondering where the other "americans" were. I built a couple of galleons and went southeast.

Another large continent found. Technilogically advanced iriqious (sp) with visual evidence of guns. Sent my galleon north and found the Aztecs, Incas, a large America, The Babylonians, and the Ottomans. All of them technologically weaker than the Iriqious. To the southeast, the main continental rival for the Iriqious are the germans on an island similar to mine.

Before I had to stop for the night, I had bought up world maps and territory maps, and rushed my tech to industrial era so I could finally get guns and ships that could fight back (my galleons met a grisly end at the hands of a some privateers). However, my position is precarious. Thanks to AI tech trading, all of "europe" is now roughly equal to me in tech. I'm going to have to start aggressively using scientists in the cities to push ahead, despite being a democracy.

It's late in the game. America's still in the middle ages -- some are still ancient. Europe is advanced. I'm right in the middle and working towards decent land units and decent boats to carry my army. In a normal civ3 game, I'd call this a wash and start a new one. With C3C, I'm looking forward to the challenge of switching to fascism and seeing if I can churn out tanks fast enough to blitz a continent. Now...I'm just trying to decide if I want to hit the advanced europeans or press my advantage in the east, having better knowledge of the "americas" wheras the "europeans" are just beginning to exploit the new continent.

Good game so far -- victory is still not assured...

[Dis]

Okay here are some initial thoughts.

The gameplay is still very similiar to civ3. So if you are sick to death of civ3, then you may not want to buy this game. It is the same game afterall.

I played a regular game as the Mayans up intil the industrial age last night. And I also started the WW2-Pacific game and played about 10 turns. I was up till 4:30 AM. I'm usually up to 2:00 AM, so it wasn't a big stretch.

Epic game. I like the agricultural trait. More traits seem to be a good thing. I love the enslave workers ability. And I was very happy with the javelin thrower. I waged an early war (and got an early GA) and took over a huge chunk (actually only about half- maybe even less) of my continent. I thought I was playing archipelago but ended up with a huge pangea continent. It was too much work to take the whole thing, and I wasn't sure how much longer my javelin throwers would be able to take cities. but they did very well against spearman.

Interestingly the Sumerians are kicking some serious ass as my opponent. Everone else sucks and has gotten their ass beat by either myself or the Sumerians. I have to look at what their UU is- I can't remember. That might explain it. And they built that wonder that gives you crusaders every 5 turns. So I'm worried about my safety. And this is only at Warlord level! I usually have no trouble staying ahead of the pack at warlord. He's right on my ass in score. Though I still easily lead in productivity, population, GNP and all of that. My cities are production powerhouses. And I've already done all of my terrain development for all my city squares in all my cities.

No volcanos in my territory. I have only seen one on my continent- and it blew it's load.

I seen some marsh squares. I wasn't impressed and cut it down.

One annoying (bug?) is my units seem to move by themselves. It only seemed to happen when I was waging war. I was using the number pad to move units as I always have. Anyone know about this bug? I would move a unit one direction using the number pad (say 6), and then the next unit would cyle up and move the 6 direction as well. And I know I didn't press the key twice or hold it down. That was really annoying the hell out of me.

As for the WW2 pacific game. I didn't play much. I just tried to get a feel for it. I do like much of the combat. I misjudged some of the Japanese ships, and thought I was attacking weaker ships. I gotta get used to the naming of the ships.

I wish the carrier graphic was larger for the allied ships. It looks too small. Another bonus would be to have light carriers in addition to regular ones. But I'm not sure how that could be implemented. I do wish you could carry more than 3 air units.

And I may bump up the naval movement. I'm not sure how I can possibly win this game in 50 turns. The ocean is so big. And I have no transports to speak of.

I was only playing warlord again. The pearl harbour attack was pretty weak. But the scenario designer said the random numbers can vary widely (see the pearl harbour thread) and often you can sink many ships. I'm sure the ai would do better at a harder difficulty level. But the ai did take the philappines without too much trouble.

One complaint is them razing Manila and another Philappine city.

All in all, a pretty decent scenario. But it will take some time to learn how to play really well.

As for stability problems. I had no more to speak of. Just that one quirk when I exited civ3, and re-entered. I didn't have to do that again though. So that quirk may still be there. Civ3 has always been a memory hog. And it does eat up a lot of my memory even after I exit. But I can still run my musicmatch jukebox in the background while playing civ3 with no problems. I had over 2000 songs on random play . Actually I just did the autodj for about 12 hours of music. I think Civ3 may have added some new songs, but I quickly grew sick of the civ3 music and wanted to add my own. But keep in mind I like civ3 music for the most part.

As for my ratings? Well it might be too soon to tell. I am kind of bored of civ3 gameplay. But I did stay up all last night playing- so I can't be too bored can I? As an expansion pack, I think it delivers nicely. It actually adds more than the Civ2 expansion packs it seems.

My initial rating is 4 out of 5 stars. That may go down if I get bored of it too quickly though.

[vmxa1]

Sumerians have a warrior replacement for a UU, so they trigger a GA about the same time as you.

[Dis]

yeah I seen one of those floating around.

Well they surprised attacked me despite them being polite towards me. It was one hell of a war. They razed one of my cities to the ground. They only took one city. I had heavy forces in all of my cities near the border, but they snuck around and hit a lightly defended city.

I had to sue for peace to buy some time. I lost too much time converting to feudalism which was just as worthless as democracy for waging war. Low war weariness my ass. . I'm researching Fascism right now. 8 more turns.

I really shouldn't be struggling on such a low level. Although I'm not really struggling. I'm very far ahead on tech, and I'm building ALL of the wonders now. But in my lust for getting factories and hospitals up I neglected my military. I knew my military was weak against his, but I really didn't think he would attack. I had 20 to 25 knights in the cities up on the borders. And musketmen.

As for the attacking ai. Well it seems about the same as before. They sensed (which is a cheat- he shouldn't know which of my cities are lightly defended) where I was weak and went there. That is the same as civ3. He has no navy to speak of and as far as I can tell no amphibious invasion is imminent.

But he has stack of those damned crusaders, and now rifleman and cavalry. I'm knocking them out fairly fast though. But I'm just holding my own right now. I want to take 5 or 10 of his cities though to push him back to the stone age. But it will be a long time before I can turn the tide (need that fascism). This will be a very long war.

Has anyone tried the fascism as a wartime goverment? Is it any better than communism?

[SewerStarFish]

I think this is a tremendous addition. I don't always have the time or the inclination to build a large enough empire or play the full length game. The scenerios provide a wonderful way to play a shorter, goal oriented game. YUMBO!

The changes to the tech tree are also seemingly well thought out. My one big disappoint with Civ III is how often the game ended before the coolest of the modern techs became useful. The delays in things like trading maps and the newer techs seem to promote at least the opportunity for actually using the late modern era techs while the AI has them too.

Finally the new civilizations should provide just about any combination of traits that your in the mood for. I'm stoked.

[Elias]

I Just got conquests yester day although I only played for an hour and a half It was Much beter then PTW. I played the pacific sen I stoped however because i was to lazy to figure out where all the units were and move them into sutable locations for an attack and oh yeah I placed my air force on wake island so i could have a better bombing location and well the end writes its self. I then started the medevial sen which I Immediatly fell in love with I am england and have all ready taken the celts and am working my way to france. Unfortinantly my computer has been revoked so this is all I will see for conquests for a while Taken away before I can do much anything!!! You may see me constantly complaing about this on other threads.

[Dis]

revoked?

Truelly sad.

I have been working, and still haven't played all the scenarios.

I have played all three Intro scenarios. They were short, but sweet. They were actually pretty fun. I recommend them. The third one is the most war orientated. You start with little army, but you have decent tech. You are exactly even with the enemy in units, and cities. Just connect the iron asap, and hav fun.