Thinking of playing the Conquests - Advice Please

[Master Zen]

/me has only played the Mesoamerican scenario... ONCE... during the beta test....

don't know, scenarios ain't my thing. At least not the Civ3 crappy scenarios.

[Fistleaf]

I tend to play the side which I am "supposed" to win with. Pheonicia in Mesopotamia is easy because you are in the middle of the map, able to trade techs with the left and right halves of the map.
Rise of Rome - As Rome, after defeating Carthage and weakening the Celts, I find that the Persians are close to a domination victory. Panicking, I transfer all the legions to the Turkey to attack the Persians and managed to win.
Fall of Rome - As the Huns, initially a bit difficult, but after the barbarian civs start ganging up on Rome and Byzantine, I simply attack whomever is nearby and convenient for the 8-city elimination.
Middle Ages - I am playing as the Abbasids currently, attacking the Fatimids and the Turks. I do not dare to attack the Byzantines because they have cities and troops trespassing all over my middle east.

[Dis]

I can't believe so many people don't like the scenarios or haven't even played them.

Fall of Rome isn't a bad scenario, I think it's worth playing once or twice. This is different, because it requires a bit of a different strategy. First you have to build up and do some minor building (but not too much or you will fall behind). And then you have to strike. If you aren't fast enough, you lose.

Age of Discovery of course is a great builder scenario. Or you can just attack everyone. And it has many methods of winning.

I think playing the scenarios allow you to see the game differently and try things you have never tried before. At least it has with me. There are many strategies I would have never thought of if I just played the same ole epic game over and over.

[Cerbykins]

See, that's the thing. Many of the poly gurus are 'epic' specialists...so maybe in a lot of cases, the scenarios just don't 'tinkle their bell'

[Catt]

Well I decided to play Mesopatamia - partly at Dominae's suggestion, partly because it was first on the list, and partly because it seemed it would be short. I played random civ and drew the Myceneans (sp?) -- essentially Greece. It was fun and quick, but I just don't think I'm a scenario type of guy -- didn't enjoy having to absorb all the new rules / units / improvements, and didn't particularly enjoy the particular victory types to shoot for. This scenario strikes me as potentially quite different depending on the civ played.

Since the first was so quick, I also played Rise of Rome and this time selected Rome. Warmongering domination. This time the player starts with a bunch of cities and units (Mesopatamia was just settlers and units). I found this one pretty one-dimensional -- build lots of legions and conquer. Although the tech tree provides for some new discoveries and buildings like libraries and universities, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why -- the tech tree was done very early and research was shut off completely (even by the AIs ). Just slogged it out until the particular domination point was reached. Once again I didn't like having to absorb new rules -- despite a solid half-hour reviewing changes before hand, I had built 6 or 7 galleys before I realized they carry 4 instead of the epic game 2 units.

While I found them enjoyable overall, I'd definitely say I prefer the epic game. The good news is that I don't think any bugs seriously detracted from these two scenarios -- Rise of Rome would be better if the AI used armies properly (as alexman reported in his game, I assualted Carthage to find a 1 numidian merc army defending -- hardly a challenge to two legion armies). Mespotamia suffers from the AI's inability to pre-build and the human's better understanding of making cities shield-producers.

I'll probably play through the others over time, but I'm not so enamored with the scenario concept that I'll race through the remaining Conquests and replay some of them again and again.

Thanks for the advice offered

Catt

[Fistleaf]

I think a player with some interest in actual history will appreciate the scenarios more.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Fistleaf
I think a player with some interest in actual history will appreciate the scenarios more.

Don't know if that's a general comment or a comment on my view of the two scenarios I've played, but I have a reasonably strong interest in history of all stripes and I don't think I'd agree that an interest in history translates to a significant increase in interest in the Conquests.

Catt

[vmxa1]

I did not want to learn the new rules either.

[Dis]

learning new rules.

Didn't you have to learn the rules of Civ3 before you played your first game?

Well some of you all probably dove right in and figured they were the same as civ2. So in that case you had to learn the rules of Civ2 before playing, or Civ1.

My point is at some point you had to sit down and learn the rules .

I tend to be annoyed by that as well, but it doesn't stop me from playing. Often I just learn the rules as I go along. No sense spending time researching the tech tree 3 ages in the future. I look at the current age, figure out my goals, right click to see what each tech does, and then start researching.

[Master Zen]

Honestly, the reason I play all epic is because the thing I like most about civ is how empires progress throught history. The fact that scenarios take place during the same era mostly just doesn't cut it for me. In other cases like the WW2 scenario, being an avid wargamer, there are far superior alternatives to recreating the pacific war.

Perhaps what I dislike most about the scenarios is that frankly, they do not have same flexibility as Civ2. Civ2 had events, and had EVERYTHING which could be modified, not to mention the editor was far more easy to use. Civ3 lacks events and there are many aspects of the game which cannot be changed (diplomacy, attitude, etc.). The results are considerably inferior scenarios to those possible in Civ2.

That being said, I've heard the Age of Discovery scenario makes for an awsome PBEM. Must try it

[Dis]

The only problem I have with the epic game is I can't stand the modern age anymore. It just annoys me so much.

But lately I've been playing on small maps, so it really helps speed up my games. They often don't reach the modern age.

So I'm enjoying the epic game again.

As for the scenarios, they do have limited replay value. But I don't get a chance to play that often, so that's why I still talk about them. There are still a few more combinations I want to play. After that, there will be little reason to keep playing them. But each scenario has a couple or a few interesting civs to choose from.

My least favourite is probably Rise of Rome. I played a pretty easy difficulty level, and still could not achieve domination victory (I won on points, I easily had more points than anyone else). It can be so tedious moving that many units around. It took me over 14 hours to finish.

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

The only problem I have with the epic game is I can't stand the modern age anymore.

That exactly is the point.
When c3c came out, I really enjoyed to play with the new civs, traits, wonders, difficulty level...but now I've reached the same level of boredom I had with ptw (admittedly, ptw needed exactly 2 games to get me there; luckily, there was DyP). Either I play some kind of variant and have an interesting first half of the game, but absolutely dominante later, or I play Deity (didn't touch Sid so far), with that usual hole, and that always the same RR/Inf/Art war to finally become the strongest Civ and pick a way to win. Luckily again, RaR (DyP for C3C) is to be released soon

So, to me, the replayablity of the better Conquests is essentially higher than the (unmodded) game can offer.

Why? Because those are designed to offer different strategies for the different Civs, not the pretty uniform way of the epic.

That said, especially Middle Ages has a huge replayablity; the flavors and starts are so different from each other, it won't get boring (given you enjoy the them in general) even with the 10th Civ played. And, as Warpstorm already pointed out, the AI only Civs need only very few modding to get really interesting - we've played 3 of them as SGs over at CFC. Preknowledge of the map is a no-issue since you know about the shape of Europe anyway. The new units in that scenaro are simply a GREAT addition, you finally will build 5-6 different units, because they are all useful - 4.1.1 ATAR, 6.1.1, 5.1.1 Stealth&HN, 2.2.1 ATAR, 5.3.2,...

Mesopotamia is great simply because you can play a whole game in 2h.

FoR is also one I really like, though admittedly you only have 3 choices here, no real difference between the 'Germanic' Barbarians, pick one of those, Sassanids and one of the Romes (needs the 'Everlasting Rome Scenario' from Gobi Bear, the FoR/MA/AoD designer).

AoD requires some kind of variant rule, the AI just doesn't get the ball rolling in returning shipments. That simply is a Conquest for newbies (no offense!).

WW2 is ok for those who like the theme, otherwise play China and win with the usual :yawn: massive stacks of Artillery.

I fail to see the difference between RoR and an epic game with those Civs, I just hated the tedious work to finish it, and stopped once I felt I was the strongest Civ; wish there would be some kind of UN...

Napo is fun for some Civs, but most of them are Artillery SoDs again, plus travelling over half of the map before you meet your opponent - especially the Ottomans are a pain to play.

Sengoku means heading for UN, but for me has some real problems with unit balance (Yamabushis simply kill the fun), and the HN bug.

And Mesoamerica - I plain simply dislike it. Except for the Guinea Pigs.

In short: True, you have to learn new rules, but replayability is great sometimes.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Fistleaf
I think a player with some interest in actual history will appreciate the scenarios more.

I don't know. Were I not interested in history, the various little inaccuracies and ahistoricalities wouldn't bug me.

Couple comments:

Mesopotamia: A glorified epic-game Ancient Age on a pre-set map. The Ancient Mediterranean Mod does this much better.

Rise of Rome: Beware of the Persian juggernaught!

Mesoamerica: The Silent Hunter is broken. Quite enjoyable till that comes along, but then it's down the drain.

WWII Pacific: I'm impressed that the AI actually manages to wage a decent naval and aerial campaign. A bit too easy, tho.

[Fistleaf]

What I meant was: If you know the real history, wouldn't it be interesting to play the losing side or underdog and see if you can change history?

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dissident
learning new rules.

Didn't you have to learn the rules of Civ3 before you played your first game?

Well some of you all probably dove right in and figured they were the same as civ2. So in that case you had to learn the rules of Civ2 before playing, or Civ1.

My point is at some point you had to sit down and learn the rules .

There's a big difference between learning new rules for a game that will be played hundreds of times, and learning new rules for a one-time (or few time) scenario -- the latter being made even more challenging since some of the units and buildings are named the same thing and use the same graphics but have different stats and abilities.

I'm not opposed in any way to learning new rules -- I just don't want to spend 1/2 hour worth of pre-game study racing through the tech tree and the civilopedia all for a 6 hour game. This is of course the very nature of scenarios -- I don't begrudge it and obviously won't let it stop me from playing others, I'm jost offering a personal opinion on my own likes and dislikes with the initial Conquests.

Catt