Is Conquests worth buying?

[woody]

I bought CIV3 the day it came out. After that, I swore I'd never buy another Firaxis product until it had been out a few months and the bugs were fixed. I never bothered with PTW, due to all the quality complaints.

So, seeing that Conquests has been out for awhile, is it worth buying? I'm not at all interested in multiplayer, and probably will not bother with scenarios. Does it have enough new features to make it a significantly better game than the original CIV3?

Oh, and is it relatively bug-free yet?

[Creator]

Yes it is worth buying.

I have it and its great no bugs that I know of.

[vmxa1]

You should have gotten PTW as it was a fun expansion. C3C adds more civs, more improvements and for the price you can't go wrong.

[woody]

I didn't get PTW because I'm not interested in multiplayer. (That, and all the bugs.)

I like vanilla Civ3. I'm not interested in the multiplayer or scenario aspects of Conquests.

What new features will be of interest to me in conquests? (Other than new units and civs, which sound interesting but really don't add much to the game.)

For example, I've heard there's a feature called auto-bombard. Is it useful?

What other kinds of improvements to the game have been made? A.I.? Diplomacy? Economic model?

Does the game run well on a low-end system? (As well as vanilla Civ3?)

[Krill]

It's not just the new civs, since the new civ traits have altered the game as well. Personally I think that PTW was the same as vanilla, but C3C is a completely new game.

The new features help to keep the micromanagement to a minimum, add more variety, etc

Their is a new corruption model (oh alexman, you explain it, you're better than me at this), and this changes the game slightly, but not much.

The AI and diplo is the same as before, not that difficult, but just as boring.

And if you don't go above standard size maps, this game will run fine on a low end system

[Proserpine]

Originally posted by woody
I didn't get PTW because I'm not interested in multiplayer. (That, and all the bugs.)

I like vanilla Civ3. I'm not interested in the multiplayer or scenario aspects of Conquests.

What new features will be of interest to me in conquests? (Other than new units and civs, which sound interesting but really don't add much to the game.)

For example, I've heard there's a feature called auto-bombard. Is it useful?

What other kinds of improvements to the game have been made? A.I.? Diplomacy? Economic model?

Does the game run well on a low-end system? (As well as vanilla Civ3?)

Well they fixed most of the bugs (then got new ones in a patch, then patched to fix those . . . you know how it goes).

Seriously, C3C is almost the game Civ3 should have been. Some things have been tweaked, there a couple of new governments (Fascism & ?), there are new "civ traits", resources are bit scarcer. I think the AI is much the same. Systemwise, its much of a muchness with Vanilla Civ3. Doesn't sound like much,does it? Trust me, just go get it.

[woody]

Hmmm... doesn't sound like much new, but might be worth picking up.

Does it have better editing options? One thing that bugged me about Civ3 is that you couldn't edit the game after you started it.

I like "playing God", and doing things like giving a poor wayward civ some high-tech military equipment. Stuff like that. That was great in Civ2 (via the "cheat" menu).

Is that possible with conquests?

[vmxa1]

Woody all I can tell you about PTW is a lot of us here had a lot of fun playing it and never played any MP.

In fact Sir Ralph as talked about going back to it.

[Dis]

yes

[Flandrien]

If you don't want multi-player or scenario's, I don't think you need conquests.
You can edit a lot of new features yourself.

[Conqueror]

with 1.22 patch, definately worth buying

[Arrian]

C3C still has some annoyances. For instance:

The AI got ****ed somewhere between PTW and Conquests. AI city spacing and worker routines are FUBAR in C3C. It was better in PTW.
The sub war bug.
The great wall bug (or has that been fixed?).

There are some goodies like the new traits, civs, governments, wonders and bonus tiles. Additionally, like Krill said, the corruption system (specifically, the Forbidden Palace) went through a major change two patches ago.

The "Conquests" themselves (glorified scenarios) are nothing special, IMO. The AI doesn't deal well with them. Having said that, I enjoyed most of the ones I played.

It does run well on a low end system. I'd say mine qualifies as "low end." 800mhz, 128 RAM.

-Arrian

[Cerbykins]

Oh good grief...computer speeds have moved on
I can see myself in a year or two, surrounded by 64-bit processors and nowhere near upgrade

Really though, despite civ's predisposition towards being a buggy piece of....code - it's still worthwhile, and conquests - despite what some might say - counts as a worthy expansion. To be honest, you have to play it to appreciate it

[Willem]

Originally posted by Creator
Yes it is worth buying.

I have it and its great no bugs that I know of.

I'd say the fact that the AI no longer uses Armies a pretty serious bug. It's enough to stop me from playing it. I haven't booted up the game for ages now because of that.

[Willem]

Originally posted by woody


For example, I've heard there's a feature called auto-bombard. Is it useful?

Yes it is, but there's a problem with it. Unless the bombard unit has a range of 2 squares, the auto-bombard orders get cancelled whenever an enemy unit is next to it. To make it work, you have to go into Preferences and turn off the Cancel Orders When Next To Enemy Unit flag. Which means you have to watch your other troop movements very carefully.