Which civ.-style game is the best overall? Why?

[C. Free]

Howdy, folks.

I'm new to the civ. world, and I'd like a little advice. Now, I've played Starcraft and Warcraft, but they just aren't as much fun as Civ. 3. Since Civ. 3 is the only one I've played, I sense I may be missing out on some good civing. So, what I'd like to find out is this:

Which civ.-style game is the best overall? Why?

I've read some of the posts regarding ideas for Civ. 4, which I'll check out when it's released, so I've got a good idea of some of the concepts that are being debated. Recently, I got rid of my copy of Civ. 3 after playing it a while, but I kind of miss it, now. The reasons for its dismissal are mainly these: too many units, too many towns (ICS), too many roads, too little time during each age, and long stretches when nothing seemed to happen. However, I did enjoy the game on the whole, and I'm interested in others. Please, don't let my objections to Civ. 3 influence your reasoning. And, lengthy responses are welcomed (as are short ones).

Bye, bye.

[MrBaggins]

Re: Which civ.-style game is the best overall? Why?

Originally posted by C. Free
*SNIP*
The reasons for its dismissal are mainly these: too many units, too many towns (ICS), too many roads, too little time during each age, and long stretches when nothing seemed to happen.

CTP2 (at least with recent mods) is probably the answer for you, especially once its been spruced up (the CTP2 source code project, here at Apolyton, is giving it a 3 year makeover.) Essentially its based on Civ2 concepts but has been significantly extended.

ICS (actually REX plus, in Civ3, but its semantic) gets solved by empire size caps and distance caps (affecting happiness- which can't be exploited the same way as corruption in Civ3.)

Too many roads... not a problem (first you don't get economic benefits from railroads- which obviously need to be roads first, other than indirect trade/bureaucratic ones.) Every road also cost PW, rather than being products of slightly costly units... which in my view is just an REX product.

Too many units... first you don't have workers to deal with in CTP2... big micromanagement saver, and second you have stacking... you can stack upto 12 units and move, and attack with that as a group. This means that typically you never have unmanagable numbers of stacks, since 12 ends up being a substantial divisor.

As for too little time during each age, check out the MedMod or Cradle Mod for CTP2. More turns (done in less player time due to the lower-micromanagement superiority of CTP2... due to the above reasons, plus, for instance, the useful Nation Manager,) and plenty of content during those periods, particularly during earlier game periods.