Evaluation of civ 3

[Admiral]

I have long held the prejudice that civ 3 is rather worse than civ 2, and that were i to buy it, i would be greatly disappointed. This derived from the reports concerning it immediately following the release for PC. For the past 4 months, i have not even considered buying it, and have not sought to confirm or dispel my prejudice. Yet, i have recently been seeing information that suggests that later patches made civ 3 into a quite good game.
Hence, i would be interested in the thoughts concerning civ 3 from mac users who have played the game. I admit to knowing nothing about the mac version, yet i know that SMAX for mac was better than SMAX for pc ever was, and hence i have grounds for hope.
Thanks.

[Smash]

Don't get your hopes too high.The game is not so good on any platform.Tedium is almost immediate from turn 1.I can't see how anything MAC can change that

[dojoboy]

Personally, I find it to be a most enjoyable game, especially w/ the newly released editor (OS X only). The editor does have several revisions out due to some early bugs. You can get revision beta6 at CFC's Mac forum in a thread started by Brad Oliver.

[CivPatriot]

Civ 3 is a good game, but not nearly as enjoyable as Civ2. I've played it on both the PC and Mac, and there is no difference in the gameplay between the platforms. If you don't have Civ2 for mac(which sadly i do not) then its worth the money, but if you do have Civ2 for mac, then i'd wait for the price to become cheaper.

[Gatekeeper]

It appears that the PtW port for the Mac is rapidly turning into a phantom? At least if dojoboy's call to Macsoft corporate was a harbinger of things to come ...

Also, there's a news item on 'Poly about Macsoft re-releasing Civ III as a "Game of the Year" edition or something? And that the new editor will be packaged with it, along with the "Making of Civ III ..." video and excerpts from some guide.

[Henrik]

I obtained civ 3, and put it straight to the trash can just a few days after getting it.

Civ 2 is still infinatly more fun than civ 3.
Apart from the general gameplay of civ 2 being better (and suprisingly more realistic as well), civ 3 also lacks MP (I know it's been fixed for the PC, but has it for the mac yet?) and scenario building (this hasn't even been fixed for the PC, the puny little thing they released a while ago, and which now has been ported for the mac, is still not as powerfull as the tools civ 2 classic supplied you with.).


Oh and why haven't all of you joined the mac civ group yet?

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by Henrik

Oh and why haven't all of you joined the mac civ group yet?

Most of us have.

[CivPatriot]

My main complaint against, Civ3 is the combat system. I'm sorry, but i've had my tanks overrun or forced to withdraw from longbowmen one too many times. And the ability to wage war has been hampered more than it should have been. This, plus the limited ability to modify the game easiely(using text editor and photoshop is easier than the crappy editor we've been provided with), really makes it less than civ2.

As for PtW, i am interested in it being ported, but i won't buy it until its in a workable state(hopefully they learned a lesson with the PC release), or unless they package Civ2 MGE for mac with it.

PS, I have joined the mac group as well.

[Admiral]

Thanks for the input. I suppose that i shall just hope that MOO3 gets patched, and in the mean time shall stick with SMAX and Civ2.

[FlameFlash]

Originally posted by dojoboy
Personally, I find it to be a most enjoyable game, especially w/ the newly released editor (OS X only). The editor does have several revisions out due to some early bugs. You can get revision beta6 at CFC's Mac forum in a thread started by Brad Oliver.

Does there happen to be a URL where we could just download it? I think I downloaded the proper one, but I want to make sure there isn't a more recent one.

[FlameFlash]

I enjoy Civ III. The only problem I have is at the end of the game it sometimes crashing if I play the major events tracker at the end... and then only on a scenario I'm playing now do I have to do that

Speaking of scenarios... I'm no power maker, but I could never manage to master Civ II's builder, more than likely because it was so complicated. Having an average Joe mod program (CivIIIEdit) and then for the masters them do what they might always do or figure out (photoshop & textedit) I see no problem.

The only thing the game is lacking is the MP feature, and since I'm still trying to master the game is SP I don't find it that big of a miss (especially since I already play CtP and SMAC/SMAX in PBEM, I don't need/can play any more PBEMs for quite some time.)

My only major complaints about CivIII are the resources and the AI. The resources are at times, way to scarce and unrealistic (having an overabundance of saltpeter while near to no horses? ) Also the fact that resources get used up (realistic, but with as few as are seeded in some games, it should be toned down). Plus the fact that I can't dig/mine/breed my own resources or search for them is annoying... who says rubber can't be grown artificially elsewhere? Horses? The minor wonder where a city has both coal and iron in its radius has yet to be built in any of my games... is this because I'm unlucky, or because resources are indeed this shortchanged?

The AI, while predictable, could be much improved as well. First off, if my little advisor would say that the AI would be [insulted by a deal]/[never accept such a deal] (world map & tech from nation while only giving only a world map) where do they get off thinking I would agree to something like that?

I've had no problems declaring war, though the unit strengths are a little off... a knight, for instance, not being able to trample a spearman? (Though I have to agree the longbowman beating a tank is sadder). AI defense scores seem to be much higher than player defense scores.

To not solely complain, I love the worker system and the worker AI... if you automate one of these guys they actually work dilligently and well, and if they get killed you're not thinking (gee, I could have used it to build a city elsewhere). The national support for units rather than per home city is also a nice and needed change IMHO.

Wonders are more balanced... I'm not sure if I like this or not yet... but if you don't get a wonder, you don't have to worry about being as hurt as you used to be (Leonardo's Workshop for example.)

And then, of course, the SMAC-style unit upgrading is a great new add-on... while we can't engineer our own units yet being able to upgrade that defending spearman to a pikeman to a rifleman without building a new one and wasting build times is nice.

But those are just my two cents.

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by FlameFlash

The national support for units rather than per home city is also a nice and needed change IMHO.

Amen to that, brother! Although I enjoy managing my cities, dealing w/ individual cities in this area was a major pain. I guess I should've had better economies.

There are many reasons why I enjoy Civ3 more than Civ2, but I think the most critical reason is timing. When I was playing Civ2, I hadn't discovered sites like Apolyton and CFC. So, I never really studied the game like I do now, well, at least to some extent. The civ communities have really added to my Civ3 experience.

[President iGreg]

The only thing I seriously miss from CivII is the little videos of the advisors making comments. Some of them were pretty funny. Why didn't they include something similar in CivIII? The still pictures are kinda lame.

Also, the animations of the Wonders was nice in CivII.

[FlameFlash]

Both of those things would have supposedly held up the development of CivIII for another few months and they wanted to focus on gameplay more... personally, I think they should have focused on multiplayer more.

Bring PtW to the Mac!

[Lawrence of Arabia]

I think PTW for mac is dead.