Diffuculty comparison from II to III

[MotownDennis]

Heh. I should've qualified my statement by saying that it applied to the Civ series only.


Mo D

[vmxa1]

Yeah that works as Heroes4 was next on my list, but not as bad as Moo3.

[Kropotkin]

I got CivIII a couple of weeks ago. I'm an old CivII vet and I think that CivIII-PtW at least seems to be harder. I started my first game on Warlord as I thought that was an easy level to learn the game. I'm still on warlord. Granted, I've won once (Space race) and in my current game I the leader of the pack, but I'm constantly affraid of being gangbanged by the rest. I can't remember that they did that back on CivII on warlord...

[Paddy]

Hi Kropotkin, I am glad you are enjoying PTW. I had a great time playing PTW, and am still involved in 3 PTW PBEM games.
Yet I really reccomend C3C to you.

In my opinion there is a great difference in the difficulty levels from Civ II to Civ III C3C.

I hope that you continue to enjoy Civ III.

[Kropotkin]

Let me guess, you're a salesman or something like that?

[Paddy]

Far from a salesman, but I do drink a LOT of beer....

[gunkulator]

As an old Civ2-deity player, I'll also chime in that Civ3 is much harder than Civ2, I never played Civ1 and easily won my first game of Civ2, and every other game after that, all the way up to deity. Starting on Regent, I was horrified to find myself losing my first game. And then my second. Didn't win until my third game. Even now, I still only play on Monarch and I don't always win. Now that's a good challenge.

[:) Smiley]

Civ2 we've had almost a decade here on Poly to dissect the game and distill all sorts of human-side cheats to the point where people have managed to win spaceship victories on Deity with one city at the absolute earliest possible date (determined by the fact that you can't build spaceship parts before 0 AD). Civ 3 will get easier with time.

[vmxa1]

Smiley that may be the case (I am not so sure though), people were beating Civ2 and had no contact witht he board or even the internet. I had stopped playing Civ2 before I found the board.

IOW you do not even need any decent tactics to beat most levels of Civ2. Over the past 2 years I have seen many players come here looking for help beating Chief on CivIII. To borrow from Theseus, "enough said".

[Kropotkin]

Yeah, my pow and background is about the same as vmxa1. I managed to beat the AI easily in both Civ1 and 2 without internet contact, just withas one of a couple of friends with an interest in the game.

On the other hand, one learns the game after a couple of times. In my current game I'll probably kick the AI civs to the floor. Still only on warlord though. I'm looking forward to a conquest victory. Thus far I've just won space race and diplomatic victories (the latter one being just too easy at warlord with a few bribes on 250 gold or so). Eventually I guess warlord will be childish to me, but as far as I can remember the development takes much longer time than for Civ2. The adaption from Civ1 was much faster.

[Myrddin]

It seems to me Conquests is easier at the higher levels because of the changes in trading rules - you know you have to go and make contact with everyone else and get some good trades otherwise you fall far behind; in PtW this was just not possible

[BulMaster]

I guess i'n stuck on emperor i was playing on it in civ2 and 3c

I might go to monarthc though, cause the AI gets to many bonuses i think on emperor might be me just whining

[MrWhereItsAt]

There were ways open to you in Civ2 (and SMAC) to run away with the game and make Deity/Transcend a breeze. These tactics have been used in force in the Civ2 and SMAC Democracy games. The biggest of these in Civ2 is the humble Caravan, and in SMAC the Crawler. Build loads of Caravan in Civ2 and you can rush Wonders, or send them all to other civs' cities where the cargoes are demanded and you can get huge instant cash and tech payoffs that can get you a tech per turn, even in the later game stages. Another great trick is 'Xinning', where you stockpile food in a city, then turn all of the citizens into Taxmen or Scientists until you need to gain food again. You can get huge boosts of gold or science in these few turns, especailly if you have Tax or Science improvements in the city, as these increase the return from specialists too.

In SMAC, building Crawlers means your bases can harvest more resources than their populations can support. If you give them all the Clean Reactor ability then they cost no resources to maintain, and you can support bases that work far more than the 20 base tiles normally available. This can turn even a one-base faction into a game-winner by a huge margin.

None of these tricks are available in Civ3. Sure there are little tricks and strategies, but they are nowhere near this huge, and where they have profound effects (eg Great Leaders), there is a random chance attached to them. To master Civ3 requires you to actually master the game in many different ways - you can't afford to rely on things like Caravans or Crawlers anymore.

[The Vagabond]

Got Civ3 recently. Wow, it's a tough game! I started and still play on Regent. Out of four games, I was winning only in one, but that was a great starting location, with a lot of rivers and land. Civ2 is much easier. It seems to me that Civ2 is much easier than even the original Civ1.

Thus far, I like the game. The culture thingie, bargaining table, etc. -- all seem great to me. People here on Poly who cried how bad Civ3 was misled me big time. On the other hand, perhaps it is because I didn't expect too much that I've got a good first impression.

What I don't like in Civ3 is that expansionistic drive seems to be much more important than in Civ2. In Civ2, I used to enjoy games with a small number of cities, e.g. just three cities on a large map (and on Deity level, of course). I greatly enjoyed observing how much more efficient was my three-city empire than AI empires with a countless number of cities. It was a great pleasure to grab almost all the WoWs just in my three cities, and to build a full space ship. Now, in Civ3, no such neat perfectionistic gamestyle seems to be possible in principle, as it was not possible in the original Civ1. Furthermore, by the beginning of the Middle Age, war seems to be the only way left for further expansion, for all the land on the map is occupied by then (AI spawns like crazy). On the contrary, in Civ2, one could usually find virgin land even at the end of the game.

[WackenOpenAir]

i played both civ2 and 3 almost deity only.

civ3 is a multitude more difficult.