Civ3 vs other strategy games

[vmxa1]

Watch out for some of the maps as they like to make them crazy.

I have run into a few that you step on a tile and trigger a stack with zounds of level 5 monsters in the first 20 turns of the game.

But i have DL 100's of maps from the old Astral Wizards site. I think they are at :

http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~homm/index.php?page=features/interviews/fabricecambounet.htm

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Wiglaf
sid meier's gettysburg and antietam are great. get firaxis's XP compatability patch and you're fine. you can pause and issue orders, especially useful as the battle begins. I play it on prudent/indirect/3rd level difficulty, making an intelligent but fair opponent. its only big flaw is that it does not have the grander scale/ perspective of Civ3. you are basically thrust into a battle and must win it under the circumstances.

I forgot about those, both are definitely worth playing. They're kinda the precursors for total war in terms of tactical battle simulation.


I didnt know there was an xp patch !

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Dominae
The fact of the matter is even the most hardcore players of the game have commented how the online RoN community died a about 6-7 months after release. So either everyone is playing the game but no one is talking about it, or no one is playing the game and (therefore) no one is talking about it. The first makes more sense to me.

By the way, where is the RoN expansion?!

IIRC, a lot of online players dropped RoN in the first 6 months because there were lots of connectivity issues plus a rather poor matchmaking system. Both problems were greatly diminished with patch 1.03 which was released in November, but by then the online community was already very small, perhaps too small. We'll see if BHG is able to create another 'hype' (and attract new online players) with the X-pack ('Thrones and Patriots'), which should be released on April, 28th.

BTW, as RoN's gameplay and pace are similar to TBS (compared to that of other RTS games), and as RoN's AI seems to be rather good (at least I haven't read a criticism that resembles that of SMAC's AI), it may be unfair to judge the game as 'poor' only because of the small online community. I haven't played many RoN games until now (got interested in it only recently), but by now it seems that building up a good economy does require sound strategy, but not the heavy micromanagement I dislike about Civ3.

EDIT: While I can't comment on Warcraft 3's 'awesome' replay feature, I liked RoN's replay feature and recorded games from the beginning.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by lockstep
EDIT: While I can't comment on Warcraft 3's 'awesome' replay feature, I liked RoN's replay feature and recorded games from the beginning.

As far as I know, Warcraft 3 was the first game to incorporate this feature into its engine. I'm not surprised other games are following suit because it's such a great feature. If only something like this could be done for Civ3 (the end of game replay movie is not really on the same level)!


Dominae

[okblacke]

Originally posted by Dominae
Why not just play at the harder difficulty levels (with more "intelligent" alien races)? The AI in GalCiv is quite interesting compared to Civ3's: as the difficulty level increases, the AI actually gets smarter (i.e. it uses more advanced planning and strategy algorithms).

I'm slowly getting there. While it's somewhat true with Civ games, it's especially true of space-games that it's hard to get one's bearings. After playing a few games on "beginner" and smaller maps, I boosted the intelligence to "sub-normal" and played on a huge map.

The huge map was a bad idea, though. Also a bad idea was going for a tech-transcendence victory. The last 150 turns were torture. I really didn't want to keep shuffling constructors around the unvierse, but when I stopped, the Arceans (ultimately the only other race left) started piling up influence.

So, I've played half a dozen games and I have a sense of the basic shape of the tech tree and the starbase/planet build tree. Military I'm still foggy on.

I would like to believe those publications are not all about hype, but that's not really true; "Brian Reynolds' new game? Buy, buy, buy!".

I think as far as CGW went, the fact that it was Brian Reynolds worked against him. They agreed that he had made some interesting innovations but they were expecting a masterpiece.

Also, CGW and a lot of 'net sites have no problem changing their minds a few months later. (cf "Black and White" wihch went from editor's choice to coaster of the year.)

The fact of the matter is even the most hardcore players of the game have commented how the online RoN community died a about 6-7 months after release. So either everyone is playing the game but no one is talking about it, or no one is playing the game and (therefore) no one is talking about it. The first makes more sense to me.

Bad multiplayer can kill an on-line community but that's not necessarily a reflection on the single-player experience.

By the way, where is the RoN expansion?!

A missing expansion pack is a bad sign, tho, for sure.

[ok]

[Xorbon]

If you'd like to try a good 'proto-RTS' game, play Dune 2. (Well, it was good for its time.) Anyone know if they've ever made a Dune 3?

I do enjoy playing Age of Kings (with heavy use of the pause button ). But my experience playing RTS games isn't overly vast. Where does AoK rank among RTS's in terms of quality?

[vmxa1]

It was a big improvement of AoE, but was harder too manage so many units for me. The graphics were tops at the time.

They redid Dune2 and it stunk. If you mean the one from Westwood.

[SpencerH]

I think you mean AoE was an improvement over AoK.

[furrykef]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I think you mean AoE was an improvement over AoK.

I don't know how the first game of a series can be an "improvement" over the second. It might be better (though I dunno anybody who prefers AoE over AoK), but even so it wouldn't be an "improvement".

- Kef

[SpencerH]

Despite not using a question mark, my comment was a question.

In any case it was my mistake. For some reason (oncoming senility) I thought that age of empires was called 'age of kings' and that the newer version was 'age of empires' (actually called age of empires II).

Anyway, I played em all (no matter the name). They were all fun for a while.

[vmxa1]

Yes Kings was a better game in many respects, but I did not finish it. I did finish the first one (Age Of Empires).

Kings was just so beautifully done (for that time), but I ran out of gas.

[StupidLlama]

aoc

My favorite game though not anymore was age of kings the conquerors. I played AoC for 2 years every night and during the summers I would play till 3 a.m. Finally I couldnt take anymore Hun rushing and smashed the cd out of madness lol. Im still having withdrawls from the game too. Civ 3 isnt my favorite game only because you can quit and start over but you have to build up your civ all over again. Which is why I cant wait to get a new comp just for RoN

[binyo66]

Could someone tell me what is smac?
I enjoy CivII, CivIII, Romance of Three Kingdoms from Koei, and used to enjoy games series such as Krynn's and Buck Rogers.

[vmxa1]

Sid Meier's Alpha Centuria.

It is the place you sent your spaceship to in CivII.

[binyo66]

OK, thank u vmxa1