new review: # of playable civs revealed!!

[Pintello]

Hi Steve Clark,

I'm willing to bet that after a few times, most of those that are blindly excited about playing with 16 AI civs will get tired of it and will look to playing against the 5-7 UNIQUE AI civs.

If CTP 1/2 is any indication, this statement is completely incorrect. Most people once they figured out how to have more than 8 civs played all their games this way. Even I use 12 civs including barbs and that has more to do with not wanting to over tax my computer than anything else. Many people liked to play with the full 32 possible. Many settled for 24. Many 0thers settled on 16. Everybody has the number of civs they like to play with and in most cases it is larger than the 8 limit that comes with the game.

Timothy Pintello

[Steve Clark]

Good points from everyone (including you war4ever, my old friend). Guess we'll have to see if how well the AI manages its expansion and whether that many opponents will or will not lead to more micro-management and busywork.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Fer chrissake, I can't believe people are complaining about this one...

Theben (hey look, I spelled it right! ), look where you are. They'll find a way to complain about everything .

[uh Clem]

As noted, CTP allowed many more civs with some editing of a text file. Once you get used to it, it's the only way to go IMO. I don't think people should be forced to have that many, but it's a great option.

Keep in mind that with 16 civs, 3 or 4 won't survive the first few turns. They'll fall to either an agressive neighbor or the Barbs.

Early and mid-game empires are also more realistic. You can dominate your region or perhaps a continent at this stage, but not the globe, just as the Romans could dominate their world, but that world was only a small fraction of the earth's surface.

Global empires become possible with technological advances like faster transportation, etc, and that's when the big fish start swallowing up the smaller fish, and alliances become critical. Diplomacy is more interesting at this level.

As I said, I don't think you should HAVE to have that many, but I hope it's a possibility.

[War4ever]

Hi Steve (how's life treating you?)

I want to clarify this to everyone. I am not saying that i don't like the idea of 16 civs , i just want it done right.

Remember less can be more and if they screw it up that would really suck. Obviously the amount of civs in a game will always be an option. I don't want people to get their hopes up thinking 16 civs is all the rage.

As for MP.....16 civs forget it..... never happen (well it could but not more than once by the same people)

Remember SMAC's MP failure..... well 16 civs seems like a nightmare to me

[Inverse Icarus]

16 CIVS?

::grumbles and erases all his plans::

[Theben]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Theben (hey look, I spelled it right! )

Duly noted on calendar (!!)

btw you realize that there have been MORE recent newbies spelling my name Theban...I'll never understand.

[K.J.H.]

One thing I don't understand.

When I was playing with 7 civs in civ2, sometimes one civilization didn't even reach 1 AD. Let's say the Babylonians. There are six left.
When I captured a capitol many years later, a civil war created a new civilization, with the same colour of the Babylonians (let's say the Zulu's). Then there are seven again.

How is this working in Civ 3? When I capture a capitol the Babylonians appear again, because there are 16 civs and you can play all them at once?

[Stefu]

My guess is that they are divided to 'good' and 'evil' Babylonians.

You can tell them apart, because the 'evil' Babylonian leader has a little goatee.

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by K.J.H.

One thing I don't understand.



When I was playing with 7 civs in civ2, sometimes one civilization didn't even reach 1 AD. Let's say the Babylonians. There are six left.

When I captured a capitol many years later, a civil war created a new civilization, with the same colour of the Babylonians (let's say the Zulu's). Then there are seven again.



How is this working in Civ 3? When I capture a capitol the Babylonians appear again, because there are 16 civs and you can play all them at once?

One way they could to it is when a civs capitol gets captured, that civ loses all cities it has captured from oither civs. These cities go back to their former civs, and if that former civ is dead, it should reemerge again.

[Rasputin]

ahhhhh Diplo game heaven !!!!!!!!

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Grumbold


What about players who always wants to play white or cyan because they are easiest to spot on the minimap no matter which Civ they play. FIRAXIS are doomed if they do and doomed if they don't. Go figure

A good point - indeed, this is one of the reasons I often pick the white civ. Perhaps Firaxis should let the player pick a colour, with the default colour always being the same for a particular civ... but in any case, since there is often going to be e.g. a blue civ in the game anyway, and in Civ 1 and 2 especially the blue cities were difficult to spot on the brown minimap, perhaps they should consider marking the cities more clearly on the minimap, e.g. with white/black borders like in SMAC.

[Roman]

Oh my word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is the best piece of news possible about the game!!!!!

Unfortunately I have no access to the internet over the summer, but I have managed to get on for a minute or two and it was well worth it, thanks to this info!!!!

[Fidel]

Originally posted by War4ever
Well 16 civs eh? I suppose i should be jumping for joy! I doubt i will be though. Civ2 as it stands doesn't allow the ai to build properly. The ai has no concept of expansion. Putting 16 civs on a map as Steve Clark suggests is just ludicrous. As he has done the math, there is no way the ai will expand properly if they stay with the current AI expansion.

Civs within close proximity will vanish ala the Egyptians vs the Carthaginians on the World Map. While 16 civs sounds neat..... and believe me it does, i seriously hope that the AI is significantly more advanced than the current civ2 model is.

Whats the point of conquering 12 mini civs? Give me 7 well spaced civs with equal starting positions and an ai which expands aggressively and i will be more amused.

Oh and anyone listening..... for MP can you please give us small random maps which aren't full of mountains......... nor shaped like something under a petri dish from biology class

I want more civs...... but not at the cost of half of them dying off by 2000BC

well they promised better map generators and better AI. i really do not know why you address AI problem via max number of civs.

actually, more civs are good way to constrain human player who usually better exploits free space and who might now have to be more agressive initially to get what he wants.

i also played stupid ctp with more civs and it sucked less on those occassions. would have played it with 32 if the comp allowed me to....(slow pc)

[ancient]

you know, if they include 16 civs at once they will most likely have larger maps also! id imagine about twice the size of the ones in civ2..