My Review of Civ 3

[Mister Pleasant]

The review was was some funny stuff, Yin. And what's this facsination some people have with a big manual? Save some trees people! Just give me enough to get started and I'll figure it out. Wait! I know - a manual that details every alterable file and gets very specific about how to mod. But I guess that's asking to much. The manual that came with SMAC was pretty big, and had absolutely nothing about modding. It got tossed aside, never to get picked up again after 5 minutes.

I think that I shall never see
A manual as lovely as a tree
If they must, instead of great heft
Just give the damn thing as a PDF.

[Grumbold]

The fact that there has been a news blackout hints to me that they are currently in early beta. All these concepts that Dan admitted were not fully fleshed out are now being hammered down by the early beta team. The website is probably sitting there 90% complete but it will not be switched on until the broad balancing has been done. Once they are confident the majority of features are "done" then the text will be finalised, the proper screenshots embedded and the whole thing released for consumption. Hopefully Dan & co may then come back here and indulge in some more discussion. Alternatively they may decide that what we have to offer is minimal in comparison to the late betatesters who can actually wrestle with the real product.

2. A manual doesn't have to be big to be good - but it needs to be big enough. Civ is a complicated game to get to grips with for beginners, and Firaxis surely must have hopes of attracting at least some completely new players. Then the experts just want to know the hard details about how this version differs from the last. Just as long as it comes on paper not some darn PDF file you can't read while you look at the game screen or take to the bathroom with you

[Colonâ„¢]

"The manual that came with SMAC was pretty big..."

Ever seen the mighty Sim City 2000 manual? The imperial civ1 manual? Or the bulky Railroad Tycoon manual? Those were manuals for real men, unlike that petty SMAC manual of yours.

[yin26]

THE MANUAL

After spending the past few days playing the game further, I found the manual in most respects to be quite helpful. First, the lesson from SMAC was obviously learned as there is a complete index in the back, making searching for particular explanations on even minor elements of the game a breeze.

My only complaint here is that there still isn't enough statistics outlining the various strengths and weaknesses of units, production bonuses, etc. While this info can be found easily on the CD itself, including 10-12 spreadsheets of info in the manual itself would have been a pleasant treat.

[TechWins]

Yin, that's too bad I thought we might actually get a really good manual. I mean it seems good but not great. The Civ2MGE manual was good but not great. The Civ2MGE manual did lack some information that would have been usefull to have in the manual.

I'm not sure why but when I bought SMAC a few months back (April?) I didn't get an actuall manual. All I got is a crappy manaul on Acrobat Reader. Maybe that is another reason why I don't like SMAC, actually I don't like the sci-fi stuff.

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant


I think that I shall never see
A manual as lovely as a tree
If they must, instead of great heft
Just give the damn thing as a PDF.

NO WAY!!!

I love my manuals. I bought AC 14.99 used instead of 9.99 JC in THE SAME STORE because it had a manual, and the JC would only have it PDF.

I print out PDF's when I can't get the manual, and thumb through them in bed. it's not the same as a bound and printed manual, though. I always go for the real thing.

[TechWins]

I love my manuals. I bought AC 14.99 used instead of 9.99 JC in THE SAME STORE because it had a manual, and the JC would only have it PDF.

That's why I didn't get a manual.

Firaxis I hope you're reading this, I will pay an extra $15 for a great manual that is bounded and printed out. I'm going to spell this out to you very clearly. Example- A non-printed out manual I would only pay $40 for the game. A printed out manual I will pay $55 for the game. I'm not saying that I would only pay $40 for the game, I'm just giving a hypothetical number. I'm not sure how much that manual will cost you to make but I'm sure you could make a hefty profit. Understand???

[TCO]

Originally posted by campmajor!
Yin, unless you had the privilege to really play civ3 instead of dreaming about it, don't you think it's a little premature to post a review on it?

This week of silence must have been hard on you. You probably used all your frustration caused by not-posting on Poly to write this masterpiece.

Though I think this post was premature, it must admit it is thorough. If you would just wait till the release and then post such a review I would be impressed!

Actually Yin loves to b*tch, but even more so, he loves to pre-emptively b*tch. It's a great review (honestly), but too bad we won't get to see it after the game comes out. With CTP, he swore up and down that he would take the time to do a review (after wasting plenty of time on the boards) but than he changed his mind and never wrote it...

[yin26]

The problem with CtP is it sucked so bad I couldn't even FORCE myself to play it long enough to write a credible review. I like your "pre-emptively *****" tag, though...that has a nice ring. For CtP, I should have said: "Assuming the game isn't a TOTAL PIECE OF CRAP, I'll write a review." Sure, I could have written a great and negative review if I had wanted to really work it all out and give good examples, but most people already knew the game sucked so I wouldn't be adding much.

I do regret not plowing through the game and writing a review. Ahh, salt on the wounds...

I have a feeling, though, I'll play Civ3 no matter what happens if only to see how The List did or did not affect the game. There's also an outside chance I'll lead or participate in the Bug Hunter Project. So I would think that I'll have a real review of Civ3 up at that time. However, I have learned my lesson:

"Assuming the game isn't a TOTAL PIECE OF CRAP, I'll write a review."

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by Father Beast


About your review: I read this and can't help but wonder, are you one of those guys that thought civ2 sucked?

along those lines, I thoght I'd post this:

I was thinking what Yin must have thought about civ2 when it came out…

[Yin's (fictional) review of civ2]

If You've played Civ (and what TBS gamer hasn't?) You know something about the history of this game. You know that the game was made by Bruce Shelley, and given the name of Sid Meier, the founding father of computer gaming. Since then, Microprose has put out a number of similarly themed games, but failed to recapture the elusive Civ magic.

This Gave Microprose the confidence to hand the reins back to Sid Meier (now sans Shelley) and have released Civ2 in time for the 1996 Christmas season. If this Christmas release seems like a warning sign to you, unfortunately, you're right. Just install the game (on one of those newfangled CD's) and find out what the critics mean by "Civ 1.5".

Despite some moments of brilliance, a lot of what die hard civers is, sadly, missing. So, with this lump of quartz in our stockings, the optimist in me suggests "If you look at it right, it does look sort of diamond-like". Then again, I guess I should consider just how much squinting is necessary.

GAMEPLAY
For those of you who wer looking for something radically different from Civ, look somewhere else. While the concepts of Damage and improved trade looked good on paper, In fact they seem to have added more tedious micromanagement at the expense of any strategic decisions. First, while the concept of damage seems interesting, all they could do was make damaged units weaker, and only able to be "healed" by either sitting around for several turns doing nothing (great fun), or by sitting out a single turn in a city with the appropriate building. And guess what? There's not one, but three of these buildings. What does this mean in gameplay terms? Obvious, isnt it? You'll be tempted to make sure you have all 3 of these buildings in every city to keep your units up to snuff. Then a creeping question will settle in: "Was this ever challenging or fun? Is there even a point to this?". In a sense it IS fun, for a while. After all, it takes a streamlined economy to to support all those buildings, and one begins to feel that Civ2 is like a grand Santa Paravia or SimCity. Then the frustration sets in as a damaged chariot spends 12 turns limping back to your nearest city one square at a time, and you'll discover that all those buildings are next to useless a lot of the time.

As for the improved trade, what's it for? You guessed it. Making money. This DOES lead to some fun decision making: "Hmmm, this city supplies gold and demands hides, so if I can find a city that supplies hides and demands gold, I can make even more money". Of course, this would be made all the more interesting if your computer opponents somehow took advantage of this situation themselves, but as you'll see in the next section, you'll often be wanting to either give the computer every chance it can get in order to craft yourself a challenge - or to quickly put it out of its misery.

DIPLOMACY
Cease fire, neutrality, and alliance have been added to the old conditions of war and peace, and peace conditions mean they can't put units inside your city limits. Unfortunately, the computer seems unable to recognize these details. What this means is that you'll continually have to nag your neighbors to get off your lawn, like some disrespectful neighborhood kids. If you're allied, this gets worse as they then have the RIGHT to set up their lawn chair in your driveway when you're trying to get to work. This is a bad situation initially, and it gets abominable when two city limits overlap, which happens all the time. Eventually you'll just want to go to war with these trespassers as the only effective way to get them off your land. While it is possible to make good use of this system, it requires so much annoying micromanagement that I found myself annihilating a neighbor several times just to save myself a few turns of yelling at them. The computer seems utterly unable to repect your limits.

Which brings us to the other side of Diplomacy. Despite these new options, civs will still come to you demanding advances and money just like in the old Civ, and alliances are essentially worthless as you allies can't be counted on to actually attack your enemies. You also have a reputation, but it is completely worthless as it doesn't change how the computer treats you (except for giving it a way to insult you), and the computer cheerfully sneak attacks without any regard to its own reputation.

SOUND
Not bad, but if you've played either Civ for windows or Civnet, you've already heard it. The sounds seem as if they've been directly imported without improvement. Nothing new here.

GRAPHICS
This looks to be the place where Sid and Co. tried the hardest, and failed most miserably. There are several "movies" included, from small wonder films to an animated high council giving bad advice. To a one, these are poorly produced. There's also a new city view which is pointless to look at since there's no way of telling what those buildings poking above the trees are. The unit and tile graphics areplaced almost without any changes int a new, and confusing, diagonal-on point of view (and no, you can't fix it). Perhaps Microprose is satisfied, but I for one wish they had lifted their heads out of the office for just a moment and taken a look at some modern games like Myst, and see what CAN be done today.

AI
I left this part for last, because the faulty AI in civ2 is its most glaring failure. The only times I was impressed was when the computer refused to trade techs when it was building a wonder. This was great. It ended up making no difference, as I was able to steal the tech anyway. This one moment hardly makes up for masses of bad decisions, inexplicable war and peace declarations, and general idiocy of the AI. Also, and this is very important, EVERY trick that worked against the AI in Civ works EVEN BETTER in civ2, mainly due to the fact that the computer is so incompetent at making trade routes or taking care of its damaged units that it starts crippled and stays that way. Frankly, I am stunned that such vital requirements for the AI seemed to be overlooked entirely. Again, I might not be so critical if the computer took any real note of diplomacy but, as noted, the computer is either a trespasser or a warmongerer with little or no intelligent moments in between.

MULTIPLAYER… anyone?
Since we already had multiplayer support with civnet, it would be natural to have multiplayer in Civ2, right? No such luck. Mysteriously, any sort of multiplayer is completely missing from civ2, and even hot seat play is nonexistent. Perhaps Microprose is of the opinion that Civ2 will only be played by people by themselves in the cave of their computer dungeon.

CONCLUSION
Overall, while Civ2 promises a great deal over Civ in a number of fascinating areas, the game simply fails to deliver due to horrendous AI and shoddy implementation of features.

While there has been some talk of including multiplayer into civ2 in a future add on, I would consider paying even a few more dollars on this pathetic gameplay an insult to MY intelligence. Barring any miraculous patches, I'm done with this game. Or as the AI says to me in negotiations, "perhaps if you threw in some advances to sweeten the deal". Well, Microprose, If you make some REAL advances to this game, then I might be willing to give it a second look.

[thank you, facsimile of Yin]

hopefully that will give us some perspective,

[Grumbold]

Nice one FB

[yin26]

Father Beast:

LOL! That was really funny and nicely done. Actually, I thought Civ 2 was awesome. One of the problems is I'm looking for Civ 3 to represent that same leap, which might well be impossible, but I don't think so. Anyway, what I actually think of Civ 2 is irrelevant I suppose since your point was well made.

But I, of course, recognize sleight of hand when I see it.

[Father Beast]

Yin:
I was going to do one in the vein of Rah's review also, but realized it wouldn't work, since I was describing the game as it was actually released , rather than a vision of what it's like.

The truth is, reading your review, I could see the genius behind your ranting, and even though your review was negatively biased, it made me want to go out and get the game. Ahhh, but it's not out yet.

In doing this civ2 review of yours, I realized how little civ2 was improved from civ, especially compared to the proposed improvements in civ3. I may now be inclined to think of it more as civ 1.5 even now.

I took a negative attitude in doing your review for civ2, but everything I said there was accurately describing the game. and the potential for ripping it apart for shoddy AI and lack of implementations is far higher than for civ3. And I still think civ2 is an awesome game.

So, thank you Yin, by your negative review of civ3, you've given me more confidence than ever that this will be a totally awesome game.

Thanks for giving me the boost.

[rah]

Well Done FB.

Writing a happy happy one would be boring unless enough humor could be added. If I get bored, maybe i'll try one.

And yes from your review, you'd think the game was awful,

Well Done

RAH

[rah]

Ok, I was bored.
Not that good, but hopefully it will provide some entertainment.

My review of CIV II

After playing CIV on my old NES machine, I was looking for something more. When I saw CIVII, I quickly rushed out and spent my life's savings on a computer. Top of the line 286 machine. I even splurged for extra memory and disk space.

I was hoping for a game with the same feel and I wasn't dissapointed. While there were a lot of new features, they had faithfully reproduced my baby, it was almost like they had used a lot of the same code. I figured since I was an expert on CIV that I would be able to skip reading the manual and leaped right into a Deity game. There were so many new things that I quickly retired and picked up the manual. It beat the snot out of the manual that came with my nes game. There was a couple of hundred pages of top notch information. Within 15 minutes, I was an expert again. The index could have used a little more work. Fortunately I didn't need it.

They added a handful of new "SPECIALTY" unit that in hindsight, I can't believe weren't in civ, especially the unit that looks like a skier. Cool looking unit. And the improvement to the combat system rocked. No longer would my battleships lose to a lowly warrior fortified in a fortress on a mountain. That always bugged me about CIV. And they added damage so a single chariot can't take out an entire empire without resting. Of course, the new chariots are kinda wimpy. You can even see the damage on the unit icon. And during the combat you can watch the unit damage pile up. The combats go slow enough that there's an added element of suspense as both units get down in the red. This is a true revolution in wargames.

Sadly to say they eliminated some of the loopholes that made CIV somewhat easy. No longer can you sell your palace off and get a free one with your next city. I made a lot of money that way. I'm sure that they playtested this game to the max so we won't find any more loopholes like that.

I don't know where to start talking about all the new specialty graphics. There's a throne room that as you progress you can make improvements to. I can't wait to see how much more modern it will get. I'll never tire of this feature. I was laughing out loud listening to the improved council. Their advice will help me successfully finish the game. And the foreign adviser is HOT. The new wonder movies are so good that they could be broadcast as specials on PBS. When I watched the one for the Hoover Damn, I was proud to be an American.

The board graphics have also been improved. I don't have to squint anywhere near as much as I used to to differentiate the units. The terrain features are so consistent that I don't have to double click on them to figure out what they are. (unless a river passes through it). The city icons even have little flags and you can see city wall when you build them. There was also a city view, but I couldn't real tell what it was trying to show. But I know it's important or they wouldn't have included it. Maybe it's in the manual.

I was a little disappointed with the AI, but it hasn't forgotten how to attack, every chance it gets it sends whatever it build in your direction. Maybe in Civ III they'll be able to figure out how to do a coordinated attack, or use aircraft carriers. If you're strong late in the game, you might as well forget about diplomacy. The AIs know you're in the lead and will even gang up on you. It was fun watching them sign all those secret alliance pacts. There must be a bug in the game because everytime they did it, a pop-up informed me. Not much of a secret there. Maybe they'll fix that in the first patch. Of course I worry that there will be so few problems that a patch won't be necessary. But all in all, once you get that far ahead, the AI isn't good enough to stop you. Of course, maybe I'm just that good. I was really impressed with the star race win movie. Using the theme from 2001 was a stroke of brilliance. I'm going to have to satisfy all the other win conditions to see what you get you do that.

I even read a rumor that if enough people buy the game that, in a few years, they would work on a version for multiplay. I'm going to tell all my friends. I would be willing to pay twice as much for just that feature. Maybe if I write letters, it would help.

THIS IS A MUST BUY 6 star game (5 just doesn't do it justice) Well back to playing. I'll be looking for CIV III sometime in 1998.

Rich