Tweet
What I Think About Civilization 3
Jeff Morris Said:
We're on our third alpha version at the time of this writing. Civ III should hit beta within 2-3 weeks. There is an internal deadline, but when the game will hit shelves hasn't been specifically pinned.
It appears that the core concept, graphics and game engine of Civilization 3 are all more or less finished. This means that the screenshots we have seen are proberly what the game will be like, unchanged. By every piece of information & media Firaxis’ have provided us, I personally feel that Civilization 3 does not deserve the title. As Yin mentioned the graphics are very unrealistic and I believe they could have been improved. However Firaxis have not released enough confirmed information and multimedia about the game for anyone to draw to conclusions, Civ 3 might simply not be what it appears to be.
If you don’t want to read my complete review, please comment on the section above.
I’d like to start by saying I have owned Civilization for 6 years, and Civilization 2 for 3 years and am very impressed by both games, as I mentioned before, if you took a look at a Civ 1 screenshot, you proberly wouldn’t be impressed, but look at how good it is. This goes the same for Civ 3, we currently hardly know anything about the game. Since I bought CTP2, last year, the game company that designs a game must be one I trust, I think that Firaxis are making the same impression as Activision, but I could be wrong. Currently the only game company I trust is Rareware, because they have never built a ‘bad’ game, the history of Firaxis is much better than Activision, if Sid Meier was leading the project I suppose I would put quite a bit of trust into Civ 3.
Yin Said:
For those of you who were looking for something radically different from Civ 2, look elsewhere. While the additions of Culture and Resources sounded good on paper, in fact they seem to have added more tedious micromanagement at the expense of any strategic decisions. First, the concept of Culture is a tricky one at best, and Firaxis deserves credit for taking it head on. Unfortunately, the best they could come up with is the equivalent of "Making more and more of certain types of buildings will spread your influence over the map." What does this mean in game play terms? Obvious, isn't it? You'll be tempted to literally stuff your cities with building after building just to see how far your cultural influence can spread.
Still unsure of what the game might turn out to be I’m sadly believing Yin is right. It is very hard to create a game such as civilization, to manage trade, military, science, culture, economy, game play and graphics. If Firaxis for one second think there is something not right about the game, they should immediately delay it and fix it. I don’t care when the game is released, as long as it’s the game that should be ‘Civilization 3’. Nevertheless Culture is what Civ & Civ 2 lacked greatly, you could choose any civilization, and there would be no difference, they are all basically the same. It seems to me that a possible case might possibly be: where Civ 2 fell, Civ 3 rose, but where Civ 2 rose Civ 3 fell. Firaxis should consider improving one thing at the cost of another very carefully.
This image looks like previous Civ games, well slightly better. But the modern era and other parts of the game look much worse, not to mention that they could work on the screen above. Graphics don’t bother me to the extent that game play does. If they had a game play calculator that told Firaxis how much ‘fun’ Civ 3 opposes to Civ 2 was, I would be expecting no less. Will we be disappointed be Civ 3? Well it’s nearly impossible to tell, Yin and other people seem to get their hopes to too high, the truth is I’ve seen movies, screenshots and reviews of thousands of games and not one was the same as the clips and screens showed. So I suggest we all wait until the game is released, Firaxis are obviously going to ignore pessimism. It all gets down to them making money, and will they release patches, mods, scenarios, for free, who knows?
It is hard for me to accept that whenever someone makes a statement to Firaxis like ‘I hate Civ specific units’; they always give an answer like ‘you can easily turn them off’. They have an answer for everything; surely they have some flaws in the game, unless they have truly fixed everything. I’d like a question to the art director at Firaxis, ‘do you feel that the game is the best game it can possibly be?' If he can say yes to that then I will be satisfied, but if he sais no, then I think there should be a delay. Some people may want to realise that Firaxis’ games don’t have very good graphics, so perhaps this is the best they can do. What I would like to see though is customisability. The ability to change the graphics, and other aspects of the game. How does the game ‘play’ is another thing that is important to me, if the game runs smoothly but has bad graphics then that’s not a problem. Civilization is not a game that needs superb graphics, only a realistically presented interface.
We're on our third alpha version at the time of this writing. Civ III should hit beta within 2-3 weeks. There is an internal deadline, but when the game will hit shelves hasn't been specifically pinned.
It appears that the core concept, graphics and game engine of Civilization 3 are all more or less finished. This means that the screenshots we have seen are proberly what the game will be like, unchanged. By every piece of information & media Firaxis’ have provided us, I personally feel that Civilization 3 does not deserve the title. As Yin mentioned the graphics are very unrealistic and I believe they could have been improved. However Firaxis have not released enough confirmed information and multimedia about the game for anyone to draw to conclusions, Civ 3 might simply not be what it appears to be.
If you don’t want to read my complete review, please comment on the section above.
I’d like to start by saying I have owned Civilization for 6 years, and Civilization 2 for 3 years and am very impressed by both games, as I mentioned before, if you took a look at a Civ 1 screenshot, you proberly wouldn’t be impressed, but look at how good it is. This goes the same for Civ 3, we currently hardly know anything about the game. Since I bought CTP2, last year, the game company that designs a game must be one I trust, I think that Firaxis are making the same impression as Activision, but I could be wrong. Currently the only game company I trust is Rareware, because they have never built a ‘bad’ game, the history of Firaxis is much better than Activision, if Sid Meier was leading the project I suppose I would put quite a bit of trust into Civ 3.
Yin Said:
For those of you who were looking for something radically different from Civ 2, look elsewhere. While the additions of Culture and Resources sounded good on paper, in fact they seem to have added more tedious micromanagement at the expense of any strategic decisions. First, the concept of Culture is a tricky one at best, and Firaxis deserves credit for taking it head on. Unfortunately, the best they could come up with is the equivalent of "Making more and more of certain types of buildings will spread your influence over the map." What does this mean in game play terms? Obvious, isn't it? You'll be tempted to literally stuff your cities with building after building just to see how far your cultural influence can spread.
Still unsure of what the game might turn out to be I’m sadly believing Yin is right. It is very hard to create a game such as civilization, to manage trade, military, science, culture, economy, game play and graphics. If Firaxis for one second think there is something not right about the game, they should immediately delay it and fix it. I don’t care when the game is released, as long as it’s the game that should be ‘Civilization 3’. Nevertheless Culture is what Civ & Civ 2 lacked greatly, you could choose any civilization, and there would be no difference, they are all basically the same. It seems to me that a possible case might possibly be: where Civ 2 fell, Civ 3 rose, but where Civ 2 rose Civ 3 fell. Firaxis should consider improving one thing at the cost of another very carefully.
This image looks like previous Civ games, well slightly better. But the modern era and other parts of the game look much worse, not to mention that they could work on the screen above. Graphics don’t bother me to the extent that game play does. If they had a game play calculator that told Firaxis how much ‘fun’ Civ 3 opposes to Civ 2 was, I would be expecting no less. Will we be disappointed be Civ 3? Well it’s nearly impossible to tell, Yin and other people seem to get their hopes to too high, the truth is I’ve seen movies, screenshots and reviews of thousands of games and not one was the same as the clips and screens showed. So I suggest we all wait until the game is released, Firaxis are obviously going to ignore pessimism. It all gets down to them making money, and will they release patches, mods, scenarios, for free, who knows?
It is hard for me to accept that whenever someone makes a statement to Firaxis like ‘I hate Civ specific units’; they always give an answer like ‘you can easily turn them off’. They have an answer for everything; surely they have some flaws in the game, unless they have truly fixed everything. I’d like a question to the art director at Firaxis, ‘do you feel that the game is the best game it can possibly be?' If he can say yes to that then I will be satisfied, but if he sais no, then I think there should be a delay. Some people may want to realise that Firaxis’ games don’t have very good graphics, so perhaps this is the best they can do. What I would like to see though is customisability. The ability to change the graphics, and other aspects of the game. How does the game ‘play’ is another thing that is important to me, if the game runs smoothly but has bad graphics then that’s not a problem. Civilization is not a game that needs superb graphics, only a realistically presented interface.
Have they ever played civ1 or civ2? 
Comment