First Impressions

[Zealot]

Originally posted by BlueHooHoo
From personal experience I have found Civ 3 to be pretty stable; I haven't experienced one crash in 3 or 4 days of playing on three different PC's with fairly different hardware specifications (Win XP and '98). I know its early days and there will be bugs/crashes and configuration issues, but so far so good.

I just have this tiny little huge curiosity! Wich color are the Editor's background windows on Win XP? I know that on previous Win, they are grey. But since Win XP has that new color (let me call it beige, don't know if it's correct) for background, I would like to know...

Call it a fetiche if you want to, but I want to know!
Please!

[Indiana Jones]

Played for 7 hours yesterday. I like the borders and the way resources are used. I am having problems keeping my science output up, but hopefully I learn the ropes.

I haven't had any crashes, though I am running a high end system.

[LarryM]

I've played about 8 hours (family and work have limited my playing time, alas). I reported a few impressions yesterday; here are a few more.

(1) Research is slow; I've started two games so far, both just into the Medieval age; in both, I've been behind the computer civs, even though I've concentrated on science.

(2) The game is quite challenging on Monarch (King) level. One of my civs is 6th, and getting hammered by the #1 Civ; the other is second, in good shape, but several other Civs are competitive.

(3) Initial impressions of the AI are good. I've been attacked in one of the games; the AI did a decent job, concentrating its troops, avoiding strong points, attacking my infrastructure. OTOH, in one game, the AI built a city in a gap between two of my strongest cities (I left the gap because it was a marginal city site). It was assimilated into my civilization pretty quickly.

(4) The city assimilation, btw, is quite cool, and makes playing a peaceful/ cultural game a lot more fun.

(5) I mentioned in my last post that corruption is quite high. Its even worse than I thought; its bad even under Republic, though less so. I haven't built the Hidden Palace yet, but it looks like it will be a must for all but the most compact civilizations.

(6) If you like to have a significant amount of time to build your civ before meeting up with other civs, you will need to play on a bigger map (bigger than the normal map) or with fewer Civs. It get crowded real fast.

(7) The game is sometimes quite slow on my P500 with 64 MB RAM.

[Stuie]

First Impressions

Well, I have one game of Civ3 under my belt (a rather pathetic loss around 500AD playing on Prince/Regent) and a second game under way (playing on Warlord; Prince was a humbling experience, and I usually played and won Civ2 on Emperor, just for comparison). So, here are my impressions - trying not to repeat a lot of other stuff I've seen. For the record, I'm running the game on a 1.1Ghz Athlon, 256mb RAM, 32mb GeoforceMX Video Card, Windows 98SE.

1. Interface. The new interface has only caused me minor problems - my bigger problem is not being able to quickly find answers in the manual. Sure the manual is thick and has an index, but if you are trying to find out how to queue items for building it may take a few minutes (minutes I could have spent playing the game! It's shift-click to queue items for those who are curious). Most other things about the interface I already knew from following the forums for the past few months. Having gotten used to the interface, I like it.

2. 16 Civs, Huge Map, VERY COOL. It is rather humbling to see the occassional "Most Advanced" list or "Strongest Military" list or "Largest Civ" list appear and not even be on it! They only show the top 8 civs, and I managed to appear on "Strongest Military" in my first game (coming in 6th....) before the Babylonians decided my lack of interest in trade needed to be "corrected". Corrected militarily, that is. Then the Greeks started crowding me and it was all down hill from there. I did manage to beat up the Zulus a little before succumbing to the Babylonians.

3. Combat is fun, and I like the animations. The units throw up their arms and cheer whenever they go up in experience (regular-->veteran-->elite). I haven't seen anything unnerving in combat - no lopsided results, but I also haven't made it very much out of the Ancient era. No leaders yet. Cities are HARD to take - I'm trying to mass catapults outside of Thebes and coordinate the assault with my legions for best results. Everything about combat so far makes sense to me.

4. Tech Development. Someone else was complaining that it went too slow in the early game. HOORAH!! This is exactly what I hoped for; between the slow down in research and the required techs to leave an era, it feels like ancient warfare can finally make a difference in a civ game. I've really been able to concentrate on some good fun ancient warfare without me or my enemies rushing to get gunpowder. What a blast!

Criticisms:
1. My wrist hurts. But that's probably more from my non-ergonomic workplace than from Civ3.
2. I'm tired. Only 4 1/2 hours of sleep last night. Hmmm... wonder if I can get away with less tonight.
3. I'm at work.
4. Seriously, I haven't gotten far enough into a game to come up with any real criticisms. Minor stuff: The AI can drive a really hard bargain in trades, but that doesn't bother me. Manual Index could be more comprehensive, or at least have a section for all the hotkeys. The barbarians (I always play with Raging Hordes) don't seem all that fierce. Think I've lost one unit to them, while destroying uncounted masses of them and sacking several camps.

Nothing else right now. If anyone has questions I'll try to answer them, but I'm at work and far away from my computer at home!

[Master Marcus]

Research is effectively slower than Civ II - when most things being "equal"- and the AI expand like rabbits . You can rapidly ascent when having Monarchy or Republic, but until then in Ancient era you cannot really expand at large. Despotism and 2 pop cost for settlers can make me tedious even at my actual first game ( Reagent level, that's Prince ). Will find in time new ways to thrive, but I still find the unbalancing progression after mid-game next to the slow beginning, like previous games, though the AI is stronger. Didn't find any major bugs, and the game runs perfectly - no crash with a PIII 1 Gh.

[Boris Godunov]

Okay, day two--more impressions. Once again I played from about 6pm to 1am. In my current game, I'm at Chieftan level on a large random map as the Germans.

First, the stunningly bad news--there is NO way to determine specific civ starting locations on a map when making your own maps. You can designate a site as a generic "player start," but you can't say what civ starts where. This is tremendously disappointing. How can one possibly make a scenario without the basics of determining WHERE the civs start? I hope I'm wrong here and there's something I missed...but I don't think I did. This is a MAJOR design flaw of the editor, as it renders scenario-making almost pointless. Historical scenarios would be impossible to design.

In fact, I didn't see any means of using the map editor to add techs to a civ, to add cities for them on the map and edit the content and size of the cities, to place units, etc. This further renders scenario-making pointless and impossible.

OK...on to my game...further items of interest:

ICS is alive and well, and it is the AI players--all of them--who practice it. It's 1570 AD in my game now, science is at medieval level, and virtually EVERY piece of land is taken by a city now. After obliterating the Russians, I have had to race the English to gobble up the free land. Barring islands, there's nowhere left to expand on the continents.

Military Alliances are badly misnamed--they aren't "alliances" at all. All you're doing is bribing one civ to attack another. I was at war with the French, and since they were hitting Russia as well, I joined in a Military Alliance with Russia. Three turns later, the Romans entered into a Military Alliance with Russia against ME. So it's not an "alliance" at all.

Also, the AI has a looooong memory. Earlier, I had gotten into a Military Alliance with France vs. Russia. A few turns later, after thrashing the Russians, I made peace with Catherine. Apparently this is violating the Military Alliance. So now France was p.o.'d at me for centuries, and whenever I tried to make an alliance with England to help in wars against the Romans etc., they refused saying they remembered my "treachery" against the French. You'd think that if I'd made the alliance I could make peace without repercussions with my ally, but apparently not.

Overseas invasions are extremely difficult, as conquering a city doesn't help...being so far from my capital, the corruption and waste is astronomical, and the city is constant disorder. I took Helipolis from Egypt, and have basically two units (one being an army) fending off the oncoming hordes until reinforcements can arrive via caravel from my homeland. I can't even produce a courthouse in the city, disorder or not, as the waste gives me only 1 production shield...so it would take 75 turns to build a courthouse.

Oh...Armies are cool and vital to an offensive campaign. Just choose your components wisely. It moves at the speed of the slowest movement. I have two armies...One is a well-rounded Knight/Long Bowman/Swordsman. The other is 3 Knights. Combining their attacks with cannons is pretty effective. Otherwise, taking a city is an exercise in unit slaughter.

So far I've earned 3 great leaders, built 2 armies and used 1 to hurry Bach's cathedral. I hope I still get some in the later stages.

I am unhappy because tonight I simply MUST do laundry, which will take away precious minutes of gameplay time!

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by miniloops
I am soooooooooo gutted tht the Uk release date is the 16th. I was so looking forward to getting it today! However, maybe Foraxis will iron out early bugs before it gets here!

Yeah right!

Tell yourself that you would be one of the people for whom the unpatched game is unplayable and hope the first patch comes out on the 15th. Then you've effectively lost nothing.

[Spatzimaus]

(In regards to me saying I had beaten three civs that started on my continent using Immortals)

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune

I must admit this scares me a little, because it sounds way too easy. Hope this is Chieftain or Warlord level?

Warlord, but never underestimate the difference between 3 attack (Swordsman) and 4 attack (Immortal). That fourth point makes all the difference; even if they have city walls, every unit before Pikeman is at a disadvantage in a 1-on-1. I had all my cities churning out Immortals, trying to grab as much as I could before war weariness set in. It's what that UU is for, after all.

Downside: Immortals don't upgrade to anything. Once the other side gets gunpowder they're practically worthless. That's what you get for having a stone age UU, although it helped me beat the Americans, long before they could make their F-15s.

[Dis]

please tell me about the navies. I'm a navy guy and have to know

I love naval warfare. I'm curious how much impact sea units. have

aww screw it I'm going to best buy right now.

[HatchetMan]

the amount of civ's is down to 16, yes,
but some of the goodyhuts refers to some other tribes with real names, like "Magyar" which is the
Hungarians. Like this was a tribe to small to become a "real" civilization. Just a detail, but small differences like this help
create a more sophisticated game environment

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Spatzimaus

Warlord, but never underestimate the difference between 3 attack (Swordsman) and 4 attack (Immortal). That fourth point makes all the difference; even if they have city walls, every unit before Pikeman is at a disadvantage in a 1-on-1. I had all my cities churning out Immortals, trying to grab as much as I could before war weariness set in. It's what that UU is for, after all.

Thanks for clearing that up; you are a pretty methodical player. Don´t forget to drop in later and tell us what happened after you won the game. Hope there are some nice goodies!

[HalfLotus]

I played for about 10 hours yesterday. I love it. The AI is MUCH smarter than Civ2. They were pilliging my roads and launching effective attacks. Thje goto command works! I can send a unit across an entire map and he'll follow roads! The no ZOC takes getting used to.
I had developed my entire continent and went looking for more. When I found another continent it was fully settled by AI. I traded maps with a few folks, and saw the entire world was settled by AI. Impressive.
The diplomacy in incredible. The AI is reasonable, but knows how to bargain. I was trading maps, resources, gold, you name it. How fun!

[Ralf]

Originally posted by HalfLotus
I traded maps with a few folks, and saw the entire world was settled by AI. Impressive.

In Civ-2 one bumped into late-game continents with huge areas of uninhabited no-mans-land, over and over again. Im glad that this have been 100% fixed in Civ-3.

By the way; Do one have access to all 20 surrounding food/shield/trade-tiles right from the start, as in Civ-2? Or, is one restrikted to 8 surrounding WORK-tiles (NOT the culture-border) at the begining? What triggers the work-area expansion?

[Mahdimael]

Your first city and every city after that starts with 0 culture points, which makes your borders and workable land the 8 squares around your city. Once your city has accrued 10 culture points, the borders expand to the normal 21 square area.

Note that what limits your city's workable squares is not the size of the city, but rather the borders. So if you had four cities like this:
X
X X
X

and the border surrounding all of them, then built a city in the middle, it would be able to work all of the tiles as soon as it was founded

[The Mad Viking]

Ralf- Someone playing said that you start with 8, and get 21 when you have your first cultural expansion.

Military Alliances are badly misnamed--they aren't "alliances" at all. All you're doing is bribing one civ to attack another. I was at war with the French, and since they were hitting Russia as well, I joined in a Military Alliance with Russia. Three turns later, the Romans entered into a Military Alliance with Russia against ME. So it's not an "alliance" at all.

If this is typical it would be a little dissappointing. Maybe you need to treat your allies better to prevent backstabbing.

Also, the AI has a looooong memory. Earlier, I had gotten into a Military Alliance with France vs. Russia. A few turns later, after thrashing the Russians, I made peace with Catherine. Apparently this is violating the Military Alliance. So now France was p.o.'d at me for centuries, and whenever I tried to make an alliance with England to help in wars against the Romans etc., they refused saying they remembered my "treachery" against the French. You'd think that if I'd made the alliance I could make peace without repercussions with my ally, but apparently not.

This is very disappointing. I don't really have a problem with the French being ticked that you made peace with their enemy- but it is ludicrous that the English would care a century later. I was hoping for an alliance / reputation system where the AI and the human player could expect the same reaction to the same behaviour.

Whining now complete. Everything else about what they gave us sounds excellent, thanks Boris for the excellent posts.

I sure hope a proper editor is coming shortly... expecially since they promised!