First Impressions

[Tventano]

First experiences

Having received the game yesterday (do not ask about total price with courier costs and taxes), and the LE box really looks nice. The manual is good, but the overview poster is disappointing. The CivII poster, which is still around here on my desk is really much better.

Starting up the game is good. The intro movie is certainly not better than the CivII version. Nice idea, but not so great. The game looks really good, reacts smoothly and I like the music, often special occasions are best recognized by some change in the music, very clear. Voice is completely missing, and after SMAC I was in fact expecting it, perhaps once they can make an expansion with a lot of voice in it.

I tried to get home early, but it was already almost five o'clock when I got finally home. I unpacked the game, and apart for getting something to eat and drink Im played continuously till about 4:30 am saterday morning. In fact I stopped not because the game was not good, but because I had hopelessly lost my first game at regent level. I will post in the Stories section about it. So this is a very good sign: the game is hopelessly addictive and quite different than earlier versions, it will take some time time to work out good strategies.

Some things did irritate me btw. The governors sometimes decide to build the most strange things. In the middle of a war they start building an aquaduct. In peace time a nice decision, but during war quite weird. Secondly he takes that decisions without consulting me and I did not found any preference that he should just always ask me what to build. As a default I would prefer what I just built, and not what he thinks is the best. He may tell me, and that with one click I can take the decision to follow his advice, but the default should be: continue as it was. He should act as an adviser, and only should be allowed to take decisions when the sovereign agrees on it.

It is difficult to see what units are in one stack. The only way I found is using the RMB. The current hitpoints of a unit I would have liked in the window at the rightbottom instead of only graphically indicated, which looks good btw.

Some options are quite difficult to find, and for some of them in the manual I could only find a key combination, if there is a button or menu for them I do not know.

So my final conclusion is that CivIII is definitely a very good addictive game and everyone should buy one. But at the same time Firaxis has some polishing to do and they have to do some userinterface testing, just based on analysis or design documents. They should check if all options can be found easily, and do work properly.

[4th^Horseman]

What can I say, I just downloaded Civ3 due to the gayness of the Australian release not co-inciding with the US (oh you important people) / UK release, but do not fear I have the game already on pre-order so as not to jip Sid etc. outta their hard earned dosh

My first impressions of the game are pretty good, but different in general startegy from Civ2. I been reading some stuff on the forums about choking points etc. and after a few unsucessful games I know what you mean
Resources I rekon are a ****en good idea, if you are in a war, chop off the arms and legs from the person (ie. kill their resources) and then beat 'em down easy style
anyhoo, thus far i'm impressed! Got other civs paying me money per turn (heheheh). Kick ass game

[playshogi]

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


Have you tried Clean Map (Shift+Ctrl+M)? It takes all of the terraforming and cities off the map, making finding resources much easier. Also, when the patch comes out, it will also remove units...

Great, but why do I have to scan the whole map? Can't my advisors just tell me X has 5 oil Y has 1 I have 0? Heck, I almost went to war for uranium not realizing my own guy was on top of one on a square in my own territory with no road.
If you make me scan the whole map, at least give me the choice to scan for only oil. I don't want to see silk and horses and ivory etc. when I'm looking for oil.

P.S. According the default rules, rubber is a resource with 0% chance of disappearing. Is that right?? Every other strategic resource except horses has a chance to disappear.

[Chowlett]

4th^Horseman - the UK release is late as well, don't forget. Don't lump us in with the US!

Originally posted by playshogi
P.S. According the default rules, rubber is a resource with 0% chance of disappearing. Is that right?? Every other strategic resource except horses has a chance to disappear.

That makes sense. I can't remember the exact list of resources, but horses breed, rubber comes from trees, and all the others are minerals, and thus finite, IIRC

[Ancientfool]

Well, I see a good game buried in here somewhere.... Besides the obvious fixes mentioned by others I think the following would be good.

An Editor option to allow flagging of units as destroyable via bombardment (for those who want ships, infantry or both to be blasted away).

Cultural city capture needs some fixing. I can see a 100ad german settlement being induced to join Rome due to superior culture but the german panzer divisions didnt give a **** about french culture when they took Paris. They didnt take one look at the Louvre and decide to denounce Hitler and start wearing berets. Cultural assimilation should have different effects depending on a cultures era (ancient, medieval, industrial, modern). Once you hit the industrial age you shouldnt see city defection from culture, at most you would see an occasional population loss (gained by neaby high culture civ). In the modern era this might result in a "brain drain" penalty where your best and brightest are being induced to leave for greener pastures.

But overall, 20th c. mexican cities dont defect to texas, individuals just migrate. Cultural superiority should have different effects in different eras.

[Solmyr]

On resources:

I do agree that they seem to be *too* scarce, even though I edited the game to make them more common. What's more, from what I've seen so far I have a suspicion that there's a hidden code which puts most strategic resources in AI territory, denying them to humans. I had a huge mountain range right next door, and was there iron in it? No, but the French had three deposits available to them.

So as a solution, make sure the resource distribution is really random. Plus, I would really like it if we were allowed to stockpile resources for future use. I mean, if you have 3 iron deposits, and aren't exporting them, you should be able to save some up in case you lose them at a later date.

[Zealot]

My first 2 hours of play

Finnaly, I got a copy of Civ3! And the excitement was really big! Was it was I expected? Did I like it?

Well, I have to say this is a new Civ game. Not Civ 2.5. It deserves the '3' mark.
I only played the tutorial, and I have to complain a lot about it. In CTP 1 (never played CTP2) the tutorial was really helpful. In Civ 3, it almost doesn't exist, because you get hardly any help. It said when to build a second city, It said that I needed to build colonies to get resources outside my borders, but didn't advise when or where was a good place to build a colony. So I haven't built any yet. Did see the russians with one on iron, though.

Another thing I have to complain about was that there was no online help to tell me that I could no longer make irrigations without being next to rivers or an irrigated tile. I presume you can't, but this makes coastal cities impossible to grow! I didn't discover harbors or anything that gives food, but it is also a problem to make "rural" cities. I think lakes should exist as rivers already exist. I also think workers should be able to build wells on grasslands and plains right from the start. And then some tech to allow them to build wells on hills and maybe deserts. This will be more fair to those cities that could be very far from any river.

Oh, one more thing:
Civ 3 is highly addicting!

[cutlerd]

First Second Impressions

Actually my first impressions having now finished a full game. I won't rehash what I posted earlier...none of the points from my original post have been changed.

I played a 16 civ warlord level game on a temperate, huge map, 70% water continental 4 billion year old world. I was the US and won the space race in 2006 AD by a hair's breadth (probably close to 5 turns) over the Greeks.

The game overall was FANTASTIC....probably the most draining and thinking-oriented gaming experience outside of face to face World in Flames WW2 board gaming.

Anyone who can should try a 16 civ game. The dynamics are amazing (use the HUGE map though). With 16 civs, you have to use the political system fully....I was wheeling and dealining, cringing and manipulating and backstabbing...sometimes to stay alive and sometimes to administer the coup de grace. And to my pleasant surprise, I found that the AI civs were never easy to take advantage of and they could be convinced to make reasonable trades when the timing was right. I even got other civs to give me 2 cities. Sometimes threats worked....sometimes not. I noticed that when a civ had a monopoly on a given resource (i.e. no others were available for trade...the price they offered for it rose considerably...great job!).

The resources I think are fine. They move the game and force conflict and don't allow you to park yourself on an island somewhere and race to a space victory. And if you are low on resources, you find yourself in situations that are nicely historical, like Japan in the first half of the 20th century.

Invasions in CIV3 are tougher, especially against a modern opponent. This because you don't have spies all over the place to really smash the opposition beachhead. Also, movement through enemy territory costs more than movement through friendly territory...even on rails. So simply invading an enemy land who is fully railed does not allow your armies to then run willy nilly through the enemy territory. Also, when you land from a transport, even with tanks, you stop for the turn. So you can be trapped on a beachhead if you are not careful. This makes realistic tactics like flanking paratroopers to cover the beachhead worthwhile.

I still have not seen too much of the Phalanx-kills-battleship stuff, though a few of those did happen. I personally think units more than 1 age removed should have almost no chance to do even minimal damage in combat, so I wouldn't mind a mod on this.

SOME ISSUES:

1. When you want to build a railroad, the railroad button says to type "R" when you move the cursor over the rail button. However, typing "R", while working fine for roads, would not get a single worker to build a railline. This is a bug I think.,

2. Corruption is a bit too harsh. I think corruption is necessary and I think it should be harsh, but not this harsh. On an island less than half the map away I had cities with 30 shields producing 1 a turn! 3% production is too much. Any city which is not in disorder and with courts and police stations should be always at 25% efficiency at least.

I do wonder though if replacing foreign population with native population (via workers) would help?

3. The maps need more rivers. If you want to say that you need rivers or lakes to irrigate pre electricity...that's fine....but either place more rivers on the map or allow hills to be irrigated (perhaps via an ancient civ advance called TERRACING). Otherwise, I had to restart a game as the only fresh water on the entire continent was a lake surrounded by hills and mountains. Not having any irrigable squares until electricity is a game breaker.

4. The AI civ fighters were well able to intercept my bombers....but I will be damned if any fighter or F-15 I had on air superiority ever intercepted a single AI bomber! Is there a bug here?

5. Like in CIV 2, units can airlift between cities with airports. It'd be really nice if it mentioned this in the pedia under airports or under a concept entry for airlifting. Unlike CIV2, for example, any number of units can airlift INTO a given city, but only 1 per turn may airlift FROM a given city. I am hard pressed to explain how a city can have such a limited capacity of planes embarking, but can theoretically handle 100's of units disembarking. I think the limit should be something like 3 units per airport coming and/or going.

6. The pedia has an error in the Man of War, giving it the same ratings as a frigate.

7. Some of the later war units need to come in earlier or the space race advances need to be separated from the later military units. For example, by the time paratroopers and aegis cruisers come around the game is pretty much over and most civs can be in space or so close to space that the new units don't affect the game at all.

Devin

[cutlerd]

Manhattan Project

Forgot one thing.

If you raze the city that built the Manhattan Project, no one can build nukes. Not a good thing IMO. Pandora's Box and all that. Certainly a bug.

Devin

[Brutus66]

5. Like in CIV 2, units can airlift between cities with airports. It'd be really nice if it mentioned this in the pedia under airports or under a concept entry for airlifting. Unlike CIV2, for example, any number of units can airlift INTO a given city, but only 1 per turn may airlift FROM a given city. I am hard pressed to explain how a city can have such a limited capacity of planes embarking, but can theoretically handle 100's of units disembarking. I think the limit should be something like 3 units per airport coming and/or going.

Nonsense- it should be unlimited each way. Think Berlin airlift, for example. There were SO MANY planes going into Berlin at that time that if a pilot missed on his first approach he had to return to where he came from and try again the next day.

[Chronus]

1. When you want to build a railroad, the railroad button says to type "R" when you move the cursor over the rail button. However, typing "R", while working fine for roads, would not get a single worker to build a railline. This is a bug I think.,

Do you mean . . . R? This works good for me.

[Saxman]

Something a bit different here. I've played a bit of Civ2, and was never very good at it, but enjoyed it a lot. I bought Civ3 after reading about it on the Web, and hoping that it would prove as addictive as Civ2 was, but with better presentation and more intuitive gameplay. So, the first impressions of a newbie:

1) Introduction? Waste of (disk) space. You want something that'll get the blood pumping, introduce a bit of drama. See AoE2 for a good Civ-type intro, even if it is combat-orientated.

2) Presentation is lovely - the animations may annoy some, but they make the map look a lot more lively, and give units character. Still graphics are good, but a little confusing - got horses resource without even realizing it!

3) Early game seems slower, perhaps due to less early technologies heading my way. Expansion is harder, probably because of the Settler and Worker population drains. Exploring is a lot more fun, although I keep heading towards rivers for the movement bonus. Klutz.

4) Combat is neat. Sound effects could use some more variety, but the unit animations really help. Haven't see the late game units yet, so we'll see how well they develop. Defendind cities seems harder, or maybe it's my imagination.

5) Lack of info on wonders and technologies is disappointing - load times for information screens seem slow on my Intel 1.5GHz 256 Mb RAM machine. Why? I may have to get the mod for info screens, but I can only download to floppy, and the file is too big. Sorrow.

6) Diplomacy is better. The foreign advisor helps for newbies like me, because you get a better idea of relative worth (e.g. maps vs. money vs. techs), letting you stand on your own two feet later on.

I haven't got past 500 AD yet (only played for 1 1/2 hours), but there's my first impressions. Knock yourself out.

Be seeing you,

Saxman

[sgrig]

I recently got Civ3, and have been playing it for a total of about 8 hours

I am still in my first game in 1650 AD (chieftain ( ), 16 civs, huge random map).

So far I have been really enjoing it! And so far I can say that it has been much more interesting and more realistic than a standard civ2 game.

Usually in civ2, even if playing on a large map (not huge), my civ got large enough to border some other civ by about rennaissance, so before that I was usually on my own and my units were just patrollling the wilderness looking for goody huts!

In civ3, however, even though the map is much larger, I met a few civs quite early on and surprisingly we could peacefully coexist until about 1400AD ! This would never be possible in civ2 - usually I ended up having thousand year old wars with my neighbours (when I had any!), which finished in the modern age with the destruction of them.

I am also amazed that declaration of war is more 'civilized' in civ3! I mean in civ2, the ai players would just sneak attack you, but in civ3 they either demand something off you first, or enter a military alliance with one of your existing enemies - no random sneak attacks. (However, this might not be a fair test since I always played civ2 on king, but in civ3 I'm on chieftain)

Also, another good point is that you can be quite successful without building large number of cities (I am quite successful so far... with only about 20 cities, half of them captured).

I also love the fact that you can capture workers! That's great! That's something civ2 really missed - enslaving enemy population.

I heard a lot moaning about unfair combat in these forums, but so far I can only say that people used to the civ2 combat might not like combat in civ3 just because it is different and something they are not used to. It can get a bit random at times (like a regular warrior defeating an elite knight), but it is nice to see that units in stacks fight one by one. However I was a bit annoyed when I thought I destroyed a stack of 4 roman legions, but turned out that I only killed one of them! This new combat system requires more realistic buildup of forces, as it is much harder to kill lots of enemy units with just one unit.

I really like the concept of culture - I actually 'culturally absorbed' 4 or 5 persian cities - which was great. Introduction of resources make the game much more challenging - like for example at one point I almost was in trouble because I lost my saltpeter supply when the French destroyed my colony and they destroyed a road connecting my cities to an iron supply! At that point my second iron supply ran out - so I had to resort to building spearmen, while a turn before I was churning out musket-men and knights!

So these new concepts - culture and resources really do add a new dimension to the game.

Overall I found that civ3 is (so far) more challenging then civ2 was, with a better AI and more multifaceted gameplay.

I am not even sure if I will win this game (which would really be embarassing - losing at chieftain - while in civ2 I got 640% at king), but I guess I just need more practice.

Ok, I should go back to the game!

[Darkknight]

(like a regular warrior defeating an elite knight)

That's very bad!
If the knight was attacking that is. on open ground the knight has a 99.34% chance of winning.
Unless you mean if the warrior attacked the knight?
There the warrior would have an amazing 0.93% chance of winning.
This is what was bad in civ and civ2!! aarrgh! not good to hear 10 hours before you buy a game.

[sgrig]

Originally posted by Darkknight


That's very bad!
If the knight was attacking that is. on open ground the knight has a 99.34% chance of winning.
Unless you mean if the warrior attacked the knight?
There the warrior would have an amazing 0.93% chance of winning.
This is what was bad in civ and civ2!! aarrgh! not good to hear 10 hours before you buy a game.

The warrior attacked the knight.

But don't worry - it was only once. Amazingly enough knights most of the time do kill warriors.

Sometimes it might get infuriating - but usually it's alright.