First Impressions

[Faboba]

First in my defense I'd like to remind you all I really do love Firaxis and their new-born.

However the large savegame size gives two bad points.

1 : It's going to be a pain in the ass saving games. Probably take a minute or two.
2 : It's not going to be easy doing progressive/dynastic games anymore. I mean it takes me a good 10 minutes to get a file that size on my 56.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Considering that he was apparently playing the game, grabbing screenshots AND chatting on ICQ at the same time for 2 hours, I am not surprised that it finally crashed. That it took 2 hours before crashing is actually a good sign. I think if you tried to chat on icq, take screens and play at the same time with most games, they would crash long before 2 hours.

Good grief! Are you on Firaxis' payroll?

A crash after 2 hours of play is a good thing???? Not in my world.

[Steve Clark]

Comrade, I always do.

My point simply was that it shouldn't warrant a sticky thread AND a news item. Either make all of the First Impressions tonight and tomorrow a sticky or none of them...unless there are some arrangements between Apolyton and GamePen...naaaahhh.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Considering that he was apparently playing the game, grabbing screenshots AND chatting on ICQ at the same time for 2 hours, I am not surprised that it finally crashed. That it took 2 hours before crashing is actually a good sign. I think if you tried to chat on icq, take screens and play at the same time with most games, they would crash long before 2 hours.

I totally agree. The questions is? Where are the screens?

Apolyton, give us the screens, please!

[Faboba]

Originally posted by Ray K


Good grief! Are you on Firaxis' payroll?

A crash after 2 hours of play is a good thing???? Not in my world.

I don't know. If I'm playing a game and have MSN on and it doesn't crash or start getting slowdown when I alt-tab it, I get upset.

Also I don't know if you played the Civ1 windows edition, but jesus could it eat up your RAM. It took everything it could possibly take from the system resources.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Ray K
Good grief! Are you on Firaxis' payroll?

A crash after 2 hours of play is a good thing???? Not in my world.

I have a friend who can crash any program by just looking at it.

I am not too concerned about this.

[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 still think that the minimum system requirements are a little low and some people will find the game slower than expected. However the save/load game function is very quick (the files I have produce so far are about 1.6 Mb in size on average)

[The Templar]

One crash in two hours? Well, at least its better than the "benchmark" set by CTP2 (crash after 1 hour and about 15 minutes. Of course that was on my old system).

[manofthehour]

How is the AI. What diffuculties are you playing at.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
That's nice and all but not worthy of a sticky thread. Personally, I am much more interested in the First Impressions of folks like Ralf or some of the long time Civ2/Apolyton vets.

if you took the time to read our news, you might notice that i asked from other people with the game to post their own first impressions here....

[OneFootInTheGrave]

when are we getting the first official Apolyton preview than?

[albiedamned]

I have it!!! I got it at Electronics Boutique in Laurel Mall, in case anyone in the Baltimore/Washington area is interested. I called around beforehand, and not every EB in the area has it (for example, EB at Columbia Mall said they wouldn't have it until Wednesday).

I've been playing for about 30 minutes, and my first impression is I need to read the manual! I've been utterly involved on the message boards here the past couple weeks, so you would think I should know what is going on in the game. But the new interface is different enough from Civ2 that I'm not yet fluent with it.

By the way, before I start a controversy, I didn't say the new interface is bad, just different. The overall visual effect is awesome, and the music is very mood-setting.

So far I have managed to set Athens on fire (civil disorder), build a few Hoplites, and build some roads. Roads seem to provide a commerce bonus on every square, not just grassland and plains. In case you're wondering how I managed to achieve civil disorder so quickly - I'm playing on Regent level (they've renamed Prince to Regent), which allows 2 content citizens before unhappy ones appear. I had no military units in the city, no luxuries, and I had a wheat bonus square on a flood plain which let me grow to size 3 quickly.

[BLackraven42]

Originally posted by Faboba
First in my defense I'd like to remind you all I really do love Firaxis and their new-born.

However the large savegame size gives two bad points.

1 : It's going to be a pain in the ass saving games. Probably take a minute or two.
2 : It's not going to be easy doing progressive/dynastic games anymore. I mean it takes me a good 10 minutes to get a file that size on my 56.

Not true. I have the game and saves take the better of 2 to 3 seconds. I'm running Windows XP and haven't had a crash yet. And don't worry about the AI. It's almost too good. Before you know it 5 civs will atack from all directions at once. And that's on Cheiftan.

[Darkknight]

God I'm jealous as hell I need to wait till 16th. The "shop" here probably wont have it in for another few days after that. It's looking good though keep up the reviews!

[old dog]

I got my copy too. It'll be tomorrow before I can give it a serious try. It's really clear that an hour or two of manual reading is in order.

The biggest thing I noticed, though, is rivers. In the game I started, they are everywhere. Plenty of freshwater irrigation, to replace oceans. However, this does present obstacles to road transport of resources -- not a problem that I had forseen.

The game looks good, and I had no problems with the interface or playing with the rules settings. But it'll be many hours before I can judge the main thing -- the AI.

I can see that I'll spend tomorrow at work watching the clock!!!