First Impressions

[faded glory]

ya...does it matter tho? They both have funny city names.

[Ballz1998]

WHOOOHOOO IM SO EXCITED. . .

I cant wait till i get out of the dentist tomorrow and pick up my copy of civ3!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then Im goin straight tot he puter and loading the game... reading the manual, watching the video and hopefully I'll get my arse kicked on prince level... it'll sure be a nice change from smacking the King AI around in civ 2

[FrostyBoy]

Ahh great, the AI seems tough, that will bring back memories of when I was playing Civ1. I would have legions, with 3 cities, and the computer would have 10 cities and flying stealth bombers over my land, completely ignoring me as if I was not worth worrying about.

ahh the memories of being patheic

[FrostyBoy]

wait.. I should tell you, this was when I first played the game

so it will be fun to have those memories back again

[The Negotiator]

I also remember the time when i first played the civ 1. Ahh the sweet memories..

I was just little boy then and didn't understand english well. It took months before i did win a single game. It was pretty tough because i didn't understand english enough to read the manual nor did i understand everything what the enemy leaders said to me.

[ElitePersian]

hhehe, the good old civ 1 memories, i remember those too.
when i first played, i didnt know my city would BUILD stuff, i thouht i had to save up money and buy it!

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by The Negotiator
I also remember the time when i first played the civ 1. Ahh the sweet memories..

I was just little boy then and didn't understand english well. It took months before i did win a single game. It was pretty tough because i didn't understand english enough to read the manual nor did i understand everything what the enemy leaders said to me.

Man! Now that's a handicap!

You actually won one?

What are you gonna do next? Cure Cancer?

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by The Negotiator
I also remember the time when i first played the civ 1. Ahh the sweet memories..

I was just little boy then and didn't understand english well. It took months before i did win a single game. It was pretty tough because i didn't understand english enough to read the manual nor did i understand everything what the enemy leaders said to me.

And i thought it was bad when i was defending my cities with cannons They worked well in Pirates, so i thought they would do a good job in civ... And i had a cannon i didnt know how to wake back up, so my cities were being overrun and my cannon unit was just sitting there sleeping... Arrgh!!

I did get better at the game

[Fidel]

mark, did you get your copy already?

any comments or too busy playing?

[SonofDogbreath]

PLayed about seven hours last night
1) no crashes
2) my system bogged down late in the game (p3 450, 256) not bad but noticable. There were lots of AI cities.
3) interface takes getting used to, but doesn't seem bad. read the manual walking to work today and found the hotkey for diplomacy.
4) irrigation is hit or miss. if you have fresh water/river nearby it is easy, if not you're SOL. You can connect from other irrigation systems and I built a long chain of irrigation to get water back to my main area.
5) cities on rivers don't need aquaduct, this is a nice feature
6) takes a long time to get hospitals, so cities are stunted at size 12. Good time to build more workers!
7) AI is pretty good, they protect their settlers and workers and can give you a run for your money (at least while we are still learning the interface!!!)
8) played greeks on small earth, was surprised to find myself in florida! Nice map.
9) LE fold out chart is kind of weak. Small 6 inches by 36 inches. Some what hard to read. Will be useful once I know the symblos but not starting off. The symbols are also small and somewhat hard to read. (Might not be worth getting the LE just for this)
10) Palace screen is nice to have, but looks a little hokie. I think that I liked the one in CIV I better. They are the same style.
11) Haven't figured out how to use the que yet.
12) the game suggests items to build when you finish something. It does a fairly good job of selecting; even alerting you to new things while you are still building another (such as telling you that you need a hospital to grow and asking if you want to change to build that)
13) Music is OK, gets kinda old.
14) Graphics are nice.
15) Diplomacy is quite nice. I really likes the options that can be made during trading.
16) The resource and lux items are really nice additions
17) Wonder movies are just a picture, but we knew this already.
18) Never got a leader, but mostly fought border skirmishes.
19) I like the Upgrade ability!!! (Just make sure you know what can be upgraded and what can't)

and

20) I kissed my wife goodbye as it was loading and told her that I'll see her in six months. After playing 7 hours, it looks as if this was a good prediction!!!

[campmajor!]

Well, one advantage of getting the game later is that we are able to read the American notes of their stuntling...

Thanks, guys! It makes the waiting easier.

[campmajor!]

By the way, how good or bad is Chips & Bits concerning delivery times?

The postman did not have it with him today (now he regrets he did not... ).........

[Fidel]

Originally posted by campmajor!
By the way, how good or bad is Chips & Bits concerning delivery times?

The postman did not have it with him today (now he regrets he did not... ).........

i cancelled my order with them after not being able to receive order number for 2 wks and managamannus posting that they had no clue when the game was out.....

[Boris Godunov]

Hey all,

I played around with Civ III from about 6 PM to 1:30 AM. I spent several hourse futzing with the editor though, just to see what I could do.

Installation went smooth as could be, though it took a little while.

When the intro started, I got nervous because it "auto adjusted" my monitor...and the movie was waaaay off to the left. So I hit the auto adjust on my monitor again...problem fixed.

The one gripe I have with the interface from first starting is the buttons. When you click on them, it doesn't do what you ask it until you a) click it again or b) click the green circle at the bottom. This seems silly to me.

I played as the Germans on a random, large map. The first time I started, my locale was so bad that I restarted.

The biggest problem I had with the program was that my music started skipping and became so garbled I shut it off. Since I normally shut off game music anyway, no big deal, I suppose. I imagine it's a hardware conflict that's on my end, though.

The game runs smoothly on my PII 400, 128 MB Ram. It's a little sluggish at times, but is fine. Of course, I've only gotten to 570 AD, so who knows what will happen in the future.

The interface takes getting used to. It's not 100% intuitive. It seems to me that a lot of game information, even in tutorial mode, takes some digging to get to. It took me forever to figure out how to buy an embassy with a civ. You'd think it would be on the foreign advisor screen or in diplomacy...but no, you have to double-click on the star next to your capital city.

Graphically, I think it's beautiful but simple. I am having some difficulty distinguishing the different units' nationality, as some civ colors (Egypt, Russan, English) are very similar. However, this is fixable via the editor, which allows you to change the colors. Also, when in combat, sometimes the HP bar of the units is obscured and can't be seen, which is irritating.

Oh and with the editor...you have to remember to save rules changes as a scenario and then when you start a new game, Load Scenario with your rules. It will still generate a random map provided you didn't save a map with the scenario. This leads me to wonder how one will change the rules and play on a world map...

Oh, and there are no scenarios that I can find. Just the 2 world maps. Anyone else find any? The editor looks very robust, but info on how to use it and what things effect what is scarce. It will take some playing with. You can't add new improvements, civs, techs, units...but you can change existing ones all you want. You can add as many new governments as you want, though.

The most annoying thing about diplomacy is that when you encounter a unit for another civ, you automatically "have contact" and an instant peace treaty...but you aren't told this! No advisor pops up saying "We have found the Russians!" or something like that, and often they won't contact you. So if you mistake that Russian for an Englishman (which is easy), you might not even know you've contacted the Russians for a while.

Now, those are the only quibbles I have so far, and I may be mistaken on a few, but that's the impression of the "bad side"

But the good side:

THIS GAME IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!

The good far far far far far far outweighs the bad (thus far). I was addicted right away and found the atmosphere immersive as hell. I had the best one-more-turn-syndrome I've had in ages. The fact that I got to bed at 1:30 AM was a tremendous act of willpower and a desire to not be a quivering mound of jell-o.

I can't see playing Civ2 anymore...this replaces and surpasses it easily, and is just a terrific game. Best buy in gaming I've made in a long time. This is all pending further exploration of the later stages of the game, but so far it's terrific.

Cheers.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by campmajor!
By the way, how good or bad is Chips & Bits concerning delivery times?

The postman did not have it with him today (now he regrets he did not... ).........

I originally preordered with Chips & Bits. I called them after I heard the game was in stores yesterday, and the guy said they didn't expect to receive it until Friday. So I cancelled my order and went to EB and bought it.

Re leaders: I got one leader, Barbarossa for the Germans, after winning a battle with an elite archer against a Russian warrior in about 450 AD. I haven't used him yet, as I have to get him back to a city to make an army, and he's trapped behind enemy lines with my elite archer (who DID NOT disappear to make the great leader, as I thought he would!). Barbarossa looks like a fat king in long cloak, btw. He's very vulnerable right now and I'm worried the Russians will kill him before I get him back to a city. (apparently you can't make an army out in the field, must be in a city).