first impressions and response to crazy Avault review

[Jason Beaudoin]

You're right about that Avault reviewer. I think he may have had an earlier version because some of the things that he's been saying are untrue.

randomturn: what level did you play on?

[FexFX]

Comment on the Scrolling issue in the Avault Review:
This is beyond the shadow of a doubt the result of using a less than cutting edge video card, OR a less than cutting edge system... My prime example for this is running a 1ghz machine with a Viper V770 Ultra (TNT2U based card). I have not seen the performance of Civ3 on this combo, however I can give you a long list of 2D games that do the ripple and tear dance across your screen as you scroll. A GeForce2 with all of these games smooths it out to the point where it slides like a piece of oiled glass.
Now interestingly this is NOT 100% the video card, because the same video card on a 500mhz Celeron will still ripple and tear on these same games! Another BIG factor is bus speed...
The real issue here is that there is no such thing as 2D accellerated video. With 3D there is accelleration, which allows for amazing feats like the 180fps I get in Quake III. But 2D has not changed fundamentally in the way it is handled in nearly 7 years! The last innovation was DirectDraw which goes back to the dawn of DirectX.
When scrolling a screen that is 1024x768@16bpp, you are moving roughly 3MB per cycle! The real downer on this is that 2D performance does not even benefit from the increase pipeline of AGP!
So when dealing with a 2D game at very high res expect to see that rip and tear! If only they had programmed Civ3 in D3D...Oh wait you still would have needed a 3D accellerator and a half way decent CPU...
The Fans demanded more than 256 colors and they got it. This is the result. At 256 colors the difficulty of moving around the same picture is LESS THAN HALF.
So Give Firaxis a break. If your screen tears, upgrade! Did you complain about Doom and Quake because they sucked in Software mode?
The ONLY thing Firaxis can be faulted for here(sorry Firaxis!) is not being flexible on the resolution! 800x600@16bpp would have been MUCH easier to drag!

[Kyle]

I played for about an hour and a half last night. Very addicting and fun.


Haven't figured out how to use the queue yet. And the workers still display occassional stupidity. One went off well beyond my territory and built an irrigation tile improvement.


Oh and map scrolling is horrible. I have a 900 Mhz system, 256 MB of RAM and a 64 MB GeForce 2 video card. There shouldn't be a problem of that sort. Other than that, like I said, I had a lot of fun playing and had to drag myself away in order to get to bed.

[FexFX]

Kyle,
In your motherboard BIOS, do you have AGP 4X turned on?
When you installed your VIA AGP patch, did you install it in TURBO mode or NORMAL mode?

I get my copy of Civ3 today...

[randomturn]

Jason: prince. I'm going to play King or Emperor next, so if corruption/discontent increase much I will post here.

Kyle: when you're in the city screen and you set something in production, just keep adding other items while holding down the SHIFT key.

[Kyle]

Originally posted by FexFX
Kyle,
In your motherboard BIOS, do you have AGP 4X turned on?
When you installed your VIA AGP patch, did you install it in TURBO mode or NORMAL mode?

I get my copy of Civ3 today...

My motherboard only supports 2x AGP


And uh, what's this "VIA AGP patch?" Don't recall hearing about that.


randomturn: Thanks for the info.

[FexFX]

Kyle,
What type of system do you have exactly?
a 900Mhz that only supports AGP 2X sounds odd to me...
What kind of processor?
What kind of Motherboard?
Do you know your Front Side Bus speed?
How about the CAS latency of your RAM?

The VIA AGP patch is for systems that have a VIA chipset. I foolishly assumed you were running an Athlon or T-Bird...I guess I am just tired, or have read too many posts, or am just Biased in favor of AMD at this point. (P4 was a huge dissapointment)

I do support for a living (not for Firaxis) and I like to help out as a hobby...

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin


He probably sold his palace off because he set his science rate to max. Considering he is a newbie, it could have been any number of things. Stupidy is like a snowflake, it comes in an infinite number of forms.

Internet connection: 15 dollars a month
Civ 3: 45 dollars

Tearing apart a newbie review of Civ 3: Priceless

More likely, he was referring to conquered cities. In my game, I seized an Egyptian city. I am in about 1500 AD, Monarchy as the Germans. The city is on another continent pretty far away. It is 100% useless except to keep my troops garrisoned. Corruption and waste is so high, I can only produce one shield a turn, and it's not connected to resources, so I can only build spearmen, which will take 20 turns. However, even that is problematic since the resisting Egyptians keep the city in disorder. So I'm shipping reinforcements over ASAP with a caravel. Fortunately, my defending units in the city are an Army and a cannon, so enemy attacks are being beaten easily. Unfortunately, the army only counts towards quelling civil disorder as one unit instead of three, so they don't help there.

Don't get me wrong--this is actually an intriguing aspect of the game. It has rendered world conquest all but impossible, which I suppose is realistic.

Cheers.

[volcanohead]

Can you not use your army to rush-build a forbidden palace to offset the problems of corruption...?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by volcanohead
Can you not use your army to rush-build a forbidden palace to offset the problems of corruption...?

Even if I did, aren't the effects of the FP limited to a certain area? I don't think it would effect a city on another continent at all.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by randomturn
I actually had the same reaction as Draco: this guy must have some ind of problem with his mouse, because the scrolling is flawless and my system is no big deal, with an old video card

I think a few people need to go and read the support board. There IS an acknowledged problem with scrolling on certain PC's. What's more for some people there are even more serious bugs that make the game unplayable. The guy is not imagining it and there are already plans for a patch.

Tearing apart a newbie review of Civ 3: Priceless

Tearing into someone who has had an honest go at writing a balanced review that is far more positive than negative, then finding some of what you tear into is true: Foolish.

[volcanohead]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Even if I did, aren't the effects of the FP limited to a certain area? I don't think it would effect a city on another continent at all.

My understanding is that the forbidden palace acts exactly like a normal palace, and would make your 'colonizing' city function OK... similar to your very first city. But the best would be to try it and see. Could be a fun strategy for moving into new continents if it works!!

One thing Boris, just as a question, I understand that 10 shields are produced when you perform the 'clear forest' action with one of your workers. Now, if you use the sma eworker to plant a forest and then cycle, perhaps this would help the struggling far-flung city... and any other place rich in workers and poor in resources.

Unfortunately I don't have the game yet, thanks to Infogames enlightened sales policies.

[Asesino_Virtual]

Does the AI trully "learn"?

Reading the players review seems to be that the AI behaves differently from game to game... wonderful!

[Kyle]

Originally posted by FexFX
Kyle,
What type of system do you have exactly?
a 900Mhz that only supports AGP 2X sounds odd to me...
What kind of processor?
What kind of Motherboard?
Do you know your Front Side Bus speed?
How about the CAS latency of your RAM?

The VIA AGP patch is for systems that have a VIA chipset. I foolishly assumed you were running an Athlon or T-Bird...I guess I am just tired, or have read too many posts, or am just Biased in favor of AMD at this point. (P4 was a huge dissapointment)

I do support for a living (not for Firaxis) and I like to help out as a hobby...

Oh, I do. Athlon, slot A. Gateway PC, if you're interested, here's the motherboard...

Jabil (Kadoka) AMD Motherboard

[DanS]

Sigh!!!!

And I so much looked forward to beating up rt in an mp game.

Thanks for the review, rt. Do you the game? I've held off so far out of protest for no MP...