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Here are my firsts thoughts on Civilization III after my first three days of play, intended mostly for those still trying to decide if Civ3 is worth it and for non North Americans impatiently waiting for the game to get to their corner of the world. This is not intended as a full featured review (I'm sure we're all impatiently waiting on korn's opinions for that one), but more about what Civ3 feels like after a couple of games.
First of all, in an effort to shield myself from righteous Apolyton zealots (you know the kind, if you don't have X number of posts your opinion is worthless, Firaxis can do no wrong, etc.), I want to say that I *like* the game. I really do.
Here's my take of the Civilization series, with may help share some light on my thoughts below:
Civ -> v1
Civ2 -> v1.5
SMAC -> v2
Civ3 -> v2.5
Ok, here we go:
* The new graphics are sweet, but then again, what do I know, I liked SMAC graphics. I was worried that the terrain may look too flat, and it does a little, but you soon forget about it so it's not a big deal. A bigger deal however is the fact that there's no Wonder movies. Building a Wonder of the World should feel like a major accomplishment for your civilization, but the placeholder graphics are underwhelming to say the least. Was I the only one who was building relatively useless (from my faction point-of-view) wonders in SMAC just to get a movie I didn't saw yet?
* The new world-building features are great, even better than those of SMAC, and you can really create the kind of planet you like for you game. They only disappointment here is that you don't have as much control on the gaming rules as in SMAC.
* Some of us were worried about the new civ-specific attributes, units and the golden age concept. I'm glad to report, however, that those fears were not founded. You soon learn to respect the unique units (and for all of you who were dismissing the Jaguar Warrior, just wait until you're faced with an aggressive Aztec empire, you'll quickly change your opinion!) and the golden age is just powerful enough to make a difference without unbalancing the game. My only nit-pick here is with the American F-15 which seems to give them an unfair advantage, since it's the most powerful air unit in the game and the only special unit which isn't made obsolete.
* Thanks to leader animations, civ-specific attributes and different personalities, each nation feels much more alive than those of Civ2. Although, ultimately, they are not all that different and don't produce the kind of visceral, gut-feeling, love or hate reaction you had in SMAC.
* The A.I., while not great, is good, and that's more that you can say for the vast majority of games out there. I'm sure you've all heard the reports of players getting owned even at the earliest difficulty levels. The only caveat to put here is that the A.I. is at it's peak even there, the only change is that it gains reduced construction and research time at levels above Prince.
* Diplomacy and trade have been vastly improved compared to SMAC and are light-years ahead of Civ2. All the new options for alliances, trades and conflict are awesome. However, we find important things amiss or completely missing. You can tell at a glance how the other factions are reacting to you, but you can't tell what their relations to each other are, or how trustworthy they are. Is Russia in a Peace/Passage/Trade agreement with Germany because they're best buddies, or because Germany threatened Catherine of an invasion if she didn't agree? This would be important to know to be able to guess who's side Russia would take if you go to war with Germany. What about the Romans? Are they trustworthy enough to honour their mutual defence pact with you, or will they bug out half-way into the war? There's no way to tell. Why is the only way to check the specifics of your on-going trade agreements to contact the other faction leader? Shouldn't this be on your trade advisor screen? (It's hidden on the bottom-right of the diplomacy screen, for all of you still trying to find it.) Shouldn't the option to open embassies and to conduct diplomatic or espionage missions be found on your foreign affairs advisor screen?
* Culture, ah, culture! Truly one of the most important and enjoyable changes in this new version, it truly add a whole other aspect to the game. You can convert enemy cities into your empire, or have your own border cities deflect to a culturally superior opponent! But once again, there are problems. Since it is such a central issue, you'd think you would be able to get more feedback from it, right? Is one of your city one the verge of deflecting? Would you simply need a little more punch to your culture to absorb that Egyptian city on your border? There's no way to tell.
* You may have read in reviews that happy/content/unhappy citizens are tough to differentiate, and that's true. However, they are grouped from left to right on the city screen, so this really isn't a problem.
* The government system is really disappointing and I think it's what you're going to see the first mods on. Even leaving out the fact that there's no social engineering (some would have liked it, other wouldn't have), it's sad that there's only one true path to victory: democracy. In SMAC, all your SE settings were attractive, and made for though decisions; each choice offered different, but equally useful, benefits and drawbacks. In Civ2, even if democracy was a little above the others, fundamentalism and communism could be useful options. This is unfortunately not the case in Civ3. When you do the cost-benefit analysis, no government even come close to compete with democracy (if you're interested to see it, ask me to post it). At worst, if you're actively engaged in a full-fledged war of conquest and worried about war-weariness, you could change to the republic, but even then... The proof is in the pudding, as they said, and with one or two exceptions, I've yet to see an A.I. switch to anything other than democracy once it became available.
* Burn city burn! Yup, that's right, you now have the option to raze a city instead of occupying it. Really cool! But there's only one problem: it's instantaneous, regardless of the population. In one of my games where I was at war with the Germans, they sneaked up two transports all around the continent to attack one of my less defended city (the front was on the other side of the continent). Great AI move, which took me completely by surprise. My two valiant defenders fought bravely and managed to kill five of the six attacking units before succumbing to their blows. The lone remaining pikemen, however, marched into my size 16 city and immediately burned it to the ground! That single pikemen was more effective than 3 or 4 nuclear bombs!!! Something is seriously wrong here. Give the occupation forces the option to kill two or three population points per turn, but don't raze a complete city in a single turn.
* While we're talking about nuclear weapons, MAD is not in. While it may rejoice Ralf and people who share his philosophical view of the world, it was a huge disappointment for me. Compounded with the fact that the A.I. doesn't especially seem to mind them and you got a step back from SMAC planet busters atrocities to Civ2 nuclear war madness. Oh well, can't get everything...
* Infinite City Spawn (ICS) is now the name of the game. This is neither good nor bad, but just get ready for it, because the A.I. sure knows what it's doing. You can rest assured that before long all the habitable land in the world will be colonised, so get those settlers going before it's too late.
* Watch out for corruption! What was only a minor problem in preceding version is now a major civilization-shaping factor. The emphasis now seems to be on a moderate amount of well-build cities instead of a world-spawning empire.
* Warfare is also fundamentally changed: Zones-of-Control are gone, units now require gold instead of shields for support, combined arms tactics are a must... Over are the days of Civ2 blitzkriegs or SMAC precision strikes, now each conflict takes World War proportions with huge armies moving back and forth. Definitively one of the most important changes in Civ3, I believe it makes war much more enjoyable.
* You can’t see into stacks, which is mightily annoying. In SMAC, when you clicked on a tile, you’d get all the units displayed in a row at the bottom of the screen with all the information you could dream of: health, status, remaining moves, experience, etc. Not so in Civ3. If you right-click on a unit, you’ll get a text-only list with bare-bone (read insufficient) information. That, plus the fact that units placement in that list seems to be random (and change as soon as you do anything), quickly gets annoying when dealing with huge stacks, and that happens often.
* Holy #@$%!&* on a stick, the phalanx vs. battleship problem is still there!!! No, no, you're not hallucinating, you read that right. You'd think it would have been one of the first thing they fixed, right? Wrong. And the problem is only made worse with the new armies feature. Watch out for that Iron Age Swordsmen army or that Middle Age Cavalry army, your Mechanised Infantries are no match for them.
* You've got to give a thumbs up to anyone good enough to provide you with a 200+ page printed manual and a full-fledged in-game documentation system (Civilopedia). They're both really useful, but are not available everywhere (in the case of the Civilipedia) and are way more vague than necessary. Since corruption is such an essential concept in this version, how is it calculated? What is really effective to fight it, and what isn't? We don't know. Wouldn't the Civilopedia be useful in the city screen to get information about the troops or building you want to build, or in the diplomacy screen to get information about the technology trades you're about to make?
* The copy prevention on the CD (Safedisc) is quite annoying, resulting in load times near the one minute mark simply because it's trying to make sure your Civ3 CD is in the drive (the game itself only takes about 10 seconds to load).
* I'm sure you've all already heard the atrocious cries of despair regarding the editor, so I won't comment on it. It will probably be fixed in a patch, but that is not the right way to do things.
* No multiplayer. I don't think this will surprise anyone, but it still is disappointing. Civ3 is the kind of game that just screams for it.
* Overall, the interface is good, but is hindered by flaws that should never have gone through QA. Who, for example, thought that requiring double-clicks on menus would be a good idea? It's a slap in the face of U.I. consistency and serve no discernible purpose.
So, to sum it all up, what can be said about Civ3? Is it better than Civ2? Yes, in every single way. Is it better than SMAC? That, I don't know. Different, surely, but better? It's too early to tell. In the end, I'm glad I shelled out some cash to buy Civ3 and I can honestly recommend it to everyone else. It's a good game, but just not as great as we all hoped it would be.
-Hutak,
putting on her asbestos suit for protection from the self-proclaimed zealous defenders of the Holy Firaxis Faith (you know who you are)
PS: Yin, buy it!
First of all, in an effort to shield myself from righteous Apolyton zealots (you know the kind, if you don't have X number of posts your opinion is worthless, Firaxis can do no wrong, etc.), I want to say that I *like* the game. I really do.
Here's my take of the Civilization series, with may help share some light on my thoughts below:
Civ -> v1
Civ2 -> v1.5
SMAC -> v2
Civ3 -> v2.5
Ok, here we go:
* The new graphics are sweet, but then again, what do I know, I liked SMAC graphics. I was worried that the terrain may look too flat, and it does a little, but you soon forget about it so it's not a big deal. A bigger deal however is the fact that there's no Wonder movies. Building a Wonder of the World should feel like a major accomplishment for your civilization, but the placeholder graphics are underwhelming to say the least. Was I the only one who was building relatively useless (from my faction point-of-view) wonders in SMAC just to get a movie I didn't saw yet?
* The new world-building features are great, even better than those of SMAC, and you can really create the kind of planet you like for you game. They only disappointment here is that you don't have as much control on the gaming rules as in SMAC.
* Some of us were worried about the new civ-specific attributes, units and the golden age concept. I'm glad to report, however, that those fears were not founded. You soon learn to respect the unique units (and for all of you who were dismissing the Jaguar Warrior, just wait until you're faced with an aggressive Aztec empire, you'll quickly change your opinion!) and the golden age is just powerful enough to make a difference without unbalancing the game. My only nit-pick here is with the American F-15 which seems to give them an unfair advantage, since it's the most powerful air unit in the game and the only special unit which isn't made obsolete.
* Thanks to leader animations, civ-specific attributes and different personalities, each nation feels much more alive than those of Civ2. Although, ultimately, they are not all that different and don't produce the kind of visceral, gut-feeling, love or hate reaction you had in SMAC.
* The A.I., while not great, is good, and that's more that you can say for the vast majority of games out there. I'm sure you've all heard the reports of players getting owned even at the earliest difficulty levels. The only caveat to put here is that the A.I. is at it's peak even there, the only change is that it gains reduced construction and research time at levels above Prince.
* Diplomacy and trade have been vastly improved compared to SMAC and are light-years ahead of Civ2. All the new options for alliances, trades and conflict are awesome. However, we find important things amiss or completely missing. You can tell at a glance how the other factions are reacting to you, but you can't tell what their relations to each other are, or how trustworthy they are. Is Russia in a Peace/Passage/Trade agreement with Germany because they're best buddies, or because Germany threatened Catherine of an invasion if she didn't agree? This would be important to know to be able to guess who's side Russia would take if you go to war with Germany. What about the Romans? Are they trustworthy enough to honour their mutual defence pact with you, or will they bug out half-way into the war? There's no way to tell. Why is the only way to check the specifics of your on-going trade agreements to contact the other faction leader? Shouldn't this be on your trade advisor screen? (It's hidden on the bottom-right of the diplomacy screen, for all of you still trying to find it.) Shouldn't the option to open embassies and to conduct diplomatic or espionage missions be found on your foreign affairs advisor screen?
* Culture, ah, culture! Truly one of the most important and enjoyable changes in this new version, it truly add a whole other aspect to the game. You can convert enemy cities into your empire, or have your own border cities deflect to a culturally superior opponent! But once again, there are problems. Since it is such a central issue, you'd think you would be able to get more feedback from it, right? Is one of your city one the verge of deflecting? Would you simply need a little more punch to your culture to absorb that Egyptian city on your border? There's no way to tell.
* You may have read in reviews that happy/content/unhappy citizens are tough to differentiate, and that's true. However, they are grouped from left to right on the city screen, so this really isn't a problem.
* The government system is really disappointing and I think it's what you're going to see the first mods on. Even leaving out the fact that there's no social engineering (some would have liked it, other wouldn't have), it's sad that there's only one true path to victory: democracy. In SMAC, all your SE settings were attractive, and made for though decisions; each choice offered different, but equally useful, benefits and drawbacks. In Civ2, even if democracy was a little above the others, fundamentalism and communism could be useful options. This is unfortunately not the case in Civ3. When you do the cost-benefit analysis, no government even come close to compete with democracy (if you're interested to see it, ask me to post it). At worst, if you're actively engaged in a full-fledged war of conquest and worried about war-weariness, you could change to the republic, but even then... The proof is in the pudding, as they said, and with one or two exceptions, I've yet to see an A.I. switch to anything other than democracy once it became available.
* Burn city burn! Yup, that's right, you now have the option to raze a city instead of occupying it. Really cool! But there's only one problem: it's instantaneous, regardless of the population. In one of my games where I was at war with the Germans, they sneaked up two transports all around the continent to attack one of my less defended city (the front was on the other side of the continent). Great AI move, which took me completely by surprise. My two valiant defenders fought bravely and managed to kill five of the six attacking units before succumbing to their blows. The lone remaining pikemen, however, marched into my size 16 city and immediately burned it to the ground! That single pikemen was more effective than 3 or 4 nuclear bombs!!! Something is seriously wrong here. Give the occupation forces the option to kill two or three population points per turn, but don't raze a complete city in a single turn.
* While we're talking about nuclear weapons, MAD is not in. While it may rejoice Ralf and people who share his philosophical view of the world, it was a huge disappointment for me. Compounded with the fact that the A.I. doesn't especially seem to mind them and you got a step back from SMAC planet busters atrocities to Civ2 nuclear war madness. Oh well, can't get everything...
* Infinite City Spawn (ICS) is now the name of the game. This is neither good nor bad, but just get ready for it, because the A.I. sure knows what it's doing. You can rest assured that before long all the habitable land in the world will be colonised, so get those settlers going before it's too late.
* Watch out for corruption! What was only a minor problem in preceding version is now a major civilization-shaping factor. The emphasis now seems to be on a moderate amount of well-build cities instead of a world-spawning empire.
* Warfare is also fundamentally changed: Zones-of-Control are gone, units now require gold instead of shields for support, combined arms tactics are a must... Over are the days of Civ2 blitzkriegs or SMAC precision strikes, now each conflict takes World War proportions with huge armies moving back and forth. Definitively one of the most important changes in Civ3, I believe it makes war much more enjoyable.
* You can’t see into stacks, which is mightily annoying. In SMAC, when you clicked on a tile, you’d get all the units displayed in a row at the bottom of the screen with all the information you could dream of: health, status, remaining moves, experience, etc. Not so in Civ3. If you right-click on a unit, you’ll get a text-only list with bare-bone (read insufficient) information. That, plus the fact that units placement in that list seems to be random (and change as soon as you do anything), quickly gets annoying when dealing with huge stacks, and that happens often.
* Holy #@$%!&* on a stick, the phalanx vs. battleship problem is still there!!! No, no, you're not hallucinating, you read that right. You'd think it would have been one of the first thing they fixed, right? Wrong. And the problem is only made worse with the new armies feature. Watch out for that Iron Age Swordsmen army or that Middle Age Cavalry army, your Mechanised Infantries are no match for them.
* You've got to give a thumbs up to anyone good enough to provide you with a 200+ page printed manual and a full-fledged in-game documentation system (Civilopedia). They're both really useful, but are not available everywhere (in the case of the Civilipedia) and are way more vague than necessary. Since corruption is such an essential concept in this version, how is it calculated? What is really effective to fight it, and what isn't? We don't know. Wouldn't the Civilopedia be useful in the city screen to get information about the troops or building you want to build, or in the diplomacy screen to get information about the technology trades you're about to make?
* The copy prevention on the CD (Safedisc) is quite annoying, resulting in load times near the one minute mark simply because it's trying to make sure your Civ3 CD is in the drive (the game itself only takes about 10 seconds to load).
* I'm sure you've all already heard the atrocious cries of despair regarding the editor, so I won't comment on it. It will probably be fixed in a patch, but that is not the right way to do things.
* No multiplayer. I don't think this will surprise anyone, but it still is disappointing. Civ3 is the kind of game that just screams for it.
* Overall, the interface is good, but is hindered by flaws that should never have gone through QA. Who, for example, thought that requiring double-clicks on menus would be a good idea? It's a slap in the face of U.I. consistency and serve no discernible purpose.
So, to sum it all up, what can be said about Civ3? Is it better than Civ2? Yes, in every single way. Is it better than SMAC? That, I don't know. Different, surely, but better? It's too early to tell. In the end, I'm glad I shelled out some cash to buy Civ3 and I can honestly recommend it to everyone else. It's a good game, but just not as great as we all hoped it would be.
-Hutak,
putting on her asbestos suit for protection from the self-proclaimed zealous defenders of the Holy Firaxis Faith (you know who you are)
PS: Yin, buy it!
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