Hooray for Marla!

[GePap]

Recently, while avoinding far more important matters, I went to the civfanatics site and discovered Marla Singer's scenerio- basically, a very good and , as far as civ goes, accurately made map with reasonable resource and luxury placement, in which all civs start in their correct places. And I began to have some fun playing civ3 again, not because this was my first game since I installed the patch (and thus free of some minor problems) but because playing this scenerio brought back the main reason why I, and I suspect, others play this game. I am actually playing to remake known history.
As I like to have some time before going to war, and ususally want to go to war only in my terms (I'm not very sporting), I decided to play the Aztecs and have all the new world to myself. I did fine without horses (who needs them with Jaguar warriors?) and with only barbarians as playmates for a while, but then i decided to break my self-imposed isolation and go see the world. I was at this moment that I finally, after so long, felt exciment with civ3- I knew that once I got to meet one of the civs of the old world, i would be able to, by astute diplomacy, meet all other players, and get whatever techs I didn't have, something that I would not have been able to do as well in civ2 (since they never gave maps in civ2).
So why do i go on? For two reasons
1. the Civ series, I feel, reaches its heights when one really feels like they are rewriting history, and scenerios are key in this sucess (by far the greatest improvement Civ2 made over the original was having scenerios). Which is why the decision to release the game without the ability to make scenerios was such a blow and lead to a great part of my discontent with civ3.
2. I have been, and will probably continue to be, one of the critics of civ3 as is, but unlike many others, I have not uninstalled it and sold it off- and this scenerio is why: Civ3 has great potential and we the players (not the satisfied fanboys but those that want a trully great game) must continue to push for a better civ3, including making better files, like Marla did. A better Civ3 is possible, and it is probably coming, so don't loose faith.

[nibbles]

agree haven’t played a real world map, but Civ3 was driving me nuts, but it grows on you, its more of a balance game than civ2, what i mean by that is that you have to responsible in your endeavours, you cant just have wars at a whim or expand everywhere. I find it's better against my earlier thoughts to have a smaller more defendable, efficient empire

[Marquis de Sodaq]

The Marla map is good, even tho its huge size slooowwwss the game down. There are faults with resource placement and some terrain detail, but that'll get ironed out as time goes on. Overall, it's a very good map.

Yes, many maps suck. Not everybody is a cartographer...

[Harovan]

Marla's map is, no doubt, the best real world map. But in my humble opinion playing at a real world map misses one of the challenging parts of the game: the exploration of the World. I know where the continents, the other civs and the resources are and how to get there. This is also some unfair advantage I have over the AI. Yea I know it cheats no less, but anyway.

Marla made a great playground for scenarios (someday ) or "rewriting history" games, but for the real challenge I prefer random maps.