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I like Civ3.
You know, it really doesn't surprise me that there are so many more people posting about how they don't like Civ3 than those who do. After all, those of us who do like Civ3 have better things to do than post on these boards all the time... like play Civ3 
Also, because of the flood of trolls in this forum, we spend more time in "Creation," "Civs," and "Strategy" than "General."
Things I like about Civ3:
1. The Culture Model. I think it's cool. I like being able to absorb cities that get founded behind my lines, or captured by a third party behind my lines (from another, closer empire). I just seems to remove some of the tedium of conquering each and every city that exists, since once you've won militarily (defeated the army and captured some key cities), if you have a strong, rich, populous empire, you're going to win anyway, so the game may as well have a logical mechanism to give you control of the minor, but still annoying (and game victory obstructing) settlements.
2. The Nationality Model. This will be *very* useful in designing my "Second Pelopennesian War" scenario, whenever a scenario editor capable of placing cities and units gets released. Just create two civs: "Helot" and "Spartan." Make the entire domain that will be spartan "Helot," give the last remaining (completely isolated and untouchable island) city of the Helots a major Cultural wonder called "Helot Resistance," and have all the other cities (on the greek mainland) be captured by the "Spartans." The last remaining city isn't "Historical" but rather serves the purpose of maintaining a hostile othernational population (game mechanics). The Helots themselves will be set to maximum aggressiveness, maximum hostility, and have the ability to produce many military units in their "memorial" city, thus ensuring that the dominated Helot population is perpetually hostile to the dominating Spartans. But this city must be so remote that nobody can actually reach it, nor they reach the mainland, so as to avoid interferance. There can be no contact between the Helots and other greek groups, or particularly the Persians.
Yes. I like the National Model very much.
2. The CSAs. They make for much more variety between the civs. I like the fact that the civs aren't just different colors of the same thing, but rather actually have some differentation. The Babylonians play considerably differently than the Zulus for example.
3. The CSUs. Just another touch of color to the game. A CSU doesn't make or break the game (except maybe the Jaguar Warriors, if you pick your homeland well), but it is very cool. Just recently Chinese Riders and Persian Immortals fought alongside one another to eliminate the Babylonians. That was very cool.
I tend to think that, with the possible exception of the Aztecs, the good CSUs are well balanced with the less useful CSAs (Zulu Impis are incredibly useful, Militaristic and Expansionist less so), while good CSAs are balanced by less useful CSUs (Babylonians rule in CSAs, but the Bowman, while a useful Barbarian killer, aren't exactly anything to write home about, when there's iron in the hills nearby). The Aztecs are balanced by the fact that they'll never have a good unit-based GA; they blow it in the very beginning of the game.
4. THE RETURN OF THE INSTANT REPLAY!
A feature omitted from Civ2 that existed in Civ1. Just watching that big blue splotch grow across the world (or whatever color the player's civ is) is remarkably satisfying.
5. Better land forms. Civ2 was notorious for producing "ribbon-strip" land masses. No matter what the configuation, it was generally possible to reach every land mass by trireme, unless you custom built it. Tiny worlds gave me the Rocky Mountain blues (people who tried small maps with large single landmasses will remember what I mean). I like the new map generator. It is good.
6. Better city view screan. Civ's was good and cartoony (some might say too cartoony), Civ2's was nondescript and overly realistic, not iconic enough. Civ3's seems to achive a good balance between the two.
7. The "Ages of Man" model. At first, I didn't like the new structure. There are a lot of *straight lines* in the tech "tree." But with the requirement of completing the entire age before moving on, the necessity of creating a tangled tree to slow the acquisition of higher military technologies is removed. In short, nobody is going to get Knights before the age of Swordsmen is over. Nobody is going to get Destroyers before even developing the Frigate (a possibility in Civ2, since Magnetism, ironically enough, wasn't required to acquire Electricity). This is good.
Things I don't miss from Civ2:
1. Wonder movies. Okay, these looked kind of cool the first time around. But what's the big deal? I thought we were strategy gamers, not movie gamers. If Civ3 had marked the same turning point for the Civ series that Wing Commander 3 had for the Wing Comander series, I may have been put off a bit.
2. More civilizations. I compare 24 all the same civs (in all but name) to 16 different civs, and I prefer the later. Adding more would really just be overkill, IMO, except for the purposes of simulating specific events or periods of history.
3. Farms. This is abstracted throughout the game; why concrete it in the industrial age? It truly was the railroad that made such massive food production practical, anyway (from cattle drives to railheads to refridgeration cars transporting everything perishable), so rails may as well be it.
4. Fundamentalism. The "Communism" of Civ3 actually represents idological one-party rule. The Communists of the real world were every bit as religeous about their dogmatic ideology as any God-worshipping group of fanatics. Whether they be priests or marxists, Communism, in Civ3, is sufficient to represent domination by a single ideological group. The only problem is finding a name that's both sufficiently neutral and emotionally appealing at the same time.
In closing:
I will, of corse, be watching MOO3 closely, since this seems to have some revolutionary new simulations in it (the ideology/religeon model, for example). But as Civ games go, Civ3 is a good game, and, I believe, and improvement on the previous games.
Also, because of the flood of trolls in this forum, we spend more time in "Creation," "Civs," and "Strategy" than "General."Things I like about Civ3:
1. The Culture Model. I think it's cool. I like being able to absorb cities that get founded behind my lines, or captured by a third party behind my lines (from another, closer empire). I just seems to remove some of the tedium of conquering each and every city that exists, since once you've won militarily (defeated the army and captured some key cities), if you have a strong, rich, populous empire, you're going to win anyway, so the game may as well have a logical mechanism to give you control of the minor, but still annoying (and game victory obstructing) settlements.
2. The Nationality Model. This will be *very* useful in designing my "Second Pelopennesian War" scenario, whenever a scenario editor capable of placing cities and units gets released. Just create two civs: "Helot" and "Spartan." Make the entire domain that will be spartan "Helot," give the last remaining (completely isolated and untouchable island) city of the Helots a major Cultural wonder called "Helot Resistance," and have all the other cities (on the greek mainland) be captured by the "Spartans." The last remaining city isn't "Historical" but rather serves the purpose of maintaining a hostile othernational population (game mechanics). The Helots themselves will be set to maximum aggressiveness, maximum hostility, and have the ability to produce many military units in their "memorial" city, thus ensuring that the dominated Helot population is perpetually hostile to the dominating Spartans. But this city must be so remote that nobody can actually reach it, nor they reach the mainland, so as to avoid interferance. There can be no contact between the Helots and other greek groups, or particularly the Persians.
Yes. I like the National Model very much.
2. The CSAs. They make for much more variety between the civs. I like the fact that the civs aren't just different colors of the same thing, but rather actually have some differentation. The Babylonians play considerably differently than the Zulus for example.
3. The CSUs. Just another touch of color to the game. A CSU doesn't make or break the game (except maybe the Jaguar Warriors, if you pick your homeland well), but it is very cool. Just recently Chinese Riders and Persian Immortals fought alongside one another to eliminate the Babylonians. That was very cool.
I tend to think that, with the possible exception of the Aztecs, the good CSUs are well balanced with the less useful CSAs (Zulu Impis are incredibly useful, Militaristic and Expansionist less so), while good CSAs are balanced by less useful CSUs (Babylonians rule in CSAs, but the Bowman, while a useful Barbarian killer, aren't exactly anything to write home about, when there's iron in the hills nearby). The Aztecs are balanced by the fact that they'll never have a good unit-based GA; they blow it in the very beginning of the game.
4. THE RETURN OF THE INSTANT REPLAY!
A feature omitted from Civ2 that existed in Civ1. Just watching that big blue splotch grow across the world (or whatever color the player's civ is) is remarkably satisfying.5. Better land forms. Civ2 was notorious for producing "ribbon-strip" land masses. No matter what the configuation, it was generally possible to reach every land mass by trireme, unless you custom built it. Tiny worlds gave me the Rocky Mountain blues (people who tried small maps with large single landmasses will remember what I mean). I like the new map generator. It is good.
6. Better city view screan. Civ's was good and cartoony (some might say too cartoony), Civ2's was nondescript and overly realistic, not iconic enough. Civ3's seems to achive a good balance between the two.
7. The "Ages of Man" model. At first, I didn't like the new structure. There are a lot of *straight lines* in the tech "tree." But with the requirement of completing the entire age before moving on, the necessity of creating a tangled tree to slow the acquisition of higher military technologies is removed. In short, nobody is going to get Knights before the age of Swordsmen is over. Nobody is going to get Destroyers before even developing the Frigate (a possibility in Civ2, since Magnetism, ironically enough, wasn't required to acquire Electricity). This is good.
Things I don't miss from Civ2:
1. Wonder movies. Okay, these looked kind of cool the first time around. But what's the big deal? I thought we were strategy gamers, not movie gamers. If Civ3 had marked the same turning point for the Civ series that Wing Commander 3 had for the Wing Comander series, I may have been put off a bit.
2. More civilizations. I compare 24 all the same civs (in all but name) to 16 different civs, and I prefer the later. Adding more would really just be overkill, IMO, except for the purposes of simulating specific events or periods of history.
3. Farms. This is abstracted throughout the game; why concrete it in the industrial age? It truly was the railroad that made such massive food production practical, anyway (from cattle drives to railheads to refridgeration cars transporting everything perishable), so rails may as well be it.
4. Fundamentalism. The "Communism" of Civ3 actually represents idological one-party rule. The Communists of the real world were every bit as religeous about their dogmatic ideology as any God-worshipping group of fanatics. Whether they be priests or marxists, Communism, in Civ3, is sufficient to represent domination by a single ideological group. The only problem is finding a name that's both sufficiently neutral and emotionally appealing at the same time.
In closing:
I will, of corse, be watching MOO3 closely, since this seems to have some revolutionary new simulations in it (the ideology/religeon model, for example). But as Civ games go, Civ3 is a good game, and, I believe, and improvement on the previous games.
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