"If I were a Civ3 beta-tester, the first thing I'd do is..."

[Father Beast]

I think I would play a perfectionist game, just to see how different the gameplay is. see if the settler cheat works, while I'm there. send some camels and make some notes about differences between trade routes, see if it affects my science rate, etc.
try an OCC game next and crank it way, way, up!

not cry too much when it crashes, just report it and try again, after all, I'M PLAYING CIV III!!!!

[Father Beast]

actually, if I were serious, I would go over to the Great Library, get mings big, big list of cheats, and that compilation of ways the ai cheats and start documenting.
see if I can still do xin yu's trick for transforming a square in one turn.

Truth is, if I were seriously doing this, I would spend a LOT of time at the Great Library. people have seriously played civ2, and some outstanding stuff is there.

but first... I would go down the EC3 list and see what made it.

[airdrik]

I'd wish they hadn't sent it to me because I have no time and no computer to play it on .

If I had a computer and the time to play it...

[OmniGod]

I'd crash it... complain... get an update... and crash it again... bring it on

[Steve Clark]

First thing?.....to check which scenarios I can load and test and how I can get Capt Nemo to create custom Civ3 units to play with.

[Sirotnikov]

I would fire up the must-have WWII scenario and play it as Germany.
See if it is a fun as playing germany in the Civ 2 scen.

[Taliseian]

The first thing I'd do is.....

READ THE F'N MANUAL (If the beta ships with one, of course)

After that, check the install to insure it installs.

Then, play and play and play and play...noting any abnormalities then sending a big long email (or fax or whatever is necessary) to Firaxis to help them make the absolute best Civ game ever.

If Civ3 is even half of what I've read about on the boards, I'll be playing it for quite a while....

Taliseian

[joseph1944]

Just play the game and have fun playing it.

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[tniem]

Been a while since this thread was responded to. Thought there would be a few of you out there that would like to say a few things. Boy oh boy do I wish I was a beta-tester.

[BeBMan]

- pray to God that this is not a dream
- then, if the CD still appears real, then I would make a copy of it, and put the original in a holy shrine, next to the Sid Meier statue

... oh, and yes, I also would play the game...

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Civ2000 hosted by CivII Universum

[EnochF]

Play for about a week: First play once through, to the end, on a normal random map. Then start a bunch of brief games, including several small island and water maps.

At the end of the week, I'd start fooling around with the text files. Then I'd send them my version of the text files, with a little note saying, "Just a suggestion."

I'd also spell-check their work. There were errors all over the place in the Civ 2 files, ditto with Alpha Centauri. "Generousity"?

[DrFell]

Consider myself lucky. Reserve a few weeks for civ3 playing using whatever means necessary

Install the game, look for bugs in the installer. Try as many ways as I can think of to crash the game especially using the cheat menu (the game hasn't been made that can withstand my crashing attempts ). Play a few games on a random map, with the lowest, highest, and 'average' no. of civs. Look for obvious loopholes/bugs in the program (e.g. something like incremental rushbuying in civ2).Test all difficulty levels, make sure Deity (or whatever it is) is hard enough to get me killed on the first go, but is possible to win, and make sure Chief is easy enough for me to win on the first go.

Try out more extreme cases i.e. odd maps etc. Look for super wonder/improvement combinations that seem unbalanced. Look at how the AI civs do in my games... make sure one civ doesn't consistently jump far into the lead while the other civs get left behind, for example, or make sure the AIs can't be easily tricked/crushed by my huge military. Look for agression in the AIs, if they never attack you or poorly defend their cities then there's a problem. Make sure all the ways of winning work.

Send off my 100-page bug report to Firaxis. Sleep.

[Sabre2th]

1. Die of excitement.
2. Inspect the game for game-stopping bugs.
3. Play for 13 days straight.



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"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
-Thomas A. Edison

[Russian King]

If i was a civ3 beta-tester, the first thing i would do is...
Test the damn game!
LOL

[Comrade Tribune]

I would closely study the manual for a method to beat their supposed ICS-solution with a new modified ICS-expansionist strategy, invent that strategy, then go about beating the game with it, because they have still not fixed ICS, they just THINK they have...

Half-joking, just want to scare You a little, because everybody has been so over-optimistic lately...