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Hello to everyone in the Forum! I've been a fan of this site for many years, but only now have I joined the forums (I've read them many, many times) and the launch of Civ3 has brought me back...
I've been a fan of TBS games for years, & although I never played the original, I played Civ2 to death, got disenchanted with CTP (ignored CTP2) and was glued to SMAC & SMACX >waves @ Vel<. Now that I have my grubby little mitts on Civ3 and I've made some observations & would like some feedback on a few things.
I'm one of those people that's a bit of a perfectionist, so my initial games were very short. Just getting the hang of the interface, the new concepts & stopping every once in a while trying to work out how to do something (you know what it's like, the what!?, click on the what?!, where's that?!)
My first game that went beyond a couple of cities (cough), I played the Persians, they seemed to fit with how I thought I would play it. I opened up on chieftain level (Standard, 8) because I wanted to make sure I had some experience before I started cranking up the difficulty.
I played my usual builder game, slow & steady, mind you, I obviously hadn't grasped the concept of expansion, I went to about 6 cities before I ran out of space, because virtually every single square available was already gone. I was able to inherit some cities through culture, but usually these cities weren't good for expansion & usually stopped growing before an aqueduct might have been needed.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, the only major warfare encountered was the Zulu & Babylonian coalition that descended on me. Thankfully I was able to beat them back, but seeing a tank being killed by an archer (no, I'm not going there, I guess his name must have been Rambo?), all did not feel right. Towards the end I checked my year, it was about 1995 & I'd only just discovered flight. I was like, huh?
My history is a bit vague, but flight a la the Wright Brothers was c.1900. I've read posts saying people have completed the spaceship before the end of the 1900's! Man, was I out of shape!
I won the game by way of Histogram Score in 2050, the melee at the end was comical, many mutual protection pacts kicking in, every other year had 'x declares war on y'.
So this game was going to be different from what I had been used to. That's no problem, I like this.
I played some more games since that first one & my current one is with the Greeks (this time I started on my own private land mass & established 9 solid cities, on top of this I have so far absorbed another 5 through culture!), this time my research seems to be more in line of where I think it should be (I've just made the Industrial age at c.1350AD), which brings me to my first question (eventually!), can anyone give me good suggestions as to where you need to be (year wise) for each age for a chance at playing with all the toys at the end, or building the spaceship?
I've worked out that you can drop the optional ones & I found an interesting side benefit from my second long game where I shot for construction in Ancient. After discovery, I traded this one tech to the other civ's for almost the remainder of the entire tree! I've also read a lot of people saying as soon as you have a tech, trade it for one you don't...is that all these quick people are doing?
Diplomacy is taking a bit of time to get used to as well. In my first game I went to war for the silliest things, regretting it soon after. I then tried working on the keep 'em happy & keep 'em sweet strategy. (I'll save the warmonger in me for a later date). Some things I've noticed (that seem to work).
When you receive a request for a trade that is outrageous (world map for all your tech & all you gold, kind of thing) as long as you have the option to re-negotiate, you're sorted. Ultimatums are a bit trickier, depends on whether you want to call their bluff!). I have found that re-negotiating to a completely different trade, works wonders. I admit it's easier in my current game because my tech is quite strong so I have a lot of throw-away techs I'm not fussed about, but the theory should still be sound. I tend to change it from an 'outrageous demand from them' to a 'have this free gift' from me. They came in annoyed, they go away polite or even gracious. A slightly more amusing one is the 'I forget what I came in for' approach. Civ asks for 'a', reply with 'would you trade for b', they say 'no', you say 'sorry to bother you, goodbye'.
Anyway, establishing an embassy seems to improve their mood & surprisingly stealing a city by your inherent culture, doesn't seem to tick them off much, if at all? Anyone know the lowdown on that one?
Anyway, I better stop babbling now, I appreciate that there's nothing particularly earth shattering in here, but I thought I would make an introductory post.
Regards,
Kokuei
(DtM)
I've been a fan of TBS games for years, & although I never played the original, I played Civ2 to death, got disenchanted with CTP (ignored CTP2) and was glued to SMAC & SMACX >waves @ Vel<. Now that I have my grubby little mitts on Civ3 and I've made some observations & would like some feedback on a few things.
I'm one of those people that's a bit of a perfectionist, so my initial games were very short. Just getting the hang of the interface, the new concepts & stopping every once in a while trying to work out how to do something (you know what it's like, the what!?, click on the what?!, where's that?!)
My first game that went beyond a couple of cities (cough), I played the Persians, they seemed to fit with how I thought I would play it. I opened up on chieftain level (Standard, 8) because I wanted to make sure I had some experience before I started cranking up the difficulty.
I played my usual builder game, slow & steady, mind you, I obviously hadn't grasped the concept of expansion, I went to about 6 cities before I ran out of space, because virtually every single square available was already gone. I was able to inherit some cities through culture, but usually these cities weren't good for expansion & usually stopped growing before an aqueduct might have been needed.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, the only major warfare encountered was the Zulu & Babylonian coalition that descended on me. Thankfully I was able to beat them back, but seeing a tank being killed by an archer (no, I'm not going there, I guess his name must have been Rambo?), all did not feel right. Towards the end I checked my year, it was about 1995 & I'd only just discovered flight. I was like, huh?
My history is a bit vague, but flight a la the Wright Brothers was c.1900. I've read posts saying people have completed the spaceship before the end of the 1900's! Man, was I out of shape!
I won the game by way of Histogram Score in 2050, the melee at the end was comical, many mutual protection pacts kicking in, every other year had 'x declares war on y'.
So this game was going to be different from what I had been used to. That's no problem, I like this.
I played some more games since that first one & my current one is with the Greeks (this time I started on my own private land mass & established 9 solid cities, on top of this I have so far absorbed another 5 through culture!), this time my research seems to be more in line of where I think it should be (I've just made the Industrial age at c.1350AD), which brings me to my first question (eventually!), can anyone give me good suggestions as to where you need to be (year wise) for each age for a chance at playing with all the toys at the end, or building the spaceship?
I've worked out that you can drop the optional ones & I found an interesting side benefit from my second long game where I shot for construction in Ancient. After discovery, I traded this one tech to the other civ's for almost the remainder of the entire tree! I've also read a lot of people saying as soon as you have a tech, trade it for one you don't...is that all these quick people are doing?
Diplomacy is taking a bit of time to get used to as well. In my first game I went to war for the silliest things, regretting it soon after. I then tried working on the keep 'em happy & keep 'em sweet strategy. (I'll save the warmonger in me for a later date). Some things I've noticed (that seem to work).
When you receive a request for a trade that is outrageous (world map for all your tech & all you gold, kind of thing) as long as you have the option to re-negotiate, you're sorted. Ultimatums are a bit trickier, depends on whether you want to call their bluff!). I have found that re-negotiating to a completely different trade, works wonders. I admit it's easier in my current game because my tech is quite strong so I have a lot of throw-away techs I'm not fussed about, but the theory should still be sound. I tend to change it from an 'outrageous demand from them' to a 'have this free gift' from me. They came in annoyed, they go away polite or even gracious. A slightly more amusing one is the 'I forget what I came in for' approach. Civ asks for 'a', reply with 'would you trade for b', they say 'no', you say 'sorry to bother you, goodbye'.
Anyway, establishing an embassy seems to improve their mood & surprisingly stealing a city by your inherent culture, doesn't seem to tick them off much, if at all? Anyone know the lowdown on that one?
Anyway, I better stop babbling now, I appreciate that there's nothing particularly earth shattering in here, but I thought I would make an introductory post.
Regards,
Kokuei
(DtM)
however, I would like to get some nice timeframe's in which to play the game. I was quite disappointed in the first one, because although I could have played on, I only just crept onto the Modern tree by official game over time.
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