scottbell
Oct 31, 2001, 01:54 AM
There aren't a whole lot of posts from people with the game, so I thought I'd lend my first experiences.
For my first game I selected Warlord (I think that's what it's called, it's the second difficulty level) and decided to play the Egyptians on the medium earth scenario. The game seems to randomize starting positions as I found myself in France. I haven't found away to put civ's in their respective homelands yet (any help in doing this would be greatly thanked), but no biggie. The strategies I used in Civ2 (i.e., expands as quick as you can) don't seem to work as well. I started by building my first town and immediately breeding settlers. I didn't bother building defenders and kept trying to get a bunch of settlers out the door as early as I could. Being unconcerned about being invaded in the very early game was a big mistake. The barbarians villages kept eating my treasury with repeated sackings of my small outpost towns. Oh well.
After taking control of a the majority of Europe (which isn't really a whole hell of a lot), I built the pyramids. The advisors informed me that we had entered a golden age (I guess because I'm Egyptian and I built the Pyramids); never bothered looking up what that meant but I'm sure it involved economic bonuses. The Greeks were right beneath me and took over most of Africa. Diplomatic relations seem a lot less hostile than before. I like that.
The Romans popped up to the east of me taking most of Russia. One of their towns rebelled over to my side due to my fantastic culture rating. Very cool. I've seen other people talking about this and how easy it is to take over other towns. Well, I think if you play above Chieftain, this becomes dramatically harder to do. The other Civ's do a lot better in building city improvements on the harder difficulty levels (happened to me on a brief stint at Deity on a second game). Nonetheless, I do like the benefits conferred from holing up and playing nice. Being an expansionist a-hole shouldn't always be the right strategy.
War is really tough, even on the second difficulty level. It might be my inexperience in playing, but funding the units and keeping any sort of semblance of order in your cities is hard work. Much later in the game (around the Industrial Age), I started experimenting with spies. I don't like the new espionage process as much as the old one (the new one is just a menu item), but I digress. The spy infiltration pissed off the Japanese who promptly declared war on me (the first civ in history to do so). This was ok, I had plenty of plenty of money and my cities were all well defended. Japan had only two measly cities in Finland. My plan was to mop up the north, then sue for peace. The minute after I started mobilizing things got messy.
Russia, Rome, and Japan declared economic sanctions on me. Greece (my ally in Africa), declared war on Japan in response. Russia declared war on Greece. Rome declared war on me. Germany declared war on the Iroquois. Pretty soon the whole damn planet was involved in a pretty good reenactment of World War I. The large scale wars only seem to be happening in the later game which I think is very cool. Suffice to say though, I got my ass kicked. Rome ate my eastern borders, Japan my western one. Greece kinda helped me out, but the sanctions threw my economy into shambles and my cities all went into disorder. Don't underestimate war weariness.
That's about where I left off my game. Overall I'm highly impressed. Lotsa fun and really interesting dynamics. Nite all!
-Scott :king:
For my first game I selected Warlord (I think that's what it's called, it's the second difficulty level) and decided to play the Egyptians on the medium earth scenario. The game seems to randomize starting positions as I found myself in France. I haven't found away to put civ's in their respective homelands yet (any help in doing this would be greatly thanked), but no biggie. The strategies I used in Civ2 (i.e., expands as quick as you can) don't seem to work as well. I started by building my first town and immediately breeding settlers. I didn't bother building defenders and kept trying to get a bunch of settlers out the door as early as I could. Being unconcerned about being invaded in the very early game was a big mistake. The barbarians villages kept eating my treasury with repeated sackings of my small outpost towns. Oh well.
After taking control of a the majority of Europe (which isn't really a whole hell of a lot), I built the pyramids. The advisors informed me that we had entered a golden age (I guess because I'm Egyptian and I built the Pyramids); never bothered looking up what that meant but I'm sure it involved economic bonuses. The Greeks were right beneath me and took over most of Africa. Diplomatic relations seem a lot less hostile than before. I like that.
The Romans popped up to the east of me taking most of Russia. One of their towns rebelled over to my side due to my fantastic culture rating. Very cool. I've seen other people talking about this and how easy it is to take over other towns. Well, I think if you play above Chieftain, this becomes dramatically harder to do. The other Civ's do a lot better in building city improvements on the harder difficulty levels (happened to me on a brief stint at Deity on a second game). Nonetheless, I do like the benefits conferred from holing up and playing nice. Being an expansionist a-hole shouldn't always be the right strategy.
War is really tough, even on the second difficulty level. It might be my inexperience in playing, but funding the units and keeping any sort of semblance of order in your cities is hard work. Much later in the game (around the Industrial Age), I started experimenting with spies. I don't like the new espionage process as much as the old one (the new one is just a menu item), but I digress. The spy infiltration pissed off the Japanese who promptly declared war on me (the first civ in history to do so). This was ok, I had plenty of plenty of money and my cities were all well defended. Japan had only two measly cities in Finland. My plan was to mop up the north, then sue for peace. The minute after I started mobilizing things got messy.
Russia, Rome, and Japan declared economic sanctions on me. Greece (my ally in Africa), declared war on Japan in response. Russia declared war on Greece. Rome declared war on me. Germany declared war on the Iroquois. Pretty soon the whole damn planet was involved in a pretty good reenactment of World War I. The large scale wars only seem to be happening in the later game which I think is very cool. Suffice to say though, I got my ass kicked. Rome ate my eastern borders, Japan my western one. Greece kinda helped me out, but the sanctions threw my economy into shambles and my cities all went into disorder. Don't underestimate war weariness.
That's about where I left off my game. Overall I'm highly impressed. Lotsa fun and really interesting dynamics. Nite all!
-Scott :king: