CIV3, Better then the rest?

Overall I'd agree, but my opinion of Civ4 has gone up a lot over the past year now that I have Beyond the Sword. There's still aspects of it that I don't like, but a lot fewer than in Vanilla Civ IV (the catapult thing is one of the significant improvements). And it's also fairly fresh, whereas I know CivIII quite well. So I've probably played as much Civ4 as Civ3 this year. It also seems to be smoother in multiplayer, at least as long as random events are off, so I play it with friends from far away lands.

If I were to take a year or two off from Civ3, I might find it more engaging again. It's unlikely that I'll take a whole year off from Civ3, but it might actually make sense from the long-term viewpoint.

For what it's worth, I too found vanilla Civ4 quite disappointing and came back to Civ3.
 
CivIII all the way! Civ 5 was the worst waste of $50 I ever spent - it has been collecting dust since november.
 
Quintillus said:
my opinion of Civ4 has gone up a lot over the past year now that I have Beyond the Sword... And it's also fairly fresh, whereas I know CivIII quite well.
Click to expand...

I have the Warlords version, which I imagine is only a slight improvement of the vanilla version. Honestly, like you said, I too know Civ 3 quite well. Nearly every game I play is identical since I know the path to take to victory. I found myself getting bored with 3. I probably will get BTS to satisfy my CIV itch. Also, from the reviews Ive read, Civ 5 most likely will be even more disappointing to me than 4.
 
Preface: a lot of tl;dr in this post. sorry for the rant and text wall... thank you for your understanding. - dilettante

Predictability is not necessarily a bad thing.

People in Civ5 lambast the diplomacy is quite opaque and unpredictable/unstable. (i think its been dealt with last patch)

People in Civ4 lambast shady vegas odds-makers for supplying false odds in combat situations. Supplying odds was supposed to have fixed spearman vs. tank FTW but whatever... we won't go there. (99% my butt... two losses to the same unit both vs. 99% = rage quit.)

People in Civ3 lambast the AI for trespassing/declaring on your land without hints... sneaky sneaky.

I love Civ3 but also love Civ4. What I love about Civ3 is its pick-up & play mechanics and simple yet elegant graphics, also it's uncluttered UI. It's like comfort food, predictable yet solid and delivers in the clutch.

What I love about Civ4 BTS is factional warfare, diplomacy, vassals, the Revolutions Mod, role-playing AI civs, and yes religion but only because it adds to tension to diplomacy - also trading, tech diffusion, random events, and an open source which I can change the whole ruleset if I know Python better. (I know, i know... Civ3 has an editor).

What I hate about Civ3 actually didn't come until Conquests. Marshlands and other weird things that weren't in the vanilla game (i came to civ from civ3 vanilla), it had a six button elegance and now it has so many buttons in conquest. Yes, some of my complaints are nitpicky things but they still bug me... and none of those complaints are from the base game itself... the conquest game is fun. too many new unit types IMO but they're not overbearing.

What I hate about civ4 is stat-addiction micro... Goodness, Civ4 people complain that civ3 has a lot of micro on higher difficulty levels with no overflow, etc, etc but seriously... just look at a city screenshot of 3 and a city screenshot of 4. I prefer 3's uncluttered look.

And don't get me started on how many pieces of information you need in each advisor screen. Do I seriously need to look at a damn excel spreadsheet if I'm looking through domestic advisor? Do I seriously need to look 3 damn times if my citizen allocation is correct in Civ4 cities because it keeps on shifting? Oh and let's not talk about specialist allocation, I HATE specialist economy because of stupid micro... it's a great strategy to win at high difficulty levels in 4 but designed for OCD folks.

I know civ4 is the OCD, min-max, micro-civver's greatest-game wet-dream EVAR but come on, I don't want to be at work when I'm playing, enough with the stupid excel and number crunching, I see it all day long, I don't wanna see it during civ games.

Another thing is the UI. I already mentioned the sheer amount of info. But I don't need nor want all of it. Seriously, who reads every single thing in the city screen from civ4? I don't have time to read it all. It speaks to Civ3's elegant UI that I can look at a city screen for 10 seconds max and get every single info I need.

Graphics are not a big deal to me but I like's Civ3's graphics. Civ4, as previously mentioned in another post, has a 3-d cartoony look. It is what it is but I don't see logic behind the graphic change from Firaxis, Civ3's look was fine... timeless and classic... like a TBS game should be.

The other thing I hate about Civ4 is the sheer number of unit types and the stacks it creates. The AI only knows to defend and to defend with a mountain of troops at its cities. This combined with the 99% odds fail and we got a frustrating way to capture and conquer. I know Schafer tried to break this in Civ5 and kudos to him for trying and failing, at least he tried to lessen this insanity. I've never seen a 50 defender stack in a Civ3 AI city, have you?

The number of unit types is insane. There's no predictable route and players are concentrating more on what units to bring in the stack than how to whittle the enemy to pieces. Often, a hit-n-run tactic won't work because the enemy won't chase you. And the unit-counterunit thing doesn't even work on offense, because if you try to pick the unit that will counter the defender, it will bring up the counter-unit to defend. I've tried and failed to break stack advances by sending a forward army to break the stack into pieces and it fails everytime because the counter-unit thing comes up...

all hail the pancake stack... :rolleyes:

There are other complaints such as no era lock tech to discover and tech locks are flimsy at best, i.e. you don't need drama to have broadway. you don't need flight to have rocketry, etc. but a lot of those are minor.

Funny thing is that I love Civ4 BTS. I really do... but I have been modding the game ever since I got the complete edition to make it play like Civ3. What does that tell you?

If I were in charge of Civ5 (yeah right, I would've screw up that game so bad), I would've had the best of Civ3 and the best of Civ4.

but... that's just my two cents.
 
You posted 7 paragraphs about why you hate CIV as opposed to one about why you love it. I'm not quite convinced that you like it.

Though to be honest, while I do enjoy CIV, I do miss some things about Civ3 , namely:

-The foreign advisor saying whether the AI would like a deal or not.
-The entertainer specialist
-Easy to mod terrain graphics (Though I don't mind CIV's)
-Tourist attractions
 
Strong Reaction said:
I have the Warlords version, which I imagine is only a slight improvement of the vanilla version. Honestly, like you said, I too know Civ 3 quite well. Nearly every game I play is identical since I know the path to take to victory. I found myself getting bored with 3. I probably will get BTS to satisfy my CIV itch. Also, from the reviews Ive read, Civ 5 most likely will be even more disappointing to me than 4.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Warlords isn't that different from vanilla Civ4, and is generally seen as the black sheep expansion. I've hardly played it myself, pretty much one multiplayer game and some Genghis Khan scenario. But after having played Beyond the Sword I don't want to play earlier Civ4 versions. And not just because of what they've added, but because of how they refined what was already there.

dilettante said:
Preface: a lot of tl;dr in this post. sorry for the rant and text wall... thank you for your understanding. - dilettante

Predictability is not necessarily a bad thing.

People in Civ5 lambast the diplomacy is quite opaque and unpredictable/unstable. (i think its been dealt with last patch)

People in Civ4 lambast shady vegas odds-makers for supplying false odds in combat situations. Supplying odds was supposed to have fixed spearman vs. tank FTW but whatever... we won't go there. (99% my butt... two losses to the same unit both vs. 99% = rage quit.)

People in Civ3 lambast the AI for trespassing/declaring on your land without hints... sneaky sneaky.

I love Civ3 but also love Civ4. What I love about Civ3 is its pick-up & play mechanics and simple yet elegant graphics, also it's uncluttered UI. It's like comfort food, predictable yet solid and delivers in the clutch.

What I love about Civ4 BTS is factional warfare, diplomacy, vassals, the Revolutions Mod, role-playing AI civs, and yes religion but only because it adds to tension to diplomacy - also trading, tech diffusion, random events, and an open source which I can change the whole ruleset if I know Python better. (I know, i know... Civ3 has an editor).

What I hate about Civ3 actually didn't come until Conquests. Marshlands and other weird things that weren't in the vanilla game (i came to civ from civ3 vanilla), it had a six button elegance and now it has so many buttons in conquest. Yes, some of my complaints are nitpicky things but they still bug me... and none of those complaints are from the base game itself... the conquest game is fun. too many new unit types IMO but they're not overbearing.

What I hate about civ4 is stat-addiction micro... Goodness, Civ4 people complain that civ3 has a lot of micro on higher difficulty levels with no overflow, etc, etc but seriously... just look at a city screenshot of 3 and a city screenshot of 4. I prefer 3's uncluttered look.

And don't get me started on how many pieces of information you need in each advisor screen. Do I seriously need to look at a damn excel spreadsheet if I'm looking through domestic advisor? Do I seriously need to look 3 damn times if my citizen allocation is correct in Civ4 cities because it keeps on shifting? Oh and let's not talk about specialist allocation, I HATE specialist economy because of stupid micro... it's a great strategy to win at high difficulty levels in 4 but designed for OCD folks.

I know civ4 is the OCD, min-max, micro-civver's greatest-game wet-dream EVAR but come on, I don't want to be at work when I'm playing, enough with the stupid excel and number crunching, I see it all day long, I don't wanna see it during civ games.

Another thing is the UI. I already mentioned the sheer amount of info. But I don't need nor want all of it. Seriously, who reads every single thing in the city screen from civ4? I don't have time to read it all. It speaks to Civ3's elegant UI that I can look at a city screen for 10 seconds max and get every single info I need.

Graphics are not a big deal to me but I like's Civ3's graphics. Civ4, as previously mentioned in another post, has a 3-d cartoony look. It is what it is but I don't see logic behind the graphic change from Firaxis, Civ3's look was fine... timeless and classic... like a TBS game should be.

The other thing I hate about Civ4 is the sheer number of unit types and the stacks it creates. The AI only knows to defend and to defend with a mountain of troops at its cities. This combined with the 99% odds fail and we got a frustrating way to capture and conquer. I know Schafer tried to break this in Civ5 and kudos to him for trying and failing, at least he tried to lessen this insanity. I've never seen a 50 defender stack in a Civ3 AI city, have you?

The number of unit types is insane. There's no predictable route and players are concentrating more on what units to bring in the stack than how to whittle the enemy to pieces. Often, a hit-n-run tactic won't work because the enemy won't chase you. And the unit-counterunit thing doesn't even work on offense, because if you try to pick the unit that will counter the defender, it will bring up the counter-unit to defend. I've tried and failed to break stack advances by sending a forward army to break the stack into pieces and it fails everytime because the counter-unit thing comes up...

all hail the pancake stack... :rolleyes:

There are other complaints such as no era lock tech to discover and tech locks are flimsy at best, i.e. you don't need drama to have broadway. you don't need flight to have rocketry, etc. but a lot of those are minor.

Funny thing is that I love Civ4 BTS. I really do... but I have been modding the game ever since I got the complete edition to make it play like Civ3. What does that tell you?

If I were in charge of Civ5 (yeah right, I would've screw up that game so bad), I would've had the best of Civ3 and the best of Civ4.

but... that's just my two cents.
Click to expand...

:lol: at the use of the term 'rage quit'. One of my friends and I were just talking about that, so to read it on CFC tonight is ironic. But I know the frustration, all three of my Cavalry got owned by Longbows despite having 75% chances to win. One I'd expect, two would be unfortunate, three... yeah. Thought I might have lost the decisive war right there.

In some ways I like the lack of stats on combat odds that Civ3 has. So if I lost two battles where I had 99% odds, I'd figure I probably had 95% odds and was just unlucky, and be less likely to rage quit.

I agree with the specialist micro managing being a pain in Civ4, I wish I could set, say, no spy specialists ever unless that's the only type other than Citizen that a city can build. Nothing worse than getting only spy specialists. Well, except multiple losses with > 99% odds.

I've never seen a 50 defender stack in Civ3. Most is probably about eight, for victory point locations in some scenarios. TBH though the Civ3 defensive strategy isn't the best. Without victory point locations, the AI pretty much defends all cities about equally.

The rationale Firaxis gave for flight not being required for rocketry is that it's possible that people could have been inspired to make big rockets due to late-1800's style artillery rather than flight. It does make some sense. Of course, you couldn't land a moon rocket without knowing how to fly stuff, but you could make V2s without knowing how to make planes. ICBMs may be a stretch.

Have you posted your mods of Civ4 that make it play more like Civ3? I'd be curious to see what you've done, I've thought about that possibility, but never did much on it myself.
 
I never played Civ IV, although everybody says that it's quite a good game. I'm content if I have one game to play at a time. Although I spend several hours a week on gaming, it's just Civ III at the moment and only since about one and a half year. Before, I played Europa Universalis II for about 4 years (and little else).
When I'm done with Civ III (thus having discovered all the secrets of strategy), maybe I'll switch to IV. The advantage of being "late" to games is, that they're cheap and all the short-time fanboys are already swept away - leaving the forums to those who are really interested in a game. :)
 
Civ III is for me by far the best.

Probably the two things that put it far over the top in comparison are the size of the maps and the ease of the editor. I guess I would toss number of civs into that as well.

What I enjoy about IV that I wish III had are the vassal states and the way that cities look different when they build wonders. I also like barbs being able to build and take cities. I haven't played IV in awhile, but I can enjoy it.

I like IV's religions and coporations, but I don't like the respective systems for them. Its too much work. They should be more passive.

I actually like the graphics of V for the most part. The non-stacking of units was a horrible idea though. And steam irks me. I lump it in with Norton: a commercial virus. I never play it V anymore.

Civ II was quite good, but very outdated now.
 
I enjoy the mature discussion about that theme in this forum. :)

agonistes said:
Civ II was quite good, but very outdated now.
Click to expand...

Sorry, in that point I don´t agree with you concerning Civ 2 ToT. This game still has a lot of potential that was never used in the past. For example until now, it´s the only version of civ, that is able to connect different maps and therefore can create invasions to your territory from three dimensions. If you like invasions in a Science Fiction game from different galaxies, try this mod (but it can become really nasty):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=421505
 
Quintillus said:
Have you posted your mods of Civ4 that make it play more like Civ3? I'd be curious to see what you've done, I've thought about that possibility, but never did much on it myself.
Click to expand...

I actually just build on other mods so its a modmod (is that the correct term?).

It's mostly just adding some python and tweaking xml values to the awesome Revolutions Mod by jdog5000 so I feel like I'm stealing jdog5k and his crew's ideas if I release my modmod.

I really liked Civ3's elegant simplicity. It's a game, not a reality simulator (as many CFC'ers have said before).

Specifically, I wanted to limit the unit types to be built (it helps the AI tremendously by narrowing its choice of unit spam to counter a pancake stack) and I want to limit the pancake stack itself by limiting the number of units that can be built (the python code was supplied by Baldyr http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=407896 but I tweaked it so that players including AI cannot build more than their current total of citizens and cities combined throughout the empire * an exponential growth number. I also wanted to limit bonuses but go about in a different way rather than exhausting and respawning like in Civ3. I wanted to limit the bonuses and strategic ones are severely limited (like 2 land oil resource, 1 coastal oil per continent, 3 iron per continent, etc.) and teach the AI to aggressively expand so that it challenges the human for resources. I also wanted a gunpowder resource but that was too much work changing XML codes and typing new ones.

Other fun stuff I was going to include was when a player discovered satellites, that player can actually see the entire earth unfogged (xml tweak for espionage values), tech era locks that cannot be unlocked until every tech is discovered in that era (plus tech diffusion if necessary, i never balance tested it), overpop is +1 :yuck: and not +1 :mad: IMO, and this one's a biggie... include only 3 religions with no AP diplo victory available (still only 1 AP) but each leader is a zealot for only 1 of 3 (WillieTheOrange gets the only FreeReligion fav civic, 17 leaders for each of the 3 factions), this creates factional warfare from the get go and encourages the AI to form alliances creating NATO-style blocs. There's plenty of other fun stuff I'd like to have included (I have a notebook full of BTS ideas) but I've already OT'd on this thread so I'll bring it back.

This is what I meant by wanting Civ4 to be like Civ3 (Diablo Canyon 2, why can't you be more like your brother, Diablo Canyon 1?!), by limiting choice - there actually is a game to be had instead of jumbled mess of choices . Let's just say I was heavily influenced by Civ3 vanilla and even my playstyle reflects that in Civ4, I'll expand until my economy is at breakpoint and COL and courthouses in every city (just like in Civ3)... first to infantry gets to control the world (please look at avatar thx)... etc. etc. I can go on but I won't.

Also, I've re-examined what the poster Farsight said and I guess he's right. Maybe I don't like Civ4. So I uninstalled all Civ4 Complete and I'll walk away from BTS... for a little while at least.

Let's fire up Civ3 again, can I eliminate marshlands from the editor?
 
dilettante said:
I really liked Civ3's elegant simplicity. It's a game, not a reality simulator (as many CFC'ers have said before).
Click to expand...

I wish I'd thought of that. It rather poetically describes what I like about CivIII. I find the game goes much faster than IV as well (as long as I remember to turn off other Civ's moves.
 
In terms of time played in an HoF game, that only indicates the amount of time the game ran for. There may have existed many hours where miss Moonsinger left the game on and talked on the phone, or went shopping, or whatever.
 
Elegant simplicity. Well said. After completing the G Major X for Civ 5, I decided to fire up Civ III again, and it was truly a nostalgic feeling that I had. I had forgotten all about a game without specialists, religions, and so forth, where one could just escape for a while within a world that lacked overcomplication. Ah, the hours in the past that I spent in Vanilla Civ III! Honestly, I have spent an eternity playing Civ IV and love it dearly (well, other than the rage quit thing -- I thought I was the only one!), but I can see that it is time to reconnect with Civ III.

In fact, I am getting ready to show another person how to play Civ, and I debated which version to start with. I personally started with Civ II. I'm thinking that Civ III may just be the perfect balance for a new player. Civ IV has too much going on for someone who doesn't even know where to start I think... thoughts? Civ V on the other hand plays like an entirely different game it seems....
 
DizzKneeLand33 said:
Elegant simplicity. Well said. After completing the G Major X for Civ 5, I decided to fire up Civ III again, and it was truly a nostalgic feeling that I had. I had forgotten all about a game without specialists, religions, and so forth, where one could just escape for a while within a world that lacked overcomplication. Ah, the hours in the past that I spent in Vanilla Civ III! Honestly, I have spent an eternity playing Civ IV and love it dearly (well, other than the rage quit thing -- I thought I was the only one!), but I can see that it is time to reconnect with Civ III.

In fact, I am getting ready to show another person how to play Civ, and I debated which version to start with. I personally started with Civ II. I'm thinking that Civ III may just be the perfect balance for a new player. Civ IV has too much going on for someone who doesn't even know where to start I think... thoughts? Civ V on the other hand plays like an entirely different game it seems....
Click to expand...

I think you answered your own question. I'd start with III. Less complexity than IV, easy to use and fast-moving. I may be biased because that's how I started. Basic III, then C3C, then IV and then BTS. I still keep coming back to III. Steam plus the hatred of V has kept me from spending the money on V. Couldn't get into II with the food requirements for workers and being unable to see the terrain clearly.
 
I just got a new Windows 7 notebook computer and decided to try installing Civ4 on it. It had stopped running on our home system long ago, and I never bothered to sort it out. Turned out it had compatibility problems on my new computer too, so I gave up. Never liked the 3-D graphics anyhow.

Instead, I installed Civ3 and Conquests. For the past couple evenings, I've been rediscovering the game. I had a whole lot left to learn last time I stopped playing--whenever that was.

First off, I was impressed by the graphics. I had forgotten how good they are. If they're not actually 3-D, they're still pretty spectacular. Seems like almost a little too much for a TBS game, but I'm OK with it.

I guess civ borders were new with Civ3. That was a huge step forward, I thought, and I still love the idea. Too bad other civs don't respect the borders much. I get so tired of shooing trespassers away that I'm half tempted to declare war. (But then again, I need to trespass too sometimes in order to explore the coast with a galley.)

Diplomacy is complex in Civ3. I'd forgotten about that, since I'd played Civilization Revolution DS in the meantime (diplomacy is a joke in that game). I'm not crazy about all the haggling, but I like that diplomacy seems like a real part of the game.

Just getting warmed up to Civ3 again, after being away from it for probably several years. Hope it grows on me. Right now I'm just knocking the rust off with a game on Regent level (playing as the Aztecs, as a result of a random draw).

Oh--the "rage quit" thing. I sure experienced a lot of that in CivRev DS. So maddening to see my panzer tanks knocked out by a stray catapult--again and again.
 
Nostalgia certainly plays a role. I bought Civ3 when in came out in Oct 2011. This was right after 9/11 and my father passing away the same week. I was in my freshman year and we really didn't know what was going to happen.

So I spent my time in the game, and really liked the fact I'd post a question and Soren Johnson would post a reply asking for a save or for me to clarify something. Though it's unfair to take credit, I'd like to think I contributed to the patching of the game.

Many will recall many mini controversies and temper tantrums from Civ2 players complaining about Civ3 ; some were legit issues, many were just upset it didn't play like Civ2.

But in retrospect, what made Civ3 great was it's one of those games that shifted the landscape. Civ4 improved on a lot of it, and worked out a lot of exploits (at the expense of flexibility and strategy depth - but that's for another rant) but Civ3 was the game that built the foundations. It's achievements are
  • Human blind AI in diplomacy
  • Cultural Borders
  • The creation of the 'nation' as an idea. Civ2 tied unit maintenance to the city. Civ3 tied units to the empire
  • The Trade table - gpt trades/1-1/lumpsum for gpt/ map valuation/ treaty valuation/ luxury valuation/ trade valuation/ tech valuation - all done by the AI
  • Value based city governors. A city will build a building based on its weighted actual stats, not because it has a pre-set build order. So if you gave barracks no worth with its stats, a city will never build one.

And there's more, but those things made Civ3 an epochal leap and I'm always upset with players praise Civ4 but forget about 3.
 
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