From civ 3 to civ 2

Quintillus said:

And while Civ4 vanilla is arguably worse than Civ3 Conquests (I certainly have argued that it is), all in all it's a very good game with both expansions. Nowadays, I play both more or less equally, despite having been vehemently pro-Civ3 in the first few years I was a member of CFC (roughly 2007 - 2010). But both Civ3 and Civ4 have their strong points and weak points; this could become another one of the classic megaposts from the good old Civ3 vs Civ4 debates if I went into them in detail, and I've done that a few times in the past, so I'll leave that for archive-searching.

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Ah. The I only have Civ IV with Warlords, so that's where my experience comes from. I have to say BtS looked pretty good, but I just never was able to pick it up. Do you think it's worth it to look into it, or should I just go ahead and stick with Civ III?

I bought civ5 a couple of months ago. I played my first game, but never finished it. I havent gone back.

It's not bad. It was interesting at first, but after drinking civ 3 juice for such a long time I just could not find a repeat factor for civ 5.

What discouraged me was:

1- Cant unlearn social policies. I felt like I was playing world of warcraft, selected the wrong talents, but I couldnt unlearn them, so I was dead for the rest of the game.

2- 1 unit per tile. I have units all over the map like a mongol ready for conquest. I'm a peaceful person!

3- Cities magically come to life and attack enemies with their sky scrappers/huts/houses.

4- My army was of like 30 units and I stomped my enemies. Huge difference down from commanding 100s of units in Civ 3.

It felt like a cellphone game.

The good:

1- The graphics, and animations. I liked the smoke from destroyed improvements.

2- I cant think of anything else since I only played that one long game.

Lord Plebian said:

Ah. The I only have Civ IV with Warlords, so that's where my experience comes from. I have to say BtS looked pretty good, but I just never was able to pick it up. Do you think it's worth it to look into it, or should I just go ahead and stick with Civ III?

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I think it's definitely worth looking into BtS. Of the two expansions, it was the more significant - just like Conquests being more significant than PTW - and I think that's when Civ4 really came of age (although I should note that I've only played a few games with just Warlords since I got both at the same time). Most of the scenarios available for Civ4 also require BtS, just as most of them for Civ3 require Conquests. Though while, in theory, the Civ4 scenarios are more flexible, in practice I've found the Civ3 scenarios usually are more polished.

Although, BtS doesn't really simplify the game, religion is still more of a diplomatic barrier than it should be, and the combat and government systems are still basically the same. So it really depends on whether those were major deal-breaker issues for you, or if it was more that they were minor issues that the positives didn't cancel out. If it's the latter, BtS evolves Civ4 enough that you may find it enjoyable.

ZergMazter said:

I bought civ5 a couple of months ago. I played my first game, but never finished it. I havent gone back.

It's not bad. It was interesting at first, but after drinking civ 3 juice for such a long time I just could not find a repeat factor for civ 5.

What discouraged me was:

1- Cant unlearn social policies. I felt like I was playing world of warcraft, selected the wrong talents, but I couldnt unlearn them, so I was dead for the rest of the game.

2- 1 unit per tile. I have units all over the map like a mongol ready for conquest. I'm a peaceful person!

3- Cities magically come to life and attack enemies with their sky scrappers/huts/houses.

4- My army was of like 30 units and I stomped my enemies. Huge difference down from commanding 100s of units in Civ 3.

It felt like a cellphone game.

The good:

1- The graphics, and animations. I liked the smoke from destroyed improvements.

2- I cant think of anything else since I only played that one long game.

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Other than not minding the permanent policies, those were among my top complaints with Civ5, too. The mish-mash of tactical and strategic elements, and the AI ineptness, led to it not really feeling like a Civ game to me. And while I do want to try it with both expansions for at least one game since Civ4 went from so-so to quite good when the expansions were added (with Civ3, I found it quite good even without expansions), it's been a long time since I played Civ5 as a result of the not-really-Civ feeling.

On the same subject, I recently found a link to a PC Gamer article surveying people about their favorite Civ game; Civ5 won that contests, followed by Civ4, Civ3, Civ2 (in that order), and in not-quite-clear order Civ1 and Beyond Earth. The sampling is more even among first-civ-game than I would have expected (about 20% started with Civ1, 20% with Civ2, etc. through Civ5). And while that does mean that newer titles have an inherent advantage since more of the surveyed are likely to have played them, it does mean that Civ5 has found an audience that likes it, howevermuch those of us who stick with older versions might wish to think otherwise. On the other hand, it's not a universal favorite either.

Man really civ 3 on 4th place? How disappointing. If civ 3's community was bigger we could all pool in some money and buy our access to civ 3 source code. While I don't know how to code I know what it can be used for and I would gladly support our community so others can work with it.

If I ever won the lotto I'd pay for it myself, then gift it to civfanatics lol! Oh and pay salaries to programmers to better the game! Its a dream

Quintillus said:

And while that does mean that newer titles have an inherent advantage since more of the surveyed are likely to have played them, it does mean that Civ5 has found an audience that likes it, howevermuch those of us who stick with older versions might wish to think otherwise..

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I believe Civ5 won because most people hadn't actually tried the other versions of the game. They simply chose the one they played as the best. I'll attribute this to the lack of technology penetration in the days of Civ3 and Civ2.

ZergMazter said:

Man really civ 3 on 4th place? How disappointing. If civ 3's community was bigger we could all pool in some money and buy our access to civ 3 source code. While I don't know how to code I know what it can be used for and I would gladly support our community so others can work with it.

If I ever won the lotto I'd pay for it myself, then gift it to civfanatics lol! Oh and pay salaries to programmers to better the game! Its a dream

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Sounds like a dream to me. Giving you a big on this one . There's already essentially a free version of Civ 2/1 out there. It's different, but plays a lot alike. Having a version of Civ III people could work on would be a dream.

What we really need is for Civ III to get the Age of Empires 2 HD treatment. That would be awesome.

Lord Plebian said:

Sounds like a dream to me. Giving you a big on this one . There's already essentially a free version of Civ 2/1 out there. It's different, but plays a lot alike. Having a version of Civ III people could work on would be a dream.

What we really need is for Civ III to get the Age of Empires 2 HD treatment. That would be awesome.

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HD!!!
When did Age of Empires get HD or are you talking about AoE 3?
Anyways, even if we have Civ 3 in HD, I really doubt if that would make a considerable difference as the size of everything is so small in the game that for most things the improvement would be unnoticeable.

Atishay Jain said:

HD!!!
When did Age of Empires get HD or are you talking about AoE 3?
Anyways, even if we have Civ 3 in HD, I really doubt if that would make a considerable difference as the size of everything is so small in the game that for most things the improvement would be unnoticeable.

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Age of Empires 2 got an HD release on steam, and has two new expansions, one that's already out (there's a free version of an earlier build you can get if you have the disk like me) and one that's coming this fall. The main reason I want to see a Civ III HD is not necessarily for the HD, it's just as a sign that they are paying attention to it. A sign we could get more updates or even another expansion. And widescreen would be nice.

HD as in more pixels? Does that mean we get to look like civ 5? Lol... with newer user created graphics of course.

Lord Plebian said:

Age of Empires 2 got an HD release on steam, and has two new expansions, one that's already out (there's a free version of an earlier build you can get if you have the disk like me) and one that's coming this fall. The main reason I want to see a Civ III HD is not necessarily for the HD, it's just as a sign that they are paying attention to it. A sign we could get more updates or even another expansion. And widescreen would be nice.

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The Steam version of CivIII was patched this spring. And while I've heard they managed to break a few things in the patch (it was supposed to solely move multiplayer from the defunct GameSpy to Steam), that does at least mean that the source code was not lost as it was rumored to be at one point, and that it's in a workable state.

I know there are some widescreen wonder graphics in the graphics part of Creation and Customization. There are also a few widescreen main menu graphics - I made one myself back around 2009, but there are others too. And I'm pretty sure someone's done some work on more widescreen-friendly city screen graphics. But yes, it would be nice if everything were nicely centered on widescreen monitors.

ZergMazter said:

HD as in more pixels? Does that mean we get to look like civ 5? Lol... with newer user created graphics of course.

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With Age of Empires II, the HD edition did indeed allow going beyond the old maximum of 1024x768 pixels. Civ3 is modern enough that it can already do this with KeepRes=1 - I run it at 1920x1200 on my desktop - but some of the graphics are still limited, such as how the advisor windows never get any bigger no matter how much space you have. Age of Empires II HD did not, however, redo the graphics beyond allowing the user interface to work with higher resolutions and some water effects. Redoing all the graphics would be much more work, so I don't think there's any need to worry about that.

I actually played through a game of AoE II HD about a week ago, and once you're in-game, it's essentially indistinguishable from the original. The graphics are probably a little more crisp than the original on a high-res screen, but it's hard to tell when you're in game and focusing on the action. It's definitely cool that it's getting attention, but I'd be happy playing whichever version worked best on the computer I had at the time - and oddly enough, on my main and most powerful computer, the old CD version actually works better than the HD one. Go figure.

Although in the case of Age of Empires II, I think there were two things that really helped land the HD edition. One is that many series veterans considered it the best of the series. True, many prefer earlier versions of Civ to Civ5, but in the Age of Empires community it was a general, though not universal, consensus (I personally slightly prefer III, but that may be because AoE III was the first one I really played in multiplayer). The second is that Age of Empires III in 2005 was the last one in the series - it came out within a week of Civ4. So Firaxis is likely to focus on Civ6 once they wrap up Beyond Earth, whereas Microsoft had no successor for Age of Empires for nearly a decade, and no one had really made a generally-acknowledged spiritual successor either. Thus, there were a lot of series fans who hadn't had anything new in ages, and were more than happy to revisit their old favorite. Civ fans generally haven't been as starved for new content.

There's also an HD update to Age of Mythology, which came out between Age of Empires II and III. I don't have that one, and haven't heard as much about it - probably due to a combination of the original Age of Mythology aging better than the original Age of Empires II, as well as that game not being considered as good as AoE II or III in general.

I certainly would be interested if something like this were to happen, even though I don't expect it.

Atishay Jain said:

Anyways, even if we have Civ 3 in HD, I really doubt if that would make a considerable difference as the size of everything is so small in the game that for most things the improvement would be unnoticeable.

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If I were to work at Firaxis and make an expansion/patch/update/whatever for Civ3, how I would handle it would be to add a closer zoom level (or just let there be more detail on high-DPI screens), and allow graphics with twice the horizontal and vertical resolution. So every unit/tile/city/etc. could have 4 times as many pixels and thus much more detail, when you either zoomed in or had a high-DPI display. That would also allow graphics creators to include much more detail - it's amazing what has already been done considering the technical limitations. If higher-res graphics weren't available (such as for old scenarios), current-resolution graphics could be used as a backup so no compatibility would be broken, and the closer zoom would either be disabled or rather pixelated.

I'd also do something to the 256-color limitations in certain files such as units_32.pcx, and ideally allow more colors in general, but the first paragraph probably have the most noticeable difference.