civ3 forever?

Hello,

I haven't played civ3 for ages and what reminded me of this brilliant game is yesterday's Twitch.tv explorations. I was streaming my favorite game (worldoftanks) and took a short break to look around twitch games, found civ5 and thought why not let's check it out.

For some reason, I just can't see myself playing civ5 ~ just as I couldn't play civ4. Just can't make this happen, the game feels SO different but not necessarily better. I understand it has evolved in the sense of how diplomacy works and different ideologies additions etc etc.. but it could be the same with civ3 if it were developed further as well.

Gladly I still have a civ3 copy so I can play a game or two for the sweet nostology.


How is it with you guys?
Did you try civ4/5 and came back to civ3? do you think civ5 is amazing and better and all civ3fans should definitely just get used to the new game/meta/wateva?


I double post it; meaning I posted on civ3 general discussions as well, to have as many opinions as I can get so mods, don't delete plz

I played only civ3 and civ5 - i like both. I think Civ5 BNW is really good for multiplayer and I doupt I will play civ3 once again...

I don't mean to say the obvious here but this is obviously going to be your first reaction if you have only seen it for the first time recently and have been playing Civ 3 for this long (it has been out for years). I mean, are you really going to dismiss 4 and 5 on the strength of a Twitch video you watched?

Yes, every Civ game has been different but I thought that was the whole point?!?!? Would you really want a game that has the exact same gameplay with each new version and the only difference is slightly better graphics?

I'm actually amazed that you have still been playing Civ 3 all these years and weren't even slightly curious as to how Civ 4 and Civ 5 might look/play and you are only seeing the differences now - that's quite an impressive feat!

I've tried civ4 several times & civ5 once I might give civ5 another try though ...

goodsmell said:

I've tried civ4 several times & civ5 once I might give civ5 another try though ...

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I really would give it another go - at least play it a few times to see if you get a feel for it. Civ 3 was a great game but there are things in Civ 5 (and even Civ 4) that are vast improvements and make the game more immersive. Culture, Ideologies, ranged combat, etc. I'd say the weirdest thing for you would be the 1UPT feature but Civ 5 is definitely worth revisiting. I actually have Civ 3 installed on my PC and play it the odd time for nostalgia reasons but Civ 5 is the best in terms of gameplay!

Civ III was a downgrade compared to SMAC/SMAX. So I went back to that.

Civ IV was only able to keep my interest because of the gotm sub forum here.

Going back to IV has no appeal for me whatsoever, even as I readily acknowledge that BtS is a much bigger game and/or expansion than BNW.

Apart from nostalgia, what does III offer over IV, let alone V?

beetle said:

Civ III was a downgrade compared to SMAC/SMAX.

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I had that same feeling in 2001. When civ4 came out I never went back to civ3.
Compared to civ4, there are some civ5 features (music, combat, religion) I like better, but the civ5 AI is horrible at war. The defender has most of time a negligible army and there's no room for it because the attacker occupies most of the tiles.
I find it extremely annoying when one aggressor simply conquers other civs in no time because the defenders lack military units. The Civ4 AI is superior in this area, just like in diplomacy and trading.
Civ4 gives the player more options and much more to do, although it's repetitive sometimes, but everything is better than sit and wait for the next turn and do only one or two things.

I can't believe you didn't like Civ IV, that makes no sense at all! Yes, Civ IV beats V easily!

I started with Civ III and loved it. One of my favorite things was the music, and I've gone back a couple times to play the game, and enjoyed it. I really liked playing Persia with the Immortals. However, the flaws became obvious, and it was hard to want to keep playing it. Corruption was the worst, along with the extreme amount of time it takes for workers to build improvements. Civ IV fixed those huge flaws and more, and that's why it is hard to go back much to Civ III. Still, sometimes I get the music going in my head and think about it.

I personally never played Civ3 game that's last longer than renaissance. Palace and leader changing costume is nice, but it is not "fulfilling" enough for me. Granted, My first ever civ game is Civ4 BTS, and I having fun. Also, I play SMAC, and also having fun

Well, aside from losing the hilarious advisor videos, III was a pretty straightforward improvement over II for most aspects of the game. It was only by comparison to the years-earlier SMAC/SMAX that the simplistic gameplay became glaringly obvious.

The delta between difficulty levels was much too much though, so that killed the enjoyment for me. Then IV repeated that particular terrible design flaw. I am so happy that V this aspect of the game correct!

I think I understand enough of the appeal that IV holds for some people over V, so fine. Different strokes for different folks.

But what is the appeal that III has over IV?

beetle said:

But what is the appeal that III has over IV?

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Except for nostalgia and the music, none really.

Civ II and Civ III were essentially expansion packs for civ 1. The game-play was so similar that they just added more game elements, better graphics, and more options. But it was a pretty linear progression as they became not only more complex as they progressed but also more enjoyable. So yes, civ III is the best version of the original civ game.

CIV4 had such drastically different ideas that it became essentially a different game with the same conceptual basis. Some elements were more enjoyable but some elements were a bit of a trade-off.

CIV5 continued in this trend by changing so many game elements that it once again became an entirely new game with a similar concept. The big change here is whether or not it was an improvement. Personally, I'm torn on this - on the one hand, I have both CIV4 and CIV5 at my disposal and play exclusively CIV5. On the other hand, I remember enjoying the experience of CIV4 more than that of CIV5. I think it means that, in my opinion, CIV5 is better but not by the degree that should be expected due to the technological advances that have happened in the time between their releases.

rschissler said:

Except for nostalgia and the music, none really.

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and Palace, Adviser that do something*, Leader in era-appropriate costume** and beaten/kissed leaderhead when you won or lose. These reason is what made me bother to try Civ3.

While greatness of Civ3 music is carried over to Civ4, not hearding them all the time could be drawback, but Civ4 music is also great in it's own right.

*Although no version done it better than Civ2's advisor.
**leading to skinhead Jeanne d'Arc and some Native American leader in tuxedo.

rschissler said:

I can't believe you didn't like Civ IV, that makes no sense at all!

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I missed that this comment was probably directed at me. CIV was/is a great game. I liked it very much. But for me, as compared to V it has very little replay appeal. I could never progress up the difficulty levels, as one setting was much too easy but the next one up was much too hard. The civs did not seem that variable to me. I am sure I played each leader at least once, but it was actually something of a chore. Every AI opponent behavior was always about the same.

Yes, Civ IV beats V easily!

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As compared to the hours of enjoyment I got from II and SMAC/X -- and am still getting from V -- III and IV were of poor value.

beetle said:

But for me, as compared to V it has very little replay appeal.

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I found the opposite to be true because CIV4 had one more victory condition than CIV5. Granted, there are strong similarities between domination and conquest VC's but I liked the CIV4 domination VC because when you started to ran away with the game to such a level that it was impossible to lose, you just won automatically. They actually could have reduced the VC values and it would have still worked.

beetle said:

The civs did not seem that variable to me.

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This is interesting. Both CIV4 and CIV5 had two unique slots and, IIRC, UU's and UB's were included in both games, but UI's were a new concept to 5. The primary difference between civ-specific bonuses were 2 traits in CIV4 vs. 1 UA in CIV5. While the UA's were unique to civs, I found that there were different strategies associated with different traits in civ4, and finding the best way to utilize the compatibility (oops, sorry. This is civfanatics. Our $5 word is synergy) of the two traits of the leader to be very interesting and provided more replay value than UAs in Civ5. Washington and Huana Capac were both financial but often had very different approaches to the game. Furthermore, while there is a never-ending debate about tradition vs. liberty, Civ5 seems to have more universally applicable strategies that you can rinse-repeat with any civ whereas civ4 had lots of approaches that worked on similar levels. There was great diversity in how the five civic selection choices would combine for different cumulative advantages and further how they were affected by leader traits.

goodsmell said:

Hello,

I haven't played civ3 for ages and what reminded me of this brilliant game is yesterday's Twitch.tv explorations. I was streaming my favorite game (worldoftanks) and took a short break to look around twitch games, found civ5 and thought why not let's check it out.

For some reason, I just can't see myself playing civ5 ~ just as I couldn't play civ4. Just can't make this happen, the game feels SO different but not necessarily better. I understand it has evolved in the sense of how diplomacy works and different ideologies additions etc etc.. but it could be the same with civ3 if it were developed further as well.

Gladly I still have a civ3 copy so I can play a game or two for the sweet nostology.


How is it with you guys?
Did you try civ4/5 and came back to civ3? do you think civ5 is amazing and better and all civ3fans should definitely just get used to the new game/meta/wateva?


I double post it; meaning I posted on civ3 general discussions as well, to have as many opinions as I can get so mods, don't delete plz

Click to expand...

I've played all civs. When I was 12 I played Civ I for the first time. Didn't understand much about it, specially since english isn't my native language.
I had an old pc from my brother and pretty much the only game I kept on playing was Civ I. I remember I actually beat King difficulty at some point by science win while Mongols captured the entire world except my island(I was Egypt) and I payed them every few turns(Don't recall how often it was set.. I mean it is almost 20 years ago..) 10000gold just so didn't attack me. An attack I could never hold off.

Funny thing I still remember that so well after such a long time. The feeling civ 1 gave will never return, but I played all other civs so far and every time when a new one came out I thought it wasn't that good and that the previous one was just a lot better. After a while I always got into the new Civ and ended up liking it a lot.
It's only since the last month that I got into Civ 5 actually... so it took me really long to like the latest edition, but it's good. It's just too bad the AI is really poor in combat imo. Besides that it has a lot to offer.

Anyways... sometimes you just need to give it some time, but all civs are awesome. I'm not even going to pick a favourite, because I can't pick one. Except not civ 2

This post made me smile. I also loved Civ3, which I heavily modded to my liking.

We are probably a small minority, but I never got into Civ4, and humbly returned to my heavily modded Civ3. I tried several games in Civ4, but never enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed Civ3.

The main reasons were probably the warfare (I liked the promotions, but did not like the stacks of dooms - Civ3 at least had proper artillery units), the graphics (everything was colorful and moving, yet kind of comics-like, kind of hard for me to track everything) and I did not enjoy some of the new features, such as religions. I have been playing civ since Civ1 and my modded Civ3 was much closer to the spot where I wanted the game to be than Civ4.

I was often toying with an idea in my head about how to make the warfare more tactical ... if only they could combine the 2 of my favorite games/concepts together: the empire building of Civ and more tactical warfare of Panzer General with one unit per tile or similar system. After a couple of years, they did exactly what I wished for - they even mentioned Panzer Generals in the game previews!!

So I bought Civ5 (before DLCs, but after a few patches which fixed the most glaring bugs) and I fell in love with it. I especially liked the warfare. I also liked the graphics, which was pleasing to the eye, but not as chaotic as Civ4.

As I played more and more, I started to realise how poor the military AI sometimes was (which was partly understandable considering how much more complex the warfare is with 1 unit per tile) and that some areas of the game were not balanced too well. I still liked the game very much though, especially after they released the DLC expansions, which added new concepts. Then I found the Communitas mod (and its pre-DLC predecessors) which fixed many imbalances, improved the AI to some extent and added new features.

Then after the DLC expansions and after the development of Communitas was abandoned, Firaxis released the source of the DLL libraries, which among other things contained the AI routines. Then AI improvement mods started to appear and to my surprise some of them significantly improved the AI, without increasing the turn times too much.

Now I am playing with the Community Balance Patch which apart from being one of the best AI improving mods pretty much overhauls the whole game, reballances stuff and adds new game mechanics. Now I feel like when I was playing my heavily modded Civ3 in the old days - the game is how I like it (within certain limitations given by the game and current technology).

Anyway, if you are thinking about giving Civ5 a try, why don't you download the demo from Steam? It will let you play 100 turns, which is enough to find out if you like the new concept of Civ5 or not. If you do buy the game, then I suggest to play it without mods first to learn everything and after that, if you start to feel the game is lacking something, try out the mods. I suggest to buy the Complete Edition which includes all the 2 big expansions - the game feels kind of incomplete without them (no religion (- I like the one in Civ5), no trade routes, no ideology, worse unit hitpoint system, etc.).

vyyt said:

if you are thinking about giving Civ5 a try, why don't you download the demo from Steam? It will let you play 100 turns, which is enough to find out if you like the new concept of Civ5 or not.

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Not necessarily. It's a good idea for people that are on the fence about whether or not to get it. But when I first got Civ 5, I played two partial games before just concluding that I liked CIV4 better (or at least, I liked what I was familiar with better. Change bad! Please don't change, Civ?!!?) Later after giving it a fairer shot, I eventually embraced it and haven't played CIV4 since, roughly 200 CIV5 games ago.

i liked how workers and citizens had ethnicity in civ3 and were shown as faces in the UI.
miss this feature alot.
in civ4 and 5 population is just numbers
i also kinda miss the ability to bombard improvements
in other aspects later games are alot better.

Well, the CD copy of civ3 is way too old and doesn't work.

I'm going to buy both civ3 and civ5 (after demo..) from steam or g2a.com.
I see many of civ3 fanatics have moved to civ5, I guess they know what they're doing ^_^

I relate to what vyyt has said about the civ4 and 5 looking chaotic at first. I mean the graphics are super different but is it necessarily better? they could make it bit cleaner or something, so many things going on your screen.

Thank u for opinions guys