Civ 3 vs Civ 5

My favorite civ game still is civ 3

I went ahead and bought the complete civ5 and I can see it really evolved from civ4. The resource management is awesome. You get an incentive for having more irons for example since you can build a limited amount of certain units depending on how many resources you got.

I liked the policies, and just like civics from civ4 I think they were an amazing idea. I like how caravans and cargo ships play a very nice role in the economy. Lastly I like the expanded diplomacy when in comparison to civ 3.

I wish civ3 had all these things. Now I hated the way the game feels slower even at fastest pace. This started with civ 4, and civ 5 is no different.

In civ3 It feels like you can enjoy every aspect of the game as you play. On civ5 it feels like you have to specialize, but once you deviate from your specialization you fall behind and you become the jack of all trades, got it all but not good at any. Also I find myself always making the decision to have an army or have buildings and cant build both as you progress like on civ 3.

Lastly while the came up with an idea to limit armies since they affect your economy heavily, I think its good, but to my taste they took it a bit too far. In my game I spent until the middle ages just to be able to build a single additional unit aside from the one defending my cities, and after that it was a continuous struggle to have an army.

I notice the AI plays the same way which tells me its not because im just a noob. Their army was as big as 3-6 units and mine was about that size.

Over all I think they implemented very good ideas, but i dont like the fact that those ideas finally even out late in the game. So you spend 3-5 eras just trying to reach a balanced spot, so that for example you could finally play like a warmongrel and invade countless cities without destroying your empires productivity. I dont like to go invade and raze cities because i cant afford them. Its a bit too over the top. Maybe it could have been better if the penalty was less.

I just cant make the jump from civ3 to other titles. They should make a title evolving from civ3. Just make it better and leave what it already has.

They just feel like different games in the sense that it shouldnt even be named sid meier's civilization 5, but sid meier's [name of your choice].

These games deviated from the family. civ 1-2-3 all feel from the same family, but 4-5 are just something else. To me it still feels like im waitting for the real civ4 thats gonna pick up where civ3 left...

Oh also where the heck are my people? I got a city with 20 citizens.... not cool. It felt like I was playing a simpler game like minecraft. There are lots of details like that in the game that makes it feel like it got dumbed down. I cant manually manage my citizens to work what i want them too?

UPDATE: Oops I meant to post this in civ5 general forum.

ZergMazter said:

My favorite civ game still is civ 3

I just cant make the jump from civ3 to other titles. They should make a title evolving from civ3. Just make it better and leave what it already has.

They just feel like different games in the sense that it shouldnt even be named sid meier's civilization 5, but sid meier's [name of your choice].

These games deviated from the family. civ 1-2-3 all feel from the same family, but 4-5 are just something else. To me it still feels like im waitting for the real civ4 thats gonna pick up where civ3 left...

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I'm with you man, and I was actually thinking about posting something similar right before you did!

I played Civ 4 a few years ago, but from what I remember it became too easy to have an empire pull itself apart with the different religions and local influences.....And Civ 5, I tried playing it for a few days, and just couldn't get into it.

I agree with you. Civ 3 needs a true sequel. In my opinion the best Civ game out there. Even 14 years after it came out, its a game that can be played over and over again, without getting sick of it.

Long live Civ 3!

I agree to, Civ3 is the best. I found Civ5 quite complicated and not very enjoyable to play. Also in some ways they made it easier to do a few things like city defense is already there and you dont have to build up your own defense as much and also transportation across water which I did not like. The only allowing 1 unit on a tile is also very annoying.

EDIT: Didnt make it very clear in a certain spot.

I agree with Civ5 being a somewhat faster game. However, it doesn't have that epic feel that Civ3 is known for.

You don't tell stories of how you slogged through hell and back to destroy an opponent when they burned your city to the ground. You even burned some of his cities just to teach others a lesson.

You don't have stories of the largest amphibian invasion known to man with 20 transports and 12 battleships & 15 destroyers, & 5 subs accompanying all your huge stacks of infantry. None of those things exist in Civ5 as it doesn't capture the feel of what's happening on screen.

With that being said, there were a lot of good things going for Civ3 that didn't make it to 5 (even with Brand New World) and a lot of Civ 5 stuff couldn't be added to Civ3 (no way to mod the C++ source).

Civ5 held it's on in city states. The city states really was a good addition (though the quests were repetitive and became stupid over time) and drove narrative and plot as it became a pure joy to manipulate world affairs with city states.

I am not a fan of Shafer's Social Policies and happiness being the empire limiter. Civ3 got the empire limiter correctly done and shouldn't have been messed with (war weariness, corruption, & pollution non-withstanding).

A game somewhat similar to Civ5 in the things it got right was Imperialism 1 by SSI.
It had a limited resource and armies are dependant upon raw materials ala civ5. it also has minor powers similar to the city states of Civ5 with deeper diplomacy.

I wish we could combine Civ3 (battle mechanics, naval battles & d-day invasions, tile improvements, cleaner UI, more user friendly) and Imperialism 1. That and the Purity, Harmony, Superiority virtues (aka religions) of Beyond Earth would be pretty awesome.

I have to add my voice in support of Civ III. Yes, Civ V is prettier and faster but it's nowhere as epic as III. The few times I've played 5, I found myself pushing a couple of dozen units around and am happy with my army. In III? I grab 120 tanks, covered by 30 artillery and several dozen aircraft and have massive battles against similar-sized armies. Can't beat that rush.

And the scale also feels better. The smaller city and unit icons make the world seem larger.

I haven't played Civ 5. I tried to move on to Civ 4, but I hated the unit promotion system and all if the micromanagement that it added.

Civilization games are supposed to be grand strategy games, not military simulators. I didn't want to have to remember which of my units had the city attack bonus, which one had the additional strength, which one was a medic, etc. Then, of course, the AI magically had units that had all of the promotions. I much prefer the conscript-regular-veteran-elite system of Civ 3. It has a proper balance than allows the retention of the concept of military experience without too much additional micromanagement.

I'm going to join the fray here in support of Civilization 3. I don't like some of the changes mad in Civs 4 and 5, and as Dilettante said it has an epic storytelling feel about it without complicating the system unduly.

I have tried to play Civ4 after buying the complete edition, but I do not like it one bit.

The graphic looks worst compared to Civ3, the techtree is all messed up, the religions do not fit in, the new right of way is even more horrible and the illness instead of happiness is more than worse.

It seems to me, that they have removed everything that I liked on civ and replaced it by some horrible "improvements".

There is absolutly no "civ-feeling" in Civ4 and I have not finished a single game in it.

Civ 5 is weird as well. I kept playing for 20 hours out of curiosity, but meh its just another game. I wanna play civilization not 'world of civilization'. A fair comparison would be warcraft vs world of warcraft. They look similar but they are very different games and play completely different.

It looks like civ 5 did away with RNG, That takes all the fun out of the game

So yeah civ 3 is better

dilettante said:

You don't have stories of the largest amphibian invasion known to man with 20 transports and 12 battleships & 15 destroyers, & 5 subs accompanying all your huge stacks of infantry. None of those things exist in Civ5 as it doesn't capture the feel of what's happening on screen.

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Sorry for taking just a small chunk of your post, but this bit made me chuckle because of a game I'd recently played which kind of belittles your largest amphibian invasion known to man bit.

I finished a tech game somewhere in the 1700s on a huge map, about 15-20 size 12 cities on a shared island (I didn't bother taking out the sharing civ as they were pure tundra and so backward the hassle of owning their towns would be worse than leaving them be) and I decided to practice naval warfare. I spent about 100 turns building:

150 Marines
100 Modern Armour
60 Radar Artillery
10 Battleships
10 AEGIS Cruisers
10 Destroyers
10 Carriers
60 Transports
and
40 Stealth Bombers

to make 10 stacks of equal measure, one each to be parked off-shore to one of 10 Metropolises owned by the leading competitor civ.

And that all turned out to be a complete waste of time. The Marines were ten tons of complete and utter uselessness. Well, a very small exaggeration, they were ok once the enemy's units had all been red-lined, and there weren't too many units to attack, but anything Infantry and up and they just died like Barbarian Warriors attacking Modern Armour. In fact, I think I've seen Barbarian Horsemen fare better against Modern Armour than my Marines managed against TOW infantry.

It is good to red-line the enemy first, obviously, so I put my 40 Stealths into action. Oh boy, they sucked so badly. Aside from destroying buildings I didn't want destroyed, dodging rusty old Spitfires, crashing into missiles, failed bombing runs, it took all 40 to red-line just one Metro's small stack of 6 or 7 units.

Nevertheless I secured the two smallest coastal cities and started moving in the Modern Armour and Radar Artillery and basically reverted to a normal land-based invasion. So much for a one-turn swoop of their entire coast-line...

Man, naval invasions are so sucky unless you're attacking backwards like my neighbour for whom it wasn't worth the bother to do so.

One amusing cheese I discovered, or, rather, used for the first time ever, was using an ICBM. After moving my entire fleet and troops into one of the above two cities I then immediately unloaded and pushed forward into another in-land town in the same turn. 15 Marines, 10 Modern Armour and 6 Radar Artillery then had to defend against the entirety of the this civilisation's offensive army, a classic, omg how far do I have to scroll down, stack of Infantry and TOW Infantry (they had Modern Armour, but only a few, who had failed to retake either Metro).

So I'm sitting there thinking, erm, where do i go from here...? Luckily this civ I was attacking had cleverly built the Manhattan Project just prior to my setting sail and I had a few ICBMs to play with. I then spotted a really neat cheese. In one turn I loaded all of my troops back onto their Transports, moved the fleet one square out of the city, nuked the big stack, then realised that a direct nuke on top of the stack's head turned out to leave a remarkably large number of soldiers still on the square, so I dropped a second nuke on their head.

Finally, there was only about a dozen of them all red-lined, so, still in the same turn, I moved my fleet back into the city and used them to finish of the stack. After that it was just a matter of Stealthing the defences of a few more coastal Metros and it was all over bar the crawling through Cultural Boundaries.

But I still regret taking 150 Marines instead of 150 additional Modern Armour/Radar Artillery and just unloading next to the cities as per the usual routine.

If anyone knows a circumstance where Marines are in any way useful for competing with similar era units I'd be glad to hear it. As far as I'm concerned, I'm done with them aside from hosing down Medieval and Ancient small-fry.

Marines are the only way to take coastal cities directly without having to land your army on nearby tiles first. If you combine the mobility of naval forces with some proper bombardement(You need huge amounts of destroyers or similar for that) they are quite powerful. After redlining the defenders they take out even MechInf quite well. If you play against humans you may start to love Marines. Against AI you often donnot need Marines. Using them for anything but amphibios attacks on cities is a waste if you can build modern armour. Then Marines just fasten your conquest by a few turns. Once you can nuke your enemy things change dramatically. Doublenuke a huge stack of the enemy and any unit with less than 5 HP will be destroyed for sure, the rest will be destroyed by a chance of 8/9. Nukes somewhat offset numbers.

150 Marines were apparently not the way to go in this situation. More effective is to just unload a ton of MechInfs & Modern Armor on a coastal mountain and let the AI throw all their units at it. (If you don't want to sneak attack them via RoP rape.) If you have a MechInf Army to cover your stack, it will even not be attacked on that first turn. (Unless the AI has nukes. But would the AI nuke a stack right next to one if its metropolises?! )

If there is no mountain for cover, you could have built just one Marine and 74 additional Stealth Bombers. That should be enough to clear one metro of all the units and then the one marine can take it... Afterwards unload the Modern Armor & Artillery and continue as you actually did. (Or use nukes instead of the bombers as justanick already mentioned. I usually try to avoid using nukes for "moral" reasons. )
In any case, against the AI more than a handful Marines is overkill. They should only be used for taking empty cities, otherwise the losses are too heavy.

justanick said:

Marines are the only way to take coastal cities directly without having to land your army on nearby tiles first.

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I usually go the other way around. I find a coastal city with a mountain or hill nearby, and land a massive, D-Day style force on it. In a typical late-game assault, I drop around 20 artilery, 30 defensive units, a dozen SAM and 60-90 attack units. The fleet offshore will bomb the roads on the hexes around the landing area, to stop at least part of the enmy counter attacks, and provides air cover. Then it's a matter of resisting attacks. Next turn, I jump on the city.

Can't do this kind of epic assault on Civ5...

I remember doing that one time against the Iraquois, but I was new to the game. I was so exited and happy because I made a massive 40 tank 20 mech inf amphibious landing on them and i thought the game was mine.

Unfortunately I landed on grassland and I got wiped out in a single turn. What made it worse is I was a democratic state and wasnt religious. Next turn not only did I lose my army, but i also lost the ability to maintain power in my civ and had to drop my goverment spending the next 8 turns doing nothing just waiting to get a new government running.

I wasnt mad about it tho, I was PISSED since it took everything i had to make that army me being a newb back then. Fun times haha... The AI just doesnt wanna stop making tanks. They wanna make more and more and more and more and more and more...

Bought Civ 4 years ago, played a couple of games and stopped. Nation building and war had lost their simplicity and fun.

Civ 3 mkII would be awesome- with lots of scenarios of course.

Yeah like what is the problem of just walking into the AI's territory, among other issues.

While in Civ4 you have to declare war, or Open Borders.

(if i remember correctly it's been a long time since i put in Civ4)