BlackBetsy
Warlord
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2005
- Messages
- 250
I didn't post on CivFanatics from 2006 to 2024 because, well, getting married and having children tends to get in the way of playing Civ 3. I loved the community here and learned so much and got better at the game. Civ4 was less interesting to me because of the tough limits on expansion and I describe Civ5 as creating the one unit per tile heresy. Never even tried Civ6. Civ 3 has always been the perfect expression of the game for me, love Modern Armor, love Great Leaders, and the great increase in type and function of Wonders. (I played original Civ as a teenager to the point of severe sleep deprivation). In November I started thinking about old Civ and downloaded a DOS emulator and played some original CIV. Damn, that was fun. So I went to GOG and got Civ3 and picked it up again.
I started out at Regent, which seemed ridiculously easy as a starting point, and rolled up through Monarch and Emperor to Demigod, where I first started having issues with the game play. I remember struggling with Demigod back in 2005 and avoided COTM and GOTM that were Demigod or higher difficulty. With a few tweaks to my game and greater focus on tech trading and maximizing production, I was eventually able to beat Demigod a couple of times. Definitely, I referred back to this forum and watched some Suede videos for reminders / motivations to get me over the DG hump. I thought I was gonna be done with 2 a.m. sessions once I won DG, but something was calling me to see if I could do Deity. I started playing around with conditions (trying Pangaea with the Greeks, trying Archipelago with the Greeks, trying the Sumerians on Pangaea) and learned more about the math and science of the game and figured that I could give it a go under favorable conditions - Large Archipelago 60% water with the Byzantines against non-scientific, non-seafaring/commercial Civs (so I could at least trade at the start of the game). I had a couple of sessions where I had good starts and the maps just crushed me for a variety of reasons, including no resources or limited ability to expand (sharing an island with even Aztecs that are backwards - no bueno).
I finally got a pretty sizable island to myself with good RNG on my curraghs to make contact with 5 different civs and tech brokered my way forward. Having only one lux (wines) on my island meant I had to use the lux slider + lux trading to build cities of any size. We fought off an early intrusion by the Aztecs into our island. The Aztecs were only coastal squares away and shared a big island with the Mayas. I usually think the Mayas would win over the Aztecs but Monty wiped them out pretty early in history. Can't remember the other civ or two wiped out early by the other AI. The big problem in the game was that there were two tech leaders through most of the Ancient and Middle Ages - Arabia and Egypt - who I could broker tech with and sell to the Celts, Aztecs, and Zulus. The Mongols were doing the AI archipelago strategy of build tons of weak land units on an island and never tech or have gold. I got into wars by refusing tech demands (whatcha gonna do, Shaka, ya gonna drop off two Impis to be slaughtered by Trebs and Knights if you make it past my Dromons?) but never fought a land war in the entirety of the game past wiping out 2 Aztec cities with Horsemen in the Ancient era.
The Arabs then broke free from the other AI in tech in the late Middle Ages and I was left with the task of guessing techs they wouldn't research and beating them and extracting cold hard cash and tech. I did this repeatedly, including Economics for a SGL and Adam Smith's Trading Co., generating huge reserves over 10,000 gold at various points. My whole strategy was to get to Scientific Method, pre-build and then build ToE (I moved my capital to Adrianople and had Constantinople do the building) and then leap ahead with Atomic Theory and Electronics and reap huge rewards and eek out a science victory based on pure Human ingenuity over AI discounts. Then disaster struck - I missed ToE by one turn in 1435 (tech was slow this game after a while because it was only Arabia and me teching). I didn't think this was possible because I kept Scientific Method from the Arabs. Full disclosure - I cussed silently to myself (it was 2 am) when this happened and looked for the 5 turn reload and ToE couldn't be saved. Had I made slight adjustments 10 turns earlier (railroading two bonus grasslands) I would have beaten the AI (Sigh). Not wanting to live in a world without the ToE, I reloaded to 770 AD for a second shot, I admit. Since I was playing peacefully, this mostly meant re-doing all the railroads and trades I had done but I mostly re-created the world as is - no new wars started or ended. I lost my SGL in the re-load but got it back when I hit Medicine early in the industrial age and that let me build ToE as soon as I hit SciMeth (my pre-build just became Hoover Dam). ToE got me back to parity with the Arabs and dramatically increased my gpt inbound, but I still paying big amounts to the Arabs for Coal and their 2 luxes. Somewhere in the late Industrial Era Arabia had a massive leap forward and despite not being scientific, got Rocketry AND Computers by the time I hit the Modern Era, meaning my free Rocketry was worth nothing. I put Fission on 100% research after buying all the lux and cathedrals I could to keep the folks from rioting and hit Fission the same turn. Arabia had just declared war on two other civs and I had been giving out goodies for hundreds of years. My pre-build of the United Nations in Constantinople got me the UN in just 10 turns (if I remember) and good old Theodora won the vote easily. Yeah, a Diplo victory isn't the most satisfying condition, but it's a win nonetheless. It's a good thing, too, because the Arabs were already at 121k of culture on a 130k victory condition. Given the wonders in Mecca and elsewhere, maybe I had 20 turns left - there would be no space race. I don't think I've ever won from so far behind.
As I think most Civ players note, these electronic sagas don't really live very long, except in our memories. This wasn't the best game I've ever played nor do I love the Byz, and there were no glories of war to tell. But it's still very satisfying to beat a hard level like this even with a reload. Truly enjoyable to get back into the game again and create the little history it does. I love the fact that we can memoralize the little victories here with other people who share the same perspective, even when our families think we are totally strange when we curse some ancient civ for dropping a Modern Armor SoD on us.
I started out at Regent, which seemed ridiculously easy as a starting point, and rolled up through Monarch and Emperor to Demigod, where I first started having issues with the game play. I remember struggling with Demigod back in 2005 and avoided COTM and GOTM that were Demigod or higher difficulty. With a few tweaks to my game and greater focus on tech trading and maximizing production, I was eventually able to beat Demigod a couple of times. Definitely, I referred back to this forum and watched some Suede videos for reminders / motivations to get me over the DG hump. I thought I was gonna be done with 2 a.m. sessions once I won DG, but something was calling me to see if I could do Deity. I started playing around with conditions (trying Pangaea with the Greeks, trying Archipelago with the Greeks, trying the Sumerians on Pangaea) and learned more about the math and science of the game and figured that I could give it a go under favorable conditions - Large Archipelago 60% water with the Byzantines against non-scientific, non-seafaring/commercial Civs (so I could at least trade at the start of the game). I had a couple of sessions where I had good starts and the maps just crushed me for a variety of reasons, including no resources or limited ability to expand (sharing an island with even Aztecs that are backwards - no bueno).
I finally got a pretty sizable island to myself with good RNG on my curraghs to make contact with 5 different civs and tech brokered my way forward. Having only one lux (wines) on my island meant I had to use the lux slider + lux trading to build cities of any size. We fought off an early intrusion by the Aztecs into our island. The Aztecs were only coastal squares away and shared a big island with the Mayas. I usually think the Mayas would win over the Aztecs but Monty wiped them out pretty early in history. Can't remember the other civ or two wiped out early by the other AI. The big problem in the game was that there were two tech leaders through most of the Ancient and Middle Ages - Arabia and Egypt - who I could broker tech with and sell to the Celts, Aztecs, and Zulus. The Mongols were doing the AI archipelago strategy of build tons of weak land units on an island and never tech or have gold. I got into wars by refusing tech demands (whatcha gonna do, Shaka, ya gonna drop off two Impis to be slaughtered by Trebs and Knights if you make it past my Dromons?) but never fought a land war in the entirety of the game past wiping out 2 Aztec cities with Horsemen in the Ancient era.
The Arabs then broke free from the other AI in tech in the late Middle Ages and I was left with the task of guessing techs they wouldn't research and beating them and extracting cold hard cash and tech. I did this repeatedly, including Economics for a SGL and Adam Smith's Trading Co., generating huge reserves over 10,000 gold at various points. My whole strategy was to get to Scientific Method, pre-build and then build ToE (I moved my capital to Adrianople and had Constantinople do the building) and then leap ahead with Atomic Theory and Electronics and reap huge rewards and eek out a science victory based on pure Human ingenuity over AI discounts. Then disaster struck - I missed ToE by one turn in 1435 (tech was slow this game after a while because it was only Arabia and me teching). I didn't think this was possible because I kept Scientific Method from the Arabs. Full disclosure - I cussed silently to myself (it was 2 am) when this happened and looked for the 5 turn reload and ToE couldn't be saved. Had I made slight adjustments 10 turns earlier (railroading two bonus grasslands) I would have beaten the AI (Sigh). Not wanting to live in a world without the ToE, I reloaded to 770 AD for a second shot, I admit. Since I was playing peacefully, this mostly meant re-doing all the railroads and trades I had done but I mostly re-created the world as is - no new wars started or ended. I lost my SGL in the re-load but got it back when I hit Medicine early in the industrial age and that let me build ToE as soon as I hit SciMeth (my pre-build just became Hoover Dam). ToE got me back to parity with the Arabs and dramatically increased my gpt inbound, but I still paying big amounts to the Arabs for Coal and their 2 luxes. Somewhere in the late Industrial Era Arabia had a massive leap forward and despite not being scientific, got Rocketry AND Computers by the time I hit the Modern Era, meaning my free Rocketry was worth nothing. I put Fission on 100% research after buying all the lux and cathedrals I could to keep the folks from rioting and hit Fission the same turn. Arabia had just declared war on two other civs and I had been giving out goodies for hundreds of years. My pre-build of the United Nations in Constantinople got me the UN in just 10 turns (if I remember) and good old Theodora won the vote easily. Yeah, a Diplo victory isn't the most satisfying condition, but it's a win nonetheless. It's a good thing, too, because the Arabs were already at 121k of culture on a 130k victory condition. Given the wonders in Mecca and elsewhere, maybe I had 20 turns left - there would be no space race. I don't think I've ever won from so far behind.
As I think most Civ players note, these electronic sagas don't really live very long, except in our memories. This wasn't the best game I've ever played nor do I love the Byz, and there were no glories of war to tell. But it's still very satisfying to beat a hard level like this even with a reload. Truly enjoyable to get back into the game again and create the little history it does. I love the fact that we can memoralize the little victories here with other people who share the same perspective, even when our families think we are totally strange when we curse some ancient civ for dropping a Modern Armor SoD on us.
