First longish game and some observations

[Il Mafioso]

Well, the icon for the post says it all. Definitelly think it's a Thumbs Up.

I had played 2 games at king level (dunno if it's called something else... don't remember) and got my butt handed over to me... probably 'cause I hadn't read the manual and couldn't figure out a lot of stuff (the changes compared to Civ2 *appear* subtle but there are some significant ones).

Anyway, decided to play a full game at chieftain so I could spend most of my time in the civilopedia to learn the new stuff.

here are some thoughts from this game (currently in the 1400s):

Chieftain *IS* easy

I dunno how some folks who said they were killed at Chieftain, managed such an accomplishment. Maybe a SUPERCROWDED continent would do it.

Neighbours don't attack you for no reason Not at this level anyway...

I've been pacifically coexisting with Egyptians, Romans and Greeks on my continent while the lucky-a$$ Aztecs got a continent of their own.

I've been trading with my neighbours, but mainly for techs, money, and maps....

resources are scarce!!!!

I have about 10 cities now (maybe 11, don't remember) and all I found after dominating about half the continent is:

1 Furs
1 Incense
2 Horses
2 Iron

That's it!!!!

Everyone else had at least one source of Iron, but I traded Horses to the Egyptians... maily to see if having the ability to build mounted units would push them to attack me.

Culture Rocks!

I *assimilated* 5 foreign cities, they were just too awed not to kiss my butt.

In order to have this happen I made sure every one of my cities built:

Temple
Library
Cathedral
Colosseum

and now I'm working on adding Universities.

I'm not 100% sure how the border expansion works. At first I thought that whenever the culture rating for the city filled up I would expand, but this apparently only happens if there are no neighbouring foreign cities.... I could have sworn Ur would have assimilated Sparta, but that didn't happen (yet). By the way, I'm playing the Babilonians.

I guess there's some formula that tells you how border expansion works but it's not in the civilopedia, or in the manual.

Corruption is a HUGE problem

Too much of a problem, if you ask me.

I don't mind having to deal with corruption as I guess it is realistic. However Courhouses while somewhat effective don't appear to have anywhere near the same effect as they did in Civ2.

I was planning on doing all sorts of tests... garrisoning many units, in hope that they would police the corruption, building many roads to make the city feel more *linked* to my empire.

I didn't spend too much time on these tests though... maybe I'll do it in another game (I'll make a map with only 2 civs on FAR continents, so I can experiment without dealing with foreigners).

Whatever I tried had little or no appreciable effect.

My farthest city had 8 shields of production 7 of which were going to waste. And this with a We Love the * going on!!!

What this does, imho, is FORCE you to strive for better governments. I'm currently a Repubblic and waste is no longer an issue.

Or the other thing it forces you to do (which I also did... and may explain why at Republic I'm pretty much waste-free while others have reported waste at DEMOCRACY!!!!!) is either wait forever for a forbidden palace, or take advantage of a Golden Age to build one.

I don't mind striving for better government as I would probably do it anyway... but imho it does tend to make your choices more limited. In Civ2 if I wanted to I could keep playing Monarchy and have an enjoyable game 'till whenever... in Civ3 unless there's some hidden way of decreasing the corruption problem, you would soon face the fact that building something as silly as a Musketeer takes 35 turns!!!

Build Queues are cool!

I love the ability to go to a city and tell it what to build for the next x turns. makes micromanagement easier.

Governors are weird

If you *don't* specify a build queue I've experienced some weird and frankly annoying behavior:

1. After building some things the governor will ask me what I want to produce next, but in some cases it just decides all by itself without saying a thing! Typically when it does this it builds a unit (as opposed to an improvement)... and this doesn't happen in a lightly defended city... unless 3 defenders is light for my Governor.

2. My Governor is obsessed with building me a Galley. He won't shut up about it. I'd love an option to fire the sucker and put him in a field to irrigate... where he belongs.

3. When he's not obsessed with the Galley (which means we're talking about ANY CITY that's NOT on the water, regardless of it's production ability) he wants to build "Sun Tzu's War Academy." Oh yeah, I should mention that I don't WANT Sun Tzu, I certainly don't want it built by a city that will take 130 turns to do so, and he's asked me maybe 20 times already.

How do you shoot your governor? (Incidentally there ARE other wonders I AM interested in but the scumbag doesn't want to build those I guess). Maybe he's from my opposing party and I had to appoint him to appease a voting group.

Roads roads everywhere.... kinda yuck!

Not that I don't agree that roads provide some trade benefit wherever they are, but visually it gets kinda ugly when every worked city square, has a road through it. I think I liked the Civ2 approach better.

Terrain is sometimes hard to identify

Flood plain <--- Disease looks very much like desert. I 'spose if I turned on the grid I would have noticed that 4 pixels of the corner of the tile were touched by water.

Jungles and forests near each other are essentially impossible to identify. Certain forests anyway. After carefully looking at the graphics I can tell a VERY MINOR difference, not something I'd be able to pick up at first glance. Right click happens a LOT on Jungle-looking terrain.

By the way it would be nice that either right-clicking another tile, or clicking anywhere with the mouse would dismiss the little terrain-view window (in case of right-clicking on another terrain tile it should reopen on that tile).

Incidentally if they *have* to keep the close X on it, it would be nice if you could DRAG the little terrain view window around to examine other tiles on the fly.

Oh yeah, and I wouldn't mind if the words in the legend for that view thing were hyperlinks to the civilopedia.

That's it folks.

It's addictive at least as much as Civ2.

It looks really nice.

It does need some polishing, but overall it's strong.

Corruption *IS* a wee bit too much of an issue. (and this coming from someone with the screenname: "IL MAFIOSO"

Haven't had any wars with other than barbarians so can't comment on wether loss of "firepower" really impacted warfare. It certainly made building Barraks a priority.

Thanks for listening.

I'll be glad to answer any questions for those of you who unfortunatelly don't have it yet (or anyone else for that matter)

Happy civing!

 

[Heffalump]

Can the corruption setting be tweaked in the editor?

Also, one thing I was wondering about earlier, what happens if the borders of a foreign civ overrun your colony? I know it disappears if YOUR borders overrun it but haven't heard what happens if it falls within another civ's borders.

 

[CurtSibling]

Originally posted by Il Mafioso


Governors are weird

If you *don't* specify a build queue I've experienced some weird and frankly annoying behavior:

1. After building some things the governor will ask me what I want to produce next, but in some cases it just decides all by itself without saying a thing! Typically when it does this it builds a unit (as opposed to an improvement)... and this doesn't happen in a lightly defended city... unless 3 defenders is light for my Governor.

2. My Governor is obsessed with building me a Galley. He won't shut up about it. I'd love an option to fire the sucker and put him in a field to irrigate... where he belongs.

3. When he's not obsessed with the Galley (which means we're talking about ANY CITY that's NOT on the water, regardless of it's production ability) he wants to build "Sun Tzu's War Academy." Oh yeah, I should mention that I don't WANT Sun Tzu, I certainly don't want it built by a city that will take 130 turns to do so, and he's asked me maybe 20 times already.

How do you shoot your governor? (Incidentally there ARE other wonders I AM interested in but the scumbag doesn't want to build those I guess). Maybe he's from my opposing party and I had to appoint him to appease a voting group.
[/B]

LOL!

I want CIV3 just for these crazy antics!!!

Thanks for the info!!

 

[Dmitry]

I have to agree. Chiftain is easy. I am somewhere in 1000AD - switched to the Monarchy a little while back and all is looking up.

The problem is that I got sandwiched with another civ on a island and had to kill it off - not enough space for two. Plus I don't have ANY iron anywhere yet!

Like the game so far. Can't wait to get home and play again. Work sucks when you got a CIV addiction

 

[Portent]

When a cities borders expand via culture, does this allow the cities population to work it, i.e. does the normal two-square radius increase when the cultural borders increase?

 

[RobKid]

You can never work beyond the standard 2 tile radius, and you can also never work squares outside your borders. Thus, the tiles you can work are limited until your culture expands your borders once, but when your culture forces your borders out to 3 or 4 tiles, you cannot work those squares.

 

[LoneWolf5050]

Your borders can get bigger, but you can only work 21 tiles per city (including the city square).

--LW

 

[Il Mafioso]

Originally posted by Heffalump
Can the corruption setting be tweaked in the editor?

I dunno if the Corruption setting per se can be tweaked, but since governments can be tweaked I suppose one could give Monarchy the corruption/waste settings of Republic, then give Republic those of Democracy, then give Democracy a better setting than it has.

But before I go and do that (especially to the main game *bic* file) I'd rather explore *legal* ways of dealing with this. Considering that I plan on participating in the Games of the month it wouldn't make much sense to make my copy *easier to play* and then get creamed in the GOTMs.

I figure either a Firaxis patch will fix this, or we'll figure out how to get around the problem, hopefully NOT with a strict strategy (I hate strict strategies, like ICS etc. ... I try to play every game differently ... and of course I'm referring to Civ2 here)

Also, one thing I was wondering about earlier, what happens if the borders of a foreign civ overrun your colony? I know it disappears if YOUR borders overrun it but haven't heard what happens if it falls within another civ's borders.

I lost a colony this way... I was an idiot, instead of moving a defensive unit into my town from another that was well protected and build a temple, I built the defenses and then the temple... the AI civ expanded before me and in the following turn my resources (and colony) were gone.

Got it back later when I built better cultural stuff and a wonder. Got their city actually

 

[Il Mafioso]

Originally posted by CurtSibling


LOL!

I want CIV3 just for these crazy antics!!!

Thanks for the info!!

I'm glad you find it funny!

Seriously though... it's gotten REALLY annoying. it's not every once in a while, now literally whenever a city doesn't have something in it's Queue and when it's got most of the goodies I've put in other cities (it does learn... after 3 cities I didn't have to tell it I wanted libraries anymore, it came up with that all by itself).

Of course if in 20 turns or so the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians sign a pact against me and overrun me because my musketmen are all green instead of veterans I'll probably find my city governer in the Dan Quayle screen giving me the finger

I think I'm going to have to build the darn SunZu just to placate the bastard!

As far as the naval units are concerned, it's stupid. Now that I have Caravels available it wants to build those. But there's no freggin' point. If they end up in ocean there is a *percentage* possibility they'll sink. I may be unlucky, but in my case so far it's been 99.99999% ... and I can't go around the continent because the other civs have borders extending into the water all the way out to the end of SEA (and beginning of ocean)... so when I try they yell at my and tell me to bring the suckers back home.

My theory at this point is that my governor thinks the other undiscovered Civ is that hottie of Joan D'Arc.... so he's thinking if we get caravels, soon we'll have yacths and maybe he can get her topless or something. I don't have the heart to tell the poor sap that the undiscovered Civ (by my selection at startup) is the Aztecs. And who wants to see Montezuma topless?

Alessandro
Trying to find something funny in everything. And thoroughly enjoying Civ3 regardless of what I've mentioned and the additional minor complaints you'll read in my next post

 

[Kev]

Il Mafioso:

My experiences are almost IDENTICAL to yours. Check out my post in the CivIII Tips & Strategies Section titles "Some thoughts after a few games". I wish I knew how to post the hyperlink.

Anyway, one thing that I didn't mention that you covered very well was the cities making choices on their own as to what to build. Especially with a large number of cities, it runs through the group that finished something and it stops at some and ignores others (and goes WAY too fast past many). In my case, all of my governors had some weird penchant for Pikemen. Cities with 3-4 units in it, and they think Pikement are the way to go.... Sounds sorta gay.

The only good thing is that you can see from the map what your city is building, and every 2 or 3 turns you can just eyeball your cities and see what's going on. There is NO penalty for changing your production - not on ANY level - so it's easy enough to change the item being built. Though it's a hassle, as you mention your advisors seem to be able to pick up on your style a bit and even make some decent suggestions. Just leave the pikemen, OK????!!!

 

[Peteus]

Originally posted by Heffalump
Also, one thing I was wondering about earlier, what happens if the borders of a foreign civ overrun your colony? I know it disappears if YOUR borders overrun it but haven't heard what happens if it falls within another civ's borders.

When the borders from another civ overrun your colony, it disappears. You can't have a colony inside a rival country.

Also, it seems like borders are a first-come first-served thing - I haven't observed borders being pushed back at all, although they may become enveloped on all sides. Capturing a city by overwhelming it with culture doesn't involve pushing your bubble over the city...I don't think that ever happens.

 

[Il Mafioso]

Take this in the spirit of my first post in the thread... I am addicted to the game so these are just minor things that I can definitelly deal with, and really they're more of a wishlist than negatives. And except for the very first one they all have to do with access to the Civilopedia.

Military Advisor Screen

Go look at a screenshot if you don't have the game, so you can follow what I'm saying...

In the upper left corner is a small map that shows you little dots representing your cities.

When you move your mouse over one of the cities, in the list below, a cross-hair indicates the position on the map.

GREAT!

Great because it allows you to check your border cities to see how your garrison there is.

Unfortunatelly though, you have to go through the list of cities... it would be much cooler if this were a two-way street and placing the mouse over the white dot on the map highlighted the city and the respective garrison!

Moreover it would be nice if there was a way to look up a unit's Civilopedia entry from this screen.

City Screen

As far as I can tell there's a way to get Civilopedia help on every stinkin' icon on that screen... except.... the production list!!!! So basically if you don't know what FOOD is, you can find out.... but if you don't happen to remember the exact benefits of a Colosseum, you have to pick to build it (or something else), then go out of the city screen, then go to the civilopedia from the map, look it up and go back to the city if reading up makes you change your mind.

Maybe you could avoid going out of the city screen by right-clicking the FOOD, getting help on food then going to the civilopedia index (I assume this is possible from any entry), then go to improvements etc. etc. etc.) but still... doesn't it make sense that most users may find civilopedia entries more useful on units and improvements than on the meaning of Food?

Trade Table

Here the problem is the same.

You're at the trade table and they offer you a trade... Writing for Masonry and 30 gold.

Is it worth it?

Who the heck knows? Thanks to the fact that many unit build requirements, many improvement requirements and purposes have changed, I can't trust my recollection of what a Civ2 advance gave.

And of course... you guessed it, there's no access to the Civilopedia.

In this case the situation is more problematic because your lack of information forces you to take a deal you shoudln't... or offer a deal that you would know the AI would find unfair if you knew exactly what you were trading... or more embarassingly, you have to say "never mind" and then go read up and maybe try again next time.

In the end I'm thinking that maybe a reasonable solution would be to spend a couple of hours taking screenshots of the civilopedia and building a quickie html document that allows me to look up the various pages.... and keep that running in the background.

 

[Ilspana]

I'm having alot of trouble trying to figure out the interface for this game. Namely, my main problem is with figuring out ques. How exactly do i set a que?

Also, my experience is somewhat different... I've had difficulties even on cheiftan difficulty and I'm not much more powerful than all the other civilizations in the game (my culture is equal to the sum of all of theirs at the moment, but its beginning to decline.). It may just be because theres always at least two other civs on my continent.. perhaps i should try an archipeligo map sometime.

 

[Shaar]

A queue(sp?) is set by holding down shift and clicking on the units you want to add.

 

[Ilspana]

Originally posted by Peteus
When the borders from another civ overrun your colony, it disappears. You can't have a colony inside a rival country.

Also, it seems like borders are a first-come first-served thing - I haven't observed borders being pushed back at all, although they may become enveloped on all sides. Capturing a city by overwhelming it with culture doesn't involve pushing your bubble over the city...I don't think that ever happens.

Actually, I've seen different. I'm involved in a heavy culture war with my neighbors (in which i've taken over about five of their cities, peacefully.) My borders originally were larger, but now that the other civs are getting in gear, they are beginning to push back a bit. Its most definitely not first come, first serve. You have to establish your culture accumulation, and keep it steady to prevent your borders from being pushed back (whenever the enemies decide to build their own cultural power.) You are right that borders dont actually envelop the actual square in which the city is located, however. I think if a culture was powerful enough to push that far, it would already have been assimilated.

This makes religious structures much more important. I rarely have peoples' happiness in mind when i build them. I make cathedrals and temples purely for their cultural impact, so i can extend my own borders and prevent others from assimilating me...

With all the other small disappointments in the game, i can definitely say that Firaxis did culture right. It shapes the way i play the game.

 

[PepsiFizz]

You mention the tendencies of your governor in the suggestions made as to what to build next. Have you found the governor editor yet? In the open city window, hit "G" and a window pops up that allows you to give the governor some guidance as to what he should build....you can also tell him to manage the mood of the city and the production of the city. You can make your orders apply to this one city, to all cities or to just the continental cities. You can tell him to emphasis food, production, or commerce, and you can tell him NOT to build wonders. This was helpful to me when every city started trying to build JSBach when I was trying to prepare for a war!