Civ 3 or Civ 4?

[Spoonwood]

TheOverseer714,

I've tried to present some evidence instead of character assination. As another case-in-point against what Phungas wrote, I just finished a Deity domination game with the Iroquois on an 80% standard map with 7 opponents. I didn't build a "settler pump", as I only founded 5 cities before I started capturing. I used almost all mounted warriors, with maybe 5 catapult bombardments the whole game. I researched Writing, then shut research off, as I traded for horseback riding. Later I did research Chivalry, but it probably didn't affect things much. It should come in the HoF update next month, and if not, I'll post some saves here.

 

[tom2050]

Are you drunk?

Way to start off with the passive aggressive tone. Of course behaving like an asshat is just par for the course on the internet. The holier then though passive aggressiveness seemingly a pivotal part of it. One tip though, if you're going to try to make your post have a high and mighty tone, do it subtly, starting off like you just have ruins it, and shows you're just slogging around in the mud with an upturned nose.

I am still amazed that a discussion about differences in Civ versions makes you this mad. And as everyone can see, the hatred continues to spew out the fungus.

Civ4's combat mechanics are more in depth. The unitcombat classes and promotion bonuses have far more depth then a simple A/D combat system.

I agree, and I have stated I like the class and promotion system. I do not like the single value strength system. This severely limits modding and unit abilities. For instance, you cannot easily make something such as a Machinegun Nest for defensive purposes only, since it can attack with the same strength (of course, I have no idea if this can be or has been modded somehow in XML).

If they kept the Attack and Defense, along with classes and promotion bonuses, it would have been much better IMO.

Son I've been playing strategy games for quite some time. Hell I used to play Sid Meyer's RailRoad Tycoon, on a computer that required a DOS boot disk to start up.

I'm sure many here have gone back to DOS, Commodores, Atari's, and many old-time classics. Calling another adult son ?? I'm in my 30's. If you are 60 or 70, then by all means.

Civ's combat engine is pretty crappy, it's 1v1 unit combats that are simplified as far as one can get. No one plays civ for the combat mechanics. Players have great games like the Total War series for that.

Same can be said for Civ3, Civ4, Total War, or any other game compared to an actual strategic / tactical war simulation. Combat is meant to be fairly simple in an empire building game, at least that is the way the dev's have designed it for all of the Civilization series.

At the same time it bypasses tedious micromanagement and is intuitively presented to the user. On balance it's the best economic model I've seen in a strategy game. I suppose that's my main point. Which runs directly counter to the "Civ 4 is simple, civ3 is complex and strategic" argument the civ3 fan boys keep saying.

The dev's stated themselves they made it a prime point to get rid of any and all micromanagement, and go to a macromanagement system to make it easier to do everything. That has boosted Civ 4's popularity. To argue that micromanagement gives no advantages (in any game) is off-base. I don't love all micromanagement, and I don't love all macromanagement either. Most players enjoy well-rounded proportions. Civ 4 is not all macro, and Civ 3 is not all micro... they are just more than the other.

Seems you're a passive aggressive chump. Blow me.

Sorry, not gay. Look elsewhere. Civ 3 or Civ 4 only please.


The main things that bothered me about 4 were the small civilization sizes, less but more solid graphics would have been preferred for game to run quicker (even Civ3 is too slow on fast computers for huge maps), the one number combat system, a push to go all macromanagement, game does not feel epic having 10 cities, etc...

As for Civ 3, there is an abundant I do not care for either. Editor is limited, they won't release source code, combat system has flaws, AI is not great (but that goes for all games; since AI doesn't sell games); but major AI flaws in that artillery is not used to any extent, player can take advantage of AI to a very high degree, excessive micromanagement techniques give players huge advantages not meant to even be in the game (I have never done any of them, although it is interesting), etc...

Tom

 

[Sashie VII]

At this rate, I foresee this thread being closed..

 

[Takhisis]

a flamer got in here...

 

[Turner]

Moderator Action: If y'all can't be nice, I'll shut this thread down and hand out infractions as warranted.

Let's face it, some people will like Civ3 over Civ4, and some will like Civ4 over Civ3. Nothing wrong with that. There's also nothing wrong with politely debating the pros and cons of each game. However, if you don't do it in a Civilized manner, you won't be doing here.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[The Omega]

Don't mean to be discussing a mod action, but did anyone start laughing when they read the phrase "civilized manner" in reference to Civilization games?

 

[Spoonwood]

With the capital C in "Civilized" it seems reasonable to conclude that Turner intended the pun there.

 

[ShunNakamura]

I play both Civ3 and Civ4, although I tend to spend more time on Civ3. And I've come to treat both separately, ie not comparing the good and the bad of each. I think that allows you to enjoy both in its own way.

I think I am also in your boat(though Civ3 has more play time because it tends to take me longer for me, that and my good computer died recently so I am on my 350mhz screamer(it screams whenever you make it work hard) until I get the money for the needed replacements)).

Well, I don't really have a strong opinion either way (regardless of what I posted earlier), but I've been known to have strong reactions against condescending attitudes, RL/net. Be nice to me and I'll be nice to you

Ah so your strong opinion is that condescending attitudes are not a good thing . I may have to agree with you there, cept in my experience it is better to ignore those types, it can get ugly if you confront them head on and rarely is it worth it imo.



And if we are going to bring in other games, I so have wished that Civ would eventually try something like Age of Wonders combat system. Its empire management is no where near Civs, but the combat system is love. Combine that with Civ 4's unit promotion and the Civ games excellent empire/economic system and I have a game I would love until the end! Well assuming I could stand the graphics :/.

As a last note, Turner's pun is indeed a smile inducer .

 

[Lanzelot]

I have been paying the Civ series (1, 2, 3 & 4) since 1992. I played Civ4 for a while when it came out in 2005, but after reading the manual and playing a couple of games, I went back to Civ3. Civ4 did not fascinate my imagination as much as Civ3 and appeared less attractive to me. I posted the reasons in a similar thread two years ago:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5606447&postcount=23

However that doesn't mean Civ4 is a bad game. In fact it's one of the greatest games of all time. The thing is just that Civ3 is still a little better... (At least that's my personal taste. Others may find Civ4 a little better, that's fine with me. Some like Beethoven some like hard rock. It's just a matter of taste and personal preferences, no reason to get mad about.)

There are a few points that I like better in Civ4 than in Civ3, e.g "Corruption" is really a pain in the ass in Civ3, the micromanagement does get tedious sometimes, things like that. But overall there are many features I like better in Civ3.

Apropos micromanagement:
First of all there as others already said, there are tools that take most of the burden off the player, like CivAssistII. Using them you can again concentrate more on the fun parts of the game and on the strategic decision making.
Next MM is necessary only in the early stages of the game. When you get into the middle age and have a significant number of towns, it doesn't matter that much anymore.
And finally: MM is not the most important aspect of the game. It is necessary to be a truly great player, but it is not sufficient. Perhaps some of the misconceptions about Civ3 & MM came into existence, because the great players of Civ3 (SirPleb, Moonsinger, klarius) have been great micromanager as well as great strategists. But it was always their superior strategy that allowed them to produce great games, not the MM which was only a subordinate tool to them. However, subtle strategy is much more difficult to recognize than MM, and perhaps many people just saw the MM and thought that was what enabled the stunning victory?!

In any case, Civ3 and Civ4 are both games that allow a wealth of deep strategies. They may be different in many aspects, but which one is better is mainly a matter of taste.

Lanzelot

 

[Argetnyx]

I love how, in Civ3, almost everything on the screen has a purpose. In the city screen, you can change many things, in the advisor screens, everything is all comviently placed, the important things are all where they are easily found and the unimportant details are all off in a corner where you can look at them if you want. Thus making gameplay much smoother.

In civ4, all of the screens are taken up by all of those "shiny new graphics that the creators wanted to get noticed" and the useful things are all crammed inbetween a bunch of unimportant details that you only need to look at if you feel like it. I hate having to look around for what I want.

 

[Maimonides]

Someone should sticky one of these threads so that new ones won't pop up every now and then.

Agreed. This isn't just a duplicate thread. The same conversation/argument is repeated in thread after thread after thread.

Obviously most people here are going to say Civ III.

I gotta say that by combining this poll and the other one, giving equal weighting to each, to be fair, Civ 4 comes out clearly the winner. I mean, it was almost unanimous on the Civ4 forums, but here Civ4 has almost 25% of the vote.

Here's a poll in OT. Civ III has a good lead on Civ IV.

BTW, go vote, fellow Civ IIIers!

 

[Takhisis]

Agreed. This isn't just a duplicate thread. The same conversation/argument is repeated in thread after thread after thread.





Here's a poll in OT. Civ III has a good lead on Civ IV.

BTW, go vote, fellow Civ IIIers!

KK. Done. But I didn't bump it. Will you do the honours?

 

[Maimonides]

KK. Done.

But I didn't bump it. Will you do the honours?

Nah. I don't wanna bump it either. It's a year & a half old. I just like to point it out whenever another Civ III vs. Civ IV fight breaks out.

 

[Camikaze]

Here's a poll in OT. Civ III has a good lead on Civ IV.

BTW, go vote, fellow Civ IIIers!

That's not really an unbiased source, either. OT has a reasonable Civ III bias owing to the fact that a lot of OT posters do not play Civ anymore (which is why a lot of them do not post in the Civ forums), either because they don't own Civ 4, or they thought it sucked.

As Abaddon said:

CFC:OT is shifting away from a heavy Civ3 bias that outlasted cIV's launch.

Noting the bias towards Civ III.

 

[TheOverseer714]

CIV4 is very popular. Point taken. Civ for the masses wins a popularity contest. So did George W Bush and Barack Obama, and look where they got us... OT aside, which is better is always a question for each person, not a thing for a poll to determine.

 

[AMW]

Civ III is much better than the new Civ, I have both Civ III Vanilla and Civ IV complete warlords expansion pack. Civ IV requires more ram and a better video card than civ III does so if you havent got a decent computer then get civ III as it only requires like 128mb ram, besides that I find Civ IV to be alot more difficult to understand far as playing etc...

 

[nullspace]

I like Civ 3 and I played it for hundreds of hours. But Civ 4 has civics and great people. Those two features alone make the builder side of the game much deeper and more varied. Civics let you build your own government and then customize parts of it as the game progresses, or change it all at once. And golden ages let you change civics with no anarchy, so you can make big changes if you time it right.

There are six types of great people, each of them has four abilities, and two of those abilities are unique to that type of great person. Decisions about what to build in some of your cities and which tiles you work depend on what type of great person you want to generate.

One more change that makes Civ 4 much better but which sounds really boring is that roads do not produce commerce. In Civ 3, you have to choose between farms and mines, but every tile gets a road. So you build enough farms for the growth rate you want, mine the rest of the tiles, and road everything. All cities on good terrain end up with decent growth, production, and commerce. In Civ 4, a tile with a farm or mine doesn't produce more commerce, so for your cities, you have to choose between growth, production, commerce, or great people points. That's a much bigger decision, and it allows many more effective ways to build your cities.