Civ3 or civ4?

[bryanwallace]

thanks

i already have vanilla and was thinking about buying conquests-is it that much diff to make it worthwhile spending money on??

im not int in playing multiplayer games

 

[gmaharriet]

thanks

i already have vanilla and was thinking about buying conquests-is it that much diff to make it worthwhile spending money on??

im not int in playing multiplayer games

I think it makes a huge difference. The upgrade paths are better and there are 31 civs to choose from. Most of the discussions here are about Conquests and most of the mods and scenarios are for Conquests. If you're happy with vanilla, I suppose there's no compelling reason to upgrade, but I'm glad I did.

 

[Turner]

I have never done MP in Conquests, and have been playing it since a couple of months after it's release.

It's worth it.

 

[bryanwallace]

is there anywhere you can get a free demo?

 

[bryanwallace]

forget about the downloads as seems not licensed for japan.

saw complete for 17.99$ on amazon and conquests expansion for 19.9$ on same,presume no prob with getting the complete??

also,is the main change only the scnearios??

not so interested in them,and i saw somewhere that the extra resources(fruit etc) were only for the scenarios??

 

[grumbler]

is there anywhere you can get a free demo?

There exists a demo version of CIV; you can get it for example from here:

http://worthdownloading.com/download.php?gid=1600&id=6036

This is probably unpatched and without WL's features. No idea about a demo for Civ3/C3C.

 

[gmaharriet]

also,is the main change only the scnearios??

Oh, my, no!!! There are many, many changes. Check on the link I posted in this thread on April 7 for a fairly complete list of the changes.

There are new units, new upgrade paths, new wonders, many new civs, and the corruption model is completely different...all for the standard epic game. I never play the scenarios.

 

[spiralx]

If you think C3C has no variety, then bugger off to CIV and play that game. A lot of us here think that C3C is huge fun and we play that game. I dare say that generally the older, more mature audience prefers C3C, while the young crowd likes CIV. Graphics alone in CIV make we want to cry and I am not alone.

That's not very nice and arrogant to boot. I've been playing Civ since the first one came out on my Atari ST - my first ever hardware upgrade was an additional 512K of memory just to run it. And in my opinion CIII is the worst title in the series by far.

Every other Civ title (and SMAC) grabbed me from the first time I played it and wouldn't let go for the next god knows how long. CIII is the only version that sunk me with endless tedium to the point where I barely could be bothered to finish a game - the initial phase was ok, but then micromanagement hell took over and resources started disappearing arbitrarily leaving strategy a matter of expanding to try and secure as many as possible leading to more micromanagement and so on. And quite frankly a "vast" empire of mostly identical cities spammed over every piece of land just removed any character from my civilisation.

Oh, and I much prefer the graphics in CIV, having towns and villages and cities sprawling outside of their square make them look more like the huge population centres they're supposed to represent, and we've finally gone back to the top-down view of CI rather than the horrendous isometric view of CII and CIII.

And the smarter routefinding algorithms means I can send units to a destination and have them get there as quickly as possible, rather than having to micromanage each step like you did in earlier Civs.

Chose has given other reasons to prefer CIV

However, in the end it just comes back to the issue, that CIV is just not much fun to play (and I tried really hard to play and was only able to do so in SG's). I play a SP CIV game and get bored so fast, I can't even finish it...

Horses for courses and all that, I think exactly the same of CIII

 

[spiralx]

The tech tree in Civ4 seems dumbed down somehow, there's no real sense of any "must have" techs, they appear to be much of a muchness, bronze is pretty much as good as iron and so on. It's almost as though they engineered it so players would never find themselves getting into trouble if they didn't have that vital resource or couldn't keep up.

Bronze Working enables forest chopping

As far as the UI, just look at the world building interface as an example. In Civ3, you just go in and select world size, climate, age, land mass type and so on. It's totally transparent. What the heck did they do with Civ4? After days of play, and numerous visits to the Civ4 help forum, I managed to figure out what I needed to do to generate the type of world I wanted - kinda. I still didn't understand half of it though, and if I went back to the game now, I'd have to start all over again.

Click "Play game", then select world size, climate etc in the screens that follow it. Or you could adjust them all on one screen by choosing Custom Game instead. You can't start the game without seeing these options...

 

[WackenOpenAir]

That's not very nice and arrogant to boot. I've been playing Civ since the first one came out on my Atari ST - my first ever hardware upgrade was an additional 512K of memory just to run it. And in my opinion CIII is the worst title in the series by far.

Every other Civ title (and SMAC) grabbed me from the first time I played it and wouldn't let go for the next god knows how long. CIII is the only version that sunk me with endless tedium to the point where I barely could be bothered to finish a game - the initial phase was ok, but then micromanagement hell took over and resources started disappearing arbitrarily leaving strategy a matter of expanding to try and secure as many as possible leading to more micromanagement and so on. And quite frankly a "vast" empire of mostly identical cities spammed over every piece of land just removed any character from my civilisation.

Oh, and I much prefer the graphics in CIV, having towns and villages and cities sprawling outside of their square make them look more like the huge population centres they're supposed to represent, and we've finally gone back to the top-down view of CI rather than the horrendous isometric view of CII and CIII.

And the smarter routefinding algorithms means I can send units to a destination and have them get there as quickly as possible, rather than having to micromanage each step like you did in earlier Civs.

Chose has given other reasons to prefer CIV


Horses for courses and all that, I think exactly the same of CIII

I think civ3 is better for those players that like to calculate and optimise everything. The perfectionists. These players don't care about the routefinding since they never give orders that will take till the next turn anyway. And they like the micromanagement.

Civ4 seems more like a game for those that like to play by their gut feeling.

I think civ3 is the best civ ever. And i don't understand the joy over the civ4 graphics. Sure civ3 aint pretty, but civ4 is pretty darn ugly as well. Personally i don't care about graphics at all. Graphics and strategy games are not a good combination. I also don't like the time it takes before you can trade technology in civ4.

 

[spiralx]

Optimise what though? You can do as much micromanagement as you want in CIV, it's more that it's less required in most cases. Especially if you use Blake's AI improvements to the city governers.

If you're saying the game's main appeal is to bean-counters, then that's not the most ringing of endorsements

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Civ3 is much more transparant. You can much more calculate the effects of every move. Even far into the future. And that is why i like strategy games. I want to know what i do exactly, i want to be able to calculate it. I do not like to learn from trial and error and play by experience. I want to use intelligence, insight and perfectionism to excel. I like to calculate, reason and analyse before every move.

If you want everything to go easy and automatically, why don't you just watch a movie ?

 

[Abegweit]

Oh, and I much prefer the graphics in CIV, having towns and villages and cities sprawling outside of their square make them look more like the huge population centres they're supposed to represent, and we've finally gone back to the top-down view of CI rather than the horrendous isometric view of CII and CIII.

The graphics of civ4 are atrocious. I'd rather civ 1. At least you can tell what's on the map.

And the smarter routefinding algorithms means I can send units to a destination and have them get there as quickly as possible, rather than having to micromanage each step like you did in earlier Civs.

Have you actually played civ3? The pathfinding works properly. It's actually better than civ4 where the computer will propose one route and then take another.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

only thing i hate about civ3 routing is that when you have fast and slow movers, or units that used part of their movement points and you move them together, the ones with most movement points will magically lose their excess movement points.

 

[Abegweit]

Yeah that's annoying. But long as you are aware of it...

Civ4 will actually propose one route and then take another one. The two will be equivalent in distance but other considerations might make one superior to the other. I've lost units when the AI decided to re-route close to enemy positions.

 

[Turner]

only thing i hate about civ3 routing is that when you have fast and slow movers, or units that used part of their movement points and you move them together, the ones with most movement points will magically lose their excess movement points.

That really depends on how you move them. I think if you have a slow mover as the top unit, then when it runs out of MP the faster movers won't lose theirs. It might be the other way around, tho. But there is a way you can move a mixed MP stack and have the remaining MPs not be lost.

The only complaint I have about the pathfinding algorithm for Civ3 is sometimes it will say it's going to move from say a mountain tile to a hill tile via a grassland tile with a road/railroad, and it actually won't. It will move directly to the hill tile and my MPs are gone, so now I can't fortify.

 

[Scouse]

Interestign to read these comments about 3 v 4. I've just ordered 3, after playing 2 to death.
Reading these notes makes me glad that my mac doesn't have the grunt to run 4 (but no doubt when I do have the grunt, I'll give it a try).
I got rid of my Civ 2 quite a while ago, but I rather suspect I'll get another copy.
Scouse

 

[TheOverseer714]

Interesting reading. I almost want to cancel my order for Civ4... But I won't. I am just stubborn enough to find out for myself. I loved Civ2 and SMAC, but Civ3 has owned my heart for 4 years. I never regretted purchasing any of those or their expansion packs. I did get Call to Power, which sucked eggs. I hope I didn't waste my money on Civ4. I'm not worried about hardware, as my game computer has plenty of all the right stuff to handle it (it runs The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion almost seamlessly, only chugging on the most intense battles) I guess I am in the group who doesn't have a problem with graphics. I like pretty, but I also like a good addictive game, and Civ3 has only eclipsed Civ2 in that respect.

 

[I. Larkin]

It looks that even Civ odd and odd are even...
I have found that rules in CIV4 so complicated (I mean "real rules", not what is in manual), so I give up for some time. I did not found yet good strategy articles for CIV4 that may help to sort out some set of resonable opening, research pathes, goverment and religion types and so on. Combat rules also very obscure. (Not like in Civ 3 when RNG drive 4-5 round battle). Interface and map are difficult, (Not like in Civ 1). The same have happend when Civ 2 appears. And I did nop play it. May be Civ 5 will be better again?

 

[Elapid]

Civ 3 is much better. Although I may think that because my computer wont run civ 4 very well