Civ3 screenshots & Info from PC GamePlay!

[Mongol Horde]

Has anyone been out and bought the mag yet? I will be going out in my lunch hour to check if the poxy little newsagent round the corner stocks it.

 

[Håkan Eriksson]

Maybe the second screen shoth is the lanch of a SPACE SHIP!

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[Tr|x]

First post!

Let me introduce myself. I am Tricks.

I am new to turn based strategy games - the only two I have played (don't flame me) are CTP1 and CTP2. However, I cannot wait for Civ3.

I'm going to buy that magazine on the way home tonight, but about the screenshot. I know graphics are arguably the least important part of a turn-based strat game. However. IMO that Civ3 'shot looks almost identical to CTP2, maybe a bit uglier. What gives? The unit animations on firaxis.com however do look fanastic.

What I would really like to know is why Civ fans hate the CTP games so much! Can someone enlighten me?

Tr|x

 

[Damien]

i just understood it..lol
the numbers under the cities rnt the units in
but the turns left to build it...horsemen:53 wow lol

 

[Håkan Eriksson]

Welcome to the froum Tr|x or is it Tricks?

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[Håkan Eriksson]

And remember also that this might not be their final grafiks. Maybe they will change the irregation.

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[Mongol Horde]

Originally posted by Tr|x:

What I would really like to know is why Civ fans hate the CTP games so much! Can someone enlighten me?

Tr|x

Play civII and you will understand. Welcome to the forums mate. I hope you have a long and happy posting career.

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The Mongols are coming.........

 

[infoman]

It is still early everyone. Firaxis can change how the graphics look everyday. Wait till it is released and then decide. When I changed from Civ to Civ2 it me some time to get used to the graphic changes but I love the graphics of Civ2 and it will take some time to get use to the changes in Civ3.

 

[Az]

There are apparently some great features like deep water

and borders

but the graphics...

Well guys I do'wanna be pesimistic but the is not exactly what was waiting for...

-Are shields gone???
-Maybe the mountains and the forests are more realistic but look how stupid the units look when they stand on them!
-Is that supposed to be irrigation??? For those who have played the "Mars" Scenario well, they look exactly the same!!! They were far more realistic in civ II

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CIV IS NOT "AGE OF EMPIRES"!!!
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[This message has been edited by Az (edited April 27, 2001).]

 

[Andu Indorin]

Frankly, graphics are not that important for me. As long as the overall look is "clean" and functional. ("Form follows function.") Otherwise, I hope they spend at least as much time improving the AI's capabalities as they appear to be on the graphics.

 

[Az]

I agree with you but all I'm doing is criticising what I see...

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[siouxpermarket]

Overall impression: Very nice. Not much can be guessed from this pic about gameplay--which is far more important to just about everybody--but I give the graphics a solid 8 on a scale of 10.

Terrain: The mountains, hills, forest, and resources--all excellent (the mountains in particular are gorgeous). Ocean, also nice, especially the strip of sand at the shore. Plains? Desert? Salt flats? What is the rest of that stuff? I don't get it. Visual clarity, please. I agree that the irrigation looks horrible, and the roads not much better.

Units: Those little army-man circular bases have got to go. I realize that you've got to know somehow that that spearflinger is an Apache and not a Quebecois. But I much, much prefer the flag/shield system of Civ2. Also, I don't get how the base will tell you if the unit is damaged.
A 'small point': There is a unit right beneath St. Louis that looks, for my money, waaayy too much like a butt plug. (But then, I'm twisted...)

Grid: Related to the unit base is the question of how you tell which 'space' the unit is occupying. That's unclear to me here, which might or might not be fine...I'm the kind of player who spends the whole 4000 years with the grid ON anyway. Presumably that'll be an option in CIII.

Borders: I like 'em. A whole lot, from what I can see. Never played CTP or SMAC or whatever it is people complain they're too much like. And thank you, CivGods, for extending them into the water where appropriate.

Cities: Beautiful. Love to see what a big one looks like, but so far so good.

Colors: Nice overall, except for two things. The flat yellow-green needs work (as in terrain, above). And the tribal colors are much too pastel. No way I'm wanting to play as the Pepto-Bismol Pink Palestinians or Baby-Blanket Blue Barbarians of Boeotia. I also think bolder colors for that would make the city titles easier to read.

Population Indicator: There's something weird and creepy about those faces at the top. They've got a cadaver look that just kind of icks me out. (For whatever it's worth, I had the same reaction, but much milder, to many of the Leader Faces published previously.) Also, something obvious should be done to indicate whether they're happy, content, whatever.

The title bar: The adjectival form should be used there. The Romans Despotism sounds wrong. "The Roman Despotism", eh?

Iconography: Please, please, please give us those of us prejudiced toward Words over Visuals the option to label some of the buttons. I'm thinking in particular of the five at the lower right.

Miscellaneous thoughts: Someone asked what the burning thing is in the lower left. I don't think it's on fire...The white may be a bit of terrain (?) ... Any ideas on why some cities have a little "F" by them? Fortifications? Meaning City Walls?

Looking forward to more. God/dess bless and keep El Sid, Danny the Mouthpiece, and the rest of Tribe Firaxia.

 

[allhailIndia]

Beautiful Screenshot though the terrain improvements need a little improvement themselves. BTW those guys faces on top are your advisors, something like those 5 five clowns who would pop from time to time bickering over what to advise me. I lke the Border system most and I think thise numbers next to a unit, under the city stand for the number of resources collected

 

[Håkan Eriksson]

I would like Dan from Raxis to reply to this post

.

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[siouxpermarket]

Interesting. Hmmm.

I just returned from the 'other' Civ site, and they've got a very similar screenshot up from PC Gameplay. However:

--There are no 'army-man' bases on units.

--The difference between desert, plains, and grassland is crystal clear.

--The irrigation is different (better).

I've debated the ethics of posting a link to the competition...I guess if I'm out of line my post will be struck with godly thunder. I would understand, no problem. In the meantime, you can see what I'm yammering about here:
http://www.apolyton.net/civ3/images/screenshots/gameplay-incaesar2.jpg

 

[Thunderfall]

Thanks for the link. The irrigation in that screenshot looks better and different than the "irrigations" in the previous screenshot.

btw, can someone in UK scan the entire preview and send it to me? I would like to post it. Thanks.

[This message has been edited by Thunderfall (edited April 28, 2001).]

 

[Håkan Eriksson]

Yes this "new" screen shot have a much better garfiks!

Maybe the army-man bases is a on/off option.

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[Az]

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This is A LOT BETTER!!!

Notice the circle arround the city and the type of building currently being constructed...

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[Thunderfall]

Four more scans from the PC GamePlay UK preview are available. These screenshots are actually better than the ones posted at PC GamePlay's own site. The irrigation graphics looks MUCH better! <IMG SRC="http://forums.civfanatics.com/ubb/smile.gif" border=0> Click on the thumbnails to see the full image:

<a href="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/pcgp-screen3.jpg"><IMG SRC="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/gameplay-incaesar2T.jpg" border=0></a> <a href="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/pcgp-screen1.jpg"><IMG SRC="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/gameplay-cityviewT.jpg" border=0></a> <a href="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/pcgp-screen4.jpg"><IMG SRC="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/gameplay-citiesT.jpg" border=0></a> <a href="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/pcgp-screen2.jpg"><IMG SRC="http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3images/gameplay-babelT.jpg" border=0></a>


More details from the preview:


[*]Completely Revamped ZOC system
[*]Real Stacked Combat
[*]New Tech Tree
[*]Minor Wonders
[*]Two new, so far secret, Multiplayer Modes
[*]More details on the Resource system
[*]New Barbarian model

New info on... Wonders
Jeff Briggs: "Wonders of the World are as important as ever. We have all the Civ2 ones, a couple of new ones, some that are old and function in new ways and a brand new set that we call "small wonders". While you can only constuct one of each Wonder of the World, small wonders can be built by every civilization, such as the Strategic Defense Initiative, Apollo Program and Manhattan Project.

The Great Canal is one of the new Wonders in the game. When you build that, you can chose a place on the map and connect two oceans, so it's like the Panama Canal. We also have the Great Wall, which is an old wonder, but now you can chose a section of your border and you get a wall that is really hard for someone to get through. We have another great Wonder, the Internet, but we're not sure exactly how that's going to function. We know it's got something to do with education, it will create a smart populace, but appart from that we're stumped."

New info on... Misc.
Multiplayer: "Right now we're looking at doing some unique things with the multiplayer, but we're not ready to start talking about it yet. The challenge in the past for turn-based games has been to make it really fun and we're looking at new ways of approaching that. We have two big online features, which I can't really say any more about. It's just not there yet and we're not comfortable talking about it. But both of these features are something you have never seen before and will be a big part of the game."

Start date: 4000 BC, as usual

Starting Units: One Settler, One Worker.

Number of Civilizations: Cut down to 16.

Number of Civilizations in one game: Still seven.

Victory Conditions: "UN Victory", essentially like "Diplomatic Victory" in SMAC added. Another possible addition is a Corporate Win: "We're talking about some new interest at the end, perhaps global investors, that spring up independently of any nation and control the end game if you make a deal with them. These are very unformed ideas, but we're looking at them."

Unique Units for Civs: Yes, they're in. Zulus - Impis. Americans - F15s. Germans - Panzer Tank.

Barbarians: "Barbarians now work in a totally different way. In this game Barbarians have cities, like all other civs, and they originate from these cities and make raids. Sometimes building roads can be really hard because there are barbarians out there that constantly attack. Each time you destroy a barbarian town, it will respawn itself in an area of the map you can't currently see. So what you have to try to do is set up a situation where you can see as much of the map as possible so that you can keep pushing them back.

New info on... Combat
Jeff Briggs (All quotes are from him, by the way, in case you wondered. The other info I try to summarise as much as possible): "Combat has become a much more significant part of the game. For starters, we have changed zones of control. In Civ2, all units had them, which made for some weird situations, like a phalanx fortified in the mountains stopping tanks going by. But we're finding the fewer zones of control we have the more fun the game is. Now only the fast, big units have them."

"We've also added bombardment. Catapults can now attack city walls and we have coastal bombardment. If you build a coastal fortress and a ship goes by it will immediately open fire." (Think about the potential for ocean choke points!)

BIGGEST NEW ADDITION (IMO): "Armies". Like a transport, you can place different units in an army and move them around together. "Say you have a tank and an infantry guy in an Army, and someone attacks. The unit with the best defense will stand up and do the defending until he gets worn down by the battle, then he will stop and the other will stand up and defend. The same thing happens in attack. So big armies are really, really powerful. In order to combat somebody who's got armies you pretty much have to build your own. It's an escalating thing which has a big impact on the game."

Armies can come into play in one of two ways: the most common is by researching Nationalism (new tech!). Once you've got nationalism, you can put your economy in one of three modes, mobilized, normal or peace. In peace mode, military buildings and units will cost twice as much, and peaceful buildings and units half as much. With mobilization the reverse happens, except you can now also build army units. The other way is through leaders, who will appear randomly after a successful battle. They will be named after real historical figures, and might also confer special benefits depending on their real historical status (the ones mentioned in the preview are Patton and "Stonewall" Jackson, with Patton adding a Tank bonus). "We'd like to do that - in some cases it makes a lot of sense, in others it doesn't. But Civ has always been very abstract in terms of its interpretations of when things occur and who's where. So we could easily go either way and make it work."

More info on... Nukes and Interface

Nukes: "There are two types of nuclear weapons. We have ICBMs that can hit anything on the map (yin26, Infinate missile range, eh - transcribers comment) and tactical nukes that can be put on submarines and launched as cruise missiles. If you think you can have a war and launch tactical nukes you can try it, but it's a challenge in the game just to survive the whole erea.
"The nuclear war part of the game should be (and this is something we're working on) something that you come to and pass through. In Civ2, it's sort of the end point. When you get nukes, everybody gets nukes and the game is pretty much over. In this game, if you're the first person to get them you will have an opportunity to benefit, but once everybody else gets them it's unlkiely that you can use them and have a successful game."

Interface: "The city screen is now on the map. We've put infromation at the bottom of the screen to make the player get more connected with the map and the cities. We're trying to keep the player on one screen as much as possible.
"One thing we really paid attention to is that is Civ2, there were a lot of pop-ups which would stop the game and you'd have to click through. Now we've put a lot of these pop-ups on the map so that you just read information and get on with the game.
"We're working hard to make it a seemless contious experience on the map instead of having to click a lot of buttons to proceed."

New info on... The Tech Tree

JB: "The tech tree is split into four sections: Ancient Times, Renaissance, Industrial and Modern. The new rules are that, in order to advance to the next section of the tech tree, you pretty much have to complete everything in the section before it, except what we call the arts or the intellectual pursuits.

"For example, you don't have to develop horseback riding in order to advance to the next era, nor anarchy, republic or literature. But literature gives you the Great Library, so they're useful to have. The whole new concept with the arts is that they're things you don't need to progress, but if you have them your civilisation is much stronger, more developed."

New info on... Trade, Resources, Culture

Resources: "When you look at the map now, you don't see that many resources. That's because they don't appear until you've researched the technology that needs them. For example, you can't see iron until you've researched iron working. And you might already have some, but it might be somewhere else.

"What we tried to do is clump the stuff. It's not spread evenly over the map. The idea is that one player can corner the market on, say, iron and he becomes a powerbroker in the game. The same thing happens with uranium, so your diplomatic relations become really important. You definately want to have friends that have the stuff you need so that you can trade with them. If not the only way to get the stuff is to attack people.

"By the time you get to the end of the game you really needto have coal, iron, oil and rubber otherwise you can't build anything. The way you develop a civilization, to a large extent, depends on where you start the game and what kind of resources you have available. If you start in an area that has iron you're in good shape at the beginning, but later on in the game iron is not enough."

Trade: You can trade in Luxuries, and resources. Luxuries goods trade is vital to keep happiness up, and resource trade (as you can see above) will be exceptionally important. Keeping peace will be more important than before, because you need a constant supply of resources to build your units. Complex diplomatic treaties and trade agreements can be arranged.

Culture: Accumulated by long-time cultural city improvements (as in last preview). Three effects:

(a) In diplomacy, a high culture rating will make other civs admire you more, and positive outcomes are more likely as a result.

(b) A high culture rating will literally expand your borders, the Greater your civilization the larger it will become.

(c) The aforementioned effect of pacifying newly conquered cities. Cities can now resist in a variety of fun and interesting ways; citizens can refuse to work, lower the defense value of the city, or revolt and rejoin their original civ.

Our thanks to <a href="http://www.apolyton.net/civ3/" target=link>Apolyton</a> and especially its forum poster Snapcase for posting the the details from the preview</a>!

[This message has been edited by Thunderfall (edited April 29, 2001).]

 

[Loaf Warden]

Okay, there's no real reason to comment on the parts I like--let's just say I'm very excited about a number of things.

However . . .

1) Combat is being made more significant? How much more significant can it be? It already takes up most of the game. Ah, well. With new victory conditions, maybe I won't have to fight all the time anyway.

2) I am extremely disappointed that they have added specialized units. I still maintain that this will just bollocks up the balance and take away from what I consider to be one of the main things Civ has over other games of this kind--the fact that all civs have an equal chance at the beginning, and the only thing that will give an advantage to one civ or another is good leadership.

3) Why, why, why would they reduce the number of civs in the game? It would have been a disappointment enough if they had simply not added more, but now they tell us they are taking some away? It doesn't make sense. I had understood that everything that changes in a sequel is theoretically supposed to do so in order to improve the game. How does it improve the game to take civs away from us? I know I can't speak for everyone, but I was happy when they added more for Civ II. I thought it added to the game. Removing some will not add to the game, it will take away from it.

[This message has been edited by Loaf Warden (edited April 28, 2001).]