Miniskirt
She Who
Notes and Thoughts on COMM3; a Review?
I have recently played through COMM3 at least 4 times, on about the 5th? or 6th? or so difficulty level and been having a blast. First game on large islands or small land masses, the 2nd two on Islands or Archipelago or so, the most recent on Standard size (having dropped down a size each time). The 4th current game on the next smaller size among the enemies which I have come to hate the most. I'm looking at you, Avlee/Green. I think this Mod is best for large land masses which don't absolutely require shipping.
Wow. I have played Civ since the beginning and own all versions through vanilla 4. Could happily play Civ DOS now; recently started one and lost an afternoon. Colonization, SMAC etc all many times. Have sampled a number of Mods over the years including making my own.
Amazing. This is by the far the best Mod I have seen and the best I have played. I still enjoy Heroes Of Might And Magic 1, 2, and 3 (not into Kings Bounty any more; want to get back to Hammer Of The Gods), but I don't see knowing anything about Heroes as being necessary to enjoy this total fantasy implementation of Civ as a completely new game in its own right.
To be clear: this Mod is for anyone interested in a Fanasy Civ experience. This is a Fantasy Monster Slugathon, a la AH's Titan boardgame from the 80s. Following the instructions I had absolutely no issues running this. Have tinkered slightly in this BIQ: changed colors (I need to be Purple), raised the VP condition and end year (have not exceeded original parameters in play just hate having to think about those limits), allowed Cultural conversions (still have not seen it happen, darn), and maybe 1 or 2 other niggly changes but not much. Note that tom2050 has made many of the units and other graphics for this mod himself. I don't know how many he created, it is possible he created all of them. The action animations of the units are super fun.
Crash Caveat: The game has crashed from time to time. Save files have worked to restart and get up and running. The crashes feel like the Pedia has been involved or my system generally. It has happened in a city screen particularly loaded with units and going through the build list. Also, I normally can't recreate the crashes. These uncommon crashes have only happened in the 2nd half. Save often and everything is fine. Heck, regular Civ3 Conquests crashes now and then on its own, so this may not be the fault of this Mod. I play on a win 10 laptop connected to my large TV and 5.1 sound system, 3840 x 2160 resolution, truly great.
The faction names and adjectives are fantasy thematic, as per Heroes Of Might And Magic, but can be problematic. I use a small text file listing the faction names, color, and adjectives, and how they feel about me. I can't keep straight who the Avlee are: the Green guys? the Rampart or Tower may be Blue?? Alt+Tab to the text files is the only way I can keep straight who is who. Actually I have found that doing this some helps to need it less over time. Note that in HOMM the factions are called Towns, and so they are here. Also Castle can build a Castle, for example, which can add some confusion.
Here are the standard 8 Factions and some information about them. There are 3 versions of each of these Factions, named for example: Castle, Castle2, Castle3, etc. I only include the 1st version of each here. A Faction is called here a Town, as per HOMM. Note that the only difference for the different of the 3 types of each Town is cosmetic: different color and leader, but the same Bonuses. Each Faction has all unique units and many unique structures. The only way to fight the same critters is to have multiples of the same Faction out in the world. The headings below contain useful info on starting a game.
My txt file has the following headings: COLOR; TOWN; ADJECTIVE; ATTITUDE. I include Attitude so I can track their feelings towards me, all a part of not being able to remember who is who, for me. Below is the contents of my most recent text file, with me playing as Queen Catharine's Castle Faction (changed to Magenta but reset here and above with the default colors). Suitable for cutting and pasting into a txt file.
Roads: The cobble?stone railroads are difficult to tell apart from the gravel?stone regular roads. The more advanced stone roads are railroads of course, and these come along quite late in the game. Like everything, roads and railroads take a looong time to build. Since I can't tell by looking at them which are which I constantly pull the workers around with the mouse to see if they have already built rails. I don't like having to do this. (From the BIQ: the more advanced railroad roads are cobblestone roads; the primitive regular roads are gravelstone.) Note that The Grail is the advance needed to build cobblestone 'railroads'.
I love how the costs, building types, and culture bonuses are completely different (from regular Civ3). Most buildings give 1 culture now. Many buildings produce units over time, as a nod to the breeding buildings of Heroes. Most other Mods use the same or similar buildings as regular Civ3 but in this Mod there is often little correspondence between new bldgs and regular Civ3 bldgs. Which is totally nice but some won't like that. This is a plus for me. I have had some trouble figuring things out but as of the 3rd game I think I have figured out enough (still a tad more to discover properly). There are a number of units which I have never built but hope to try some of these in future plays. There is only 1 Age.
I have never seen the AI build large capacity 8 transport ships, go figure. When they attack via ships it is usually a small army, making this Mod particularly good for a large land mass world, so they don't need ships so much, if combat is your thing. They do sometimes mass a few ships or more, and sometimes have a good number of these task forces about. They do like to attack in general.
Corruption still happens but is much less, which is lovely. Ditto pollution, which is much rarer than usual Civ, and only needs 1 turn to clean! Maybe 2 turns to clean a polluted Mountain. It is wise to have at least 1 or 2 available Settlers to clean pollution on each land mass. Can be difficult to see the pollution, darn. Only 2 buildings fight pollution: Town Hall and City Hall; but also a Small Wonder which I can't right now recall. War weariness is also much less, which is welcome. It is fine to have these 3 issues (corruption, pollution, war weariness) still present in the game; it is absolutely fabulous to not have them be as big a deal as in regular Civ. Oh, occasional Disasters pop up but again these are a nuisance and not devastating (nice graphics though).
Note that all terrain can be settled except Mountain and Volcano. The writeup here and the c-pedia says no city building on Sand, but the BIQ file let's us. I didn't realize until I saw the Tower Town Faction build a city *on Sand* which simply had to go after they declared war on me.
Workers are interesting in that they take an inordinate amount of time to complete their tasks. Can be 48+ turns to build a mountain road! I have seen 112 turns required; no idea why so expensive sometimes, but get multiple workers on the job and the time required reduces quickly. Many workers are needed in this total conversion, and on one single square. The 4! different kinds of workers are confusing but, oh well. My own workers move 1 and 2, the 1s being more productive. Captured 1 and 2 workers round out the 4 types. Enemy workers normally get destroyed in battle, but can be acquired in conquered Cities.
I thoroughly enjoy the production buildings a la HOMM. Having critters spawn here and there which I would never purposely build can be a delight and interesting to have to deal with. I have never purposely built any spells (aircraft) but those created via the spawning buildings are plenty. The spells-as-aircraft which always seems so cheezy in Civ2 and Civ3 Mods finally works here!
Other neat stuff, too. Bringing Treasure (created by Marketplaces, which no longer increase commerce, but instead add Happiness and create Treasure) to the Capitol for 50 gold, neat. The fun critters which can *only* be auto-built by certain town buildings. The spells which upgrade into creatures, boats, and missiles. There are very few actual Great Wonders here, some, but mostly plenty of Small Wonders which do fun things. I finally figured out Dimenson Door, tots fun: it may be considered overpowered by some but I will have to decide that on a future game since I was already winning by the time I figured them out (it is both a Paratroop/Heli-thingie AND a Teleporter device, two ways to use it). Dimension Door comes along rather late normally in any event. tom2050 clearly knows his units! Hard to heal units quickly since the required bldgs are hard to get but this is a feature (units spend lots of turns in Cities to heal). Note that there are a ton ton ton of Small Wonders.
You get the custom government type that you start with and have nothing to switch to, ever. I like this change. Not that I want this in regular Civ3 Conquests, but it is a nice change here and fits the HOMM theming.
There was a review online regarding Civ 2 Test Of Time Fantasy which panned that product due to the fact that all the buildings were different from regular Civ. Well, the reviewer missed that this was exactly the point, and the same "problem" exists here, only it is now an even better problem considering how well thought out everything here is. And the Civ 3 base engine is also better in general, more robust to tinker with.
Armageddon's Blade: aka The Space Race. This is poorly implemented, poorly documented, and does not work. I tried and tried and could not make this happen though I had everything needed. I managed to create the required Small Wonder: Visionary Dreams and then the 1st 2 components of the 10 needed. Simply could not start work on any of the final 8. Spent hours and hours trying to make this work, over at least 2 different games of this Mod. If this were a 5 Star review system, this failure would take off a full star: 4 out of 5. On my last game I left my final enemy with a small holding and went to town trying to figure this out. It requires an advance of the same name which is at the end of the tech tree. A ton of civ-o-pedia looking up and reading is necessary for this job/quest. Regardless, even if this could work, the time and cost of it likely puts it out of reach in almost any game. The 1st component costs 720 Shields, for example, and much of this must be completed in sequence not concurrently. And the game crashes often in the Spaceship, I mean, Armageddon's Blade screen (thanks, Sid, sheesh, hire some error handlers please). I looked over the BIQ file but nothing seemed funky. Note that the Capitol Small Wonder figures in all of this and in That City you can build the first component or so. The Palace (actual capitol) city also figures in. I rarely do the Space Race but once in any Civ game, but this should have been made easier to deal with. It's a shame. Ah well, back to the praise.
The music! from HOMM is much more cinamtic than the Civ3 music. Fabulous. Occasionally for me the music gets choppy in this one, fixed by turning music off then back on in ctrl+p options. (What is the deal with sound and Civilization games?? From the guys who did not understand windows or directory structures or error handling. At least the sound and the fury mostly works in Civ games.) Even the opening music on starting the game in this total total conversion is HOMM.
I just love the new HOMM-ized 'throne room', which is the actual Town graphics from HOMM, each upgrade adding 1 new HOMM Town structure until full.
Generally, though, when I am playing this Mod it is a total immersion for me. All of the terrain is modeled to fit the HOMM theme, including in the oceans. Random flotsam over here, some jetsom over there, and oh no, Sirens! Darn Sirens. Fish and Wales are super special, and can feed an arctic City on their own. I like the plain vanilla Civ3 terrains, but these terrains are also great in their own right. I don't love the Mine graphics, but yes they should be ugly. Lovely when I can late game convert them back to pretty farming fields.
I won't mention much specifically about the units but they have fun abilities and graphics to match. Particularly useful are the scout types which ignore most terrain limits, and those that can attack multiple times. Often these are winged units, which don't fly like airplanes but instead move like a Scout. Oh, Armies can only hold 1 unit! Which seems like a nice limitation. There are not many amphibious units, which can be crucial, and they are super expensive, especially to upgrade, and sometimes they come along rather late. There may be 1 (or 2?) in most Factions, and could be 0 in one or two Factions. I think it is possible for amphibious units to upgrade out; in other words, can no longer be produced, so watch for that if it is important in a given game.
This fantasy monster slugathon does it for me. I may never play vanilla Civ 3 Conquests again.
For now, on to that Might & Magic game I never finished!
I have recently played through COMM3 at least 4 times, on about the 5th? or 6th? or so difficulty level and been having a blast. First game on large islands or small land masses, the 2nd two on Islands or Archipelago or so, the most recent on Standard size (having dropped down a size each time). The 4th current game on the next smaller size among the enemies which I have come to hate the most. I'm looking at you, Avlee/Green. I think this Mod is best for large land masses which don't absolutely require shipping.
Wow. I have played Civ since the beginning and own all versions through vanilla 4. Could happily play Civ DOS now; recently started one and lost an afternoon. Colonization, SMAC etc all many times. Have sampled a number of Mods over the years including making my own.
Amazing. This is by the far the best Mod I have seen and the best I have played. I still enjoy Heroes Of Might And Magic 1, 2, and 3 (not into Kings Bounty any more; want to get back to Hammer Of The Gods), but I don't see knowing anything about Heroes as being necessary to enjoy this total fantasy implementation of Civ as a completely new game in its own right.
To be clear: this Mod is for anyone interested in a Fanasy Civ experience. This is a Fantasy Monster Slugathon, a la AH's Titan boardgame from the 80s. Following the instructions I had absolutely no issues running this. Have tinkered slightly in this BIQ: changed colors (I need to be Purple), raised the VP condition and end year (have not exceeded original parameters in play just hate having to think about those limits), allowed Cultural conversions (still have not seen it happen, darn), and maybe 1 or 2 other niggly changes but not much. Note that tom2050 has made many of the units and other graphics for this mod himself. I don't know how many he created, it is possible he created all of them. The action animations of the units are super fun.
Crash Caveat: The game has crashed from time to time. Save files have worked to restart and get up and running. The crashes feel like the Pedia has been involved or my system generally. It has happened in a city screen particularly loaded with units and going through the build list. Also, I normally can't recreate the crashes. These uncommon crashes have only happened in the 2nd half. Save often and everything is fine. Heck, regular Civ3 Conquests crashes now and then on its own, so this may not be the fault of this Mod. I play on a win 10 laptop connected to my large TV and 5.1 sound system, 3840 x 2160 resolution, truly great.
The faction names and adjectives are fantasy thematic, as per Heroes Of Might And Magic, but can be problematic. I use a small text file listing the faction names, color, and adjectives, and how they feel about me. I can't keep straight who the Avlee are: the Green guys? the Rampart or Tower may be Blue?? Alt+Tab to the text files is the only way I can keep straight who is who. Actually I have found that doing this some helps to need it less over time. Note that in HOMM the factions are called Towns, and so they are here. Also Castle can build a Castle, for example, which can add some confusion.
Here are the standard 8 Factions and some information about them. There are 3 versions of each of these Factions, named for example: Castle, Castle2, Castle3, etc. I only include the 1st version of each here. A Faction is called here a Town, as per HOMM. Note that the only difference for the different of the 3 types of each Town is cosmetic: different color and leader, but the same Bonuses. Each Faction has all unique units and many unique structures. The only way to fight the same critters is to have multiples of the same Faction out in the world. The headings below contain useful info on starting a game.
------+-------+-----------+---------------------------+----------------------COLOR TOWN ADJECTIVE LEADER BONUSES ------+-------+-----------+---------------------------+----------------------BLUE Castle Erathian Queen Catharine Ironfist Industr, Relig, SeafarCYAN Conflux Conflux Wanderer Tamar Commerc, Relig, ScientAMBER Dungeon Nighon Queen Mutare Commerc, Milit, Relig OLIVE Fortres Tatalian King Tralossk Agricul, Milit, Relig RED Inferno Kreegan Demon King Lucifer (Eeofol) Expansi, Milit, Relig GRAY Necrop Deyjan Lich King Griffonheart Commerc, Expan, Relig GREEN Rampart Avlee Elvenking Eldritch Parson Agricul, Commrc,Relig YELLOW Strongh Krewlodian Duke Winston Boragus Industr, Milit, Relig PURPLE Tower Bracaduun Immortal King Gavin Magnus Industr, Relig, Scient------+-------+-----------+---------------------------+----------------------My txt file has the following headings: COLOR; TOWN; ADJECTIVE; ATTITUDE. I include Attitude so I can track their feelings towards me, all a part of not being able to remember who is who, for me. Below is the contents of my most recent text file, with me playing as Queen Catharine's Castle Faction (changed to Magenta but reset here and above with the default colors). Suitable for cutting and pasting into a txt file.
-------+-------+-----------+--------FACTIONS -------+-------+-----------+--------COLOR TOWN ADJECTIVE ATTITUDE-------+-------+-----------+--------PURPLE Tower Bracaduun Polite GREEN Rampart Avlee War! CYAN Conflux Conflux WAR! -------+-------+-----------+--------DESTROYED -------+-------+-----------+--------AMBER Dungeon Nighon Furious RED Inferno Kreegan Polite -------+-------+-----------+--------UNUSED -------+-------+-----------+--------GRAY Necrop Deyjan XXXXX YELLOW Strongh Krewlodian XXXXX OLIVE Fortres Tatalian XXXXX -------+-------+-----------+--------BLUE Castle Erathian ME: Catharine Ironfist - Rel, Ind, Sea-------+-------+-----------+--------Roads: The cobble?stone railroads are difficult to tell apart from the gravel?stone regular roads. The more advanced stone roads are railroads of course, and these come along quite late in the game. Like everything, roads and railroads take a looong time to build. Since I can't tell by looking at them which are which I constantly pull the workers around with the mouse to see if they have already built rails. I don't like having to do this. (From the BIQ: the more advanced railroad roads are cobblestone roads; the primitive regular roads are gravelstone.) Note that The Grail is the advance needed to build cobblestone 'railroads'.
I love how the costs, building types, and culture bonuses are completely different (from regular Civ3). Most buildings give 1 culture now. Many buildings produce units over time, as a nod to the breeding buildings of Heroes. Most other Mods use the same or similar buildings as regular Civ3 but in this Mod there is often little correspondence between new bldgs and regular Civ3 bldgs. Which is totally nice but some won't like that. This is a plus for me. I have had some trouble figuring things out but as of the 3rd game I think I have figured out enough (still a tad more to discover properly). There are a number of units which I have never built but hope to try some of these in future plays. There is only 1 Age.
I have never seen the AI build large capacity 8 transport ships, go figure. When they attack via ships it is usually a small army, making this Mod particularly good for a large land mass world, so they don't need ships so much, if combat is your thing. They do sometimes mass a few ships or more, and sometimes have a good number of these task forces about. They do like to attack in general.
Corruption still happens but is much less, which is lovely. Ditto pollution, which is much rarer than usual Civ, and only needs 1 turn to clean! Maybe 2 turns to clean a polluted Mountain. It is wise to have at least 1 or 2 available Settlers to clean pollution on each land mass. Can be difficult to see the pollution, darn. Only 2 buildings fight pollution: Town Hall and City Hall; but also a Small Wonder which I can't right now recall. War weariness is also much less, which is welcome. It is fine to have these 3 issues (corruption, pollution, war weariness) still present in the game; it is absolutely fabulous to not have them be as big a deal as in regular Civ. Oh, occasional Disasters pop up but again these are a nuisance and not devastating (nice graphics though).
Note that all terrain can be settled except Mountain and Volcano. The writeup here and the c-pedia says no city building on Sand, but the BIQ file let's us. I didn't realize until I saw the Tower Town Faction build a city *on Sand* which simply had to go after they declared war on me.
Workers are interesting in that they take an inordinate amount of time to complete their tasks. Can be 48+ turns to build a mountain road! I have seen 112 turns required; no idea why so expensive sometimes, but get multiple workers on the job and the time required reduces quickly. Many workers are needed in this total conversion, and on one single square. The 4! different kinds of workers are confusing but, oh well. My own workers move 1 and 2, the 1s being more productive. Captured 1 and 2 workers round out the 4 types. Enemy workers normally get destroyed in battle, but can be acquired in conquered Cities.
I thoroughly enjoy the production buildings a la HOMM. Having critters spawn here and there which I would never purposely build can be a delight and interesting to have to deal with. I have never purposely built any spells (aircraft) but those created via the spawning buildings are plenty. The spells-as-aircraft which always seems so cheezy in Civ2 and Civ3 Mods finally works here!
Other neat stuff, too. Bringing Treasure (created by Marketplaces, which no longer increase commerce, but instead add Happiness and create Treasure) to the Capitol for 50 gold, neat. The fun critters which can *only* be auto-built by certain town buildings. The spells which upgrade into creatures, boats, and missiles. There are very few actual Great Wonders here, some, but mostly plenty of Small Wonders which do fun things. I finally figured out Dimenson Door, tots fun: it may be considered overpowered by some but I will have to decide that on a future game since I was already winning by the time I figured them out (it is both a Paratroop/Heli-thingie AND a Teleporter device, two ways to use it). Dimension Door comes along rather late normally in any event. tom2050 clearly knows his units! Hard to heal units quickly since the required bldgs are hard to get but this is a feature (units spend lots of turns in Cities to heal). Note that there are a ton ton ton of Small Wonders.
You get the custom government type that you start with and have nothing to switch to, ever. I like this change. Not that I want this in regular Civ3 Conquests, but it is a nice change here and fits the HOMM theming.
There was a review online regarding Civ 2 Test Of Time Fantasy which panned that product due to the fact that all the buildings were different from regular Civ. Well, the reviewer missed that this was exactly the point, and the same "problem" exists here, only it is now an even better problem considering how well thought out everything here is. And the Civ 3 base engine is also better in general, more robust to tinker with.
Armageddon's Blade: aka The Space Race. This is poorly implemented, poorly documented, and does not work. I tried and tried and could not make this happen though I had everything needed. I managed to create the required Small Wonder: Visionary Dreams and then the 1st 2 components of the 10 needed. Simply could not start work on any of the final 8. Spent hours and hours trying to make this work, over at least 2 different games of this Mod. If this were a 5 Star review system, this failure would take off a full star: 4 out of 5. On my last game I left my final enemy with a small holding and went to town trying to figure this out. It requires an advance of the same name which is at the end of the tech tree. A ton of civ-o-pedia looking up and reading is necessary for this job/quest. Regardless, even if this could work, the time and cost of it likely puts it out of reach in almost any game. The 1st component costs 720 Shields, for example, and much of this must be completed in sequence not concurrently. And the game crashes often in the Spaceship, I mean, Armageddon's Blade screen (thanks, Sid, sheesh, hire some error handlers please). I looked over the BIQ file but nothing seemed funky. Note that the Capitol Small Wonder figures in all of this and in That City you can build the first component or so. The Palace (actual capitol) city also figures in. I rarely do the Space Race but once in any Civ game, but this should have been made easier to deal with. It's a shame. Ah well, back to the praise.
The music! from HOMM is much more cinamtic than the Civ3 music. Fabulous. Occasionally for me the music gets choppy in this one, fixed by turning music off then back on in ctrl+p options. (What is the deal with sound and Civilization games?? From the guys who did not understand windows or directory structures or error handling. At least the sound and the fury mostly works in Civ games.) Even the opening music on starting the game in this total total conversion is HOMM.
I just love the new HOMM-ized 'throne room', which is the actual Town graphics from HOMM, each upgrade adding 1 new HOMM Town structure until full.
Generally, though, when I am playing this Mod it is a total immersion for me. All of the terrain is modeled to fit the HOMM theme, including in the oceans. Random flotsam over here, some jetsom over there, and oh no, Sirens! Darn Sirens. Fish and Wales are super special, and can feed an arctic City on their own. I like the plain vanilla Civ3 terrains, but these terrains are also great in their own right. I don't love the Mine graphics, but yes they should be ugly. Lovely when I can late game convert them back to pretty farming fields.
I won't mention much specifically about the units but they have fun abilities and graphics to match. Particularly useful are the scout types which ignore most terrain limits, and those that can attack multiple times. Often these are winged units, which don't fly like airplanes but instead move like a Scout. Oh, Armies can only hold 1 unit! Which seems like a nice limitation. There are not many amphibious units, which can be crucial, and they are super expensive, especially to upgrade, and sometimes they come along rather late. There may be 1 (or 2?) in most Factions, and could be 0 in one or two Factions. I think it is possible for amphibious units to upgrade out; in other words, can no longer be produced, so watch for that if it is important in a given game.
This fantasy monster slugathon does it for me. I may never play vanilla Civ 3 Conquests again.
For now, on to that Might & Magic game I never finished!
