Grrr Americans & Chinese

Blinking Joy

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 11, 2007
Messages
38
Location
Babylon
I just have to gripe a little.

I love games in which the Romans and Babylonians exist, rather than the Russians and Zulus. Romans and Babylonians create lovely cities, with super infrastructure, and they're a delight to know and to trade with.

Russians are horrid. Their civilizations are garbage. The Zulus are a little better, but still cheesy compared with the sweet Babylonians.

Egyptians and Aztecs are both good. They also create awesome cities, with high populations and advanced infrastructure. They are excellent trading partners.

My big complaint concerns the "Bright Blue" civilizations. Both the Americans and the Chinese, when they survive, produce the best AI civilizations in the game: high-tech, well-built, deeply infrastructured cities. They're cool -- except they are killed off within the first thousand years of the game ninety-nine percent of the time. It is SO rare that the Americans or Chinese last until the development of Trade, let alone Invention. They usually only survive when they have their own continent, and for some odd reason, whenever they DO have their own land in my games, they have the smallest and crappiest one!

It makes me sad. The Aztecs and Egyptians can also be too passive, but not nearly as much as the Americans and Chinese are. I'm sure you're used to seeing "Egyptian civilization destroyed by...", but not as much as "American civilization destroyed by..." -- and the Americans make awesome civs! Grrr...

If there were ONE feature I could transplant from Civ II to Civ I, it would be the ability to choose which AI civs you play against. I would always choose the Romans, Babylonians, Egyptians and Americans, and pray that none of these share a continent with anyone else. The Germans are slightly more refined than the French, although both are OK in my book. Indians are clearly superior to the Mongols, but I'm not in love with the Indians the way I am with the Egyptians, Americans, Babylonians or Romans. Greeks and English are both nasty! Neither of them produce delicate civilizations, although the English are marginally better at building roads and irrigating.

I usually press escape when choosing a civ. I prefer to be Roman, German, Egyptian or American (my favorite civ to be is the Egyptian, I absolutely LOVE the Egyptians' anthem...gorgeous music). I change the civ name to "Twebbians", and always have the same order of twelve city names (as though I were playing a standard civ). My play style is like that of the Egyptians or Americans -- not very expansionist, preferring a few high-population cities full of improvements and wonders, all close together (though ideally not overlapping, but perfectly adjacent). Of course, sometimes you simply have to expand -- killing off neighbors, or starting on a too-small island (one that can only hold 3 cities or less). A nice four- or five-city miniature continent is a real treat for me.
 
You could use Dack's tools to craft the perfect game for yourself.... of course then you wouldn't have the fun of exploring...
 
Like it indeed. I love it!

I'm wondering about trying Civ IV though. My biggest reservation lay in the fact that, from what I've read, Civ IV has a kind of "accelerated" ancient era -- it's 1AD before you can blink twice. And I don't like that; I enjoy the slow development, the plodding quality of the ancient era -- even CivDos goes too quickly for me.

I am actually playing a game now where the Chinese are the second most powerful, second largest, second most advanced civ (I'm the first, playing a customized Egyptian civ -- the "Twebbians"). It is amazing. It's 900 AD now, and all ten of my cities have 3 fat trade routes with the Chinese's three biggest cities; I'm researching RailRoad. The Chinese just got Steam Engine. This will be a hot n' heavy game.
 
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