Let me count the ways ...

[t-civnut]

How do you improve the world's best strategy game?

Answer: Don't mess with the good stuff!

I started playing Civ1 10 years ago, then it was Civ2 and now 3 (and I still haven't grown up). I was really pissed off with Civ3. It is sooooooo frustrating. Why can't they put the good stuff in without taking the other good stuff out?

The diplomacy and espionage options in Civ3 are a joke comapred to Civ2. In 2 you had immediate access to see who was producing what, where and at what stage. In 3, for a LOT MORE shields, you get almost zip. When another civ wants to talk to you - you are not briefed (unlike 2). In order to know what another civ is producing or how many cities they have, you have to go through the silly motions of calling them up and offering a deal. DRAG.

Corrpution and waste are INCURABLE. The hidden city/palace is cool. But you can only build one. For very large empires, it is not effective. So you go through 5 turns of anarchy to get "Democracy" and guess what? The furthest cities still have one blue shield to 10 red.

In Civ2 the impact of government change was real. Going to Democracy/Republic was a hastle coz you had to keep people happy, but it was worth it in terms of money and productivity. In Civ3 it is not worth it. Stick with monarchy or communism.

And we lost the Statue of Liberty, the wonder that allows you to change governments without anarchy.

And last, but not least, we lost the cool funny ministers of Civ2. They were animated, and even though they got predictable, they were still amusing at times. (The military adviser drunk was a great one.) I was really looking forward to more of the same. But what do we get? Still pictures of geeks and no sound effects. Thanks guys. Great work. Keep it up.

And you can't change the sex or name of the leader (as you could do in Civ2), so whenever I play as the English, I have to put up not only with being called "madame", but also "queen".

I have heard of upgraded versions of games with new features put in, but why can't you keep some of the old good ones in too?

Civ3.com has no feedback channel. So I hope the guys at Firaxis monitor other sites and listen.

Right, now I am going back to play.

Keep conquering.

 

[SirJethro]

*Sigh*

 

[connor]

Here is some help.

Get the 1.29f patch. Use the editor and modify whatever you want. You can kill corruption by going to the world size tab and change the optimum number of cities to 1000. Don't remember which tab, I think the same, but you can set the corruption level to whatever you want. You can also mod improvements to reduce corruption. For example I make all religious and educational, and governmental improvments with the reduce corruption flag.

Diplomacy and spying are annoying, not much you can do.

It sounds like you need a good mod. Go to the mod section and get Kal-el's DyP mod. It is awesome. The are like 50 each of new techs, improvements, and units. Several new governmental types as well. There also a whole lot of new small and great wonders.

The new patch and the DyP mod make the game a lot more fun.
-----------------------------------------------
To secure peace is to prepare for war. Don't tread on me.

 

[Padma]

@SirJethro: I couldn't have said it better myself.

I sometimes think newcomers to Civ have an easier time with this game than some of us old-time civvers, because they don't have to accept that it is a different game from Civ2. You cannot play it like Civ2 and expect to win, or even survive!

Just to hit the points of the original post:

1) I think diplomacy is better. You don't have omniscience. You have to pay attention to what's going on around you, and make decisions based on less than totally perfect information.

2) Corruption is fine (at least with the latest patch). In my latest game, I took over a small subcontinent across the ocean from me, and had it producing at about 50% corruption by the industrial age.

3) Government makes a HUGE difference. Democracy is best, Republic second. Monarchy is OK if I get stuck in serious wars, and I have never used Communism. (I have forced the AI to use it, though, and always to their detriment. )

4) If you want no anarchy, play a religious civ.

5) I don't miss those silly ministers in the least. - Personal preference.

6) Agreed! (How 'bout that?) I do wish we could change the sex/name of our leaders easily. But it is a very minor issue for me.

I prefer not to mod, because, IMHO, it leaves you a weaker player, i.e., you are still unable to play the game as designed, which is necessary for GOTM, the Tournament, most SGs, etc. It only leaves you able to play with a "crutch", your favorite mod. Again, that is just my opinion.

 

[Chieftess]

You can change the name. Just click on the leader, or the civ trait when starting a new game.

 

[Becka]

Originally posted by Chieftess
You can change the name. Just click on the leader, or the civ trait when starting a new game.

And you can chose male/female this way (one of my favorite patch changes!!! )

 

[DaDoo]

hm

By the time you get your empire big enough to have cities near the edge of the border to only produce 1 shield due to production... what does it matter what they make anymore? You should have a core 8-10 cities around your palace and your forbidden palace that have very good production to power your war machines. The rest of the cities are more or less there to claim resource and land area for domination victory.

 

[Vorlin]

To add some to what Dadoo said, they are also great for culture. The key to using totally corrupt cities is -not- try to deal with them as if they are normal cities. Consider them an entirely different animal and you'll do much better. I focus on population and cultural improvements in them and in those areas they are quite useful. They extend your civ's control, your line-of-sight, and deny both to AI civs.

I agree with an earlier poster, if you try to play this game like it was Civ1 or Civ2 then you'll get quite frustrated. It takes a different approach, one that takes some getting used to.

I will agree with the original poster, the espionage part of Civ3 is very weak. Perhaps they ran out of time to balance it, or to code the AI to use it, so they just chose to make it so expensive as to be all but useless (I can generally buy three techs for the price of (possibly!) stealing one). Has anyone ever had the AI civs use espionage or propaganda against them? If it's ever happened to me, I wasn't notified of it, but then, I'm not sure if I would be...

 

[Koronin]

I have a feeling you haven't played the game very much at all.

Some of the things that seem to be a pain in the arse, are all very managable and the lack of those said things, are what made Civ2 TOO easy to beat.

Keep chipping away at it, soon enough those issues will be easily solved.

At least you didn't mention your tank falling to a spearman right before all your cities cultre flipped

 

[sealman]

Originally posted by Vorlin
....
Has anyone ever had the AI civs use espionage or propaganda against them? If it's ever happened to me, I wasn't notified of it, but then, I'm not sure if I would be...

Actually, I have had civs build embassies in my capital. in a recent game, I was told that the Germans tried to steal a tech from me, they were caught and punished

 

[Vorlin]

Sealman, what difficulty level was that? I'm a regent player, and possibly the AI never has enough money on hand at that level to give it a shot. I do get the 'built an embassy' message now and then, but generally only by one civ (maybe two) in any given game. Maybe they only build embassies when they intend on trying espionage?

 

[sabo]

Volin I too have had other civs get caught trying to steal technology or planting a spy, the thing that I NEVER see is an enemy aircraft carrier, has anyone??

 

[Catt]

Originally posted by t-civnut
Why can't they put the good stuff in without taking the other good stuff out?

Without addressing your specific complaints, may I suggest that the definition of "good stuff" varies from player to player, and that some "old good stuff" doesn't work very well from a game balance perspective when combined with "new good stuff?"

Keep at it, you may find that you'll come to really enjoy the game.