Preview on IGN

[gozpel]

Originally posted by NHJ BV
If the English are Seafaring and Commercial, then what will they make the Dutch? I think England is a prime example of an expansionist nation and should be Seafaring and Expansionist, then make Holland Seafaring and Commercial.

This logic would make the Vikings Seafaring as well then, a trait that they really deserve. But for the second trait I don't know which is more appropriate, Commercial or Military. They used both very successfully 500 years before either the English or the Dutch even knew how to fish offshore.

 

[Mark Young]

Originally posted by Sirp
I'm a little dubious about this Daimyo in the Japanese scenario. Who wants to risk their 'king' unit in battle in any situation other than complete desperation? I can just see the howls of complaint now, "my 12/12 Daimyo was killed by a spearman!"

-Sirp.

hehe
When ever I see spearman now I run away from them in tears.

The thing that I liked is the ability to sacrfice captured workers in return for cultural expansions. No more lazy captured workers taking 5 times as long to do a job.

 

[Novaya Havoc]

I agree here, it ought to be:

Expansionist/Seafaring -- English
Commercial/Seafaring ---- Dutch
Militaristic/Seafaring ------ Viking

But what I see possibly happening are:

Scientific/Seafaring ------- Koreans? Greeks?
Agricultural/Seafaring ---- ??? Polynesia
Industrious/Seafaring ---- Dutch
Expansionist/Seafaring -- Polynesians(?)/Spaish
Commercial/Seafaring ---- English
Militaristic/Seafaring ------ Vikings/Japanese
Religious/Seafaring ------- Arabs? Spanish?

-Ben

 

[Sark6354201]

i hope seafaring wont be as worthless as expansionist. Actually, I'd rather see them improve expansionist, than add more traits. IMHO i think expansionist is a broken trait.

 

[warpstorm]

You are right, expansionistic is broken. It's too good. Most games it lets me pull way into the lead (on the medium difficulties, for Diety, it's not enough). On standard size continent worlds I average about 6 techs, 4 warriors, and a free settler or a badly placed free city. In MP it's even more deadly. Yes, occasionally I'll get a map where it doesn't work out for me. Some are much better.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Sark6354201
i hope seafaring wont be as worthless as expansionist. Actually, I'd rather see them improve expansionist, than add more traits. IMHO i think expansionist is a broken trait.

I'd like to see more traits that are relatively unhelpful, or even disadvantageous. That would give me an additional way to adjust the difficulty of the game, by deliberately choosing civs with unfavorable characteristics.

 

[Flandrien]

I hope they also changed the disorder message so that it pops up BEFORE disorder breaks out, and not when it is too late.

 

[The Last Conformist]

As for the actual Black Death pandemic, it apparently struck the Arabic world harder than Europe. At any rate, the population decline continued longer south and east of the Mediterranean longer than north of it, and when recovery came, it was stronger in the north. This is by some historians invoked as the chief explanation for the shift of power from the Arabic lands to Europe during the Late Middle Ages (it will be noted that the chief Muslim power of the early modern age was had its capital on European soil).

To which extent this pandemic affected more easternly bits of Asia is poorly known. Such trivialities like peasants dying by the millions was not considered worth commiting to writing in many cultures. Later outbreaks of bubonic plague have, of course, caused serious disruption on South and East Asia.

If the Justinian Plague in the 6th C indeed was bubonic plague, it certainly played a significant role in Byzantine history. But I don't suspect that the game will care to make distinctions between different epidemic diseases.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Just when I thought it was safe to go back to the Civ3 site... these improvements in conquest sound awesome!!!

 

[Black Waltz]

But remember. Most of these are only in scenario's! I just hope that there are a lot of changes in the normal game too. I don't play scenario's that often and I don't want to shell out for a game that hasn't changed at all!

 

[Necromancer]

Originally posted by Black Waltz
But remember. Most of these are only in scenario's! I just hope that there are a lot of changes in the normal game too. I don't play scenario's that often and I don't want to shell out for a game that hasn't changed at all!

Me too.

 

[Iron Cross]

Oh my God, I just saw this and $h!t a brick.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Welcome to CFC, oh szjitter of bricks.

 

[Sir John]

Ive just read the prewiew and it sounds so awsome... I cant wait for this to get out

 

[-proletarian-]

Originally posted by Necromancer

Me too.

Me three.

 

[zeeter]

England should definitely be expansionistic and the Dutch commercial. I'm with you guys there.

As for the ship bombardment, from what I've read it seems to make sense. Ships in port take double damage. This would seem to represent two things. One, the ship's unreadiness for combat, and Two, the ship's lack of mobility.

What's the deal with Rally points? That's in PTW already. I used them for a few games, then realized how futile they can be. What would be more useful is the ability to move your rally point. It is a hassle sometimes to set these rally points.

Maybe I missed it, but has anyone actually explained what seafairing will do? An intelligent guess would be an extra move for ships and the ability to sail one extra zone (coastal can go to sea, sea can go to ocean). Hopefully they'll leave it to an extra move. That, along with the Lighthouse would be phenomenal!

What are the extra civs we'll be getting?

 

[yoshi]

Aside from graphics, the scenarios will not include anything that the original game can't have, and if it did that would mean that the scenario has hard-coded information in it thus preventing players from reproducing those effects --that would go against the Civ trend.

I read the article, the Japanese civs have to research gunpowder. Is this historically acurate? Not exaclty. Europeans introduced it. But how can you introduce something that isn't there from the beginning (like putting the Dutch on a nearby island, but that would be highly unrealistic)?
You need triggered events (Events scripting). Civ3 has no Events so that's why the "clans" have no choice but to research Gunpowder.
Why doesn't Civ3 have Events? God f*#!ing knows!

If you were to get Firaxis on the phone and ask for obvious additions to the game this might well be what it would sound like:

Player: How about including a graphics editing program with C3C?
Firaxis: No.
Player: How about Events?
Firaxis: No.
Player: How about...
Firaxis: No infinity.
Player: At least add in a Diplomacy Setting...
Firaxis: We could but...No.
Player: Why not?
Firaxis: Because we enjoy watching you suffer, HAHAHAHAHAHAH -burp- HAHAHAHAH!

As for the additions to the core game, Satellites reveal map! Wow, what a breakthrough --enough said.

Personally, what got me into Civ2 were the scenarios, not the regular game. But then Civ2 was not very strategic for a strategy game: the AI was stupid, combat way to simplified, diplomacy almost redundant, ect. So the scenarios were the way to go. You could take that pathetic excuse for a WW2 Europe scenario that shipped with the game and using Events, could turn it into a heavy-hitting war game (make Russian T-34s appear in the Urals every turn ad infintium, or Mossies in Britain and have the loss of key cities be devastating to the protagonist (Germans)...and so on. Yet the AI was so stupid that no matter how much thought you put into the scenario, certain things, like its inability to use Carriers properly, would just make certain scenarios (e.g.WW2acific) unplayable --not to mention playing the regular game.
I bought Civ3 for a better regular game and assumed that, considering how popular Civ2 got in great part because of scenario design, that Civ3 scenarios would boggle the mind. They do. But not in a good way. Instead, Civ3 was and is slow, frequently not fun (which is quite a feat considering all the stuff they added in which should have made the game better) and lacking the proper tools with which to design good scenarios (not even Diplomacy Setting or Reveal Map for $h!t's sake). Now Conquests offers plenty of pre-made scenarios and some extra things that should have been there already! What is there that you know about C3C that I don't that will improve Civ3 to the point where it will be as flexible and playable as Civ2 was?
...And to top it all off the AI seems even stupider in some ways than in Civ2! What have Civilization players done to deserve this?

[SMAC was quite good though, even by today's standards. Maybe Firaxis should stick to what really works.]

 

[Louis XXIV]

Originally posted by ChrTh

"They definitely plan to have some kind of epidemic disasters as part of the medieval scenarios."

So we'll be having at least 2 Conquests that are medieval European (history is shaky, but I don't recall the plague hitting anywhere else)? Even if it's a typo (i.e. only 1), it does confirm a medieval Conquest.

EDIT: I guess it's conceivable they can introduce an epidemic in the Mesoamerican scenario if the Europeans are slated to arrive therein...but this still sounds to me like a confirm on a medieval european conquest

The Black Plague was very wide spread. The Mongols spread it to Europe. Byzantium was affected (I seem to recall hearing the Byzantine will be in a scenario). There definately will be a Medieval scenario of some sort. I have no idea if it is the Crusades, or some other goal entirely.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Originally posted by yoshi
Aside from graphics, the scenarios will not include anything that the original game can't have, and if it did that would mean that the scenario has hard-coded information in it thus preventing players from reproducing those effects --that would go against the Civ trend.

No and No.

At least for the second one. The scenarios have stuff you can't currently have. They won't be hard-coded (So people have said, that's the best I can give you)

I read the article, the Japanese civs have to research gunpowder. Is this historically acurate? Not exaclty. Europeans introduced it. But how can you introduce something that isn't there from the beginning (like putting the Dutch on a nearby island, but that would be highly unrealistic)?
You need triggered events (Events scripting). Civ3 has no Events so that's why the "clans" have no choice but to research Gunpowder.
Why doesn't Civ3 have Events? God f*#!ing knows!

If you were to get Firaxis on the phone and ask for obvious additions to the game this might well be what it would sound like:

Player: How about including a graphics editing program with C3C?
Firaxis: No.

You do realize that Firaxis uses a very expensive graphics editing program, and that even a cheap one would be very expensive to include standard (although I do think one will encourage even more mod makers)

Player: How about Events?
Firaxis: No.

We still can hope

Player: How about...
Firaxis: No infinity.
Player: At least add in a Diplomacy Setting...
Firaxis: We could but...No.

Does fixed diplomacy count? Very useful for a War scenario. Wanted by many people. etc, etc, etc.

 

[Gen]

Originally posted by yoshi
I read the article, the Japanese civs have to research gunpowder. Is this historically acurate? Not exaclty. Europeans introduced it. But how can you introduce something that isn't there from the beginning (like putting the Dutch on a nearby island, but that would be highly unrealistic)?

Where did you read that? I've read in a preview that gunpowder weapons will be accessible for Japan clans after contact with Europeans. Maybe you can't research that tech by yourself and have to buy it?