Prima's Official Civ3 Strategy Guide: I question it's writer's intelligence...

[Exsanguination]

I was looking through Prima's Official Civ3 Strategy Guide today, and noticed SEVERAL queer wrongs and faults, allow me to list them.

First - the things that are downright false or wrong:

-Empire cultural victory = 80,000 pts. Really?
-Bowman ADM = 2/1/2. Again, really? The guide says its tactial advantage is "it moves at twice the Archer's speed". Feel sorry for those who got gipped here.
-Infantry require no resources. What about rubber?
-Diff. Levels = Chieftain, Warlord, Prince, King, Emperor, Deity

Second - the given strategies I question:

-Steam Power "...appears to be the most important advance to research... [in] ...the era. It's not." "Nationalism and Medicine should take precedence over SP." How people agree with this? My experience tells me to go for SP FIRST, due to massive production increase. I would go for sanitation, but its 2 techs away so I find SP a much better starter. And Nationalism? Are you kidding me? I find that a pretty useless tech, I research 4-5th in the indust. era. Riflemen... infantry are better!

-I strongly disagree with the way it describes research paths in specific and says which civs are best for which victory (not gonna quote anything here, too much). Any civ player should be able to make any victory with any civ. The only advantages, at all, I see are the Babs for cultural and Iroquois/Persia for conquest.

One last note, I read the meat of it, and it really just seems like a repeat of the civ3 manual, with "notes". Yippee.

More to come, my fingers are tired.

 

[Sanaz]

Where is this guide? Was it written for any specific patch, or any specific version of the game?

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

You're absolutely right, it su*ks!

 

[andrewgprv]

I do see different Civs being good for different Victories and Maps

i.e. England is the best civ for archapelagos because it's only two techs away from mapmaking and has ManoWar

 

[Machi]

I've learned more from my first visit to this forum than that whole book. Its just a stupid money grab.

 

[cracker]

andrewgprv,

I strongly agree with you that certain conditions extremely favor certain civ traits.

A good example is the Greeks in an area isolated by mountainous terrain and choke points. The greeks get the hoplite which is the same power as a pikeman, but it comes a full era earlier and costs 20 versus the pikeman 30. Greeks are almost undefeatable in narrow mountainous terrain until you get knights, cannons, and longbowmen.

On an open terrain map without major bands of jungle and mountains, the zulus and aztecs can be much tougher due to their enhanced early mobility.

I have not read the "strategy guide" but based on the extreme strategy swings we have seen with each patch V1.16 vs V1.17 (yech, bleh, ptooey) and now V1.21, I would bet that any civ3 document from before May of 2002 would be essentially worthless.

If you followed some of the very effective strategies that power players developed in December and January, then you would get trashed today because V1.21 civ3 is a radically different game than out of the box.

For archapelagos, five current civs (plus the upcoming Spanish) all have the commercial trait and start with the expensive alphabet tech. My bet is on that the Vikings will be Expansionist/Commercial just like Britain since firaxis has indicated no plans to release the Maritime civilization trait in the XP.

The zulus are and aztecs are also good for archapelago maps because they have extra mobility to help find the key land routes and coastal city locations with their early military units.

 

[Zouave]

Is that the same Guide that showed up last year when the game (the BETA game) first was marketed? I guess so.

That Guide, with a phony interview with Sid Meier, who had nothing to do with programming the game, was written by a Firaxis flack who later gave that BETA game an effusive and glowing review in, as I recall, Computer Gaming World.

How STUPID was it? How much was it a mere PROMOTION for the game?

Even when privateers had an attack strength of '1', as it was with the original game, the author was saying how great they were!

I consider privateers a waste of time with an attack strength of '2', and they should in reality be able to attack merchant shipping on enemy trade routes, as should subs.

So the Guide was just an advertisement for the game. I never said Firaxis wasn't great at marketing its stuff.

 

[Reboot]

Its an evil guide made to let amatuer Civ players have a bad time in the game so they can hate it before they see the true beauty behind the imperfections.

 

[-proletarian-]

I can't relate to all the moaning and complaining about the crappy strategy guide, because I really can't understand why anyone would buy such a thing in the first place. Isn't part of the fun finding out all these strategies yourself?



I mean, you can't be very confident in your abilities if you feel like you need a strategy guide in order to be able to play the game.

 

[pompeynunn]

The guide would be useful if it included all the little stuff that isn't included in the manual - like the advantages that the AI gets on higher levels, or how exactly culture flipping works.

But all too often guides (in general for all games) simply restate what is in the manual with just a couple of snippets of info, and that is just not good enough.

This site has all the info you need, anyway!

 

[etj4Eagle]

Originally posted by pompeynunn
The guide would be useful if it included all the little stuff that isn't included in the manual - like the advantages that the AI gets on higher levels, or how exactly culture flipping works.

But all too often guides (in general for all games) simply restate what is in the manual with just a couple of snippets of info, and that is just not good enough.

This site has all the info you need, anyway!

Another problem is that they are often released in conjunction with the initial game release, which meant they were written based on beta candidates of the game. Hence features could easily change since the time of their writing. Also the true strategies tend to be developed by the communities following the release of the game, so those won't be in there either.

The purpose of the strategy guide is to work as an expanded manual for newbies and to give them some basic strategies.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by etj4Eagle

The purpose of the strategy guide is to work as an expanded manual for newbies and to give them some basic strategies.

The purpose of the strategy guide is to make extra money from people who believe the promises on the cover. merchandising at it's best/worst!

 

[Qitai]

Who needs strategy guide when you have the internet.

 

[Reboot]

Qitai: I agree with you completely... at least so long as the person has an internet connection.

I find guides rather tedious, and sometimes wrong. The best way is still to visit fan-forum (like this one! ^_^) or search the net for fan-written guides. The only time I found guides immensely useful is when i'm playing console-based games like FF... partly because of all the hidden stuff and useful screencaps.

 

[WarlordMatt]

Lt. 'Killer' M. said:
You're absolutely right, it su*ks!

LOL Killer are you afraid to say sucks? LOL

I heard everything in the strategy guide can be found in the manual.

 

[Reboot]

Except maybe the brains.

 

[Masquerouge]

Originally posted by Reboot
The only time I found guides immensely useful is when i'm playing console-based games like FF... partly because of all the hidden stuff and useful screencaps.

Ooooooh yes, my frined, how right you are !
But this is a different kind of guide-marketing ; you MUST have the guide to complete the game thoroughly.
Or wait like 6-8 monthes until a correct and complete fan site is up !

Now where are those ù*$£*! Jecht Spheres, anyway ?

 

[bobgote]

How much is the cultural victory? I thought it was 80,000? When was this changed?

I reckon I could write a strategy guide... lead people up the garden path no i would never pay for one anyway.

Also lol@privateers being useful. It is even less useful than the war chariot!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by WarlordMatt


LOL Killer are you afraid to say sucks? LOL

I heard everything in the strategy guide can be found in the manual.

1) nope! but I was expecting automatic censorship, like when you spell f u c k and it comes out as ****...

2) yep! except for mistakes, they made a few of their own

 

[etj4Eagle]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.


The purpose of the strategy guide is to make extra money from people who believe the promises on the cover. merchandising at it's best/worst!

Oh it definetly is that too. I was just saying that there is a certain market for whom it is a decent purchase. Remember that not everyone is able/comfortable with getting info on the net (and there are some for whom patching is a new concept).