PtW vs. Conquests

[Brad Oliver]

I haven't followed Civ3 in a while (particularly Conquests) so I'm a little behind the learning curve. In particular, I'm curious - if you have Conquests, is there any reason to keep PtW (or even the original Civ3) around?

OK, that's not necessarily Mac-specific so let me rephrase so I don't get modded off-topic. If you guys had Conquests for the Mac, would you all immediately stop caring about the original Civ3 or PtW? Or do they have functionality that Conquests doesn't?

 

[Helmling]

No. Everything in PTW, including the ability to play with PtW-only clients is in Conquests.

Conquests is by far the best version of Civ. I can't even play vanilla on my Mac at home because it would be like going back to Civ2 there are so many features that Conquests added that now feel like "must-have's."

 

[Brad Oliver]

No. Everything in PTW, including the ability to play with PtW-only clients is in Conquests.

Conquests is by far the best version of Civ. I can't even play vanilla on my Mac at home because it would be like going back to Civ2 there are so many features that Conquests added that now feel like "must-have's."

So you can successfully play the regular and PtW GOTMs in Conquests?

 

[AlanH]

You can load a vanilla or PtW save file like the GOTM start files in Conquests, but it then plays to the Conquests rule set.

We advise people with Conquests to play Classic GOTMs using the PtW .exe that they should always have available. They could play the start save using the Conquests .exe, but the submission system rejects the save file that results, because the embedded version number is then the C3C version, indicating that they have played a different game, with map and contact trading in the middle ages, SGLs and MGLs, various new wonders etc.

[EDIT] That'll teach me to rush out a post just before dinner. Of course, things like the techs required for trading, and wonders, are defined in the scenario in the save file. The rule changes embedded in the game software version are things like the corruption model, the effect of civ traits on workers, the frequency and effect of leaders, etc. These are sufficiently different in C3C to make it a different game.

 

[Brad Oliver]

These are sufficiently different in C3C to make it a different game.

Fantastic, that was my very next question. So if you wanted to play a current GOTM, Conquests by itself isn't useful - you need either Civ3 or PtW. On the PC, do you know if PtW is the preferred app for GOTM vs. straight Civ3? Are the straight Civ3 variants of the GOTM kept around strictly for Mac users? Why no Conquests versions of the GOTM (in lieu of PtW)?

It seems to me - and correct me if I'm wrong - that the only current usage of Civ3 and PtW appears to be for GOTM players. For all other uses, Conquerers is preferred pretty much universally?

 

[AlanH]

For the last 16 months we have been running two competitions per month, one for C3C and one for the "Classic" versions. Here are the stats on the number of distinct players for each software version during this 16 month period:

Civ 1.29f (PC vanilla): 104
Mac 1.29b2 (Mac vanilla): 29
PtW1.21f and 1.27f (PC PtW): 407
C3C (PC Conquests): 614

Distinct players over all versions: 816

Notes:

- The sum of the players broken down by version is 1154. This is greater than the "All versions" number, because 338 players played in both competitions at some point, so they were double counted in the breakdown.

- Mac players amounted to 3.5% of the total across all these games.

- 614 players played one or more Conquests COTM games.

- 540 players played one or more Classic GOTMs, of which 5.4% were Mac players.

- PtW is about 4 times more popular on PC than vanilla.

If you want more details please PM me and I can extract finer resolution info from our database.