Rate the new patch (1.21f)!

[Cybernut]

My major gripe with Civ III is the poor trade management system. All the clicking and constant repetitiveness of trying to see how many turns are left on each trade. This could be easilly addressed by increasing the info in the pop-up whenever you hold the cursor over the traded luxury or resource.

An extra screen were your trades with every other civ (luxuries, resources and money) are visable at once would be the ideal solution. Is this really that much of a stretch?

When this is sorted out and we get MP, then we will have a truly wonderful game.

 

[Dralix]

Originally posted by friedmad
under 1.21, the persians cannot by default hurry immortals as soon as they have pop 2 and have one shield toward production.

also, any scientific civ cannot hurry the library if as soon as they have 2 pop and one shield toward production.

This is because they fixed a bug where the first citizen sacraficed to production returned 40 shields, instead of 20 like all others. If memory serves, this was documented in the readme.

 

[saintides]

Originally posted by friedmad

i play on monarch level, which used to make for a very good game. but now, i think the AI cheats at building wonders. Every time i have 1 or 2 turns left to build a wonder, another civ completes it. this pisses me off to no end cause that didnt happen in pre-1.21.

I play on the same level. Thought the same thing in the first patched up game. I was 4 turns from the GLB .. somebody got it. 2 from the great lighthouse (switched over) .. somebody else got it. Managed to whip out a library pretty quick after that.

Next game, I managed to get the GLB and the lighthouse one.

Of course the ai cheats.. has too or it wouldn't be much fun against civ3 masterminds like us.

 

[PatLasch]

I've read some stuff about not being able to test mods with the new patch, but something's being overlooked. if it's just unit values or other things use the new scenario tools. You can start in any age, and with any units that you set. It might not work to test things on the fly, but it will let you test something without playing until a certain age. It does let you start there.

 

[Stuka]

I give it a 7. I *LOVE* the improvements, and I'd have given it a *10* if they'd have allowed us to put our civs WHERE we want 'em.


The effort is very noteworthy, though. I just.. <sigh>

PLEASE FIRAXIS LET US PUT OUR STARTING LOCATIONS!!!

 

[rommel77]

Originally posted by PatLasch
I've read some stuff about not being able to test mods with the new patch, but something's being overlooked. if it's just unit values or other things use the new scenario tools. You can start in any age, and with any units that you set. It might not work to test things on the fly, but it will let you test something without playing until a certain age. It does let you start there.

How do you do this?? Where??

 

[PatLasch]

Rommel77, I'll make a new thread to tell everyone how to test their mods.

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

Originally posted by rommel77


How do you do this?? Where??

Yes, please tell- but I still don't understand their policy: Create a game that is highly customizable; and then make it freeking hard to customize it- keeping errors "in" without one being able to change them in ones 3-4 weeks old savegame.

As was once said in 1945: "NUTS !"

 

[Lab Monkey]

This is by far the best patch, and at least we have a hacked editor at last!

Also the AI expansion seems to be a little more sedate than before.

Though I'm still angry at Firaxis' arrogance towards us all.

 

[Ozymandius]

I used the new patch half way into the game and the tech swapping stopped. I was again able to sell techs to ignorant civ's without a competing civ giving it away simultaneously.

BUT I have now had two crashes never experienced before when I pushed F3 to look at the location of my units.

Courthouse did not reduce corruption. Production of 39 shields & only 2 left after corruption despite courthouse & everyone happy. This is the only city that could have produced ironworks.

Wish that there was a way to automate without having workers produce irrigation. There should be a choice for auto mine makers. Who needs more food production when size of cities limited till after hospitals.

Useless canons fail 3 out of 4 times in bombardment.

Button location should be fixed so that I don't build fortresses by mistake when buttons shift from irrig. etc.

 

[Sanaz]

Originally posted by Cybernut
My major gripe with Civ III is the poor trade management system. All the clicking and constant repetitiveness of trying to see how many turns are left on each trade. This could be easilly addressed by increasing the info in the pop-up whenever you hold the cursor over the traded luxury or resource.

An extra screen were your trades with every other civ (luxuries, resources and money) are visable at once would be the ideal solution. Is this really that much of a stretch?

When this is sorted out and we get MP, then we will have a truly wonderful game.

This is exactly why I gave it an 8/10. I'd like more of a grid format, at least to give the basic information, more like the F1 or F3 screens, so that trade status can be glanced at quickly each turn. It's tedious now, so I only check every 5-10 turns, and I'm often surprised when I lose a luxury, or my trade income decreases. Sometimes I realize I'm giving a free (or almost free) luxury to a civ from a trade I've made over 20 turns earlier...

Opening and closing each advisor, then clicking on active trades, then exiting to look at some cities or to check on my happiness levels, then going back to the diplomacy screen to finally make a trade, takes some of the fun out of one of my favorite parts of the game (Diplomacy). War, Culture, and Production are easy to monitor and adjust.

 

[Carver]

Originally posted by Zouave
This poll is premature.
Can't we wait at least a WEEK (or two) before evaluating 1.21??
I did NOT spend all weekend playing Civ 3!

Why not? Did your mouse hand get slammed in a door or something?

Really, it's a 9. Civ3 is definently better than its ever been. More options, fewer stampedeing settlers, global bomber range in the editor, better tech trades.

1.21 is a must have. I expect no more than 1 additional patch before the XP comes out.

 

[friedmad]

My first real game using the 1.21 patch. I always play on monarch level with the Persians. Pre-patch i've never had modern armor before 1800-or-so. post-patch i have modern armor in the 1200s?????

techs getresearched WAY too quickly after the patch

 

[Beeblbrox]

8 because I have noticed little difference really (now that I have figured that setting the percentage OCN to 1000% on difficulty tab has the same effect as setting OCN to 1000 except that it doesn't stop you building Forbidden Palace)

A patch where I have yet to notice a great deal of difference is good. Means that there's obviously lots of good stuff that I haven't even encountered yet that's been sorted out. One thing that I do like however (even though most seem to complain about it) is the J only moving awake units. It's VERY useful when you have your military at one base (as I usually do for convenience) and want to split it into seperate divisions easily when mobilising.

I agree that I am also awaiting a more useful trade advisor (in fact thanks to the guy who mentioned it is actually possible to review your current trades - I had never noticed that before and usually only found out that they were due to expire when they actually did )

Making this post also for a little quibble that occured to me a minute ago. I am actually pleased that continental restrictions on Wonders are implemented - but please make it apply to the continent! not just the land - mass! It should be easy enough - any land in the same Sea/Coastal connection (i.e. shelf) I'm fed up of my little islands just off the mainland not being counted as on continent.

Oh - abandon city - fab - most useful for removing cities you have accidentally placed in a wrong location but only noticed a few turns after.

btw - worker Death SFX now plays etc. - how DO you kill a worker and not capture it?

Hrm. Well apart from the worries of mod makers as I have posted in the main patch thread (let them add units etc.!) all seems well and good really.

 

[Matt]

I give this patch an 8 out of 10. Play is much better than the 117 patch, corruption is at least playable for large empire, AI is much improved. They actually respond to the moves I make, such as changing directions after I fortify a city that they are obviously headed for..

Two things that lower my rating: bombards should be able to sink ships, destroy units in a regular game as default. This is true for real life, it should be true in the game. This is a minor annoyance.

My main cause for concern seems to be limited to me, from what I've read here. I am getting lag problems, especially when I am using the bombard function. When I am bombing, the unit will often 'lag' for up to 2 minutes after the move is made. The unit just sits there, the options icons for the unit either disappear in the case of bombers, or remain frozen in the case of ships, until this lag completes itself. You can still select other units, move around on the map, use all functions, however the flow of the game is interrupted. I don't want to have to manually select each unit I want to bomb with!!

This bug seems to get worse the longer the game has been running consecutively. Saving and restarting helps somewhat. I have also experienced this lag with other units after finishing their move, but only once per hour, say. Lastly, when I capture a city, sometimes there will be a lag on opening up the city window. I can manually open it up and set up the city, but when the system catches up, it goes right back to the city window, and all the changes I made manually are gone.

These lags are a pain in the a$$, and simply makes the game take longer to play, especially at 3:00 am when I just want to take over that enemy capital before bed!!

I am running a P3 800 with 394 MB, Win 98, and a nVidia GeForce 2 200MX in case anyone wants to know. Maybe its a config issue?? (This config seems to have had similar issues with previous patches)

 

[Beeblbrox]

Oh - one thing id like to see that i forgot to mention - drop shadow on the number of turns to go to a tile (it's impossible to see on plains/desert/coast).

 

[Dralix]

Originally posted by Beeblbrox
btw - worker Death SFX now plays etc. - how DO you kill a worker and not capture it?

You don't, but barbarians do. Or maybe you do with lethal bombardment.

 

[Sanaz]

Originally posted by Matt
My main cause for concern seems to be limited to me, from what I've read here. I am getting lag problems

May not be the same problem, but some of us saw lags because of the new compression feature with saves, and auto-saving was causing problems. We disabled auto-save, and the lags went away. May be worth a shot.

 

[Esca]

Civ3 has wrecked my computer.
Not sure if it was the last patch.

Win98 would not load.
I took it to a computer shop and they said the culprit was Civ3 and they uninstalled it.
Now everything is fine.

I never did like the way it messed with the config files and the monitor settings, everytime I ran the programme.

Not sure what to do now.

I cannot install WinXP as my satellite software will not run with it.

 

[Rikolus]

Thunderfall, do you know the definite answer to this question: Does installing the patch affect Saved Games that are already in progress? I have a few games already started and wonder if the new rules will immediately impact those. Thanks, anxious to give it a try.