Vanilla vs. Complete

[oli.watts]

Hi,

I'm currently throughly enjoying playing the original Civ3 for my Mac to while away an annoyingly long commute. Thought it might be time to ask you chaps some questions to make it even better!

If I were to upgrade to C3C, other than additional Civs, would I see any change in gameplay/performance etc?

Can you recommend any good scenarios/saves/maps to use. I've done the usual standard world map, but i'm looking for something fun and perhaps different.

Hope those make sense, thanks for your time

Oli

 

[AlanH]

Hi, welcome

If you buy Civ3 Complete you get Play the World (PtW) and Conquests (C3C). PtW is mainly about additional Civs, Units, and a few extra buildings. While C3C adds yet more of these items, plus more wonders, resources and terrains, it is also a significantly different playing experience from vanilla and PtW.

- The corruption rules have changed the way you play with the Palace and Forbidden Palace. RCP (Ring City Placement) is no longer a way to achieve artificially low corruption.

- Trading maps and contacts comes much later in the game, removing that mass trading extravaganza in vanilla around Writing and Map Making in the Ancient Era.

- You can get a free tech if you are first to research Philosophy, often referred to as the "Republic" or "Monarchy" slingshot, depending on which free tech is targeted.

- There are separate Military and Scientific Great Leaders. SGLs can rush Great Wonders, and can be created when you are first to research a tech. MGLs can only rush Small Wonders or buildings, or make armies, and can be created by elite battle victories.

- Armies are much more powerful in C3C. They get increased movement and more health units.

There are probably more changes I have missed. Check out SirPleb's analysis on page 4 of this thread for more information.

Finally, you can only play the Game of the Month (GOTM) in PtW or C3C, and you can only join in Succession GoTMs with C3C.

Re. scenarios, I'm no expert, but I'm sure someone who is will be along soon to assist.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Welcome! Check this thread where we as a group worked out installation issues of some of the more popular mods. TAM (The Ancient Mediterranean) is a personal favorite of mine, since I enjoy the pre-gunpowder eras of history. It bears repeated play on the random maps. Rhye's is one that I enjoy when I want to play up through the modern era.

After the last patch more of the mods installed without difficulties, so that thread kind of got dusty. Look here and here for anything that strikes your fancy. If you have trouble installing and playing a mod, you'll get more help by creating a thread here in the Mac forum. In addition to the spectrum of mods it's definitely worth installing C3C for the additional terrain, etc. in the standard game.

 

[tao]

2 points may be worth considering:

If you stay with vanilla Civ (Brad's beta version), you don't need an original CD in your drive; this might be useful when commuting.

On my old 2x1GHz MDD, the load times are excessively larger for both PtW and C3C than for vanilla.