What a big let down

[Ironikinit]

Libertarian,

While Europa Universalis is a good game, it has a buttload of flaws (dumb AI, crashes, etc.) so I'm surprised that you'd hold it up as an example. Maybe you just wanted to hold up that one feature as an example, but yeah, I could claim that tic tac toe has a more user friendly learning curve and is all "intuitive" and ****, never mind that it's only fit for children.

Your complaints seem to be meant just to give you an opportunity to be obnoxious and sarcastic. "End game tedium", for example... all the games in this series are tedious in the end game in the majority of instances, IMO.

 

[zebi]

I personally LOVE Civ3 and it _has_ improved Civ2 a lot. Just think of the countless times you pressed the button "R" or "I" in Civ2. Or maybe you couldn't remember which cities of yours were building military units when you desperately needed them. Now this is fortunately gone.

But there are other things still to be improved. F.e., look at your continent once you have discovered steam power and your workes have covered the whole territory with railroads. This is UGLY, it's simply not aesthetic. Why not modify the game rules so that it's only useful to build rails as a connection between cities?

 

[Libertarian]

Ironikinit

I gave that as an example of a particular interface element.

Excusing Firaxis for neglecting patently obvious game-play and interface improvements (like group movement and proximate unit activation sequencing) simply because other interfaces are equally lame is so ontologically egregious that I cannot fathom the mindset that allows it.

If you believe that it's fun to kick around in quicksand as your game begins to grind down to slow-motion torture, then more power to you.

 

[Ironikinit]

So, mainly because of those two flaws, you condemn not only the game but the company that made the game. I don't get it. You apparently didn't have a beef with Europa Universalis, despite its problems, but for some reason you have a real wild hair about Civ 3.

I'll try to be helpful with your slow game problem. Here are some things you might try, if you haven't already:

Use Cntrl Alt Del to shut down all programs except Explorer and Systray before starting the game.

Play on a smaller map with fewer AI players.

Upgrade your system.

I'm assuming you have already downloaded the most recent patch. If the above doesn't help, maybe you could do like a lot of players and just not worry about the endgame. The main fun in the Civ series, IMO, has almost always been in the early game anyway.

To address your point about how just because other programs are flawed doesn't excuse Civ 3's flaws, yes, I'd say that's valid. IMO, games shouldn't be released when they obviously need a patch, but I've come to accept that they often are. To me, that's a lot bigger problem than the (IMO) rather niggling complaints you keep harping on, because the game out of the box was unplayable and lacked a technical help sheet. Not everyone has internet access.