What is favorite part of Civ3?

[cycle]

My favorite moment is also the beginning, or the startup. This is where your skills are put to the test : how fast do you expand and manage your relationships with other civilizations. During that expansion phase, you need to adapt your strategy based on your location, available ressource, how close your neighbour are, etc...

I also like the mid-game when you finally launch a huge assault on your opponents. I'm always looking forward to see how the ai will react and if it will be able <gasp> to surprise me, for once.

IMO, the end game is way too tedious. Too much micro-management. The pacing in Civ 3 is horrible in the end game (the whole modern age). As in previous version. Like masquerouge, I finish few (+/-20%) of my game. At some point, it is obvious if you are going to win or loose. Why spend 20+ hours to conclude a game you won/lost such a long time ago ?

BTW, not to start an off-topic discussion, but I am really curious about the expansion new feature : the turnless mode. They say they implemented it to improve the pace of the game. Sounds good to me.

 

[sabo]

Originally posted by Gastric ReFlux
I like bombarding size 18 cities down to 1 pop point in 1 turn.

HOw many arty for that Gastric?

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

I think I gave the estimate earlier. It was about 45 arty pieces, and I will say that there was some good luck on the random number generator.

On standard maps, I usually aim to have at least 50 artillery pieces as part of my military. Due to the nature and width of the continents, I can move those around as needed to take one, two, or three enemy cities depending on the invasion path. But at that point in the game, I had reached a narrowing of the path, and had all my units in one stack. Then they fanned out into three groups after getting through there.

Artillery is Civ3's equivalent of SMAC's Organic SuperLube. Great stuff, great stuff. It is so good that I think even without lethal bombardment enabled it is absolutely an unbalancing advantage to the human player over the AI.