Which was better: civ3 with all expansions/patches or cIV at launch?

[bryanw1995]

ok, this thread got me interested in doing some play testing. It has been many years since I picked up cIII, so I'm kind of re-learning it. just played a warlords small map. some thoughts:

1. took me until democracy to pull ahead tech-wise. I only built 6 cities, clearly that wasn't enough.
2. civ IV introduced many improved game mechanics. different game speeds, enormously better graphics, different resolutions for gaming to name a few. also, moving units as a stack can be quite frustrating in cIII. edit: I remembered to to off "animate your moves" to fix that.
3. building maintenance is actually quite similar to civ5.
4. ranged units quite similar to 5, though the defensive bombard is obviously not easily implemented into civ5.
5. tech tree is only 83 techs, though it feels longer than civ5's by a lot more than that.
6. overall the influence from cIII to civ5 is quite clear, I would say that civ 5 is much more based upon cIII than civ IV.
7. cIII is generally a much larger game. more cities, etc etc. ics looks like it would be killer since the only block to expansion (corruption) actually pushes you to keep cities closer together.
8. cIII really takes off after railroads, it's amazing how op'd those were.

I'll go play a vanilla civ IV game later for comparison, but first I'm going to go tackle cIII at a harder level!

 

[jjkrause84]

Civ4 for me....I never looked back from the day it came out.

 

[jagdtigerciv]

Civ 3 was, beyond a doubt, the worst of the series, in my opinion. Civ 3 was like doing your taxes. Some autistic people really get into that (doing taxes and Civ 3, both), so I guess there's always going to be some people who love Civ 3 to death.

Civ 4 was basically Alpha Centauri with better graphics and AI, and I loved Alpha Centauri. So, I really liked Civ 4, on release. There were lots of issues, but it was a pretty good release. I seriously disagreed with the 9.95/10 reviews that came streaming in (I thought it was more like an 8.5 or 9.0/10), but what can you do? Game review sites are basically just another cog in the marketing machine. They're a complete joke. Also, the fanboys were highly annoying. Anyone else remember the "thank you. it's perfect." thread that sprang up? Ugh.

So, I'd definitely say that Civ 4 was better on release. Civ 3 was an abomination. Yeah, conquests made it better, but it was still kind of like doing taxes, while you balanced your checkbook, and did math homework. Civ 4 was like composing a symphony. Civ 5 is... is... hmm... I'll have to get back to you on that. Preliminary tests reveal it to be more akin to riding a bicycle with training wheels, but, hey, not everyone wants or needs the complexity of a 10 speed bike. Sometimes you really do want a game with training wheels. It's not a put-down, necessarily.

I'm slightly autistic and I really enjoyed CivIII. Is this directed at me?

 

[Spoonwood]

I don't know if you're playing Vanilla, or Conquests. When talking about corruption my comments apply to Conquests.

ok, this thread got me interested in doing some play testing. It has been many years since I picked up cIII, so I'm kind of re-learning it. just played a warlords small map. some thoughts:

1. took me until democracy to pull ahead tech-wise. I only built 6 cities, clearly that wasn't enough.

Did you try to research everything yourself? 6 cities and it's not a variant? You can't even build the Forbidden Palace with that. I suspect you had plenty of tiles that no citizen in your cities could ever use even with a hospital.

2. civ IV introduced many improved game mechanics. different game speeds, enormously better graphics, different resolutions for gaming to name a few. also, moving units as a stack can be quite frustrating in cIII. edit: I remembered to to off "animate your moves" to fix that.

The "j" button can move them all at once. If you move only one square, then you get to watch all of them move. If you move several, you don't. Or at least that's my experience.

7. cIII is generally a much larger game. more cities, etc etc. ics looks like it would be killer since the only block to expansion (corruption) actually pushes you to keep cities closer together.

ICS in civ III is a strict CxC spacing (well as close to that once we factor in mountains). ICS really doesn't seem to work out well except in a 100k because of corrption. The rarest victory condition played for seems the 100k game... even HoF players who like playing for many different victory conditions often avoid it.

For most games, 12 tiles per city comes as a basic guide-line for city spacing in Conquests which lies between CxxC and CxxxC spacing. People say that ring city placement works well in Vanilla, and there's something about using some sort of remote palace trick to reduce corruption, though I don't know how that works in Vanilla. The location of the Forbidden Palace matters significantly in Vanilla. The location of the Forbidden Palace does have some non-zero effect in Conquests, but not enough that I've really ever paid much attention to it, and most Conquest players don't worry about it's location... they just make sure to build it early.

 

[bryanw1995]

Oh, I took 11 cities from the irroquois and 10 from the americans. I eventually settled a 7th and 8th city, they was just afterthoughts to fill in the blanks after I took over the continent.

I'm glad I played that game, now I'm on a monarch standard sized map and it's definitely more of a challenge. I got korea and I'm still 3 techs behind sumeria right now. bad luck for netherlands that 1. they are on my continent, and 2. I snagged all 3 iron deposits. mdi vs spearmen and horsemen ftw!

 

[GamezRule]

Hey, those spearmen are very useful once tanks are around.