Why are you playing civ 3 after all these years?

[Buttercup]

Except for the first, you can mod the others.

In all seriousness though, I was genuinely more than a little disgruntled when Civ 3 first arrived and I couldn't either settle on Mountains nor chop them down. "Why are they going backwards!" I exclaimed to no-one. Later on in years I tried Civ 4, and you couldn't even road/mine the mountains... er... I mean 'Peaks', lol. Though I think someone did a mod so you could road the mountains, er, I mean peaks.

 

[Takhisis]

You can add new worker units, you can fiddle with research caps and limits, you can add new artillery units. The Koreans' cartillery might be the best ranged unit in the game, btw.

 

[85397389]

The best strategy game ever made. The sense of time era when playing is even better than civ4, you can actually fight a lot of ancient->middle ages battles.
I personally don't like the non stacking Civ 5 and 6. Too much micro management.

 

[B-29_Bomber]

The best strategy game ever made. The sense of time era when playing is even better than civ4, you can actually fight a lot of ancient->middle ages battles.
I personally don't like the non stacking Civ 5 and 6. Too much micro management.

I would say that Civ 3 is the closest we've ever gotten to a fully realized natural state of a civilization game (as I see it anyway).

That natural state in my opinion is Civilization as a more complex game of chess with a nice coat of history paint over top to give it flavor.

The problem with later civ games is that they leaned too heavily into simulationist gameplay when the game's foundation can't really handle it well. It's like trying to build a 50 story apartment complex on top of a 2 story family home foundation. It just doesn't work.

In short, Firaxis looked at the relative popularity of Paradox games and thought "we could do that too!" The reality is, I wouldn't mind seeing a simulation style game from Firaxis, but it needs to be built up from the ground up and not shoehorning in those kinds of features into a game where it was never meant to be.

Mind you, there were some nice things introduced to later civs that I think were a good idea. Like the general trend toward making individual military units a more precious commodity so that you didn't just spam out a hundred units to throw at the enemy. I just wish the limits introduced in Civ 5 weren't hard limits.

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

I'm going to give my own two cents in this thread. I see this discussion is still fresh.

For one, B29's remarks are valid: Civ was always meant to be a tabletop chess with a coat of history on top of it, and the first three civs stick to this formula with no problems. This sort of simplicity, clear cut style, is an advantage.

But there is one thing that still makes me stick to the old, and "tried", in this regard. I even play Europa Universalis 2 because of this:

1 - For one, I'm a late 90's kid. So the nostalgia and sentimental factor peak at late 90's, early 00's games. That said this is not an absolute. But then there's factor 2:

2 - I'm a slow guy, and I'm also old fashioned. I can't keep pace with how just dazingly and stupidly fast modern software develops itself: for the same reason, I've ditched MS Office for LibreOffice, because it's free, and it has all the in-built functionalities that I need as a purely domestic user (no advertising, just saying plainly here
). No excessive complexity. But back when I used Office, I would keep old versions running long after M$ released something else, and I would also keep the old hardware. Even when I had the bucks to buy something new, hey, lemme tell you a secret: when I was a kid, I learned to use typewriters. And I kept using them until I was 21 to write my own texts.

I guess you could send me back on a time machine to the 50's and 60's, in some place like rural Idaho or whatever. I would fit in nicely. That's my kind of everyday pace.

The same thing happens with games: I like the clearcut, well tried, "old but good". Civ2, Civ3, with their tried and tested chess tabletop approach, feel like good old fashioned Civ.

I was never capable of keeping up with the pace of Civ development after 4. Sorry. I'm just a slow guy. I'm astonished to hear that in just 10 years, they made two new civs. Sorry that's just too fast. LOL.

There's also the fact I began to play, get hooked on, and prefer actively the Paradox games, esp. CK2 which is one of my all time favorites. I just they think they're different, but I still like them more, but I keep returning to Civ because of difference, nostalgia, etc...

 

[Takhisis]

I still like them more

*the screen depicts Takhisis leaping onto MPorciusCatoCivver's back while wildly swinging a knife before it cuts to static*

 

[MPorciusCatoCivver]

LOL LOL but yeah even Civ4 which I didn't like a lot doesn't compare favorably to a contemporary game like EU3 which I enjoyed. As for Civ3, it's good fine and dandy but CK2 is miles ahead of it. I know you'll kill me and I'm in a civ forum. But yeah, the truth is that for the hardcore strategy gamers there are better choices.