why do YOU play Civ 3?

[haluu]

just curious...and becuz im bored...

i've been wondering myself why we all still play civ 3... when there is civ 4 and civ 5 out there. personally, i own civ 2 through 5, and all i play is 3. mostly due to it's "accessibility" when it comes to modding. i would just like to know what the reasons are for YOU playing civ 3, and if you do or do not play it's sequels and why.

oh. and merry christmas!

 

[tom2050]

I like Civ 2, and would prefer to play 2 over 4 or 5. But I play Civ 3 because for isometric sprite graphics, it is graphically good enough. I don't like 4 for several reasons (doesn't keep my attn for long, blocky graphics, some other things relating to combat). I guess I'm somewhat old school; I prefer Alpha Centauri, GalCiv types. There should be no reason to even ask why I don't play 5. I played for a bit, but that Steam game has more issues than Time magazine.

Alot of people in Civ 4 and 5 forums love to trash 3; but they won't trash Alpha Centauri, in fact they say they even love that game (which is a different game but quite similar to 3 in more ways then 4 or 5 is). I call those specific group of people a bunch of hypocrites, and then I get a flag thrown for illegal conduct.

 

[bigdog5994]

Tom is a trouble maker

anyways i play civ 3 because its fun.

 

[King Coltrane]

I have civ 2-5 and predominantly play civ3. I play civ2 when i'm feeling nostalgic (or I miss civil wars, King Richard's Crusade, terraforming, etc.) and play civ4 when i have an hour or so, though i only play Rhye's and Fall of Civ + modmods (which is basically an outgrowth of what was started in civ3).

As for civ3: i like not being able to cheat and therefore having to plan ahead and accept consequences as they unfold. I think the graphics are the most artistic and thoughtful of all of the semi-3D-fully-3D civ games. I think the gameplay is more fun. AND I like to create my own mods and see what other people create as well, even if we don't know programming languages. The last of these reasons is probably the most important for me. We have such high quality mods out there, from old favorites like RaR, TAM, Rhye's of Civ, to new greats like Mod of Modness and Worldwide, and CCM. AND the best part is, if I want to make a little change I can do it myself and not request that the whole mod make an adjustment for my playing style.

Anyway, Civ3 is the best

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

I have all civ versions 1-5 and play civ 3 the most; have played civ 1 and 2 when feeling nostalgic too. Civ 3 is the one that I can customise the most and is the one I understand best how to win when playing - don't seem to be able to win at civs 4 and 5.

 

[Quintillus]

There's a few reasons I prefer Civ3 to Civ4, but the biggest one comes down to the lack of epic scale in most Civ4 games. Even on a standard-size Civ3 map the empires are a decent size, whereas on even large Civ4 maps the empires feel tiny. Scale up the map and Civ3 can feel really epic, whereas it's quite rare to get that feeling in Civ4.

Other reasons include:
*Some ground combat elements, such as artillery being throwaway units rather than bombard-at-range units (against other units), and the existence of bonuses against certain types of units resulting in a game that generally skews more towards defence, unless large amounts of artillery are sacrificed to each conquered city.
*Air combat elements, such as not being able to destroy buildings with aircraft.
*The graphics looking better and less cartoony in Civ3 than Civ4.
*The fact that I bought Civ4 at launch. This resulted in trying to play the slow, inefficient Civ4 1.00 on a slow, inefficient computer with inadequate resources for it. This didn't help the "epic" element, either, although even with adequate hardware now I find Civ4 is much less epic than Civ3. I'm now venturing into Civ4: Warlords a bit, but have yet to have much desire to try Beyond the Sword.

Probably one or two other reasons that I'm forgetting. As for Civ5, reading about it here has persuaded me that I shouldn't buy it now due to a poor AI, many bugs, and having even less of an epic sense than Civ4 at this stage, and the demo didn't change that conclusion - it actually reinforced the poor AI part. It seems there's not much of a reason to buy it, even if one-unit-per-tile would work if the AI were decent. I figure by waiting until it's patched up/expansionized to buy it, I'm much more likely to have a positive view of it in the long term.

2010 probably is the year in which I've played the least Civ3, other than 2006 when I played Civ4, since I bought Civ3, though. OTOH I've probably spent the most time on Civ3 modding-related activity of any year since buying Civ3, and my Civ4 playing time has remained quite low for three years running now.

 

[tom2050]

Probably one or two other reasons that I'm forgetting. As for Civ5, reading about it here has persuaded me that I shouldn't buy it now due to a poor AI, many bugs, and having even less of an epic sense than Civ4 at this stage, and the demo didn't change that conclusion - it actually reinforced the poor AI part. It seems there's not much of a reason to buy it, even if one-unit-per-tile would work if the AI were decent. I figure by waiting until it's patched up/expansionized to buy it, I'm much more likely to have a positive view of it in the long term.

Jon Shafer, the lead guy of 5, just got canned, dumped, pushed out the door, fired, or quit (no one knows). Hopefully 2K didn't do it to save money (leave it to 2K ); but I hope it happened so they can get someone that knows how to keep with Sid Meier's Civilization formula that is successful for them and to Civ fans.

 

[Pounder]

Civ 3 is the last Civ game with the classic game play.

I like an epic game, just can't get that experience with the newer games.

I play Civ3 everyday for a couple hours before the family wakes up, a typical game will take me a month to play.

With Civ 4, I find a lot of turns with nothing to do, and when I make my play it is like I am in a game with a bad referee, the game seems to be unbalanced, I don't feel satisfied even if I do manage to win.

The randomness in Civ3 is better than the randomness in Civ4, can't really express it any better, it's just my feel of the games.

I will still play a Civ4 game about once a year, haven't wanted to buy Civ5 yet.

 

[Kyriakos]

I dont play any computer game anymore, although a month ago i dled the Rise and Rule mod and played a few turns.

I tried to get into civ4 in the past, but i hated the 3d environment.

 

[Delta_Strife]

I play civ 3 because of the great community support it has. There have been so many great things created by everyone here! I also like that I can mod the game and I am not that computer savvy!

 

[Vuldacon]

I especially enjoyed Civ 2 for its game play and esthetics. I prefer Civ 3 because it is simply more esthetic, has better Game Play in its original form and offers the ability to customize a game from minor to major changes that allow personal "tweaking" satisfaction as well as Many other New Games to be created than Civ 4 or 5.
I find it easier to see and feel more realism when playing a Civ 3 Game than the "surreal", cartoony Civ 4 or 5.

 

[Moosezilla]

Civ3 is fun. Civ4 is so ugly I never dreamed of buying the two expansions. Civ 5 seems to be a bad joke. Civ 6 is coming!

 

[Grandraem]

There's a Civ 4 and 5???

Actually, for me it's just a matter of loving Civ3 so much, and not having much time to check out Civ 4 or 5 (I knew that I wouldn't have much time to play them so I've just stuck with my love of Civ3). Besides, I'm nowhere near finished modding Civ3.

I guess I also have some sort of silly mental disorder where I feel like I can't go to number 4 or 5 until I've finished number 3. Rather annoying actually, as it also sometimes makes me read unnecessary chapters of a book (a non-linear one) so that I don't miss out anything.

 

[timerover51]

I play if for a wide variety of reasons, not the least that it runs very nicely on all of my home computers, including both my Mac iBook and my acquired Dell with Windows, courtesy of my son graduating from high school and getting a new laptop at college. (I do not want to give the impression to the Mac community that I have gone over to the Dark Side). I cannot afford to upgrade a computer simply to run a computer game, and while I have Civ4 for the Mac, and actually could probably run it on my wife's new MacBook, I have no interest in so doing.

For me, Civ3 has the right blend of graphics, gameplay, and modibility for me, especially since I now have Steph's editor under Windows and Quintillus's editor for the Mac in addition to the standard editor. When a play on a HUGE map, I prefer something larger than 160 X 160, it feels like I am playing on an entire world, not a small portion of one like Civ4.

Quite simply, Civ3 is a superior game to Civ4, and far more fun for me to play and experiment with.

And again, an enormous THANK YOU to Steph and Quintillus for all of their efforts. I just wish that we had the source code to work with too.

 

[Dumanios]

Civ3 is a fun game.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

I love Civ3 the most and I own all versions from Civ1 to Civ5. Civ3 is the best simply because it is easy to modify and you are allowed to modify so much even though civ4 and 5 are toted as being the most user friendly for modding.


My suggestion for civ6: take the civ3 engine and blend in some elements from civ5 (i.e. hexes but with stacks of doom allowed) and give a better editor than what comes with the game and you will sell millions.


Tip for would be modders of Civ3: I've tried all the editors out there created by the user community. All of them have corrupted my .biqs in some form or another. Use these user created editors to check out concepts you've been thinking of or to just look at the scenario structure in a more efficient way but do not save! Instead once you know what to do by using these user created editors go back into the stock editor that came with the game, make your changes there then save.

 

[Bluemofia]

For the mods mostly.

It's been a while since I seriously sat down and played a game though, because I just don't have time.

 

[HorseSoldier]

What everybody else said plus one I haven't seen -

The replay-ability factor of Civ 3 is more than any other computer game I can think of - ever.....
You can finish a game and immediately fire up a new one with unabated enthusiasm. Not even factoring in maybe tweaking a rule or adding a unit or building or Wonder or two.........

 

[nick0515]

Pretty much same reasons as everyone else.

I've owned or played all versions of Civ but Civ 3 is the only one I've hung onto. Civ 2 is great, but Civ 3 includes most of the greatness of Civ 2 but adds a lot more and has better graphics.

Civ 4 and 5 have terrible graphics and are exceptionally boring to play, especially 5. I'm not really sure why they are so boring; all I know is that they never come close to holding my attention like 3 does. I had big hopes for 5 but when I tried it out is was everything I hated about 4 but more so. Dullest game ever!

Modability. Though it's taken me many years to get where I am now, I can mod Civ 3 fairly well. I'd have no chance of learning to mod 4 and 5.

So many great graphics, mods and scenarios made for Civ 3, and still being made, that'll I'll never get bored of playing it.

 

[haluu]

Thanks for the responses guys! It seems that civ 3 may never die! And I didn't know shafer got fired, but that means that civ 5 is beyond repair IMHO. Sure they will still make expansions, but there's no reason to buy them. Let's hope that civ 6 ends up being a glorified version of civ 3!