Civilization III: Gold Edition

[Alexanderofmacedon]

I just got this game. Thoughts?

[Kekvit Irae]

Conquests is much better, in my opinion, than Gold by itself. The rules editing of Conquests is that you can make really unique scenarios with interesting win conditions.

[Kekvit Irae]

Gold is essentially CivIII plus a patched version of Play The World expansion. Play The World adds in a few new features plus the following civs:
The Arabs
The Carthaginians
The Celts
The Koreans
The Mongols
The Spanish
The Ottomans
The Vikings

Conquests adds in the Inca, Maya, Aztecs, Byzantines (Empress Theodora = HOT!), Portugal, Netherlands, and the Hittites, as well as new game modes such as Regicide, Capture The Princess, and other goodies.

[Alexanderofmacedon]

Cool, I'll start playing right away....well, when I get back home...

[LeftEyeNine]

Stalin was featured to be the Russian leader in Civ I. I do not know if he sitll was in Civ II, though.

And Napoleon was the French leader in the first game as well.

I think they tried to be...well, how to say..erm.. more *humanist* maybe ?..

[LeftEyeNine]

Well, Joan D'Arc and Czarina Catherine sounds too weak to me as well..

[doc_bean]

It's a great game imho. I think it has a certain board game feel to it (but much more complex), one game is finished pretty fast, it usually takes me 2-3days (with other stuff to do). The only downside is that I can never finish two (or more) games in a row, so I only play a few days every few months. But as a budget game it's well worth the money.

[English assassin]

I got pretty bored with it pretty quick. I played Civ II a bit, and I was addicted to CTP for quite a while, and maybe I've just done Civ. If you haven't played CTP then Civ III would be great, as it does have some good features (culture, mainly, although trade diplomacy and spying are all also a lot better and the slight differences in the civs are mildly interesting. resources give you more strategic issues to manage. Oh, OK then, its quite a lot better than CTP. Combat and the interface itself I found worse but not by much).

but if you've played the earlier games the feeling of same old same old creeps up pretty quickly.

But as was said above for a budget game you can't complain.

[Del Arroyo]

What really annoyed me about Civ3 in the long run was its geopolitical immobility. Strong factions always got stronger and never ran into difficulties-- there were no significant counterbalances to power, no decadence, no backlash or decline.

This was to the point where you could look at all of the factions on the first turn and tell which one would be rolling in cash at the top of the tech-trade pyramid in 1900 AD. It was to the point that on Deity difficulty, it was either way too easy (you started on a river in mixed terrain) or impossible (you started in the plains).

Did any of the later expansions fix the fluidity issue? Cuz that's what killed it for me in the long run. The game wouldn't flow back or forth, nothing interesting ever happened-- it was just a battle towards (or against) inevitability.

MTW, though it's too easy, is at least better in this respect.

DA

[English assassin]

That's basically true. I got Gold as well and it was the same there so I guess the answer is the expansions didn't fix it.

The only thing you can see, if the map is small enough/the faction number big enough, is that not all empires get all resources. Lacking saltpetre or oil will make you/them pretty vulnerable militarily regardless of size. In fact generally playing with a LOT of factions makes for a better game IMHO.

Falling any real way behind in the tech race is still more or less impossible to correct though, although with better trading options you do at least have more of a chance to correct a small deficit. (Equally, with the AI swapping tech they can build a monstrous lead if you aren't part of the tech swapping club yourself)

I thought the pace of the tech race was better, in that you spend a reasonable amount of time in eras that are recognisably ancient, renaissance and modern, whereas with CTP it galloped through to a sort of early modern era and then ground to a halt with endless not very interesting advances.

You know what? its not such a bad game, i might have a quick go this week for old times sake.

[LeftEyeNine]

I may defend my very old Civ to the bone ! :)

I just want to tell you about a short game story that happened once which was very very enjoyable : I was controlling the Russian faction, being already a superpower and practicing the Manhattan Project, I was stuck. All factions were stuck. Everyone was informed about the nuclear power but nobody could make use of it since only one faction had Uranium under control. They were the Zulus living happily in a pre-times period compared to all others just before the whole world was all over them because of the Uranium deposit. That was a world war, I gathered the Uranium, another superpower leading another polarity. And finally we were on war for Uranium against each other again. Nobody remembered who Zulus were. Maybe we trapped them into touristic settlements so that they could sell exotic souvenirs, I don't know.. LOL..

[Kekvit Irae]

I personally had mixed feelings when I first played CivIII. On one hand, I really like the culture boundries and resource system, but on the other hand, I hate having to wait 50 turns to complete a wonder because you have no way of hurrying it without a Great Leader (whom appears only when pigs fly). I guess I'm just too into SMAC and CivII