Civilization Iii Complete...

[Eagle of Fire]

... has to be my worse Civilization experience ever. I personally beleives that CIV III is the best of the three, but yet again the expantion (Conquest) is yet another stupid example of a gem turned into a piece of chalk by turning it into a milking cow.

A lot of "bonuses", new stupid rules and units been added without adding to the game. Worse, they actually remove to the game! The game AI seems to have been upgraded, which is good... But to compensate and (probably) to get the game harder, the code seems to have been reworked and "tweaks" added in for nothing. Such "tweak" include not being able to create an irrigation with 2 settlers even if you are industrious, barbarians who seems immune to terrain and obstacles or who simply stay put somewhere in the map instead of hunting down cities, the combat code which seems to have been rewitten so the computer always have the advantage and is really looking like a chance dice game... Really stupid changes.

In my first game I just played, I retired because I was so depressed on how the game turned up that I did not even want to play anymore. I had access to Iron and Horses and was building a nice specialised army of veterans and elites (like I always do...). But the computer managed to beat me with an army of Archers... ARCHERS! Is there a more useless unit than some archers in Civilization??? Even the Warriors have a better use. Yet they seemed to be able to take down a Spearman who was fortified inside a walled town and behind a river without taking a single hit! That's almost mathematically impossible, yet they managed to do that often.

I really feel like I wasted good money on something which should not have happened.

[Rubberband]

Disagree mostly. IMO, the conquest expansion adds a lot to civ3.

Firstly, the AI DO NOT get any advantage in combat. The AI get production bonus in higher difficulties, and thus can field a larger army. But the computer do not get any combat bonus.

Combat in civ3 depend quite abit on luck, as weaker units now have a higher change to win a stronger unit, due to the random number generator in civ3. I agree that this a a bad system, but this problem have been around since vanila civ3, so it is not the fault of the expansion.

And the archer is NOT unless at all! If you look at the stats, it have a attack of 2, compared to the warrior attack of 1, both have the same defence and movement point of 1, with the archer having a defensive bombard , so the archer is acttually better than the warrior. Therefore, archer beating spearman is quite possible, and spearman have a defence of 2, same as the attack of archer.

I advice you to play a few more games before giving up, possiblily playing at an easier difficulty.

[Rogue]

I own Civ III gold, and I really like it.

It is harder, with a lot of new ways of win and most imprtantly, AI learned to resign. (I hated when I have to look for some city with 1 setller :))

As Rubberband said, archers have better attack unit then spearmans or warriorrs.

[Eagle of Fire]

I been playing Civilization since I'm 10, and I'm almost 24 here. I thank you for all your considerations both of you, but I think I know what I'm doing. Archers are useless. I had swordmen and horsemen in quantity by the time they attacked me with a horde of archers and they still managed to beat me. And his units were all regular and mine were all veterans, some of them were elites...

This is stupid. If attackers now have a better chance of winning because of a "random seed generator", then the game is an utter failure. No way around it.

An archer have an attack rating of 2. A spearman have a defense rating of 2. In theory, an archer should win 1 time out of 2 against a spearman. The thing is, a fortified unit give it a bonus to defense (must be 50%, 2+1=3 defense). Fortifiying in town gives it another bonus (must be 25% in town, 3+0.75=3.75). Having a walled city add to that bonus (50%, 5.625 defense). Elite rating gives another defense bonus (must be 100% against a regular, we are over 10 defense now.). Catapults fire on attacking unit when they are in a city. And last but not the least, they attacked from the other side of a river which I think is also 50% defense bonus. Yet, a low life archer, alone, managed to kill several of my spearmen without even being hit once. Sorry, but 2 attack against over 10 defense and winning is utterly stupid.

The other side of the scale happened often too. I attacked archers in open terrain and comonly got my swordmen being creamed by a lone archer, attack 3 against defense of 1.25 (terrain bonus)...

[The Niles]

Yep, the Civ3 combat engine is the single element in the game that manages to downgrade the entire game from an instant classic to a fun, playable game that has some problems.
They said Civ4 would be full 3D. I say keep your 3D and give us a good combat system.

None of this has anything to do with Conquest btw. Conquest in my opinion was a very good addition to the game and gave us several things the origional lacked. In vanilla Civ3 you where very dependend on finding Iron and other resources in order to produce good units. In conquest you will still be hurt by not having those resources but it is no longer a life and death issue. Also unique unit upgrades. I hated being the Germans in vanilla Civ3. Sure they had a good unique unit but I had to scrap them all once I got modern armour as I could not upgrade them. Played a lot of Romans after that as their unique unit was a dead end anyway.
And of course the thing you had all been waiting for came with conquest. The ability to play with The Dutch.

[BlackMageJawa]

Hmm... I have plain old Vanilla Civ 3, so is it worth getting Conquests and/or Play The World or not?

[Eagle of Fire]

I have no idea what "vanilla" is. I never get user mod expentions. I would play the original and not play Conquest at all. Really not worth purchasing. The only reason I got it is because it was part of a 3 in 1 package which was (strangely) exactly the same price than the "gold" edition, which contained only the original and Play the World.

If you consider that they did not even include a multiplayer option in the original package and wanted the players to actually buy an "upgrade" for that part... Not worth purchasing.

Actually I'm glad I had a pirated copy for so long. I got the best of the game, and would I knew that it was so bad I would not have purchased it in the first place.

I'm also glad now that I noticed that I can play the original and/or Play the World without using Conquest. Tough I'm still to try Play the World to see what they screwed up in that version.

[Nick]

Could someone tell me, how can I run Civ III in 800x600 resolution mode? There must be a proper line to be written in *.ini file but I just don't remember how exactly this line should looks like...

[Rogue]

Originally posted by Eagle of Fire@Jan 26 2005, 12:19 PM
I been playing Civilization since I'm 10, and I'm almost 24 here. I thank you for all your considerations both of you, but I think I know what I'm doing. Archers are useless. I had swordmen and horsemen in quantity by the time they attacked me with a horde of archers and they still managed to beat me. And his units were all regular and mine were all veterans, some of them were elites...

This is stupid. If attackers now have a better chance of winning because of a "random seed generator", then the game is an utter failure. No way around it.

An archer have an attack rating of 2. A spearman have a defense rating of 2. In theory, an archer should win 1 time out of 2 against a spearman. The thing is, a fortified unit give it a bonus to defense (must be 50%, 2+1=3 defense). Fortifiying in town gives it another bonus (must be 25% in town, 3+0.75=3.75). Having a walled city add to that bonus (50%, 5.625 defense). Elite rating gives another defense bonus (must be 100% against a regular, we are over 10 defense now.). Catapults fire on attacking unit when they are in a city. And last but not the least, they attacked from the other side of a river which I think is also 50% defense bonus. Yet, a low life archer, alone, managed to kill several of my spearmen without even being hit once. Sorry, but 2 attack against over 10 defense and winning is utterly stupid.

The other side of the scale happened often too. I attacked archers in open terrain and comonly got my swordmen being creamed by a lone archer, attack 3 against defense of 1.25 (terrain bonus)...
Time to cheat the game? :D

[BlackMageJawa]

Heh, 'vanilla' just means 'plain'. As in, Civ III with no expansions.

It's from Magic: The Gathering, where it's used to describe a Creatutre (usually a 1/1) with nothing in the text box apart from flavour text (ie it has no abilities)

[The Niles]

Vanilla commes from the most eaten flavour of ice cream in the word. Plain vanilla ice cream.

conquest has all the things from Play the World in them so it does not pay to buy them both and you are better of with having Conquest then Play the world.

[Unknown Hero]

I have Civ III: Play the World and I would say, that many new options are made available! I didn't play this game for long time, so I can't remember what options, but I remember that there were a lot of add-ons (especially new races).

@Eagle
I always was angry at bigger difficulties about attacking system! The other units were hundred times stronger than mine!
Here is an example: I played with astecs and had around 10 (let's say 5) unique astec warriors (I don't recall the name of unit), and computer had 2 spearmen! He managed to weaken all of my warriors without even taking one life of his spearmen! This is too stupid! (later my warriors "regenerated" and I defeated computer - after 2,3 or 4 times :D )

Still let's say that if you have stronger army no-one can defeat you! This is also stupid! And I really love when it's tied! (I win in most cases) :bleh:

PS I played on difficulty of Regent (and later of Monarch).

[Unknown Hero]

God I hate when you "wake up" such a nostalgy for this game!

The problem is that the game doesn't work! I don't know why? It worked on my older computer! And on Win 98 units move too slow! Does anybody know the solution (at least for Win 98)?

[Rubberband]

An archer have an attack rating of 2. A spearman have a defense rating of 2. In theory, an archer should win 1 time out of 2 against a spearman. The thing is, a fortified unit give it a bonus to defense (must be 50%, 2+1=3 defense). Fortifiying in town gives it another bonus (must be 25% in town, 3+0.75=3.75). Having a walled city add to that bonus (50%, 5.625 defense). Elite rating gives another defense bonus (must be 100% against a regular, we are over 10 defense now.). Catapults fire on attacking unit when they are in a city. And last but not the least, they attacked from the other side of a river which I think is also 50% defense bonus. Yet, a low life archer, alone, managed to kill several of my spearmen without even being hit once. Sorry, but 2 attack against over 10 defense and winning is utterly stupid.

Actually, a town(size1-6) and elite status does not give any defensive bonus.So the correct calculation is 50% fortify bonus + 50% from wall + 25% river(not 50%) + 10% terrian bonus(assuming the city is on a grassland, 25% if on hill) = +135% bonus, resulting in the total of 4.35 defence, not much difference from 2 attack. Taking into account the elite status of the defender(+2hp), the archer would have around 5% change of winning. Not high, but not impossible either.

The problem is that the game doesn't work! I don't know why? It worked on my older computer! And on Win 98 units move too slow! Does anybody know the solution (at least for Win 98)?

What problem are you having? You need to give more detail. Do you have problem installing, or the game crashes at startup?

[Eagle of Fire]

Actually, a town(size1-6) and elite status does not give any defensive bonus.So the correct calculation is 50% fortify bonus + 50% from wall + 25% river(not 50%) + 10% terrian bonus(assuming the city is on a grassland, 25% if on hill) = +135% bonus, resulting in the total of 4.35 defence, not much difference from 2 attack. Taking into account the elite status of the defender(+2hp), the archer would have around 5% change of winning. Not high, but not impossible either.

Well, if it doesn't it used to previously. And it would be stupid if it doesn't do anymore.

And anyways, it poves my point; 5% is nothing. You can't expect the computer to win easily without even losing a single HP and do it regularly.

[Tulac]

I like Civ2 better than the 3rd one, don't ask me why, I don't know...
The only thing better is the AI, because in Civ2 there is no real "AI", the game just makes your non-human enemies, produce faster, have more money etc. by cheating.

[Yamcha]

I liked Civ3 because it has the option of choosing to take over or destroy a city cuz I simply hate when i need to estabilish a new goverment in a "1" city. Another good thing are the trees. Cut them and the shields will come. But the combat system is really stupid!!!

[Eagle of Fire]

I really got no issue with the combat system of the original CIV III, only with Conquest (and possibly with Play the World, I did not try that one yet).

[Rogue]

So you are not sugesting me to get conquest? :blink: (I was looking to get it)

[The Niles]

No Warez talk.

I would advise you to get Conquest it has some nice improvements, especially if you do not yet have Play the World.

Eagle of Fire, why do you say the combat system got worse with Conquest? There was no change in the combat system from the origional Civ3.

[Unknown Hero]

Originally posted by The Picard@Jan 28 2005, 12:24 AM
Eagle of Fire, why do you say the combat system got worse with Conquest? There was no change in the combat system from the origional Civ3.
I don't know about original Civ3, but I know that this rule is the same in Play the World!

BTW when I said my game doesn't work, it's because it crashes when I try to play it (winXP), and in Win98 I can't hear any sounds! :not_ok:

[Eagle of Fire]

I never seen archers win anything with my old copy of CIV III. With the game I am talking about, archers winning was common place.

Something been changed. Probably in the difficulty setting. But something obviously been changed.

I always played Regeant difficulty. In Conquest, there is 2 new difficulties level, so I would expect Reageant to be easier, not more difficult. If the difficulty level been changed so the computer "cheat" to get an advantage on you, then it's only another point to add to my downgrade list.

I also just pinpointed that CIV III complete install a spyware every single time I run the program. That spyware is named C-Dilla according to Spyware Doctor and if I am to beleive that program, C-Dilla monitor my internet habits.

I had a hard time finding out from where that blasted spyware was coming from, but I've run Spyware Doctor on startup and cleaned the registery of it, then did a second scan to be sure it wasn't there and immediatly ran CIV III Complete, start a game and close the program immediatly. C-Dilla reapeared immediatly afterward.

I'm going to uninstall that piece of crap at once. Not going to trust Atari much in the future either. (I am pretty sure Atari did not ship the first version of CIV III.)

Edit: the spyware never came back after I uninstalled the game.

[Rubberband]

BTW when I said my game doesn't work, it's because it crashes when I try to play it (winXP), and in Win98 I can't hear any sounds!

I don't know what to do, but maybe you can try asking on this (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=48) forum on this (http://www.civfanatics.com) site.

[Mr. Barman]

I had access to Iron and Horses and was building a nice specialised army of veterans and elites (like I always do...). But the computer managed to beat me with an army of Archers... ARCHERS! Is there a more useless unit than some archers in Civilization??? Even the Warriors have a better use. Yet they seemed to be able to take down a Spearman who was fortified inside a walled town and behind a river without taking a single hit! That's almost mathematically impossible, yet they managed to do that often.

I really feel like I wasted good money on something which should not have happened.
thats not a new problem, i had a game where it was me with modern armour against the french who still had spearmen/archers. of a group of about 20 modern armour i lost 6 to archers :not_ok: of course in the end it wasnt much of a problem as soon after i had ICBM's :whistle:

[Unknown Hero]

http://www.civ3.com/conq_screenshots.cfm?startimg=19

IF THIS IS CIVILIZATION III: CONQUESTS THEN I'M BUING IT RIGHT AWAY!!! :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain:


@Anubis

Get it! That's an order! :sneaky:

[Mentor]

Duh.

Look at history: Archers were the most devistating military units in the known world until firearms came into being. 4000 archers could take out 10000 knights in a few minutes. Until I got into firearms in Civ I always relied on my archers to be the brunt of my armies. Rarely, if ever, had more than a few units of cavalry or knights.

[Eagle of Fire]

Your point is invalid. 100 Knights could easily kill 10000 Archers assuming there was at least 10 left to take the Archers in close combat. Archers only rule in long distance combats and even then Archers were not even good enough to actually penetrate good Knight armor.

Crossbows were something else tough. But you don't have crowbowmen in CIV III.

Before trying to state history I suggest you read about it yourself. Unless your Archers are defending units on a castle they are dead meat without melee backup.

[Mentor]

RANGE being the operative word. Before the knights could get close enough the archers could volley hundreds of thousands of arrows their way. Besides, you don't even have to hit the knight, just his horse.

Why do you think the English longbowman was so famous? Against insurmountable odds English longbows won out 9 out of 10. It's not about being good, it's about NUMBERS. A longbowman could shoot an arrow every 5 seconds. 12 a minute. With a thousand archers, that's 12,000 arrows in a MINUTE. In the situation of 10,000 archers vs 100 knights, unless the knights started the fight a foot from the archers, they'd be slaughtered in a matter of moments. Even then they probably wouldn't get too far, since the archers would just nock and shoot.

There are many, MANY battles in history that support me, one of them being Agincourt, 1415.

King Henry V had about 5000 archers and 900 men-at-arms. The French had around 20,000 - 25,000 men-at-arms and knights.

The English SALUGHTERED them. Sure, the situation was against the French, but the point is that they were mutilated while only a few men-at-arms were lost on the Enlish side during the clean-up.

Another is France vs. Flanders, 1382. 10,000 archers decimated about 40,000 knights in a matter of minutes. losses on the French side were about 1000.

Need I go on?

But this is OT, technically.

Civ never was my kinda game. I liked more squad-based games than army-based. Maybe it was too dry for me, I dunno.

[Eagle of Fire]

You are stating historic battle but I don't think I even have to read about them to find out that strategy and tactics is what won those battles, not Archers. Beside my point was that Archers without melee backup would be crused in battle and the two battle you mentioned effectively had shields to cover those Archers.

Of course Archers in an army is more effective than an army without. However being crushed by an army consisting only of Archers is not only stupid but unbeleivable.

If you like squad based games like UFO or TFTD maybe I can suggest you Laser Squad Nemesis (http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com/Download.htm) made by the Gollops brothers. That's pretty much a recent version of an old game called "Laser Squad" which I think if my memory serve me right Julian Gollops designed or helped to design back in the days. It lacks the geoscape element of UFO and TFTD but if it's Squad management you're after then you won't be disapointed.

The main site seems to be down ATM but I linked to the trial version download instead.

[The Niles]

Stay on topic please.

[Unknown Hero]

I always loose many of my advanced soldiers against weak enemy soldiers, but I know it's not fair to always win with advanced soldiers, because in that case the whole game will be C.R.A.P.!

I will buy Civ3: Conquests and admire to new options and new scenarios!