05-05-2004 04:19									#1
	Thinking of playing the Conquests - Advice Please Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Since C3C came out I've played only epic games - none of the Conquests. I waited until now primarily to let the bugs get worked out, but also because I prefer epic games to scenarios. I've read lots of different views, and in particular read through alexman's thread Are all Conquests like this? I figure I can avoid some of the larger exploits myself (such as diplomacy on turn 1), and understand there are a few serious bugs still (invisible AI units can attack cities, invisible human units cannot in Sengoku) but I'd appreciate any feedback / opinion / insights into the Conquests.

Any scenario-wrecking bugs / problems that make a particular Conquest substantially weak (sounds like AoD with European AIs doesn't work well)?

Any reason you know of to suspend the play of the Conquests until a future patch (I'm on v1.22) addresses some issues?

Should I play one or two levels more difficult than I might otherwise use in an epic game?

I really don't like replaying the same map in an epic game -- if you share the same distaste, did the increased start knowledge offered by the Conquests leave a sour taste in your mouth?

How often have you replayed the various Conquests?

Any other thoughts to share?

Thanks,

Catt

	05-05-2004 05:16									#2
	Got spare money?

I'm tired of the epic game.

The conquests have their limitations. That's for sure. Much of it is a weakness of the game engine. They did all they could with the editor I guess.

I can't believe he exploited the ai like that. Do peopel have no ethics?

Although maybe I'm just jealous, I've never had found those kinds of exploits. I can never get the ai to give me outrageous deals like that. Often I have to trade them 2 techs just to get one tech.

The great thing about the scenarios, are they are fast. I lack the patience to play epic games. Scenarios are just the right size for me. Excpet maybe Rise of Rome- that takes a long time.

	05-05-2004 05:33									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

Feed the Mod makers... We are the hope, the glory in tomorrows dawn.

	05-05-2004 06:07									#4
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

In hindsight, the Conquests were a massive PR exercise....and admittedly it worked (remember the marketing tag line...."fight for control over tobacco"....I mean, as if!). When I first bought C3C, I went straight to the conquests and played a few. After a couple of weeks I started playing epic games again and I haven't been back to the conquests since, despite telling myself I'll go back to finish them off.

The most engaging ones IMO are Mesopotamia (short, nice new wonders), Mesoamerica (some cool concepts and you gotta love founding towns on mountains!), Sengoku (great units, though short tech tree, so after a while it becomes a slogathon between units with the same stats) and Middle Ages (just because I love the middle ages). Napoleonic Europe also has some nice units, and the locked alliances there are interesting, if you ignore the exploits.

The Rome scenarios have some potential....I played Persia in Rise of Rome, but it took a lot of organisation at the start - cities too widely spread, units all in the wrong places.

The one I have avoided like the plague is WWII. I know a lot of players love the modern WWII idea, but unless you like spending your time just moving units around then there's not really that much in it.

Unfortunately for me, the replayability is just not there. Been there, done that, bought the tee-shirt.....ho hum! Which means, as I said, the whole concept was a very clever marketing ploy. But definitely worth a look, even if you only play the short ones.

	05-05-2004 18:10									#5
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I find that the Middle Ages Conquest can be played numerous times as the situations are different for the various teams. (With a few minutes modding you can get to some of the challenging teams also, like the Celts).

I wouldn't expect a future patch to solve any remaining issues with specific Conquests. (Other than obvious bugs that apply across the board to the Epic game also). Breakaway (who did the Conquests) is no longer involved and Firaxis is moving on to bigger and (hopefully) better things.

	05-05-2004 18:33									#6
	Suffering from ads?

I think the scenarios have a good replay value as far as there are still civs that you still have not played. I particularly love/hate the Rise of Rome, because, well, I just can't make Rome Rise. Still gotta a lot to learn.

	05-05-2004 20:45									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Catt: try out Mesopotamia first. It's a pretty tight scenario that, I believe, fits your playstyle (or, at least, your play preference). The modified tech tree really makes you think when you first play it, which was a major selling point for me.

	05-05-2004 20:51									#8
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Middle ages is fun, I greatly enjoyed it despite of some flaws. If only the AI would stop to settle every bloody patch of land and thus, create an awful mix of French, Burgundian, Byzantinian and Scandinavian cities in the swamps of Russia, it would be great.

	06-05-2004 05:30									#9
	Tired of ads?

Personally, I've found all of the conquests (other than maybe Fall of Rome, which I can't seem to get working properly) to be fun. I have to say that for multiplayer, my preference for various conquests changes a lot though.

In SP, my favorite conquests are Mesopotamia, Sengoku, and Middle Ages.

In MP, my favorite conquests are Age of Discovery, Napoleonic Wars, and Mesoamerica.

I have found that I don't like the WW2 in the Pacific or either of the Rome scenarios as much, but they're sorta fun and certainly not BAD.

	07-05-2004 12:42									#10
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

WW2 was kind of cool initially. The main thing with this one is it is purely a war scenario. Someone said earlier that the scenarios are all about war, which is not the truth entirely. Although this one is. Most base facilities have been built, or there is no need to build (aside from airports or harbours). so you can change your mobilization and just go to an all out war. The balance is kind of off to me though. And only 2 real factions to play. Although it might be interesting to play someone challenging like the dutch or chinese.

Some scenarios can be builder scenarios such as mesopotamia and mesoamerica (although this one I treated as a warmonger scenario), and age of discovery.

	07-05-2004 13:15									#11
	Support Apolyton

I've had the biggest surprises with the WW2 scenario. First time I played with the Chinese and got an allied victory just when I was about to kick the Japanese out of mainland China. Next, I played the Americans and lost to a Japanese domination victory a few turns after I occupied Tokyo and the neighbouring cities. This time, Japan took out China. All of it.
I think the fastest paced scenario is the fall of Rome. Both Roman empires start with huge VP scores and barbarians start at zero. If it weren't for the 8 city elimination rule, this one would be impossible to win. I got both Roman empires when they were a few hundred VPs from maximum.
You can have fun as a warmonger even in the age of discovery scenario. I played the French and kicked the English and the Spanish out of Europe.

	08-05-2004 00:28									#12
	Increase Your PM Length

Catt,

I enjoyed playing a couple of times, but in general they are not as much fun as the epic game. I have been working on my game play and now break even in emperor games. Trying a couple of changes in each new epic game is much more fun than playing the scenarios. However, there is some value in playing the scenarios, if for no other reason than
-- see the effects of different tech trees
-- see the effects of victory points
-- starting with a common prestarted game.

Unfortunately I can't remember all the scenarios, but I guess the one's I can't remember were too boring.

Rise of Rome-- good for waiting and learning about VP locations
Fall of Rome-- not too interesting
Age of Discovery-- too tedious with shuttling of treasures
Napolean-- annoying that can't build new cities. Limited replay value for learning strategies when you are target country surrounded by enemies.
WWII -- also annoying can't build cities. Good play at first with limited number of units. Biggest problem is the short 50 turn limit.
Japan-- boring, just a lot of civs to work thru.
Crusades-- not bad. Using priest unit is interesting. More decision making required on the order of tech research and trade.

Don't recall the rest. I can't imagine you would have any trouble with any of the scenarios. I would recommend trying the best:
Crusades
Napolean
WWII pacific

and then decide if you want to play any of the others.

PF

	08-05-2004 04:48									#13
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I dunno...if you can stop seeing it as an exercise in efficiency and enjoy the flavour, they all have real merit. Although, that more paints a bad picture of my abilities than the decency of the conquests
Still - try them - I'm not a scenario guy myself, but they have a strange draw on me

	08-05-2004 07:34									#14
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

Well, I've played one and am now playing a second -- my views soon.

Catt

	08-05-2004 08:48									#15
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

I was disappointed in the WW2 in the Pacific scenario mainly because I found a rather enormous exploit that I could use against the poor Japanese- player AI.

The AI seems to be prone to re-directing the Pearl Harbor attack fleet halfway across the board if you put the Luzon fleet out into the Pacific Ocean on the first turns where the Japanese can see it.

Furthermore, you can rush an airport in Manila and start airlifting in troops from the Western U.S. at several units per turn. Sure, the Japanese will bomb the crap out of Manila to get rid of the airfield (I was actually IMPRESSED by how the AI seemed to consistently realize just how much of a threat the airport in Manila was), but you can generally airlift in enough troops before they knock out the airport that Manila becomes EXTREMELY hard for the Japanese to take without devoting way too much effort into it.

While the Japanese are bashing their heads away trying to take Manila, you wipe out the misdirected Pearl Harbor attack fleet with the U.S. Pearl Harbor fleet and then start building up for your move to relieve the Philippines and start retaking any islands the Japanese have taken.

After a while, it becomes a cakewalk.

	08-05-2004 08:53									#16
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

* Master Zen has only played the Mesoamerican scenario... ONCE... during the beta test....

don't know, scenarios ain't my thing. At least not the Civ3 crappy scenarios.

	08-05-2004 10:07									#17
	Increase the size of your Attachments

I tend to play the side which I am "supposed" to win with. Pheonicia in Mesopotamia is easy because you are in the middle of the map, able to trade techs with the left and right halves of the map.
Rise of Rome - As Rome, after defeating Carthage and weakening the Celts, I find that the Persians are close to a domination victory. Panicking, I transfer all the legions to the Turkey to attack the Persians and managed to win.
Fall of Rome - As the Huns, initially a bit difficult, but after the barbarian civs start ganging up on Rome and Byzantine, I simply attack whomever is nearby and convenient for the 8-city elimination.
Middle Ages - I am playing as the Abbasids currently, attacking the Fatimids and the Turks. I do not dare to attack the Byzantines because they have cities and troops trespassing all over my middle east.

	08-05-2004 12:05									#18
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

I can't believe so many people don't like the scenarios or haven't even played them.

Fall of Rome isn't a bad scenario, I think it's worth playing once or twice. This is different, because it requires a bit of a different strategy. First you have to build up and do some minor building (but not too much or you will fall behind). And then you have to strike. If you aren't fast enough, you lose.

Age of Discovery of course is a great builder scenario. Or you can just attack everyone. And it has many methods of winning.

I think playing the scenarios allow you to see the game differently and try things you have never tried before. At least it has with me. There are many strategies I would have never thought of if I just played the same ole epic game over and over.

	09-05-2004 01:41									#19
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

See, that's the thing. Many of the poly gurus are 'epic' specialists...so maybe in a lot of cases, the scenarios just don't 'tinkle their bell'

	09-05-2004 07:36									#20
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Well I decided to play Mesopatamia - partly at Dominae's suggestion, partly because it was first on the list, and partly because it seemed it would be short. I played random civ and drew the Myceneans (sp?) -- essentially Greece. It was fun and quick, but I just don't think I'm a scenario type of guy -- didn't enjoy having to absorb all the new rules / units / improvements, and didn't particularly enjoy the particular victory types to shoot for. This scenario strikes me as potentially quite different depending on the civ played.

Since the first was so quick, I also played Rise of Rome and this time selected Rome. Warmongering domination. This time the player starts with a bunch of cities and units (Mesopatamia was just settlers and units). I found this one pretty one-dimensional -- build lots of legions and conquer. Although the tech tree provides for some new discoveries and buildings like libraries and universities, I couldn't for the life of me figure out why -- the tech tree was done very early and research was shut off completely (even by the AIs ). Just slogged it out until the particular domination point was reached. Once again I didn't like having to absorb new rules -- despite a solid half-hour reviewing changes before hand, I had built 6 or 7 galleys before I realized they carry 4 instead of the epic game 2 units.

While I found them enjoyable overall, I'd definitely say I prefer the epic game. The good news is that I don't think any bugs seriously detracted from these two scenarios -- Rise of Rome would be better if the AI used armies properly (as alexman reported in his game, I assualted Carthage to find a 1 numidian merc army defending -- hardly a challenge to two legion armies). Mespotamia suffers from the AI's inability to pre-build and the human's better understanding of making cities shield-producers.

I'll probably play through the others over time, but I'm not so enamored with the scenario concept that I'll race through the remaining Conquests and replay some of them again and again.

Thanks for the advice offered

Catt

	09-05-2004 08:44									#21
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

I think a player with some interest in actual history will appreciate the scenarios more.

	09-05-2004 09:11									#22
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Originally posted by Fistleaf I think a player with some interest in actual history will appreciate the scenarios more.

Don't know if that's a general comment or a comment on my view of the two scenarios I've played, but I have a reasonably strong interest in history of all stripes and I don't think I'd agree that an interest in history translates to a significant increase in interest in the Conquests.

Catt

	09-05-2004 10:47									#23
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

I did not want to learn the new rules either.

	09-05-2004 11:51									#24
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

learning new rules.

Didn't you have to learn the rules of Civ3 before you played your first game?

Well some of you all probably dove right in and figured they were the same as civ2. So in that case you had to learn the rules of Civ2 before playing, or Civ1.

My point is at some point you had to sit down and learn the rules .

I tend to be annoyed by that as well, but it doesn't stop me from playing. Often I just learn the rules as I go along. No sense spending time researching the tech tree 3 ages in the future. I look at the current age, figure out my goals, right click to see what each tech does, and then start researching.

	09-05-2004 12:16									#25
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Honestly, the reason I play all epic is because the thing I like most about civ is how empires progress throught history. The fact that scenarios take place during the same era mostly just doesn't cut it for me. In other cases like the WW2 scenario, being an avid wargamer, there are far superior alternatives to recreating the pacific war.

Perhaps what I dislike most about the scenarios is that frankly, they do not have same flexibility as Civ2. Civ2 had events, and had EVERYTHING which could be modified, not to mention the editor was far more easy to use. Civ3 lacks events and there are many aspects of the game which cannot be changed (diplomacy, attitude, etc.). The results are considerably inferior scenarios to those possible in Civ2.

That being said, I've heard the Age of Discovery scenario makes for an awsome PBEM. Must try it

	09-05-2004 12:50									#26
	Suffering from ads?

The only problem I have with the epic game is I can't stand the modern age anymore. It just annoys me so much.

But lately I've been playing on small maps, so it really helps speed up my games. They often don't reach the modern age.

So I'm enjoying the epic game again.

As for the scenarios, they do have limited replay value. But I don't get a chance to play that often, so that's why I still talk about them. There are still a few more combinations I want to play. After that, there will be little reason to keep playing them. But each scenario has a couple or a few interesting civs to choose from.

My least favourite is probably Rise of Rome. I played a pretty easy difficulty level, and still could not achieve domination victory (I won on points, I easily had more points than anyone else). It can be so tedious moving that many units around. It took me over 14 hours to finish.

	09-05-2004 14:46									#27
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: The only problem I have with the epic game is I can't stand the modern age anymore.

That exactly is the point.
When c3c came out, I really enjoyed to play with the new civs, traits, wonders, difficulty level...but now I've reached the same level of boredom I had with ptw (admittedly, ptw needed exactly 2 games to get me there; luckily, there was DyP). Either I play some kind of variant and have an interesting first half of the game, but absolutely dominante later, or I play Deity (didn't touch Sid so far), with that usual hole, and that always the same RR/Inf/Art war to finally become the strongest Civ and pick a way to win. Luckily again, RaR (DyP for C3C) is to be released soon

So, to me, the replayablity of the better Conquests is essentially higher than the (unmodded) game can offer.

Why? Because those are designed to offer different strategies for the different Civs, not the pretty uniform way of the epic.

That said, especially Middle Ages has a huge replayablity; the flavors and starts are so different from each other, it won't get boring (given you enjoy the them in general) even with the 10th Civ played. And, as Warpstorm already pointed out, the AI only Civs need only very few modding to get really interesting - we've played 3 of them as SGs over at CFC. Preknowledge of the map is a no-issue since you know about the shape of Europe anyway. The new units in that scenaro are simply a GREAT addition, you finally will build 5-6 different units, because they are all useful - 4.1.1 ATAR, 6.1.1, 5.1.1 Stealth&HN, 2.2.1 ATAR, 5.3.2,...

Mesopotamia is great simply because you can play a whole game in 2h.

FoR is also one I really like, though admittedly you only have 3 choices here, no real difference between the 'Germanic' Barbarians, pick one of those, Sassanids and one of the Romes (needs the 'Everlasting Rome Scenario' from Gobi Bear, the FoR/MA/AoD designer).

AoD requires some kind of variant rule, the AI just doesn't get the ball rolling in returning shipments. That simply is a Conquest for newbies (no offense!).

WW2 is ok for those who like the theme, otherwise play China and win with the usual :yawn: massive stacks of Artillery.

I fail to see the difference between RoR and an epic game with those Civs, I just hated the tedious work to finish it, and stopped once I felt I was the strongest Civ; wish there would be some kind of UN...

Napo is fun for some Civs, but most of them are Artillery SoDs again, plus travelling over half of the map before you meet your opponent - especially the Ottomans are a pain to play.

Sengoku means heading for UN, but for me has some real problems with unit balance (Yamabushis simply kill the fun), and the HN bug.

And Mesoamerica - I plain simply dislike it. Except for the Guinea Pigs.

In short: True, you have to learn new rules, but replayability is great sometimes.

	09-05-2004 16:43									#28
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

quote: Originally posted by Fistleaf I think a player with some interest in actual history will appreciate the scenarios more.

I don't know. Were I not interested in history, the various little inaccuracies and ahistoricalities wouldn't bug me.

Couple comments:

Mesopotamia: A glorified epic-game Ancient Age on a pre-set map. The Ancient Mediterranean Mod does this much better.

Rise of Rome: Beware of the Persian juggernaught!

Mesoamerica: The Silent Hunter is broken. Quite enjoyable till that comes along, but then it's down the drain.

WWII Pacific: I'm impressed that the AI actually manages to wage a decent naval and aerial campaign. A bit too easy, tho.

	09-05-2004 17:46									#29
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

What I meant was: If you know the real history, wouldn't it be interesting to play the losing side or underdog and see if you can change history?

	09-05-2004 22:49									#30
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by Dissident learning new rules. Didn't you have to learn the rules of Civ3 before you played your first game? Well some of you all probably dove right in and figured they were the same as civ2. So in that case you had to learn the rules of Civ2 before playing, or Civ1. My point is at some point you had to sit down and learn the rules .

There's a big difference between learning new rules for a game that will be played hundreds of times, and learning new rules for a one-time (or few time) scenario -- the latter being made even more challenging since some of the units and buildings are named the same thing and use the same graphics but have different stats and abilities.

I'm not opposed in any way to learning new rules -- I just don't want to spend 1/2 hour worth of pre-game study racing through the tech tree and the civilopedia all for a 6 hour game. This is of course the very nature of scenarios -- I don't begrudge it and obviously won't let it stop me from playing others, I'm jost offering a personal opinion on my own likes and dislikes with the initial Conquests.

Catt