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Steve Clark
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Colorado Springs, CO
Oct 1999
time: 22:16
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Here’s a different perspective on playing the first game of Civ3, not so much from what happened in the game but from the viewpoint of a veteran Civ2 player trying to figure out what to do. This review/analysis/story is from my first game that I am still playing. My game-time is very limited and with my usual slow style of play, here’s the story covering most of the Ancient Age…
It all started when I got a call from my wife at 10:30am on Oct 30 saying that FedEx has delivered a box. I told her to expect it because we are true believers in the entity called “FedEx” and when they say ’10:30am”, they mean it (plus we own stock in FedEx, but that’s besides the point). Anyway, she opened it up and saw the box of Risk II. She said, “I thought you were expecting Civilization?”. I replied, “It’s in there, they just used Risk II as packing material instead of styrofoam peanuts.” Digging out the packing-material-disguised-as-a-game, she saw a tin box. “Cookies?”, she asked. “No,” I replied, “just a promotional gimmick to extract money from us fanatics.” It apparently worked for I’m the type of buyer that, in more cases than not, wait to the first big price drop. But noooo, not in this case. I had to be a hypocrite to my usual cynical, curmudgeon self and go along with the rest of the lemmings.
When I got home from work, I just put the box on my office desk and then played with my 4 year old son until he went to bed. See? There are more important things in life than a computer game. (Note to self, teach my son to play Civ.) Okay, so now is the moment we all have been waiting for, Sparky - The Great Unveiling of the Limited Edition. Let’s see, nice tin box, two CDs (one of them is the game itself, so that’s a good sign), a manual (I love book-like manuals), a letter from Sid and Jeff on parchment paper that better had to cost $5.00, and the eagerly anticipated tech tree, and … ummm, I guess that should be it. Okay, let’s look at the tech tree first. Nice looking but way too small for these old, tired eyes. No sense tacking this to the wall since I cannot even read it close up (what graphics designer that this was clever or cutting-edge? I tell them to go back to interior decorating). Oh well. At least there’s a bonus CD with something on it, right? I guess, but I don’t think there is anyone in the world that has watched it yet, including me. So what did I get for $59.99 plus shipping? Did I mention that it was a nice tin box? And then it dawned on me. If you look really closely on the inside lip of the cover, you can see the words, “Sucker” with a smiley face. Don’t believe me? Check for yourself.
The next evening, I loaded up the game just make sure it’s going to work properly. I expected it to be flawless since I have a real nice PC with the words “Gateway” on the front (no, I don’t own stock in Gateway but I have believed in them since 1994). Plus, I spent some time updating all of my drivers, including the MiniPort driver and the AMD 4-in-1 suite of drivers (bet you don’t know what those are), as well as going to Detonator 12.41 and DirectX 8.0a direct from Microsoft (now I know you know what those are). Installation went very fast (can you say 7200rmp disk drive?) and now I’m ready just to start it up. As I do with all new games, I let it run through the very expensive but useless opening cinematic, just to say that I have seen it…once (why is it that artists think they are more important then they really are?). It ran very fast and smooth (unlike the one in Zeus, but that’s a different story) and then it displayed a nice big splash screen with the brilliantly lit Tower of Civilizations (I know I’ve seen that before). And what do I do next? Yep, I quit the game and took the manual upstairs to bed.
I read a few chapter that night and a few more at work the next day. Anyone who has been following Apolyton as much as I have would find not much of anything new, but it does seem well laid out. However, there was something lacking when I read it. I couldn’t put my finger on it right away until I put my finger on the Civ2 MGE manual. You see, the Civ2 manual was the best game manual ever written, in my humble opinion. It had soul (and it had wonderfully, readable descriptions of scenarios). I guess I’ll expect the Civ3 manual to get there in the Ultimate Civilization III Platinum Version Super-Duper Limited Edition.
Okay, enough of the fiddling around, let’s dig into the Tutorial. (Note to self, remind my readers that I am anal retentive when playing a new game, I get into real slow to make it last a looooong time.) Ahh, there is a Tutorial button. I am a fanatic believer in tutorials that not only teaches you the mechanics, but basic gameplay issues in a sequential manner (see Imperialism II, not EU). Remember Civ2? It had a tutorial that you followed along in the manual. I saw that the Civ3 manual had a similar section but much to my surprise, it didn’t relate to the in-game Tutorial. Okay, so maybe it’ll teach me the game with popup messages. I saw the first few and then when it displayed the Domestic Advisor screen, it showed me the important parts. This is good, I thought, nicely done. But…that’s all it did for me. Sure it popped a few messages when I encountered something new but that’s not a Tutorial. Hmmmm, maybe they DID spend way too much resources on artists instead of on more important things (like a better manual, a decent tutorial, and dare I say it, scenarios and editor tools?.) (Another note to self, update my signature at Apolyton.) So I’m going to have to learn the game by jumping into (how quaint of an idea). By the way (or in kewl d00dz nomenclature, BTW), I did see the Preferences to where you can get Tutorial-like help message popup and that was cool.
First game, I thought, let’s keep things simple. Standard Continental world, 70% land/water and let’s choose the Iroquois since I like the color purple and the fact that I grew up right in the center of the Five Nation. Chieftain sounds about right with 7 random civs and roaming barbs (I hate those things). And awaaaaaay we go….
This type of default world, which I later found out, typically consist of 3-5 island continents with usually 2 civs per continent. So there I was, there I was, there I was…in the civ world at 4000bc. I got a settler, a worker and a scout. A couple of turns later I determined I was on a peninsula at the far left of a continent, and a nice grassy area with a few of sn00py’s mountains pimpling up from the land. One of those pimples had some gold while a forest had some silk. Nice spot to found my first city, which named Onondaga, of course. I thought, ahhh, just like Civ2 but much nicer looking. But wait! I choose my first tech to research and it tells me it’s going to take 32 turns? 32 turns?!?!? Got to be slider somewhere. It’s at 50% so let’s kick it up a notch to 100%, what? still 32? Hmmmm, well, no sense wasting coins since my moronic researchers are too busy applying for government grants instead of doing real work. Let’s see, 32 times 50 years means that I won’t have discovered my first advance until the English launch their spaceship to some stupid planet somewhere. Oh great.
So by 3150bc, I have two scouts scouting and one settler settling (plus a warrior worrying?). Founded my second city (or town, to be more exact, more like a squatter shacks if you ask me) and named it Seneca. Did the warrior-settler-warrior-temple routine and so I am now sitting in the year 1575bc with 4 towns and have discovered my 2nd (read that to mean SECOND) tech. 32 turns for Warrior Code, about 32 for Mysticism and definitely 32 for Polytheism. Why is this game forcing me at a slow research rate, does it not know that I want (no, need) to get Monarch, asap? Oh that’s right, apparently the right people complained to Firaxis that the Ancient period went by too fast in Civ2. Ok, I can live with that (since I got no choice). But the downside on slow-tracking to Monarchy is that there is NOTHING cool you can build. By the time I had researched Monarchy in 90bc (90bc?!?!?), I had six cities (all about size 3-6), each with temples, barracks, walls and slew of vet Archers. Oh, did I forget that in 730bc, I ran into my partner civ on my (emphasis, my) continent? Wouldn’t you know it, it was the Americans, whom I usually play as. Here’s how the diplomatic exchange went…
Iroquois: I want Masonry and The Wheel or else?
Americans: No.
Iroquois: Fine, I want Masonry and The Wheel and I’ll give you Ceremonial Burial and 24 trinkets of jewelry.
Americans: Agreed (talk about role-reversal, huh?)
Americans: Please move your Archers away from Washington.
Iroquois: Bye (doing my best to avoid the issue)
Next turn:
Americans: I demand you move your Archers away from Washington.
Iroquois: No
Americans: Can you say, WAR?
Iroquois: Can you say, kiss your aqua blue heiney goodbye?
The results were that in the next 8 turns, I captured 3 American cities and razed a fourth (vet Archers against Warriors = no contest), and now had the continent to myself. That, my friends, was like Civ2 and it felt good to be able to do that. So back to 90bc. I am now in Monarchy (finally), with 700+ in culture covering ¾ of the continent, and I can crank out techs at 4 turns each (finally, part deux). But I am still sitting on my continent with 9 cities, all by my lonesome (except for those pesty barbarians with quaint names like the Saxons). With nothing else to do (already got 14 Archers and Warriors roaming around or defending), I had started building a Wonder in 4 of my cities, hoping that by the time I get more techs, I’ll switch them over to something more vital than the usual stupid ones like the Pyramids or the Oracle. It worked because in Onondaga, I built the Colossus which, lo and behold, triggered a Golden Age. All that meant is that now I can crank out Mounted Warriors like Hershey Kisses and get more defenders and temples built so my cultural influence of rubber tomahawks and fake war bonnets can span the globe. When I discovered Iron Working, wouldn’t you know it, 5 iron deposits miraculously appeared out of thin air. By now, I have a road network connecting all of my cities that only Spiderman can appreciate, so it’ll be a simple manner of getting connected to the iron (those are important, right?). Somewhere about that time, I started building a few Galleys (just a fancy name for Triremes) because I wanted to see where everyone else was at and why they were ignoring me. In the meantime, I had built the Hanging Gardens (don’t ask me why since happiness is not an issue) and the Great Lighthouse (which is important for my Triremes, oops, Galleys).
And just when my Golden Age ended, I saw new land to the North populated with The Blue Man Group with names like Dusseldorf and Hogan’s Heroes (I bet they’re the Germans, don’t you think?). By now, I have 3 Galleys each with 2 vet Mounted Warriors (plus more than can be picked up) ready to do something useful instead of just sitting there going through its animation loop. I wonder if the Germans will let me clobber them? We traded territorial maps (which proves much more of an advantage to me then to them, I suspect) and saw that they have about 7 cities, all quite small. The usual blather from my advisor said that they are in awe of everything I’m about, blah, blah, blah. Oh, along with their territorial map, I got contact with the Japanese (who was there partner on the continent). Likewise, the Japanese were small and weak (and this 400ad already!?!?!). What were these people doing all of these years only to have small cities with Warriors and Spearmen? Can you say it’s clobbering time?!?! And that’s where I left off. Playing for about 5 nights and still not out of the Ancient Age (what must I do get into the next age?!?!). Normally in Civ2, I would be in Democracy with Riflemen and Cavalry running around, on deity no less. But I guess this is Firaxis’ way of making me savor what each Age has to offer, so I can get a sense of the Sweep of History and enjoy the fruits of Building a Civilization from a ragtag band of nomads. Sure, whatever, as long as I win.
So, do I like Civ3? Yes. That’s it, “Yes”? Yes. Ok, I’ll elaborate. The game is definitely playable out of the box (which is more you can say for a lot of games). As I have said many times, I am more interested in custom scenarios and I’ll wait patiently for those. But with my experience so far in this one game, there is a lot I have to learn just to master the varied strategies for the regular game, especially at higher difficulty levels (particular having to deal with The Happiness Factor). Do I see things that could be changed or tweaked? Yes, but I am not convinced that such changes will not lead to further complications or problems. In all, I’m glad that cost is not an issue for me in paying too much for the LE but other than that, it’s fun having to learn Civilization strategies all over again. That, along with the Promise of the Future (I like the CAP key today), it’s worth it.
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07-11-2001 23:34
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