I have done it again! (CIV III)

[Pippin]

Right, just the other day I walked into the same old EB stores again and sure enough, there is ANOTHER CIV III edition sitting on the shelves. Sheesh, how much more are they going to milk this product? I think there are what, 8 different versions of CIV III out there now.

Well I certainly wasn't going to pick it up, after finally getting over that Civ III addiction months ago. Well, sure enough, a week later I find the original Civ III still in the box, with the original manual etc, at reduced price. Tried to hold off the urge to pick it up. I held out a week or two, then just broke down and picked it up before someone else did. Hence, every day i've been doing a bit of civ III despite it gets me hopping mad every time my citties flip to the other side.

Not sure what I should do now. Perhaps play it on Diety again until I get so frustrated, I burn the box?

[bostonrpgmania]

I also have seen new collection version. I have CIV III, play the world and conquest. But since conquest contains play the world, I dont know why they make 3 cd version this time. do they really think that customers are dumb or what?

[Hexed Gamer]

Some games sure are like peanuts ain't they hehe.

[Charles2222]

testing

[Charles2222]

Flipping really is a non-issue. Dealing with it is not that difficult. The main thing is to build more cultural buildings so that it isn't a problem. Taking over enemy cities and holding them is a little more tricky, but I've probably put over a thousand hours into that game and can't recall, other than when I first started out, ever losing a city to a flip. I've only played on the regent level, so perhaps the flipping is worse on the harder levels, but IIRC from my frequent forays into the Civ forums the harder levels don't affect that.

Try www.civfanatics.com and you can get all kinds of easy workarounds to any cultural problems you're having.

[Kevinugly]

I bought Civ3 when it came out, didn't bother with PTW (I gather this is true of many) and hence acquired 'Conquests' when that came out. Now I find it quite playable, especially on the shorter scenarios but I have to say that I still turn to Civ2 if I want to play the full game.

Regarding the plethora of Civ3 versions, they did the same thing with Civ2. Not saying that's good or bad mind.[:)]

[gunny]

I could never understand why technology trees had to be so linear. And that was a big disappointment for me regarding CiV 3.
For example why not this:
Discover physics in the ancient age, discover gravity with small hot airballoons such as the pre Newworld aztecs did, mix that with medeval chinese rocketry, and Leonardos plans for gliders and his concept of aero dynamics.And what have you got?
A NAZI style Comet rocket plane by the 16th century. And there, that Branch ends.

But as it is there is only one fast track to tanks and everbody plays the same style.

[Charles2222]

The only thing I like about Civ2 in comparison is the cut-scenes and the King. As long as I can think that game is playable on whatever system I may have in the future, I'll always keep it just on the off chance I want to install it to hear some Kingly comedy again.

[Pippin]

Ok, I played last night again. I was very, very kind to everyone. Then sure enough I get backstabed with no warning what-so-ever. GRRR!!!

No civ III for today. That is my promise to myself. Lets see if I can hold it.

[Kevinugly]

This is probably an idiot suggestion but have you checked out Apolyton? I find the forums there quite helpful[:)]

[ravinhood]

I like all the different victory conditions and extra features of CIV III Play the World. The culture victory is one of the most challenging and on higher difficulties sometimes impossible for me.

Just can't beat the Civilization series though for good gameplay, at least one of the versions should appeal to just about everyone. I liked CIV II for it's 1000's of scenarios, though I'll never play them all, there was a horde of them. Master of Magic Jr. is one of my favorite.

[Svennemir]

Flipping really is a non-issue. Dealing with it is not that difficult. The main thing is to build more cultural buildings so that it isn't a problem.

A non-issue? Well, except for probably being incorporated in the lamest possible way. So, let's say you capture some city and have a large force in there to quell the resistance. Then they revolt in the city. What happens? Do your forces take damage, do civilians get killed? No, your forces DISAPPEAR and the city will henceforth belong to the enemy. Wow, that has got to be the most ill-thought out concept in history, with the possible exception of windows 95! And if you move more forces into the city - they'll probably just disappear as well! Except, maybe, if you move EXTREMELY large forces into it, then maybe nothing at all will happen! Nothing in between - just like quantum mechanics!

And then they totally ditched the concept of Zones of Control. It's impossible to stop enemies from slipping through wherever they want to go. So you might as well assemble all your forces in one giant stack and attack with that stack - since collateral damage is unheard of.

But except for these issues the game is actually a masterpiece. There are so many really good concepts like strategic and luxury resources.

(edit: changed "bold" to "quote")

[Svennemir]

Maybe I... got a bit carried away.

[Charles2222]

ORIGINAL: Svennemir

Flipping really is a non-issue. Dealing with it is not that difficult. The main thing is to build more cultural buildings so that it isn't a problem.

A non-issue? Well, except for probably being incorporated in the lamest possible way. So, let's say you capture some city and have a large force in there to quell the resistance. Then they revolt in the city. What happens? Do your forces take damage, do civilians get killed? No, your forces DISAPPEAR and the city will henceforth belong to the enemy. Wow, that has got to be the most ill-thought out concept in history, with the possible exception of windows 95! And if you move more forces into the city - they'll probably just disappear as well! Except, maybe, if you move EXTREMELY large forces into it, then maybe nothing at all will happen! Nothing in between - just like quantum mechanics!

And then they totally ditched the concept of Zones of Control. It's impossible to stop enemies from slipping through wherever they want to go. So you might as well assemble all your forces in one giant stack and attack with that stack - since collateral damage is unheard of.

But except for these issues the game is actually a masterpiece. There are so many really good concepts like strategic and luxury resources.

(edit: changed "bold" to "quote")

If you would have studied my posts more carefully you would have noted that I made a distinction between the difficulty of maintaining order in your own cities and the quite different problem of occupying conquered ones. The way the original post put it, it appeared that he was having trouble with his own border citites flipping, which, as I said, is easy enough to fix. Don't at least culturalize those cities and you might as well hand them over. In a small degree I only covered the problem of dealing with border cities, not conquered ones. Trying to explain either indepth could take a pretty good while and saying to build cultural buildings is a good small start.

BTW, in case I didn't make it clear, I was talking about keeping your border cities (not ones you've conquered) from flipping was easy, not that dealing with having flips as being easy:

Preventing border cities from flipping = easy.
Trying to deal with it 'after' a flip = not so easy.

[Svennemir]

Oh, sorry Charles, the rant was against the game, not your argument as such.

Still I believe that even in peacetime the "all your units are now gone"-principle is quite bad. True, it's easy to almost eliminate the chance of this happening to native cities, with libraries and whatnot.

I just like to take a swing at the badly implemented concepts once in a while.

[ravinhood]

I never had a problem with the lack of a zone of control myself. I just sent out infantry and calvary/tank units and made a line across my borders, looked like WWI when I actually got to the WWI era units, was pretty kewl. I believe they changed that zone of control feature because it was too easy to exploit the AI with "diplomats" in previous versions, so I didn't mind having to find another "realistic" way to stop enemy units from running deep behind my lines.

[Pippin]

I am very interested in how you stop your cities from flipping? I mean, I have even had my capitol city flip on me once because the AI built a city too close to me. I do not DARE to attack a city and capture it, because as mentioned, all that happens is I quell the resistors, and POOF, all my precious tanks disappear just as I needed them for my counter-counter attacks.

Lets put it this way, even when I have luxouries, and I drop science funding to zero while putting happy spending up to 90%, and even spend all my time building culture, my cities still flip to an opponent who doesn’t even have a single city of his on my own continent!

For the love of God, if someone here has found an EASY exploit to stop this on diety I REALY REALY REALY would like to know!

[Kevinugly]

http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay ... orumid=136 might help

[Svennemir]

For the love of God, if someone here has found an EASY exploit to stop this on diety I REALY REALY REALY would like to know!

For one thing, you could turn off the preference when starting a game, so no cities can flip.

When conquering cities, just don't put more than one defending unit into them if the city is not in immediate danger of being attacked. Don't quell the resisters. They may flip, but if there's only one unit in the city it isn't critical. Just exterminate the entire civilization you're fighting, and THEN quell all the resistors. They can't flip back when their original civilization doesn't exist. Of course this might be a pretty messy way, but it kind of works in my experience.

[Charles2222]

I agree that it's a bad implementation, only. The idea is good, but it shouldn't have as high a rate as it does. Surely one or two units should fall to rebellion, but just not as easily is all.