/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4808215
Have not played in a long time. I bought Civ4 about 2 years after its release and it's my current favorite in the series. Front what I recall, discontent was tougher to control on Civ3. And colonies were used to sit on a resource without expanding to it yet.

>>4808384
corruption/waste ruined it cause you had to shit out all these useless cities while only your core of cities actually mattered. Civ 4's # of cities + distance from palace maintenance system was the only good expansion limiter they came up with and Civ 4 is by far the best one, but Civ 2 is the best one to play the ICS game with no limits. 3 and 5 are just ICS with arbitrary limits bandaided over the broken system. 4, 2, and 1 are the only working games in the series really, and VI is even worse than V.

Civilization IV is easily my favorite game in the series, but III has such pleasing visual aesthetics.

>>4808415
I think the purpose of V/VI/Revolution are to attract new players to simplified, streamlined series. To me, IV improves on everything that III created.
Have not played I or II, but want to check them out.

Also did Civ III have "strategy" to each ruler/civ the way IV did? I don't recall it making a big difference beyond the special unit.

Official Ranking:
5 > 3 > 6 > 2 > 4 > 1
(I enjoy all of them however. I find myself even playing 1 from time to time. I love the simplicity of it.)

>>4808834
>4 that low
opinion discarded.

>>4808694
The civ/leader traits are very weak in III and don't have a major impact. IV they have a major impact, but playing the map still takes priority over playing the civ/leader, for example if you have riverside grassland sites everywhere you're gonna wanna make multiple cottage cities even if you're playing gandhi. V is when civs start getting pigeonholed into playing the same every time regardless of map (which really goes against the spirit of random map games..), though there are some well-designed more versatile ones like America's ability. That's the least of V's problems though.

>>4808215
Anon, there is literally nothing to "get" in Civ 3. It's very simple game and always was. You can learn the ropes by just randomly playing it and paying attention to what you are doing. 3-4 playthroughs and you know all you need to know.

>>4808834
>5 on the top
>6 not in the bottom
>3 above 2 and 4
>1 in the bottom
Not sure if retarded or fucking retarded

>>4808694
>>4808851
Bullshit. Traits make or break civs in 3. Not because they are strong or influencial, but because they are extremely unbalanced. If you are ever planning to fight (and this is 4X, so literally half of the game is about it), you MUST be Militaristic. Since Democracy now has corruption, having Commercial saves you a boatload of money by both lowering corruption and adding extra commerce(s) per city. There is also Scientific, giving you three techs for free just because. On the other hand, there are bullshit traits like Seafaring and super-situatiional Agricultural.
Granted, it's nowhere near the level of Civ 4, but the utter lack of balance between traits makes certain civs fucking pathetic, as they have no saving graces.

>>4808834
Actual rating:
SMAC > empty space to represent the disparity between SMAC and rest of the scale > C2C > 4 >= 2 > CtP2 >= 3 > CtP > 1

There are no other Civ games. The franchise ended with 4th game. Anyone who argues otherwise is a lunatic.

Have only ever played Civ V but its a great game have spent countless hours on it, have tried III but didnt get it so continued with V

>>4808917
Literally how?
No, seriously, how the hell one doesn't "get" 3 after playing 5. I could get someone having issues with 1 or 2, that's perfectly sensible, but 3 is the cornerstone of how Civ game works, with borders, culture, resources and all that jazz.

>>4808909
Not retarded, I just have don't really like 4 that much. I've been a diehard civ fan since the late 90s, I played hundreds of hours of 4.
and yeah fuck you I love 5, I think BNW is perfection.
>>4808916
forgot about SMAC and CtP series. Lets through Beyond Earth in there too. In that case...
5 > SMAC > 3 > CtP > 6 > 2 > BE > 4 > 1 > CtP2

>>4808932
I mean, if you lose on chieftain because you reached 2050 you're doing something wrong, no?

>>4808938
>beyond earth over 4

>>4808932
civ 3 is really creative but it's very flawed, unlike civ 2 which was basically just an improvement over civ 1 that didn't change much. the expansions focused mostly on patching things up. the fact that the lead designer of the civ III expansions (not the base game) became the lead designer of civ IV is no coincidence. civ iv fixed ICS where III failed, culture made more sense, culture victory was more interesting with great people and religion, unit promotions are way better, leader traits/civ uniques are better, etc. V took a similar path to III by trying to be a different game instead of improving on the previous one. III, IV, and V are all really different from each other and I'm not surprised someone who started with V would find III weird.

>>4808950
Is 4 a bad game? Hell no. Did I enjoy the fuck out of it? Yes. but in the last 5 years I've played maybe 45 minutes of Civ 4, while I have thousands of hours in 5, have revisited 1 and 2 countless times, and put at least a few hundred into SMAC and BE. That's gotta be a sign. 4 just doens't interest me anymore.

>>4808932
I played Civ III before V? I just didnt quite get it so I played V after that and it came easier to me, I only ever tried Civ III once.

>>4808938
>I'm not trolling!
>I swear!

>>4808948
It means you are probably suffering from a serious brain damage or are completely green in field of 4X games

>>4808938
Civ V BNW is hands down best for me

>>4808938
>liking 6 more than 2 or 4
you're just fucking with us I know it

>>4808938
>Anything over SMAC, ever
>CtP2 worse than CtP and even Civ 1
Confirmed you played none of those games

Thread about strategies in Civ III turned into an argument of which Civ is best kek

>>4808980
ok ok I'll admit that perhaps I'm bias more torwards CtP because of nostalgia. My father bought it back in 99 and I spent many late nights on that game. and I thought the civilopedia was neat as fuck.
CtP2 user interface is god awful and I could never get past that.
>>4808973
>I disagree with him. Therefore he must be trolling! How could anybody like 5 the most!?

>>4808983
Which is unbearably stupid, because the whole point of /vr/ is to create a place where old games can be discussed without arguments about more recent ones drowning them out, as inevitably happens since new games are fresher in most people's minds and they have stronger opinions about them.

>>4808983
More like single troll getting a nice catch of trout on most basic bait.
And as noted by >>4808909 there isn't much strategy to discuss in 3. Pick Scientific civ and you are pretty much set. I would suggest picking Ottomans, as their special unit is very strong when it shows up and it never gets completely obsolete like regular Cavalry.

>>4808990
>Interface of CtP is dog-shit bad
>CtP2 makes it at least playable and introduces automation
>I-I'm not a troll
>S-stop projecting
Get the fuck out.

>>4808997
See this pisses me off. I come in here and give my honest to god fucking opinion and autists go apeshit. "he's trolling! don't fall for the bait guys!". I don't care for 4 that much. Is that really so hard to comprehend? I even said I liked all civ games, none of them are bad (besides Civ Revolution series).

>>4809004
CtP didn't have "automation"? Actually, CtP2 didn't add much in terms of gameplay and mechanics. The UI was way worse. The force this stupid fucking dedicated city screen on you and everything in general takes several more clicks to accomplish.

>>4808215
Civ 3 is not retro.

>>4809026
>CtP didn't have "automation"?
But CtP2 had. Along with other changes in gameplay it made. You would know, if you ever played it.
Your opinion is worthless, as you didn't play the game. I bet you didn't play any of the Civs that qualify to be even discussed on /vr/

>>4809037
Tried playing CtP2 several times but could never get past the trash user interface they added. I could always go back and play CtP and get virtually the same experience.
and CtP had automation. Not sure why you think it doesn't? Have you even played the game? It makes sense now, why you have such a hard on for 2.

>>4809036
It's almost as old as I am, grandpa.

Civ III is the worst in the series. Major problem that ruined the game was corruption. There's no way to mitigate it effectively. Second problem is that the units that were very useful in previous games are now completely nerfed. Nukes, cruise missiles, ships, planes, and artillery are next to useless. Also, there's also no noticeable difference between any difficulty level. The AI seems unaffected by corruption, pollution, nor bad locations. The only way to have a chance of winning is have the AI start at a bad location.

But is not retro?

I loved the artillery in Civ3. Probably the best feature--ranged plus you can capture enemy artillery pieces. Why they had to go back to the Civ2 suicide artillery in 4 baffles me.

>>4809054
Then you are probably still underage, kiddo. Be gone!

>corruption. There's no way to mitigate it effectively
Democracy with Commercial civs, as it gives you a massive edge in OCN, thus reducing corruption into nothingness
>Nukes, cruise missiles, ships, planes, and artillery are next to useless
Nukes, cruise missiles and ships are as effective as they were. Planes now are capable of doing runs they were unable in Civ 2. Artillery is fucking OP with ability to attack at range, while all it did in Civ 2 was just existing like every other unit
>The only way to have a chance of winning is have the AI start at a bad location
You've got a lot of gitting gud ahead of you. Because while AI does cheat, it's fucking brain-dead and if you lose against it, it just means you are even worse.

What holds in your post is how AI is unaffected by most things that hinder human player. And you've missed a crucial complain about Civ 3. Namely - the diplomacy is flat-out broken due to never fixed bug in diplo AI.
So instead of focusing on actual issues you made up bunch of shit.

>>4810884
Was supposed to also quote >>4809479

>>4808215
Ugggh, that brown and yellow 2000s color palette is so ugly and dated.

The map editor was a lot easier to use and ran faster than the Civ4 editor.

>>4810923
I'm still using it myself for /tg/ purposes

Civ 3 is the best Civ bar none. Fite me m8.

>>4810919
No, it looks warm and pleasant.

Adding religions in Civ4 was conceptually cool if they hadn't been PC and made them neutral.

>>4810919
>Having shit taste
>On /vr/

>>4811164
The way the Civ4 system makes it work is that the world inevitably divides itself into Buddhist, Hindu and Jewish blocs, with an occasional Confucian or Taoist coming from a CoL or Philosophy slingshot. Nobody cares for Christianity or Islam, they're awkward techs in the tree, Divine Right in particular I never research, not even for tradebait.
>>4810884
>Because while AI does cheat, it's fucking brain-dead and if you lose against it, it just means you are even worse.
Do you routinely win on Sid?

>>4808980
>Anything over SMAC, ever
I consider 4 to be better than SMAC because SMAC, while a fantastic, unique game really loses replay value for difficulty climbers. Transcend in SMAC is rather easy to beat in any regular game because of multiple abusable mechanics and abysmal AI, whereas Deity in Civ4 is really hard to beat consistently (though of course mostly because all the numbers are stacked against you), and even on Immortal you can roll some terrifying map that you won't know how to beat.

Civ 2 is good.

>>4811238
I just wish Civ 2 had a map and minimap that showed "national borders" like Civ 3.

>>4811164
>Judaism +1 commerce
>Islam +1 military experience (could be science if we're talking golden age, after that -2 science!)
>Buddhism +1 happiness
>Christianity +1 culture
>Hinduism -1 food, +2 happiness
>Confucianism -25% maintenance
>Taoism +1 ....growth? food?

Would have been interesting.

>>4810884
>Nukes, cruise missiles and ships are as effective as they were. Planes now are capable of doing runs they were unable in Civ 2. Artillery is fucking OP with ability to attack at range, while all it did in Civ 2 was just existing like every other unit

You're either trolling or haven't played the earlier games. They can't kill units like they do in previous games, only reduce their health, which means that if you don't have a ground force close to the enemy units, they can recover to full strength in a few turns after bombardment. It's utterly retarded that you can't completely decimate enemy units with nukes, bombers, artillery, etc. If you're aiming for a total conquest victory, it'll be a very slow war of attrition.

>>4811164
C2C fixed that. Religions still are neutral and balanced out, but religious buildings are linked with the things related with given religion. In fact, this makes Druidism and Shamanism some of the better religions to (re)ebrace in late industrial period.

>>4811185
C2C explicitly made ALL religions a "dead-end" techs. There is no technology that unlocks a religion as a bonus, which was a big issue with Civ4.
So you can technically spend entire game without researching any religion whatsoever (good luck with losing all the juicy bonuses related with religious buildings, especially monasteries) OR intentionally avoid researching certain religions (like Mormonism, which impose prohibition on certain luxury goods, making things really annoying).

>>4811943
Try C2C
It solved the whole issue looooooong time ago. And comes with much more religions.

>>4812128
>It's utterly retarded you can't conquer a city with bombers, but instead needs land unit for that
Did you think this throu

Civ 3 great idea - and I will repeat it with confidence, great idea - was giving you tools to mutilate entire stack of units at once. And at range. And often without ability to retaliate. Civ 3 essentially solved the "doomstack" issue that eventually turned Civ 5 into unplayable mess due to one of the most retarded solutions against stacking, rather than just keeping things from 3.

If you are aiming for total conquest victory, but don't have enough workers to just lay down railroad to enemy cities and steamroll them OR para-drop units in far away places, you are a retard and deserve the slow crawl.

>>4811234
It's not even about abysmal AI itself, but AI's inability to use basic-tier terraforming tips, so it always fucks things up, unless you upgrade AI tiles yourself (which I usually do to make the game fun... and you would be surprise how nice the game gets after a bit of help).
It's really damn confusing for me how they were unable to script AI to use terraforming properly, because if it could, the game would be consistently challenging from... Librarian, I guess? That's the "base" difficulty for the game, where AI isn't crippled and player isn't buffed.
After all, how hard it could be to guide AI to plant forest on arid/flat/below 1000m, where to place boreholes (and different who uses how many of boreholes per faction) and how/if to use mines? That's something that can be even modded into the game and they've spend A YEAR test-playing this before release without even bothering to do so.
I'm genuinely curious how bad the AI was initially

>>4812478
>After all, how hard it could be to guide AI to plant forest
I'm a lazy Transcend player and most of my wins are literally carried by the "when in doubt, plant a forest" mindset. Tree Farms are ridiculously efficient and the AI would see a shitload of improvement even if it only ever made Forests.

>>4808851
The traits did have some impact, but how strong they were depended on the difficulty.

For example, Expansionist would rightly be considered one of the weakest traits for most players since it simply doesn't offer a whole lot beyond the first 30-50 turns, but on high difficulties, getting additional goodie huts and more favorable results can catapult you forward to where you can keep up with an AI who gets free settlers and military units every time he founds a city. Likewise, Religious isn't particularly very useful for a player that can run democracy even during war, but on higher difficulties where you can't, it's invaluable for quick government switching.

Beyond a few other details though, your UU only really influences when your nation has a relative advantage against others, for example, Rome having a very versatile Legionnaire unit Chinese Riders giving them war dominance for quite a while in the medieval age. And then some, like the American F-15, get ridiculous shit like lethal bombardment, but come so late that the game is already over.

>>4809479
What do you mean, there's no way to mitigate it effectively? Corruption works off of total number of cities, just found more cities with a further spread and build courthouses. Courthouses don't just affect your city's corruption where you build it, it also increases your total number of allowed cities, globally reducing corruption for each that you build.

Beyond that, you get a Forbidden City national wonder, which acts as a second palace, eliminating corruption where you build it and using it for distance to capital corruption calculations. And if you really have a sprawling empire, Communism spreads corruption equally everywhere and gets an extra effect from courthouses to combat it.

>>4810884
To add to this, bombers are fucking broken once you get them, partially because the AI can't take advantage of what a massive benefit they are. With lethal land bombardment, you can soften up cities with cheap, normal artillery, use a few bombers to kill every defender without risk to yourself, and walk in with a cavalry unit. Or once you get to the point where you're producing a fleet every turn, just rebase/bomb every bordering enemy city or coastal defense they have nearly risk free. Civ3 aircraft becomes absolutely broken once you discover how to effectively use them as long range stack deleters.

For note, ships can do the same, but they have a much more limited range and attacking from the city they're based in isn't really feasible. But battleships can lethally shell port defenders to prepare for landings and hit pretty hard too.

>>4811943
I'd rather it be

>Jeudaism: Military bonus for conquest, useful early game
>Islam: Nice science bonus for late arrival
>Christianity: Access to Apastolic Palace (Since it comes so late) and special treaty to sign with other Christians that work like a MPP against other religions.

I don't know what I'd do with the rest though, Buddhism and Confucianism sounds reasonable, but I just don't know enough about Taoism to comment.

>>4812546
>
Beyond a few other details though, your UU only really influences when your nation has a relative advantage against others, for example, Rome having a very versatile Legionnaire unit Chinese Riders giving them war dominance for quite a while in the medieval age. And then some, like the American F-15, get ridiculous shit like lethal bombardment, but come so late that the game is already over.
I seem to recall that the best UUs came roughly around the Middle Ages/early Renaissance, as that was the window of time where you could have a solid, efficient Golden Age going. Ancient Age golden age from UU victory was kinda wasteful because you only have a few towns at that point, and in the Modern Age a golden age doesn't help because most of the time you're in a winning position when that happens.

>>4812563
Yeah, that was typically the thing. Early UUs helped you secure additional land against your neighbors though, which wouldn't outright win you the game, but pulverizing some of your biggest nearby threats before they can defend themselves lets you catapult yourself forward.

Disregarding that though, it depends on your difficulty level -- it's not feasible to take down an AI player on Deity or Sid with four legions just because they spawn three military units every time they make a city.

>civ 7
>tech up to post truth politics and mass immigration
>kill all nazis with hillary at the helm

can't wait

>>4812505
My set of terraforming rules:
Arid = forest
Below 2k m = forest
flat and below 2k m = forest
The only exceptions from this involve highly specific situations, but that's just about managing micro. If AI was just following "arid = forest" and "flat lowlands = forest", it would have shitload of minerals and energy.
The modded AI I saw for this literally added 4 short lines of code for AI to plant forest over arid and was openly posted as "quick fix, didn't have time for subtle coding". So if random player can make this work, how the hell Firaxis fucked this up? Especially since they were making expansion based on players' replies and messages, so it only makes it worse, as they've apprently ignored the whole issue entirely.

>>4812546
Scientific trait is massive bonus regardless of difficulty. In a game where there are only 500 turns and research CAN'T be done faster than in 4 turns no matter how much money you throw at it, having 3 tech for free (and saving 12 turns) is a massive bonus always and each time.

>>4812563
That's why Germans and Ottomans are so fucking OP. They both have good traits that are viable for entire game on all difficulties and units that are around for long enough to have serious impact.

>>4812634
>Germans
>around for long enough to have serious impact
Do you really care that much for the Panzer? How often do you fight wars in Civ3 on tech parity or without an overwhelming backstab full of bombers?

>>4812559
And then Civ 4 removed most of it, because.
And then Civ 5 "fixed" the "problem" with doomstacks by disallowing any sort of stacking, making pathfinding a nightmare and turning AI into complete moron unable to move units around.

>>4812635
I don't care for regular tanks, as they are useless. I do care about panzers, because they are strong enough to justify them. With every other civ I'm using Cavalry for my ground forces, for that juicy 3 movement and all "fast unit" traits, so much needed when you are conquering someone bombed into pieces by your air fleet.
However Panzer also has 3 movement, but also pack a punch, so you can use it for quick capture AND some heavy combat.

Different people, different strokes, I guess. Generally, I'm just jacking up my defenses once industrial rolls in, because offensive war gets tedious at this point.

>>4812610
imo, the Civ series is at a dead end. Simulationist play is outdone by Paradox games (Don't get me wrong, which are far from perfect, but not afraid to delve into a modicum of complexity whereas modern Civ seems to abhor that), which has forced the series to veer down towards a purely mechanical game with history as a backdrop, much as it has been in the past, but now pushed further towards that role, in which it is matched or outdone by other games in the genre such as the Endless series.

Firaxis needs to take a long look at just what made the series so popular in the first place and adjust their development accordingly -- the games were liked for a variety of reasons, each of which needs to be analyzed so a balance can be struck.

>>4812656
I still think it would've been a very elegant solution to simply focus on army creation that Civ3 has. The rise of doomstacks was always because concentrating the majority of your forces on a single point always gave the greatest advantage, while there was no reason to spread out and attempt to play defense when the enemy could ride in at any time from anywhere and hit your weakest spots. There was no counter until artillery fire started to damage an entire stack of units, which was always a poor and ugly solution to the problem, which should have been reducing combat unit mobility and increasing the price/cost of fielding military units.

When your entire armed forces only consists of 1 army per town plus a few garrisons on strategic points backed by airplanes, and combat doesn't always completely result in one side being wiped out, you have a lot less trouble with doomstacks appearing.

>that one Civ IV mod you can devolve everyone back to the prehistoric age

>>4808215
Expand, improve your land. Build more cities, don't be afraid of overlap. Build armies, conquer more cities. Don't be obsessed with spamming wonders. If city is very corrupt and loses all commerce & production, use farms + specialists. OP picture is awful: so much unused and unimproved land!

>>4808595
True. Civ4 is the best Civ game, but 3d was unnecessary, I would prefer Civ4 with Civ3-tier 2d graphics. Also, as others pointed, artillery was better in Civ3 and Civ3 (map&mod) editor is convenient and very easy to use (but Civ4 modding possibilities are much bigger).

>>4808916
> SMAC
Excellent story and atmosphere, a lot of new features. But very unbalanced (including tech tree), abysmal incompetent AI, very easy even at highest difficulty, many new features like borders are implemented better in later Civ games. And we are talking about strategy games, not about books, all this is more important than story.
> C2C
> good
> better than Civ4
Reddit-tier taste. C2C is hoarding. No balance, historical relevance or competent AI, and very, very pro-ICS. Liking C2C over Civ4 usually means player is very low level, doesn't understand strategies and just wants "more stuff".
Also Civ3 > Civ2.

>>4808938
Very shitty tastes.

>>4809479
> Civ3
> planes, and artillery are next to useless.
> The AI seems unaffected by corruption, pollution, nor bad locations. The only way to have a chance of winning is have the AI start at a bad location.
Complete non-sense. Fuck, you even contradict yourself.

>>4808215
Honestly, Civ3 was the most abuseable of all the civs that I've played (2-5). Armies are super ridiculously powerful. Artillery even more so. Build lots of little, shitty cities, spam out a temple and a library and no other buildings, and then just churn troops, fight all the time, and try to get warlords so you can make armies and then conquer even faster.

IMO, that's the big weakness with every iteration of the CIV series. Someone can, by completely focusing on their military, force everyone else to follow suit or be steamrollered; and that in turn turns CIV into a wargame. There are better wargames out there, and furthermore, when you play on the high difficulties and the AI gets all those production bonuses, you can really only keep up by being able to tactically outmaneuvering it through warfare.


That being said, FFH is awesome.

My favorite part of Civ3 was the WWI doughboy infantry. It was quite realistic, too. Have your infantry attack other infantry who have dug in and it really does accurately simulate the Battle of the Somme. ;)

>>4812851
The games I play the most are probably Civ 4 and Crusader Kings II. It's not a consequence that I don't play Civ 5 or 6 despite owning both. Beyond Earth was the best attempt they have had recently at trying something new.

>>4813353
I believe they said in an interview that the attack/defense values of the available units of each era were specifically chosen to create time periods that roughly reflected the flow of warfare in real life. Middle Industrial era was a great example of this in 3 and 4, with the advent of machine guns and no real way to deal with them beyond early artillery, most battles became very defensive with artillery inefficiently slugging it out.

Speaking of that, did anyone regularly play the conquest scenarios? I really enjoyed the Sengoku era one, I felt like the Japan map was huge and war felt overall tighter and more interesting. Beyond that, the only other maps I played were the Napolean era one, the one in central/south America when Europeans arrived, and a user mod called TAM (The Ancient Mediterranean) that featured early Rome and a lot of similar tribes.

>>4812860
>The rise of doomstacks was always because concentrating the majority of your forces on a single point always gave the greatest advantage, while there was no reason to spread out and attempt to play defense when the enemy could ride in at any time from anywhere and hit your weakest spots
This is why I love Civ 3. Doomstack? Bomb it with artillery and planes. Instantly wiped out entire army of few dozen units with 3 units of yours.
>artillery fire started to damage an entire stack of units, which was always a poor and ugly solution to the problem
Um... Are you insane? That was the best solution ever presented for the whole issue, because it made it a gamble - either you had your army spread, so you didn't have "pure" concentration in single spot OR you were risking being destroyed by artillery while having high concentration. This made things fun and endgaging, while AI could use that system (and did).
Compared with "no stacking, period", this looks even better.

>>4812851
You are ignoring a simple "problem":
Civ 5 was a complete best-seller in the franchise, while taking a huge dump on everything that made it good in the first place. The game appealed simply to more people whan any previous Civ.

>>4813113
>and very, very pro-ICS
? ? ?
As in - the hell that even means.

The food tiles (wheat, corn, and rice) in Civ4 were not balanced very well. Rice gives the lowest food output of the three when it should be the exact opposite--it has such a higher crop yield than wheat or corn that Asian countries can support enormous population sizes.

>>4812902
Which mod is that, anon?

>>4813341
The "problem" with military focus is that if you do it too early, you are going to cripple your ass. There is a short period where all you can build are Warriors (no techs for building, shitty production capability anyway), but then there is a fuckload of basic stuff that if you won't build, you will have a hard time keeping up with anything at all.
>Build lots of little, shitty cities, spam out a temple and a library and no other building
That strategy is around since Civ 1, to the point where it was most profitable to do "city crawl", with each city next to each other and Civ 2 imposed to have at least a single tile of free land before placing another city. It was never really fixed, as it can't be fixed, unless you put entire production on its head.
Just look at Civ 6. It tried to "fix" a lot of abusable mechanics and made the game even MORE abusable.

>>4814001
it has such a higher crop yiel
It doesn't. I mean the difference in yield is marginal.
BUT due to climate and plant demands it can be planted twice or even trice per year, thus you have in the end much more food. If you were planting it only once per year, you would have barely noticable increase of yield.
Anyway, the game still poorly reflects poor wheat yields (as in - worst crop when it comes to efficiency and productivity, along with calories output) and other cereals, which is annoying. At least most of mods are aware of this and fixed it one way or another.

>>4812450
The AI literally just spams railroads everywhere which is pretty unrealistic in terms of how IRL rail lines are laid out.

>>4814012
You can do the same, so what's the problem?
What? You want to have separate techs to laid railroads over plains, marshland, hills and mountains, like Imperialism (the first one) did?

I kind of preferred how in Civ3, barbarians have villages they emerge from instead of just popping up from unsettled areas, but Civ4 went back to the Civ2 system. Conversely, Civ4 made it like Civ2 again in that barbarians can capture cities while in Civ3 they just raid them.

>>4814015
My brother would always play Civ3 with barbarians disabled. He said they were just annoying and kept destroying your roads.

The way it works in Civ4 is that initially you have wild animals appearing in tiles that you don't have visibility on. After a certain amount of time (depends on the difficulty setting) they're replaced by barbarians. Eventually as your borders expand, barbarians and wild animals disappear.

I thought it worked something like that in Civ2 but it didn't shade out tiles you don't have visibility on so it was harder to tell.

I used to spend hours making maps of Europe or Asia or North America for scenarios I was doing; I'd even have an old Hammond Atlas showing where natural resources were so I could place them accurately. Of course map scale made it that you couldn't really do scenarios like the Pacific in WWII that involved cross-oceanic action.

Why do the Ottoman units in Civ4 yell "EVERYWHERE THERE'S A BIG TURTLE" when you select them?

>>4814026
Someone once told me the Native American units are speaking Navajo but in fact it's Mohawk.

>>4814036
The Egyptian units are speaking modern Egyptian Arabic, not ancient Egyptian because nobody knows how to pronounce it. Vikings are speaking Norwegian, Aztecs Nahuatl, Mayans I have no idea, and HRE Plattdeutsch. The Carthaginians speak Kabyle, a Berber tongue because the pronunciation of Punic has been lost.

>>4814043
Considering in Civ5 they thought it was a good idea to have Elizabeth I sound like a 1950s radio presenter on the BBC, I wouldn't complain overmuch.

>>4814043
>Vikings are speaking Norwegian
This is something that baffles me each and every time. Why not picking Icelandic, which had close to no linguistic drift since... you know, colonisation of Iceland, meaning it works, sounds and is written the same way how Norse was, but instead going for modern Norwegian?

>>4814059
Then again, in Civ5 they speak Danish, so...

>>4814061
I don't mean it in context of Civ, but general attempts to portray "vikings" in your movies. It's always either Nowegian or Swedish in their modern version, sometimes Danish, but nobody ever goes for Icelandic, which is "modern Norse" and linguistic fossil that never really evolved since 11th century till about post-WW2 period.

>>4814061
Civ5 also added Siam as a civilization. The Thai dialog is not perfectly accurate but Thai is tough, in fact impossible to translate 1v1 into English.

>Civ4
Celts speak Irish Gaelic
>Civ5
Celts speak Welsh

Ok but ancient mainlander Celts spoke something that sounded quite different and more like Latin.

>>4814048
Also Willem of Orange speaks in actual 16th century Dutch complete with archaic phrases yet other leaders like Maria Theresa speak the modern form of their respective language. Catherine the Great also speaks in modern rather than 18th century Russian.

>>4814065
We don't actually know how the hell it sounded. And Romans were infamous for their inability to render foreign languages into how they've sounded, due to Latinising everything to the point of complete corruption.

>>4814074
Speaking of which, Augustus does speak proper classical Latin in Civ5 and not Church Latin, which is a nice touch and unlike some ancient languages, we do know some of the pronunciation for it (for example, road--"vae" sounded more like "wae" in classical Latin).

>>4814081
Empress Wu's dialog leaves something to be desired. Not because she's speaking in modern Mandarin rather than 7th century Chinese, but because she says stuff that would have been totally inappropriate and out of character for a Chinese ruler. Eg.

>I'm sorry, say that again?
The emperor was appointed by Heaven, he is therefore divine and does not make mistakes such as misunderstanding something you said.
>I will disembowel all of you
An emperor would not describe the punishment itself, but rather the name of the punishment.

>>4814043
The Ottomans speak modern Turkish and also the way the voice actor speaks is slightly ludicrous as if you were watching a bad Turkish movie from the 1970s.

BTW, Ottoman Turkish had a high percentage of Arabic and Persian loanwords and was overall quite different from the modern language, which developed from Ataturk's language reforms in the 1920s.

>>4814093
What about Indian? That's Hindi, no?

>>4814095
It is but it sounds like Google Translate Hindi and the voice actor seems to have been a diaspora rather than an Indian from India.

>>4814097
There is always Polish with Cassimir. While his accent is well-done (as in - really well-done, since Polish is one of those languages where you can instantly detect foreigners), he still speaks in really weird way, making his dialogues funny, despite proper language.
And of course he speaks in modern Polish. If he was using late medieval Polish, he would sound pretty much like a Czech.

The truly best Civilization game.

>>4814162
>AFRICA is moving.

>>4808215
Pic related is the only civ game i can enjoy. I play it on my PSP to this day. All the others seem retarded and clunky somehow. Only Alpha Centauri gives me a comparable feeling of comfiness.

>>4814043
Darius speaks Aramaic in Civ5 because he decreed it as the official language of the Achaemenid Empire. In Civ4 the Persians speak Farsi but the language has not changed that much since the Arab conquests.

>>4814065
Aztecs speak modern, not classical Nahuatl which has (as you'd expect) any number of Spanish loanwords.

>>4814978
What about the Incans?

Attila speaks in Chuvash, and a really bad Google Translate version plus his pronunciations are fucked up. Of course we don't know exactly what the Huns spoke and Firaxis probably contacted a language scholar who suggested the popular theory that Chuvash may be related to the Hunnic language (although others dispute this).

>>4814982
I think it's north Quecha as spoken in Ecuador--there's several dialects and it differs in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru.

>>4814982
Quechua had relatively easy time surviving, even despite Spanish presence, because unlike Aztecs living on Mexican Plateau, Incas were in Andes. Which means a lot of separated valleys and communities with very limited interaction with outsiders, thus substantially slowing down language drift and addition of loan words. Meaning you have much more native Quechua speakers than you have for Nahuatl. It wasn't until post-WW2 period when things speed up with language drift due to massive improvements of infrastructure, communication and transportation in Andes.

>Civ2
>your units get two extra movement points on rivers
>removed in later games
Why do.

>>4815074
Because it was a rule that migrated from board games and they've realised by Civ 3 (after already making Civ 2 and SMAC with that rule) it's not exactly good thing to have in Civ series.
The idea for "rivers as roads" was that your unit is floating on a barge. But in the same time you need a technology to even build bridges over rivers, meaning the whole thing was very messy in execution and just looked weird at times, especially when you were rolling with something like chariots (a lot of penalties for terrain when off-road, but still using rivers as roads) or in SMAC, where you had anti-gravity or just plain all-terrain rovers that couldn't move over rocky tile, but were floating just fine on rivers.

tl;dr "muh realism" replaced "muh game mechanics" as design logic

Oda Nobonaga: Speaks modern Japanese in the standard (ie. East Tokyo) dialect when Nobonaga was from western Japan. Some of his dialog also sounds like Google Translate.

>>4814089
She has a central Chinese rather than a northern or southern accent and the voice actor sounds like she's 15.

Did a War of the Pacific scenario once in Civ4, made a whole South America map for it. Had Portugal as Brazil, Spain as Argentina, Incans for Peru, and Mayans for Colombia (not 100% accurate but oh well). I thought I had England or something as Chile just because I couldn't think of anything else.

>>4815593
Colombia and Brazil weren't even involved in that war though.

I wanted to do a Civil War scenario but it didn't work that well due to the map scale since there wouldn't be enough space between Richmond and Washington (like 3-4 tiles?).

What the hell, are there really that many linguistics experts in this thread? That's a lot of detail on various old languages.

>>4814081
Julius Caesar's name in classical Latin would sound something like "Gwaeus Juwios Ceesar".

>>4814010
I hear some mods also brought back the Civ3 ranged artillery.

>>4810883
Still would have been nice if you could capture enemy ships.

>>4813113
>C2C is hoarding
Not the orioginal anon, but this is the entire fun part of it. Also, the extended time-frame makes it more appealing for me. Granted, the pre-sedimentry part of the game can be painful, but C2C has bunch of elements that make it equal in my eyes with Civ 4 BtS:
>huge tech-tree that doesn't go full autism
>modded map size
>extended civis providing genuine choices I end up with Matriarchy for that sweet food bonus for a loooooong time
>inner mods, like Revolutions
It's not without issues (the biggest one is stability), but the game by itself is fun to play and at least for me is the direction the franchise should be heading, rather than getting dumbed down and gutted with each following game. The vanilla Civ 5, before expansions, was so damn gutted Civ 2 felt more complex and nuanced and that means serious downgrade in my eyes.
Different people, different strokes, I guess.

And I really damn wish Civ 4 would work with 64x architecture, so C2C would stop choking on the RAM limit.

>>4815837
I thought it would be
Keye-us Yulios Keye-sar

>>4814356
>Civ II PSX on PSP
You've just killed my productivity. Thanks anon.

I want to experience Alpha Centauri but I can't get into it. Any tips or things I should know when heading in?

>>4808909
>4 above 3
opinion discarded

>>4817746
Pick a solid all-rounder faction who won't hinder you in any major way and allow you to do some explosive growth - Gaians and Peacekeepers are obvious candidates, Hive and University are a wee bit more specialized but are also generally well-to-do because they don't have any big quirks in their playstyle and generally do well at supporting the basics, plus they support solid economies and from a good economy you can pick any victory type you want.
Spam an absolute shitload of colony pods and do not worry about overlap - unlike in games like Civilization 4, fresh cities are instantly productive and the bureaucracy penalty doesn't apply until much later.
Plant trees everywhere. They're by far the most efficient improvement in the game once you learn how to build Tree Farms. They're universally useful and later you can experiment with some farm/solar condensor combinations or borehole centers.
Supply crawlers are extremely abusable and can be used for propelling your production through the roof. Make them en-masse and park them on high yield squares that don't have food on them or that aren't used by anyone, and ask them to harvest.
It's okay to play light on defense and give in to AI's every demand, and outstrip them later. The "warmonger" AIs tend to be poor researchers anyway.
Get a lot of Formers to improve your land.
You probably can't get the game without the Alien Crossfire expansion nowadays, but for your first few games it's generally recommended to stick with the vanilla SMAC factions and not the SMAX ones, as they're generally trickier and somewhat specialized (and the consensus is that their writing is completely not up to par).

>>4818351
4 is an all-round improvement on 3. It gets rid of open borders exploits, it improves on the trait system, makes the AI more competent in general (though it's still pretty awful), gets rid of the convoluted corruption/waste system, removes much of the clunky micromanagement.

>>4818359
>Preferring a mod over a real game.

Everyone knows that Fall From Heaven is the real CiV4.

>>4818373
The point is that Civ4 on its own trounces Civ3, and 3 doesn't even have its own FFH, shitposter.

5 did two things right and got rid of doomstacks and brought back range.

>>4818359
Also it lets you have as many civilizations as you want on mutiplayer games while Civ3 allowed 8 max for multiplayer (playing the AI let you have as many civs as you want).

>>4808215
Civ 3 is very deterministic. You know OP has already lost the game just by looking at the screenshot.

>>4817746
Aside what was already said:
https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri/Getting_Started
And I'm not kidding. It's a great thing for greenhorns to read to learn the ropes.
The easiest faction to learn from ground zero are Gaians. They come with enough bonuses to make your early games considerably easier, their penalties aren't really penalties and they are the closest you can get to just playing Civ 2.5 (which helps a LOT in terms of gameplay).
Like said by the other anon, plant trees. Everywhere. Like this guy put it: >>4812626
If something is above 2k meters, solar panels are a better choice.
And remember, early game you have a cap of 2 of each resource being gathered from a tile, UNLESS it has a resource bonus. So more often than not it's worthless to build tile upgrades early on, unless they have bonus.
What wasn't said already is that you should change starting settings. You don't want to have blind research if you are new to this game (since it makes the game needlessly hard for new players) and you want to get Unity survey for the continent outline, making. Those things aren't needed (or welcomed) once you know the game, but if you are green, this helps a fuckload.

>>4818358
>You probably can't get the game without the Alien Crossfire expansion nowadays, but for your first few games it's generally recommended to stick with the vanilla SMAC factions and not the SMAX ones
You literally pick on launch if you want to play SMAC or SMAX. So it's not an issue.
But yeah, sticking to SMAC to learn the game is super-important, as SMAX adds few things and tweaks around other stuff to make the experience different, especially when it comes to water bases.

>>4818359
It also removed artillery as it was in Civ 3, which is a massive step-down. Takes mods to bring it back.

>>4819494
>Hey, we had perfect solution against doomstacks in Civ 3!
>Let's get rid of it!
>Now let us remove ability to stack units at all, so the AI can be killed by god-awful pathfinding!
Daily reminder people who consider V a good game, not to mention improving or fixing anything, are not people you should listen to.
Not to mention this is usually the only Civ they ever player seriously (or at all), so they have zero comparison.

>>4819510
>Controls entire continent on his own
>More cities than any other civ
>Said cities are developed, rather than barely spawned
>H-he lost already
The moment he gets to Industrial, he steam-rolls AI with ease

>>4817746
>>4819839
Also, regarding tiles with bonuses early on:
Unless you have Weather Paradigm (and you eventually should, one of the best Secret Projects in the game), before you remove the cap, the best way of using bonus tiles is to plant forest, unless it's an energy bonus at 2k meters or above (then it will provide you more energy with solars) or if you have generally good terrain for expansion and rainy tile with food bonus (then farm will provide absurd amount of food). And naturally there are mines on rocky tiles with mineral bonus, giving a whooping 7 minerals, which is a fuckload early on and totally worth it over any other configuration (early on).
But unless it's rainy+nutrient, 2k+energy or rocky+mineral, just plant forest over bonus tiles. Later in the game you can switch them for something else, but early on, especially when the caps are still in place, forest is the best shot for bonus tiles that aren't the three listed exceptions.

Also, important note. Never, ever try to change elevation of the map. Just don't. You can fuck up rainfall for entire continent just by lifting or lowering a single tile. Not worth the risk at all, as this might cost you some great region, turning it into desert instead.

Oh, and one more thing:
For learning the game, I advise playing on Huge map of the Planet. You will replay on the same map over and over, meaning you will already know the terrain pattern, landmark placement and non-randomly generated bonus resources, making it all that easier as a learning experience.

Civ4 went back to the Civ2 artillery system because the ranged artillery in Civ3 didn't work that well with the AI. It would just target random squares rather than stuff with enemy targets on it.

>>4819840
>It also removed artillery as it was in Civ 3, which is a massive step-down
http://www.sullla.com/Civ3/conquestsed.html
Point 1) explains why you're wrong.

>>4819921
All his argument is why lethal bombardment is wrong, while my point is how removing of artillery was wrong.
Which means your reading comprehension is equal with zero, as you don't understand either of us.

>>4819893
>We could improve the AI to be more efficient
>Let's just remove the option instead!

>>4819921
>You know what, we made bombardment OP
>Let's remove it entirely!

Truly, Firaxis went to shit the moment Reynolds left.
And this annoying stance on AI is something that piss me off to no end, because they are essentially keeping the same fucking AI ever since Civ 2, but changing the game and never really adjusting the AI for it. My biggest gripe over this is toward Civ 5, which went from square to hex tiles and made it impossible to have two units on the same tile, which completely and utterly breaks down AI's ability to move around.
And this was done precisely because they've decided "no stacking" and "no shortcuts on diagonals" were better options than "better AI" and "4/3 movement cost for diagonal movement"

>>4819949
>how removing of artillery was wrong
It was a poor, broken system that got even further broken in Conquests, that's the entire point. Artillery as it is, moved to Civ4, would just make the defender advantage even greater and would further shit on the AI, because the AI never understood how to bombard well.

>>4819959
Oh, and they've also nerfed railway into being almost entirely useless, because that was the answer to the "creeping railway" strategy people were using when preparing an invasion.

>>4819960
Soooo... like I've said, your reading comprehension is non-existent. Because Sulla makes an extensive argument why artillery and bombardment were great before Conquerors fucked it up and all you can get from it is "artillery bad, remove".

>>4819959
>because they are essentially keeping the same fucking AI ever since Civ 2
Try again. Civ2 AI is actually a massive, massive cheater, with multiple exploits that go beyond simple discounts on difficulties over Prince, such as infinite fuel planes and Spies being able to flip capitals - it's just that the AI is also still too incompetent to really use those things.

Civ4, in the meantime, never had to deal with any of these - the AI only gets economy boosts from starting at higher levels, nothing else - and Firaxis actually co-opted Blake AI (as in, a modder's) fixes to their product when they released BtS.

Firaxis went to shit when Soren Johnson left. Civ4 is mostly his brainchild, and it's widely considered to be one of the best Civilization games. There already were some questionable changes in BtS design, but the game still had its solid chassis left behind by Johnson. Civ5 is where they got completely different developers on board and stopped including veteran players and online players in their playtests, which is why Civ5 didn't have much of any multiplayer support.

>>4819961
Railroads still provide +1 production to mine tiles and are still the most efficient way of transport, and now you can actually automate your workers to only improve roads so you never have to go through the Industrial Era tedium that always brought my Civ3 games to a complete stall.
>>4819963
He mentions it's an iterative improvement over the old catapult/artillery rules, where they were all-offense but immobile regular units. He also says later on that the system was irritating at times, but it worked. He can give it credit all he wants, but Civ4 still had a superior system of dealing with this stuff. Complaining about Stacks of Doom is pretty stupid when siege, as its implemented in Civ4, is the best way of completely punishing that playstyle. Even the AI is *sometimes* capable of completely wiping out your stack if all you do is waltz into the enemy territory with like 80 units all on top of one another.

>>4819965
>>4819974
The actual state of current Civ playerbase.
No wonder most of the old guards simply left the forums in disgust by the time BE premiered

>>4820006
>I have no arguments for why Civ3 artillery was good other than "it was good".
>I will shit on the generally most well-received Civilization game in the old fanbase that is designed to be an iterative improvement on 3 and never list any arguments
>my entire argument for Civ3 hinges on the inclusion of a controversial mechanic that got broken in its own expansion pack
I don't even like BE or 5, sweetie. Hell, I even like Civ3. You still talk right out of your arse.

>>4820012
>All arguments were already give, but I've ignored them
>I even quoted an article describing why initial Civ 3 artillery was a great thing adding strategy, but missed that entirely
>Now I will just get angry for no reason, because my lacking reading comprehension makes me to engage in the conversation
>Let me miss the point further by assuming the subject switched to BE or 5
Can I have a question?
How the FUCK you managed to finish school if you literally can't read?

>>4820029
*makes me unable

>>4820029
The article stated Civ3's artillery was a step forward in comparison to the old system where artillery units where just plain vanilla beatsticks like 6/1/1 Catapults. Later on the article writer mentions specifically that the system wasn't perfect and sometimes even irritating, even if it overall added to depth. The article writer is also a MASSIVE Civ4 fan, much more so than Civ3. He believes Civ4 did a much better job than Civ3 did, just like Civ3 did a better job than Civ2. That's all. You're hinging on like two words from that article.

And you're the one who mentioned BE, as if implying that i'm a newfag who's only started playing the game around the 5 era. And no, you haven't ever said why Civ3 is any better than 4. You just screamed and complained and called everyone a retard.
Saying
>4 over 3
>shit taste
is not an argument.

>>4820038
Ever occured to you, you absolute retard, there are more than you and one (1) other person in this thread?
Because not only you can't read, you are also in some fucking impression I'm some random fuck from earlier.
If you can't read nor understand what you are "reading", maybe you shouldn't be using text-based imageboard?

>>4820052
Still waiting on those arguments.

>>4820059
your gay

>>4820493
no u

>>4808215

Spam guerillas.

>>4820493
>>4820531
ur mom

>>4820643
And TOW infantry. And Medieval infantry.
Because all we need in a game with strategic resources are units that don't require them and have stats comparable with resource-based units

Privateers are about the most useless unit ever. There's only a very short window of time they're useful and it was basically just a silly feature from Colonization that somebody happened to remember.

>>4808215
>can hold my own in Immortal (second highest difficulty) in Civ V
>literally can't even win on chieftain (easiest) in Civ III
Why? What am I doing wrong? I try to build as many cities as quickly as possible, but every civ in the game declares war on me and I'm dead by the medieval age. I've never even seen what the modern sprites look like

Does anyone else think it was a bit silly to idiot-proof Civ4 so you couldn't move galleys into the ocean and have them sink? I mean, in the older games that was always a given--do not move galleys outside of coastal squares at your own risk.

>>4821395
It was probably done so you can't cheat and go across the ocean before getting proper ocean-going ships. In Civ2 and 3, there was a roughly 50% chance that a galley would sink if it was in an ocean square, so you could still potentially cross an ocean if the game happened to roll the right numbers. In Civ4 they just made it that you can't move galleys into ocean squares period to prevent you from doing this.

>>4821401
That's almost as silly as the complaint about the Civ3 AI not knowing how to use artillery.

>we could just make the probability of a galley sinking higher, say 75-80% but no, that would be too smart--let's just hard code it so you can't move them into ocean tiles

>>4821401
Actually that's a partial truth. Galleys can go into the ocean if the ocean square is within a friendly civilization's borders. And Civ4 also got rid of the sea tile from Civ3 and just has coast and ocean tiles.

In Civ3, galleys can sink if they go into sea or ocean tiles, while caravelles can go into sea tiles but risk sinking in the ocean.

>Civ3--mountains give you increased visibility of the surrounding terrain, wheeled vehicles cannot go into a mountain square unless it has a road
>Civ4--mountains are completely impassable unless the tiles are arranged so there's a gap between them

>>4821393
Stack up for border cities with units. Spam science to keep up technologically, but if you can't shit tons of older units work decent.

Don't be afraid to go on the offensive either if you plan a little.

If you grow near someone be prepared for them to eventually attack.

>>4821410
Probably did it to make things a bit more challenging.

When I was playing the Romans, I'd always mod the attack/defense values for legionaries by adding an additional attack point and subtracting a defense point because if you read your history, legions got their ass kicked by Persian cavalry at that one battle whose name I forget so I thought the default values weren't quite reflecting reality.

The only Civ game I've played was the one on SNES.
It was enjoyable.

>>4821420
Carrhae. The Parthian archers rode rings around the legions and shot them to pieces. If you tried attacking legionaries with horsemen in Civ3, the latter would get pasted pretty quickly.

>>4821474
To be fair, there are plenty of battles against the Parthians where they did get pasted by legionaires. (For some random examples, Cilican Gates, Amanus Pass, Mt Gindarus were all fairly easy Roman wins against the Parthian cavalry not far from the date of Carrhae) Carrhae is remembered precisely because it was such an upset.

>>4821410
One of the reasons why I like C2C - mountains are passable for certain units and/or with certain unit upgrade. So mountains are safe... for the most of the time, but then suddenly an army crosses them and you are caught with your hand in pants

>>4821391
>Can attack without declaring a war
>Useless

>>4821395
>>4821401
It was done, because AI was proven to be prone of ignoring that rule and losing units due to being AI.

>>4821395
>>4821401
It's because it's a mechanic that simply favors the player and not the AI. The AI will sink its own ships while the player can send "suicide galleys" into the sea in the early game. If it sinks, oh well, big deal. If it makes contact with land, congratulations, you made it onto a second landmass and can now reap its benefits due to the quirkiness of this particular map. There was nothing particularly engaging about this design and it just made the Archipelago maps even easier on the player than they usually are (AI sucks ass at expanding on islands and in naval warfare, and a savvy suicide galley commander can just claim all of the contacts with the AI before they ever have a chence to do so and abuse that for some sick brokering leverage).

>>4820012
>sweetie
Opinion discarded.

>>4819494
but civ 2 already had a solution for doomstacks
makes u think

Is it still possible to obtain Civ2: Test of Time with the sci-fi and fantasy modes? Those were pure gold.

>>4822702
Yeah it's abandonware, just go out and download it.

Ive always wanted to get into Civ but Pirates! remains the only Sid Meier game I really like

>>4821393
>What am I doing wrong?

Mostly bad luck. Playing Civ III is like playing a slot machine at the casino. You'll lose more often than you'll win. If you don't have access to the required resources to build the more advanced units or if you start off in a bad location, you'll likely lose even if you try to play optimally. The AI seems to be always one step ahead of you. Unlike in the other games, you can't afford to make any mistakes.

>>4822584
Every game had option(s) to deal with doomstacks. And then the self-appointed "greatest fan" decided to "fix" the game by simply preventing any stacking whatsoever.
This, combined with hex-based map, research done with labs rather than money and general gutting of everything for simplicity killed Civ for me. I want to play a fucking 4X game, not a fucking caravan simulator.
And don't get me started on Civ 6, which was done with "balance" in mind and thus is the most unbalanced Civ of them all, while being even more gutted

>>4821393
>What am I doing wrong?
Let's see
>I try to build as many cities as quickly as possible
You are probably over your OCN (Optimal City Number) and the corruption is killing the profit/creates malnus (depending on how severe it is)
>every civ in the game declares war on me
Try to avoid diplomacy. AI's script for diplomacy is broken. As in - it doesn't work at all and it was never fixed. If you want to avoid problems, always repeat the same when AI asks you for somethings: offer counter-proposal, clear options for both sides and then reject the offer. This way AI won't register interaction with you and the bug based on lacking script won't count it as a negative action, so you won't anger that civ
tl;dr it's a decades old bug that never got fixed, but has a work-around

In general, play scientific/commercial (Greek, Korean) to learn how the game works. Scientific gives you a free tech each time you advance into new era, while commercial reduces your corruption in a noticable way and provides nice bonuses by mid-game

Also, remember four things:
Granary is THE most important building to have, especially in early and mid game. If you can have it in any reasonable time, get Pyramids wonder
Research is based on percentage of your total income devoted to it. Meaning the more money you are making, the more of it can be spend on research. This means tiles producing commerce are always great. On the other hand, you can't research faster than 4 turns, so eventually there is no point adding more money to your research.
If you don't have too many enemies early on, pushing for Republic can win you entire game, as this provides significant bonuses to pretty much everything. If you are not going to war, this is the best government to rush. Democracy can be researched on your leasure, but if you are not fighting, then Republic is OP early on.
Native villages (Goodie Huts) very often provide you with free tech and are worth MUCH more than in Civ 5, but only give early tech

>>4825015
>t. brainlet

>>4821393
Adding to what >>4825410 said about OCN. First of all, read-up about corruption:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150722214609/http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76619
It's no longer on the forum, but fortunatelly there is wayback machine

Aside that, remember that OCN depends on map size modified by difficulty
>Map size
Tiny: 14,
Small:17
Standard: 20
Large: 28
Huge: 36

>Difficulty modifier
Chieftain: 100%
Warlord: 95%
Regent: 90%
Monarch: 85%
Emperor: 80%
Demigod: 70%
Deity: 60%
Sid: 50%

It is VERY easy to go above your OCN, which is lethal.

4X games literally give me a headache after hours of micromanaging and still being behind in tech and attacked by AI stacks.

Am I supposed to take long breaks and play it like a chess game or what?

>>4825475
>Am I supposed to take long breaks and play it like a chess game or what?
Honestly enjoy them however you like. If you want a less micro-heavy aspect and just want to feel like the father of an empire, lower the difficulty level. No shame in that until you start getting bored. You can create a ton of interesting narratives just from how the world is shaped.

I know people who automate almost everything and play very quick and sharp games of Civ (and still win on high difficulties), and I know people who want to launch a ship into Space by 1 A.D., so they micromanage everything and devote themselves to building perfect Super Science Cities.

If you are having headaches managing stuff by yourself, join a Succession Game in the community of your favourite 4X. Succession Games are games where a few people pass each other the same save game, each picking up the state of the empire from the previous saveowner. They rotate and post their turnsets on the forum. You generally play 10 turns, write down a report from these turns, write down your plans and considerations, and you're free from management until your next turnset is up.

If you want to try a 4X game that is extremely lax on micromanagement and everything is done by just moving 5 sliders around, try Master of Orion 1.

>>4825475
You are not supposed to be a brainlet. That for starters.
My advice in case of Civ series is to play Civ 2. It's simple, but not simplistic. And if you have trouble, you can always just turn the cheat menu on, give yourself early advantage and then continue playing normally, with the landfall of that advantage giving you edge even against opelny cheating AI.
If you still can't manage to beat the AI, find the gameplay troublesome or annoying or whatever else - consider changing a genre. There is no point forcing yourself into playing something that you simply don't enjoy.

I find it astonishing just how addictive Civ2 remains to this very day. I am going to be so sad when it will no longer work on any modern OS because of just how intuitive it is.

>>4826260
There are at least two stable versions that work on 64x systems: the "basic install" version and the fan-made patch for full-fledged Civ 2 (so it includes council and wonder vids)

>>4826578
Link to the council and wonder vids patch?

>>4826660
It's a torrent, with the tooled install disc .iso that has to be emulated all the time during playing.
Should be on pirate bay.

After playing 5 with Rise to Power, Events and Decisions, and Civ 4 traits, I really want to get into Civ 4. The only thing is that the lack of unique abilities is putting me off.

>>4828306
Play the Fall from Heaven mod. Then you'll have some seriously unique civilizations.

>>4828306
The different combinations of traits + the unique units and buildings are enough to basically counter that in my book.

Otherwise, another way to be sold on it is that Civ4's system for making leaders unique actually tries to keep itself in line with the core gameplay of Civilization as opposed to either adding one thing to shortcut it or just a whole new weird thing on top of the game.

>>4825435
>t. masochist

>>4828527
Since when your lack of entry-level skills is equal with everyone else being masochist? Civ 3 is by far the easiest in the series.

What was the deal with Call to Power? My bro gave me a copy when he bought III and I remember being blown away by the scope and complexity of it all compared to II and newer releases.

>>4809479
The corruption mechanic was actually pretty good at approximating the reality of large Empires and forced you into the role of Empire management. In reality you can't control a world encompassing empire, especially not in a pre-internet age or at least not cheaply. In principle you can't rule uniformly over such a vast population and local leadership is required which isn't going to agree with the Emperor 100% of the time.

Your incentivized to raze conquered cities and plant down your own sparsely while keeping in mind where their influence will begin and end. Sparsity is really the key though since the most powerful corrupting influence seems to be number of cities.

>>4828804
Different anon and I would argue that 6 is the easiest one, at least in terms of micro (since you literally don't have options to pick for tiles and everything can be automated), but yeah, within the pre-hex games, Civ 3 was the easiest. It had borders, but barely implemented. It had culture, but paying much smaller role. It had strategic resources, but not counting iron and rubber, they were flavour (and with Conquest they all became flavour).

>>4829387
First CtP was an attempt to "branch out" Civ games as a franchise. But few management disagreements later and CtP 2 had to drop "Civilization" from the title, while Activision was forced to drop the franchise.
Think about it. In 2000, Activision wasn't strong enough to resist legal claims of Firaxis, a small-fry studio back then and today. How the world have changed.

>>4828804
It's the easiest if Civ 3 was the only game in the series.

>Civ 3 cultural victory, islands map
>immediately go to war with the one other Civ on your island to secure territory
>expand your territory to about 20-30 cities and micromanage workers like a motherfucker
>keep the capital building essential wonders
>after building the Sistine Chapel, you're basically just hitting the space bar until you win

>Civ 5 cultural victory, islands map
>it's impossible to rush another Civ because of how powerful cities are
>game discourages you from having more than 5 cities
>game is mostly just hitting "next turn" until the renaissance era
>once you can travel the oceans, game becomes hide and seek as you try to found the world congress first while trying to spread your religion as much as possible
>from renaissance onward, there's a whole ton of shit for you to do and build

If it were possible to combine Civ 3's early game with Civ 5's late game, you'd have the perfect cultural victory experience.

>>4829529
>It had strategic resources, but not counting iron and rubber, they were flavour (and with Conquest they all became flavour).
Ivory + SoZ was absolutely retarded.

>>4830373
Genuine question - which one was easier?

>>4830490
I'm still confused about the development cycle for PtW and Conquest. Almost complete ignorance of testers feedback, stupid ideas thrown into the game for no reason at all, general "rebalance" with no clear objectives set and the whole thing looked like someone who never player any game at all was suddenly tasked with "enhancing" Civ 3

>>4821391
The ai sucks and won't prioritize chemistry, leaving the window fairly wide

>>4833186
It's not even about AI sucking, but the unit being viable all the way until battleships arrive with Combustion. Unless, of course, someone feels like wasting time on making Ironclads, since they are dead-end unit.
So I would say Privateers are fucking awesome, despite not looking that impressive at first glance.

If you think about it, the whole problem lies directly in the way how the tech tree is organised. Magnetism is one of the last techs of its era. Technically you are not going to use units given by it... but in reality, until Combustion becomes a thing, you literally have nothing better than tall ships on your disposal. Worst case scenario (shortest lifespan for Privateers) is 24 turns. This asumes you research Magnetism as the last tech to reach Industrial Era and then rush directly toward Combustion.
Of course everyone sane will go for Medicine and Sanitation first and unless you are hard-pressed for naval power, then Replacable Parts are priority anyway, extending the lifespan for another 16-20 turns. And if your empire is in really dire need for soldiers, then there is Nationalism as top priority for quick upgrade from Musketmen, which ends Cavalry's supremacy by having defense value equal with its attack. Or because unlike Mustermen it doesn't require any resources to hire, which is the biggest boon.
Either way, Privateers have lifespan of about 24 turns at the very minimum and in reality, it can go as far as 60. That's a lot of time.

>>4833424
I meant destroyers, not battleships.

>>4833424
>>4833428
The sudden jump between sailships and even ironclad to destroyer is truly massive. Movement gain is minimal, but the firepower and defense means you can go through all the earlier ships like through wet paper. You don't even really need battleships to utterly whack enemy navy and they are cheaper by almost a half when compared with battleships too.

i want to get into smac but its so bizarre concept i cant get into it.
civ is easy, its earth, history. i know whats up. in smac it ask me to build and do stuff that doesnt exist on earth. wtf

>>4833446
>I'm too dense to grasp things if they have different names
Literally what's so "bizzare" in calling food nutrient, shields minerals and building command centers instead of barracks? It's literally Civ 2.5 with swapped names and futuristic theme.
Masterfully executed futuristic theme, but gameplay is pretty much mix of elements from Civ 2 and 4, with unique ability to design your own units.

>>4833446
Dunno what's your problem. SMAC has two features that can be confusing to anyone familiar with otjher Civ games: land elevation as a factor for "money" production and blind research as a default option. Understanding of elevation takes about... 5 minutes, I guess? And blind research can be turned off, so you know which tech exactly you are working on right now.

>>4833446
On gameplay level, you need to understand how the unique features work: unit assembly, elevation, resource bonus and potential changes in rainfall, terraforming in general and in detail and the policies. Takes a single play-through or just reading any sort of tutorial in the net. Guys in this thread already covered most of those things anyway.
On fluff level, you simply need to evision it as playing a sci-fi themed mod. That's literally it. And as weird as it sounds, it helps if you played original Colonization, because mindworms act almost like natives from Colonization.
So if you can handle Civ 2, played a bit of original Colonization and read up about basics of gameplay (or just read the fucking game manual), you are peachy.

And as noted, turn OFF the blind research, this makes things considerably easier to handle. To this day I'm confused why blind research is a thing.

>>4833476
>>4833483
>>4833507
sweet, just one more question. smac or smax

>>4833517
smax but with only smac leaders
smax also adds some nice techs and secret projects, but the leaders are generally a tier below smac
play with only classic smac leaders for a bit and then experiment.

>>4833517
If you are playing for the first time - vanilla SMAC.
The problem with using SMAX is precisely in the fact it changes the tech tree and adds few things that are more than confusing for newcomers, but make perfect sense if you know what to do. It also makes early game harder.
After you learn how to play vanilla SMAC, then do what >>483352 said - SMAX rules, SMAC factions. My own preferred combination is to use SMAC factions, BUT replace Miriam with Domai from SMAX. This removes an extremely aggressive, but weak-ass AI from equation and makes the games much more enjoyable. If war erupts, then it erupts for good and with real armies, rather than shit-tier cannon fodder Miriam churms up while fighting a four-front war.

tl;dr first 3-5 games on vanilla SMAC, then SMAX with SMAC leaders

>>4833587
i see. Also, https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri#Unofficial_Patches pc gaming wiki gives 3 different unofficial patches, which one should i go with?

>>4833517
First, adding to what wasn't told:
Learn how to use crawlers. They are kinda-sorta like caravans in Civ 2, allowing to speed-up secret projects, but they also have other applications that are absolutely unique to SMAC. You can carry entire game on those babies if you know how they work, so I highly advise reading up on apolyton.net or similar places how to use crawlers. It's nothing complex, but makes a huge difference.

>smac or smax
SMAC all the way in. If you are not using original discs or .iso of them, then the GOG version has fully patched SMAC without adding crap from SMAX.
Meanwhile SMAX adds grand total of three good secret projects (that should have been in baseline game anyway), two useful improvements for coastal/water bases and... that's literally it. In the same time it reworks the tech tree in cosmetic, but annoying way (and makes AI choke on it when it has free choice of technology rather than random), adds retarded weapons and even more retarded armour modules. The factions, sans maybe Drones and Concsiousness are all fanfiction-tier bad and the game doesn't offer really anything.
I can live without Cloudbase Academy secret project if that means skipping all the crap related with using SMAX rules and tech-tree. Besides, if you build Cloudbase Academy on multi, you are pretty much guaranteed to get nuked in that base, that's how OP this project is and how much people will try to deny access to it.

>>4833517
>>4833607
Oh, and since it wasn't linked to you already, then read basics on terraforming by >>4812478 >>4812505 >>4812626
When in doubt - forest the shit out of it. Especially since forests spread on their own, too.

>>4833593
Different anon, but Yitzi's patch is the only of which I would recommend. Also not as something to start with, but rather first explore the game in "official" status, only then using that patch if you will find its content needed.

>>4833607
Cloudbase Academy was flat-out broken. Within a range of just handful of "early mid-game" techs you suddenly had access to ability to increase your production by the amount of your total population. Shit was so unbalanced I personally consider CA a mistake. At least if you had to build Aero-complex in each and every base in vanilla, this somewhat countered the usefulness of satellites without making them outright useless. In SMAX, if you combine CA with Planetary Transit System and/or Cloning Vats, you snowball at absurd rate. Just having CA alone makes starting new bases so much easier, as regardless of anything, all tiles are by default 1/1/1, even if you aren't working them out.

Satellites with CA are so broken, your bases literally don't need to produce minerals or energy, but just make as much food as possible, to get as many people inside.