/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5136406
Have you tried not sucking in the easiest Civ game out there? Literally all you need to know is what's your current optimal number of cities and then have that number of cities. Nothing else matters and you can steamroll AI on pretty much any difficulty, because it's literally brain-dead (part of AI scripts are poorly implemented, so it's not using about third of them at all).

Git gud

>>5136452
>easiest
Anon that's not 5 or 6

>>5136457
What do you mean by "5 or 6"? The series clearly ended with 4th game.

>>5136452
>all you need to know is what's your current optimal number of cities

how do I know that?

>>5136406
Same desu

But Civ only got good with Civ 4 so just drop it lol

>>5136452
>Have you tried not sucking in the easiest Civ game out there?

You mean the first one where all you have to do is build settlers and chariots?

You know how you win? Being cheap as slimy as fuck. That's how you get ahead in this game - by cheesing. Spam as many cities as possible. Huge stacks of doom of the same unit. Take advantage of the god-awful AI. The game is seriously broken.

Now Civ 5, that requires real strategy.

>>5136452
t. talking about games you never played

>>5136406

What the fucking fuck? I play on Emperor and archer spamming the first Civ you come across is easy as fuck. I even manage to build The Pyramids and The Great Library while waging my first war.

Uhm Are you on Civ III Gold or vanilla?

>>5136935
Complete edition

>>5136595
... that would be the 3rd one

>>5136651
>Civ 5
>Strategy
Sides: escaping atmosphere with enough velocity to reach Jupiter

>>5136651
If you're not being sarcastic, then military strategy in Civ 5 is also too easy.
>wait until someone declares war
>handful of ranged units at choke point: their entire army decimated
>do nothing but defend
>AI can't break through, offers me peace + two of their cities
>raze the cities immediately

I just don't get it. I finally managed to take an enemy city but I eventually lost out on the war. I don't really understand a lot of how the basics work, like keeping my citizens happy and what I should even be producing when I have like 6 cities

>>5137974
Honest to God question, anon:
How new are you to this franchise? Not just Civ series in particular, but franchise of semi-related titles, like SMAC, CoP or Colonization.

Because you sound like someone who jumped into deep water without any prior experience with such games.

>>5138103
See OP, I've logged a few hundred hours in Civ 5. I can win easily on the second highest difficulty. Not sure why 3 eludes me

This thread makes me happy because at least were not talking about that shitpile looking game IV.

>>5138240
Because you haven't read up on the basic rules of the game. Unhappiness and things like that are explained in the in-game Civilopedia, which you should check out.

The older Civ games provide a pretty good challenge, because even a simple computer opponent can handle the simpler rules of those games. They're not prevented from stacking their units, so all they have to do is build a lot, and rally them toward your cities to defeat you if you don't know what you're doing. It's particularly effective when combined with cheat production on high difficulties. You can't simply exploit the terrain to beat the game, you need an economy, lots of cities, and lots of production, particularly since the combat is very random and you'll need to be constantly replacing lost units.

Anyway, I recommend dropping Civ 3 and trying Civ 2, since it's a better game in a lot of ways and more on topic.

>>5136584
>>5137124
What dumb posts

>>5138340
This thread makes me upset because all my Civ3 threads get shitposted into oblivion for not being retro but its ok when literally anyone other than me does it

>>5138385
How is Civ II better? Tbh what draws me to III the most is the graphics

civ 3 strategy:
build a SHITLOAD of cities.
take advantage of dogshit AI and buy all your techs
build like 8000 of {swordsman, knight, cavalry, tank}. send your stack of doom from city to city.

there you go. you win the game.

>>5139001
download combat calculator, although there are no level bonuses, there are hundreds and hundreds of different complex variables affecting a unit fighting another.

>Playing Civ 3 when Civ 2 exists

>>5139571
you just build a shitload of cities, rush Monarchy, rush Philosophy, get Monotheism, and either build Michelangelo's Chapel to revolt into a runaway Republic/Democracy or make 3491 Crusaders. Then you just pick your victory. Works 100% of the time on Deity because Civ2 AI can't expand or do anything well aside from doing bizarre shit like infinite fuel planes and spies causing revolts in your capital city.

>>5138240
>I played Civ 5 for few hundred hours
>Can't handle Civ 3 at all
So you are an idiot then. This >>5138385 anon already covered it for you.

>>5139001
2 wins over 3 by sheer simplicity. It's the type of game which runs on a motherfucking calculator and still is a chellenge for a player, while strikes the perfect balance between retarded simplicity and elegant simplicity. This means the AI can remain competent, which means it stands a chance against you. Part of the reason why Civ 3 is so fucking easy is related with the fact AI can't utilise the new options it was given at fucking all, especially when it comes to borders. On the other hand, there is Civ 4, where AI was written from a scratch to use all the new options and not counting unit upgrades, it's just as competent within the frame of rules as it was in Civ 2.

tl;dr Civ 3 has shit-tier AI, which ruins the fun, play Civ 2 or 4 instead.

>>5139579
Replace Monarchy with Republic, ignore all the stuff about Monotheism and wonders, just churm up gorillion of Medieval Infantry and conquer the world with it. That's how Civ 3 looks like. All while AI is busy running lapses around own cities, because it can't into borders

>>5139824
>CIV2

which version are you referring to?
Gold
or
Test Of Time?

>>5140181
Test of Time is pretty much Civ 2.2 (since SMAC is Civ 2.5), so go figure

>>5139824
I guess it's because I like building tall and never liked building wide, which is impossible in Civ III because you need to have eight gorillion cities per square mile. But I'll try Civ II, thanks. What's the best way to buy it? Don't think it's on Steam or GOG

>>5140775
>t. someone who never played Civ 3
Sure, make a lot of cities. Of course it's gonna work. Why shouldn't it, right?

>>5141396
So you shouldn't make a lot of cities? What're you trying to say anon

>>5141396
City spamming is pretty damn uniformly understood as the best high-level strategy from Civ1-3. It's only Civ4 that really hampered infinite city sprawl.

>>5141396
Infinite city spam is basically THE strategy of Civ until V. Free gold, free production,. There is no downside.

>>5141505

massive 20-30 city empires are the thing I miss the most that civ IV and V got rid of

>>5141402
>>5141505
>>5141673
All of you are fucking morons. It's like you never learned one of the most basic characteristics of Civ 3: the dreaded Optimal City Number.
Get over it = get fucked, especially in Ancient and Medieval. The corruption caused by it will pretty much ruin you and eat out more resources that you will be ever able to gather thanks to having higher number of cities. It was introduced PRECISELY to counter ICS and does a fantastic job in doing so. Unless you are playing Commerce-tied civ, you are going to murder yourself. And don't forget about extra requirements for settlers, along with them being separate unit from Worker in Civ 3.
So yeah, nice knowing you never even tried to pull ICS in Civ 3, but still post horseshit about it

>>5141979
How do you find it out? And infinite or not, it still seems like having a handful of tall cities is completely unfeasible.

>>5142000
>How do you find it out
By not being a moron and reading the fucking manual. It's depending on map size. So having a fuckload of small cities the ICS produces means you are fucked. As compared to having a handful of tall cities that produce a lot and use maximum number of tiles instead.
But the fact I have to explain something so basic pretty much screams you never played more than maybe a single game of Civ 3.

>>5141979
OCN still doesn't prevent you from prioritizing land grab as the be-all-end-all where each new city until the OCN limit is effectively productive. You still create a dedicated Settler pump that you optimize to vomit a Settler out once in 6 or 4 turns.
Not to mention that Forbidden Palace exists.

>>5142056
... and neither of the things you've listed makes ICS viable nor even related with it, so what's your point, really? Aside making remarks about things you clearly have no idea about.

>>5142015
I've logged about 40 hours. Not much but that's a lot of games. I'm slowly getting it although I still don't get how their spearmen manage to kill at least two crusaders while my pikekmen/samurai in cities are lucky to kill one attacker before they die

>>5142217
Except it's plenty viable all the way until Sid. And on Sid/Pangaea, you often have to pack your core of cities anyway because AI expands very, very fast. If you're playing a Huge map, your OCN limit is still 18 cities. Conquests expansion buffed Communism to make massive trash empires sustainable, and Courthouse/Police Station spam really helps battle the rampant corruption. While you might have to do a little bit more work, Civ3 still doesn't really punish expansion until you hit the hard OCN limit, which you can then learn to circumvent after a few more turns.

>>5141979
They probably modded those mechanics out, "I don't like them, too hard!"

>>5142236
The same way how Gandhi is a nuke-loving warmonger. I guess the term is "ascended bug". Originally due to some coding lapses, Phalax were pretty powerful in later stages of the game, against any sense or reason. Eventually it became a meme for spear-totting units to trash everything, with actual coding to support that.
Either way, Civ 3 is infamous for the tank vs. spearman duels always ending badly for the tank. You literally are more likely to pull some obsolete unit or infantry than try to handle spearmen with tanks.

>>5142278
>Still talking horseshit
>Still not even understanding what ICS is
>Still pretending you can fight against OCN hard limit
>While fucking even calling it a hard limit
You are one dense motherfucker. And somehow confusing regular large empires with ICS.
Do yourself a favour and learn what ICS even means in terms of playstyle. Pro-tip: it doesn't mean just setting up a large number of cities.

>>5142308
There is a simpler solution:
They never played the game.
For various reasons, a lot of people out there never played Civ 3, but knowing 2 and 4, they assume it plays as exact middle ground of their mechanics, rather than being one fuck-huge experiment with the franchise and mechanics, while keeping things barely changed on surface level (as opposed to 5).
Which leads to entire slew of strategies that make perfect sense in Civ 2 and 4, but will tear you a new one if used in 3. Someone still insist they are going to work out? Go fucking figure

>>5142371
on Sid you literally use ICS (building towns 1-2 spaces away from one another in as tight a sprawl as possible) to make late-game science farms because Scientist specialists aren't susceptible to corruption issues anyway
>Originally due to some coding lapses, Phalax were pretty powerful in later stages of the game
>coding lapses
No, it's just that the Phalanx was a unit with 2 defense that happened to be in a game with a wonky RNG-laden combat system that gave defenders a fuckton of defensive boosters, and people were too fixated on the "Tank vs Spearman" imagery to realize that the extremely abstract Attack/Defense mechanic of Civ games merely means that an unit with a lot of attack is still liable to die to a unit with a lot of defense.
>Either way, Civ 3 is infamous for the tank vs. spearman duels always ending badly for the tank.
It isn't, it's just confirmation bias after you run a tank into a fully fortified Phalanx behind City Walls and get shreked, which is obviously a huge victory for the side with the Phalanx and a massive disappointment to the player. Nothing makes Phalanx specifically an anti-tank unit.

>>5142387
>Scientist specialist aren't susceptible to corruption
And who is going to feed them? Or earn you money for upkeep and actual research? Oh, right, you forgot how this game scales research from income vs raw labs from specialists

>All the shit that follows
Shit son, have you EVER played Civ 3? And Civ 1?
Or any Civ game at all?
All you are doing is being contrarian for the sake of it, starting with calling a simplistic value comparison combat resolution "RNG-laden"

>>5142398
yeah anon I'm talking specifically about Sid tactics for the past three posts but you obviously insist that I haven't played the game
nevermind that Sid was only in Civ3
and yeah, obviously they coded three different games (from 1 to 3) and in all of them they accidentally coded Phalanx to be broken against Tanks and you're not just shit at calculating probability

>>5142387
Throwing my five cents into this:
The original meme was about Phalanx vs. Battleship (you know, a naval unit) in the original game. There isn't even Phalanx present in Civ III. And stats are anything, but abstract. They come with scaling table, where the game engine compares the attack vs defense and matches up the outcome using disparity of tables. That's why Civ IV was loathed so much for merging the two values into single number, while keeping the way how combat is resolved, thus leading to units simply being powerful or not, rather than good for defense or good for assault. Combined with doomstacks, this was a huge problem, which artillery barely balanced out.

>>5142412
Not the anon you are replying to, but your reading comprehension is seriously lacking. All he said was the original source of the issue in Civ I, which later was intentionally coded into following games. It's pretty clear, if not from the context, then the simple lore of the franchise.

>>5142426
>the original source of the issue in Civ I, which later was intentionally coded into following games.
[citation needed]

>>5142420
>That's why Civ IV was loathed so much for merging the two values into single number, while keeping the way how combat is resolved, thus leading to units simply being powerful or not, rather than good for defense or good for assault
The most beloved game in the franchise was loathed for streamlining the issue even though it introduced the promotion system and still distinguished defensive and offensive units by giving some modifiers like +50% City Defense and others +25% City Raider or whatever else? Interesting. Really interesting.

>>5142431
>The most beloved game in the franchise
You mean Civ II?

>>5142438
No, that's obviously Civ4. Civ2 had been rendered obsolete the moment SMAC was released, and Civ2 is a much simpler, easier game to beat than either Sid Civ3 or Deity Civ4.

>>5142440
>Let me throw around difficulty levels to sound smug and experienced
>All while I have no fucking clue about game mechanics allowing to even attempt playing on said levels
What are you even doing here? It's a fucking ANONYMOUS internet image board. You know what that even means? And how it applies to you?

As for the crunch, since I have zero patience for your faggotry:
AI can't use it, because it's still operating on obsolete patterns scripted for old value system. If AI can't use something, it's pointless to have, because it only makes it easier for human player to beat AI enemies. Part of the reason why the "no stacking" rule is so fucking lethal for AI in Civ 5.
And nothing was ever rendered obsolete. People still are playing Civ 2 and having tournaments with it. Same with SMAC and (which is weird) Civ 3. Along with 4, but that one should be pretty obvious. The only game that ever got obsolete was Civ 1 and ToT.

Now /out/.

>>5142450
Anon, I beat Civ2 Deity all the time, it's really fucking easy. I don't know what to tell you, the game just simply lacks the interesting features of SMAC, and I'm not interested in seeking out multiplayer matches. I'm happy that you are playing GOTM or whatever else, and I'm glad people still play Civ2, but I honestly don't believe Civ2 is the "most beloved" overall.

>>5142457
>I beat Civ2 Deity all the time
And I have an elephant in a bottle, so? It was bought to me by my uncle, who works in Nintendo.
>but I honestly don't believe Civ2 is the "most beloved" overall
And I honestly don't believe you ever played Civ 3 at all, considering the level of faggotry and lack of basic knowledge about mechanics you show

>>5142463
read up on ics specialist farms used in c3c in gotm competitions and try again

>>5142463

>>5142468
Play the game and stop sprouting bullshit about it. And as the other anon pointed out, work on your reading comprehension. Might be helpful when you will try to bring up some guide or AAR, without understanding the meaning of it

>>5142475
>no u: the poster
have fun with your life, anon, I'm out

>>5142480
>November

Is the RNG on the Steam version broken, or something? Besides the ludicrously pro-AI sided combat, every time I pick a tiny map, I always get the Americans, Incans, and Mayans as opponents, regardless of what civ I play or what random seed I type in

>>5143615
This may or may not be related but I believe the game will pair civs with other civs that are geographically near that civ in real life. There may be an option to turn this off.

>>5143615
It's seed related. The smaller the map, the more issues with seed, since the game generates limited number of everything. Meaning it has less slots for civilisations and always must add at least one aggressive one, then adds another and another depending on difficulty setting.
So it's not as much as RNG being broken, but the game simply following guidance for map making a bit too strict.