Some minor changes. Small and large police stations, fire stations and hospitals. More education facilities such as primary schools, high schools, colleges, universities, museums, libraries, and a lot more leisure facilities.

Thanks, I'll try that editing. Sad that it's not possible to change the rules in an already running game, because I've started playing on a huge world map in the meantime (playing as Babylon and I've just started colonizing Australia - it works by the help of the 'Forbidden City' or whatever it's called), and it'll certainly take some time to finish. After that, I'll see what can be done to improve the diplomacy...

There are a million little tips and tricks to this game but I'll give you a little hint about trading techs with the Computer:

If you trade a tech with someone else, make sure you trade it to everyone else you know too no matter what they offer. If you don't, the one Computer player you gave it to will just trade away that tech to every other Civ he knows the next turn. It's sort of annoying and it makes it really hard to try and turn the other Civs on each other since they end up loving each other so much through this.

As I said before I don't have the game with me right now but I believe to change the rules there are actually menu options across the top of the screen. Rules->Edit Rules I think works.

How big of a map are you playing on? Usually my corruption was so bad that my outer cities were completely useless that I had built from my own settlers. Don't even think about landing on some continent across a big ocean.

edit: oops it looks like changing the rules is a little more complicated than that.


Edited by Tuss at 05:53 on November, 09th 2005

As I said, I never liked how easy it was to win the previous games just by building a huge army, conquer cities and then use those cities to produce even more military units. This self-sufficient model of exponential growth is effectively eliminated by the high corruption. Supplies and fresh units always have to come from the 'core land' instead of being built right on the frontline.

What I can already relate to is the problem with diplomacy. There are interesting options, like for example alliances being formed for a special purpose like fighting against civilization X instead of the 'all or nothing' approach. However, it indeed seems to be practically impossible to stay friendly with one's neighbours. I'm playing very defensively, never build a large army and hardly ever declare war on anybody. Still, everybody seems to hate me.

You talked about customizing rules and everything else before. So... how is this done?

The problem I have with the corruption is that when I am fighting the wars I don't want to stop building wonders, so my best production cities go to those, and every war I get into pretty much ends up as a grinding stalemate that wears down both parties. Although true to life in a lot of cases, it makes the game frustrating at times.

I started to randomize the different leader traits though because everytime I saw Montezuma I knew he was going to be hell to deal with
I really want to play it again but my CD is not with me, so I'm playing freeCiv instead.

IN OTHER NEWS:
If you liked freeware DOS games with really crummy sprite graphics but whole lots of fun, Cleaner 2 got released over the weekend. I'm downloading it now.

Edit: Hmm it puts my monitor into power saving mode. Refresh rate?

Edited by Tuss at 01:49 on November, 06th 2005

So, after playing the game a little, my first impression is quite positive. I have to get used to the tech tree, of course, but features like small differences between the civilizations or culture are certainly an improvement. Also, I quite like the high corruption problem so far, because it makes the classic 'war machine' strategy which I really think goes against the basic idea of the game impossible. I'll have to play more to do it justice in my verdict, of course.

That's a good thing (tm)

I did as you advised and ran all Spyware Doctor, Spybot and Adaware before running Civ 3 (nothing was found) and again after starting it. They all still found nothing. No trace of anything. As I said, it's a magazine CD, so it's probably different from the retail version. In this case, for the better apparantely

Probably. What I did after finding this was to run the program, hit my Windows button and then run the anti-spyware program which found it in seconds. Then remove it, return to CIV III and play. Had to do this everytime I played.

Simply the fact that something get installed everytime you start the game is very ominous, I'd never take the chance to keep it up on my system...

Ok, I just ran it, and absolutely no process tried connecting to the Internet in the process. Is it just one of those programs which collect data and then hook onto another program to send its information at a later date?

I think the spyware been installed as soon as Atari logo got in the fray. I remember seeing an old copy here at my house, and there was no Atari logo. That version seemed to work fine without spyware, but yet it was the first unpatched version.

No need to say that the copy I am talking about was an unlegal one, so I thought to myself that Civ III was a worthy game and I should actually buy it when I get the chance. Big mistake, if I knew back then that it was so boring, so badly pieced together in several aspects and such, I would have kept my first copy and that would be all. I think this game is better without the patches anyways because I actually had fun playing that version.

There is a program which install itself every single time you run the game, usually by the time you see the Atari logo on your screen. I am not 100% sure it's related, but that's a very strange "coincidence". Anyhow, there is no doubt that a spyware get installed as soon as you launch the game. I think it's Spyware Doctor which found it all the time when I played Civ III. Seems to be the usual "catch infos on your habits and send them somewhere" spyware.

What infuriate me is the fact that a true, complete and "trustable" game incorporate spywares in their bundle. What infuriate me even more is the fact that the damned thing install itself every single time you want to play the game!

A lot of people consider Civ 3 to be the worse than Civ 2. There are some pros and cons, but if you tweak the rules a little bit the pros outweigh the cons I think. Here's what someone suggested for me:



I haven't tried it yet but it seems like it would make the game a lot better. Building cities that are three cities away from your capital becomes a real chore with that 100% corruption, it takes like 60 turns to build the simplest things. Also the AI in Civ3 is absolutely ruthless and any common sense in the diplomacy window is thrown into the wind. Every game I've ever played by the time I got to the middle ages every civ was super angry with me except maybe one that I managed to keep happy with bribes. This was on the lower levels too.

Anything more specific about the Civ III / spyware problem? The game was sold on a magazine cover here a few weeks ago, and I picked it up. Haven't tried it yet, and if there's really something doubtful about it, I'm definitely going to pass it up...

I didn't even know they got Civilization IV out. Seeing how I hated the second part and how frustrating (as well as the spywares) the third game was, I am not even looking forward trying it in a near future.

Right now I been playing Diablo II: LoD from quite a while now. Seems like I finnaly found a character I like enough to level it further level 30; a melee, spear-using Amazon.

I'm also playing Singles 2 since yesterday. An easy Sims clone with a hint toward sexuality. Unfortunatly it seems it's pretty much the only interesting bits in the game, I'll probably get tired of it very fast.

I'm still playing Mount&Blade, somehow.

Has anyone picked up Civilization IV yet? I've heard it suffers from a major memory leak right now, probably will get patched no doubt. That is how every game is these days.

That's a definite improvement. Any more changes (apart from cosmetics)?

By a more limited budget. Hospitals, police, schools and so on are more expensive, and recration facilities such as parks cost a monthly amount as well. As they are so expensive, the monthly budget of an institution has to be adjusted seperately, i.e. you provide more money for a specific police station, and its radius will increase. Altogether, income and expenses are far more balanced, and your income doesn't necessarily exceed your expenses once the city has reached a certain size (as it used to be in part 3).

That's interesting. How is it prevented?

Maybe you could note that 3 was even easier than 2000 according to what I remember. Fortunately, part 4 is harder again. The famous moment where the game starts to become a virtual sandpit is missing.