A Civilization 3 Retrospective
Вставка
- Опубліковано 31 лип 2024
- A quick retrospective on all the nuances, depth, strategy, and community that come together to make this 2001 classic one of the most defining moments in strategy games history. A Civilization 3 Critique.
Credit for multiplayer gameplay goes to
SuedeCiviii: / @suedeciviii7142
Towel: / @towel5314
NatMerris: m.ua-cam.com/users/29blazehea...
Intro - 0:00
The Basics - 2:00
Intermediate Knowledge - 9:10
War - 49:11
Multiplayer (SuedeCiviii) - 1:15:50
Play the World DLC - 1:34:12
Conquests DLC 1:40:31
The Sense of Personality - 2:00:43
The Community/Conclusions - 2:05:33
Bloopers - 2:10:32
Of course, I have to call out Suede CivIII once again for giving me the privilege of putting this Collab together, and he's probably the sole reason why I was able to learn the game so quickly as I worked my way up to deity. Definitely your one stop shop for everything Civ 3 related.
/ @suedeciviii7142
Otherwise, if you want to check out the written civilization chronicles of a player named Sulla, you can find his website at the links below. I believe he continues to make lets plays of strategy game, and still streams to this day if you want to see what he's done since then, but I will never forget how his writing helped shape me into the type of person that I am today.
sullla.com/Civ3/civ3.html
And of course here’s a link to the civ 3 Ladder as of 2021: civplayersciv3league.com
If you like my work you can always let me know by pressing that subscribe button so I can get a good idea whether i'm putting out a decent product. Or if you felt like something was off let me know in the comments below. - Ігри
FYI, the reason you're running into Pachacuti so much is because you're playing with culturally linked started locations turned on. The feature is bugged and makes it so the AI are very likely to be from the American culture group.
That happens to me All. The. Time. It took me a while to figure out why that was happening.
Saw the video title and thought "I figured this would be a suede video, oh well give it a go anyway".
Then you're top comment. Lol
I actually do make a cameo in the video!@@Ch1pp007
HOLY CRAP !!!!
SuedeCivIII…?
Is that the Civ3 G.O.A.T I see in the comments?
I know this is a 3 yr old video but I’m only just now seeing it and it’s a video about a 20 yr old game.
@@andrewwilliams7661 I'm in the video too hahah
One thing you need to remember when talking about older PC games is that they used to come with large instruction manuals the players were expected to at least partially read those manuals. In-game information, accordingly, was less important than it is now.
I'm glad you pointed out the ridiculous difficulty disparity, and that it's worsened by how misleading the game can be. That's been on my grievances list for a while. One of the more consequential ones is no visual indicator of the despotism penalty, combined with rival/automated workers not paying any respect to it. It's not that complicated, but it's a pain in the ass to learn because it's treated in a way that makes it so arcane.
One of the more blatant examples though is that the game penalizes you for declaring war if you have units in enemy land (this is never explained in the game itself). If you do so the rival AIs will tell you "you broke their right of passage agreement" even though ROPs are a real thing that exist in the game and you likely didn't have one!
I just realised that 20 years later, I still think of the Civs added by the expansion packs as "new" civs XD
yes
Hey it's the Byzantines! Lucky me
This will be an interesting game
I wonder what they'll do with that dromon
Civ III was one of the first video games I ever played, and I had no clue what was going on back then. You just explained so many of my childhood gaming memories. Thank you!
I'm glad you commented about the evolving fashion of leaders. This was one of my favorite feature of the game and as much as I can enjoy the big animations of Civ VI leader, their single-tone looks get REALLY boring after the first couple times. Gimme stone-age Teddy Roosevelt, dammit!
Hearing Suede talk about the MP scene gives the old Uncle describing a huge battle that happened in the field kids usually play in. from growing up with the game i never imagined so much lore for a Civ game that's rather overlooked by the latter entries.
I gotta give thanks to both you and Suede for shedding some very insightful tips and mechanical knowledge in a game that i played often but even now are still learning to play challengingly
Very well made and informative video. I always found older CIV games charming and aesthetically pleasing, but the problem was CIV 5 was the first one I got truly hooked on. It's a problem because it was a very significant shift in design and felt more like a board game than RTS turned into turn based game how I viewed older entries. I hated the city spam mechanics and the necessity of tech trade of older games, but slowly and surely I'm finding beauty in these old games. Thank you for the video!
I got this game from a Scholastics magazine but when it was first released. I still play it to this game. The flaws are indeed there but this game is so "comfy" that playing it is a joy.
Yup good old scholastic book fair
Great video. I really appreciated the praise for the Conquest scenarios at the end; one thing I could never stand about Civ V (a game which I appreciate the majority of, even as a Civ III fanatic) was how lazy the scenarios were in comparison to the masterpiece's Civ III made.
One note of criticism however: Communism is actually a completely broken form of government if played correctly, even more broken than republic potentially. This is due to the anti-corruption buildings, plus the fact that communism gives the corruption reducing policeman specialist (it should also be said that one of the anti-corruption buildings, the police station, also is only available from learning communism). Because communism, as you said, removes distance corruption effects from all cities, making them all start from a base level of around 50% of their economy going to corruption, anti-corruption effects then all work off of this base level as well. So, rather than anti-corruption effects starting from base levels of 75-99% (as they would be in cities super far from your core in a republic, making your anti-corruption efforts in those cities ultimately completely pointless because they'd still suck) they're starting from levels that are much lower. When you combine the courthouse+police station+policeman specialist combination as a communism, literally any city in your empire, no matter if it is right next to your capital, or is 120 squares away, can have not just decent corruption levels (50% of your shields/commerce going to corruption) but absolutely amazing levels (just 25% or less of your shields/commerce going to corruption). Combine this with the fact that you have massive unit support and no war weariness, you have the recipe for the ultimate war machine government. The hilarious part is that even though the government is clearly meant for warmongering, you can easily space race with it as well. This is because eventually, even though you do not have the extra commerce bonus that republic has, you'll have so many more useful cities than a republic that eventually you'll end up making more money than them. The only real catch to playing communism rather than republic is 1. You can't rush with gold.2. You have to make sure your empire is large enough to overwhelm the commerce bonus that you would get playing as a republic instead.
There's another catch with Communism.
It requires another revolution.
6-8 turns of lost production and commerce?! And lost food due to the Anarchy penalty?!
Those make for big downsides.
Also, not being able to cash rush with gold... that's a huge downside at upper levels. Because purchasing armies due to getting gold per turn from the AIs and/or their lump sums one way or another comes as rather powerful. So does disconnecting one's resources, changing builds to horseman, and then reconnecting and upgrading for quicker cavalry (and possibly knight and other unit) production.
That said, Communism does have good numbers.
My fav series of all time. And my fav game of the series. Great video
Mind explaining why Civ 3 was your favorite? Literally boggles my mind. IMO it was by far the worst. It had a worse, simplified combat system over Civ 2, full on step back. It just emphasized spamming cities 2-3 spaces apart, and it had crappy cartoony graphics. The tank looks like a windup toy on a cartoon for example. Civ 4 was just better in every single category, Civ 5 was also better if you could deal with the AI kind of failing at the new hex system. Civ 5/6 are a big departure but it puzzles me how you can put Civ 3 above 4? Civ 4 is the same as Civ 3, just better in every category. Graphics, variety of units, AI, combat system etc.
Great breakdown - this was one of my favorite/defining games as a kid too
I have been looking for so long for a long critique of civilization games, and Civ III was my first game of the series so I already love this video! Im gonna watch it later because right now im in the middle of a match in Civ IV
Great! Another video from our bouy JBJett!
It is always nice to see one of your videos, man.
Oh, hey, I liked how you described that video games are art through math and systems. For as true as that is, I am surprised I never realized it before.
Great video. I dont think I will ever play a civilization game, just wanted to see what you had to say (and learn a little bit about the game in the process). It was really neat!
Thank you for making a video on such a great game!
Awesome Video, love to see love for one of my favorite games.
I've played Civilization since the very first game, way back in the mid 90's. I am of the mind that 4 was the best for what it was , and I think 2 has more fond memories for them than 3, but that isn't to say 3 is bad at all. Watching this does make me want to go back and try 4 again. I have that on steam so maybe time to give it a go.
Thank you so much for making this analysis.
Great video. I remember multiplayer games with cton (in whose honor this type of game was actually named), playerxxcc, snowmonkey etc. during my studies... this video brings back incredible memories.
Thanks for this gem. i am shocked this vid does Not have More views.
You need way more views. Nice work!
FYI - you CAN zoom in - just press 'Z' (you could bind that to your mousewheel with your mouse software as well)
Awesome video. These games aren't discussed enough in the modern day. Please do Civ 4 next!
I remember playing Civilization V for eight hours straight then immediately deleting it as it was way too much fun.
Oh no. I'm gonna download it again.
alphabet is such a cool technology that MOST PEOPLE ON EARTH still has not developed it
That was a beautiful Battle for Wesnoth reference :D
Also, subbed
hey buddy! lol
man that was a real throw back. I still regularly listen to the soundtrack, and play the game on occasion.
Give me a minute while I get out the IBM laptop running windows 98 to run this game.
@@almightyful1 lol right?
Man, I loved this game back in the day, thought now it is quite hard to get back to (with having Civ 4, 5 & 6, Old World or Humankind in the library). The best thing about it was graphics, unit designs, sounds & animation and diplomacy, which often resulted in world wars near end game (which is almost non existent in my current games). The worst things about Civ 3 were mostly the corruption system (making distant cities from capital/forbidden city unusable), transporting units through bodies of water and the fact that units had to fight each battle to the death (also I never was a fan of 'stacks of doom'). The AI was somewhat better then today, but there was really big room for improvement there. Civ 4 delivered on that, but had other issues, for which I couldn't transition for a looooong time after it came out.
I remember buying this game at best buy when I was 7. If I had this video then I wouldn't have sucked so badly
I always love to listen to videos like this while I'm conquering the world as whatever civilization that has the agricultural trait...
Where do i donate for a pop filter?
If you got a really big 1080p monitor, like I have one, the game and the UI are actually perfect on 1080p. But like I said it's gotta be a big screen since the pixels themselves become bigger themselves. Other than that the increased FOV that comes with such a high resolution is also a very welcome addition to the game on a big monitor.
Bombers being an unstoppable force, almost as powerful as nuclear weapons, was the prevailing military theory in the interwar period, historically.
After listening to this I would've loved to listen to how this game is compared to the next one, or even the most recent one.
I have all Civ games. I play CivIII XD
First PC game i had. Probably one of the best games ever.
I LOVED Civ I and II and III. but Civ IV felt like such a deviation, such a change, that I could go no further. I am stuck on CIV III. I wish I could download somewhere the ability to play ww2 Europe in CIV III.
you forgot the fortified bonus. units defending cities are nearly always fortified too
You could have but a blurred zoomed-in version of the gameplay in the background to mask the black bars.
Great video. I learned a lot! Been getting stomped on Regent while playing with accelerated production. Do you have any words of advice on whether to use accelerated production or not?
You might want to look up multiplayer tips cause they use accelerated production a lot more in their games. Otherwise on regent the AI should still be slow enough that you can out tech them by using the republic government while you mitigate their larger armies by using diplomacy and trade deals to just never go to war.
When playing vs the ai, acc prod isnt optimal.
Use an Archi map & find a bottleneck,close it with Def units by fortifying them across it(a la Leonidas & 300 greeks vs the Persian Army),& keep all other civs out of that land,then build settlers fast & populate it,then keep pushing your frontier forward.
Use a city with an irrigated cow or wheat as a 'settler pump'-a city that produces a settler every 2-4 turns while regenerating from a population of 3,4,or 5 ,at the same rate you lose the 2 pop from producing that settler. Using a city as a settler pump works for any map or strategy,too
you sound exactly like me. like voice wise
Weird, I exclusively played fascism in my late game and absolutely wrecked other players, I've never seen a review of civ3 but I remember it being extremely overpowered.
Some commenters here are too concerned about why people love this game. This game is tied for the best of the series, the other being 4. I would love 4 more if it had the sprite art style and the evolving leaders that 3 did. But I have yet to dislike any game in the series. They’re all fantastic.
But you can see how many turns it takes to finish the research?
While I really liked this video overall, and the general mindset you used about when you should or shouldn't commit to an offensive war, you had a pretty major oversight in the combat section that drastically alters the math in use. The fortification bonus.
You know that thing you can do to units to lock them in place to protect your cities or remove the from the turn management? That provides a +25% defensive multiplier. You can check Civilopedia under Defender Combat Bonus, the first Structural Bonus if you don't believe me.
As a result, most of the comparisons you used are not, in fact, accurate. A spearman doesn't defend with 2, it's 2.5, a pikeman isn't 3, it's 3.75, and a musket isn't 4, it's 5. As a result, the offensive bonuses are much smaller than you calculated, and the defensive ones are much more drastic. A musket against a knight, or a spear against a horse aren't fair fights, but heavily in the defender's favor, only offset by the retreat ability, while a pike against a knight or a medieval infantry is very close to being fair.
I mention this because fortification is by far the most common and reliable defensive bonus you'll come across. It's going to be present in any siege and most open battles, so it needs to be accounted for.
1:16:52 i don't recognise this game. what is it?
I miss fundamentalism government from civ2
Fanatics were great
I remember Fundamentalism being hilariously broken in Civ II. Zero unhappiness, extra income from Temples, low corruption, ten free military units per city, and you can churn out tons of Fanatics (which require no support). The only penalty is that your science output is halved - but once you've reached the endgame, either you've researched everything you need or you're winning by conquest (and can just steal technology from captured cities), so there's effectively no downside!
"Fascism... just kinda sucks" yes it does
Criminally underrated channel. I hope you don't give up from the lack of recognition the algorithm is giving you. Maybe even try making a secondary channel under a different name and gradually upload your back catalogue to see if that channel takes off due to the whims of the Algorithm. It's nuts you've only got 1.47k subs. Hell if you can afford it, maybe look into some services that will artificially inflate your numbers for a fee, it's not what anybody wants to do but after watching 3 or 4 of your videos I know that if the right audience discovers you, the Noah Caldwell, Joseph Anderson, Neverknowsbest type audience, then you could be big. UA-cam is a real bastard though so I don't oppose using an exploit here or there. Regardless, thanks for the content, I really enjoyed it.
Videos you might be interested in:
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Interesting video, thanks for the extensive analysis. One comment I have, is that it seems the primary drawback to Civ3 for a current player would be the clunkiness of the UI, but Civilization IV has an incredibly fluid and easily usable one, while being mechanically very similar to this game. Those core mechanics are still solid and fun, but in what way is Civ3 superior to 4 in this regard, if these are what makes the game desirable aside from personal nostalgia? I actually began playing Civilization with III, but find IV vastly superior.
next time you record at low resolution upscale without interpolation and then it looks good
wow, so you have barely beaten it on deity.. does that mean level *Sid* is unbeatable for everyone?
I think I like this game more than civ 4
earlier civ games have waaaay bigger palaces. not as pretty ones tho
Civilization 3 is the game where you can create your own Empire Your Own Story every game is different no game is ever the same and there is no stupid no stack rule like in Civilization 5 or 6. In my opinion civilization is not made for multiplayer I hate waiting for my opponent to come back from the bathroom or has to do something important it gets annoying
I have the feeling that older games like Civilization III just allow the player to experiment with whatever the game gives them. It doesn't impose ridiculous limitations on the player, it allows you to do ridiculous things inside the game but only if your own skills allow it. That's why games like Doom are so great too because of the simplistic gameplay and game mechanics, if the player is good, then the game is too, and so on.
I never played civ 3, I am more fan of civ 2 on ps1!
Civ 3 was a HUGE disappointment. Someone on the team actually was like: You know how Civ 1 had that crappy dice roll mechanic to combat, where a tank is like 10 and a musket man is 4, so the tank has a good chance to win but can lose? Or a battleship can lose to a phalanx? Then remember Civ 2 had an awesome combat system where units with heavy armor had more health, and units like cannons/artillery had more firepower and less health? That made so much sense, right? And a tank never lost to a musket man in Civ 2. Yeah.... lets put it back to Civ 1 style with just full on dice roll combat. I think that's the play. People might need to have an IQ above 80 to understand the Civ 2 combat system and that doesn't work for me"
Oh God I forgot about the dumb culture system too. USA was Native American culture I remember. So dumb.
Civ 2 with expansion packs is better than Civ 3. Civ 4 is far superior to Civ 3. Honestly I thing the team behind Civ 3 failed really hard. I can't think of anything nice to say about the game. I was like 20 when it came out, I was hugely excited and I was just fully let down.
1:20:17 Thats an newer list thats missing some big names like...
Beastmaster
StricklyRockers
Stormbringer
CanuckSoldier(i see his ol lady,cton,tho)
Zardoz
That list brings back memories,tho...at one point or another,every name up there was #1 in the World
Cton’s partner was Zaxxon not Canuck Soldier.