I saw the thumbnail, clicked the video, fast forwarded to ~31:00, saw palace on F tier, and scrolled down to comment. You take that back, sir. This trivial inconsistent mechanic was responsible for more dopamine release than is at all rational, and, by gum, I say Palace goes in S tier!
@@xXSirKRXx Wish I could be at your level, Im mentally 10 and I love the mechanic, I spend more time thinking how to improve my bloody palace and anything else probably, hahah😂
Open Trading is A tier at most, it takes like 10 minutes each turn to check which AI has which tech or gold, then find out wether they want 80 or 82 gold, etc. There is so much trivial room for improvement in this mechanic.
@@lotmyle5465 the diplomatic advisor could have been a list with all the AI, not just 8. Then there's a list with all the information you get from contacting them, such as available techs, gold, resources. Information is disabled of course when you are at war and they don't want to talk. There is no way none of the developers or test players came up with this idea.
Regarding the palace mini game - I remember playing civ1 as a kid and always not upgrading the palace entrance, so I had the cave entrance to the giant palace, making it look ridiculous 😂 That being said I think the palace mini game is for us who also liked the view city feature. Remember going specifically for wonders which looked nice 😅
View city feature was legitimately cool (And one that doesn't trigger annoying pop-ups). Sad they didn't add the Conquests Expansion buildings and wonders.
A note on the thing with anarchy were it cycles through all the city disorders (12:30): If you quickly double click on a disordering city before it cycles to the next one, you go into the city management screen. From there, you can use the arrows at the top to cycle through all you cities and change their citizens so they wont disorder. This way only your capital will disorder. Means you get to keep growth for that turn for the rest of the cities, and is just less annoying in general lol
Palace mini game by YOUR OWN CRITERIA: 1) Given a pop-up by the game when eligible, or accessible at any time. Extremely intuitive to new players as you simply select style and build. 2) Extremely fun to watch the center of your civilization evolve and grow over time as a single-screen representation of your progress. 3) No problems with other game mechanics or throwing off the balance of the game, creates depth of character with no downsides. I've seen enough, further opinions rejected. Suede, all you're good for now in my eyes is meme thumbnails Edit: Also agree, the only good thing about SGLs is the slight dopamine hit when you see the text as they appear lol
One well-known tactic consists of having some AI with a unit in your territory. Then you make silly demands that the AI won't accept. Until their leader becomes Furious. Then tell them to "leave or declare" (you also payed gpt for gold or technology before this). Then the AI declares war on you (if you are not too strong according to the military advisor). That happens, because of the AI attitude. AI attitude also affects declaration of war probability if you fail to steal a technology... or I guess if your spy gets caught while doing espionage or trying to get planted. If you play above 'least aggressive', AI opinion changes what the AI will give you at most for something. I don't know those details, but found out something like that with debug mode before. Let me see... I put details in the "My 80k game journal" thread by Moonsinger over at the HoF subforum of civfanatics.
Isn't it a treat that we can still learn new things about the mechanics of this game after all these years? I'll be playing Civ 3 to the end my days.@@suedeciviii7142
1:51 This is why I like archipelago maps (esp low ocean with high civ count) - you get 5-8 large islands with 1-2 resources each. Makes for nice trading opportunities, or excuses for military outposts.
The Tech trading mechanic is what fundamentally sets apart Civ3 from it's successors my opinion. It just makes sense that Civilizations would boost eachother's technological advancements and it helps to simulate the real world a lot better.
I don't know specifically how trading is implemented in any of the other civ games, but if they have major restrictions on how you can trade with the others, then that just doesn't sit right with me. The moments in civ 3 where you're behind in tech, but say you manage to research some valuable tech and have the monopoly on it, and explode forward with intricate trades with all the empires to catch up on all your missing techs. That, or even selling an arm and a leg to nab a tech from someone with a tech lead, then pawning it off to the others to keep pace. Feels like a very natural way to do trade with others and allows for very interesting plays surrounding trade. I suppose tech trading isn't the most natural thing, since knowledge tends to spread around the world organically, and you'd have a hard time monopolizing the concept of, say, physics. But as a mechanic, it's very fun imo, and allows you to play from behind or really reap the benefits of having a tech lead As for the palace mini game discourse, I'll just say that although I used to swear by it and play it every time, it's been a hot minute since I last touched it. Quirky little thing for new players to mess around with that kind of gives you a break from the game and symbolizes your humble beginnings contrasted with your glorious late-game empire with an intricate palace, but it loses its novelty the more you play. I still like that's it's there, just maybe it'd be nice to disable it.
After learning how to trade, I think that's gotta be one of my fav parts of the game, especially in the early and midgame. Culture flips as worst. The issue of cities flipping back & forth multiple times in a conquest eating up units every time is a massive pain.
you could fix the problems with despotism penalty easily, just show the tile yields as they would be without the penalty, add an additional window into the city overview called "government bonus". there you could add either bonus commerce from republic or despotism penalty as corruption/waste, and then a tooltip or reference to the ingame wiki could explain whats happening. the good concept behind despotism penalty is not only the equalizer of starting conditions, but also kind of simulating how with better technology improvement priorities change. its one of the best things they tried in civ 4 too, tough civ 4 is way too reliant on cottages for money and slavery/whipping for production and large overhauls of improvements in late game happened rather rarely, usually just replacing mines with windmills
When I was first playing I enjoyed the palace mechanic but now it’s annoying that you can’t turn off it popping up at least. When I was a child I thought as a child but now I’m a man
my favorite is that spamming cities near the border of the Civs in the game. also, crossing over the Civ's border and build a City in the back of other Civ. P.S. I am developing a Civ like video game as a developer.
The standard tile penalty works very effectively for intelligent players who are not lazy. Note that the AIs will not irrigate mined tiles, nor mine irrigated tiles ever. Consequently, they will do things like irrigating grassland in despotism. But, the human player can control workers and rework tiles. Thus, the human player has more of an advantage with workers when both their empire and AI empires are in despotism. At higher levels, the AIs would expand more quickly without the standard tile penalty. So, the standard tile penalty gives intelligent human players an advantage since they can manage workers better, and also limits AI expansion (which can matter when they have a free settler or two). The standard tile penalty also applies to Anarchy. That encourages that people don't revolt much and plan more with respect to their governments.
I love the movement system of Civ 3. The offset grid pattern is perfect even if it is a little wonky getting more vision alternating North then east for example rather than straight North east. I agree, railroads are OP but it'd a fun mechanic at least, 10 tiles on railroads is much more balanced like in Civ 4. Combat is perfect even if RNG can be frustrating. I like the promotion/bonus system of Civ 4, but those interactions get very complicated. Civ 3 is elegantly simple, but the factors that do affect defensive odds make sense SGLs are great in theory but not implemented correctly. Building a great wonder is too OP, RNG for building one is *too* random (at least with MGLs there's far more opportunities to roll the odds), something like a points system to work towards like civ 4 makes more sense, 2 pt for researching a tech yourself, 1 for trading for it, 5 if you are first one to it, etc. A boost to science would be nice if it worked correctly, or allowing to automatically finish a tech would make more sense thematically. The fun thing about a bonus like this is having to choose between tech now or more techs long term or any building or small wonder wherever
"Building a great wonder is too OP, RNG for building one is too random (at least with MGLs there's far more opportunities to roll the odds)" Well, I think you're talking about the Conquests expansion here. The original version and Play The World had military great leaders with the ability to rush great wonders. Also, the C3X mod has a feature which enables scientific great leaders to trigger a scientific golden age.
Civ III's civilization bonuses are generic enough that you can pick up any civ and not be shocked by the mechanics, but special enough to give variety to play style. Civ III is one of the best in this respect, similar to the civs in Age of Empires II, especially before Definitive Edition. It's not that each civ is relatively cookie cutter, but rather that bonuses synergise - or work against each other - in Civ III enough to make learning easy but mastering them hard. Civ III is generally pretty balanced all around and not too grandiose. It's a shame you can only play it on PC, as I would kill for a PC-style Civ III on Android.
Hey, I am replaying all Civs starting from Civ1 but in a way that I want to get a bit deeper with game knowledge and complete every game few times on at least no AI nor player handicaps difficulty. This means spending at least 100h on every game just because every Civ game is fun. I started with Civ3 recently and man I was so destroyed on Warlord difficulty. All the habits from Civ1 and Civ2 made Civ3 so annoying to play. But with time I managed to learn a bit and secure a victory after 5 defeats on Warlord. The learning curve of this game is so amazing but because of that it can be frustrating a lot. Then I discovered your guides that confirm that this game is really really good and I still have much to learn about it, thanks :)
I would enjoy the palace mini game if it could be toggled on/off so I could mess with it when logging off instead of being pestered by it during actual game play.
Totally agree about corruption. Great mechanic, especially compared with civ 4 and 5's analogous mechanics, but a bit of a shame that it's somewhat unintuitive
I personally love the palace minigame but I'm a very casual player, I understand it being an inconvenience for hardcore or competitive players. One gripe I have with it is the asymmetrical building of walls, hurts my ocd
Counterpoint about Pollution - In Civ 5 since Roads/Railroads cost GPT to maintain you don't want them on all tiles, so you have a lot less things to do with workers in the late game, especially if you're playing peacefully. When Uranium is discovered you improve it and then you can basically disband all your workers. But then it feels bad if you need 1. So you just end up AFKing them like 1 per city, but it feels bad since they also cost GPT to maintain. Civ 5 really suffers from the lack of 'free maintenance' on non combat units & it only scales up the price per era, so a worker that cost you 1/2 gpt in the medieval era costs you 4/5 in the Atomic/Information era so they feel so bad to have.
@@Frilleon _"you need to balance how many units you have"_ My workers: *Finish improving that last Uranium tile / final forest chops 5/6 tiles away from city* Me: *Disband, disband, disband, disband.* *_Perfectly balanced as all things should be._* There can be no "unit management balance" if the optimal play is to simply not have the unit & thus making it the optimal play to delete every obsolete unit. And sadly it's the same for scouts, unused settlers and the few warriors / spearmen post lets say the Modern era. The problem I have with units in Civ 5 is as I wrote - there are no 'free to maintain' units. Why do missionaries cost gold to maintain for example? All this does is penalize players who spawned with the luxuries that just give you less gold. In Civ 3 the same worker you had in the Ancient era digging roads & making farms is still digging railroads, cleaning pollution & making every tile into a fort in the information era.
Worst killjoy in Civ III (for me) is corruption: no government rids you of it like in Civ II is realistic BUT on a large map a major industrial city far from the capital gives 1 production- ultra unrealistic & massive killjoy. On rails, yes 1/10 would be large advantage without turning them into wormholes.
@@suedeciviii7142 I like the idea of Courthouses and Police Stations reducing corruption but they are too expensive and don't reduce corruption/waste enough. You also have to distinguish rank corruption from distance corruption. The idea that you pick up an enemy capital and now it's a productive city for you because of low rank corruption is weird. Distance corruption makes more sense.
@@suedeciviii7142 I love the standard tile penalty. Why would I want the AI to have use from irrigation while in despotism? Why would I want them to have good worker moves at high levels? Why would I want *less* encouragement of players controlling their workers, when I hate players automating workers? It makes little sense to automate workers in despotism, because of the standard tile penalty. Also, why would I want empires to have the same amount of food in Anarchy as in other governments? It makes little sense that the food supply would be as good in Anarchy as in a real government, doesn't it?
@@suedeciviii7142 the despotism penalty was a big deal in Civ 1 where Despotism was the only free unit support, and explained very well in Civ 2, and after spending so much time playing those games I actually quite like the despotism penalty.
3:12 I’m pretty sure when they r polite or gracious they will trade with you slightly cheaper, also they are less likely to declare war and more likely to agree to right of passage/mutual protection pack
The happiness mechanic is singlehandedly the thing that stopped me from playing Civ V because no mods could ever address it in a way that satisfied. Civ III's corruption is massively superior.
I just found a picture of me playing civ3 on our old computer. It was a very good game but I recall only wanting to play if I had Snoopy’s enhanced graphics, with enhanced roads. Also, corruption was such a bad mechanic, and late game eras weren’t nearly as fun as ancient and medieval eras. Playing in the modern era was a pain (pollution, pop a tank every 1 to 3 turn) that needed to be eased by finishing the game asap 😅
The thing I most hate about Civ III (and IV) is how unit stacking works. I wish they had kept in the system from Civ II, where if a stack of units is attacked outside of a fort or city, _all_ units in the stack die if you lose the battle. It forces players to tactically spread out their units while fighting, without getting in the way of manoeuvring your units around at home. It makes decisions about how to balance the production of defensive and attacking units much more important, increasing strategic depth, without increasing the game's complexity. Plus, having units spread out across a wide front with varying concentrations is different places looks cooler and is more realistic than having them all in a couple of doomstacks.
I like to micromange my workers until I have every tile roaded, mined/irrigated the way i want, and railroads connects to every city so i can move between them. after that i just automate them mostly. they'll finish up the railroads, and i'll keep a few to railroad a couple important tiles earlier if it's important. usually newly conquered cities by then have most of their tiles finished anyway and/or are too corrupt or late game to truly matter how optimized everything is. If so i'll un automate a few. gotta pay attention tho cuz those workers are fearless and stupid. I do the same with the governors. i'll micromanage my tiles early and often, and late game i'll just turn on the governor especially if i'm in/out of wars. Ill periodically check the domestic advisor and scroll through to see if there's too many entertainers and mess with the luxury slider, then reset the governor. Both the automate workers and governor late game when most tiles are improved and being used saves hours upon hours of gametime when you care more about shuffling units and combat in specific orders.. Combined warfare done right mid industrial era - so you don't fuck up a game - you can spend 30min+ on one damn turn planning out how you can move Cav on railroads, future captured tiles/cities, and which cities are reachable by artillery or bombers and how many to save etc. If you really think long and hard and know Civ3 really well, you can capture 10 cities+ in ONE turn on a GOOD civ without the AI fighting back, even on Diety.
Zamn, the despotism penalty, almost forgot that was a thing. Haven't really played Civ3 yet, but the despotism penalty existed in FreeCiv, which was my gateway. It was similarly unintuitive, but you got used to it
Hi, just discovered the channel and been binge watching all your videos. Been playing for 15+ years and learnt a lot. Could I be cheeky and ask if you'll do a video on playing as the Russians? I've always played with them.
Wait a minute, I thought the Palace Mini Game was THE ultimate goal of this game. If you are not playing to build up your ultimate palace, then what are you playing this game for??! 😅. I"ve loved this mechanic since Civ 1.
Everyone complaining about you putting the palace minigame in F tier... I say, you are entitled to your opinion. I like it myself, but you're more than allowed to dislike it!
My favorite mechanic is luxury resources. Happiness and all sort of goodies possible from AIs. My least favorite mechanic is outposts. Soooo useless, and too costly.
What's wrong with the palace?? I loved the feature in Civ1... and its still very cool in Civ3... it sets the game apart from others.. its A tier AT LEAST...
I disagree about the despotism penalty balancing out bad against good land early on. What it actually does is making good/great land with bonus food the only way to grow your cities more quickly per turn since irrigating grasslands does nothing so you cant get a food surplus via citizens without bonus resources or floodplains.
Too much info to explain, but I did say it was good but not the most effective way to do that. Because yeah as you say, the best land is still awesome while, say, mid tier tiles plains sugar suffer just as much.
I think you can work/plan around it decently still as suede said. Knowing what the future tile is going to yield once you switch governments, and railroads in the future, you can prioritize what tiles to improve to minimize wasted worker moves.. or making irrigation paths to cities without fresh water nearby. If i know for a fact i want to irrigate a grassland tile in the future because i need the food later on, i'll skip it (or just road it) and improve a different tile that gives immediate benefit, i know won't ever change. EX: irrigating a couple plains tiles to get 2F1P instead of mining that grassland tile to get 2F1P then being forced to switch it later on to irrigation. or: mining that sugar plains tile i want irrigated then instead of mining a bonus grassland, i save it to be irrigated later.
The standard tile penalty does more than that. It applies to Anarchy for starters, and thus affects whether a 2nd revolution makes sense or not moreso in the favor of 'not'. Also, it applies to the AIs. But, the AIs won't rework tiles in the sense of irrigating mined tiles or mining irrigated tiles. The AIs thus end up with poorer worker moves in despotism (which are necessary) than other governments. It also means that automating workers on turn 1 or while still in Despotism ends up rather discouraged/inefficient. Overseeing a work force isn't the job of some AI, but of a real human being.
You mentioned you're not into culture, and I understand. Must just be the preferred playstyle. I like the culture flip mechanic of the game. It's a fun exploit that they've since nerfed in succeeding releases. Found a city beside the opponent's borders, spam rush build all cultural and religious buildings, then watch the enemy's city/ies change color. Rinse and repeat. Expansionist/Religious is a good combo for this, also Industrious/Religious in a small Pangea map. How to win via Conquest without bloodshed. At the very least, it cripples the enemy. That said, borders is on my personal s-tier and the best added feature from Civ II to III.
"Not into culture" I'm not sure if I use these words, but if I did, I mispoke. 1 city culture victories, I love going for. Going for culture flips is cool but it doesn't work on higher difficulty levels. I play to win, so I'm just constantly having to put out fires caused by the flips So maybe it's more of an issue with the difficulty system
@@suedeciviii7142 Also, do you know about capturing wonders? If you capture wonders with your civ traits, as soon as you build another wonder, you get a Golden Age. That's what I remember reading, but I don't think ever have triggered a GA myself that way.
If someone is gracious and you waltz into their territory (without right of passage) with a military unit, you can claim it is merely a military exercise. I have no idea what else the AI opinion does, other than make their faces look different.
Palace minigame in F tier? I don't even play 3 much, I far prefer 2 and 4 (the latter not even *having* the palace minigame, for shame) and I will shit your pants about this, Suede.
I remember switching from Civ3 to Europa Univasalis 2 back in the day and played that series for many years to come. While I enjoy the quirks of Civ3, judging by your comments on balance and features you sound a lot like a player who would enjoy EU4. I understand that it would be difficult putting out videos with same knowledge depth you have on Civ3, but it would be interesting to learn your thoughts when playing such a game. Maybe you could have a smaller second channel for such videos. But I guess there is only 24 hours in one day 😅
1) Automatic pop-ups. You can't turn it off, it happens at some point 2) When your flipping thtrough the f keys (f5, f6) you inevitably get that screen instead of something useful
Hello @suedeciviii7142 and all, Does anyone knows if there is a mod existing that add the combat percentage conditions in-game ? For example, you select your warrior and drag it without release it on enemy warrior you see that you have 50% chance to win for example.
Luxury slider is D tier to me. Just compare it to the science slider: 1) Does not interact with buildings in any meaningful way, unlike the science slider 2) Awkward 2-tier system of happy/content faces 3) Zero flavor. Like, exactly how is it turning money into happiness? The fact that its known as the luxury slider when it's called the "Entertainment slider" in the Civilopedia is telling. You can't really conceptualize what it's doing (unlike more money for scientific research, you can imagine extra researchers running more experiments). What kind of mechanism creates happiness equally over all cities? Entertainers are far more intuitive, even though they suck.
I would put both strategic and civ traits both down two tiers. Only one copy being necessary for everything felt awful and boring, it's passable but barely. Civ traits felt alright but kinda boring, its good for balance and has its perks, civ 5 and and even more civ 6 did go a bit too far, worst of both worlds, where it's both unbalanced but ultimately each civ is not really unique enough.
Doesn't AI opinion modify another civ's likelihood of attacking you? Even if relative power is probably the stronger variable, surely it's still a factor, right?
Works for me on steam and Windows 10; did you get the fix for the audio bug? I recall some people saying that the audio glitch that causes the trade screen to stop playing music can also crash the game sometimes, and I think the palace dialogue is affected.
Jesus I really kicked the beehive with the palace building ranking. I thought it would be bad but I didn't think it would be this bad
you literally put pollution above the palace, suede i'll secretly mod your game to give you a pollution trigger in every city when a palace triggers
Your punishment is to be thrown into the palace dungeon.
@@nathangamble125 Good think I didn't build the palace dungeon 😏
I saw the thumbnail, clicked the video, fast forwarded to ~31:00, saw palace on F tier, and scrolled down to comment. You take that back, sir. This trivial inconsistent mechanic was responsible for more dopamine release than is at all rational, and, by gum, I say Palace goes in S tier!
@@kirktown2046 Fine, palace in S tier, inability to disable the pop-up F tier
"We're going to start off by dumping the 'Palace Mini Game' in F-tier."
I have not seen that method for declaring war.
Palace mini game = S-tier
Huge agree
i love mixing and matching. Ive actually made an amazing euro/asian with mid east accents palace that looks dope as f
Throwing shade at Suede! Nice!
@@fundip12
swedish government officials be like:
S++ TIER!
When i was a kid the palace building feature was literally the only thing i cared about
Yeah it's great if you're 12
@@suedeciviii7142 Im mentally 13 and i like it XD
@@suedeciviii714212 year old me made DOPE palaces thank you very much
When i was a a kid and you got a palace build in civ 1 you knew because you had to "insert disk 3"
@@xXSirKRXx Wish I could be at your level, Im mentally 10 and I love the mechanic, I spend more time thinking how to improve my bloody palace and anything else probably, hahah😂
SUEDE, YOU SHALL BE PUNISHED BY HAVING A GAME IN WHICH THE WIN CONDITION IS: "COMPLETE THE PALACE"
AMEN! You win condition is complete the palace mini game. NO LOOKING UP THE TRIGGERS!!!!
Open Trading is A tier at most, it takes like 10 minutes each turn to check which AI has which tech or gold, then find out wether they want 80 or 82 gold, etc. There is so much trivial room for improvement in this mechanic.
There's a utility program on civfanatics called CrpMapStat. I first used it years ago, still use it today, and highly recommend it.
Some sort of diplomatic spreadsheet would be nice.
It takes like 2 minutes at most cmon dude
@@lotmyle5465 the diplomatic advisor could have been a list with all the AI, not just 8. Then there's a list with all the information you get from contacting them, such as available techs, gold, resources. Information is disabled of course when you are at war and they don't want to talk.
There is no way none of the developers or test players came up with this idea.
Your point about anarchy triggering you to look it in EVERY city on EVERY turn when you have it is annoying is so spot on
Hmm?
palace mini game in F-Tier is crazy
Regarding the palace mini game - I remember playing civ1 as a kid and always not upgrading the palace entrance, so I had the cave entrance to the giant palace, making it look ridiculous 😂
That being said I think the palace mini game is for us who also liked the view city feature. Remember going specifically for wonders which looked nice 😅
Ashamed to admit that this included the oracle for me 🤪
View city feature was legitimately cool (And one that doesn't trigger annoying pop-ups). Sad they didn't add the Conquests Expansion buildings and wonders.
Another part of civ1 i loved!
Anyone remember the colossus just being the base and 2 legs, shin down
I did the same thing playing civ 2
A note on the thing with anarchy were it cycles through all the city disorders (12:30):
If you quickly double click on a disordering city before it cycles to the next one, you go into the city management screen. From there, you can use the arrows at the top to cycle through all you cities and change their citizens so they wont disorder.
This way only your capital will disorder. Means you get to keep growth for that turn for the rest of the cities, and is just less annoying in general lol
Palace mini game by YOUR OWN CRITERIA:
1) Given a pop-up by the game when eligible, or accessible at any time. Extremely intuitive to new players as you simply select style and build.
2) Extremely fun to watch the center of your civilization evolve and grow over time as a single-screen representation of your progress.
3) No problems with other game mechanics or throwing off the balance of the game, creates depth of character with no downsides.
I've seen enough, further opinions rejected. Suede, all you're good for now in my eyes is meme thumbnails
Edit: Also agree, the only good thing about SGLs is the slight dopamine hit when you see the text as they appear lol
Ahoy there Suede.Thanks for not giving up on uploads despite remaining a niche channel!
If you don't use every style when building your palace, you are doing it wrong
One well-known tactic consists of having some AI with a unit in your territory. Then you make silly demands that the AI won't accept. Until their leader becomes Furious. Then tell them to "leave or declare" (you also payed gpt for gold or technology before this). Then the AI declares war on you (if you are not too strong according to the military advisor). That happens, because of the AI attitude.
AI attitude also affects declaration of war probability if you fail to steal a technology... or I guess if your spy gets caught while doing espionage or trying to get planted.
If you play above 'least aggressive', AI opinion changes what the AI will give you at most for something. I don't know those details, but found out something like that with debug mode before. Let me see... I put details in the "My 80k game journal" thread by Moonsinger over at the HoF subforum of civfanatics.
Thanks for the tip!
@@suedeciviii7142 You're welcome.
Isn't it a treat that we can still learn new things about the mechanics of this game after all these years? I'll be playing Civ 3 to the end my days.@@suedeciviii7142
Suede you're civ 3 content is always so good, thanks for doing the Lord's work
your opening joke was 🔥 💯 🔥. Typically I don't write comments on such videos but man you deserve this one
1:51 This is why I like archipelago maps (esp low ocean with high civ count) - you get 5-8 large islands with 1-2 resources each. Makes for nice trading opportunities, or excuses for military outposts.
Agreed. I just wish luxuries could spawn on smaller islands too
Putting palace minigame in F-tier is unforgivable 😤
Palace mini game in F-tier??? Unsubbed, blocked, deleted youtube, threw phone in toilet.
I'm a complete casual who last played this game as a kid. Learned so much here, thank you for the video!
The Tech trading mechanic is what fundamentally sets apart Civ3 from it's successors my opinion. It just makes sense that Civilizations would boost eachother's technological advancements and it helps to simulate the real world a lot better.
The mechanic that brought me back to the game is the tiles improvement system. I enjoy its simplicity and flexibility.
I don't know specifically how trading is implemented in any of the other civ games, but if they have major restrictions on how you can trade with the others, then that just doesn't sit right with me. The moments in civ 3 where you're behind in tech, but say you manage to research some valuable tech and have the monopoly on it, and explode forward with intricate trades with all the empires to catch up on all your missing techs. That, or even selling an arm and a leg to nab a tech from someone with a tech lead, then pawning it off to the others to keep pace. Feels like a very natural way to do trade with others and allows for very interesting plays surrounding trade. I suppose tech trading isn't the most natural thing, since knowledge tends to spread around the world organically, and you'd have a hard time monopolizing the concept of, say, physics. But as a mechanic, it's very fun imo, and allows you to play from behind or really reap the benefits of having a tech lead
As for the palace mini game discourse, I'll just say that although I used to swear by it and play it every time, it's been a hot minute since I last touched it. Quirky little thing for new players to mess around with that kind of gives you a break from the game and symbolizes your humble beginnings contrasted with your glorious late-game empire with an intricate palace, but it loses its novelty the more you play. I still like that's it's there, just maybe it'd be nice to disable it.
After learning how to trade, I think that's gotta be one of my fav parts of the game, especially in the early and midgame. Culture flips as worst. The issue of cities flipping back & forth multiple times in a conquest eating up units every time is a massive pain.
_Someone's mad his people don't ask him to expand his palace..._
*Bet. Ratioed.*
lolol this was the best comment
you could fix the problems with despotism penalty easily, just show the tile yields as they would be without the penalty, add an additional window into the city overview called "government bonus". there you could add either bonus commerce from republic or despotism penalty as corruption/waste, and then a tooltip or reference to the ingame wiki could explain whats happening.
the good concept behind despotism penalty is not only the equalizer of starting conditions, but also kind of simulating how with better technology improvement priorities change. its one of the best things they tried in civ 4 too, tough civ 4 is way too reliant on cottages for money and slavery/whipping for production and large overhauls of improvements in late game happened rather rarely, usually just replacing mines with windmills
When I was first playing I enjoyed the palace mechanic but now it’s annoying that you can’t turn off it popping up at least. When I was a child I thought as a child but now I’m a man
my favorite is that spamming cities near the border of the Civs in the game.
also, crossing over the Civ's border and build a City in the back of other Civ.
P.S. I am developing a Civ like video game as a developer.
Despotism Penalty does suck glad we are in agreement
The standard tile penalty works very effectively for intelligent players who are not lazy. Note that the AIs will not irrigate mined tiles, nor mine irrigated tiles ever. Consequently, they will do things like irrigating grassland in despotism. But, the human player can control workers and rework tiles. Thus, the human player has more of an advantage with workers when both their empire and AI empires are in despotism. At higher levels, the AIs would expand more quickly without the standard tile penalty. So, the standard tile penalty gives intelligent human players an advantage since they can manage workers better, and also limits AI expansion (which can matter when they have a free settler or two).
The standard tile penalty also applies to Anarchy. That encourages that people don't revolt much and plan more with respect to their governments.
"Corruption is good"(c) -Tyber Zann- Suede
I love the movement system of Civ 3. The offset grid pattern is perfect even if it is a little wonky getting more vision alternating North then east for example rather than straight North east. I agree, railroads are OP but it'd a fun mechanic at least, 10 tiles on railroads is much more balanced like in Civ 4. Combat is perfect even if RNG can be frustrating. I like the promotion/bonus system of Civ 4, but those interactions get very complicated. Civ 3 is elegantly simple, but the factors that do affect defensive odds make sense
SGLs are great in theory but not implemented correctly. Building a great wonder is too OP, RNG for building one is *too* random (at least with MGLs there's far more opportunities to roll the odds), something like a points system to work towards like civ 4 makes more sense, 2 pt for researching a tech yourself, 1 for trading for it, 5 if you are first one to it, etc. A boost to science would be nice if it worked correctly, or allowing to automatically finish a tech would make more sense thematically. The fun thing about a bonus like this is having to choose between tech now or more techs long term or any building or small wonder wherever
Hexes are great but offset grid works great too, once you learn the ins and outs.
"Building a great wonder is too OP, RNG for building one is too random (at least with MGLs there's far more opportunities to roll the odds)"
Well, I think you're talking about the Conquests expansion here.
The original version and Play The World had military great leaders with the ability to rush great wonders.
Also, the C3X mod has a feature which enables scientific great leaders to trigger a scientific golden age.
@@suedeciviii7142tell me more about civ X that limits movement to 10 on railroads
Civ III's civilization bonuses are generic enough that you can pick up any civ and not be shocked by the mechanics, but special enough to give variety to play style. Civ III is one of the best in this respect, similar to the civs in Age of Empires II, especially before Definitive Edition. It's not that each civ is relatively cookie cutter, but rather that bonuses synergise - or work against each other - in Civ III enough to make learning easy but mastering them hard.
Civ III is generally pretty balanced all around and not too grandiose. It's a shame you can only play it on PC, as I would kill for a PC-style Civ III on Android.
Seriously though, I used to love the palace mini-game as a kid. For me, there’s too much nostalgia there for it to be bottom tier
You have also forgotten canal cities "mechanic" and submarine sneak attack and ocean sinking and also boat chaining to move units
unit capturing? rushing? chopping?
ESPIONAGE??? LIKE THE WHOLE SCREEN SUEDE???
Canals was massive oversight. everything else, no strong opinions
This is possibly your greatest thumbnail ever
Hey, I am replaying all Civs starting from Civ1 but in a way that I want to get a bit deeper with game knowledge and complete every game few times on at least no AI nor player handicaps difficulty. This means spending at least 100h on every game just because every Civ game is fun.
I started with Civ3 recently and man I was so destroyed on Warlord difficulty. All the habits from Civ1 and Civ2 made Civ3 so annoying to play. But with time I managed to learn a bit and secure a victory after 5 defeats on Warlord. The learning curve of this game is so amazing but because of that it can be frustrating a lot.
Then I discovered your guides that confirm that this game is really really good and I still have much to learn about it, thanks :)
I would enjoy the palace mini game if it could be toggled on/off so I could mess with it when logging off instead of being pestered by it during actual game play.
Starts with putting palace in F tier
Absolute trash, reported to police
Totally agree about corruption. Great mechanic, especially compared with civ 4 and 5's analogous mechanics, but a bit of a shame that it's somewhat unintuitive
How could you say that about the palace builder D:
I personally love the palace minigame but I'm a very casual player, I understand it being an inconvenience for hardcore or competitive players.
One gripe I have with it is the asymmetrical building of walls, hurts my ocd
I didn't know CivIII was still so popular judging by the number of comments
Counterpoint about Pollution - In Civ 5 since Roads/Railroads cost GPT to maintain you don't want them on all tiles, so you have a lot less things to do with workers in the late game, especially if you're playing peacefully. When Uranium is discovered you improve it and then you can basically disband all your workers. But then it feels bad if you need 1. So you just end up AFKing them like 1 per city, but it feels bad since they also cost GPT to maintain. Civ 5 really suffers from the lack of 'free maintenance' on non combat units & it only scales up the price per era, so a worker that cost you 1/2 gpt in the medieval era costs you 4/5 in the Atomic/Information era so they feel so bad to have.
That’s the idea though…you need to balance how many units you have. To me I like it
I’m a civ 3 and civ 5 lover
@@Frilleon _"you need to balance how many units you have"_
My workers: *Finish improving that last Uranium tile / final forest chops 5/6 tiles away from city*
Me: *Disband, disband, disband, disband.* *_Perfectly balanced as all things should be._*
There can be no "unit management balance" if the optimal play is to simply not have the unit & thus making it the optimal play to delete every obsolete unit. And sadly it's the same for scouts, unused settlers and the few warriors / spearmen post lets say the Modern era.
The problem I have with units in Civ 5 is as I wrote - there are no 'free to maintain' units. Why do missionaries cost gold to maintain for example? All this does is penalize players who spawned with the luxuries that just give you less gold.
In Civ 3 the same worker you had in the Ancient era digging roads & making farms is still digging railroads, cleaning pollution & making every tile into a fort in the information era.
@@guest273 use them or lose them (or pay for them)
@@Frilleon *Use them and then lose them (to not pay for them).
@@guest273You need them if you end up in a war to repair tiles
Im glad that people still show interest in this game. This is an awesome video. But how could you massacre my boy the palace mini game like that.
I get it, F tier must mean F for first class.
Nice! Thanks for sharing
Worst killjoy in Civ III (for me) is corruption: no government rids you of it like in Civ II is realistic BUT on a large map a major industrial city far from the capital gives 1 production- ultra unrealistic & massive killjoy.
On rails, yes 1/10 would be large advantage without turning them into wormholes.
I responded to this point of view in the video, idk if you caught it. There's definitely counterarguments against my position though
@@suedeciviii7142 I like the idea of Courthouses and Police Stations reducing corruption but they are too expensive and don't reduce corruption/waste enough. You also have to distinguish rank corruption from distance corruption. The idea that you pick up an enemy capital and now it's a productive city for you because of low rank corruption is weird. Distance corruption makes more sense.
Palace mini game should be S+ tier mechanic😁
How can I take this tier list seriously when you put the best mechanic on the F tier. Like, come on! 😆
Maybe I was wrong about no one loving the despotism penalty
@@suedeciviii7142 I love the standard tile penalty. Why would I want the AI to have use from irrigation while in despotism? Why would I want them to have good worker moves at high levels? Why would I want *less* encouragement of players controlling their workers, when I hate players automating workers? It makes little sense to automate workers in despotism, because of the standard tile penalty. Also, why would I want empires to have the same amount of food in Anarchy as in other governments? It makes little sense that the food supply would be as good in Anarchy as in a real government, doesn't it?
@@suedeciviii7142 the despotism penalty was a big deal in Civ 1 where Despotism was the only free unit support, and explained very well in Civ 2, and after spending so much time playing those games I actually quite like the despotism penalty.
3:12 I’m pretty sure when they r polite or gracious they will trade with you slightly cheaper, also they are less likely to declare war and more likely to agree to right of passage/mutual protection pack
The happiness mechanic is singlehandedly the thing that stopped me from playing Civ V because no mods could ever address it in a way that satisfied.
Civ III's corruption is massively superior.
i also like how workers represent 1 population point and can join different cities
I totally agree. the Palace mini-game is a useless feature.
I just found a picture of me playing civ3 on our old computer. It was a very good game but I recall only wanting to play if I had Snoopy’s enhanced graphics, with enhanced roads. Also, corruption was such a bad mechanic, and late game eras weren’t nearly as fun as ancient and medieval eras. Playing in the modern era was a pain (pollution, pop a tank every 1 to 3 turn) that needed to be eased by finishing the game asap 😅
The one that always pissed me off was the option to loan gold. It could be cool but I’ve never got it to work
so many comments defending the palace builder. as there should be. nature is healing
That was brutal to the palace mini game 😂
Workers can be air lifted. Nice job as usual.
26:10 hello time traveller, how do you like Civ 10 compared to Civ 3?
I remember airlifting workers but sometimes it just isn't possible. I don't know why or how it works.
Checking now in the editor, you can airlift workers.
I was unsure because some quality of life things like that are only in multiplayer mods.
The thing I most hate about Civ III (and IV) is how unit stacking works. I wish they had kept in the system from Civ II, where if a stack of units is attacked outside of a fort or city, _all_ units in the stack die if you lose the battle.
It forces players to tactically spread out their units while fighting, without getting in the way of manoeuvring your units around at home. It makes decisions about how to balance the production of defensive and attacking units much more important, increasing strategic depth, without increasing the game's complexity. Plus, having units spread out across a wide front with varying concentrations is different places looks cooler and is more realistic than having them all in a couple of doomstacks.
More tedious to manage though. I'd rather they increase strategic depth in other ways.
Game mechanics tier list now that is original haha
I like to micromange my workers until I have every tile roaded, mined/irrigated the way i want, and railroads connects to every city so i can move between them. after that i just automate them mostly. they'll finish up the railroads, and i'll keep a few to railroad a couple important tiles earlier if it's important. usually newly conquered cities by then have most of their tiles finished anyway and/or are too corrupt or late game to truly matter how optimized everything is. If so i'll un automate a few. gotta pay attention tho cuz those workers are fearless and stupid.
I do the same with the governors. i'll micromanage my tiles early and often, and late game i'll just turn on the governor especially if i'm in/out of wars. Ill periodically check the domestic advisor and scroll through to see if there's too many entertainers and mess with the luxury slider, then reset the governor.
Both the automate workers and governor late game when most tiles are improved and being used saves hours upon hours of gametime when you care more about shuffling units and combat in specific orders.. Combined warfare done right mid industrial era - so you don't fuck up a game - you can spend 30min+ on one damn turn planning out how you can move Cav on railroads, future captured tiles/cities, and which cities are reachable by artillery or bombers and how many to save etc. If you really think long and hard and know Civ3 really well, you can capture 10 cities+ in ONE turn on a GOOD civ without the AI fighting back, even on Diety.
Zamn, the despotism penalty, almost forgot that was a thing. Haven't really played Civ3 yet, but the despotism penalty existed in FreeCiv, which was my gateway. It was similarly unintuitive, but you got used to it
The rest of Civ 3's UI is pretty good so it's bearable.
No cool for the palace, never knew how it worked and still have no clue today, but i certainly know that those were my greatest achievement in life
Great video. Where would you put promotions as a mechanic?
Had a lot of overlap with HP but I like them. I like that you don't need to micromanage them, unlike promotion mechanics in later games.
Hi, just discovered the channel and been binge watching all your videos. Been playing for 15+ years and learnt a lot. Could I be cheeky and ask if you'll do a video on playing as the Russians? I've always played with them.
Fine fine bait worked. Love civ 3 even if i was better at it when i was 13 than now cause ive played it maybe 4 or 5 hours since i was little
Wait a minute, I thought the Palace Mini Game was THE ultimate goal of this game. If you are not playing to build up your ultimate palace, then what are you playing this game for??! 😅. I"ve loved this mechanic since Civ 1.
You should be demonetized for putting the palace mini game in F tier.
I've been stuck on emperor difficulty for like 10 years. Can you make a guide on how to beat it? I play on random everything.
This is what you're looking for. Just keep in mind you have an extra unhappy face on emperor
ua-cam.com/video/YZDmlnJSVdE/v-deo.html
Everyone complaining about you putting the palace minigame in F tier... I say, you are entitled to your opinion. I like it myself, but you're more than allowed to dislike it!
My favorite mechanic is luxury resources. Happiness and all sort of goodies possible from AIs.
My least favorite mechanic is outposts. Soooo useless, and too costly.
What's wrong with the palace?? I loved the feature in Civ1... and its still very cool in Civ3... it sets the game apart from others.. its A tier AT LEAST...
My only objection is it gives you pop-ups for a purely cosmetic feature, that can't be disabled
I disagree about the despotism penalty balancing out bad against good land early on. What it actually does is making good/great land with bonus food the only way to grow your cities more quickly per turn since irrigating grasslands does nothing so you cant get a food surplus via citizens without bonus resources or floodplains.
Too much info to explain, but I did say it was good but not the most effective way to do that. Because yeah as you say, the best land is still awesome while, say, mid tier tiles plains sugar suffer just as much.
I think you can work/plan around it decently still as suede said. Knowing what the future tile is going to yield once you switch governments, and railroads in the future, you can prioritize what tiles to improve to minimize wasted worker moves.. or making irrigation paths to cities without fresh water nearby. If i know for a fact i want to irrigate a grassland tile in the future because i need the food later on, i'll skip it (or just road it) and improve a different tile that gives immediate benefit, i know won't ever change.
EX: irrigating a couple plains tiles to get 2F1P instead of mining that grassland tile to get 2F1P then being forced to switch it later on to irrigation.
or: mining that sugar plains tile i want irrigated then instead of mining a bonus grassland, i save it to be irrigated later.
The standard tile penalty does more than that. It applies to Anarchy for starters, and thus affects whether a 2nd revolution makes sense or not moreso in the favor of 'not'. Also, it applies to the AIs. But, the AIs won't rework tiles in the sense of irrigating mined tiles or mining irrigated tiles. The AIs thus end up with poorer worker moves in despotism (which are necessary) than other governments. It also means that automating workers on turn 1 or while still in Despotism ends up rather discouraged/inefficient. Overseeing a work force isn't the job of some AI, but of a real human being.
You mentioned you're not into culture, and I understand. Must just be the preferred playstyle.
I like the culture flip mechanic of the game. It's a fun exploit that they've since nerfed in succeeding releases.
Found a city beside the opponent's borders, spam rush build all cultural and religious buildings, then watch the enemy's city/ies change color. Rinse and repeat.
Expansionist/Religious is a good combo for this, also Industrious/Religious in a small Pangea map.
How to win via Conquest without bloodshed. At the very least, it cripples the enemy.
That said, borders is on my personal s-tier and the best added feature from Civ II to III.
"Not into culture" I'm not sure if I use these words, but if I did, I mispoke.
1 city culture victories, I love going for.
Going for culture flips is cool but it doesn't work on higher difficulty levels. I play to win, so I'm just constantly having to put out fires caused by the flips
So maybe it's more of an issue with the difficulty system
how could you put the palace game in f tier? every time i play i try to get my palace as large as possible. this is an atrocity
Um... did this video miss espionage?
Wonder GA is simple for America. Just build The Internet! It will trigger a golden age for any civ that hasn't had a GA.
😂
@@suedeciviii7142 Also, do you know about capturing wonders? If you capture wonders with your civ traits, as soon as you build another wonder, you get a Golden Age. That's what I remember reading, but I don't think ever have triggered a GA myself that way.
Palaces FTW
If someone is gracious and you waltz into their territory (without right of passage) with a military unit, you can claim it is merely a military exercise.
I have no idea what else the AI opinion does, other than make their faces look different.
Palace minigame in F tier? I don't even play 3 much, I far prefer 2 and 4 (the latter not even *having* the palace minigame, for shame) and I will shit your pants about this, Suede.
I remember switching from Civ3 to Europa Univasalis 2 back in the day and played that series for many years to come. While I enjoy the quirks of Civ3, judging by your comments on balance and features you sound a lot like a player who would enjoy EU4. I understand that it would be difficult putting out videos with same knowledge depth you have on Civ3, but it would be interesting to learn your thoughts when playing such a game. Maybe you could have a smaller second channel for such videos. But I guess there is only 24 hours in one day 😅
Why don't you like the Palace mini-game?
1) Automatic pop-ups. You can't turn it off, it happens at some point
2) When your flipping thtrough the f keys (f5, f6) you inevitably get that screen instead of something useful
@@suedeciviii7142 and that screen is depressing to look at when its just a rock hut
Hello @suedeciviii7142 and all,
Does anyone knows if there is a mod existing that add the combat percentage conditions in-game ?
For example, you select your warrior and drag it without release it on enemy warrior you see that you have 50% chance to win for example.
I hated so much corruption in giant earth maps, the city limit is so stupid and awful
SS tier: Unit stacking (over newer civ games)
Luxury resources do spawn on islands. Do they not spawn on an island below a certain size?
The place mini game is just cosmetics so I don't mind putting it on the bottom.
Luxury slider is D tier to me. Just compare it to the science slider:
1) Does not interact with buildings in any meaningful way, unlike the science slider
2) Awkward 2-tier system of happy/content faces
3) Zero flavor. Like, exactly how is it turning money into happiness? The fact that its known as the luxury slider when it's called the "Entertainment slider" in the Civilopedia is telling. You can't really conceptualize what it's doing (unlike more money for scientific research, you can imagine extra researchers running more experiments). What kind of mechanism creates happiness equally over all cities? Entertainers are far more intuitive, even though they suck.
I would put both strategic and civ traits both down two tiers. Only one copy being necessary for everything felt awful and boring, it's passable but barely. Civ traits felt alright but kinda boring, its good for balance and has its perks, civ 5 and and even more civ 6 did go a bit too far, worst of both worlds, where it's both unbalanced but ultimately each civ is not really unique enough.
#bringbackradartowers
Why no discuss the 'colony' mechanic?
Pretty sure that AI opinion factors into other's civs decision to declare war on you.
That sounds right. Although the AI has no issue war deccing you if they're polite to you.
is it posible to send win games so you can comment on them ? Also realy ? palace minigame f tier ....
I like bombardment I just wish it didn't take so long to do and that civ 4 didn't go back to the very bad way arty was in the first two games
C3X has stack bombardment if it's bugging you a ton
Wow wow WOW! WTH?????? Palace is the best thing ever and how even I can't... what?????
Doesn't AI opinion modify another civ's likelihood of attacking you? Even if relative power is probably the stronger variable, surely it's still a factor, right?
Palace mini game crashes the game for me on steam so as much as I love it, F TIER!!!
Works for me on steam and Windows 10; did you get the fix for the audio bug? I recall some people saying that the audio glitch that causes the trade screen to stop playing music can also crash the game sometimes, and I think the palace dialogue is affected.
Ok sorry dude......FRIENDSHIP ENDED!!!! PALACE MINI GAME IS THE GOAT!!!