Civ 3 or 4?

[attackfighter]

Cottages take 60 turns to grow into cities, that means at best 60 years. A bit much but you can speed it up with civics.

Stop the lies.

 

[attackfighter]

I heard late game trade route calculations were really awesome in civ3.

Yeah that was the biggest flaw imo. Fortunately it can be avoided by playing scenarios which are much superior to the vanilla game.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Civ 4's economic model was worse. Cottages were poorly implemented, they simply took too much time to grow. If you lose a war for example and your cottages are destroyed, you're at too much of a disadvantage to make any sort of comeback because on top of the regular reprecussions of a lost war (captured cities, lost investment you put into the war, lack of military immediately afterwards, etc.) you have to spend roughly 1/4 of the game nursing your cottages back to health, and that's too big of a handicap to overcome (assuming your opponent is competent). I'm all for 'grand strategy', but not when it's applied to such an extent that a single, common event can dictate the rest of the game.

Well, assuming that your opponents manage to pillage your entire empire... In which case you bloody well *should* be at a huge handicap.

More typically however, the largest part of your income comes from a couple of strong commerce cities, and those are typically located at your core. To get there your opponent should typically have to either take your outer cities (which takes time) or travel all the way to your commerce city, which takes time and makes him have to travel through territory in which you have twice the movement speed and internal supply lines.

So really, you need to fuck up royally to have the majority of your cottages pillaged. The effect of having to spend all your production on the military is a far larger penalty.

 

[MetalCraze]

Civ 3 is more complex than Civ 4 and has a better gameplay due to f.e. unique resources which gives different advantages to nations controlling them and disadvantages to nations that don't (either forcing them into trying to find ways to trade or conquering neighbours for resources)

Civ 4 was dumbed down to allow turtling players to develop easily. However this ruins much of the fun if you want to play it normally - aka conquest. And combat was dumbed down as well due to a single stat instead of 3 which ultimately made different types of units in a stack unneeded.
AI became much less aggressive as well. In Civ3 it didn't hesitate to rape and rob you if your nation was too weak which makes sense.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

If you've played civ 4, presumably you are aware that unique resources existed in civ 4 as well?

 

[attackfighter]

So really, you need to fuck up royally to have the majority of your cottages pillaged.

wars in civ tend to end with one side gaining total dominance

 

[Malakal]

If you've played civ 4, presumably you are aware that unique resources existed in civ 4 as well?

Obviously he has not played Civ4 because he doesnt know it has more and more advanced mechanics than 3.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Skyway is full of shit again, news at 11.

 

[Malakal]

Cottages take 60 turns to grow into cities, that means at best 60 years. A bit much but you can speed it up with civics.

Stop the lies.

STFU n00b.

* Cottages +1 Coin ~10 pillage value
o grows to a Hamlet in 7/10/15/30 turns worked
* Hamlet +2 Coin ~15 pillage value
o grows to a Village in 13/20/30/60 turns worked
* Village +3 Coin ~20 pillage value
o +1 Coin.png upon the discovery of the technology Printing Press
o grows to a Town in 27/40/60/120 turns worked
* Town +4 Coin ~25 pillage value
o +1 Coin upon the discovery of the technology Printing Press
o +2 Coin with the civic Free Speech
o +1 Hammer with the civic Universal Suffrage

That gives 70 turns on normal speed for town and 35 with emancipation. From nothing. I will remind you (noob) that it takes four turn for one unit to pillage the improvement to the ground.

 

[catfood]

I remember that in vanilla Civ3 it was quite possible to have such a shit stroke of bad luck that resources would never spawn in your teritory, and the AI would never trade their excess resources with you thus you'd be stuck in the stoneage forever. That was incredibly shit design right there. I played it unpatched however. Did they fix this in a patch or an expansion?

 

[attackfighter]

Cottages take 60 turns to grow into cities, that means at best 60 years. A bit much but you can speed it up with civics.

Stop the lies.

STFU n00b.

* Cottages +1 Coin ~10 pillage value
o grows to a Hamlet in 7/10/15/30 turns worked
* Hamlet +2 Coin ~15 pillage value
o grows to a Village in 13/20/30/60 turns worked
* Village +3 Coin ~20 pillage value
o +1 Coin.png upon the discovery of the technology Printing Press
o grows to a Town in 27/40/60/120 turns worked
* Town +4 Coin ~25 pillage value
o +1 Coin upon the discovery of the technology Printing Press
o +2 Coin with the civic Free Speech
o +1 Hammer with the civic Universal Suffrage

That gives 70 turns on normal speed for town and 35 with emancipation. From nothing. I will remind you (noob) that it takes four turn for one unit to pillage the improvement to the ground.

You're saying that 1 turn = a maximum of 1 year, which is bs. A turn ranges from being hundreds of years long to only a few months long, depending on the game speed and current date. In civ time, turns taken during the 1500's would be at least a decade long each, even on marathon speed (and since you're getting your cottage growth numbers using normal speed, they'd be more like 50 years each).

Face it, having your economic growth stifled for the better part of an era as a result of a SINGLE lost war is fuckin' stupid from a "historical" perspective (as you put it). And it's not like I was advocating consequence free war in the first place; by all means punish a player for losing a war just don't do it to such an extent that his civ is fucked over for the better part of it's existance.

 

[attackfighter]

I remember that in vanilla Civ3 it was quite possible to have such a shit stroke of bad luck that resources would never spawn in your teritory, and the AI would never trade their excess resources with you thus you'd be stuck in the stoneage forever. That was incredibly shit design right there. I played it unpatched however. Did they fix this in a patch or an expansion?

The AI would trade with you if you had something it wanted. If it was flat out refusing no matter what, it was because you had a bad reputation and it didn't trust you.

As for resources not spawning in your territory, I wouldn't call that a problem. More like a setback. And you're highly dependant on your start position in all civ games, although in civ 4/5 they've lowered the randomness a bit by standardizing the amount of resources likely to spawn around your immediate capital (land beyond the reaches of your capital are still completely random though, at least so far as I know).

 

[catfood]

Well the AI always hated me for some reason. As for the resource problem, I remember a game where I expanded with 3-4 cities and I didn't get a single resource inside it. I hated the mechanic so much that I quit. Perhaps a patch would increase the spawning rate of resources.

although in civ 4/5 they've lowered the randomness a bit by standardizing the amount of resources likely to spawn around your immediate capital (land beyond the reaches of your capital are still completely random though, at least so far as I know).

Yes, this helped a lot. Civ 3 was too random in the resource spawning algorythm.

 

[Destroid]

You're saying that 1 turn = a maximum of 1 year, which is bs. A turn ranges from being hundreds of years long to only a few months long, depending on the game speed and current date. In civ time, turns taken during the 1500's would be at least a decade long each, even on marathon speed (and since you're getting your cottage growth numbers using normal speed, they'd be more like 50 years each).

Face it, having your economic growth stifled for the better part of an era as a result of a SINGLE lost war is fuckin' stupid from a "historical" perspective (as you put it). And it's not like I was advocating consequence free war in the first place; by all means punish a player for losing a war just don't do it to such an extent that his civ is fucked over for the better part of it's existance.

What the fuck man, the years don't mean a thing the game is measured in turns.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Face it, having your economic growth stifled for the better part of an era as a result of a SINGLE lost war is fuckin' stupid from a "historical" perspective (as you put it). And it's not like I was advocating consequence free war in the first place; by all means punish a player for losing a war just don't do it to such an extent that his civ is fucked over for the better part of it's existance.

What I don't get is why you let enemy forces rampage through your entire fucking civ.

As I've already said, it is plausible for an enemy to destroy the infrastructure of one border city, although impractical. After all, to effectively pillage all the improvements you need to split your stack, which is suicide in a territory where your opponent has two or three times your movement points. If my opponent leaves one unit behind and unguarded by his stack, I'd cheer personally, because he is easy pickings for whatever counter-unit of my choice. Thus the trade becomes one unit for one cottage development level. A decent trade.

If on the other hand the AI keeps his pillagers defended by his stack of doom, you should cheer, since this cuts his movement speed in half, since they have to wait to defend the pillaging units. This gives you ample time to build more forces, which of course moves to the front much quicker than he moves.

If, however, the enemy is vastly superior to you and manages to keep your defensive units in check and pillage at the same time, well - you just lost a city. You have more than one city, right? Not only that, but the most developed cities are typically at your core, and your frontier cities are often the least developed ones. Of course, this is all assuming that the pillaged city was a commerce city. If it was a production city, or a specialist pump, or some sort of mix, then it is much easier to restore since all you need is worker-hours.





All of this might not seem obvious to someone who hasn't played civ 4. But for someone who has a feel for how fast (slow) units move in civ 4, and how combat works, and the dangers of splitting stacks, and the movement cost of pillaging, it should be pretty obvious. Which makes me wonder whether you have actually played civ 4 at all.

 

[Destroid]

By my recollection the only time I've been pillage raped was my first or second game to millions of attack helicopters.

 

[Desmodus Rotundus]

In CIV 4 best defense is a good offense, you don't want to build loads of defensive units and let them sit in a city, waiting for barb units and later enemy civs to come to you, and pillage your infrastructure, you want to have an "offensive defense", especially if enemy forces have collateral damage units.

http://bug-mod.blogspot.com/2008/10/bug-brings-new-graphs-to-civ4-bts.html a good mod for CIV4 BtS, doesn't change gameplay but gives you more info on what's going on

Haven't played CIV 3 for a very long time so my memory is fuzzy but IIRC other civs could march their armies through your territory without declaring war or needing a open borders agreement, that pissed me off a lot, especially since they would march right back in as soon as you would order them to withdraw by diplomacy.

edit: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5320091 great thread to learn some higher level play, also civfanatics is a great forum for new players to learn as well.

 

[attackfighter]

You're saying that 1 turn = a maximum of 1 year, which is bs. A turn ranges from being hundreds of years long to only a few months long, depending on the game speed and current date. In civ time, turns taken during the 1500's would be at least a decade long each, even on marathon speed (and since you're getting your cottage growth numbers using normal speed, they'd be more like 50 years each).

Face it, having your economic growth stifled for the better part of an era as a result of a SINGLE lost war is fuckin' stupid from a "historical" perspective (as you put it). And it's not like I was advocating consequence free war in the first place; by all means punish a player for losing a war just don't do it to such an extent that his civ is fucked over for the better part of it's existance.

What the fuck man, the years don't mean a thing the game is measured in turns.

In which case the game is so abstract that Malakel shouldn't have brought up historical accuracy in the first place.

What I don't get is why you let enemy forces rampage through your entire fucking civ.

As I've already said, it is plausible for an enemy to destroy the infrastructure of one border city, although impractical. After all, to effectively pillage all the improvements you need to split your stack, which is suicide in a territory where your opponent has two or three times your movement points. If my opponent leaves one unit behind and unguarded by his stack, I'd cheer personally, because he is easy pickings for whatever counter-unit of my choice. Thus the trade becomes one unit for one cottage development level. A decent trade.

If on the other hand the AI keeps his pillagers defended by his stack of doom, you should cheer, since this cuts his movement speed in half, since they have to wait to defend the pillaging units. This gives you ample time to build more forces, which of course moves to the front much quicker than he moves.

If, however, the enemy is vastly superior to you and manages to keep your defensive units in check and pillage at the same time, well - you just lost a city. You have more than one city, right? Not only that, but the most developed cities are typically at your core, and your frontier cities are often the least developed ones. Of course, this is all assuming that the pillaged city was a commerce city. If it was a production city, or a specialist pump, or some sort of mix, then it is much easier to restore since all you need is worker-hours.

If you lose your main army the enemy has free rein over your land. In civ 3 this wasn't the end of your civ, as capturing your cities was a slow process for your opponent and pillaging was more of a short term blow. In civ 4 however, pillaging cottages has long term consequences and is essentially a death sentence if it's done on a large scale (which is possible if your main army is defeated - not an unlikely scenario).

By my recollection the only time I've been pillage raped was my first or second game to millions of attack helicopters.

If you were in the modern age you were definately playing against the AI, and the AI is retarded and incapable of strategy. Multiplayer is all that matters in this discussion, as it's the only place where two players can compete at a similar skill level.

 

[Malakal]

So if you base all those concerns on MP you should know that specialist economy is very much viable and better than cottages for the first 2/3 of the game time.

In civ 4 you can build a competitive specialist based economy in civ 3 you cant. Which game offers more options?

Besides in civ 3 you also would very much lose if opponent could simply pillage all your improvements, then he could also place units on resources and starve your cities of production and food.

 

[attackfighter]

Besides in civ 3 you also would very much lose if opponent could simply pillage all your improvements, then he could also place units on resources and starve your cities of production and food.

But that takes time, and time isn't always a luxury. He could very well be forced to withdraw his troops before his conquest is complete.

 

[taplonaplo]

What I don't get is why you let enemy forces rampage through your entire fucking civ.

As I've already said, it is plausible for an enemy to destroy the infrastructure of one border city, although impractical. After all, to effectively pillage all the improvements you need to split your stack, which is suicide in a territory where your opponent has two or three times your movement points. If my opponent leaves one unit behind and unguarded by his stack, I'd cheer personally, because he is easy pickings for whatever counter-unit of my choice. Thus the trade becomes one unit for one cottage development level. A decent trade.

If on the other hand the AI keeps his pillagers defended by his stack of doom, you should cheer, since this cuts his movement speed in half, since they have to wait to defend the pillaging units. This gives you ample time to build more forces, which of course moves to the front much quicker than he moves.

If, however, the enemy is vastly superior to you and manages to keep your defensive units in check and pillage at the same time, well - you just lost a city. You have more than one city, right? Not only that, but the most developed cities are typically at your core, and your frontier cities are often the least developed ones. Of course, this is all assuming that the pillaged city was a commerce city. If it was a production city, or a specialist pump, or some sort of mix, then it is much easier to restore since all you need is worker-hours.

If you lose your main army the enemy has free rein over your land. In civ 3 this wasn't the end of your civ, as capturing your cities was a slow process for your opponent and pillaging was more of a short term blow. In civ 4 however, pillaging cottages has long term consequences and is essentially a death sentence if it's done on a large scale (which is possible if your main army is defeated - not an unlikely scenario).

Well, if you lost your main army the enemy SHOULD be able to roflstomp you back to the stoneage, or the game would never fuckin end.

 

[attackfighter]

What I don't get is why you let enemy forces rampage through your entire fucking civ.

As I've already said, it is plausible for an enemy to destroy the infrastructure of one border city, although impractical. After all, to effectively pillage all the improvements you need to split your stack, which is suicide in a territory where your opponent has two or three times your movement points. If my opponent leaves one unit behind and unguarded by his stack, I'd cheer personally, because he is easy pickings for whatever counter-unit of my choice. Thus the trade becomes one unit for one cottage development level. A decent trade.

If on the other hand the AI keeps his pillagers defended by his stack of doom, you should cheer, since this cuts his movement speed in half, since they have to wait to defend the pillaging units. This gives you ample time to build more forces, which of course moves to the front much quicker than he moves.

If, however, the enemy is vastly superior to you and manages to keep your defensive units in check and pillage at the same time, well - you just lost a city. You have more than one city, right? Not only that, but the most developed cities are typically at your core, and your frontier cities are often the least developed ones. Of course, this is all assuming that the pillaged city was a commerce city. If it was a production city, or a specialist pump, or some sort of mix, then it is much easier to restore since all you need is worker-hours.

If you lose your main army the enemy has free rein over your land. In civ 3 this wasn't the end of your civ, as capturing your cities was a slow process for your opponent and pillaging was more of a short term blow. In civ 4 however, pillaging cottages has long term consequences and is essentially a death sentence if it's done on a large scale (which is possible if your main army is defeated - not an unlikely scenario).

Well, if you lost your main army the enemy SHOULD be able to roflstomp you back to the stoneage, or the game would never fuckin end.

The game would end; even if no single war ever decisively won the game, one player could eventually accumulate enough minor victories to give himself a solid lead. This is the ideal way for games to be decided imo. The alternative - games decided by single events - tends to be boring, as there's too much repetitive build up time and not enough action.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

If you lose your main army the enemy has free rein over your land.

Except for the fact that you can produce units, that is. To move from the edges of one city to the other takes 5 turns. If you are to pillage all the squares, make that 10 turns.

In 10 turns you can reinforce something fierce, and if the opponent has split his army to pillage as well, he's fucked or at least he has lost all momentum.

 

[Destroid]

I played a 6 way multiplayer game of Civ4 in a single sitting once, I can tell you it was one of the most miserable gaming experiences of my life. It took about 12 hours.

 

[attackfighter]

If you lose your main army the enemy has free rein over your land.

Except for the fact that you can produce units, that is. To move from the edges of one city to the other takes 5 turns. If you are to pillage all the squares, make that 10 turns.

In 10 turns you can reinforce something fierce, and if the opponent has split his army to pillage as well, he's fucked or at least he has lost all momentum.

I guess it depends on game speed and map size. If you were playing a marathon game on a small map it would be much easier to pillage your opponent's tiles, since rebuilding his army would take longer and his empire would be smaller and easier to cover. Of course playing a fast game on a huge map would be the opposite. In my experience pillaging someone back to the stone age is easy. There're too many variables for us to reach a conclusion here, though.