Civ III vs IV

[BlackAdderBG]

We should thank the lead on CIV Soren Johnson for pushing the team to code the game for maximum ease to mod. Years ago on one old podcast he said it was the biggest challenge to convince Sid Mayer and the team for that. Also it was laid down from the beginning and designed around modding. The guy is one of the few left real designers that can code and it shows as his games revolve around gameplay/mechanics.

 

[BING XI LAO]

We should thank the lead on CIV Soren Johnson for pushing the team to code the game for maximum ease to mod. Years ago on one old podcast he said it was the biggest challenge to convince Sid Mayer and the team for that. Also it was laid down from the beginning and designed around modding. The guy is one of the few left real designers that can code and it shows as his games revolve around gameplay/mechanics.

going to have a good read of his stuff here http://www.designer-notes.com/?page_id=638
thanks for pointing him out

 

[Eyestabber]

So anyone with a positive opinion of any MODERN 4x? IMO amplitude games are the only ones worth something and they still pale in comparison to Civ IV. Any other? Stellaris any good?

 

[BrotherFrank]

Judging from the steallris thread I like it more then most codexers but mostly because of the LARPING and the mod scene. Also for being the only paradox game where you can actually see battles in action instead of an abstraction in some panel where you have to use your imagination.

If you come at it from that angle, you'll like Stellaris. Just remember to go mod shopping.

 

[coldcrow]

So anyone with a positive opinion of any MODERN 4x? IMO amplitude games are the only ones worth something and they still pale in comparison to Civ IV. Any other? Stellaris any good?

Try Pandora, Polaris Sector and Stars in Shadow. Endless Space 2 for Art über alles.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

We should thank the lead on CIV Soren Johnson for pushing the team to code the game for maximum ease to mod. Years ago on one old podcast he said it was the biggest challenge to convince Sid Mayer and the team for that. Also it was laid down from the beginning and designed around modding. The guy is one of the few left real designers that can code and it shows as his games revolve around gameplay/mechanics.

going to have a good read of his stuff here http://www.designer-notes.com/?page_id=638
thanks for pointing him out

Fascinating read.

 

[Wilian]

It's quite simple. Civ IV + BtS > Civ 2 > Civ IV > Civ III

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Eyestabber

Seems like patch 2.2.5 has some issues still. Might be worth it to wait until 2.2.6, which is gonna be the last patch until they release the next DLC.
Oh and play with Glavius' AI mod. ALWAYS. The AI is kinda brain-dead right now.

I could't type for long at the time, but right now, game has the following problems:

- The AI is brain-dead, through its getting better. Everyone plays with Glavius' AI mod nowdays.

- Too much micro with high numbers of planets, because Sector AI is absolutely braindead right now.

- The performance is dogshit. Then again, I'm kind of biased because my computer is kinda weak itself.

 

[Blake00]

Quoting myself here lol.. but I feel like my post over in the Civ2 thread is better suited to this Civ3 discussion thread and I wanna add to it..

Agreed. Civ2 was pretty amazing even at launch and yeah Civ4 is a great game but it took several addons and a whole lot of amazing mods to get there. Although in some ways the same applies to Civ2 as the second addon Fantastic Worlds was really a game changer in the modding community. Plenty of cool scenarios were coming out before that but the really good stuff came after!

In fact the same can even be said for Civ3 too. Like so many I was not a fan of Civ3 at launch, god it was bad. So many Civ2 features missing and some pretty bad bugs (anyone here remember the save game corruption bug at release? urgh). Addon packs made it into a pretty decent game but still not a Civ2 or 4 beater. However in the decades since some utterly insane mods have come out for it. For vanilla players there some great terrain mods that turn the world map into a almost fertile green tropical paradise compared to the dry brown clay cr*p we originally got. While for players looking for totally new experiences then there's all sorts of amazing total conversion mods eg fantasy mods based of Master of Magic, Heroes of Might & Magic, LOTR, Warhammer etc.. scifi mods based on Star Trek, Star Wars and more that convert Civ3 into a space game like addons & modders did with Civ2 & 4... Cool Fallout and Warhammer apocalypse desert wasteland scenarios.. huge historical scenarios on Colonization and all the great conflicts and wars.. all with completely new cool looking world graphics, GUIs, custom animating units, and cool music and ambient sounds. Plus everything was too zoomed in and big back in the day but the game looks quite nice in HD and when you zoom out you can see heaps of the world.

Eg. Zoomed out vanilla with terrain mod / MoM / HoMM / Fallout / Colonization / Star Trek / Star Wars


Probably the Civ3 mod that blew me away the most was the Heroes of Might & Magic 3 mod by a fellow named Tom.. he friggin changed everything! Not just the world, units, techs and GUI, but also the city screen and the palace upgrade screens so you're actually building HoMM3 buildings in them. It's so immersive it actually feels like HoMM3 but with Civ's open sandbox experience. Something I dreamed about as a kid playing Civ and HoMM in the 90s.



Back on the main topic of Civilization 2 I was so inspired by the above Civ3 HoMM3 mod that I started thinking about how much fun it would be to create a total conversion Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod for Civ2 and use DLL hacking and various other tricks to try and convert all parts of the game to look like HoMM2 eg not just the world, techs, buildings and units.. but also the GUI, the advisors, the throne room, the diplomacy screens, the city sky view screen, hell even the friggin wonder & dip herald videos lol! I went hunting to see if any HoMM mod existed for Civ2 and found an abandoned one (with the similar ambitions) by a German fellow named Metropolis who had similar ideas. He was still around so we teamed up and brought the project back to life! If it's of interest to anyone I've been doing Dev Diaries over on moddb...

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In the first dev diary we looked at importing HoMM2 castle/city graphics into Civ2.

HoMM2 Dev Diary 01 - Creating Cities For The Civilization 2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-cities



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In the second dev diary we looked at ‘HoMMafying’ all those Civ 2 advisor, city and event screens.

HoMM2 Dev Diary 02 - Creating Nice Backgrounds For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-backgrounds



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In the third dev diary we looked at changing Civ2’s leader portraits used for diplomacy with HoMM2 heroes and begin a bold attempt at replacing Civ2’s original wonder videos.

HoMM2 Dev Diary 03 - Creating Custom Leaders & Wonder Vids For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civiliza...and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-leaders-wonders



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To further what I talked about in my original post the modding community has really turned Civ3 from a game I loathed into something I love now as there's so much great stuff there. I mean it's still not Civ2 or Civ4 beater but I really like it now.

I've been playing with various gorgeous terrain sets that overhaul Civ3's ugly graphics.. thought I'd show some of my recent results here and see which people think is the best...

To set things up here's Civ3's icky default terrain graphics from an old save game of mine (where I clearly didn't give a f*** about correct city location names haha)

A little while back I discovered Snoopy & Rhye's awesome greener terrain pack which just looks gorgeous.. turns the drab Civ3 world into a colourful almost tropical looking paradise! The water is way better and I really like the trees and the vastly improved farmland graphics.

However some of you might be looking at that and going ewww it's TOO colourful haha.. well if you want something a little more natural looking with 'earthy tones' and sharper assets then there's Ronning's awesome terrain pack which is a bit messy to get working but worth it.. As a big Civ1 and 2 player I LOVE how he brought back the good old crisscross railroads! lots of nice tree variants in his files to choose between... gorgeous farmland too! Everything is very sharp and detailed however the consequence of that is longer you look at it the more you start to notice little imperfections and overlaps lol. Not a huge fan of the coasts and water either.

And now I've just found Ares De Borg's Terrain pack which was apparently inspired by Ronning's work above and it's just gorgeous! It's has the realistic earthy look of ronnings terrain but has less imperfections (note I say less and not none). I really like the farmland variety and how 'grassy' all the grassland looks! The water has an interesting look too but I think I still prefer Snoopy & Rhyes one.

 

[deadmeme]

CIV 3 is not balanced as much as CIV 4. In CiV 3, when it comes to units, speed is king. In the late game, mass Bombers are the most cost- effective force you can have. In the Early game focus on having as much cities as possible, unless you are blocked with few cities, and have bad start, than go to war. Always be wary of aggressive AI-s if they can reach you. When you are ready to strike, strike at the top tech leader. General tips

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Blake00

I have always been a big Civilization fan, since the time I saw my brother play CivII and later, Call to Power (through I didn't know it at the time). I remember spending hours and days, playing Civilization II on a Pentium 100 (edit: Not a Pentium II, only got that later), in the late 90s and early 2000s, in my grandmother's house.

I got CivIII in the early 2000s and honestly, I did not like it very much for some reason. I dunno why.

About the Fallout Mod: I was a tester for the Fallout mod, but alas at the time (say 2007-2010) I got too busy and had some computer-less periods. Lost contact after that. I remember playing a prototypical build that was not accessible, don't know if it was released. It had some new stuff like a tribal minor nation. I miss that mod, it was great.

Anyone know what happened to Thorgrimm, he of

Cheers.

Thorgrimm.

Fame?

He was a cool guy, we used to speak in the MSN era. I remember him having health problems.


Civilization IV was meh at first, but it reached perfection after BTS. Its a pity that the engine is ANCIENT and obsolete, which makes it run slow as shit on modern PCs, because that game is a modding gold mine.

 

[Blake00]

Blake00

I have always been a big Civilization fan, since the time I saw my brother play CivII and later, Call to Power (through I didn't know it at the time). I remember spending hours and days, playing Civilization II on a Pentium 100 (edit: Not a Pentium II, only got that later), in the late 90s and early 2000s, in my grandmother's house.

I got CivIII in the early 2000s and honestly, I did not like it very much for some reason. I dunno why.

About the Fallout Mod: I was a tester for the Fallout mod, but alas at the time (say 2007-2010) I got too busy and had some computer-less periods. Lost contact after that. I remember playing a prototypical build that was not accessible, don't know if it was released. It had some new stuff like a tribal minor nation. I miss that mod, it was great.

Anyone know what happened to Thorgrimm? He was a cool guy, we used to speak in the MSN era. I remember him having health problems.

Was gonna say you should check out the RPG Codex Civilization 2 thread as that's been pretty active lately but I see you've already been posting in there haha.

Yeah I actually recently rescued Thorgrimm's Fallout: The Rebirth of Civilization scenario as it had been lost. Judging by the comments it's still a bit unpolished with some bugs but for the most part is fully playable. Certainly looks bloody amazing!

Dunno what happened to Thorgrimm, his final posts didn't show any signs of arguments or being unwell yet he just vanished all those years ago and never came back so maybe he did pass away but had no RL friends on the site to let everyone know. Eg well known Civ3 modder Balthasar recently passed away but a friend was able to let everyone know. Such a shame, he was a nice guy and was going to help me with a Mars scenario for Civ3 once I finished my Civ2 modding.

.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I thought it was agreed 4 is the best?

Fuck that Fallout mod says otherwise almost...

 

[Blake00]

I thought it was agreed 4 is the best?

Fuck that Fallout mod says otherwise almost...

Haha yeah majority (myself included) feel 2 and 4 are the best. However I like how 3 has made comeback over the years and redeemed itself a bit thanks to the modding scene.

Yeah the Fallout Rebirth Mod is one of the most amazing looking ones.. (Tom's Heroes of Might & Magic 3 Civ 3 mod probably takes the number one spot for me though as there's almost nothing remaining that looks like Civ3, it all looks like Homm3 lol). I particularly love the custom town screen design!

However don't worry Civ4 has Fallout content too! I recently found out that someone took the popular madmax mod and modded it to be in the fallout universe. It's called Fallout Tame The Wastes!

 

[Bigg Boss]

Choices.

 

[AdamReith]

I had a recent conundrum a few months ago, the answer is:

If you need to play a Civ game, make it Civ4.
If you want to have a good time, SMAC your bitch up.

 

[Blake00]

 

[BING XI LAO]

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