Get Away with you! The English Inventing Gravity - AND testing it and keeping in calibrated for the rest of the Planet (Even the French!) with an annual blood sacifice to a antediluvian cheese god in the mysterical land that is... Gloucestershire. Makes Civ 3 look like some little game you run on one of those mechnical difference engines. They will never catch on. Dwile Flonking is a superior game anyhow.
I've been trying to get into other Civ games, and the kind of visual clarity you get in CivIII is unmatched. I like how the ages transition, the general aesthetic of the land and the ambience when music is turned off. Very romantic, in a way.
Civ 4 is fantastic yeah. A proper heir to Civ 3 would be too close to Civ 3 to justify its own existence as a commercial product. If you want "Civ 3 2" we have to make it ourselves.
@@cuzon550 That's what I've been saying! :D The designs in Civ III were so brilliantly simple and straightforward that you could zoom WAY out on the map and still see what everything is (this unit is an Archer and that one's a Longbowman, this land is a Forest and that one's a Jungle, this land has Gold and that one has Iron) But Civ 4 and up put so much subtle nuance into all of the designs that you have to zoom in real close to see the distinctions :( When you can only see such a tiny glimpse of the map at a time, it doesn't feel like a strategic game where you're controlling an entire empire - it feels like a tactical game where you're only controlling one unit at a time.
@@Simpson17866 Civ4 looks too cartoonish, childish, overloaded with details, just visual mess overall tbh. I was so disappointed the day i bought and launched it so i returned to lovely old civ3 and never tried later games of civs series.
The visual clarity of Civ 3 is definitely something I've grown to appreciate so much because it tends to be lacking in modern games as a whole - not just the Civ franchise. You're absolutely right about it being refreshing! Civ 6 is a fantastic game, but the visual clarity is a mess. By the late game, it's hard to tell what's going on at a glance amidst the jumbled mess of districts, improvements, and wonders. Civ 5 is worse than 3 in this regard too, but I also appreciate how much clearer that game is than 6 when I go back and play it. Another point that wasn't addressed in this video: the added flavor from the little details on leader scenes is such a nice feature that I wish was expanded upon in later games. Watching the leaders change outfits depending on the era and address you with rich, customized quips is such a charming feature that I wish stuck in the later games. Leader scenes peaked in Civ 5 with the fully detailed throne rooms and outstanding voice acting, and Civ 6 completely dropped the ball in my opinion. 6 lacks both the charming quips of 3 and the stunning environments of 5. Sure, there's a little variety in what the leaders actually say, but they still lack the personality that the other games had. Many times, they just stand silently with an expression while a default line is listed on the screen.
Suede, I cannot thank you enough for being the voice of Civ III on TH-cam. I've been waiting for someone like you to come around and articulate what the rest of us have been thinking. I started playing Civ III when I was a kid and haven't stopped since. It truly has some of the best UI and reply I've ever experiences in a RTS. I really thought it was nostalgia, but year after year, I keep coming back. Civ III is really special and I'm glad you're continuing the legacy with your unbelievable dedication to the game, from masterful strategies to tier lists, Suede thank you!
One thing especially good about Civ 3 is its epic feeling of world wars. I could experience world super powers fight each other with very large armies and great strategies. Those wars actually lived in my memory. Since CIV 4, because either number of cities are limited, or the size of the armies is reduced (due to one hex one unit rule), I could never find the same feeling about epic wars, let alone remembering them for many years.
my mom bought my older brother and me the complete edition of this game in the mid-2000s and I used to play it a ton. it'll forever be my favorite strategy game. kinda wanting to get back into it
It's funny how a lot of us have the same memories. I remember staying up all night playing it as a kid, and I'm about to spend $4.99 on the complete edition.
I love modern strategy games for going to new depths and advancing accessibility, but there's something about the elegant simplicity of 2000's games like Civ 3, Red Alert 2, AoE2, and Empire Earth that really helps distinguish them from today.
It is amazing how many people Civ 5 and 6 were able to drive towards this incredible franchise. I'm critical of certain elements of newer games but they are SUCH a blessing for fans of Civ 3.
AoE2 and Empire Earth were hardly "elegantly simple". Just look at all the hidden attack bonuses in AoE2 that are not written anywhere. All you got was "Good against X" in description, and that was sometimes wrong. The same applies to Empire Earth, game about a huge number of bonuses you build your civilization with, a large number of "ages" you ploug true is not simple. Tetris, Arkanoid, etc. might be elegantly simple. Especially nowadays you have indies some indie games that, due to limited resources and need to come with a formula, go for the elegant simplicity you are praising.
@@colombodoesstuff7653 I think simplicity is relative. Civ 3 is certainly a complex game, but the city screen comparison with Civ 6 gets the point across. A lot of the tabs in the Civ 6 city screen are for systems that just don't exist in civ 3. But yes, with RTS' specifically, I don't think there's the same creeping increases in complexity. SC2 was in many ways toned down from Brood War (in case it needs to be said, complexity is not inherently good or bad)
@@colombodoesstuff7653 Nah, you're right on that front. I'm talking more on the graphical level, there's something very endearing about the sprites and lowpoly models!
@@jbeast33sconniepyro Ah then, but we have word for that, stylization. And yes, the games did very well, the units are often differentiateble at glance according to a few details. There was quite a lot of work put in Age of Empires to have e.g., every single building being recognizable as a "mill" even for different civilizations and different ages.
@@suedeciviii7142 Chess 2 will come out one day, people will hate on it for centuries, but a millennium later people will swear that it is where the series peaked & was never matched by Chess 3, 4 & 5. Just wait & you'll see!
This will be a wild comment, but when I couldn't yet read English (was like 7-8 years old) I used to think that the Dyes icon was 'Punch' as in that Drink they always showed in American TV shows.
Thanks for your strategy articles years ago drakan! If you ever took an interest in a succession game, a COTM game, or something over at the HoF, I believe people would welcome you.
@@Spoonwood Thank you Spoonwood, that's very kind of you. I'm glad you enjoyed reading them! Recently I've retaken activity back at CFC; looking forward to Civ VIIs launch. Kind regards
I play Civ 3 daily. Whenever I find 30 minutes to spare I load up a random tiny map with archipelago setup and I try to break personal record of exterminating 4 civs in 15 minutes in Warlord mode.
Hey Suede Im now at 430BC (the end part of your 2nd vid) on the non-exploit Sid difficulty Iroquois map you did a few months ago. Only difference is I'm playing as the Celts. I've just conquered all Mongol territory, settling new cities there and doing great so far. I'm even keeping up in tech with my surrounding neighbours, where I went into the Middle Ages in 750BC. I'm confident I wont need the Great Library to hold up in tech compared to AI. I'll keep you up as I'm going along!
The grafics of modern 4x games are absolutely abominable. I am glad you mentioned the extra-icons that the civ 5 provides to be able to read that superfluous map. I sometimes played civ 5 just on the strategic map, which has beautiful icons for everything. The actual game map could very well be removed from the game without any loss to the gamplay.
Strategic mode is a significant improvement but it's admitting defeat and overcorrecting. Civ 3 shows you can actually have a unit on the map, you don't to turn it into a circle with a bow and arrow logo. The resource icons in Civ 5 and 6 are beautiful, better than the Civ 3 icons maybe. Why not actually integrate them into the map?
@@suedeciviii7142 I absolutely agree with you! Glad im not the only one who notices such things! Good example is also Colonization. Every unit and every terrain type explains itself perfectly!
I started playing Civ 3 because I found it to be the least addicting entry and it's really focused on the core gameplay. It's still addicting, but there are so many bells and whistles in the newer games that I can't pull myself away and that ruins my day.
It's still reasonably addictive but nowhere near Civ 6. That's not necessarily good, but it certainly has a different feel to it I think what matters isn't "how hard is it to put down". What matters is how excited I am to pick it up
@@suedeciviii7142 I owned Civ 3 when it came out, but I preferred 2 at the time and then I got into 4. So I never really gave Civ 3 a fair shake til a couple months ago and it's such a fun and challenging entry, and has just a hint of nostalgia for me.
I agree 100% to the chess thing, when I first started playing civ V, I had a not so good pc, so I played in strategic mode, which is a simplified view. Later, when I had a good pc, I got tired of the normal graphics very soon and switched back to strategic view anyway. I like to know what I'm looking at at a first glance
You forgot that units still have different values for attack or defense. This make the strategy much more interesting that just having one value for all. You construct differents units if you need to protect or if you need to conquer a city or attack other units
Chess has more strategic depth than Civ3? Actually chess has lots of tactical complexity but strategy is based on one goal: checkmate the enemy king. Yes there are positional considerations, but in the end if you don't have the proper visualization, calculation, memorization (gotta know them opening variations and basic endings) and pattern recognition ability you ain't gonna be no expert, let alone Master and beyond. Tactics have been said to be 99% of chess; more realistically as GM Nicolas Huschenbeth puts it: "Tactics are the foundation of everything else." And one might add they are practically unique to chess, having little or no similarity to war or anything else. OTOH with especially Civ3 and 4 IMO a player has various plausible ways to win, while terrain, combat, worker actions, production, diplomacy and other aspects of the game give him or her a feeling of actually navigating a culture through history. There are other games that do that, or try to, but few have been so enduring. While Civ3 may not exactly be humanity's greatest achievement it certainly ranks up there as an honorable mention.
Went back to Civ 3 earlier this year after probably a decade away. I was surprised at how great it still was. There was a lot to get used to (I actually had to read the civilopedia every turn for a while), but it's a really tight game. I think the base game is a bit long, but diplomacy was more useful than in 5 and 6 and combat was just fuzzy enough to be challenging. I'll definitely look into some mods, and I do recommend the game for anyone who's a fan of the franchise. Oh and also: the point about representing things rather than being things was great; I hadn't thought about it before and Civ 3 doesn't have the readability issues if its successors
I agree about the base game being long. If you play a lot, I strongly recommend diplomatic victories as a quick and consistent way to wrap up a winning game.
I've been playing this game from 19 years old till today and i am 42 !! I just cant stop so i couldnt agree with you more. Civ 3 and medieval total war 2 are my addiction..
Really good video. I relate to your love of Civ 3 as I am pretty much the same way with Civ 4. Makes me want to get better at it so I can make some videos about it in this similar style
The first time I tried playing Civ III, I installed it on my parents' outdated Packard Bell. It took 15-20 minutes to start up. My first turn, I patiently waited the ring to show up around the warrior's feet, and I sent him to the northeast. Five more minutes of waiting as the computer's fan screamed and the hard drive crackled, before he finally faced the right direction, and walked there in slow motion. It was glorious.
Hi I'm the creator of the Spearman vs. Tank animation, circa 2005. How the heck do you know about it?? I can't believe I'm seeing it in a 2024 video! So cool!!!
Thanks so much for making it! I've played Civ 3 since release, so I read plenty of CFC back in the day. 2000's forum emojis were great, and our culture is worse without them.
Since I discovered this channel, I played Civ III again after too many years. It's and amazing game, and hold up extremely well even today, better than I remembered. I would love to see your take on armies, as I find them very useful. In a recent long game with the Ottomans (huge map, continents, 14 civs, Monarch), I managed to win (a Histograph victory) after being about five or six tech behind. With two armies of infantry, some Sipahi and a lot of artillery, I was able to conquer all the IA capitals to prevent them from winning the space race. Since I have never been a very skillful player, this was my greatest achievement so far. Thanks for your videos!
Congrats on the win! The game is fun at all levels of play, and people who get good too quickly might miss out on fun tactics and play patterns that only exist on lower levels :)
Suede I love and hate your channel. I love that you are still making content for a 23-year-old game with such passion and devotion. I hate how much you make me want to play Civ III and ignore every responsibility I have. Now talking about the point of the video, I agree with you, mostly. I have played a lot of IV, V and VI but I keep returning to III because the game loop is just fun. VI is just too easy when you know what you are doing and kind of goofy with some of the options. I feel like the devs were afraid that we would lose interest if there were no OP strategies. That's why I like V the most after III. Sure, there's only one strategy that's viable most of the time, 4 cities tradition-rationalism, but the game is hard so you need to minmax at the best of your abilities. The problem is that after playing it a couple times it gets old withouth mods. Can't really talk about IV because I only played it with mods. The things I disagree are about trading techs and the doomstack-based combat in III. Trading techs is tedious and the logic behind it can be sort of deceptive when you don't know everything about the game. For example, how much a tech costs is not obviously clear.The doomstack system is OK but combat in V and VI is just so much better and more strategic. I feel like the hexagons and the one unit per tile are the best changes the series have experienced so is kind of hard to go back. Still, III is the best from the series. But as everyone else here I'm biased because it was my entry to the series.
I will agree that in single player, 1 unit per tile is an issue. But in multiplayer, it's balanced so that people don't stack their units, even though they're technically allowed to, which is S tier IMO
I literally got this game on a whim back in the early 2000s from a flee-market i attended with me mum. I got for $5 back then. I dont have the original CD anymore from that time but it definitely captured me so well that Its still my favorite 4x game
When you mention a child could mod Civ 3: can confirm, I did. I feel Civ 4 made modding less accessible but still powerful, and the greater mechanical breadth of Civ 4 (with civics and religion, etc.) made resulted in mods that are flat-out better than full released games of the years since. There are very few fantasy games half as good as Fall From Heaven 2.
Civ 4 is still in the same spiritual vein as 3, 2, and 1. 1: Stacks of doom are still in Civ 4 (They are countered with collateral damage though) 2: Rapid expansion is still highly rewarded in Civ 4 (also in Civ 6, but that's another story) 3: Combat can still be quite random in Civ 4 as well (One of the games more frustrating pitfalls) 4: In 4 cities have to be placed at least 2 tiles away (In 5 and 6 they must be placed 3 tiles away) The Civ you're thinking of that really changed the spirit of the game is Civ 5 and made it really stupid 1: You can't stack units together (not even a worker and settler can share a tile) 2: Expanding is punished SEVERELY where if you create one city it splits your happiness resources dramatically and still makes tech and cultural policies more expensive. On top of that it makes creating national wonders more difficult. 3: Combat is much more predictable for individual attacks, but annoyingly difficult to form up your troops or advance in a strategic manner. 4: Cities must be at least 3 tiles away (I don't really hate this mechanic though)
Once I get my new PC I can't wait to give Civ 4 deity a good run. Yeah mechanically Civ 4 is quite closer to Civ 3, just with extra features. Great people I like, religion I didn't. Just in terms of visuals, Civ 4 was a big switch. But they did take efforts in Civ 4 to tackle all the perceived problems with Civ 3 that I mentioned.
I'd love to see a video of you playing a standard Civ 3 game whilst sticking with the official strategy guide from Prima to determine if it's a good guide or not
Thank you Suade for this wonderful video, so in depth, cool to listen to, laugh, and the classy outro joke 😂 looking forwards to hearing ant thoughts about civ 7
I spent so much time on the daimyo and cruzade scenarios, i remeber even learning the game to the point of maxing the dificulty and reading so much on the civilopedia entries
One thing you might mention is player-created maps. Once I found a massive map of the Mediterranean region, started up with my Roman settler, and ... oh my. I may just have to rhapsodize. ;D
Speaking as a Civ 6 and 5 enjoyer, Civ 5 absolutely has a good modding scene, and Civ 6 has plenty of mods you can see with just a peek at Ursa Ryan's channel, especially unique leaders and civs. I love your videos and I'm absolutely interested in trying Civ 3 sometime
I played A LOT of civ3 during the pandemic (civ3 + a good podcast is a great combination), but eventually tried to make the move to civ4. I quickly went back to civ3 though, mainly because the geography of the map felt much more varied and consequential in civ3. I can still vividly remember the geographical features of civ3 maps I played years ago (and what podcast I was listening to at the time interestingly), whereas all my civ 4 games seemed to take place on a map constisting of two big ovals. And the cheapness of terraforming, and the even and generous distribution of luxuries and food resources, resulted in games that were comfortable but quite unmemorable.
Hey Suede, I'm enjoying these new videos. Couldn't agree more about the presentation; I'm so tired of modern strategy/management games either attempting realistic graphics or going cartoony. If it's a strategy game, I want a strategic view of things!
I grew out of 4X games, is what Idve said 10 years ago, now it's more like you can remove the 4X. But what I always preferred in Civ3 o ver 4 is that it feels way more like planning and managing a civilization rather than constantly optimizing an archipelago of cities and planning new public latrines for every one of them. What great man of history did that?
Civ3: Forever by Firaxis revamp with a ton of new mechanics, eliminating exploits, subtle updates and balancing recalcs (+ color schemes and slight graphic changes to make it feel new) by Popular Demand ✊✊🏿✊🏻
My only problem with Civ 3 is a recurring problem I had coming in from Master of Orion 2: Production Placeholders and Swapping. That is, putting something expensive into a production queue that I have no intention of actually building just so I can hot-swap it for something else that I currently can't build down the line, at the most opportune time I can as dictated by circumstance. (border pressure, military exchanges, and especially available tech) I likened that mechanic to Wavedashing from Super Smash Brothers Melee: It's an otherwise benign game mechanic that was warped into doing something radically different from what it was intended to, all while enabling players to leverage it for advantage. And yes, I know a number of people who love that sort of thing, because it creates skill expression in the metagame, despite the internal moon-logic within the normal game. However, abusing placeholders always felt like I was cheating my way around poor decision making, or mitigating/negating the intended opportunity costs for a number of big risk items (mainly Wonders, but a lot of things in general). It's this odd sleight of hand with the game mechanics that bluntly contradicts what players are taught to do in the core gameplay loop, and it's something that only shows up specifically in 4X games from that era (the mid-1990s through the early 2000s). It's something you can't get away with in any other strategy game either. If in Starcraft 1 for example, let's say I'm playing Zerg. I start building a bunch of Hydralisks in blind anticipation of my Protoss opponent deploying a Zealot swarm. But when they show up at my base with Shuttle-Drop Reavers, I should not be allowed to last-second swap all those Hydralisks to Mutalisks (the correct unit I should have been building all this time). I should in fact, be punished for not scouting my opponent like a good player is supposed to. But in Civ 3 (and Master of Orion 2), that is not only possible, but expected and normal play. Or at least, it was way back in the early 2000s when i was still actively playing those games. So for all the complaints about Civ 4's mechanical bloat and the "style over substance" direction the series took from that point onward, it did at least correctly address this issue well enough for my tastes...even if it did kinda feel like a "two steps forward, one step back" sort of ordeal going forward.
Hot take. Being able to production swap freely is a huge quality of life boon. You're right that it removes some tradeoffs and strategic decision making, but Civ 3 is not all "reactive". You definitely need to lock nd predict in other elements of the game, like teching. I will say that as a streamer, sometimes it's annoying, because like, I'm building something but I'm not really building it? Especially with the wartime mode interactions, it makes the game harder to parse for viewers.
@@suedeciviii7142 I had a laugh at that. Not because of anything you said being "wrong" or such; I largely agree with all of it. But because back when these games were still new and relevant, my version was the hot take, while yours was the popular opinion. What an ass-backward world we live in now. First, I acknowledge everything you say there, freely, in the same way I acknowledge how Wavedashing wasn't as strict detriment to SSB:Melee...or to be accurate, it garnered many more adopters than it did detractors. (at the time, anyway. Obviously that design philosophy changed at some point for Civilization as it did Smash Bros.) All the same...I got tired of getting completely owned and ridiculed for "bad play" over tech the game doesn't tell you about (because it wasn't supposed to exist in the first place). Even after I learned the tech, it never sat right with me for reasons I already explained. (too reactive, and makes no internal sense.) So I quit Civ 3 entirely for other games, and did quite well in those. So...Live and let live. But Civ 4 will always be the superior game in the series for me, even if I do miss a lot of the "Goldilocks zone" brilliance in its design.
@@atmosdwagon4656 I think Civ 4 figured out the "sensible" approach which is that you can freely switch, and the shields will stay banked towards the thing in question. I think this is the best option only if there's a reliable way to hurry production on things you need in a hurry
@@suedeciviii7142 It was sensible in that they actually explained it as an intended game mechanic and that it didn't have an ass-backwards sleight of hand exploit to it. Funny thing that; making the rules of the game clear and consistent for everyone involved. As for the rush mechanics...given what followed after launch (especially the Religion mechanics added in the first DLC, IIRC), it was the right call in my opinion. I had a lot of fun trying (and succeeding) with all of the various specialized strategies in Civ 4, albeit, only after a fair amount of arm twisting by close friends to get me to play it.
Akthually, I can tell all these things in Civ 5. The icons just make everything less ambiguous and clearer, removing a significant mental overhead. For instance, if you have plain, farm and river, what is the tile yield? Well it depends on tech, but plain is 1 food and one shield, farm adds 1 food, and river will add another food with Civil Service for the total of 3 food one shield. So you can do this small math every single time your are checking your yields, planning city, or deciding which tiles to improve, or you can turn on these fucking icons and the game will do the math for you. I do it in Alpha Centauri as well. IMHO, you find visual clarity in Civ 3 compared to other civs because you have 10k hours in it. Civ 3 is the only mainline civ game I never played (1, 2 for long time, 4, 5, and 6) and IMO graphically it looks very messy to me. I can't tell if the green are normal forests, jungles, or have some special improvements, since they look slightly different, but still sameish green blobs (e.g., at 7:21). Equally, there are a lot of icons and I cannot even begin to guess what they might be doing.
I avoided 6 until this year out of aversion to childish aesthetics, and I've enjoyed 5 visually for years but kept missing the freedom to play wide. For all I care, 4 is so bad that it doesn't even exist to me. To this day, nothing in the Civilization experience has ever come close to the joy I experienced decades ago stacking loads of Roman Legions around Carthage, only to be welcomed by wave after wave of war elephants defending their capital in what seemed like the battle of the one thousand turns. Nothing has ever been more satisfying than painstakingly planning every detail that led to the fall of Carthage in Civ3. Everything said in this video is the absolute, indisputable truth. _Carthago delenda fucking est_ bro.
I had a very dim view of Civilization Revolution, but two years ago I played the DS port of it and was actually impressed by what it had to offer. Was it particularly challenging? No. Did it offer deep strategic options? Not compared to others. Was it balanced? Not really. But: It was fun! You can just sit down and have fun building your own little empire. It flows really nicely and focuses on bonuses for the player rather than penalties. The thing I realized about Civ: Rev though, is that it's actually the truest sequel of Civ1. It's the second Civ game directed by Sid Meier himself, and as I've learned from reading his writings, he's never been a hardcore strategy gamer. Civ only ended up like that sort of accidentally, as a result of it being mechanically an empire-builder. But Sid had only really intended to make a strategy/roleplay game where you would "Feel like a King".
This video is very Civ 3 pilled. I can't imagine the reality where Suede bought Rome Total War Instead of Rome 2. In that reality I might be watching the TH-cam channel 'Suede RTW' now.
I’m still working on two scenarios using editor without mods and only conquest art. Prophesy of Pendor (Mount and Blade) - 90% complete Ultima 7 - 50% complete I have found that with good gameplay design the editor can actually help create some very fun games to play. If anyone wants to beta test these scenarios please let me know!
One mechanic I really liked in Civ 3 was that citizens had an ethnicity. Which is to say, if the Zulu conquered a Russian city, that city would mostly consist of Russian citizens: of course they'd be angry if you continued your war with Russia and want to rejoin their empire. But also, if that city was part of the Zulu empire for a thousand years, those citizens would mostly think of themselves as Zulus and maybe even resist any Russian attempt to retake the city. I think subsequent games tried to streamline things. The loyalty mechanic from Civ 6 is, in a sense, doing the same sort of work, but it just feels less interesting and it doesn't really make sense intuitively (I mean, it's not like Alaska is on the verge of an independence movement that will eventually lead them to joining Canada). A game of civ still tells an epic story, and there are certain details that, while maybe not necessary from a gameplay perspective, add to that story's narrative.
The ethnicity system is great! I wish there were more ways to interact with it. Like, policies in the late game that would allow you to encourage or restrict immigration. Brain drain, ethnic conflict, population decline in nations without immigration, irredentism, religious persuction leading to emmigration. There are so many cool ways it could interact with the systems of later civ games, it's a shame they just tossed it out!
I recently did a full run of all civ games, from emulated civ1, ps2 civ2, etc. Civ 3 is insanely hard. The AI stops you even on like the third difficulty lol. Meanwhile Civ Rev and the newest civ are a relative cakewalk of diety
Great summary, that intro with D3 an RTW2 really hit home for me 😂. I’ve probably spent half my 10K hours on the Double your Pleasure and RaR mods. Any thoughts on them, have you ever made a video of them?
Personally, I prefer quick games and smaller maps, so they're not my cup of tea. But they're also exactly what I mean when I say criticism of Civ 3 focusing on the content is missing the point. The content is whatever I want it to be (using mods). The presentation is everything
You make a very good case. In this video you can clearly see how the appearance of foreign leaders is a great instant reminder of how advanced their civs are. Civ 2 did this in a different way in the diplomacy screen (the weaponry they present to you changes) but this is a real selling point for me. I also like that you can choose Feudalism as a government, even if it is pretty terrible. Some nations -- incl. the Polish-Lithuanian "commonwealth" -- did actually have that for centuries. This is a really small thing but I also like how SDI Defense was changed from Civ 2 to 3. Instead of a building enabled by the Laser tech that magically protects a city and its radius from nuclear attack and doubles unit defense against conventional missiles, it is a Small Wonder that only works 75% of the time and requires you to maintain 5 SAM batteries. It's nice to see Ronald Reagan's wet dreams downgraded in importance.
When should you ever split up units in civ 3? I feel like some limited stacking would be ideal. No doom stacks but also no pain in the ass micromanaging your units into position.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Civ 5 with Vox Populi mod, it manages to re-create that feeling of always having something cool to work towards and really gives lots of interesting decisions. I have zero interest in Civ 6 (and 7), and 4 was a total flop. But 3 is and was quite excellent; I still have a set of five Civ 3 T-Shirts that my grandad picked up for 50 cents each in a clearance. :D
@@QuantumtestGaming (shrug) Whatever floats your boat. I was never a fan of unit stacking tbh. Basegame Civ 5 was meh also, I agree, but mods helped make it great.
*And* the modern era music is the best in the series :v Fascinating to hear such a passionate defence for probably the Civ game (other than 1) that I've probably thought least about since I stopped playing it. Well, other than that modern era music, anyway...
YES bring back simplicity and elegance to our games. Civ6 has too many notifications, mechanics, things to pursue very turn, i just get so tired playing it. Recently played Guild Wars 1 and 2. The simplicity of 1 is an absolute vibe. 2 just overwhelms the player with flashiness and stuff to do and doesn't let the player breathe. Wish our games would let us breathe and explore!
Probably. I mean I do like the 3d addition after it, but it also means: Multi-units that I don't like as much and that one has to wait for our AI age to properly begin to mod it even. Civ3 was so moddable(and amateurs with alot of heart and incentive where of the biggest contributors to those mods) and probably has still the largest modding community of all civ games and even more moddable today. Plus cause there isn't so much focus on grafics(which are still so beautiful all things considering however) the focus is kept on the actual part of the game. I mean if you don't think that planet busting is a nice thing to do to yourself(imminent death) and your planet(destroy all life on nearly all the planet surface for years or completelly turning it to dust particles). SMAC should be a perfect example as to what you DON'T want to do to your planet(and thus a completelly different game to Civ iterations) if that planet is all you have(and even if it wasn't all we have). Btw, it is one of the major factors that I'm still using and getting DAZ and Poser software to this day(ofcourse now I'm also using alot of the other apps as well), I got the major hook on it back then.
My steam store is so similar, I travel back and forth between civ 3 and aoe2 maybe a little stardew here and there because I loved harvest moon so much. I try some new games but always end up back on civ three. I have!! to keep those pesky Celt’s off of the iron ore at all costs.
Get Away with you!
The English Inventing Gravity - AND testing it and keeping in calibrated for the rest of the Planet (Even the French!) with an annual blood sacifice to a antediluvian cheese god in the mysterical land that is... Gloucestershire.
Makes Civ 3 look like some little game you run on one of those mechnical difference engines. They will never catch on. Dwile Flonking is a superior game anyhow.
It's nice to know we agree on both tea and our favourite civ game
father remembered us
It is indeed wonderful. However, it should be pronounced cha.
I've been waiting for Firaxis to create an elegant heir to Civ3 and they keep creating cluttered visually heavy renditions of civ 4
Civ and Civ4 are closer than Civ4 is to the later games.
I've been trying to get into other Civ games, and the kind of visual clarity you get in CivIII is unmatched. I like how the ages transition, the general aesthetic of the land and the ambience when music is turned off. Very romantic, in a way.
Civ 4 is fantastic yeah. A proper heir to Civ 3 would be too close to Civ 3 to justify its own existence as a commercial product. If you want "Civ 3 2" we have to make it ourselves.
@@cuzon550 That's what I've been saying! :D
The designs in Civ III were so brilliantly simple and straightforward that you could zoom WAY out on the map and still see what everything is (this unit is an Archer and that one's a Longbowman, this land is a Forest and that one's a Jungle, this land has Gold and that one has Iron)
But Civ 4 and up put so much subtle nuance into all of the designs that you have to zoom in real close to see the distinctions :( When you can only see such a tiny glimpse of the map at a time, it doesn't feel like a strategic game where you're controlling an entire empire - it feels like a tactical game where you're only controlling one unit at a time.
@@Simpson17866 Civ4 looks too cartoonish, childish, overloaded with details, just visual mess overall tbh. I was so disappointed the day i bought and launched it so i returned to lovely old civ3 and never tried later games of civs series.
The visual clarity of Civ 3 is definitely something I've grown to appreciate so much because it tends to be lacking in modern games as a whole - not just the Civ franchise. You're absolutely right about it being refreshing! Civ 6 is a fantastic game, but the visual clarity is a mess. By the late game, it's hard to tell what's going on at a glance amidst the jumbled mess of districts, improvements, and wonders. Civ 5 is worse than 3 in this regard too, but I also appreciate how much clearer that game is than 6 when I go back and play it.
Another point that wasn't addressed in this video: the added flavor from the little details on leader scenes is such a nice feature that I wish was expanded upon in later games. Watching the leaders change outfits depending on the era and address you with rich, customized quips is such a charming feature that I wish stuck in the later games. Leader scenes peaked in Civ 5 with the fully detailed throne rooms and outstanding voice acting, and Civ 6 completely dropped the ball in my opinion. 6 lacks both the charming quips of 3 and the stunning environments of 5. Sure, there's a little variety in what the leaders actually say, but they still lack the personality that the other games had. Many times, they just stand silently with an expression while a default line is listed on the screen.
Suede, I cannot thank you enough for being the voice of Civ III on TH-cam. I've been waiting for someone like you to come around and articulate what the rest of us have been thinking. I started playing Civ III when I was a kid and haven't stopped since. It truly has some of the best UI and reply I've ever experiences in a RTS. I really thought it was nostalgia, but year after year, I keep coming back. Civ III is really special and I'm glad you're continuing the legacy with your unbelievable dedication to the game, from masterful strategies to tier lists, Suede thank you!
One thing especially good about Civ 3 is its epic feeling of world wars. I could experience world super powers fight each other with very large armies and great strategies. Those wars actually lived in my memory. Since CIV 4, because either number of cities are limited, or the size of the armies is reduced (due to one hex one unit rule), I could never find the same feeling about epic wars, let alone remembering them for many years.
my mom bought my older brother and me the complete edition of this game in the mid-2000s and I used to play it a ton. it'll forever be my favorite strategy game. kinda wanting to get back into it
Go for it, you won't regret it.
Yeah do it, the game is only like $5 on steam, less if it is on sale.
You're on the perfect channel for it too, I had the exact same thing happen from watching vids on here! Haha
It's funny how a lot of us have the same memories. I remember staying up all night playing it as a kid, and I'm about to spend $4.99 on the complete edition.
I love modern strategy games for going to new depths and advancing accessibility, but there's something about the elegant simplicity of 2000's games like Civ 3, Red Alert 2, AoE2, and Empire Earth that really helps distinguish them from today.
It is amazing how many people Civ 5 and 6 were able to drive towards this incredible franchise. I'm critical of certain elements of newer games but they are SUCH a blessing for fans of Civ 3.
AoE2 and Empire Earth were hardly "elegantly simple".
Just look at all the hidden attack bonuses in AoE2 that are not written anywhere. All you got was "Good against X" in description, and that was sometimes wrong.
The same applies to Empire Earth, game about a huge number of bonuses you build your civilization with, a large number of "ages" you ploug true is not simple.
Tetris, Arkanoid, etc. might be elegantly simple. Especially nowadays you have indies some indie games that, due to limited resources and need to come with a formula, go for the elegant simplicity you are praising.
@@colombodoesstuff7653 I think simplicity is relative. Civ 3 is certainly a complex game, but the city screen comparison with Civ 6 gets the point across. A lot of the tabs in the Civ 6 city screen are for systems that just don't exist in civ 3.
But yes, with RTS' specifically, I don't think there's the same creeping increases in complexity. SC2 was in many ways toned down from Brood War
(in case it needs to be said, complexity is not inherently good or bad)
@@colombodoesstuff7653 Nah, you're right on that front. I'm talking more on the graphical level, there's something very endearing about the sprites and lowpoly models!
@@jbeast33sconniepyro Ah then, but we have word for that, stylization. And yes, the games did very well, the units are often differentiateble at glance according to a few details. There was quite a lot of work put in Age of Empires to have e.g., every single building being recognizable as a "mill" even for different civilizations and different ages.
Suede using the bongcloud as his chess screenshot is hilarious
Meme strats being that visually striking and having their own names is exactly what I'm talking about. Chess is iconic
@@suedeciviii7142 Chess 2 will come out one day, people will hate on it for centuries, but a millennium later people will swear that it is where the series peaked & was never matched by Chess 3, 4 & 5. Just wait & you'll see!
This will be a wild comment, but when I couldn't yet read English (was like 7-8 years old) I used to think that the Dyes icon was 'Punch' as in that Drink they always showed in American TV shows.
I used to think spices were a little bridge
Playing it since 2003. I think it has many layers of strategic depth to it.
Thanks for your strategy articles years ago drakan! If you ever took an interest in a succession game, a COTM game, or something over at the HoF, I believe people would welcome you.
@@Spoonwood Thank you Spoonwood, that's very kind of you. I'm glad you enjoyed reading them!
Recently I've retaken activity back at CFC; looking forward to Civ VIIs launch.
Kind regards
I play Civ 3 daily. Whenever I find 30 minutes to spare I load up a random tiny map with archipelago setup and I try to break personal record of exterminating 4 civs in 15 minutes in Warlord mode.
Hey Suede Im now at 430BC (the end part of your 2nd vid) on the non-exploit Sid difficulty Iroquois map you did a few months ago. Only difference is I'm playing as the Celts. I've just conquered all Mongol territory, settling new cities there and doing great so far. I'm even keeping up in tech with my surrounding neighbours, where I went into the Middle Ages in 750BC. I'm confident I wont need the Great Library to hold up in tech compared to AI. I'll keep you up as I'm going along!
Nice! Get your artillery stack going!
The grafics of modern 4x games are absolutely abominable. I am glad you mentioned the extra-icons that the civ 5 provides to be able to read that superfluous map. I sometimes played civ 5 just on the strategic map, which has beautiful icons for everything. The actual game map could very well be removed from the game without any loss to the gamplay.
Strategic mode is a significant improvement but it's admitting defeat and overcorrecting. Civ 3 shows you can actually have a unit on the map, you don't to turn it into a circle with a bow and arrow logo. The resource icons in Civ 5 and 6 are beautiful, better than the Civ 3 icons maybe. Why not actually integrate them into the map?
@@suedeciviii7142 I absolutely agree with you! Glad im not the only one who notices such things! Good example is also Colonization. Every unit and every terrain type explains itself perfectly!
If you find/replace civ3 with SMAC everywhere in your script, I would agree 100%.
The title is "Humanity's" greatest achievement. Genejacks and cyborgs are not humans. We must dissent
Not gonna lie, I love me some SMAC! Between it and Civ 3, it's a toss-up on whether I want "resistance is feudal" or "we must dissent" on a given day.
I started playing Civ 3 because I found it to be the least addicting entry and it's really focused on the core gameplay. It's still addicting, but there are so many bells and whistles in the newer games that I can't pull myself away and that ruins my day.
It's still reasonably addictive but nowhere near Civ 6. That's not necessarily good, but it certainly has a different feel to it
I think what matters isn't "how hard is it to put down". What matters is how excited I am to pick it up
@@suedeciviii7142 I owned Civ 3 when it came out, but I preferred 2 at the time and then I got into 4. So I never really gave Civ 3 a fair shake til a couple months ago and it's such a fun and challenging entry, and has just a hint of nostalgia for me.
I agree 100% to the chess thing, when I first started playing civ V, I had a not so good pc, so I played in strategic mode, which is a simplified view. Later, when I had a good pc, I got tired of the normal graphics very soon and switched back to strategic view anyway. I like to know what I'm looking at at a first glance
You forgot that units still have different values for attack or defense. This make the strategy much more interesting that just having one value for all. You construct differents units if you need to protect or if you need to conquer a city or attack other units
Chess has more strategic depth than Civ3? Actually chess has lots of tactical complexity but strategy is based on one goal: checkmate the enemy king. Yes there are positional considerations, but in the end if you don't have the proper visualization, calculation, memorization (gotta know them opening variations and basic endings) and pattern recognition ability you ain't gonna be no expert, let alone Master and beyond. Tactics have been said to be 99% of chess; more realistically as GM Nicolas Huschenbeth puts it: "Tactics are the foundation of everything else." And one might add they are practically unique to chess, having little or no similarity to war or anything else.
OTOH with especially Civ3 and 4 IMO a player has various plausible ways to win, while terrain, combat, worker actions, production, diplomacy and other aspects of the game give him or her a feeling of actually navigating a culture through history. There are other games that do that, or try to, but few have been so enduring. While Civ3 may not exactly be humanity's greatest achievement it certainly ranks up there as an honorable mention.
I feel the same way. If i were to play only one game for the rest of my life, it would be Civ 3
That's what I always say: Civ3 is like a big and complex chess game!
Civ 3 is the pinnacle of human technology.
Went back to Civ 3 earlier this year after probably a decade away.
I was surprised at how great it still was. There was a lot to get used to (I actually had to read the civilopedia every turn for a while), but it's a really tight game. I think the base game is a bit long, but diplomacy was more useful than in 5 and 6 and combat was just fuzzy enough to be challenging.
I'll definitely look into some mods, and I do recommend the game for anyone who's a fan of the franchise.
Oh and also: the point about representing things rather than being things was great; I hadn't thought about it before and Civ 3 doesn't have the readability issues if its successors
I agree about the base game being long. If you play a lot, I strongly recommend diplomatic victories as a quick and consistent way to wrap up a winning game.
I've been playing this game from 19 years old till today and i am 42 !!
I just cant stop so i couldnt agree with you more.
Civ 3 and medieval total war 2 are my addiction..
The middle era total wars games (and mods for them) kicked ass
Flintlock's Civ3X mod/hack gave new life to Civ3. Combined with Civinator's CCM mod this is an absolute heaven to play.
I'm excited for the new mods that will use its features!
well done, finally I got someone who speaks about CIV 3, I played it so many times just the whole series, keep the good work, thanks for uploading
civ 3 is visually so clean
for me, Alpha Centauri will always be the best in the series. It has most of the advantages of early civ games and some unique features
10:41 Pshaw, airdropping settlers is nothing compared to curraghs that can irrigate. And 0 corruption! ❤
Really good video. I relate to your love of Civ 3 as I am pretty much the same way with Civ 4. Makes me want to get better at it so I can make some videos about it in this similar style
Finally, someone else who recognizes that civ3 is peak civ.
The first time I tried playing Civ III, I installed it on my parents' outdated Packard Bell. It took 15-20 minutes to start up. My first turn, I patiently waited the ring to show up around the warrior's feet, and I sent him to the northeast. Five more minutes of waiting as the computer's fan screamed and the hard drive crackled, before he finally faced the right direction, and walked there in slow motion. It was glorious.
Hi I'm the creator of the Spearman vs. Tank animation, circa 2005. How the heck do you know about it?? I can't believe I'm seeing it in a 2024 video! So cool!!!
Thanks so much for making it! I've played Civ 3 since release, so I read plenty of CFC back in the day. 2000's forum emojis were great, and our culture is worse without them.
@@suedeciviii7142 " 2000's forum emojis were great, and our culture is worse without them."
This is a controversial opinion but it is correct.
How many happy faces does the Civ 3 wonder generate?
Plenty. But it decreases production by 25%
Since I discovered this channel, I played Civ III again after too many years. It's and amazing game, and hold up extremely well even today, better than I remembered. I would love to see your take on armies, as I find them very useful. In a recent long game with the Ottomans (huge map, continents, 14 civs, Monarch), I managed to win (a Histograph victory) after being about five or six tech behind. With two armies of infantry, some Sipahi and a lot of artillery, I was able to conquer all the IA capitals to prevent them from winning the space race. Since I have never been a very skillful player, this was my greatest achievement so far. Thanks for your videos!
Congrats on the win! The game is fun at all levels of play, and people who get good too quickly might miss out on fun tactics and play patterns that only exist on lower levels :)
Suede I love and hate your channel. I love that you are still making content for a 23-year-old game with such passion and devotion. I hate how much you make me want to play Civ III and ignore every responsibility I have.
Now talking about the point of the video, I agree with you, mostly. I have played a lot of IV, V and VI but I keep returning to III because the game loop is just fun. VI is just too easy when you know what you are doing and kind of goofy with some of the options. I feel like the devs were afraid that we would lose interest if there were no OP strategies. That's why I like V the most after III. Sure, there's only one strategy that's viable most of the time, 4 cities tradition-rationalism, but the game is hard so you need to minmax at the best of your abilities. The problem is that after playing it a couple times it gets old withouth mods. Can't really talk about IV because I only played it with mods.
The things I disagree are about trading techs and the doomstack-based combat in III. Trading techs is tedious and the logic behind it can be sort of deceptive when you don't know everything about the game. For example, how much a tech costs is not obviously clear.The doomstack system is OK but combat in V and VI is just so much better and more strategic. I feel like the hexagons and the one unit per tile are the best changes the series have experienced so is kind of hard to go back. Still, III is the best from the series. But as everyone else here I'm biased because it was my entry to the series.
I will agree that in single player, 1 unit per tile is an issue. But in multiplayer, it's balanced so that people don't stack their units, even though they're technically allowed to, which is S tier IMO
I literally got this game on a whim back in the early 2000s from a flee-market i attended with me mum. I got for $5 back then. I dont have the original CD anymore from that time but it definitely captured me so well that Its still my favorite 4x game
Played this game when i was a kid, rebought it because of your channel and i 100% agree. Love this game
Man, I miss Civ 3 and didn't think anyone else liked this game.
This video literally made me download it.
The steam version has some bugs. If that's the version you get, check out this video
th-cam.com/video/Y6qzO_bh-2U/w-d-xo.html
When you mention a child could mod Civ 3: can confirm, I did.
I feel Civ 4 made modding less accessible but still powerful, and the greater mechanical breadth of Civ 4 (with civics and religion, etc.) made resulted in mods that are flat-out better than full released games of the years since. There are very few fantasy games half as good as Fall From Heaven 2.
nah your number of hours just says you're a command pilot. I celebrate your work You're awesome
Suede you are unhinged and addicted to Civ 3. And I'm all in for it!
10k hours is crazy but thats why hes the goat
You have unwittingly kicked off the Civ 3 renaissance.
This was my first 4x game and absolutely hooked me on the series. I still think civ 3 and civ 4 were the best entries. Thank you for this video.
Civ 4 is still in the same spiritual vein as 3, 2, and 1.
1: Stacks of doom are still in Civ 4 (They are countered with collateral damage though)
2: Rapid expansion is still highly rewarded in Civ 4 (also in Civ 6, but that's another story)
3: Combat can still be quite random in Civ 4 as well (One of the games more frustrating pitfalls)
4: In 4 cities have to be placed at least 2 tiles away (In 5 and 6 they must be placed 3 tiles away)
The Civ you're thinking of that really changed the spirit of the game is Civ 5 and made it really stupid
1: You can't stack units together (not even a worker and settler can share a tile)
2: Expanding is punished SEVERELY where if you create one city it splits your happiness resources dramatically and still makes tech and cultural policies more expensive. On top of that it makes creating national wonders more difficult.
3: Combat is much more predictable for individual attacks, but annoyingly difficult to form up your troops or advance in a strategic manner.
4: Cities must be at least 3 tiles away (I don't really hate this mechanic though)
Once I get my new PC I can't wait to give Civ 4 deity a good run.
Yeah mechanically Civ 4 is quite closer to Civ 3, just with extra features. Great people I like, religion I didn't. Just in terms of visuals, Civ 4 was a big switch. But they did take efforts in Civ 4 to tackle all the perceived problems with Civ 3 that I mentioned.
I'd love to see a video of you playing a standard Civ 3 game whilst sticking with the official strategy guide from Prima to determine if it's a good guide or not
Thank you Suade for this wonderful video, so in depth, cool to listen to, laugh, and the classy outro joke 😂 looking forwards to hearing ant thoughts about civ 7
You are so welcome!
I spent so much time on the daimyo and cruzade scenarios, i remeber even learning the game to the point of maxing the dificulty and reading so much on the civilopedia entries
One thing you might mention is player-created maps. Once I found a massive map of the Mediterranean region, started up with my Roman settler, and ... oh my. I may just have to rhapsodize. ;D
All games have cool maps, but Civ 3 is the easiest to mod!
Speaking as a Civ 6 and 5 enjoyer, Civ 5 absolutely has a good modding scene, and Civ 6 has plenty of mods you can see with just a peek at Ursa Ryan's channel, especially unique leaders and civs. I love your videos and I'm absolutely interested in trying Civ 3 sometime
There are many stragedy games but this one is mine.
I played A LOT of civ3 during the pandemic (civ3 + a good podcast is a great combination), but eventually tried to make the move to civ4. I quickly went back to civ3 though, mainly because the geography of the map felt much more varied and consequential in civ3. I can still vividly remember the geographical features of civ3 maps I played years ago (and what podcast I was listening to at the time interestingly), whereas all my civ 4 games seemed to take place on a map constisting of two big ovals. And the cheapness of terraforming, and the even and generous distribution of luxuries and food resources, resulted in games that were comfortable but quite unmemorable.
Civ 4 and 6 continents maps are also. But those games do have some cool templates. I like shuffle in Civ 6
Civ 1 was excellent... as a language learning tool. As a game, oh boy, was it aggravating.
I love when people send me save files in foreign languages, and the word for "warrior" is like 25 characters long
Hey Suede, I'm enjoying these new videos. Couldn't agree more about the presentation; I'm so tired of modern strategy/management games either attempting realistic graphics or going cartoony. If it's a strategy game, I want a strategic view of things!
longtime AOE2 player. Still love getting into a game of CIV3 now and again because it has the same je ne sais quoi
blessed video, got me to install CIV 3 again. I have like 500 hours and clearly those are rookie numbers.
If you want something fresh, play the Conquest scenarios (if you haven't already)
I grew out of 4X games, is what Idve said 10 years ago, now it's more like you can remove the 4X.
But what I always preferred in Civ3 o ver 4 is that it feels way more like planning and managing a civilization rather than constantly optimizing an archipelago of cities and planning new public latrines for every one of them. What great man of history did that?
I am delighted to hear that you have the right opinion!
Civ3: Forever by Firaxis revamp with a ton of new mechanics, eliminating exploits, subtle updates and balancing recalcs (+ color schemes and slight graphic changes to make it feel new) by Popular Demand ✊✊🏿✊🏻
I fully concur sir, the civ3 is the greatest. Aaaaand its sooo good to hear someone else say so after so many years
Honestly still one of my favourite games of all time. I still go back to it.
My only problem with Civ 3 is a recurring problem I had coming in from Master of Orion 2: Production Placeholders and Swapping.
That is, putting something expensive into a production queue that I have no intention of actually building just so I can hot-swap it for something else that I currently can't build down the line, at the most opportune time I can as dictated by circumstance. (border pressure, military exchanges, and especially available tech)
I likened that mechanic to Wavedashing from Super Smash Brothers Melee: It's an otherwise benign game mechanic that was warped into doing something radically different from what it was intended to, all while enabling players to leverage it for advantage. And yes, I know a number of people who love that sort of thing, because it creates skill expression in the metagame, despite the internal moon-logic within the normal game.
However, abusing placeholders always felt like I was cheating my way around poor decision making, or mitigating/negating the intended opportunity costs for a number of big risk items (mainly Wonders, but a lot of things in general). It's this odd sleight of hand with the game mechanics that bluntly contradicts what players are taught to do in the core gameplay loop, and it's something that only shows up specifically in 4X games from that era (the mid-1990s through the early 2000s).
It's something you can't get away with in any other strategy game either.
If in Starcraft 1 for example, let's say I'm playing Zerg. I start building a bunch of Hydralisks in blind anticipation of my Protoss opponent deploying a Zealot swarm. But when they show up at my base with Shuttle-Drop Reavers, I should not be allowed to last-second swap all those Hydralisks to Mutalisks (the correct unit I should have been building all this time). I should in fact, be punished for not scouting my opponent like a good player is supposed to.
But in Civ 3 (and Master of Orion 2), that is not only possible, but expected and normal play. Or at least, it was way back in the early 2000s when i was still actively playing those games.
So for all the complaints about Civ 4's mechanical bloat and the "style over substance" direction the series took from that point onward, it did at least correctly address this issue well enough for my tastes...even if it did kinda feel like a "two steps forward, one step back" sort of ordeal going forward.
Hot take. Being able to production swap freely is a huge quality of life boon. You're right that it removes some tradeoffs and strategic decision making, but Civ 3 is not all "reactive". You definitely need to lock nd predict in other elements of the game, like teching.
I will say that as a streamer, sometimes it's annoying, because like, I'm building something but I'm not really building it? Especially with the wartime mode interactions, it makes the game harder to parse for viewers.
@@suedeciviii7142 I had a laugh at that. Not because of anything you said being "wrong" or such; I largely agree with all of it. But because back when these games were still new and relevant, my version was the hot take, while yours was the popular opinion.
What an ass-backward world we live in now.
First, I acknowledge everything you say there, freely, in the same way I acknowledge how Wavedashing wasn't as strict detriment to SSB:Melee...or to be accurate, it garnered many more adopters than it did detractors. (at the time, anyway. Obviously that design philosophy changed at some point for Civilization as it did Smash Bros.)
All the same...I got tired of getting completely owned and ridiculed for "bad play" over tech the game doesn't tell you about (because it wasn't supposed to exist in the first place).
Even after I learned the tech, it never sat right with me for reasons I already explained. (too reactive, and makes no internal sense.)
So I quit Civ 3 entirely for other games, and did quite well in those.
So...Live and let live. But Civ 4 will always be the superior game in the series for me, even if I do miss a lot of the "Goldilocks zone" brilliance in its design.
@@atmosdwagon4656 I think Civ 4 figured out the "sensible" approach which is that you can freely switch, and the shields will stay banked towards the thing in question. I think this is the best option only if there's a reliable way to hurry production on things you need in a hurry
@@suedeciviii7142 It was sensible in that they actually explained it as an intended game mechanic and that it didn't have an ass-backwards sleight of hand exploit to it.
Funny thing that; making the rules of the game clear and consistent for everyone involved.
As for the rush mechanics...given what followed after launch (especially the Religion mechanics added in the first DLC, IIRC), it was the right call in my opinion.
I had a lot of fun trying (and succeeding) with all of the various specialized strategies in Civ 4, albeit, only after a fair amount of arm twisting by close friends to get me to play it.
These are objective facts.
Akthually, I can tell all these things in Civ 5. The icons just make everything less ambiguous and clearer, removing a significant mental overhead.
For instance, if you have plain, farm and river, what is the tile yield? Well it depends on tech, but plain is 1 food and one shield, farm adds 1 food, and river will add another food with Civil Service for the total of 3 food one shield. So you can do this small math every single time your are checking your yields, planning city, or deciding which tiles to improve, or you can turn on these fucking icons and the game will do the math for you.
I do it in Alpha Centauri as well.
IMHO, you find visual clarity in Civ 3 compared to other civs because you have 10k hours in it. Civ 3 is the only mainline civ game I never played (1, 2 for long time, 4, 5, and 6) and IMO graphically it looks very messy to me. I can't tell if the green are normal forests, jungles, or have some special improvements, since they look slightly different, but still sameish green blobs (e.g., at 7:21). Equally, there are a lot of icons and I cannot even begin to guess what they might be doing.
Still my favorite Civ hands down. It’s the only one I play
I avoided 6 until this year out of aversion to childish aesthetics, and I've enjoyed 5 visually for years but kept missing the freedom to play wide. For all I care, 4 is so bad that it doesn't even exist to me. To this day, nothing in the Civilization experience has ever come close to the joy I experienced decades ago stacking loads of Roman Legions around Carthage, only to be welcomed by wave after wave of war elephants defending their capital in what seemed like the battle of the one thousand turns. Nothing has ever been more satisfying than painstakingly planning every detail that led to the fall of Carthage in Civ3. Everything said in this video is the absolute, indisputable truth. _Carthago delenda fucking est_ bro.
civ 4 with civ 3 graphics would be perfect. The problem with 3 is a lot of meaningless micro with managing overflow of shields and civil disorder.
I had a very dim view of Civilization Revolution, but two years ago I played the DS port of it and was actually impressed by what it had to offer.
Was it particularly challenging? No.
Did it offer deep strategic options? Not compared to others.
Was it balanced? Not really.
But: It was fun! You can just sit down and have fun building your own little empire. It flows really nicely and focuses on bonuses for the player rather than penalties.
The thing I realized about Civ: Rev though, is that it's actually the truest sequel of Civ1. It's the second Civ game directed by Sid Meier himself, and as I've learned from reading his writings, he's never been a hardcore strategy gamer. Civ only ended up like that sort of accidentally, as a result of it being mechanically an empire-builder. But Sid had only really intended to make a strategy/roleplay game where you would "Feel like a King".
I've always played 3 and I tried playing 6 but I don't know why it doesn't hook me in like 3 does
I will play Civ 3 and 4 till the day I die
This video is very Civ 3 pilled.
I can't imagine the reality where Suede bought Rome Total War Instead of Rome 2. In that reality I might be watching the TH-cam channel 'Suede RTW' now.
I grew up playing RTW, that's why RTW2 was so disappointing
The ideal civ game you should be able to make cardboard cutouts of and play it as a board game without changing too many rules.
I’m still working on two scenarios using editor without mods and only conquest art.
Prophesy of Pendor (Mount and Blade) - 90% complete
Ultima 7 - 50% complete
I have found that with good gameplay design the editor can actually help create some very fun games to play.
If anyone wants to beta test these scenarios please let me know!
Come shill your stuff on the discord! There's a link in the description to this video
civ4 is my civ but i will concede on 2d being inherently infinitely easier to read
fantastic video. the end was hilarious. agree w/ the whole thing
At age 30 a friend gave me an old computer and s civ2 disk.
A year later civ 3 came out. Been hooked ever since!
Best Avo
The greatest achievement of the human mind is Paradise Lost by John Milton. Civ III is runner up.
Better to reign in Civ 3, than to serve in Civ 6
One mechanic I really liked in Civ 3 was that citizens had an ethnicity. Which is to say, if the Zulu conquered a Russian city, that city would mostly consist of Russian citizens: of course they'd be angry if you continued your war with Russia and want to rejoin their empire. But also, if that city was part of the Zulu empire for a thousand years, those citizens would mostly think of themselves as Zulus and maybe even resist any Russian attempt to retake the city.
I think subsequent games tried to streamline things. The loyalty mechanic from Civ 6 is, in a sense, doing the same sort of work, but it just feels less interesting and it doesn't really make sense intuitively (I mean, it's not like Alaska is on the verge of an independence movement that will eventually lead them to joining Canada). A game of civ still tells an epic story, and there are certain details that, while maybe not necessary from a gameplay perspective, add to that story's narrative.
The ethnicity system is great! I wish there were more ways to interact with it. Like, policies in the late game that would allow you to encourage or restrict immigration. Brain drain, ethnic conflict, population decline in nations without immigration, irredentism, religious persuction leading to emmigration. There are so many cool ways it could interact with the systems of later civ games, it's a shame they just tossed it out!
Even if the game sucked, ancient Lincoln in a fur hat makes me happy
I recently did a full run of all civ games, from emulated civ1, ps2 civ2, etc.
Civ 3 is insanely hard. The AI stops you even on like the third difficulty lol.
Meanwhile Civ Rev and the newest civ are a relative cakewalk of diety
I've played this game for hundreds of hours. Best civ game by far. I grew up on this game. Got it back in the day for 10 bucks from Walmart.
Civ 3 is the best thing to happen to humanity and you are the best thing to happen to Civ 3 Suade ❤
I love playing Civ3
Great summary, that intro with D3 an RTW2 really hit home for me 😂.
I’ve probably spent half my 10K hours on the Double your Pleasure and RaR mods. Any thoughts on them, have you ever made a video of them?
Personally, I prefer quick games and smaller maps, so they're not my cup of tea. But they're also exactly what I mean when I say criticism of Civ 3 focusing on the content is missing the point. The content is whatever I want it to be (using mods). The presentation is everything
This is how I feel about factorio, although its rather new relative to civ 3
Wonder how hard it would be to get Civ III (and IV) lead designer Soren Johnson on the channel to talk Civ.
Soren is an absolute legends, but he has said a lot of things critical about Civ 3 over the years. Maybe one day, though
You make a very good case. In this video you can clearly see how the appearance of foreign leaders is a great instant reminder of how advanced their civs are. Civ 2 did this in a different way in the diplomacy screen (the weaponry they present to you changes) but this is a real selling point for me. I also like that you can choose Feudalism as a government, even if it is pretty terrible. Some nations -- incl. the Polish-Lithuanian "commonwealth" -- did actually have that for centuries.
This is a really small thing but I also like how SDI Defense was changed from Civ 2 to 3. Instead of a building enabled by the Laser tech that magically protects a city and its radius from nuclear attack and doubles unit defense against conventional missiles, it is a Small Wonder that only works 75% of the time and requires you to maintain 5 SAM batteries. It's nice to see Ronald Reagan's wet dreams downgraded in importance.
I hit "like" as soon as you mentioned Civ 3's flaws. That tells me you've a balanced perspective.
Maybe if it was a slightly less imperfect game, I could keep my head in the sand. But no, I love it despite its issues.
Gosh you actually wrote this quite well, i laughed at the conclusion a lot
The game that makes People do better homework essays than school
Thanks! I had something sincere to say, but I knew I had to try to make it funny because a lot of this is preaching to the converted
When should you ever split up units in civ 3?
I feel like some limited stacking would be ideal. No doom stacks but also no pain in the ass micromanaging your units into position.
Personally, I'm a big fan of Civ 5 with Vox Populi mod, it manages to re-create that feeling of always having something cool to work towards and really gives lots of interesting decisions.
I have zero interest in Civ 6 (and 7), and 4 was a total flop.
But 3 is and was quite excellent; I still have a set of five Civ 3 T-Shirts that my grandad picked up for 50 cents each in a clearance. :D
civ 5 is garbage compared to 4
@@QuantumtestGaming (shrug) Whatever floats your boat. I was never a fan of unit stacking tbh. Basegame Civ 5 was meh also, I agree, but mods helped make it great.
Preach king
*And* the modern era music is the best in the series :v
Fascinating to hear such a passionate defence for probably the Civ game (other than 1) that I've probably thought least about since I stopped playing it. Well, other than that modern era music, anyway...
YES bring back simplicity and elegance to our games. Civ6 has too many notifications, mechanics, things to pursue very turn, i just get so tired playing it.
Recently played Guild Wars 1 and 2. The simplicity of 1 is an absolute vibe. 2 just overwhelms the player with flashiness and stuff to do and doesn't let the player breathe.
Wish our games would let us breathe and explore!
Probably. I mean I do like the 3d addition after it, but it also means: Multi-units that I don't like as much and that one has to wait for our AI age to properly begin to mod it even. Civ3 was so moddable(and amateurs with alot of heart and incentive where of the biggest contributors to those mods) and probably has still the largest modding community of all civ games and even more moddable today. Plus cause there isn't so much focus on grafics(which are still so beautiful all things considering however) the focus is kept on the actual part of the game. I mean if you don't think that planet busting is a nice thing to do to yourself(imminent death) and your planet(destroy all life on nearly all the planet surface for years or completelly turning it to dust particles).
SMAC should be a perfect example as to what you DON'T want to do to your planet(and thus a completelly different game to Civ iterations) if that planet is all you have(and even if it wasn't all we have). Btw, it is one of the major factors that I'm still using and getting DAZ and Poser software to this day(ofcourse now I'm also using alot of the other apps as well), I got the major hook on it back then.
Thanks for the reminder to do laundry.
Wasn't expecting that British Empire burn😂
Stacks of doom are still in Civ 4 my guy. People just need to lean to use collateral damage to counter it.
My steam store is so similar, I travel back and forth between civ 3 and aoe2 maybe a little stardew here and there because I loved harvest moon so much. I try some new games but always end up back on civ three. I have!! to keep those pesky Celt’s off of the iron ore at all costs.