I bought Civ3 Complete last week and was playing around with it (I really suck, I make fat loots, but suck as far as millitary might) then I realized Civ4 is out, as well as two expansions... is there a marked improvement in Civ4? Can anyone tell me if it is better, apart from graphically? I like the Civ3 experience, but do like the idea of a bit more polish and some better control, if it is available.
Well how is 3 a cheating bastard Scruff? I noticed some shit that doesn't seem quite right once in a while, like an enemy attacking me completely without provocation after I've been nothing but nice and then managing to actually allign one of my well established allies against me... Is that kind of stuff what you mean?
Unless they are interfering with my growth, I usually just leave them be, but if they are becoming obnoxious, you can right click the unit to contact their ruler and send them off with threats of violence. Of course, I generally allow rights of passage to my neighbors, because my lands usually swallow up their colonies and they have no way to get to them, and then eventually the colonies are assimilatedafter seeing how great we are.
Having played both I'll go on record saying Civ4 is a refinement of Civ3. There are a few things I liked better about Civ3, but Civ4 is a much better game in my opinion.
Civ III is fun. A tip: expansionist civs are awesome. You can make up for some of the other attributes by simply building a ton of cities. And culture. Don't underestimate the value of it, even if you have cultural victory off. One more tip: when you're 1 turn away from a civilization advance, crank the science funding way down to boost the treasury, but still have the advance done in one turn. Or go for two turns and a ton of gold, if you're sufficiently far ahead. Then once you complete the advance, crank up the science again, to the point where you have a deficit. Rince, repeat.
That is kind of where I am at right now in the scenario I'm playing. Germans, against 5 other nations on biggest map type, with Archipelago 80% water, wet climate, roaming barbs, 4 mil earth life, on Chieftan. I've got about 3.5k gold in stores and am well beyond the other civs technologically and culturally. I've built all but the hanging gardens thus far (the frickin dutch stole that one) and any time a city is started on the borders of my civ area it is swallowed in a few turns. I think it is only about 1500 or so AD.
I used to play the original MOO. Very addictive and, if you do some digging, you can find it on the internets for free.
Civ 4 is much better, and corrects many of the imbalances in Civ 3, most notably the fact that rapid expansion was always the way to go, and whoever expanded the fastest would usually win the game. I also highly recommend the Beyond the Sword expansion.
Personally, I can't go back to playing plain Civ4 after BtS because there's so much missing. The ability to create vassals and colony states is a huge addition to the game, and the Tech tree has been modified so as to remove some of the imbalances - Cavalry and a couple of things which were completely overpowered in Civ4 are now harder to get or have less effect. There's also a far better UN system (you can violate resolutions!), corporations and espionage. It's at the point where it pretty realistically reflects real world geopolitics.
