Sunday 18 November 2001

Pic of the day: The palace picture from Civ1 is back, and better than ever! (And so is the city picture.) But is that enough to fight the Greeks and a Windows-eating bug?

Civ3, day 2

And on the second day, the Font Bug returned. The official party line is that it comes from having too many fonts installed on your computer. I had 66 in my /windows/fonts/ folder. I don't think that should confuse any software made after 1980, to be honest. So, until further notice, Font Bug is my offficial name for it.

This time, I deleted all the fonts I could delete from the Windows font folder, then played Civ3, then restored the fonts. This worked well enough, except that Windows now is convinced that I want Times New Roman as my standard font on the desktop and wherever else Windows itself shines through. I managed to compensate by choosing a setting for the slightly visually impaired. Alternatively, I guess I could re-install Windows.

Let me say, quite frankly, that I would not recommend going through this in order to install Barbie Nail Studio or some such. But this is Civ3 we're talking about. The holy grail of strategy games. If one has to sacrifice Windows, so be it! Prepare to be culturally assimilated!

***

Civilization III remained fun through the industrial era and until around 1950. By a mix of coincidence and the way the game turns are spaced out, this was technologically somewhere in the 20th century too. At this point, there had been world peace since the late middle ages, and I personally had not been at war with any other civilization ever, only barbarians.

Suddenly a group of Greek soldiers came over the border from Egypt. (Egypt lay in a half-circle between my nation and Greece.) I had no negative dealings with the Greek, but it was pretty evident that they were looking for trouble. My nation was the richest in the world by far, but also the least militarized, so perhaps they just thought they could get away with it. Given that we had no common border, it seems quite a sidestep from realism. The one thing I can say is that they seemed desperate to get hold of my workers, which were cleaning up pollution outside my big cities. The Greeks would concentrate mounted troops and run a vedge into my territory to get at the workers, which in Civ3 can be captured. And re-captured, which happened every time.

There could be no doubt that they were looking for war, entering my territory with purely military forces. Still, I used the diplomacy option of asking them to either withdraw or declare war. They declared war, the idiots. (War weariness is supposed to be noticably worse if you are the aggressor. Using this option instead of just firing at them presumably saved me a lot of trouble.)

***

Despite the cheesy way of starting a war, the realism came back with a vengeance. Everyone was involved in a web of mutual protection pacts (alliances, basically) and within a couple game years, everyone was at war with someone. Old friends declared war on one another, and some nations changed sides after the war had begun. By sheer bad luck, Egypt sided with the Greek. I think they could just as easily have been against them - half the world was.

I had recently industrialized all my cities and was building the Hoover dam, which further increases production. The situation of the Greek and Egyptians were vaguely similar to the Japanese attacking the United States in WW2. (Hint: Let sleeping giants lie.) Never underestimate the importance of a good industrial base and a strong economy. Being able to make new units faster and bring them to the war zone more quickly will decide the war. The size of the armies at the start of the war is relatively unimportant, as long as the border is not wide open.

To tweak an old saying: "War gamers study tactics, professionals logistics."

Civ3 is not a war game, but periodically it can certainly seem like it. Still, one has better keep in mind that the war is not decided during the war, but earlier when you build up your economy and your production capacity.

I am kind of disappointed that the culture rating was suddenly of no imporatance. The Greek admired our culture, but still attacked like rabid beasts. Of course, in the real world, it was the other way around: The Romans admired the Greek culture. So they annexed Greece and stole it. But not in the 20th century.

***

After 50 years of war, my people finally grew restless. (I take it this will happen much sooner on the higher levels.) The largest cities fell into disorder, and then starvation. At this point, I had doubled my military, upgraded obsolete units, and devastated the Egyptian & Greek armies. I called around to all the world leaders and offered peace. Nothing more. Evidently they had got their fill too, because they all accepted. (This did not keep them from attacking each other the next turn. Go figure.)

I have to admit that I share my "Civizen"s war weariness. It seems such an exercize in futility. Apart from destroying some roads and irrigation networks, the Greek achieved nothing. They threw all their resources into it, and got nothing back.

As for me, I got a Leader at least. When an elite unit wins a battle, there is a small chance (1/16?) that it may create a Leader. These are named after famous people from history, and are the only way to rush build a Wonder of the World. (This just seems so wrong.) More realistically, they can be used to create an army. I created an army from infantry. Very nifty, though I did not really need it. It combines the strength of all the units into one. When you stack a group of military units in Civ3, each of them fights to the death, the strongest first. But in an army, both attack and defense poins are pooled, making the army into a "super unit". The difference is subtle, but quite noticeable in combat. I'm so lucky those warmongering idiots didn't have those.

In conclusion, I like the civilized aspects of Civ3. Really liked. But the war part, while all too realistic, was not enjoyable. I guess it shouldn't be, either. But your tastes may vary.