How Civ 3 Makes Me Miss the Golden Age of Gaming…
I picked up Civ 3 a couple of months ago at Big Lots for something like $6. I don’t know if Big Lots is a national chain, but I’m a huge fan, and if there’s one near you, I’d definitely suggest checking it out. It’s just a close-out store, but I’ve picked up a number of great things there, for crazy cheap. Last month, they had a bunch of award winning foreign flicks for $2.00 each. Awesome.
Anyway, I picked up Civ 3 because I’d heard about how great the Civ series is, but I’d never had a chance to play one. I knew it was a turn based world conquering type game. The impression I got was that it was a bit like a turn based Empire Earth- a Master of Orion set in history instead of space. So far, that seems to be the case. Mostly.
The problem is this: The game doesn’t come with instructions. I don’t know if it never came with instructions or if I just got some weird version that lacked instructions, but I’ve actually noticed this more and more with computer games. What is it about PC gaming that the manufacturers seem to be less and less inclined to include an instruction manual outside of the installation instructions?
I understand that a lot of it probably has to do with the manufacturing costs, but… damn. I can’t be the only person who really misses those early days of PC gaming when you’d get a box filled to the brim with goodies. You’d get some great freebies with the old Infocom games. You’d open up the package and find that it had not only the installation instructions and gameplay instructions, but a map, maybe some trading cards, a magazine from the world of the game, or a keychain, or some letters from the characters.
I remember how nice some of the Sierra instruction manuals were, too. I think it was Kings Quest 4 or 5- the one where you have to escape from a wizard- that had recipes for the spells written in the back of it. And all of them were printed in nice matching manuals. The game they made around the legend of King Arthur had an awesome map of the world at the time that I absolutely adored.
Anyway, I was a little annoyed that the I didn’t have a manual or a unit chart to look at as I was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. I tried the tutorial, but, honestly, it wasn’t particularly helpful. It took me two hours to realize what the point of the workers were- I didn’t understand what the point of building mines and irrigating were, at first, or that I could make workers join a city to increase the population. Thanks, Civ.
A review of Civ will follow, once I’ve had more time to explore the game. So far, it seems promising, although I’m a little annoyed by the combat aspect, right now. Combat takes place one unit at a time, and it looks like there’s no way to choose who will defend against a particular attack. So, when I had six pikeman (who, the game claims, are particularly effective against mounted units) and an archer on one square, and a knight (mounted unit) attacked, I was more than a little annoyed when the game decided that my archer would be the defender.
Still, there seems to be a lot of depth to the game, and I strongly suspect that my bumbling attempts at empire building will be much improved on my second play.
July 30th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I only ever played the first Civilization. My husband has played all 4. He liked Civ 4 a lot, and it definitely came with a fairly thick manual.
I think he likes the Civ games for exactly the reason you were annoyed by the combat: the game doesn’t require extreme micro-management. This is why he doesn’t play StarCraft, according to his own words.
I have a feeling that the makers of Civilization purposely created it to play on a macro level.
The beginning of any Civilization game is the best part for me. I enjoy creating as opposed to management. And I like the excitement of not knowing what’s going to happen, whereas later in the game I usually feel too entrenched in past mistakes.
July 30th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
See, I don’t want to actually have to micromanage the combat- but I find it annoying that the game doesn’t automatically pick the best unit for a given fight. If I’m the defender, my units should have that benefit. If I’ve got pikeman, they should automatically step up against mounted units. Particularly since the game makes a big deal about what great defensive units the pikeman are. I definitely don’t want it to try to be like Starcraft- I just want it to make smart choices. I’d much rather be able to focus my attention on the building and developing aspects, although I’m still feeling my way through them. I only played for a couple of hours, so that probably is part of it.
August 5th, 2007 at 2:16 am
I had this problem with Civ 2. I don’t know if all Civ 2 boxes came without the manual but mine did, I suspect because it was being sold as a “classic”, supposedly meaning only rock-dwellers wouldn’t know how to play. It was really fun and even funny learning how to play, especially as until then the most complex game I’d ever played was Crash Bandicoot. My first game I took ten minutes to realise what was happening on screen, who I was controlling and HOW I was controlling them. My second game I thought I was doing well until I met with the closest opposing power, who was using tanks while I was still sold on catapults. The only useful thing I did before being splattered was mob one tank.
August 5th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Manuals, or the lack thereof……
When I first started playing video games and using computer applications, I remember having to read the instruction manuals to……
January 12th, 2009 at 2:11 am
So when is starcraft 2 coming out anyway. Any mention of starcraft ruffles my feathers, I hate late games…Sweet blog though, keep it up!