Civ III Conquests

[Orin]

Would anyone else be interested in starting up a Civ III Conquests Play By Email game?

Most of you should know the game Civilization by Sid Mieir - start of as a stone age settler, take over the world as you develop technology, build other cities, encounter other civilizations and so on.

Civ III, released in 2002, is the latest incarnation of the popular game (Civ was released in 1992, then came Civ II, Civ A Call to Power, Civ A Call to Power II and then Civ III). Last year an expansion, known as "Conquests" added multiplayer capacity. It also included all the stuff that was released in another expansion called "Play the World".

In a Play by Email game, you load up the game you've just been sent, make your move, save, and then send on to the next person. Each move might take only 5 minutes (or even less time), though it may take several days for everyone to complete their move.

A PBEM game like this may take many months to complete.

Anyway - I thought it might be fun to have a TA Civ III Conquests game. It would require you owning the game Civilization III and the Conquests expansion (there is a Civ III gold, but you'd need the conquests expansion for that as well). In november I think they may be releasing Civilization III complete edition, which would include the expansion - but this hasn't been confirmed.

As these games have been around a while, they wouldn't be too expensive to purchase. You don't need a rocking machine to play them. I played Civ III on a PIII 500 for a while back in 2002 with no problems.

At a minimum we'd need two players. The maximum number would be eight.

Anyone interested?

[Slider451]

Great idea. I own Civ III and Conquests, and would be interested.

I sank many hours into the original Civilization and consider it one of the best games of all time. Played Civ II and III to a lesser extent. Bought Conquests hoping to play it with a local friend, but never got it off the ground. So I actually haven't played the expansion at all, even though I've owned it for months.

We'd have to agree on startup rules, and perhaps play through the first few rounds quickly to make sure nobody got screwed on their startup location (e.g. in the middle of a mountain range surrounded by A.I. opponents.). But those details can be worked out later.

[Holdstrong]

I'd be game

Civ III really devastated my social life for a solid month, but I think the play by email would force me take a breather between moves.

Sounds fun.

Quick question - do time limits on moves still apply if you play by email? Like, load up the game, get 1 minute to make move, save game, send......

or

load up game, make your move on your own time, save game, send.

Just curious.

[Orin]

Okay some thoughts

Conquests must be patched to 1.22 (the latest)

We can turn the Turn Timer Off.

We could play a first game on

Small World
Barbarians: Roaming
Land Mass: Continents
Water Coverage: 60%
Climate: Normal
Temperature: Temperate
Age: 4 Billion
Difficulty: Regent

As this would be a first game - what about no AI opponents. That way we shouldn't have a problem with crappy starting positions.

We can allow all victory conditions:

Domination, Space Race, Diplomatic, Conquest and Cultural

[Orin]

Test of uploading a game as an attachment.

[Orin]

hmm - that didn't work. Guess we will have to use email. I can upload - but can't find any way to download the attachment.

Okay Holdstrong - we will start when you have the conquests expansion.

If anyone else wants to join in - now is the time. Otherwise we could probably start a second game a month or so after the first one starts and play concurrently.

[Orin]

I'll also need to know what Civs you intend to play to set up the game.

I'm going to play Maya.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3/cia/index.shtml

Has details about all of the possible Civs once Conquests has been installed.

[Holdstrong]

I've gotta grab the expansion - hopefully today.

Lutes, where are you.... you have to play. I have dreamt of the day when I could rumble into your country and force your vile citizens to eat Grape Nuts for breakfast and give part of their paychecks away to the less fortunate.

The more the merrier? My roomate used to play civ with me... he has never visisted TA and prolly hasnt a foggy clue or a care about any of the topics we discuss here.... but he may play a mean Greece.

[marklutes]

I haven't played Civilization for at least a decade, and that was obviously just the original one. I'd be a sitting duck for you world conquerors. Besides, it's too weird for me to think of you as a commanding dictator bent on world domination. I always picture you as a cross between Yogi Bear and the Dalai Lama. Less about wanting to take over the world and more about wanting to give the world a big hug that will magically solve all it's problems.

(for the non-Dave observers to this post, Dave recently emailed me saying that he suspected I looked like a cross between Neil Cavuto and Hank Hill...)

:)

[Holdstrong]

LOL - when I first read that I thought I saw Yogi Berra. Couldn't help but laugh at the idea of the Dalai Lama dropping a few Yogi'isms.

It's like reincarnation all over again.

[Orin]

Your friend can play - Slider - what Civ do you want to start with


Orin - Maya
Holdstrong's Mate - Greece


Given that there isn't really worker wages in Civ - we couldn't get Mark to do the whole socialist bit anyway (well we could force him into running a Communist Government).

[marklutes]

Originally posted by Orin
Given that there isn't really worker wages in Civ - we couldn't get Mark to do the whole socialist bit anyway (well we could force him into running a Communist Government). Man, I'd be *great* at that.

[Orin]

The game Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire (by the same people, but not strictly a sequel to Civ) had "future government types" - which also restricted the types of actions you could take. If you were running a Green Government and started poluting - that would set your citiziens off on riots. Rioting cities are more likely to "culture flip" to another Civ.

Culture flip is fun in multiplayer games - basically it is one of your cities declaring that you are a crap player and joining up with one of your opponents.

[marklutes]

If you guys report on the progress of the first game here I might end up buying it and figuring it out before round two.

[Orin]

Well there is no reason why we can't eventually play 2 (or more) games at the same time - so most likely "round two" could start whenever you are ready to jump in.

anyway - all we need at the moment is Slider's Civ, Holdstrong's Civ and for Holdstrong to get Conquests - then we will start the first game.

[Slider451]

I'll be the Vikings.

[Orin]

Cool - Holdstrong, we await your purchase. And your friend's email address.

[Holdstrong]

I should be all set to go by tomorrow.

Im going with Japan

Forget my roomate - he is gone for 3 weeks starting next week and I dont want to get stuck waiting his turn... he can play next game.

[Slider451]

I also have a friend who would like to play, once he gets Conquests. Maybe the three of us (Holdstrong, Orin, and I), can start one this week, then start another with five people once the other two are ready.

I'm ready to go. My Vikings have their axes to the grindstone... :cool:

[Orin]

Jeff - the game should be in your hotmail inbox.

Go to Multiplayer
Select Play By Email
In the Game Mode dropdown, select Load Game
Click Launch

You will be asked to enter a password

Play your turn

End turn. The Save and Exit dialog will come up.

Email to Holdstrong.

Holdstrong emails to me.

Email addresses are included in the email.

[Orin]

Remember - version 1.22

[Slider451]

Dave,

Tag. You're it.

:)

[Orin]

Hurry Up Dave.

[Holdstrong]

Sent it thrice now

I'll send again when I get home over the weekend.

I also sent an email saying "hey did you get it" - possible my emails are not making it to ya?

[Orin]

Turned up.

[Slider451]

Did you e-mail it? Nothing in my box.

[Orin]

Holdstrong sent turn 4 instead of 5. Can you retransmit your most recent turn?

[Holdstrong]

My most recent turn is round 4. Round 5 hasn’t started yet.

I received Jeff's round 4, made my round 4 move, and sent it on to you.

You are the beginning of the rounds, so round 5 will not start until you take my round 4 and make your move..... thus initiating round 5.

orin rd 1
jeff rd 1
dave rd 1

orin rd 2
jeff rd 2
dave rd 2

orin rd 3
jeff rd 3
dave rd 3

orin rd 4
jeff rd 4
dave rd 4 <-- this is what you got from me

orin rd 5 <-- this is the turn you need to make


Is it not letting you use my round 4 to make your move and start round 5?

[Slider451]

That sounds right.

[marklutes]

This seems to be going well.

[Holdstrong]

Mark - you'd be even more impressed if you could see how far the game progresses in 4 rounds.

Its the pac man equivilent of turning to the left and getting ready to eat your first dot.

[Slider451]

I bought Doom3 to play while I wait. Didn't take long to have the crap scared out of me. :eek:

[marklutes]

Jeff -- what kind of hardware are you playing Doom3 on?

I've been reading the benchmark tests on Anandtech and it's caused me to not go buy the game at all yet. I have an Athlon XP 2400+ w/ 768mb and a Radeon 9000 Pro (128mb) video card. I don't think my machine can even run that game. And all the video cards that benchmarked halfway decent on Anandtech are upwards of $300. I'm not spending $300+$50 to play a game. No matter how badly I want to play it. I know my gaming rig is several generations outdated, but I didn't think it was THAT bad.

Rumor has it the Half-Life 2 requirements will be much more mainstream since Valve concentrates on story way more than polygons (and obviously Id is very polygon-centric). I'm hoping that's true.

[Slider451]

Mark, your machine should provide a very playable experience.

Minimum posted specs for Doom 3:
1.5 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor or AMD Athlon 1500,
384 MB of RAM,
2 GB of free hard drive space and
either an nVidia GeForce 3 or ATI Radeon 8500 (or better).

My machine:
P4 HT 2.6MHz, 800MHz FSB
1024MB DDR dual channel
nVidia GeForce FX 5600 Ultra 128MB

I've only put a half hour in, playing at 'Medium' video settings, 640 X 480 resolution. Frame rate is excellent, and the game looks great. I may bump it up to 'High', 800 X 600, and see how it looks/plays. The highest preset is 'Ultra', 1024 X 768, but you can manually set it to 1280 X 1024 if you can somehow aquire a card from the year 2006.

As usual for a gamer geek, it's a bit demoralizing to play at less than the top settings on any game, but I'm an old, married father now, so I'm willing to put up with a few jaggies if the gameplay is good. And the gameplay on my box is very good.

[marklutes]

Okay, I might give it a go then. Thanks for the info.

Personally I've never cared about playing on the top settings and I've been a FPS addict for years. I've never been one to play any FPS on 1024x768 or higher so I never really needed the top cards. I think the last card I bought that was incredibly expensive was my Monster2 card. Other than that I've always had great gaming experiences playing n-1 or n-2 cards. My problem now is that I too am an old married father with plenty of other expenses so I've allowed my game machine to rot to n-5 or n-6 by now.

Oh well, I've got a plan to upgrade my game machine. All I need is one winning lottery ticket and my plan will work.

[Slider451]

In my area, Target is selling Doom 3 this week for $45.82. That's where I got mine. Where did they get that price point?

Roger on the lottery. I'm going the slow route and winning my friends' money through Texas Hold 'em poker nights. Of course, then they can't afford to buy Doom 3 so I have no local friends to frag. Catch-22.

[Holdstrong]

Athlon XP 2400+ w/ 768mb and a Radeon 9000 Pro (128mb) video card

Mark - that is my exact machine - only I have 1 gig of ram - and I plan on giving it a shot sometime this week. I'll let ya know how it goes, and if you beat me to it, let me know.

[marklutes]

Originally posted by Holdstrong
Mark - that is my exact machine - only I have 1 gig of ram - and I plan on giving it a shot sometime this week. I'll let ya know how it goes, and if you beat me to it, let me know. I'll let you rich, single types give it a go first. But I'll be anxious to hear your report!

Did you read the Anandtech benchmarks? Later last week Anand put out his CPU benchmarks for it, and then he made up various configurations to build PCs that would run Doom3 for various budgets. One very interesting thing that he observed in all his testing was that the difference between 512mb, 1gb, and 2gb RAM was virtually nil. There may be a total of 1 point of difference from 512mb through 2gb on the benchmark scorecard. I keep wondering if adding more RAM to this box would extend it's life a little bit but apparently not.

[Holdstrong]

Doubling my ram to 1gig really helped with games like Star Wars Galaxies, where I was constnatly tasking in and out of the game - no doubt about that - but these new games seem to be all about pure power, especialy the vid card.

I bought doom3 last night, after some vid driver issues and install problems - I was up and able to run around a little bit and was absolutely mesmerized. It is really one hell of a good looking game and seems to run fine on my system at "medium level" and 800 x 600

I do have a radeon 9500, not a 9000 .... but I cant imagine that will account for that much of a difference. I think you'll be just fine.

so when do we play our first TA multiplayer doom game?

[marklutes]

Mark - that is my exact machine - only I have 1 gig of ram - and I plan on giving it a shot sometime this week. I'll let ya know how it goes, and if you beat me to it, let me know.Dave - Did you ever get around to trying D3? Or are you still in an NYC jail waiting for your arraignment with all the other protestors...

I just loaded it up on this machine tonight. It is playable, but not gorgeous like everyone else talks about. I'm guessing this is running on the basement-level settings for video. That's okay, at least it runs. No major video glitches so far.

Now, as for the game, I'm about 30 minutes into it and I'm about to pee my pants. Why do I wait until nighttime to play games that scare the bejeezus out of me? Holy cow. Could they have set this thing up to be any creepier? Yikes. :eek:

[EDIT: Just realized that I somehow missed Dave's post immediately above this one.]