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Microfish_1: Civilization 3
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Darvond: As for Civ 3, that's more on the money. I feel like a lot of people skipped it.
I did not. Serious love for Civilization here. The thing about Civ3 was that it stood between two great titles. Civ 2 was a much expected update that even made it into the pages of mainstream media such as Time magazine, back in the nineties. That was a feat. Then, Civ 4 is still viewed by many as the best title in the series. So, yes, a great title, it offered more civilizations and leaders (loved the Persians), but civ4 with all the expansions was at another level. Also civ4 looks nice still, while civ3 requires a little tinkering to lok good on modern displays.
CIV 3 was the best in the series, except perhaps 1. I know I spent over 1000 hours in one year alone in that game, and it was my main game for possibly 2-4 years.

I did get a lot of modded scenarios, but I usually played 3 or so 300+ hour games every year for 3 or more years. In all fairness, I started with Civ 3 Gold.

In contrast, I hated Civ 4. So many ways it turned me off. The graphics looked silly in comparison (especially with those vastly hilariously out-of-scale units) and --as far as I know--they did away with the palace view. I disliked the move from 3x3 grids (perfect for the numpad!!) to the more modern hex-grid,. I disliked their iteration of religions. I hated the removal of the Stack of Doom. I really disliked the Unit-Veteran system in Civ 4. I dislike the modern city sprawl (instead of Civ 1-3's city).

Literally the only real improvements were: The Real-Life clock with alarm feature and native widescreen support.

Colonization 2 was alright, I guess, but the whole thing left a rotten taste in my mouth after Civ 3.

I didn't play much of civ 2; we didn't get it until after we no longer had an XP.

And yes, I own Civ Complete 3 & Civ 4 Complete. I still have them installed, and I still dig out Civ 3 or Dos Civ when i want to play Civ. I own 3-6 on steam/gog. I don't play much of 6 at all, and haven't touched 4 or 5 in years.

As far as Among Us, the community that I was in playing AU games sorta died out, and the change such that (as i understand it) text communication is now limited to pre-made phrases shuts out those of use who don't have--or won't use-- a microphone.
Post edited December 08, 2022 by Microfish_1
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Microfish_1: -snip-
1) Hold it right there, are you gonna root and toot about Civ 3 while SMAC is in the room?

2) Sorry, what? You're definitely describing the wrong game. You meant Civ V. Civ IV still used the classic grid.
Suppose I am glad I got to experience GOG before it turned to shteam 2.

And the gaming industry before it turned to overcommercialised shite.
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Microfish_1: CIV 3 was the best in the series, except perhaps 1. I know I spent over 1000 hours in one year alone in that game, and it was my main game for possibly 2-4 years.

I did get a lot of modded scenarios, but I usually played 3 or so 300+ hour games every year for 3 or more years. In all fairness, I started with Civ 3 Gold.

In contrast, I hated Civ 4. So many ways it turned me off. The graphics looked silly in comparison (especially with those vastly hilariously out-of-scale units) and --as far as I know--they did away with the palace view. I disliked the move from 3x3 grids (perfect for the numpad!!) to the more modern hex-grid,. I disliked their iteration of religions. I hated the removal of the Stack of Doom. I really disliked the Unit-Veteran system in Civ 4. I dislike the modern city sprawl (instead of Civ 1-3's city).
A lot of what you mentioned as downsides here didn't disappear in Civ 4, but in Civ 5. Which is why I hated that version. Civ 4, however, I always found to be fantastic. So much deeper and more complex than whatever the hell they threw together for Civ 5. The franchise ended then in my view. It's a different thing now, not easily compared with what came before. Should have started a new series instead, since they wanted to toss out almost everything that made Civ 4 (or the series) great.
Post edited December 08, 2022 by Pangaea666
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Darvond: Hold it right there, are you gonna root and toot about Civ 3 while SMAC is in the room?
Alpha Centauri is no longer allowed to compete in "best Civ game ever", due to having set the bar so high that it has been keeping the trophy for more than twenty years in a row. So as of right now it is kindly asked of Alpha Centauri to be content with their "best video game ever" trophy and let the other Civilization games have some chance in being best of something too.
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Darvond: 1) Hold it right there, are you gonna root and toot about Civ 3 while SMAC is in the room?

2) Sorry, what? You're definitely describing the wrong game. You meant Civ V. Civ IV still used the classic grid.
nah, i mean the one bundled with colonization. maybe I'm wrong about the grid, but it was Civ 4--the first with a clock, Col 2, etc

And I have SMAC but the graphics are so shoddy i couldn't get into it in 2018 when i bought it here. Also the stupid scrolling text bugged me to pieces. I tend to speed-read and waiting for the computer's text to scroll in was terrible.

And yeah, I tried Civ 4 repeatedly. that's the one with religion, the Russian scenario, Col 2, etc. Col 2 was the only iteration of Civ 4 I sort-of liked--because it was so different.
Civ 4 had a much smaller max grid than 3, as well.

Civ 3 - Huge - Total Space: 25,600 tiles

Civ 4 - Huge - Total Space: 6,000 tiles

Civ 5 - Huge - Total Space: 10,240 tiles

Civ 6 - Huge - Total Space: 6,996 tiles
https://old.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/mprtmj/map_sizes_from_civ_3_civ_6/

this is the grid i liked: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Square-grid-Civilization-IV-7_fig2_267405818

I didn't like choosing civics. I hated having to choose if my archers or spearmen would be in the front row because no 2 units could occupy the same space.
Compared In civ 3 i was a mostly cav/panzer/MI military and used them as mobile unrest-quellers. At least one war with China I had 3x3 grid -- stacked 50 deep on each--of panzers. And then dropped a ICBN on them to see what would happen. About half survived iirc.
Post edited December 08, 2022 by Microfish_1
I still have fond memories of receiving Nintendo Power in the mail and looking at what new guides they included and trying to find the games at the rental store.
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Microfish_1: I didn't like choosing civics. I hated having to choose if my archers or spearmen would be in the front row because no 2 units could occupy the same space.
Yes, that was Civilization V. Civilization IV did not have any of that. What it had was lots of official scenarios and mods. Also people made lots more.


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Microfish_1: Compared In civ 3 i was a mostly cav/panzer/MI military and used them as mobile unrest-quellers.
That is how I started playing in the original Civilization. Good times :)
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Amclass: I still have fond memories of receiving Nintendo Power in the mail and looking at what new guides they included and trying to find the games at the rental store.
IIRC they mentioned the magazine in the documentary series High Score. Most likely you already watched it. If not, give it a try, you might enjoy it.
Post edited December 11, 2022 by Carradice
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Darvond: come join us on the Linux side. You can uninstall the Bootloader. (Well, you can.)

As for MacOS Gaming: I make no guarantees that APple won't do what Apple has done and make some arbitrary cutoff, again.
How about VCR games? :p
Thanks! I will, pretty soon with a no-return ticket: The latest windows versions are not bearable anymore
Probably is me being over optimistic, but I think those sukers have trained me enough during the last decade:
-To dig down more than needed to solve elemental things...
-To find workarounds/replacements
-At last resort: Resign myself to live with junk

What really worries me about Linux are the file systems: How truly compatible, robust, repairable
and popular_in_terms_of_recovery_programs_available are

About VCR games: Unfortunately I was a very late VCR adopter
Where those vgames good? Please share some experiences



Some additions to the topic:

-The original Arcade vgamers: When joy/dextery could be measured in available coins in the pocket

#The physical era:
-Lend/Borrow handheld vgame consoles (80s/90s cheap up to gameboy included)
-Artboxes, covers, manuals, guides, paper posters, paper magazines
-Lend/Borrow/Rent floppies/cartdridges/CDs(DVDs not much) vgames
(prince of persia, gorilla.bas, battle chess, arkanoid, Keen, Super Off Road, Maniac Mansion, Mega Man, frogger)
-Shareware on CDs
-Make your portable vgames when possible (Starcraft, Mahjongg, Tetris, The Incredible Machine, plus others trimmed lyrically just by T&E)

Some are history, while others mutated/evolved. Nice memories on all of them win easily the also existing bad ones
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Amclass: I still have fond memories of receiving Nintendo Power in the mail and looking at what new guides they included and trying to find the games at the rental store.
Oooh, this is a good one. Except for me, it was likely hitting up the local CGX store.
I don't know if this really qualifies as a "gaming niche" or "subculture", however I'll talk about it for the sake of reminiscing old times, if anything (please be patient with this old chap...)
Back in mid-80s, Italian newsstands used to sell, for very little, a wide range of periodicals coming with a cassette containing a fair number of games for 8-bit machines such as the C64 or the Spectrum, including some that were sold in shops at full price!
As per my understanding, this was possible thanks to a loophole in Italian legislation of the time. Back then, videogames were still mainly viewed as toys for small children, and the law was lagging behind in acknowledging this new medium. Basically, all you had to do was change something in the original program, like the title screen, and you could pass it as a new, original creation, not subjected to copyright. Something like that.
That's why literally dozens of such publications sprang up like mushrooms, knowing there were easy money to be made and a limited time-window before the loophole was closed (well, it actually went on for a relatively long time, until the early 90s).
They simply needed to make a memory dump of the original game, change the title screen and translate all texts into Italian by touching the code in the right places with a monitor, and save the result to tape. The loading screen could be the original one (altered, if need be), or a new one, taken from another game or drawn from scratch (or it could be missing entirely). The new titles were sometimes hilarious: bad translations of the originals or, more often, bizarre creations in Italian or a fanciful faux-English.
As for the games, it was anything goes. They went from top quality (I remember Armalyte, Creatures, Retrograde, New Zealand Story, Cabal, for example) to the cream of the crap (so many SEUCK shooters, made by who-knows-who), with everything in between. Multi-load games were often presented as episodes, one level at a time, or the levels were simply scattered between different issues, with different titles, as they were different games in their own right (perhaps with a fake congratulatory message at the end).
The magazines usually featured brief instructions for each game, which most of the times bore little relation to it and were entirely the fruit of the imagination of some guy in some office. They were seldom useful; basically, you had to figure things out for yourself (which wasn't always easy, to be honest). The better productions were in full-colour, with drawings and photos, and even featured professional game reviews, probably translated from Zzap! and other
similar sources, without permission. But many were simply black text on white paper. They were sold in cheap blister packaging or plastic bags.
I don't know if this was just an Italian phenomenon, however I do not recall ever reading about something similar happening elsewhere. There are a number of websites devoted to the subject; they are a real labour of love for their thoroughness and the wealth of stuff available, including all scans and tape images. I won't link them, though, for fear this would go against the forum guidelines regarding copyrighted material. I will just post a picture of an issue of Special Program, probably the most successful and well-remembered of those periodicals, so you can revel in the garish 80s graphics (and the charming intro screen).
Attachments:
80.jpg (393 Kb)