There were two expansions, the first was Play the World, the second was Civ 3:Conquests. A lot of people preferred Conquests, although some people didn’t like the changes and stick with vanilla Civ or PTW.
What about the Panzer General series? I realize that the premise of the game is totally different from Civ, but it’s turn based and historical, so it might appeal to him.
Disciples II would be a good choice, in my opinion.
Based on my read of your dad from what you’ve said, and the fact he seems to be going right for the most intricate mainstream games he can find, Europa Universalis II would probably be the most dead on. It’s also historical and more historically accurate than Civ or any comperable titles by far (with the possible exception of the Imperialism games). This game deals with the Rennaisance and Age of Exploration. By the same company are Hearts of Iron (WWII era) and Victoria (Victorian era natch). Both of those got pretty middling reviews as I recall but have been patched up into better shape.
Coming up is Crusader Kings (middle ages era) which looks really promising to me.
I think he’d like the Combat Mission games I mentioned but 12 O’Clock High is pretty insanely complicated. He’d have to have a particular interest in the subject matter to get the most out of it.
But it does occur to me that he sounds like a prime candidate for checking out some wargames. Somebody else is probably better qualified to make suggestions on which ones to start with keeping in mind he’ll be needing turn-based or something comperable. I’d tend to recommend Sid Meyer’s Civil War Collection but I’m not sure if that’d work well for him.
If he’s only done Play the World, he’s really got to get Conquests. The scenarios change the rules and units around and are a blast. Play the World is the single piece of lead-suffused Mexican candy to Conquests’ Halloween bag full of awesome.
I’ll second the choice of Imperialism.
They aren’t quite as polished as the Civ series proper but I enjoyed Civ: Call to Power 2.
Also War! In the Age of Imperialism is a smaller title (it’s a port of a boardgame) that you can find which is fun in a beer & pretzels-y way.
The best turn based high level WW2 game I’ve played is Strategic Command. Combat Mission and it’s follow-ups (Barbarossa to Berlin, Afrika Korps) are quite good but at a totally different scale.
How about a wargame like Korsun Pocket?
Hey… one other suggestion: Kohan. It’s absolutely nothing like Civ, (it’s sort of a fantasy RTS) but it involves very little clicking, and it has a whole lot of strategic depth. In fact, it plays slow enough where it might even be considered a turn-based game.
Dunno. It’s an old game, so you could prolly pick it up real cheap. If he doesn’t like it, you’re only out like $5.
In theory, the Slitherine games (Legion, Spartan) sound perfect. They are historical and turn-based. Some people seem to have fun with it, but reviews are generally bad.
I also heard good things about the Double your pleasure mod for Civ3.
Another one nobody mentioned is Pax Romana. It also got bad reviews at release, but there have been patches and it may be better now.
I can’t believe there are so few of these games, given that Civ3 is so popular.
Bye,
Steven
Runs on XP to boot!
If he doesn’t have Civ III Conquests, that’s an absolute must. It completely “finishes” what to me was an unfinished, buggy game until Conquests came out. The scenarios alone are worth the price of entry.
Conquests is what Civ III should’ve been when it was initially released.
–Dave
Hmm? I didn’t notice any bugs or “unfinishedness” in Vanilla Civ III. I thought it was a pretty good game, actually… except that it got boring after awhile. What did you think was wrong with it?
BTW… I totally agree that Conquests made it much, much better: the additional civ traits, civs, techs, and scenarios were wonderful.
Maybe he was talking about Play the World. I would certainly include it under the umbrella of “vanilla”, since it ultimately added so little.
The initial release of Civ III was broken. The first patch included a myriad of fixes to the game. Just ask Chet. IIRC, he was slamming it day after day here at Qt3. And he was right. The game was filled with problems. It also had that horrible AI which was really only fixed in Conquests. You know, the one that cheats all the time and was a huge step backward from Alpha Centauri.
SMAC completely whupped Civ III in every way imaginable from a gameplay point of view. The problem was so many Civ fans didn’t play SMAC so they had no idea that Civ III was so completely messed up.
–Dave
That must be the problem; I only played the game with the patch, so it seemed OK to me.
As for SMAC whupping Civ III’s ass… I’ve got to agree with you. SMAC is my favorite computer game ever.
Even when the game finally worked after its initial problems, it still wasn’t right. The AI is the most egregious problem in the game that like I said, only got repaired by Conquests (and it’s still pretty bland and doesn’t necessarily play fair). They had this brilliant AI in SMAC that actually seemed like it was playing the game just like you were. Then they gave them the personalities on top of that. It was one of the best AIs in any strategy game as long as I’ve played strategy games which is probably as long as anyone around here.
Then Civ III threw all of that out the window and completely screwed it all up. To top things off, the game ran like a dog and would crash regularly. It had all kinds of gameplay problems too. I wish I could find the readmes from those early patches. They were very extensive lists of fixes.
Granted, these games are complex. Sometimes they have issues. But Civ III was clearly shifted into the market with no regard for the customer. It was a Christmas release when it came out and it was clearly sold with the cold, evil greed that grips publishers like Atari every single year.
It simply wasn’t done but to meet a deadline, they shipped it anyway. This IMO forever tarnished the reputation of Sid Meier and Firaxis. SimGolf was something I didn’t pay attention to from the start but that suffered similar problems with being unfinished on release.
It took Breakaway games to make Civ III into the game it should’ve been from the start. The original didn’t even ship with the promised multiplayer which was sold in a horribly buggy expansion pack later.
–Dave
Beat me to the punch. I was going to mention Spartan because it’s, well, a great game. It’s by far my favorite of recent turn-based strat games, and that includes Civ III. I haven’t read every review around, but the ones I have read haven’t borne out Zteven’s description of them as “generally bad.” That may be true of the earlier games in the series, which I understand were not as polished as Spartan is, but Spartan itself is one of the best computer strat games around.
Btw, if dad’s a grognard or has tendencies in that direction, point him toward War in the Pacific as well. It’s nothing like Civ of course, but it will keep him busy for a long, long time…
I find the Slitherine games missing a little something myself, but Spartan is a pretty big improvement on their other two efforts.
People have already mentioned Europa Universalis, so I’ll throw in my two cents for Crusader Kings. The latest patch has made this a truly excellent game. Not much exploring or building to do, but it is a lot of fun.
Troy
I agree that Conquests improved Civ3 a lot, but it still has bugs (submarines and barbarian behaviour are the two most notorious) which don’t look likely to be fixed and the AI is still as stupid as it ever was. Some argue that the beefing up of armies in Conquests favours the player too much as the AI rarely creates armies and when it does it doesn’t know how to use them. I can’t say I’ve noticed the AI ‘cheating’ much though apart from the usual bonuses on higher levels that are normal in in such games, which are largely negated by the AI not being able to make best use of them, even if on the highest level the bonuses are so large that it takes skillful play to level the field.
Edit: re-reading that, it sounds a bit negative, so perhaps I should add that despite the above I really enjoy the game and like the original and Civ 2, I find it to be one of the most replayable games I own.