I’ve spent the last few days working on my book and finishing up a review for CGM, so I haven’t been updating here. I notice people keep coming to read, so I feel kind of guilty every time that there isn’t anything new.<\/p>\n
What gaming I have been doing has been returning to a comfortable old friend.<\/p>\n
What is it about Civilization<\/i> that keeps me coming back? If you spend a lot of time on message boards (and I do), you would get the impression that Civ 3<\/i> was disaster of epic proportions – it has cheating AI, ridiculous resource requirements, broken diplomacy and a predictable path every game out.<\/p>\n
All of this is true, but it works anyway. The Conquests<\/i> expansion is probably one of the most remarkably excellent expansion packs in recent memory and makes a very good game nearly perfect – in spite of all the obvious criticisms.<\/p>\n
I tend to play on Warlord or Regent level – not the higher levels – because the AI cheating is less noticeable and I can enjoy the game at its best. Civ<\/i> is about the exploration and the conquest. Finding new resources, building the perfect city, making all quake before you. Though I can win on the higher levels, they are less fun – largely because the AI shuts me out of the diplomatic horse-trading. And when an entire aspect of the game design is closed to you, there isn’t a lot of incentive to keep going.<\/p>\n
With the Conquests<\/i> expansion, you can play one of the historic scenarios they have or you can play an ordinary Civ<\/i> game with one of the custom unit sets for the game. The new cultures are OK and the new units aren’t great (though I love the Numidian Mercenary unit), but the new wonders and automation shortcuts improve things noticeably.<\/p>\n
Civilization IV<\/i> is still many months off, and you can find a lot of news about it on your favorite gaming sites. I don’t like the look of it very much, though the design ideas seem to be going in the right direction. With Civ3<\/i> still entertaining me, I can wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve spent the last few days working on my book and finishing up a review for CGM, so I haven’t been updating here. I notice people keep coming to read, so I feel kind of guilty every time that there isn’t anything new. What gaming I have been doing has been returning to a comfortable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-2F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}