CivCity First play impressions

[Keith Heitmann]

I found a new key combo that slowly rotates the view of your city clockwise automatically.

ALT+T

[glycerius]

markduffy said:

Not glad at all to hear about timed missions, Keith. I absolutely hate them.

I hear that the Military missions get really hairy.

My next missions are Mediolanum on the Military side & Creta on the Civilian side. Snot laugh about Creta. The city on the World Map is called Gortyna unless I missed something. Whoops!

I made a followup post in TM's Only 6.6 review thread that has my most recent impressions.

I also found out that CCR has no snapshot capability. I posted one in the CCR Forum in a thread on screenshots here.

I think I'm playing the missions too quickly. I'm probably gonna go to sandboxes & rip the game apart from here. Not sure. Perhaps I should wait for the first patch cuz the game should change.

I just don't wanna play it too fast. But I also don't wanna determine a strategy just to watch it go into the trash as the game changes with patches. Know what I mean?

I hear that some people have already completed it. Don't know what difficulty they are playing at, but I'm on Medium. I just don't understand people who have to rush through a game. Oops, that's kinda you too!

I do not seem too much of a problem with Gortyna/Creta. The place was a city on Crete until some violent Arabs decided otherwise in the ninth century, and flattened it. Still Creta should not be used as it is the province name. Only trade contacts use province names instead of city names. I get the sense that this game came out a little too quickly.

While I would prefer that families move, not houses, to have like COTN, I like the feature well enough. It prevents a city from becoming too static.

I am on Mediolanum. The civilisation goal is a bother to get. The other goals are exceeded comfortably.

[Keith Heitmann]

I'm playing Londinium and have already spent 12 hours on it. I the population requirement was 15000, I'm at 60,300. I think I over built. I manage to get the 5 palaces, but I'm having a problem getting from 90 Civ rating to the 100 required.

I ran into the river crossing bug again with the transport jetty. They worked fine for a short but then they stopped and the bulk of wood I need is on the other side of the river. So I removed them and put in a bridge far downstream to avoid blocking the fishing grounds and the tradeships.

This is a serious fatal bug in the game if someone builds a custom map that somehow doesn't provide a bridge option your city could fail because it cannot get the resources it needs or land trade could be cut off. This is the second scenario now where I have run into this bug.

[Keith Heitmann]

Well, I managed to finish the Londinium mission, the final mission of the peaceful campaign.

I went back and removed all the shacks in my city that weren't evolving. Used the move function to get some homes into one spot in my city that was evolving housing up to the small then large insulae level and finally a small domus. I manged to get about 4 more small domus homes out of that. I gutted a couple of sections and put in the larger temples to in two places and added some more small temples and the game finally gave me the mision completed message. Good thing too because I was out of trees, my wood camps were all idle or being deleted and I had no more lumber in my warehouses to make more beds and recliners. I did have a store of about 139 beds which I sent part of to a warehouse near the one area actively evolving homes.

I managed the required 5 palaces, had about 8 small domus besides, and a number of medium insulae. The population goal was only 15,000 for the mission, my city ended up with a population of 60,300 more or less.

Next, I've gone back to my earlier save so I could pick the military path and have started Cyrene. Lost one town center, then on the next try won the battle, but ran out of money this time is looking better. I have my fort up, weapons being made, I even have the trade route open and a dock and shipyard waiting for the first load of lumber from the wood camp.

I have stopped playing for the time being right now because T-storms are passing through in waves and I have to keep shutting down my system. CivCity is not only a slow loader but it takes a while to shut down too.

[markduffy]

Another one finishes the game already. Too bad. I hear the Military Campaign is nasty.

It looks like it is hard to keep population down in this game. I definitely am an overbuilder!

So how many cities is that for the Civilian Campaign, Keith? Looks like not too many. CCR does have sub-city missions & some of them involve pre-placed buildings. I like clean maps to start scenarios. It looks like FireFly cheated by using continuing cities. Less maps to play on. Less maps to make.

Looks like user-createds is where CCR will succeed at. I hope people will come out with a LOT!

Yeah, the Name thingie is not a problem, just funny, Glycerius. I DO think FireFly was in too much of a hurry to beat TM to the market. Besides the quirks in the gameplay, a lot of features are left out. We will see how much FireFly will actually support their game.

What is also funny, is that there is almost no use for Marble except for some statues & export & I hear that is only one mission. User-createds again.

I am also worried about TM & C4. They look like the mid-September original due day is being kept as a hard number. The very same thing might happen with C4 as far as a few problems with release. However, C4 got an early start. I still believe TM dumped COTN as soon as it was released (or even before) & has been working on C4 since 2004.

PS ~ I threaded your ALT-T over on the CCR forum, Keith. I gave you credit.

[Keith Heitmann]

There area about 10 peaceful missions. Several cities you play in twice, like Ctesiphon, Massilia, and Creta.

Building a city with 6000 people only takes a few well placed shacks. You can easily hit that number with as few as 8 shacks that evolve up to small or large hovel status or less.

I'm playing Mediolanum right now and have a total of 16 houses currently evolved to large shack and small hovel status and have population hovering around 7,500. The goal is 8000. I have a few shacks near my iron mines and weapons makers and one or two farms.

Marble was only exported in the initial tutorial mission. The rest of it seems to be stone for export.

Both wood and stone are limited resources, and disappear from the map over time so export what you need to get your city stable but save enough for your Wonders construction and making beds and recliners.

Yeah, the saves are in the My Documents / CivCity Rome / Saves folder.

The other thing about CCR is that you usually only have one at most two trade possibities unlike the Impressions CB's where you might have as many as 8 possible trade cities.

[markduffy]

admin said:

There area about 10 peaceful missions. Several cities you play in twice, like Ctesiphon, Massilia, and Creta.

10 peaceful missions or 10 different cities, Keith?

So far, I have

Civilian

Lavinium 1-3
Capena 1-2
Tarentum 1-3

Civilian/Military Split here

Civilian

Massilia 1-2
Creta (Gortyna) ~ I am on 1 & haven't started it yet

Military

Cyrene 1
Mediolanum ~ I am on 1 & haven't started it yet

The other thing about CCR is that you usually only have one at most two trade possibities unlike the Impressions CB's where you might have as many as 8 possible trade cities.

More bad news. Ugh.

[Keith Heitmann]

10 missions.

Watch that wood limit on the Creta 2 mission. That's where I had wood camp problems. There isn't much available and you don't want to be exporting too much if any at all.

I'm on Mediolanum 1 now. I have my second fort up and running and have fought of the Carthoginians multiple times so far. My housing is up to small and medium hovel status, population around 7500, and I'm exporting olives and just startig to export wine. Money is becoming less of a problem as the housing evolves.

[markduffy]

Wait a minute, Keith. I just gave you a list of 11 peaceful missions & I know there are more.

Or, are you only counting Civilian Missions that start with Massilia 1? And Lavinium 1 thru Tarentum 3 (8 missions in 3 cities) you are calling Tutorials?

I don't call ANY of them tutorials cuz there is NO Tutorials. Just that stupid "Tutorial" thingie that tells you absolutely nothing. the HELP sucks also. The manual appears to be much better, at least a lot of pages. Haven't read it yet though, except for looking up marble for a CCR forum thread inquiry.

It looks like new buildings get added to the mix with each mission & that when we have all the buildings, the Campaign ends. Is this true?

The game World Map shows peaceful & militiary cities, but the Campaigns are called Civilian & Military.

What other cities have you played? So far I have Collogne (Campaign?), Ctesiphon (Civilian) & Londinium (final Civilian city?).

I'm making a list.

[Keith Heitmann]

The tutorials are not counted by me because they are so simple as to be laughable. There are probably 11, because I didn't make a save of Latvium and I just counted the saves I made of each city in my save folder.

I've played only the peaceful campaign to completion. And I have just started the military campaign, having already completed Cyrene and I have just completed Mediolanum. Now I'm just starting Sarguntum and got wiped out by a huge Carthaginian attack after I couldn't recover my losses to the legion quickly enough after several previous and frequent attacks.

[glycerius]

I am now in Colonia. It has a fairly full range of buildings, but not so much space. I was a little annoyed that it was possible to building fishing wharves, shipyards and ports on rivers, where they are no use. I recall how one review mentioned that a patch would be released imminently, or on the day of release. That has not happened. Still I am enjoying the game. The glitches are unnecessary and would alienate people who otherwise would be stalwart fans.

[markduffy]

I love playing unpatched & buggy games, Glycerius!

They are a HOOT & finding the problems & devising work-arounds is really fun.

Game-stoppers are kinda a drag, though.

Laughing at a game is very kewl, also! You know the "Why in the HELL did it do THAT !?!?!"

[Keith Heitmann]

Right now I'm having a problem getting the balance in Sarguntum right. I've failed at it about a dozen times so far. I can get the city up and running but the size and frequency of the Carthaginian invasions is wiping me out every time. They start small and start coming more frequently. I often end up ending one battle only to find myself facing another army entering the map with no time to rebuild my legions.

The game tip is to attack them on the Empire level but I haven't seen my troops move off to the enemy city when I set them for such an attack on their menu. I click on the button but their icon on the Empire map doesn't seem to move.

[markduffy]

You have a -2 Karma over at the CCR Forum, Keith.

*** snot laugh ***

Gotta love it, no?

I can't stop laughing...

;D

[Keith Heitmann]

Not sure why. I haven't been giving anyone a hard time. Doesn't bother me much though. I'm only hanging out there just to see what people are talking about.