Civilization 3

I know its an old game, but I just bought it so its new to me. I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with any bugs in the game? I just spent a few thousand years watching workers running around on dirt roads because there was no coal anywhere in the world for railroads. Also some other things come up missing at times like the Apollo program and other features it never gives me the option to built. I can't seem to build an embassy after the first two contacts with other civilizations.
Are these bugs or do I have preferences not set correctly maybe? I'm downloading a patch now but they weren't very specific about what it does. I think its really for multiplayer.
The game is great fun but ends rather anticlimatically. Civ2 had lots of great animations but now all you get is a popup banner saying "yeah, whoopiedoo, you won..zzzzz"

Resources like coal, rubber, and the like do not show up on the map until you have the scientific advancement that allows you to use them- also some continents are just completely without certain resources, which makes it a good idea to station colonies on resources early on in the game before others snatch them up.

They left out quite a few things in Civ III- some wonders just can't be built any more, and there are no more wonder videos- too sad because they were one of my favorite features from Civ II! I don't know if they thought all the neat animation was excessive, or that they were making a trade off by including the animated faces... ? Too bad, but it is still a cool game, and runs smoothly enough.

I can't quite remember, but you might have to have a road connecting you to the other players capital before you can build an embassy- someone correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I played...

You have to be able to wright to make an embassy. And the shuttle thing is probably becuase you don't have the recources to build them yet? And the recourse problem is like Ashera said, you have to research them first. But with coal I think its just at a certain point in history when you get the little icons.

There are also several patches out for the game. I think (and I am at work so I could be wrong), the current patch is 1.29f. I have PTW, so the patch numbering is a little different. I think you'll find the AI is much impoved over previous versions, it is a really great game.

To answer your specific questions, there is always coal somewhere on the map, sometimes the problem is finding it. The animation videos were cool the first few times, but I am glad they instead concentrated on the actual gameplay. Trying to beat the computer on the harder levels really take some strategy. It is true that they removed or renamed some wonders, but they added others. Strategies that used to work in Civ I and Civ II won't necessarily work in Civ III (like build a couple hundred cities).

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