Civ 4 - The List of BAD Ideas.

[Jon Miller]

teh atomoshpere is what I like about civ\

Jon Miller

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Fosse
I don't want to see caravans or supply crawler-type units for storing shields.

Maybe caravans are a good way to deal with trade, but there should be no "flash build" units.

but the camel, pwerful as it was, was not quite as overpowered as the SMAC crawlers - I mean the camels are of no production use till you deliver them - unlike the crawlers.

[Sandman]

Modability uber alles. I'll probably get flamed for this, but I couldn't care less about a complex scenario editor. I'd much rather have a fully furnished game out of the box than an editable, but half-finished game.

Humour. Get rid of it.

Bad graphics. Don't listen to those that aren't interested in graphics; make civ world beautiful.

[rah]

I would like to see civII be the starting point instead of civIII. Hopefully they would do it better this time.

[Brundlefly]

Originally posted by Sandman
Modability uber alles. I'll probably get flamed for this, but I couldn't care less about a complex scenario editor. I'd much rather have a fully furnished game out of the box than an editable, but half-finished game.

I agree I would make the same choice. Rather than give us a buffet-style "balance your own game" experience with a million tunable settings, give us a full meal of a game that we can sit down and enjoy without having to make the thing ourselves...

[Solver]

Come on Rah, I think that you will also agree that Civ 3 has some things that deserve to be carried over to Civ 4.

[Shogun Gunner]

Civ is a strategic game, the way we must utilize military units has the flavor of a tactical game.

Let's take a real world example. I'm the President of the United States and Canada just attacked.

start of silly story:

Rumsfeld: Mr. President, Canada just attacked Seattle, Helena, Pierre, ND and Minnesota. We have two tank units and five TOW units ready.

President Shogun Gunner: Send the tank unit to Seattle, because the are attacking with cavalry there. Send three TOW units to Minnesota, because that is where their tanks are....

end of stupid story...

Well, you get the idea. The real attack would be combined arms in each battle area - where you need a mix of troops.

[rah]

Originally posted by Solver
Come on Rah, I think that you will also agree that Civ 3 has some things that deserve to be carried over to Civ 4.

Stacked combat, and resources. THAT's IT. the rest sucked. (and I'd prefer a stack more like ctpII) And these two items couldn't outweigh all of it's shortcomings.

[Jon Miller]

I'm not a CTP person. I bought and played Civ 1, 2 and 3.

However, I did buy CTP 1 and played five or six games before putting it away for good. One thing that did make an impression was the improved combat handling over Civ 2.

I would like to see a carryover of this, like Trifna mentions, into the next version of Civ.

What about choosing actions for each of your units? A bombards G; D assaults G; E assaults G; F defends against H and I. B and C opportunity fire. Orders entered first, then actions carried out concurrently.

Your Troops......Enemy Troops
...B...D--------------G...J
A......E--------------H......L
...C...F--------------I...K

Actions could be:
Frontal assault (ala Kamakazi)
Assault (move, fire, move, fire)
Ranged attack (stay in position, fire)
Opportunity Fire (like cav/tanks when you pass by the position)
Defend
Fighting withdrawl (retreat, fire, retreat, fire)
Retreat
Flee (drop your sh*t and haul a55)

Different choices produce advantage and/or vulnerability. For example, choosing opportunity fire means nothing if the enemy doesn't advance on your position (out of range). Frontal assault is very costly when the enemy is in "opportunity fire mode"

Another example, counterbattery fire could be an option for artillery to artillery combat which we haven't seen at all in Civ. I love reading in the Civlopedia about Radar Artillery's ability to locate enemy artillery by tracing back the trajectory of the fire and destroying the enemy artillery. Can't really do that in Civ, can we? This new combat system may be able to incorporate those changes.

This would finally bring some "combined arms" concepts into the game, hopefully without too much micromanagement, because the additional work is the downside here.

Bottom line, adopting something like this would overcome one of my greatest objections to combat in Civ. Too much knowledge of the enemy reduces the combat into a decision tree analysis exercise of probability. What ever happend to "THE FOG OF WAR?" We all have seen the threads How come three of my Modern Armor units got destoyed attacking a Rifleman on a hill? People whine and complain a lot. Someone inevitably posts an application they compiled in C++ that will tell you when you should attack and when you should defend taking into account all bonuses of terrain, etc. Boring It's time for something new.

.

Jon Miller

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by rah
Stacked combat, and resources. THAT's IT. the rest sucked. (and I'd prefer a stack more like ctpII) And these two items couldn't outweigh all of it's shortcomings.

Don't be shy, tell us how you really feel.

I prefer the way bombardment works, borders, workers in addition to settlers, lack of pulling down mountains into grasslands (eventually), not having the tedium of caravans, etc...

But, to each their own, I suppose.

[statusperfect]

Originally posted by Father Beast
1. 3D. took resources and tended to crash the game, without adding anything.

3D???????????

[MattH]

Originally posted by bfg9000
I agree I would make the same choice. Rather than give us a buffet-style "balance your own game" experience with a million tunable settings, give us a full meal of a game that we can sit down and enjoy without having to make the thing ourselves...

You talk as if we can have only one and not both...

[Kuciwalker]

Stacked combat. There are enormous problems with this, but I'd like to detail a few:

1. Limit to the number of units on a square

This is bad. Really really really bad. It is a HARDCODED limit, even, and can be incredibly annoying. If I want the best defense in a city, no units can enter it. Moreover, it limits the size of my ATTACK forces. It places huge limits on the game and even really hinders scenarios. I like the "stacked" combat in Civ3 a la armies, in fact I think that that implementation is a great idea, but CtP-style stacked combat would ENSURE that I not buy Civ4.

2. Air units + bombardment

Civ3's current air unit system (which IMO is a huge improvement over Civ2) would function poorly here. Ditto for bombardment. Plus, scenario issues - Civ3's system offers infinitely more possibilities.

3. Ugliness

Combat in CtP2 (the only version I bought) was just plain UGLY. I hated it, it was tedious in a way that Civ3 combat isn't (not that Civ3 combat can't get tedious, but it does so in its own way).

[Fosse]

skywalker... I don't think that having stacked combat in automatically means a limited number of units on a tile... but as there is a discussion about this in progress I won't dwell on that.


I'd like to see a religion model left out. I know a lot of people talk about it, and it had a big list for the Civ 3 List... but I see this as something that really can't add a lot without just complicating things. This one is best left to the player's imagination, in my opinion.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by skywalker
Stacked combat. There are enormous problems with this, but I'd like to detail a few:

1. Limit to the number of units on a square

This is bad. Really really really bad. It is a HARDCODED limit, even, and can be incredibly annoying. If I want the best defense in a city, no units can enter it. Moreover, it limits the size of my ATTACK forces. It places huge limits on the game and even really hinders scenarios. I like the "stacked" combat in Civ3 a la armies, in fact I think that that implementation is a great idea, but CtP-style stacked combat would ENSURE that I not buy Civ4.

2. Air units + bombardment

Civ3's current air unit system (which IMO is a huge improvement over Civ2) would function poorly here. Ditto for bombardment. Plus, scenario issues - Civ3's system offers infinitely more possibilities.

3. Ugliness

Combat in CtP2 (the only version I bought) was just plain UGLY. I hated it, it was tedious in a way that Civ3 combat isn't (not that Civ3 combat can't get tedious, but it does so in its own way).

great points

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

I definitely don't want to watch any long drawn out battle

Jon Miller

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by rah
I would like to see civII be the starting point instead of civIII. Hopefully they would do it better this time.

Screw that...make SMAC the starting point.

New Graphics (with 3D terrain, thank you) + Civ 3 AI + SMAC mechanics + Imperialism combat + EU diplomatic options + GalCiv trade route system = great civ game. But the core of SMAC is what to build on.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar




Realistically, rulers (whom participated) often had to wait DAYS to see the outcome of a battle.
Let's have battles that span for days

Okay! Of course, "days" in the ancient era when turns span for hundreds of years....

Seriously, I wouldn't mind having battles that last several turns, giving the potential to reinforce a losing battle, or let suspense for a major fight carry over from turn to turn.

[Brundlefly]

Originally posted by MattH


You talk as if we can have only one and not both...

I think we can only have the "buffet-style" Civ3, Matt, because it is a better business decision for Firaxis to develop along that path. They could throw endless manhours into programming and play testing the best AI the world has ever seen and spend countless extra hours beyond that perfecting game balance -or- they could spend minimal time on AI and game balance and leave all of the settings which balance the game open and tuneable and sell it to the public as a "create your own experience" game. Some don't mind the latter type of game. I wouldn't mind paying a little more and waiting a little longer for the former type of game. But I won't get that.

[Carolus Rex]

What rah said; look at Civ 2 and not the squeeze-every-buck-out-of-the-Civ-franchise-by-pumping-out-crappy-sequels games that followed it...

And, please, no pictures of Sid (or anyone else from Firaxis) in the game!

Carolus

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I definitely don't want to watch any long drawn out battle
Jon Miller

But you are willing to spend 10 minutes sending 70 units into battle one by one...

[Torkkeli]

Infinite movement with railroads.

Infinite movement on land (units) is bad.

[FinnishGuy]

AI has to move every unit around pointlessly every time...

[Zamphyr]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


Screw that...make SMAC the starting point.

As long as the cruddy unit workshop model isn't brought in.

[DrGerry]

We just start a thread in the Spanish forum to do this. We plan to recopilate it, translate into english and post here.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by hexagonian

But you are willing to spend 10 minutes sending 70 units into battle one by one...

I said that I didn't like that

remember, I am all for having less units

and if I do have multiple units in a square, I am all for using one command to have them attack

Jon Miller

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Torkkeli
Infinite movement with railroads.

Infinite movement on land (units) is bad.

How on EARTH did we not mention this so far?!?


I'd like to add... no railroad production boosts. I'm done with systems that force me to build absurd things in every tile.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I said that I didn't like that
remember, I am all for having less units
Jon Miller

...then edit the cost of units - make them more expensive.

Less units!!

[Jon Miller]

thety are not ballance that way

they shuold be set up from the get go

I don';t just want less units, I don't like the idea of power stacking

where you just have 1 stack go arround taking cities and the like

less units would just mean a smaller stacj

Jon Miller

[hexagonian]

Increased cost of units will not affect balance if it is done in a consistent manner across the board. In fact, it makes decision-making a lot more challenging because your margin of error is smaller.

Unfortunately, with the civ3 setup that does not place any limit on the size of stacks, you cannot prevent the use of huge stacks as the most viable strategy, irregardless of pricing.

Adding bonuses based on unit composition in your stack isn't a bad idea. But in one sense, CTP2 already is using bonuses based on army composition with the use of range/flanker units. Their bonuses kick in when they are used in those capacities. Stick an archer on the front line and he is a dead man. Have him as compliment to a frontliner, and his bonus ability kicks in.

The sticking point with me regarding civ3 is still the idea of one-on-one battles. As long as combat is run as a one-on-one system of battle resolution, you are stuck with the tedium.