I'm giving up Civilization. Here's why

[A Former Member]

My computer's hard disk has just omitted an equivalent of a 'sigh of relief' as 1.5GB of Civilization data has been removed.

Having been with Civilization III from the start, I'm now giving it up. For the entire two and a half years the game has been on release with its expansions, I've had the same old problem - sometimes getting the win, but 90% of the time being subjected to harsh luck and even harsher gaming conventions like 'thou shalt not build at higher difficulty levels'.

For example, yesterday I finished a game on Emperor level as the Arabs, and scored 5723 points. However, my addiction needs fueling so I started up more games today - but found that the same old thing was happening. For every one game successful, at least a dozen others set upon by the forces of 'unfairness'.

Whether it be a rush from an AI that starts the game with half a dozen units, an AI that expands into your spaces before you can even conceivably build settlers let alone move them or build roads for them to move over, barbarians attacking your workers and units when you've barely had time to do anything, a terrible starting location, a good starting location which you realize after a few turns is terrible because it's surrounded by jungle, or even the annoying habit of the AI punishing you for building too many buildings while it, on the other hand, is pumping out not just units, workers and improvements but also wonders.

If Firaxis want me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, back as a customer for Civ4 then something must be done about the harsh exposure to probability. Other games that I have enjoyed and respected like Age of Empires and Red Alert do not start you off in terrible locations. In fact, in Age of Empires 2 you always start with roughly the same resources around you. Perhaps it is part of Firaxis's attempt to make Civilization look like a game for the more mature. However, it is annoying. The introduction of new difficulty levels, as well as continued membership on these forums, makes the prospect of going back in difficulty, or turning barbarians down (I always have them at the level just above sedentary) seem like too humiliating a concession.

Civilization has great potential, but the game's mechanics are still stuck in the primitive set of the original civilization released more than ten years ago. Civ4 needs to be radical, entirely different. It needs to offer a more satisfying way of winning games, challenging but not obnoxiously or overpoweringly so at higher levels. I feel that the current set-up is dying and I do not see a Civ5 unless Sid figures out where properly to address the series' shortcomings.

[GhengisFarb™]

What size map are you playing on? My opinion is the larger the map the more even the start positions.

[vmxa1]

A sad thing indeed. You could use the editor to "even things up" if you find the game fun otherwise.

I have no idea about Civ5, but Civ4 is already announced and if it sells as well as III, you will be seeing a V at some point.

It is not often that a game over 2 years old has somany fan sites with so much activetly. My guess is that many games rank higher that came out the same year are already forgotten.

good Luck.

[notyoueither]

Very disappointing that someone who obviously has a lot invested in civ would feel the need to give it up due to the mechanics of the latest incarnation.

I am finding that playing a winning hand in C3C is much more difficult as well. So much now depends on finding resources and making good guesses about where future resources will show up when making early warfare choices. I liked resources in Civ3. I thought they added flavour. However I think the push to make it 'more interesting' has taken some of the fun out of the game in many situations. Perhaps a lesson for the designers that the clamouring for 'harder, harder, harder' will not be universally met with joy if catered to.

As for difficulties though, I don't find that a problem. I acknowledge that there will be certain things a player will have to do to win at Monarch, and then Emperor, and then other things required to play and win at Demi, Deity, and Sid. Emperor is where the attraction ends for me, but I often play Monarch when I just want to have fun. I don't want to have to plan plan plan all the time. Sometimes I just want to sit back, make quick decisions and hit end turn quickly.

[GhengisFarb™]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I have no idea about Civ5, but Civ4 is already announced and if it sells as well as III, you will be seeing a V at some point.

As long as AtariGrames can make anything off it you'll see more Civs.

[Prot]

I almost always make my own maps when I play on higher difficulty levels. It may get old, but why not trying out building an Island and starting on it alone?

[Mr. President]

There's a lot of things I like about Civ3 - culture, unique units, civilization traits, resources.

But there are also things I don't like about Civ3 - most notably the trade system. The computer also cheats in my opinion, but that's not really relevant to the discussion.

[Exquisitor]

I had similar issues with Civ3 and corruption. I like to build so I used to edit the game to lower corruption. It really made a difference in my enjoyment level.

I also downloaded one of the scenarios where outdated units were given the ability to upgrade to infantry and fighters were given the ability to kill. That made a lot of sense. The scenario also improved my enjoyment.

As in C3, I play most of my C3C games at Monarch because I like easier games where a couple of wrong moves or bad luck don't kill you. However, I also enjoy the harder games, just not so often.

I think C2..C3C has done a bang up job in the difficulty levels. The differences in difficulty are seemingly on a log scale (or maybe a ln scale). My kids like it on the easier settings and I like it more difficult. Gives us much to talk about.

[SlightlyMadman]

I have similar issues with this game. I have hundreds of annoyances with balance and little things, but the main problem I see with the game is that it's way too easy at Monarch and below, to the point that it's no fun to play. Above Monarch, it's annoying and luck-based at the beginning, until you finally start to catch up to the AI, at which point it's too easy again.

I'd rather see Civ4 take the game down a step in complexity to allow the AI to compete better, as I understand writing a really good AI for a game like this is near impossible.

[Inverse Icarus]

because civilizations in real life aren't subject to proabilitiy or anything.

i have not had one game with conquests (or dare i say, since i've become a decent civ3 player) that i simply could not play out to victory. i've even played out the "so very cold" game back in the day.

if you want a kickass start every time, whats the point of playing? i can see if you don't like actually struggling for the victory, but thats where i see the majority of the fun. i usually end up quitting games somewhere in the middle of the industrial era, because my victory is assured.

i love the beginning of the game, where i have to carve out my land and build my empire in the face of hardships.

if i'm handed a firggin utopia for a start location, i end up with an assured victory even earlier.

[Tall Stranger]

Former Member/ SlightlyMadman:

First off, let me say that I'm sorry you're not happy with the game. However, I disagree with your criticisms of the game and think a few comments on your complaints are in order.

1. You both seem to be very upset over the role that luck plays in this game. Whether it be the quality of your starting position, the aggressiveness of your neighbors or unfortunate combat roles, I agree that luck plays a factor (as it does in real life as well). I tend to agree with Uber KruX: that's part of the fun. Getting a crappy starting can make for a very challenging and enjoyable game. It also lets you try different approaches/ strategies to win. Rarely do you get a starting position which is truly "unwinnable."

2. Building on that point, I'd ask you to consider the possibility that you're allowing yourself to get into a rut in terms of your play-style. I mean no insult here, but if you're finding that for every one game you can reasonably play, you're losing/ quitting 12 games, I would suggest that you are not modifying your way of playing to make the most of your situation. The reality is that not every starting position lends itself to every type of victory.

3. Former Member, I don't know what to make of your statement that taking a step down is "too humiliating a concession." I would just say that, since the intent of the game is to have FUN, if dropping to Monarch makes the game more fun for you, don't let pride get in the way! You should be aware that many very good players here prefer Monarch. If, however, being able to win at Emp is very important to you, I'd recommend reading Mountain Sage's thread on Winning at Emperor level and posting questions or saves to the forum. People here are happy to help you.

If your decision to stop playing is final, again I'm sorry to hear that. I've been playing Civ3 for an awfully long time now, and have yet to feel like it's no longer interesting, challenging or fun.

[Wormwood]

Man, it sounds like the poster needs a Waaaambulance. Stuff happens. Random events happen. If we could expect every game to work out a certain specific way, then the game would be no longer enjoyable. The game is at it's best for me when I find myself in a desperate situation, but I adapt and persevere and I end up out on top. The AI has to have it's advantages for the supreme one you have: true intelligence. Perhaps giving the AI extra units and reduced production times is not the most elegant and creative solution to leveling the playing field, but it's what we've got, and you either have to work through it, or give it up.

[Sovereign]

Hrmm....

I've enjoyed Civ 1, 2, and 3. I love the concept of forging a nation from the ground up.

However, I just have two nitpicks with Civ3, which probably has already been discussed before.

The weird AI diplomacy, especially with MPP and declaring war aganist other AI civ's.

Ai's tendency to buddy up with other AI's more than they do with the human player, even if the human player is middle or last ranking. (Understandable gang-up if the human player is #1).


I always create random maps in the Editor, so I can tweak a few rules. Most of the time, I tweak the ship movement points (Does it really take 20 - 100 years for a steam OR combustion powered ship to travel around the world? ) and on some occasions, I bump up food production in hills to 2, and mountains to 1... and also enable city building in mountains (The Incas were able to eke out food production in their mountain cities. Also, cities between mountain valleys or small plateaus on mounatins are feasible).

I also lower the corruption levels a bit, to somewhere between 20 - 30% of the original levels. Think of it this way, San Franscisco, Los Angeles, and Anchorage are a long way from Washington D.C. but they handle production just as effectively as New York City, Boston, or Baltimore.

Other than that, the rules remain normal. My enjoyment remains high.

[vmxa1]

I think that is a reasonable approach to getting more fun out of the game. If corruption is annoying to a player, go ahead and changes the rules to ease it. If resources are an issue change the frequency.

I don't do that because I want to be able to evaluate things I see in other games. If I have mods, then they won't apply as well, but it is ok to do it.

[Zero]

Blah blah blah. Ive seen too many of these "I hate this game so im gonna sell/uninstall" threads. Im getting tired of this lame attempt to troll.

[Exquisitor]

Originally posted by Tall Stranger
Former Member/ SlightlyMadman:

If, however, being able to win at Emp is very important to you, I'd recommend reading Mountain Sage's thread on Winning at Emperor level and posting questions or saves to the forum. People here are happy to help you.

I've been looking for this thread and can't seem to find it. Please provide a link.

[Tall Stranger]

Here's the thread:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=103656

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by SlightlyMadman
I have similar issues with this game. I have hundreds of annoyances with balance and little things, but the main problem I see with the game is that it's way too easy at Monarch and below, to the point that it's no fun to play. Above Monarch, it's annoying and luck-based at the beginning, until you finally start to catch up to the AI, at which point it's too easy again.

I'd rather see Civ4 take the game down a step in complexity to allow the AI to compete better, as I understand writing a really good AI for a game like this is near impossible.

God Lord man are you mad. If this game gets any simpler I'll write a batch program to play for me.

Why can't people get that the AI can never compete with a human. We might lose a game because of a bad start or some quirk but the AI can never outthink us.

So the game needs to be made more complex so that we don't go to sleep during the boring lets push 100 units one tile turn tedium.

If Firaxis had an once of sense they would have programed the AI to gang up on the human at the point where player has moved into the lead. This would be more fun and more challenging. But some boneheads here would be running amok cause the AI was cheating.

[Wittlich]

Ya know Jimmy, I too believe that there is a point here. You are right, once you gain the lead over the rest of the world, it is basicaly a cake walk....but if all of the AIs should all of the sudden gang up on you.....well, a different picture may well be painted.

[Dis]

thems be banning words.

That should be a 1 year banning at least

[Dis]

Originally posted by A Former Member
My computer's hard disk has just omitted an equivalent of a 'sigh of relief' as 1.5GB of Civilization data has been removed.

Having been with Civilization III from the start, I'm now giving it up. For the entire two and a half years the game has been on release with its expansions, I've had the same old problem - sometimes getting the win, but 90% of the time being subjected to harsh luck and even harsher gaming conventions like 'thou shalt not build at higher difficulty levels'.

For example, yesterday I finished a game on Emperor level as the Arabs, and scored 5723 points. However, my addiction needs fueling so I started up more games today - but found that the same old thing was happening. For every one game successful, at least a dozen others set upon by the forces of 'unfairness'.

Whether it be a rush from an AI that starts the game with half a dozen units, an AI that expands into your spaces before you can even conceivably build settlers let alone move them or build roads for them to move over, barbarians attacking your workers and units when you've barely had time to do anything, a terrible starting location, a good starting location which you realize after a few turns is terrible because it's surrounded by jungle, or even the annoying habit of the AI punishing you for building too many buildings while it, on the other hand, is pumping out not just units, workers and improvements but also wonders.

If Firaxis want me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, back as a customer for Civ4 then something must be done about the harsh exposure to probability. Other games that I have enjoyed and respected like Age of Empires and Red Alert do not start you off in terrible locations. In fact, in Age of Empires 2 you always start with roughly the same resources around you. Perhaps it is part of Firaxis's attempt to make Civilization look like a game for the more mature. However, it is annoying. The introduction of new difficulty levels, as well as continued membership on these forums, makes the prospect of going back in difficulty, or turning barbarians down (I always have them at the level just above sedentary) seem like too humiliating a concession.

Civilization has great potential, but the game's mechanics are still stuck in the primitive set of the original civilization released more than ten years ago. Civ4 needs to be radical, entirely different. It needs to offer a more satisfying way of winning games, challenging but not obnoxiously or overpoweringly so at higher levels. I feel that the current set-up is dying and I do not see a Civ5 unless Sid figures out where properly to address the series' shortcomings.

I think a big problem with this game is people complained civ2 was too easy. If you look at the gameplay of civ3, you can see that they tried to do everything they could to make the game more challenging for the player. Including simplifying the game to improve the ai decision making.

But what they didn't take into account was different playing styles. They designed the game to challenge people who play a certain way.

All I can say is if you aren't willing to drop down a difficulty level, you are stuck.

[Dis]

Originally posted by SlightlyMadman
I have similar issues with this game. I have hundreds of annoyances with balance and little things, but the main problem I see with the game is that it's way too easy at Monarch and below, to the point that it's no fun to play. Above Monarch, it's annoying and luck-based at the beginning, until you finally start to catch up to the AI, at which point it's too easy again.

I'd rather see Civ4 take the game down a step in complexity to allow the AI to compete better, as I understand writing a really good AI for a game like this is near impossible.

yeah right. Not all of us are super Civ players. This is the problem I have. People like you keep claiming the game is too easy. And the programmers do stupid things to make the game tougher.

The lower difficulties should be easy. Doesn't that make sense?

and jimmytrick. Not all of us are as smart as you seem to be. I'm sorry I can't be the best civ3 player.

But some of us want the game to be fun. You guys keep pushing to make the game harder. Soon I won't even be able to win on warlord level if they keep making the game harder.

I lose because the ai cheats. period. Of course I can outhtink the ai. But the ai can build more units than I. Always. There are no maybes about it. They always can outbuild me.

[notyoueither]

How exactly did they simplify the game when they added resourses that need to be sought after and guarded, stacks that do not automatically die when a single battle is won, culture that can cause cities to defect, and removed brain dead, calculator tactics like caravans?

[Dis]

the big simplification was the fewer options for land improvement.

[notyoueither]

Huh? Are you saying that the AI could not be trained to irrigate a second time if a competent person were tasked to bring the AI up to snuff?

You find tearing down mountains to turn them into grasslands an essential part of the civ experience?

[Rasputin]

hopefully some of the4se issues will be addressed in civ4 but i not holding my breath...

[spy14]

If you ran Civ1 and Civ3 on the same graphics engine, who would believe that they came out over 10 years apart? 5 or 6 years maybe, but 10? The noise for radical change is getting ever louder.

[vmxa1]

Dissident your point about making games tougher is well taken.
This idea killed AoWII for a lot of players. It was so hard at even easy that they had to come out with a patch to make a lower setting. The very first scenario in the first camp, took several tries by experienced AoW players (at least me).

Easy or Chief should be just that, no way to lose if you even have one clue. If the game is too easy as it was for CivII, then leave the lower settings alone and bump the higher ones.

This was done in C3C by giving us Sid, which I am now taking a shot at. Many games are cutting of new players by trying to appease the hard core players.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by Dissident


yeah right. Not all of us are super Civ players. This is the problem I have. People like you keep claiming the game is too easy. And the programmers do stupid things to make the game tougher.

The lower difficulties should be easy. Doesn't that make sense?

and jimmytrick. Not all of us are as smart as you seem to be. I'm sorry I can't be the best civ3 player.

But some of us want the game to be fun. You guys keep pushing to make the game harder. Soon I won't even be able to win on warlord level if they keep making the game harder.

I lose because the ai cheats. period. Of course I can outhtink the ai. But the ai can build more units than I. Always. There are no maybes about it. They always can outbuild me.

I am sorry. I am not making my point. I would like the game to have many of the type of sideshows like we had in SMAC. Like using crawlers. Energy parks. Super science citys. Specialist cities. Social engineering. Unit workshop. I basically wanted Civ3 to be an extension of those types of game concepts.

Instead we got a simpler game with little variety of play. Made more tedious (not difficult) by giving the AI escalating levels of advantage.

Experienced civers that manage to learn a few basics should not have any problem winning Civ3-PTW-C3C on any level below diety. But if you are not a veteran of MoM, Moo, Civ, Moo2, Civ2, SMAC, CtP, CtP2 and other 4X games yeah, you might have a bit of work getting up to speed.

One other big issue the policy of Firaxis of not explaining what is happening in the game. We have to either play and take notes and do our own analysis or read threads on sites like this one or CivFanatics to get a grip on concepts like culture and corruption. This makes the game more difficult for casual gamers. Firaxis doesn't seem to get it. They will when sales drop off in the future.

Whatever they do for Civ4 I hope they put the fun back in and document the game. This will enlarge the community and preserve hope for Civ style gaming in the future.

A lot of ground has been lost to the RTS folks already. We lost our best designer to that crap. (Reynolds, Rise of Nations).

Hopefully something will happen to turn this franchise around.

[MrBaggins]

Whilst I agree with some of jimmytricks sentiment, I think that real world limitations mean that certain concessions have to be made.

For instance... map-centric features such as crawlers rely on an understanding of a 2d space, which is innately learned by human players, who can ignore clutter and understand distance and orientation. Modelling this mathematically isn't trivial. When you introduce factors like variable movement, and a variety of variable effects, which conflict... it becomes nigh on impossible to solve optimally. Of course, you don't *need* for the AI to act in an absolutely optimal fashion, but this does require uneveness to provide challenge.

Certain features such as the unit workshop require finesse when you are competing with other designs. Solutions are more fuzzy than crisp logic, and whilst you can emulate partially fuzzy solutions with logic, they are far from perfect.

Fuzzy state machines *could* be used... but fuzzy math isn't a simple concept, and tough to design. Very few designers feel comfortable designing a new AI based on it.

When you compete with a skilled human, you have to be very close to optimal, to compete. Humans learn, adapt and improve. AI's don't (well.. Evolutionary AI's can, but evolutionary AI's in a Civ sense, are more theoretical... blue-sky constructs than tried and tested approaches.)

I think that the Civ3 approach of finding the areas where the AI cannot compete, and making them equal is not only useful, its practically essential.

There is no more obvious and flawed a feature, than the one which the human knows they can whip an AI silly with, and the AI won't respond with.

We've certainly not seen the end of percentile AI bonuses, either

AI's will improve... not as massively as many would like. Computing power isn't increasing exponentially, and much more advanced AI algorithms are much more costly. Waiting a long time for your turn is generally a game killer... and won't be implemented in a commercial game.

Crawlers and the unit workshop make little sense to implement, however "fun" they might be perceived, since they'll turn the AI into whipping boys, every time, when the human develops an ounce of skill with them.