new review: # of playable civs revealed!!

[Bereta_Eder]

Yes.
I had fears.
But Firaxis is exposing my fears to the bright sun and proves that they are nothing more than morbid products of my hyperactive imagination.

Ok back to earth.

I don't know with how many civs I'll be playing but I will surely try 16 together more than once (always thought 7 aren't enough).


BTW, Would it be nice to get a chance as Apolytoners to meet the team of Firaxis?

You know, shake hands, give them our congratulations, meet Sid and the guys who have given us such great games?

The Firaxis team can arrange such an event in the USA and then travel briefly in Europe so most of us can meet them.

[War4ever]

Well 16 civs eh? I suppose i should be jumping for joy! I doubt i will be though. Civ2 as it stands doesn't allow the ai to build properly. The ai has no concept of expansion. Putting 16 civs on a map as Steve Clark suggests is just ludicrous. As he has done the math, there is no way the ai will expand properly if they stay with the current AI expansion.

Civs within close proximity will vanish ala the Egyptians vs the Carthaginians on the World Map. While 16 civs sounds neat..... and believe me it does, i seriously hope that the AI is significantly more advanced than the current civ2 model is.

Whats the point of conquering 12 mini civs? Give me 7 well spaced civs with equal starting positions and an ai which expands aggressively and i will be more amused.

Oh and anyone listening..... for MP can you please give us small random maps which aren't full of mountains......... nor shaped like something under a petri dish from biology class

I want more civs...... but not at the cost of half of them dying off by 2000BC

[El hidalgo]

Originally posted by War4ever
Well 16 civs eh? I suppose i should be jumping for joy! I doubt i will be though. Civ2 as it stands doesn't allow the ai to build properly. The ai has no concept of expansion. Putting 16 civs on a map as Steve Clark suggests is just ludicrous. As he has done the math, there is no way the ai will expand properly if they stay with the current AI expansion.

Well, to me this just goes to show that's it's possible to have mediocre AI with even as few as 7 civs. It doesn't go to show that it isn't possible to have a great AI with 7 civs, or even more. You wouldn't be in favor of having fewer than 7 civs at once, would you? Yet if 7 had mediocre AI, maybe 3 would have great AI, by this line of reasoning...

Civs within close proximity will vanish ala the Egyptians vs the Carthaginians on the World Map. While 16 civs sounds neat..... and believe me it does, i seriously hope that the AI is significantly more advanced than the current civ2 model is.

Maybe they will vanish, maybe not. The Carthaginians did vanish pretty early on in real life. That's how it goes. But it sounds like from everything I've read that war will not necessarily be the most profitable strategy. So maybe both can survive and gain by trade and diplomacy.

Oh and anyone listening..... for MP can you please give us small random maps which aren't full of mountains......... nor shaped like something under a petri dish from biology class

I have read that the random map generator will be much better this time. Good news, I may actually use it then!

I want more civs...... but not at the cost of half of them dying off by 2000BC

Well, if you had 16, I would point out even if half died you'd still have one more than in Civ2...

For me this is great news. I also like how it says "Civ 3 will feature 16 civs out of the box," so obviously it will be fairly easy to add new civs, at least as easy, I hope, as it was in Civ2. Good news for those of us who want to rule the Mali! But still this is all really just speculation -- when we got upset at news that there would only be 7 (or 8) civs, it turned out that was just speculation (maybe). So until I hear something from Firaxis I'm not going to get too excited one way or the other. But I will tell you, Firaxis, if you at least double the number of civs you can play at once, I'll at least double the amount I'm willing to pay!

[Theben]

Fer chrissake, I can't believe people are complaining about this one...

Look, you guys can just as easily choose to play with 7 total civs in the beginning than 8+. Although I fail to see the rationality behind War4ever's argument, because 15 slowly expanding AI civs will fill up more territory quicker than 6 slowly expanding AI civs. So the human player will have less opportunity to proliferate across the map and thus helps counter ICS and brings about earlier diplomatic opportunities than before, enhancing the early game. I hope.

The argument of a weak AI is irrelevant. If the AI is weak the whole game will suffer anyway. Behind every item that is brought up on this forum stands the belief that civ3 will have a thoroughly competent AI. Otherwise all our questions & concerns are for nought.

[Captain]

I second what Theben just said.

Plus, I can't see how interacting earlier and having fewer "free" expansion zones will hurt. If anything, it will make the game more exciting! There was nothing more boring in Civ 2 than endlessly exploring and expanding for 100's of turns without meeting any other civilizations.

[Jarouik]

Although I wouldn't rejoice until Firaxis officially announces that 16 really is the maximum number of civs in a single game, apparently Firaxis are at least reconsidering the issue, which is good news indeed.

Although I personally could make do with only 7 or 8 civs at a time, as I said earlier, including all 16 in a single game makes perfect sense and provides for more options for large maps and scenarios. Since virtually everybody previously criticized the absolute 7-civ-limit, I find it odd, to say the least, to have so many people now being against even the option of having 16 civs! Bear in mind that this option in no way means you will have to play with all 16, and indeed, I believe in most games I would choose something between five and ten civs to play with, for the aforementioned reason of small and medium maps getting too crowded.

I think the default number of civs should still be around seven, with more civs simultaneously in game only if explicitly selected, as 16 civilizations make the game much more complicated, for the beginners at least. However, there are also advantages to having more civs: as previously stated, on large maps having more AI civs certainly makes the game more challenging, as long as the AI is better at expansion than the one in Civ 2, since having large swathes of unused land just to be colonized by the human player tends to unbalance the game.

As regards the fact that this would make the computer civs less unique, I doubt that, since in Civ 3 each of the 16 civs have a unique unit and, I believe, somewhat different AI settings to begin with. If anything, I think it brings more realism and variety to the game, since instead of facing a couple of huge empires with lots of space around them, you get some huge AI empires neighboured by smaller AI states, with less unpopulated space. In addition, I like the idea that in a single game you can be sure that you will eventually have to face all of the 15 other civilizations, including e.g. both the perfectionist Babylonians and the aggressive Zulus at the same time.

[MarkG]

the issue of AI is less about how many civs yhou have and much more about how intelligent they are.....

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Why do you think you HAVE to play with 16? Do you forget Civ2, where you had a choice?

You misunderstood my question or chose not to answer it. I am absolutely confident that there will be options to play with LESS than the full 16. I am delighted that the runmoured maximum has doubled. I was purely wondering whether the system will support 17+ civilisations (once custom ones are available) for those who want even more. They might code it so you to replace one of the default civs with your custom civ instead, resulting in an absolute limit of 16 players per game and requiring file adjustments each time you want to play a normal or custom game.

16 Civs may well be too crowded for a standard map size but I fully expect FIRAXIS to make the maps as scaleable as the system performance will permit. Their current demo shots are coming from worlds that appear tiny - were that the default size then more than 4 civs per game would be crowded!

[OneFootInTheGrave]

I'll try playing 16 civ's on a small map, just to feel the heat from the beginning...

[Provost Harrison]

Woohoo This is brilliant and I can't wait. And remember people, if you don't want to play with 16 civs you don't have to!

Originally posted by Steve Clark
If a large map is 90 x 90, that would be 8100 tiles.

Actually with SMAC, the previous Firaxis game, it was possible to customise map sizes. I have played on maps which are like 128x256 and I have seen some even larger. So if the world is constructed like this, it will be quite straightforward to fit 16 civs onto a map. I presume they would just have to come up with a really big map size as well for 16 civs. If there was plenty of space, it would be good to have 16 civs.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Grumbold

I was purely wondering whether the system will support 17+ civilisations (once custom ones are available) for those who want even more. They might code it so you to replace one of the default civs with your custom civ instead, resulting in an absolute limit of 16 players per game and requiring file adjustments each time you want to play a normal or custom game.

I believe they have to set an absolute maximum (16, it seems) for the number of civs in a single game, if only for performance reasons and various gameplay and interface design issues (e.g. the circular foreign advisor screen mentioned in a recent preview). This does not preclude, however, that custom civilizations could be added without removing any of the existing ones; I fully expect Firaxis to build in an interface for selecting included civs when starting a new game if more than 16 civilizations have been defined in the game rules files.

An option for selecting the civilizations you want to play against might be needed anyway when playing with less than 16 civs; actually it could be done in a single screen which just lets you toggle each civilization on and off, with the maximum number of simultaneous civs being 16 no matter how many civs are in the list. Of course you could also just specify the number of civs from 3 to 16 and let the game randomly pick the civs included. (I just hope Firaxis will code it so that when it comes to the 16 original civs, a specific civ always has the same color dedicated to it (e.g. the Germans are always blue), so the colors won't switch from one game to next like they did in Civnet...)

[kcbob]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
Some of you, including you Markos, forgot this well-reasoned argument...

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=4996

I'm willing to bet that after a few times, most of those that are blindly excited about playing with 16 AI civs will get tired of it and will look to playing against the 5-7 UNIQUE AI civs.

This is close to the end result that I see myself falling into. I'll try 16 civs a few times, probably get bogged down, and settle on a lower number. I think it'll be more than 7, though. All in all, I'm excited about at least having the option for more.

[Rollo_CH]

I also think the option for more is great.

A small consideration though: Lets say you chose to play a 16 Civ scenario. How much time will the diplomatic "incursions" take? I mean if you have to barter back and forth with all 15...some turns must take virtually hours to conclude...

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Jarouik
(I just hope Firaxis will code it so that when it comes to the 16 original civs, a specific civ always has the same color dedicated to it (e.g. the Germans are always blue), so the colors won't switch from one game to next like they did in Civnet...)

What about players who always wants to play white or cyan because they are easiest to spot on the minimap no matter which Civ they play. FIRAXIS are doomed if they do and doomed if they don't. Go figure

[Robert Plomp]

I know that Civilization is a game for fun, and reality shouldn't affect the game as long as it doesn't improve the fun of the game.

I think one of the unrealistic parts of the game that does ruin a part of the game's enjoyability is that your neighbours are miles if not continents away.

It's really strange that there's a big leap of land between two civilizations. Most countries in the world are very small and surrounded by other civilizations. The civ civilizations are mostly as big as the USA or the former USSR.

If I play on a worldmap it's very usually that in south africa there's a civilization, one of them is in China, one in South-Asia, one in Europa, one in North America and one in South America. That's it. If you want to visit one of your neighbours you have to walk for 8 turns from border to border.

I think it's pretty much fun to meet your neighbours borders around 2000 / 1000 BC. Then some border-wars will happen, pherhaps some civilization will be conquered, and then the borders are defined. The rest of the game is about small border changes and little wars. It's unrealistic and fun-destroying to be a huge civilization around 2000 AD with no real neighbours and expanding possibilities that would allow it to build another 20 big cities.

For that reason: the more civilizations the better. The only problem is that in a later stage of the game the AI time will be very long. For that reason I have one advice: make sure you have several good books

Or use 2 computers and programm / surf on computer 1, and play once in a while on computer 2.

CyberShy

[Pintello]

Hi Steve Clark,

I'm willing to bet that after a few times, most of those that are blindly excited about playing with 16 AI civs will get tired of it and will look to playing against the 5-7 UNIQUE AI civs.

If CTP 1/2 is any indication, this statement is completely incorrect. Most people once they figured out how to have more than 8 civs played all their games this way. Even I use 12 civs including barbs and that has more to do with not wanting to over tax my computer than anything else. Many people liked to play with the full 32 possible. Many settled for 24. Many 0thers settled on 16. Everybody has the number of civs they like to play with and in most cases it is larger than the 8 limit that comes with the game.

Timothy Pintello

[Steve Clark]

Good points from everyone (including you war4ever, my old friend). Guess we'll have to see if how well the AI manages its expansion and whether that many opponents will or will not lead to more micro-management and busywork.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Fer chrissake, I can't believe people are complaining about this one...

Theben (hey look, I spelled it right! ), look where you are. They'll find a way to complain about everything .

[uh Clem]

As noted, CTP allowed many more civs with some editing of a text file. Once you get used to it, it's the only way to go IMO. I don't think people should be forced to have that many, but it's a great option.

Keep in mind that with 16 civs, 3 or 4 won't survive the first few turns. They'll fall to either an agressive neighbor or the Barbs.

Early and mid-game empires are also more realistic. You can dominate your region or perhaps a continent at this stage, but not the globe, just as the Romans could dominate their world, but that world was only a small fraction of the earth's surface.

Global empires become possible with technological advances like faster transportation, etc, and that's when the big fish start swallowing up the smaller fish, and alliances become critical. Diplomacy is more interesting at this level.

As I said, I don't think you should HAVE to have that many, but I hope it's a possibility.

[War4ever]

Hi Steve (how's life treating you?)

I want to clarify this to everyone. I am not saying that i don't like the idea of 16 civs , i just want it done right.

Remember less can be more and if they screw it up that would really suck. Obviously the amount of civs in a game will always be an option. I don't want people to get their hopes up thinking 16 civs is all the rage.

As for MP.....16 civs forget it..... never happen (well it could but not more than once by the same people)

Remember SMAC's MP failure..... well 16 civs seems like a nightmare to me

[Inverse Icarus]

16 CIVS?

::grumbles and erases all his plans::

[Theben]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Theben (hey look, I spelled it right! )

Duly noted on calendar (!!)

btw you realize that there have been MORE recent newbies spelling my name Theban...I'll never understand.

[K.J.H.]

One thing I don't understand.

When I was playing with 7 civs in civ2, sometimes one civilization didn't even reach 1 AD. Let's say the Babylonians. There are six left.
When I captured a capitol many years later, a civil war created a new civilization, with the same colour of the Babylonians (let's say the Zulu's). Then there are seven again.

How is this working in Civ 3? When I capture a capitol the Babylonians appear again, because there are 16 civs and you can play all them at once?

[Stefu]

My guess is that they are divided to 'good' and 'evil' Babylonians.

You can tell them apart, because the 'evil' Babylonian leader has a little goatee.

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by K.J.H.

One thing I don't understand.



When I was playing with 7 civs in civ2, sometimes one civilization didn't even reach 1 AD. Let's say the Babylonians. There are six left.

When I captured a capitol many years later, a civil war created a new civilization, with the same colour of the Babylonians (let's say the Zulu's). Then there are seven again.



How is this working in Civ 3? When I capture a capitol the Babylonians appear again, because there are 16 civs and you can play all them at once?

One way they could to it is when a civs capitol gets captured, that civ loses all cities it has captured from oither civs. These cities go back to their former civs, and if that former civ is dead, it should reemerge again.

[Rasputin]

ahhhhh Diplo game heaven !!!!!!!!

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by Grumbold


What about players who always wants to play white or cyan because they are easiest to spot on the minimap no matter which Civ they play. FIRAXIS are doomed if they do and doomed if they don't. Go figure

A good point - indeed, this is one of the reasons I often pick the white civ. Perhaps Firaxis should let the player pick a colour, with the default colour always being the same for a particular civ... but in any case, since there is often going to be e.g. a blue civ in the game anyway, and in Civ 1 and 2 especially the blue cities were difficult to spot on the brown minimap, perhaps they should consider marking the cities more clearly on the minimap, e.g. with white/black borders like in SMAC.

[Roman]

Oh my word!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


This is the best piece of news possible about the game!!!!!

Unfortunately I have no access to the internet over the summer, but I have managed to get on for a minute or two and it was well worth it, thanks to this info!!!!

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by War4ever
Well 16 civs eh? I suppose i should be jumping for joy! I doubt i will be though. Civ2 as it stands doesn't allow the ai to build properly. The ai has no concept of expansion. Putting 16 civs on a map as Steve Clark suggests is just ludicrous. As he has done the math, there is no way the ai will expand properly if they stay with the current AI expansion.

Civs within close proximity will vanish ala the Egyptians vs the Carthaginians on the World Map. While 16 civs sounds neat..... and believe me it does, i seriously hope that the AI is significantly more advanced than the current civ2 model is.

Whats the point of conquering 12 mini civs? Give me 7 well spaced civs with equal starting positions and an ai which expands aggressively and i will be more amused.

Oh and anyone listening..... for MP can you please give us small random maps which aren't full of mountains......... nor shaped like something under a petri dish from biology class

I want more civs...... but not at the cost of half of them dying off by 2000BC

well they promised better map generators and better AI. i really do not know why you address AI problem via max number of civs.

actually, more civs are good way to constrain human player who usually better exploits free space and who might now have to be more agressive initially to get what he wants.

i also played stupid ctp with more civs and it sucked less on those occassions. would have played it with 32 if the comp allowed me to....(slow pc)

[ancient]

you know, if they include 16 civs at once they will most likely have larger maps also! id imagine about twice the size of the ones in civ2..