c194# CIVILIZATION III, A SHOE TOO BIG?

[siredgar]

...then it's got problems, right?

When Civ III doesn't even allow you to specify a player starting location like it did in Civ II and hasn't even really updated the city lists (still has "Marseilles" instead of "Marseille"), then it deserves a lot of the complaints it's getting.

It's obvious that the game was not ready for market at release.

[AustralianJeremy]

Ditto.

I was not expecting an unreasonably perfect Civ3.

I was expecting it to be at least as good as SMAC; at least as good as Civ2.

I didn't expect it to take one step forward, two steps back (or even two steps forward, one step back). The omission of standard features that came with SMAC and Civ2 - Multiplayer, scenarios & editor, decent world map, even the cheat menu... these are really unacceptable. They should have waited till they could produce a product of the same quality as Civ2 in its day. Hell, Civ2 and SMAC even came with tech charts - where's Civ3's? Why can't I play a custom Civ and choose the damn picture? (It keeps making me look like Elizabeth or Joan of Arc - and I don't get to choose which custom unit I get).

Oh - for emphasis. WHERE'S THE SMEGGING ACCURATE WORLD MAP? That's one of the things that made us so mad at CTP when it came out. How damn difficult would it be for the damn thing to come with a proper world map? The whole point of Civ is recreating Earth history.

I love the new ideas ... I just think it's obvious they didn't test it properly. I don't know anyone who has played the game who hasn't got irritated by its shortcomings. I frankly do not see why it's so difficult now for them to do the basic things they managed five years ago.

[Just My 2 Cents]

I totally agree with you however this is par for the course these days for videogames, PC games in particular:

it takes 3 years to finish a game like Civ at the end of which the publisher is pressuring them to get the damn game out the door to compete with the other big releases.

What invariably happens is features which were supposed to be included in the game (scenario editor, accurate world map, MULTIPLAYER) get cut because the focus has shifted to JUST finishing the game.

Rest assured most of us will be shelling out some more dough when the expansion pack hits the shelves; while I'm disappointed that I'll have to purchase this add-on to get the complete Civ experience at least we'll finally get it, albeit half a year late... after all, Civ IS a lot of people's favourite games.

But alas, once upon a time a game like this would ship with everything included and the little bugs which are impossible to trace until half the world has played the game got fixed in a patch. Civ 2 set a standard for its time by being such a complete game, having a kick-ass scenario editor INCLUDED as well as several really good historical scenarios. But then the publishers wised up and realized people would pay for these scenarios (while innovative gamers would release their own in the meantime) and now they get bundled in expansion packs. But once again I totally agree with you.

[kittenOFchaos]

Dude with affinity for small change:

Civ2 scenarios only started to excel AFTER fantastic worlds was completed...I'm not disagreeing that there is much to be furious about (though civ3 is my favorite game at the moment, things could have been so much better and easier) I just think that people are going all rosey eyed about what civ2 was (and hell, I played it more than you! if not then )

[Just My 2 Cents]

I played ENOUGH Civ 2 preceded by the original

I never bought any of the expansion packs but I was very happy with the scenarios and even tried some of the user generated ones (purty good if you ask me)

Point is what came out of the box was light-years ahead of the Civ 3 experience... I'm pissed that I have to buy an x-pack but at the same time I'm kind of happy. Most of the stuff that didn't make it into the game on the first cut will probably be included in the second be it scenarios, more civs or my personal hope: another page of techs (I feel that the modern era should NOT be the end of the game, I want to see Mechs!)

[XPav]

Originally posted by Jokka das Trevas
Governments are another pain in the ass. All in all, in the end it comes only to "democracy peaceloving civ" and "communism evil baby-eaters", since republic is an "alpha version" of demo and monarchy is a good-for-nothing gov that you need only in the early game. In this aspect I think Sid thought more of his personal convictions (wich I don't agree at all, England and Japan for example are Monarchies and are very efficient) than of making a fun government system (again, I don't need to mention the absolute dumbness of a propaganda-immune gov other than promoting what he thinks)

The current governmental systems of Japan and England bear more resemblances to Democracy than they do to Monarchy.

Emperor Akihito? and Queen Elizabeth have no power. Its a constitutional monarchy.

[annoyed]

what is missing is the are the variations of representative govt. while using different econ systems to add further variety. The U.S. started out as a free market representative republic, and if the electoral college is ever done away with will become almost identical with the socialist democracies that now populate Europe.
What disapoints me is that the game does not portray the drive towards egalitarianism that has constantly plagued(in my opinion) the modern world, and the animus between representative govts. and totalitarian states(be they communist or just plain dictatorships). There is no reason for war in the game except land grabs, while in the modern world wars are often fought for much more complex reasons(hell, that goes for the crusades also-would not rivalries based on competing religions be a consideration).
Maybe I was expecting to much out of the game, but something that titles itself "Civililzation" should attempt something more than a 5th grade level of historical concepts.Back to EU.

[Dominous]

I disagree. I believe civ 3 isn’t what we want it to be because the development team was hindered by pushy publishers deadlines. It’s as simple as that. It is all too common that we receive unfinished products because a company uses a publisher to save money. While I can understand that they are here to make money, but I cannot understand why they can’t make money and produce a quality game at the same time…. I would of waited another year if I had the choice of a better game.

Though I do agree with the statement that diplomacy is the best a civ game has ever seen. Yes indeed it is. Regardless of it’s other short comings I believe the diplomacy engine is the best yet. That’s not to say that it couldn’t get better.

[Compugasm 2]

Star Wars Battlegrounds, now that is a complete game. If you haven't played, its the engine for Age of Empires. I love being the Galactic Empire and commanding the AT-AT's. I've been playing for 2 days now until 6am, literally had 4hrs sleep in 2 days. Its an excellent game, has all the features of AOE, plus some improvements.

There are 6 senarios with text background story, audio comments, in-game voices from "Qui-Gon"... Just wonderfull. I haven't made my own senarios yet, but i did make a few for AOE and their editor is good as i recall. So i assume that SWBG uses the same editor.

The only thing i can think of that is missing is when attacking a Jedi, instead of giving them more hitpoints, they should be able to deflect back a percentage of attack with the saber.

[Akka]

Civ 3 is a very good game, no doubt. I can praise Fireaxis for putting things, concepts and new stuff that add whole levels of complexity/possibilities. Culture is really a great idea, and at least the nationality means something. Ressources make the game much more active, and bring whole war just for this piece of blasted land which contain oil. Just like in real

BUT, while I enjoy all the new things, I just can't understand how a game could be allowed to DRAW BACK from its predecessors, especially when it's the same team that has done the job.
Farmland, highways, terraformation were present in Civ2 and not here. I can understand that they removed terraformation for balance issues, but the others ?? Now it's back to the days of Civ1 when railroad was everything (never saw a train helping agriculture). A good idea wasted.
Much more important : many of the excellent advance in Alpha Centauri were removed. Diplomacy, alliance, planetary counsil, were just great idea and most of the time greatly included. Just compare the diplomatic victory from AC and from Civ3, and see the difference.
Same for the interface, the cheat mode and the editor. Same for the muc more sophisticated system of social engineering which would alter the efficiency/military/police/ecology/etc... in a subtle way and let you micromanage it, rather than having just to choose between arbitrary types of government (though I must say the new system of warweariness is just plain great).
Sure, they had AT LAST get rid of the stupid concept of "home city", they has at last found that the cost of an army is more money than buildpower. But if they advanced in many cases, they just removed what they were able to do before.
And THAT is something I just can't understand. Nor I accept.

[Compugasm 2]

Originally posted by Akka le Vil
...never saw a train helping agriculture...

I still shudder at the memory of the "cabbage train". In real life, alot of agriculture is moved by rail. But i understand what you mean in the context of CivIII.

[Just My 2 Cents]

I agree with most of the SMAC comparisons but just a thought:

Publishers these days are more worried about the "casual" gamer than the "hardcore" crowd. Although SMAC received excellent reviews and is supported by a fairly large fanbase I don't think we should use ourselves as a model for the casual gamer. A lot of us are freaks and enjoyed the rules layered upon rules of SMAC and SMACX (after all Civ is simply the greatest boardgame of all time if you look at it objectively).

My point is maybe they tried to incorporate some of the features of SMAC in Civ 3 while still making it accessible to the casual crowd. While most of the regulars in this forum would be all for an expanded combat system and I for one miss the economic/govermental flexibility (free market in a police state or planned economics in a democracy) I think they were too worried about alienating Joe Average.

[Deathwalker]

I agree, Sid should never have allowed a beta game to be relleased. I know they some times give us reasons for what they did, e.g. Ships not being sunk by air power because of game balance. But that is crap it should allow planes to sink ships, did they learn nothing for Civ 2

[Dominous]

Originally posted by Compugasm 2
Star Wars Battlegrounds, now that is a complete game. If you haven't played, its the engine for Age of Empires. I love being the Galactic Empire and commanding the AT-AT's. I've been playing for 2 days now until 6am, literally had 4hrs sleep in 2 days. Its an excellent game, has all the features of AOE, plus some improvements.

There are 6 senarios with text background story, audio comments, in-game voices from "Qui-Gon"... Just wonderfull. I haven't made my own senarios yet, but i did make a few for AOE and their editor is good as i recall. So i assume that SWBG uses the same editor.

The only thing i can think of that is missing is when attacking a Jedi, instead of giving them more hitpoints, they should be able to deflect back a percentage of attack with the saber.

lol...if u had more sleep maybe u would realize this is not a star wars battlegrounds RTS forum. This is a civ 3 forum.

[Strollen]

A few thoughts before heading of to Turkey day dinner.

MP as other have noted Civ3 is a just not a well suited for MP play. There is a big market for MP fantasy games (Everquest, Asheron Call, Diabolo etc) and for MP RTS games, but for MP turned based strategy games (ok maybe Chess over the net:-) I am hard to press to name a single big seller.
Civ3 games are taking me 20 hours to play, now persumably the time will come down as I get experienced. But, I still bet it will easily take 20+ hours for two people to finish the game. That is a huge time commitment, that most people won't be willing to make. For me an even bigger factor is that starting positioning in Civ3 will really matter. If I play an MP game, and my opponent has no easy access to coal, iron, and oil and I do, what does it really prove if I beat him, cause if the positions were reversed he'd probably beat me. Bad starting positions were discouraging to me in CivNet but in this game they are killers and you don't even know how bad your position is until well into the game.


Removing features. More is not always better, I thing CTP proves that. I'll admit that I liked many of the features in SMAC, although many of the things in Civ2 (farms, superhighways I could live without.) Reasonable people can disagree about the merits of adding or subtracting X. However, what is undeniable is that programming the AI to use a feature is hard. The only strategy game where the AI can consistently beat good players without cheating is computer chess. The primary reason this is true is because of the minimal number of rules and possible moves. I liked the design workshop in SMAC, because it was fun, but it also gave me a big leg up on the AI who designed a bunch of sub-optimal units. The thing I really like about Civ3 so far is the AI is still competitive through the industrial ages. This is a far different than SMAC or Civ2, where if I survived to be able to build Sistine Chapel, the game was pretty much won. If I built Leonardo, and Hoover the game was history. In SMAC, If I beat the AI to Fusion reactor I was always the winner. A simpler game makes the AI better and we all want improved AI .


Now that said. Obviously the game has some really bugs that have to be fixed. I hoped for a patch this week, and I absolutely expect one next week, and will be very disappointed if we don't have one.

I all always be a bit dissapointed that some of the fun things in SMAC and CIV2 are missing (entertaining advisors, Wonder movies etc.)

I also think that Firaxis would be well serve to explain the rational behind many of their design decisions.
1. Why is corruption so high? (personally I really like how corruption is handled but I am in the minority)
2. Why was the combat system changed?
3. Democracy seems to be the optimal government doesn't this violated Sid's rule about always forcing the player to make tradeoffs?
4. Why is esponiage so expensive (they spent some time implementing features which basically nobody uses AI or human)
5. Why is the modern age bland? not many wonders, new options, or new technologies

[Just My 2 Cents]

I concur.

However when it comes to democracies I think the trade-off is obvious:

Ever tried to fight a war late in the game in a democratic government? Easier said then done if your goal is to wipe out an entire civilization. If it's the acquisition of a few key cities its certainly doable but a 20 turn campaign is damn-near impossible. On Monarch difficulty level or higher your cities are in chaos by about the third turn and if you haven't been fighting all game I would suggest its difficult if not impossible to take much ground in 3 turns since the enemy civilization will have many cities.

What I miss most from SMAC is the "agendas" of each faction and the clash of ideologies, i.e. if you were in a democratic government the Peacekeepers and Data Angels would be more likely to be your friends while the Hive would be your enemy. I think when it comes to Civ similar governments should stick to each other i.e. democracies should be friendlier to each other while communists would form their own blocs. Let's think about it, from the end of the second world war to the fall of the Berlin Wall wasn't the world divided along these politcal lines? America and China are still tense with each other today; the official party line from Amerca (although it hasn't been mentioned as frequently since Sept 11) basically boils down to we're a democracy and they're commies, we're good they're evil. I'm sure it has more to do with the fact that America was just getting used to its position as the last standing superpower and is a little hesitant to let Red China into the club but I hope you see my point.

Don't get me wrong, if its late in the game and you're way ahead of everyone else of course you should have to "spread the wealth" to keep everyone happy but I laugh every time I see a communist government form a mutual protection pact with a democracy.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by Just My 2 Cents
its late in the game and you're way ahead of everyone else of course you should have to "spread the wealth" to keep everyone happy but I laugh every time I see a communist government form a mutual protection pact with a democracy.

i guess you do not know that tito's yugoslavia signed a military pact with greece and turkey in 1955?

[Just My 2 Cents]

Of course there are exceptions to the rule however at that time both Greece and Turkey were fighting to stay viable democracies themselves...

[jack_frost]

I'm a programmer too. I understand the pains of deadlines, and crunch time. I understand the amount of effort thats gone into this game (or at least have a general idea).

But there are so many little things that just weren't well thought out:

Interface:

The interface has no excuse for being as generally sluggish. I've played it on a 800mhz celeron, and a 800mhz p3. Both with gforce 2 gts's and tons of ram. This game has no reason to be as ... slow as it is. Even screen scroll.. I mean come on.

It is simply absurd to not be able to move multiple units at once. To create stacks that actually act like stacks should. I mean - come on. Its 2002, having to move each piece individually stopped many many years ago. Even if you gain the ability to move a stack in this game, the interface won't support it well (it won't show all the units your moving in the bottom right, etc).

Things like the intelligence agency. Both the manual, and the readme fail to explain how to actually use this. It took me over 5 minitues of futsing around to figure out how to plant a spy (not that espionage is worth crap). But for someone who has done UI programming, its absurd to take that long to figure out how to use a feature. The average player probably just...won't.

Theres so many other little things. The advisor screens ... could have been so much better. So much more useful, the trade advisor doesn't tell you who might be willing to buy your resources. And in order to tell what resources a civ has access to you need to manually go over his part of the map looking for the resource. Or possibly exploit the diplomacy screen to find it. The domestic advisor is great in general, but doesn't have basic things like a "show only rioting cities" filter. Or a "give them some entertainment" button.. why?

And come on, what the hell are the shield sorts, and how do they work? I can't figure out the logic. Seems like it sorts properly, then a second later it becomes random.

And the culture advisor? Useful for what?

The foreign advisor screen is pretty cool... unless you have more then 8 civs. Where it doesn't function properly. Specially with displaying military alliances against, same with embargos (if one of the civs isn't listed, the embargo isn't listed).

The auto unit picking order is sometimes really annoying, but thats minor (even though it can cost minitues of time per turn in a late industrial/modern war). It should pick the closest unit type (artillery, fast, slow) within the same square selected. Then move to the closest unit type in the closest square. Instead of randomly jumping around.

There isn't any "locate resource" function. Which means you have to manually scavage the map to find coal. Ugh. Come on.


Gameplay:

There should be a reason to use a government other then democracy and lil'democracy. Sure communism lost, but why bother including communism and monarchy if your going to make them useless?

Culture. I hate to say it, but after really thinking about it. I love the idea, but I think its implementation is pretty crappy. The idea of a city defection is silly in real life. And except for the AI settling randomly in the middle of your land surrounded by your cities, it will have no real effect on the game outside of borders. It could have been better.

Buying / Selling techs is very abusive, and makes the game boring. BUT I have heard they are attempting to fix this with a patch.

Two move units utterly dominate one move units, and obviate artillery till infantry.

I understand the reasons for removing the FP system. But I don't think its valid. The idea is - without needed resources a civ would get stomped. So they wanted lower tech units to have a chance. I just disagree - why even have resources if you don't want them to be absolutely critical?


Multiplayer:
No. I refuse to accept that 'civ just isn't good as a multiplayer game'. The fact of the matter is - with a tiny little itty bit of innovation (scary concept, innovation in civ3) - you could set small multi-player game types with simplified victory conditions. "Find the New Continent" could be like a mini spaceship. You should start towards the end of the dark ages ages, and you could play a 3 or 4 hour game (an evenings worth - considering the average person watches 5 hours of tv). The lack of this type of slight innovation / polish is why I am most dissapointed with Civ3.

Thats about it. Again, all in all. I think Civ3 is a good game. But when you consider the amount of years thats gone into the series in total, I cannot accept these kinds of flaws. I just downloaded a demo of empire earth. Gonna give it a spin. Take care.

[Jokka das Trevas]

Well, sorry for reviving this topic but I strayed from the net a while...

Originally posted by XPav

The current governmental systems of Japan and England bear more resemblances to Democracy than they do to Monarchy.

Emperor Akihito? and Queen Elizabeth have no power. Its a constitutional monarchy.

Well, so be it. For rudimentary times, rudimentary governments are.

Does Despotism or Monarchy get improved after time?
No, they will still suck even in late 2030's
(In Master of Orion 2, your form of government get improved with research at mid-late game. )

So late-game only government options are democracy and communism, and democracy got a pretty unfair leg ahead in this competition.

Man, it just doesn't cut it: workers work at 150% just out of happiness? People don't get corrupted or waste anymore because they're happy?
They don't submit to propaganda, even if their leader sucks, just because its a democracy?

That sucks. Only two choices of government is bad, but not having a choice at all really sucks.
Despotism should change to Dictatorship, and ancient Monarchy should change to whatever the hell it became today :P

The "communism is perfect for war" axiom doesn't cut: communism is THE ONLY WAY for war, and just because democracy doesn't like war and other governments suck (and it still doesn't cut to reality).

What went wrong with Social Engineering from SMAC? Aren't we here to rewrite history? Why can't we combine factors and create a brand-new government system?

Alas, democracy is a way of government, and communism is more of a economic system rather than another type of government.

Russia and China doesn't count: the REAL communism never got out of the paper (and, to an extent, democracy too).