Column #106; By Sirotnikov

The 106th installment of The Column features a first-time writer for the series, Sirotnikov, as he dispenses his advice on how to make CivIII and CTPII better than their predecessors in this article entitled "A Little Advice For CivIII and CTPII".

Comments/questions welcomed.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[korn469]

Sirotnikov

good article! i agreed with everything you said except for the part about simcity3000 being a good game personally i despised that game but i do agree that simcity3000 does have good fan interaction, and the sims have an innovative model for keeping the game alive...civ3 does need to adopt some of will wright's community based fan interest+support methods...

also all of the things you pointed out about advise for civ3 and CtP:2 are right on target...if they take your advise to heart the game will be doing good

korn469

[Slingshot]

I liked your 6th point - about simplicity!

Obviously no game publisher would ever try to sell a game with the graphics of Civ I. Yet Civ I was THE record-breaker in innovation.

You are right about how they should put some novel spin on the next game. I hope they really listen .

I mainly agree. However, I personally found the SimCity 3000 BAT a bit difficult to use, and not very versatile. Could have been done a lot better. And yes, as I have previously commented, I thought Civ2 had a bad editor.

Vote for Fix #2 in the EC3 list, people!

[VetLegion]

Slingshot
I love civ1 graphics. Seriously, they are simple and great. For example compare the colour of water in civ1 and civII. Which one is better. Not to mention it cycles in civ1.


Sirotnikov
I have many hours in simcity play. I played original, and 3k now. It is not all that great, and some things are very unbalancing. I cannot resist the thought there are very simple algorytms put in the game to simulate very complex things. Land value algoritm and transport algoritm dont work very well.

As for other things...I agree. What we need is innovation. After civ1 the clones have done what could be done with the old concepts. Perhaps we need new concepts..

[Sirotnikov]

Thanks for the nice feed back every one.
I had put a lot of time and thought into the article.

I know there are problems with SC3000, but waht I meant by the example, is that there shouldn't be no 'one specific goal' and no 'one way to get there'. If I want to conquer the world in a way think of, I wanna be able to do it. For instance, in civ1 you could only win if you had a good production system and you built a large army. I wanna be able to win being a medium nation that handles international affairs in a good way to eliminate her enemies. In SC3K there is no defenite way to keep residents happy and no specific way to make a city successful.

I hope I explained my self well.

[ChrisShaffer]

quote: For instance, in civ1 you could only win if you had a good production system and you built a large army.

I disagree. I won lots of civ games with tiny armies. It was easy to defend against the AI with a small force if you wanted to play a builder game.

However, I agree with your basic thesis, the game should be more open ended. Simply adding a few "different" ways to win ala SMAC (which provided more ways to win - but where every way depended upon winning militarily first) isn't good enough.

[Atahualpa]

I agree with the speed-point!
Slow games really arent funny!

Ata

[Gearyman]

I enjoyed your article!

Not extending the playing time is probably a good idea, but some games could warrant a time 'extension'. During a game of Caesar II (for example) when objectives were met, it would ask if you wanted to accept a promotion or continue playing another 10/20 years. That kind of feature could be helpful in Civ. That gives the player the control of game extension, and not necessarily some arbitrary number of years determined by the programmers.

Your second point about balanced stacking is great. In CTP (which I have played very little) it almost seemed like I was back in the days of Risk where a roll of my dice against the opponent's dice determined who won and who lost. So my tank could lose to a spearman--not very realistic or balanced.

As for scenarios, I play very few, because I don't find scenarios that are good. If you know of any, please let me know.

Finally, I also agree with making things easy to use. Complexity creates frustration, and people generally play games to relax and enjoy themselves--not become more stressed out from playing a game.

Just my two cents worth. Party on!

[Sirotnikov]

Gearyman, thw scenario that keeps me awake at nights is called "The 20th century". It's nice and balanced. well kinda. anyway, I like it. It doesn't have a unit frenzy and the settings are realistic. I usually play the gremans and prepare to take over the world. played the russians once and was frustrated. comunism is not so easy in civ2. played america for a while but i got bored. also being america requires having sea units. and i hate sea fighting in civ 2. it's a waste of money. In SMAC it's not great but it's better IMO.

your 0.02 + my 0.02 = 0.04.

[Gearyman]

Thanks for the suggestion!

Whenever I get a break from my grading for classes, I'll give it a try.