Civilization 3: End of the Line

[Velociryx]

Excellent post and excellent points as always, brother JT! And just so ya know, I know you're not a warmonger (though perhaps you enjoy warring against the AI's more than I, but then, that's not saying anything...lol...MOST folks enjoy warring in Civ more than I!)....and you're absolutely correct....unit interaction IS a critical element of the game. In the absence of camels, I DO wish they'd left diplomats in the game instead of the very vague, "top level" syping options we've got now. That alone would, I think, provide enough unit interaction to keep things interesting during some of the downtime.

As to the "jousting with windmills" (GREAT line, btw!)....I agree and disagree in the same breath. I totally get what you're saying, and you're right. If they try to release a new patch to prevent the next generation of human adaptation, they'll a) never be finished, cos we'll always find loopholes to exploit or b) wind up constricting the human player to the point that all he can do is pick his civ and watch the game unfold (governors controlling everything, you're just along for the ride). Taken to it's ultimate, logical conclusion, that's what lies at "that end" of the loophole closing frontier, and nobody wants to see that...UGH!

As to what exploits they should add back in for MP....not sure....definitely NOT IFE. I think the once per tile is sufficient, though if they're gonna leave it like it is at present, then they either need to make forests better (more productive) or remove the option to replant from the worker menu....kinna silly to have the choice to replant forests when every other form of terraforming past rails is vastly superior.

I'm *tempted* to say allow rushing wonders in MP, cos that would lead to a variety of innovative strats, but I'm not sure what else should be changed/brought back along with that.

Also totally agree about the overabundance of food....sheesh....I can grow my cities like weeds!! (and, this is something that has been mentioned in another thread too....the disparity between jungle/tundra/desert starts and plains starts is just obscene.....no banannas/bogs, and what replaced them was disease on all fronts (floodplains and jungles)....makes you wanna restart anytime you see jungle....'least floodplains are manageable, cos the food production is so good, but with jungles, you get no food AND disease....tough to enjoy a game starting like that....

I think essentially you and I are members of the same choir. The only difference is that I've found a number of things that make me wanna play more, and you've found a number that wanna play less, but I think we're basically on the same page, if that makes sense (and, you have to admit, that the fact that we have such differing opinions re: the game in general, and are still essentially in agreement says a lot of good things about the depth of the game, to even allow for that!)



-=Vel=-

EDIT: D'oh! I forgot two things! First, YES! I would love to see some volcanoes and other natural disasters in the game! That would rock, and be a very definite improvement, IMO@!

Second....I agree and disagree about Imp2....I love it....still have it on my hd, in fact, but....

the main reason I don't play much anymore (besides civ3 I mean!), is that after those cursed level 3 forts spring up everywhere, it's just too hard to conquer ANYTHING (esp. the way armies are "everywhere at once"). It'd be one thing if you could use maneuver to your advantage, but in the absence of that, it's an attacker's worst nightmare!

-V.

[StellaRossa]

Originally posted by StellaRossa
Sid gave us Civ and Sid has the right to take it away!

Uh, I meant to sound sarcastic not serious with all the Civ3 bashing going around. As a new Civer I love this game and am totally in awe. So many options, so many possibilities, so many things to keep check of, it's totally incredible. Granted the only other computer game I played before is Chess though

[Evil Robot]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Robot,

But doesn't the fact that we are arguing about whether Civ's dullness is a fact or opinion prove it to be a fact?

Otherwise, instead of defending by offering definitions of terms someone, anyone, would be offering examples of palpable, exciting gameplay.

At any rate, it does not matter because according to your dictionary the world is run by opinion anyway.

But the argument here IS over terms; fact versus opinion. What runs the world is not my concern

[SIZE = 1] Originally posted by jimmytrick[/SIZE]
Rush wonders? Oh no, new rule, wonders can't be rushed.
Wonders rushed by leaders? Let the morons try that, rule, one great leader per 24.3 hours of game play.
Specialist cities? Oh no, new rule, specialists only produce one of this or that and no city bonus.

People were harvesting forests? Oh no, new rule, once per game.
People were rush conquering? Oh no, size one cities disappear.

Can anyone else see the pattern here? Any visible trend. Sire, you may attempt to steal that tech for 47,689 gold pieces and only a 98% chance of the whole world going to war on you!

No concrete proof of ANYTHING in your statement that is negative about the game. The Earth is round is a fact because the majority of CONCRETE evidence supports it. OH NOS ITS NEW AND I DONT LIKE IT == Opinion.

Likewise, I could say:

Rush wonders? Yes! Finally the AI has a chance.
Specialist cities? Finally no super-cities.
Etc.

And it would be my OPINION. You could argue with it; but it is opinion that both you and I would be spouting.

[SIZE = 1] Originally posted by yin26[/SIZE]
So *TO ME* Civ3 is horribly, horribly dull and poorly made.

Thank you for proving my point. Q.E.D.

...oh, and as to the 'newcomers' crack.
<--- Points to registration date.
Hate to break it to you but after six months I think I'm not a 'newcomer' anymore . I may not post here often, but I read and I'm entitled to an opinion.

Trolling is fun and entertaining!

[Capt Dizle]

the first post you attributed to yin was in fact mine...

shoo....go edit now

[Venger]

Originally posted by jimmytrick

Hey, that reminds me of my brother-in-law and his vegetable garden. I like to eat the stuff he grows, but, darn he just likes to watch them grow. Not that I am saying he is dull or anything.

There is an extremely elegant point therein. Enjoying squash and watching squash grow are often very juxtaposed positions...

Venger

[Evil Robot]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
the first post you attributed to yin was in fact mine...

shoo....go edit now

What are you talking about? There IS no error

-PS: Who's the editing fool now -

[Capt Dizle]

my excitement is palpable as I run to the dictionary to look up the word
juxtaposed.....

juxtaposed positions...gee, Venger, who knew you would be the one to bring sex into this thing...

[Capt Dizle]

The public, the public - how many fools does it take to make a public?
-Chamfort


I think you should make my size greater than one Robot.

[Nadexander]

Originally posted by Velociryx
I....kinna like the fact that they took out most of the human-driven exploits of the game.

Yeah. But it seems they went out of their way to get the exploits that they missed out on the fun-factor. It also seems like most of the changes were superficial rather than attack the root of the problem (excpet for the notable exception of ICS).

It's no wonder then, that the gaming community seems so divided....that rivalry (builders vs. momentum players) has been a long-standing rivalry indeed (pretty much ever since the creation of the genre). In Civ1 & 2, the Momentum crowd won hands down. In SMAC, I think a balance was struck and would argue any day of the week that the Builder v. Momentum competition would up as a draw, and in Civ3, the Builders win. Global conquest in Civ3, while not an impossibility, has been made too uncertain a prospect (cultural reversion), too unprofitable (corruption) and too tedious (no stacking, weak armies).

This perhaps hits the nail on the head. One of the reason that I am so irked by Civ3 is that it seems like such a step back from SMAC. Although the warfare aspect did pick up some good stuff from SMAC it seems like the builder aspect is even shallower than that of Civ2 and nothing compared to SMAC. The terraforming aspect of SMAC alone is more interesting than all the builder options in Civ3 put together. Which is darn strange considering that the "designers" (in quotes here assuming there actually were designers for this game, asside from programmers and marketing personnel) decided to make the builder strategy a more influential.
One thing i have to disagree with you is that the builder strategy is dominant. I think the builder strategy completely falls apart once a warmonger decides he is going to raze your cities instead of trying to keep them against a superior culture. Aside from the palace bouncing strategy (which is no longer viable with the patch) there isnt a real way to get ahead that compares to taking cities by force in terms of efficiency. If there wasnt the arbitrary 60k culture in one city requirement for cultural victory then i think it would be impossible to win the game through peaceful building. Much easier to get the most culture by conquering everything in sight and slave-driving to put up temples and cathedrels. For some reason communists dictators who like to sacrifice their own citizens are the pinacle of cultural refinement, according to firaxis.

[Ancientfool]

All i know is this. Im a turn-based strategy gamer fan from way back BUT civIII has been off my hard drive for three weeks. I put it back on last night, fiddled around and then deleted again.

Thats all I need to know. NEXT GAME!!! Batter up.

When is CIV IV coming out? hehe

[Badtz Maru]

I can understand why the designers decided to make armies unupgradeable. At some point before release you could unload units from an army, but this can give militaristic civs a huge advantage - if you can upgrade your army, you only really need one for military purposes throughout the history of your civilization. It makes the ability to create armies without a Great Leader a lot less useful, thus making one of the wonders pretty pointless. Having an army will give you a big military advantage throughout the game.

As it is, an army is a short-term advantage. Eventually your Great Leader will become obsolete and you will want to develop a new one. Does it really make sense to have a general who once commanded chariots to be commanding advanced armor and mechanized infantry 5000 years later?

If you don't like it, it's easy to undo in the editor - just check 'Unload' as one of the options available for an army.

[Talenn]

Velociryx:

Concerning Imperialism 2: You know there is a patch (1.03, I think) that addresses the cost of level 3 forts, right? I had the same reaction as you to all of the recurring Siege battles that had to be fought as a result of all of the huge forts...apparently so did a lot of people. The 1.03 cost for forts (of level 2 and 3) is significantly higher and makes the game far more enjoyable IMO.

At any rate, I always considered Imp2 to be one of the best games I've played. Its even better multiplayer, although I havent had time to play it like that in years. The AI was fairly decent, but was easily beatable once you figured out that all you had to do to avoid major attacks was to make sure that SOMEONE was weaker than you were militarily. Multiplayer games are crazy...all of the bidding and subsidies to get trade partners can really get out of hand on your poor little econ. My first few games in MP we got so wrapped up in screwing each other that the AI countries overran us all.

Trying going to Imperialism2.com for the patch.

Hope it helps,

Talenn

[kc1000]

99% of what we see in reality is opinion that the majority of people agree with and assume is fact (notice I said majority, which could mean 51% of pop). Only 1% of our everyday reality is fact, such as gravity and electricity, these things are fact, everything else, including most of our cultural laws are based on opinions that have been turned into reality and been forced on the minority as being fact. Just thought I would put my 2 cents worth into the opinion/fact portion of this arguement.

BTW My opinion is that this game is mediocre, but it was fun the first couple of times I played it, but SMAC I can still play to this day and have fun.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by yin26
LOL! Wow, that was intellectually deep. Still believe the world is flat? People argued about that one too, eh? Try reading more than a dictionary.

Sorry. Civ3 is dull. Fact.

No, a fact would read something like "Civ3 comes in a box or a tin'.

[yin26]

Ah, but what IS Civ3? Is it a concept? A disk? Can you really say that Civ3 is IN a box? Civ3 is like God ... bigger than our human minds can grasp, grander than the ocean.

To name it is to blaspheme.

I shall from now on call Civ3:

YAWEH (help me on the spelling please, religious Civvers)

[David Murray]

I find it very worrying that grown men like Yin and Venger have so much time on their hands to be constantly deriding Civilization 3 and the designers. And over a PC game as well. It must be an American trait to get incredibly argumentative over very trivial matters.

I still don't understand why the unrepentant haters don't just...umm...go away if they dislike the game so much.

[korn469]

I think the biggest problems with Civ3 in my opinion are the following

1) The game has been dumbed down on purpose and has lost some of its functionality, tile improvement is a great example of this, since specialist are virtually worthless under most circumstances once you have enough citizens so that 20 can work the land happily then your city doesn't need extra food any longer. So the best terraforming option is mostly mines with railroads, with just enough farms and railroads to feed everyone. That is a far cry from the interesting (though unbalanced, forest should have cost 5 or 6 turns instead of 4) tile improvement system in SMAC. Civ3 has even less tile improvement options than Civ2 did.

The problem with changes of this type were not so much to relieve players swamped by a magnitude of different options, but it was to relieve the AI, that means that although the player might make the exact same number of choices in a game of civ3, each choice is far moe automatic since the choices are set up to channel the AI to reaching the optimum outcome, and therefore decisions becomes tedious.

2) Although a gameplay itself centers around diplomacy more than any previous Civ game, the diplomacy menu is a mixed bag. The trade menu has obviously improved, however the other options are less than what SMAC had to offer. No matter how close an AI is to destruction it can't offer to surrender. Players can't act as peacemakers between warring factions. Players can't become allies and garrison each others bases. Players can't coordinate attacks. Players can't trade or turn over military units for some unknown reasons. The U.N. is a major disappoint compared to the U.N. council in SMAC, since the U.N. in Civ3 serves no gameplay role other than to allow diplomatic victory. Players can't meet to vote on proposals or international accords, players can't contact other civs and even bribe them to vote for them in the U.N. election. The option of actually calling for a U.N. election has been taken away from the player. Atrocities and rivalries are much less pronounced in Civ3 than they were in SMAC. You can burn down a civs cities for years then nuke them, and although they will be furious they will still negociate with you and certainly won't muster all of their resources to defeat your civ. Certianly the other civs won't unite to stop a civ with blood on its hands from commiting more atrocities. Another long asked for feature, multiple civ alliances like NATO were also left out, so the amount of innovation outside of the trade window in diplomacy is nonexistant.

3) The ancient era is by far the most interesting era in Civ3. It contains a wide variety of all kinds of play options, and it goes downhill from there. Nationalism and mobilization is a nice feature in the industrial era, yet mobilization seems not to have any downsides, and a player might as well always stay mobilized. By the modern era the game has sunk to the depth of boriness, this problem has plauged all civ games but it appears that it is more acute in Civ3 than in the other.

4) The player isn't rewarded in the game by any multimedia perks except for the palace screen and the the era advance screen. This leads me to believe that a lack of resources rather than improvement in gameplay lead to this decision. While wonder moviesget quite tedious and virtually all players cut them off if they are playing day in and day out, i found that when playing SMAC less frequently I would leave the wonder movies on. Also i don't understand why the written and verbal description of techs and units was left out (speaking solely on gameplay reasons).

5) Civ3 lacks lacks little touches like courthouses make one citizen happy under a democracy, philosophy grants one free tech, nuclear power increases naval movement by one, etc. that Civ2 had. Civ3 replaces little touches by more arbitrary decisions like well garrisoned cities defecting and the occupying army disappear without a trace and with no harm to the reverting city. Usage has no effect on resource depletion, and unless a player is heavily using a resource it is better not to connect it to the trade grid, a resource can only disappear once a road or colony is on it.

6) Lack of multiplayer and a real scenario editor. Although many will disagree agree with me on this point, all I have to say is that in just the apolyton forums alone, there is still a number of Civ2, Call to Power, and SMAC games going on. Multiplayer is still quite active for both SMAC and CtP. There is more activity in the CtP multiplayer forum than there is in the entire CtP2 section. In short, both multiplayer and scenarios keep a game alive in the long run, and without either civ3 will have a much shorter lifespan.

7) Moore's law. Gordan Moore one of the cofounders of Intel came up with this little observation that about every 18 months computer power will double. So if we apply that law, each time a new game comes out it should be better than all previous games because the amount of computer resources that it has to work with is much greater. Since the original Civ came out ten years ago computers have made substantial advances. This in turn should lead to substantial advances in the quality of games. Everything has far more raw computing power to utilize, so games today should be much better than games from 10 years ago. A picture is worth a million words, so here is two screen shots, one from doom and one from return to castle wolfenstien.

doom (1993)

RtCW (2001)

and i was hoping to see that kind of advance in Civ3 compared to Civ1

EDIT:

That being said though, Civ3 still did include some innovations and the fact is that Civ3 is a stable game on windows 98. It still maintains the same basic civ gameplay and it is firmly anchored on human history rather than SciFi. For those who liked civ2 because you could recreate history, but hated the scifi elements of SMAC then it is a worthy upgrade and superior to Civ2 in most areas. Thos of you who like the Civ formula and aren't nitpicky then it is also a worthy upgrade to SMAC. All in all its a good game, yet it is far from being the second coming of civ or anything. It has high and lows, and don't believe either the best or worst things that people have to say about.

[David Murray]

I certainly agree with your summary of the limitaitons of diplomacy korn. It would have been brilliant to see all the missing features you described added. But it would also take a heck of a lot of programming and effort. What with Firaxis' fixation on "fun" perhaps that extra effort was foregone for simplicity's sake (and it's not as if there's really that many people complaining about the diplomacy system besides a handful).

Furthermore, the removal of fundamentalism and nasty espionage missions like planting nukes and diseases are sorely missed by myself, although perhaps not that many other people. I just think they are important elements that we have to learn to deal with/eliminate.

[Deathwalker]

I just wish they had finished the game and then properley tested it. Also that they would stopp trying to explain there crap game concept e.g. Planes can;t shink ships. As part of some grand plan to balance the game, what crap

[korn469]

David

It would have been brilliant to see all the missing features you described added. But it would also take a heck of a lot of programming and effort. What with Firaxis' fixation on "fun" perhaps that extra effort was foregone for simplicity's sake (and it's not as if there's really that many people complaining about the diplomacy system besides a handful).

Since Civ3 was built on the SMAC engine and all of the diplomacy features i listed except for something like NATO was part of the codebase it doesn't seem like it should have been that hard to include it in Civ3, however there seems to be an either either conscious or not, to not include ideas Brian Reynolds added to SMAC in Civ3. This might be because of an agreement signed when he left firaxis or i might all be coincidence.

Besides the terrorism scare, I guess that Civ3 is more disney than SMAC was, so when you put 100,000 people to death in SMAC it showed a burning base and the leader of the civ you did this too would vow to see you burn, and other civs would put economic sanctions on you. In Civ3 after you kill that many people, a friendly looking advisor shows up acting like nothing has happened and ask if you would rather build cultural raising buildings in your empire instead of ICBMs. Then it's back to the oh so pleasantly cartoony killing fields.

[korn469]

Deathwalker

lso that they would stopp trying to explain there crap game concept e.g. Planes can;t shink ships.

if planes could sink ships then you would have the game concept of B-17s being able to sink Aegis Cruisers, while F/A-18 Super Hornets would have trouble sinking Ironclads. Yeap that sounds absolutely realistic.

[David Murray]

Originally posted by korn469
In Civ3 after you kill that many people, a friendly looking advisor shows up acting like nothing has happened and ask if you would rather build cultural raising buildings in your empire instead of ICBMs. Then it's back to the oh so pleasantly cartoony killing fields.

Very well said.

I suppose you can't have it all. Good graphics and good, realistic gameplay takes too much effort.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by korn469
3) The ancient era is by far the most interesting era in Civ3. It contains a wide variety of all kinds of play options, and it goes downhill from there. Nationalism and mobilization is a nice feature in the industrial era, yet mobilization seems not to have any downsides, and a player might as well always stay mobilized. By the modern era the game has sunk to the depth of boriness, this problem has plauged all civ games but it appears that it is more acute in Civ3 than in the other.

agreed on UN
as for mobilization, i think that the penalty of not being able to build any non-military improvements is pretty substantial...

and IMHO, modern era is the best part....except for the cheap victory costs for UN and spaceship. the warfare and other thingies simply rock.

that said, attrocities and diplo stuff should be better

[korn469]

LaRusso

it might be a bug but it has been my experiance that even when i am mobilized that i can build non-military improvements, i just don't get the bonus

this is prepatch, try it out and see if it works

[yin26]

I still don't understand...

Dave, you should have stopped there.

Don't presume to know how much time I have on my hands. I work 3 jobs and just got grabbed to work for one of the most prestigious institutes in Korea. In all likelihood, I'm busier than you by orders of magnitude.

So the better question is: Why, if I'm so busy, do I 'waste' my time here? Two reasons come to mind: 1) I have friends here and since I'm often at a computer, it's not hard to drop comments and 2) I still have outside hope that the Gold Edition of Civ3 will be worth trying.

Beyond that, I find it sad that you have so much time on your hands to waste time wondering why we are wasting our time.

[Simpleton]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Its not everyday you can get 5 stars from Yin and bore a simpleton with the same post.

How come Yin gets his name capitalized buy mine isn't!! I demand equal rights!!! I got rights!!!

[Capt Dizle]

Simpleton. Simpleton. Simpleton.

There.

Actually, my intent when I started this thread was to post and hopefully just forget Civ 3.

So, I am going to try to do that. Goodbye and god bless.

jt

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by korn469
LaRusso

it might be a bug but it has been my experiance that even when i am mobilized that i can build non-military improvements, i just don't get the bonus

this is prepatch, try it out and see if it works

IIRC you can build some 'mixed improvements' like harbors, but no banks, marketplaces, etc. they are just not an option....

[moomin]

Originally posted by Velociryx

If it IS to be a Builder's paradise.....

I'm a card-carrying builder and would like to contend that Civ3 is much less of a builders game than SMAC ever was. Why? Both SMAC and Civ3 favor the war-monger. SMAC favors the warmonger _more_, but then a throuroghly peaceful game is possible, if kind of difficult, in SMAC. As far as I can tell, there is no peaceful option in Civ3 - resource shortage will eventually force you to stab, at least on Diety.

I used to derive my gaming pleasure from playing builder Transcend games in SMAC, using scenarios to set up the AI as a powerhose and then trying to survive by excellence in regard to terraforming and square expliotation, combined arms defensive strategy, diplomatic wheeling and dealing and so forth. None of this is remotely possible with Civ3. Terraforming has fewer options than even in Civ2 and optimal tile usage is so obvious they could well have set govenors to autoimprove tiles without much loss, the diplomacy has been gutted, the spying options (while I, personally, like the god-mode) are largely useless, the specialist are even more so.

If anybody has come close to winning any kind of Diety game playing _peaceful_ builder, I'd be glad to hear it. I find it's the worst of two worlds - I must go on brutal military assault from day one to survive, and by doing so there's no real challenge even at Deity.

And to think I used to win by transcedence and vote in SMAC games at trascend level playing Playing Zak against Yang, Miriam and Santigo _without ever firing a single shot during the entire duration of the game_. Those were the days.

[Venger]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
my excitement is palpable as I run to the dictionary to look up the word
juxtaposed.....

Heh, great line...

juxtaposed positions...gee, Venger, who knew you would be the one to bring sex into this thing...

Come on, you know sex talk is off limits, you trying to get me banned or something?

Venger