Civ III: The good, the bad & the ugly

[paulmagusnet]

Civilization III: The Good, the bad & the Ugly


Now that I have played CIV III my feelings are a mixture of approval, disapointment and supprise at the number of missed opportunities for innovation. In the sense that I expected much more from a third generation product, the ambivalence about it constitutes an effective failure of the product to meet the expectations of the player. Lets call it CIV 2.45.

The Good.

There are several significant changes that deserve to be praised. The first is the implimentation of meaningful resources and the simple and elegant way in which it was accomplished. It advances an idea from the original game that was undeveloped in the sense that tile bonuses added little to play beyond a few extra coins or shields. Now these features have become very valuable to the player and make a qualitative difference in what the player is able to do. So much so that certain resources are worthy of conflict to obtain them. This adds a new level of excitment and anticipation to play and gives the player new ways to manipulate the play environment. The method of using strategic and luxury resources is an excellent compromise between simplicity and reality. By making resources available only when their need is recognised is a good concept and bypasses the issues of exploration and search in an believable and senseble manner. The fact that they are tradable is also excellent. All in all, this is a good idea done well and a logical evolution of the game. One thing missing though is manufactured luxuries and resources. Steel, televisions and microchips are some obvious ones. Level I and II manufactures could be very powerful boosts to a civilization but will make it vulnerable to a loss of some vital low level component.

The other praiseworthy change is the ability to do sophisticated trading in diplomacy. What ever complaints about how it works and a rather clumbsy feedback mechanism, the ability to trade a range of products and services for some custom package of goods and services is a welcome innovation and adds flavor to the diplomatic aspect of game play. This change makes diplomatic relationships complex and valuable, with the result that, again, the player has more ways to manipulate the direction of game play in ways that change the quality of play. ie, if you devlope a strategic partner that can supply you oil when your own supply fails, doing things for that partner becomes significantly valuable and influences your strategic decisions. An improvement to the functionality of the negotiation would be to have the lump sum and per turn amounts presented as permenant value sliders, and the comparative values of the offered amounts linked to an acceptability graph that updates with each change. There should be two graphs, one for acceptability or happiness with the trade and one for 'good will'. Trade items should display a 'trade value' so you can get a sense of worth and there should be a slider on the item displays so you can easily view a long list of trade goods. The animated heads keep nodding in some eternally repetitive fashon which is both weird and annoying, but after a while you can train yourself to partly ignore the graphic.

Culture and its relationship to political influence is an interesting and positive addition to the CIV series. It gives the player another meaningful tool to use in developing his civilization and gives multiple values to city structures. While much work needs to be done to properly develope this concept, it is a good start.

The way in which air missions are done is very good and solves the perrenial problem of spear chuckers knocking down F16s.

The small wonders, essentually unique civ level improvements, is very good, and should be expanded.

The key to the success of these changes is that they are natural evolutions of existing concepts, thus they contribute to the fundimental direction of the game and aid in involving the player in the fantasy. They make give more meaning to those particular game aspects and provide for more choices in manipulating play.

The Bad:

No Stack Movement. It has become dreary drudgery to move all those units to the same place especially when the program keeps flicking back and forth between target distinations and the stack of units you are trying to move. Unless if flicks back to units that you are not yet ready to deal with. This becomes a physically demanding and stressful activity in any sizable game. How seemingly thoughtless it is that the ability to designat a large number of units to 'go there' is absent. Did the people who designed and wrote the program ever use it?

A little intelligence in the way in which the screen recenters would go a long way to releive stress also. The screen does not need to recenter every time it goes to a new unit, only when that unit is beyond visual range. And it should select units to cycle through in a spiral around the last activated unit. This way my perspective isn't constantly shocked by rapid changes in perspective.

Unit combat insanity. While I can accept the use of a highly idealized and simplistic combat resolution system, some recognition of the quality of units must be made beyond attack values. That is if you want to maintain belief in the illusion of the game. The way things currently are, I am much better off building ten viking war galleys and attacking a battleship with them than doing anything else. While some players may have no trouble with the concept of a magical war galley, I do. If you want to identify a unit as a specific type of real world device, you must consider all its relevant qualities. Did the programmers visualize in their minds a knight in shiny armour and pointy lance charging into a Sherman Tank and prevailing in the resultant collision? Did Viking war galleys really have advanced ASW (anti submarine warfare) capabilities sufficient to hunt down and sink a 688 nuclear attack sub, or the ability to plow their bronze covered wooded ram through the 26 inch steel armored hull of a WWII style battleship? If so, why doesn't every navy in the present day world have a fleet of them to go into battle with, it would certainly be more economical than an Ageas destroyer. Visualize it, how does a war galley attack even a critically crippled battleship? Assuming that plowing through the hull is not an available option, the shear height of the hull is twice the length of the galley, thus the act of climing over the sides of the battleship is rather difficult. Assumning all the deck guns are dead, even the small arms of the sailors would be sufficient to fight off the galley or even sink it. Ok, lets say someone lost the key to the armory and the crew has to fight the galley hand to hand, well, there are 1,500 men on the battleship and at best 50-60 on the galley. At those odds, the battleship crew doesn't even fight, they can win by stampeding in the direction of the invaders and crush them like fans at an English soccer game. What should really happen is that when the first monitor class ship hits the water, everybody with a heavy investment in wooden warships wets their pants in fear as they realize that their vast proud fleets just became kindling for someone's fireplace.

Catapults and cannon have artillary functions but the 'cannon' on a tank does not. What is a tank but primarily a very moble cannon.

The problem is that there is no relationship between the unit designation and its behavior. This makes units relatively meaningless beyond the incremental value of their combat numbers and breaks the illusion of the game when clearly impossible and irrational situations occur.

The sentry option for units disappeared. Oddly, this has been a standard feature of games of this type for nearly a decade, did it somehow become obsolete.

My advisors, while they love to put forth a constant stream of trivia and insipid commentary, don't feel that I, as supreme diety of the nation, should be informed when one of my cities is nuked. I feel that I should be informed about this bit of trivia, and maby even see a flash from the direction of said city if it is just out of visual range or the mushroom cloud itself. It is also annoying that there is no flash and fireball when I nuke something, I need that visual and tactile feedback as it adds to the illusion of accomplishment. Those little electon lives shouldn't die in vain, there should be at least some resultant entertainment.

Speaking of the advisors, these guys remind me far too much of the Microsoft Word paperclip helper. The paperclip is both cloying and annoying, there when you don't want it and hard to use when you do finally try to do someting with it. It does however have the virtue that you can get rid of it, unlike the CIV paperclip persons who you can't ever shut up. The commentary in the advisors screen has a rich range from painfully obvious, to irrelevant, to insultingly insipid. They actually obscure information rather than help present relevent data in a meaningful way. If you enjoy watching tv commercials and talk about them excitedly with your friends or are enthralled by laundry moving in the washer window you will enjoy these critters, othewise you will find you hand stabbing the esc key spasmatically when ever you hear that chime.

Its is nice to be told that I can build some new minor miracle, please don't tell me that maby I should as I can decide that myself. Please don't force me to have to acknowlege purly informational announcements, it is physically tiring and difficult to target that little dot. Infact the whole turn should be processed and a list of events presented that I can respond to or not at my leasure. I should not have to constantly monitor the screen to keep these dialogs from stopping the program's progress.

I don't want to be constantly told to build an aquaduct or hospital, there are so many other important things that require my attention that having to explain to the program that I really do want to finish that unit or factoy again and again is a serious problem. I find myself building things I don't want just to avoid seeing messages or having to constantly monitor my cities. There is a way to get the govener to force the city to build units but it is cumbersome.

If I don't have enough money to buy an upgrade or city enhancement, show that information and disable the button. Do not force me to click the button and subsquent dialoge boxes just to find out what should already been known.

It would be very nice to be able to click on the shield bucket itself and drag my cusor down, filling the bucket and emptying the treasury as I feel is needed. I don't always want to buy the whole thing, just speed it up a little here and there.

I should be able to find out what my current agreements are from my foreign advisor without the necessity to reinterview the other civ. I should also be able to access known statistical information about the other civs.

My cultural advisor should be able to give me a list of wonders existing and under construction that I am aware of, maby even completion times if my intel is good enough.

The list of cities in the domestic screen will not stay sorted, how am I to get information from this fleeting list? CIties in civil disorder or close to reovlt should be highlighted, as they are difficult to discern either on the list or on the map.

I can't even talk about the city govener it is so bad and unweildy. But I wish my cities would continue to produce those units I tell it to, not pirate ships and wonders It can't possibly finsh. The cities often switch tasks without telling me just to sneak these useless things through.

A pull down, scrollable list of cities in the city screen would be nice so that I can, without leaving the city screen, to directly to any other city I want to change.

An actual build que would be nice, and something more advanced that the simple one thing at a time project builds.

There are so many orphan technologies. Things like philosophy, steel and radios, are just meaningless speed bumps on the way to something useful. Why doesn't the discovery of large scale steel production give me a steel mill to produce or some other artiface or ability? Philosophy and religion could be more sophisticated and give me a choice of philosophies or religions to follow, choices that have significant future consiquences. Hindi and Buddisim are very successful religions, and they are pantheistic, why is monotheism the only path forward? Religion is a fundemental (forgive the pun) influence on how sociaties develop, but in CIV it is a simply a speed bump and a build.

The tech tree concept is very old, and needs to evolve. Why not more than one tree in the tech forest, some with different advancement requirements like culture or religious values or some event in the civ or world.

There should be a means by which advances are lost from the civilization, just as what happened in the dark ages.

The Ugly:

The defeat dart board and its infantile baiting has got to go or at least have a disable option. This is such a variance from the original CIV ideal that surviving as far as you did, no matter your score or victory, was a victory in itself. This feature is so mindlessly revolting as to spoil the game for me and anytime I am not absolutly victorious I just kill the game to avoid it. Eventually I just won't play the game to avoid it.

The win screen is almost as annoying and really provides a negative incentive to attain that victory condition.

The barbarian with the mallot and bell is not as revolting as the defeat/victory screens, but gives the game a juvinile/carny feel that just runs counter to the central theme of the game, kind of like finding Barny the Dinosaur shaking hands with Bogart at the end of Cassablanca.

It is not that this stuff is juvinile and mean, it displays an appalling lack of immagination. It would have been better to have done nothing at all than to grease my screen with this useless drek.

[Dravin]

You make good points, but I fear it won't be long until you are flamed.

[paulmagusnet]

A man is best judged by the quality of flames he inspires. And if those hords of juvinile thumb suckers don't like it, great.

[Yook]

I just have a couple of things to get out of the way so that people can get on to actually commenting on the relevant bits of your post and not snidely harp on these few points.

Some of the issues you mention are taken care of in the patch, to wit: the sorting on the city advisor screen.

Also, though you are probably aware of them I feel I should mention the F7-11 keys, one of which has info on Wonders built by you and others, as well as what is being built where and by whom.

That's all I can think of so far. Nice post.

-Yook, Lord of the Pants

[edit: Really must learn how to spell, one of these days.]

[Trifna]

Stil no flames yet... I'm really on the same side with the ugly and the rest doesn't seem that much inflamable...

[Dis]

those are good points. but I have seen them before.

...

Next

[kailhun]

Originally posted by paulmagusnet
Civilization III: The Good, the bad & the Ugly


The Bad:

No Stack Movement. It has become dreary drudgery to move all those units to the same place especially when the program keeps flicking back and forth between target distinations and the stack of units you are trying to move. Unless if flicks back to units that you are not yet ready to deal with. This becomes a physically demanding and stressful activity in any sizable game. How seemingly thoughtless it is that the ability to designat a large number of units to 'go there' is absent. Did the people who designed and wrote the program ever use it?

The lack of stack movement is getting annoying. I like to have teams of 4 workers running around clearing pollution. Moving and issuing orders to all in the stack would be most helpful.

A little intelligence in the way in which the screen recenters would go a long way to releive stress also. The screen does not need to recenter every time it goes to a new unit, only when that unit is beyond visual range.

There will always be times when screen recentering is annoying. The computer can't read your mind on what you would like it to do now.

And it should select units to cycle through in a spiral around the last activated unit. This way my perspective isn't constantly shocked by rapid changes in perspective.

Jumping all over the map in the later years is most confusing.

Unit combat insanity.

agree 100%.

The sentry option for units disappeared. Oddly, this has been a standard feature of games of this type for nearly a decade, did it somehow become obsolete.

Ah, the old sentry command. How well I remember thee.

My advisors,

I miss the civ2 video's.

If I don't have enough money to buy an upgrade or city enhancement, show that information and disable the button. Do not force me to click the button and subsquent dialoge boxes just to find out what should already been known.

The current system works for me.

It would be very nice to be able to click on the shield bucket itself and drag my cusor down, filling the bucket and emptying the treasury as I feel is needed. I don't always want to buy the whole thing, just speed it up a little here and there.

Nice idea.

The defeat dart board and its infantile baiting has got to go or at least have a disable option. This is such a variance from the original CIV ideal that surviving as far as you did, no matter your score or victory, was a victory in itself. This feature is so mindlessly revolting as to spoil the game for me and anytime I am not absolutly victorious I just kill the game to avoid it. Eventually I just won't play the game to avoid it.

The win screen is almost as annoying and really provides a negative incentive to attain that victory condition.

I do'n't bother to watch this. It is a bit Jar-Jar.

The barbarian with the mallot and bell is not as revolting as the defeat/victory screens, but gives the game a juvinile/carny feel that just runs counter to the central theme of the game, kind of like finding Barny the Dinosaur shaking hands with Bogart at the end of Cassablanca.

The rating is fun, but it would be better to have the barbarian at least evolve based on what level the world was at when you quit.

Robert

[Monoriu]

"The Bad:

No Stack Movement. It has become dreary drudgery to move all those units to the same place especially when the program keeps flicking back and forth between target distinations and the stack of units you are trying to move. Unless if flicks back to units that you are not yet ready to deal with. This becomes a physically demanding and stressful activity in any sizable game. How seemingly thoughtless it is that the ability to designat a large number of units to 'go there' is absent. Did the people who designed and wrote the program ever use it?"

I agree, lack a stack movement is a significant problem for the game in the late stage.

"A little intelligence in the way in which the screen recenters would go a long way to releive stress also. The screen does not need to recenter every time it goes to a new unit, only when that unit is beyond visual range. And it should select units to cycle through in a spiral around the last activated unit. This way my perspective isn't constantly shocked by rapid changes in perspective."

I am not bothered by the screen re-centreing, but I definitely can use more control over the movement priority of my units. Let's say I want to move all artillery units first before all others, or I want to move all units in this tile before all others.

"Unit combat insanity. While I can accept the use of a highly idealized and simplistic combat resolution system, some recognition of the quality of units must be made beyond attack values. That is if you want to maintain belief in the illusion of the game. The way things currently are, I am much better off building ten viking war galleys and attacking a battleship with them than doing anything else. While some players may have no trouble with the concept of a magical war galley, I do. If you want to identify a unit as a specific type of real world device, you must consider all its relevant qualities. Did the programmers visualize in their minds a knight in shiny armour and pointy lance charging into a Sherman Tank and prevailing in the resultant collision? Did Viking war galleys really have advanced ASW (anti submarine warfare) capabilities sufficient to hunt down and sink a 688 nuclear attack sub, or the ability to plow their bronze covered wooded ram through the 26 inch steel armored hull of a WWII style battleship? If so, why doesn't every navy in the present day world have a fleet of them to go into battle with, it would certainly be more economical than an Ageas destroyer. Visualize it, how does a war galley attack even a critically crippled battleship? Assuming that plowing through the hull is not an available option, the shear height of the hull is twice the length of the galley, thus the act of climing over the sides of the battleship is rather difficult. Assumning all the deck guns are dead, even the small arms of the sailors would be sufficient to fight off the galley or even sink it. Ok, lets say someone lost the key to the armory and the crew has to fight the galley hand to hand, well, there are 1,500 men on the battleship and at best 50-60 on the galley. At those odds, the battleship crew doesn't even fight, they can win by stampeding in the direction of the invaders and crush them like fans at an English soccer game. What should really happen is that when the first monitor class ship hits the water, everybody with a heavy investment in wooden warships wets their pants in fear as they realize that their vast proud fleets just became kindling for someone's fireplace. "

I don't agree. Making modern units too powerful can unbalance the game.

"Catapults and cannon have artillary functions but the 'cannon' on a tank does not. What is a tank but primarily a very moble cannon. "

Wrong. Guns on tanks are VERY different from artillery in the real world. Artillery guns typically have a much greater range than tanks and they serve very different roles.

"The problem is that there is no relationship between the unit designation and its behavior. This makes units relatively meaningless beyond the incremental value of their combat numbers and breaks the illusion of the game when clearly impossible and irrational situations occur."

See above.

"The sentry option for units disappeared. Oddly, this has been a standard feature of games of this type for nearly a decade, did it somehow become obsolete."

I agree.

"My advisors, while they love to put forth a constant stream of trivia and insipid commentary, don't feel that I, as supreme diety of the nation, should be informed when one of my cities is nuked. I feel that I should be informed about this bit of trivia, and maby even see a flash from the direction of said city if it is just out of visual range or the mushroom cloud itself. It is also annoying that there is no flash and fireball when I nuke something, I need that visual and tactile feedback as it adds to the illusion of accomplishment. Those little electon lives shouldn't die in vain, there should be at least some resultant entertainment."

There needs to be a lot more option for us to choose which events need to be reported in pop up menus.

"Speaking of the advisors, these guys remind me far too much of the Microsoft Word paperclip helper. The paperclip is both cloying and annoying, there when you don't want it and hard to use when you do finally try to do someting with it. It does however have the virtue that you can get rid of it, unlike the CIV paperclip persons who you can't ever shut up. The commentary in the advisors screen has a rich range from painfully obvious, to irrelevant, to insultingly insipid. They actually obscure information rather than help present relevent data in a meaningful way. If you enjoy watching tv commercials and talk about them excitedly with your friends or are enthralled by laundry moving in the washer window you will enjoy these critters, othewise you will find you hand stabbing the esc key spasmatically when ever you hear that chime."

Agreed. They should present the info in table form.

"Its is nice to be told that I can build some new minor miracle, please don't tell me that maby I should as I can decide that myself. Please don't force me to have to acknowlege purly informational announcements, it is physically tiring and difficult to target that little dot. Infact the whole turn should be processed and a list of events presented that I can respond to or not at my leasure. I should not have to constantly monitor the screen to keep these dialogs from stopping the program's progress."

I don't think its a problem. Some of us non-English native speakers may take a longer while to read the messages.

"I don't want to be constantly told to build an aquaduct or hospital, there are so many other important things that require my attention that having to explain to the program that I really do want to finish that unit or factoy again and again is a serious problem. I find myself building things I don't want just to avoid seeing messages or having to constantly monitor my cities. There is a way to get the govener to force the city to build units but it is cumbersome."

Use the production queues. In the newest patch there is an option to build units indefinitely.

"If I don't have enough money to buy an upgrade or city enhancement, show that information and disable the button. Do not force me to click the button and subsquent dialoge boxes just to find out what should already been known."

Good idea.

"It would be very nice to be able to click on the shield bucket itself and drag my cusor down, filling the bucket and emptying the treasury as I feel is needed. I don't always want to buy the whole thing, just speed it up a little here and there."

You mean a "partial speed build" option. No strong feelings on this.

"I should be able to find out what my current agreements are from my foreign advisor without the necessity to reinterview the other civ. I should also be able to access known statistical information about the other civs."

Agreed 100%. This is definitely a weakness of the game. A serious one.

"My cultural advisor should be able to give me a list of wonders existing and under construction that I am aware of, maby even completion times if my intel is good enough."

Its there. I forgot which button but it should be one of the F8-F12 buttons. Press one of them and you'll see the info in a nice list, including the ones under construction.

"The list of cities in the domestic screen will not stay sorted, how am I to get information from this fleeting list? CIties in civil disorder or close to reovlt should be highlighted, as they are difficult to discern either on the list or on the map."

Known bug. I think its been fixed in the patch but I am not sure. If not I am sure it will be fixed sooner or later.

"I can't even talk about the city govener it is so bad and unweildy. But I wish my cities would continue to produce those units I tell it to, not pirate ships and wonders It can't possibly finsh. The cities often switch tasks without telling me just to sneak these useless things through."

The governor has been made better with the patch. There is also a new preference option to build unit indefinitely.

"A pull down, scrollable list of cities in the city screen would be nice so that I can, without leaving the city screen, to directly to any other city I want to change."

Good idea.

"An actual build que would be nice, and something more advanced that the simple one thing at a time project builds. "

Yes, we need to be able to save and load queues.

"There are so many orphan technologies. Things like philosophy, steel and radios, are just meaningless speed bumps on the way to something useful. Why doesn't the discovery of large scale steel production give me a steel mill to produce or some other artiface or ability? Philosophy and religion could be more sophisticated and give me a choice of philosophies or religions to follow, choices that have significant future consiquences. Hindi and Buddisim are very successful religions, and they are pantheistic, why is monotheism the only path forward? Religion is a fundemental (forgive the pun) influence on how sociaties develop, but in CIV it is a simply a speed bump and a build."

Disagree. Its impractical to attach something good to every tech. We need speed bumps.

"The tech tree concept is very old, and needs to evolve. Why not more than one tree in the tech forest, some with different advancement requirements like culture or religious values or some event in the civ or world."

Not a bad idea.

"There should be a means by which advances are lost from the civilization, just as what happened in the dark ages."

I don't like it. Advances were not lost in the dark ages. Just that the Romans who possessed the advances were destroyed. In other words its a backward civ taking over a more advanced civ.

The Ugly:

"The defeat dart board and its infantile baiting has got to go or at least have a disable option. This is such a variance from the original CIV ideal that surviving as far as you did, no matter your score or victory, was a victory in itself. This feature is so mindlessly revolting as to spoil the game for me and anytime I am not absolutly victorious I just kill the game to avoid it. Eventually I just won't play the game to avoid it. "

Its just a little joke. Chill man

"The win screen is almost as annoying and really provides a negative incentive to attain that victory condition."

/shrug. Doesn't bother me.

"The barbarian with the mallot and bell is not as revolting as the defeat/victory screens, but gives the game a juvinile/carny feel that just runs counter to the central theme of the game, kind of like finding Barny the Dinosaur shaking hands with Bogart at the end of Cassablanca.

"It is not that this stuff is juvinile and mean, it displays an appalling lack of immagination. It would have been better to have done nothing at all than to grease my screen with this useless drek."

See above.

[paulmagusnet]

Originally posted by Yook
I just have a couple of things to get out of the way so that people can get on to actually commenting on the relevant bits of your post and not snidely harp on these few points.

Some of the issues you mention are taken care of in the patch, to wit: the sorting on the city advisor screen.

Also, though you are probably aware of them I feel I should mention the F7-11 keys, one of which has info on Wonders built by you and others, as well as what is being built where and by whom. (oops)

That's all I can think of so far. Nice post.

-Yook, Lord of the Pants

[edit: Really must learn how to spell, one of these days.]

I know I may be duplicating other's comments, but repetition serves to tell the developers that something is important.

Living in Russia, I don't have the opportunity to buy the retail version and pirate versions don't usually have manuals. I also probably won't be able to use the patch anyway.

I'm typing, not spelling. My brain only performs one function at a time, if I'm lucky.

[paulmagusnet]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Monoriu
"The Bad:

"A little intelligence in the way in which the screen recenters would go a long way to releive stress also. The screen does not need to recenter every time it goes to a new unit, only when that unit is beyond visual range. And it should select units to cycle through in a spiral around the last activated unit. This way my perspective isn't constantly shocked by rapid changes in perspective."

I am not bothered by the screen re-centreing, but I definitely can use more control over the movement priority of my units. Let's say I want to move all artillery units first before all others, or I want to move all units in this tile before all others.
-------------------------------------------
Actually, its not as horrible as some other games, it just needs to prioritize in a local area and not jump so much, or at all if something is visible.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Unit combat insanity.

I don't agree. Making modern units too powerful can unbalance the game.
--------

Then we shouldn't allow modern units in the game, just make better wooden frigates. Just like we do now in the real world.

Personally, I think the reason people produced modern units is because they give such a powerful advantage over clubs and rocks. However mean spiritied, people just don't want to be fair in war.

What it means is that you better keep up with technology and it is a real critical decision as to invest too heavily in current level units.

But don't call something a battleship and then have it act little better than a wooden sailboat. Civilization (the real thing and the game) is about aquiring a temporary advantage and exploiting it.
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"Catapults and cannon have artillary functions but the 'cannon' on a tank does not. What is a tank but primarily a very moble cannon. "

Wrong. Guns on tanks are VERY different from artillery in the real world. Artillery guns typically have a much greater range than tanks and they serve very different roles.
------

Yes you are correct, tank guns are not artillery guns, but they are clearly better in range and impact that catapults and black powder cannon. Logically, the tank should have at least the firing range and power of a catapult, Yes? As things stand I can lob rocks at a tank and almost kill it with pure impunity and then send in my knight to finish it off all with a very high degree of success.

If I call something a lamp post, is it reasonable to give it the ability to deliver babies and perform brain surgery, then fly to the moon? Some people might because they don't care or think that anything can be anything or life should be fair and balanced in all situations.

Please don't take that as a personal attack. but balance just doesn't always exist, or even be desirable in every situation. And things should act like what they are, or they become meaningless.
----------------------------------------
"The problem is that there is no relationship between the unit designation and its behavior. This makes units relatively meaningless beyond the incremental value of their combat numbers and breaks the illusion of the game when clearly impossible and irrational situations occur."

See above.

see above.
----------------------------------------
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"Its is nice to be told that I can build some new minor miracle, please don't tell me that maby I should as I can decide that myself. Please don't force me to have to acknowlege purly informational announcements, it is physically tiring and difficult to target that little dot. Infact the whole turn should be processed and a list of events presented that I can respond to or not at my leasure. I should not have to constantly monitor the screen to keep these dialogs from stopping the program's progress."

I don't think its a problem. Some of us non-English native speakers may take a longer while to read the messages. ----

My point is that let the turn process, then give us the messages so that we can read and respond to them in a relaxed and productive way. Especially for non-english readers this is important
---------------

"If I don't have enough money to buy an upgrade or city enhancement, show that information and disable the button. Do not force me to click the button and subsquent dialoge boxes just to find out what should already been known."

Good idea.-------

Occasionally I do have them
-------------------------------------

"An actual build que would be nice, and something more advanced that the simple one thing at a time project builds. "

Yes, we need to be able to save and load queues.

Not just that, but differentiate between city construction and unit builds. Most universes I know of more than one thing can be started and built at a time.

--------------------------------------------------------------

"There are so many orphan technologies. Things like philosophy, steel and radios, are just meaningless speed bumps on the way to something useful. Why doesn't the discovery of large scale steel production give me a steel mill to produce or some other artiface or ability? Philosophy and religion could be more sophisticated and give me a choice of philosophies or religions to follow, choices that have significant future consiquences. Hindi and Buddisim are very successful religions, and they are pantheistic, why is monotheism the only path forward? Religion is a fundemental (forgive the pun) influence on how sociaties develop, but in CIV it is a simply a speed bump and a build."

Disagree. Its impractical to attach something good to every tech. We need speed bumps.
----
Why do we need a speed bump? Most things exist for a reason. For example, philosophy evolved because it fulfilled some need and produced something of consiquence. What was that thing and how does it affect my present situation and future choices. Now, if I had to chose a particular philosophy that gave me some advantage now for a future limitation, or some other effect, wouldn't that be valuable.

What I'm asking for is meaning and value, options that advance the game and give me something to do or consider. Every advance does not have to give me a unit or an improvement build, but it should give me SOMETHING of value that is related to that tech.
--------------------------------------------------------------


"There should be a means by which advances are lost from the civilization, just as what happened in the dark ages."

I don't like it. Advances were not lost in the dark ages. Just that the Romans who possessed the advances were destroyed. In other words its a backward civ taking over a more advanced civ.

It is actually an artifice that they were destroyed, they actually evolved into the holy roman empire and faded away with the rise of nationalism and the european kingdoms. The fact is that records, teachers and researchers were often destroyed or simply unfunded in the process. Knowledge exists in some physical form, be it a book or person. When that form is destroyed, so is access to that knowledge.

When the Islamic fundimentalists burnt the Great Library, that knowledge was lost.

When your library is burnt, and you can't afford scientists, someting will be lost.

_---------------------------------------------------------------
The Ugly:

"The defeat dart board and its infantile baiting has got to go or at least have a disable option. This is such a variance from the original CIV ideal that surviving as far as you did, no matter your score or victory, was a victory in itself. This feature is so mindlessly revolting as to spoil the game for me and anytime I am not absolutly victorious I just kill the game to avoid it. Eventually I just won't play the game to avoid it. "

Its just a little joke. Chill man

Actually I'm very chilled, but that screen just offends me no end, I beg for the option to disable it. The fact that they spent so much time on this rather than someting that advanced the game is the true offense.
-------------------------

"The win screen is almost as annoying and really provides a negative incentive to attain that victory condition."

/shrug. Doesn't bother me.

It's stupid and childish, why do I want it? No it is not really horrible, just annoying.
--------------------------------------------

[yin26]

I believe you just summarized beautifully a number of my exact feelings. Excellent post. Very well done. And along the way, some very witty stuff, like:

At those odds, the battleship crew doesn't even fight, they can win by stampeding in the direction of the invaders and crush them like fans at an English soccer game.

LOL! Wonderful stuff.

And I agree that lack of imagination coupled with sophmoric humor and heaps of useless or just outright annoying game mechanics make Civ3 a dreadful life-sucking farce.

I am very curious, though, if the community here can make a decent game out of it within the next year.

[Libertarian]

Strangely, as you come more and more toward my direction, Yin, I am moving more and more towards yours. I wager that the place where we eventually meet will be a good one.

[yin26]

Doesn't the Bible warn against something like that toward the End of Days? LOL! Actually, I play tough sometimes, but all I want is a killer Civ3. Good thing we have a great number of near-genius gamers among us just salivating to get under the hood.

But in my war of words, I've run out of ammo. Watch my back.

[paulmagusnet]

Originally posted by yin26
I believe you just summarized beautifully a number of my exact feelings. Excellent post. Very well done. And along the way, some very witty stuff, like:LOL! Wonderful stuff.

Thankyou, it's nice to be appriciated occasionally. Usually I'm off defending some unpopular suggestion. Actually, it gets better, the battleship crew doesn't have to wait for the galley slaves to climb the hull, they can sink the galley just by having enought sailors dive onto it.

And I agree that lack of imagination coupled with sophmoric humor and heaps of useless or just outright annoying game mechanics make Civ3 a dreadful life-sucking farce.

It's not quite that bad, try playing Merchant Prince II.

I am very curious, though, if the community here can make a decent game out of it within the next year.

Depends on how lazy firaxis is, obviously they didn't waste too much thought on this release. I think they have been involved with this stuff too long and are stale for ideas. And no one in the game developemnt community cares about human interface design.

[Thomas Paine]

Depends on how lazy firaxis is, obviously they didn't waste too much thought on this release. I think they have been involved with this stuff too long and are stale for ideas. And no one in the game developemnt community cares about human interface design.

Pity.
After trudging through a three-day-long game, and wresting a well earned victory from the unworthy clutches of the despicable Whomevers, I was finally treated to my "prize" - the end game screen. If memory serves, I believe my immdiate reaction was to wince . For a brief moment, I actually felt embarrassed, as if caught playing with dollies or some such. I even craned my neck, looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was around to see this silly bit of fluff on my screen.
Ok, I'm exaggerating a wee bit. But I have to admit, I was briefly surprised by the sophomoric turn the game suddenly ended upon. It seemed as though the game was being marketed to a far, far younger crowd. I felt like an adult riding a tricycle. A minor complaint, certainly not worthy of vehement protests and Molotov cocktails, but it did add to the game's Cheese Factor.

As for the tech tree, I couldn't agree more! I fully expected to achieve some benefit upon the invention of, say, radio. I thought that there might be some hidden, poorly documented boon that had escaped my attention. But no; it was just...well...a radio. "Bravo. Moving on... ."

The same with the discovery of satelite communication. "What, no little perk, no equivalent to the old, 'Astronoughts bring back pictures of the Earth' message?' To be honest, I was more surprised than disappointed. I thought it was yet another opportunity missed to reward my rat-like devotion to successfully threading the maze. My feeling was far less than outrage; it was more akin to 'Oh - really? That's it? Hmm. Ok... .'
Such was my reaction to the game in general. Neither hostile dismay or overwrought jublilation. Just a sort of...bemused indifference. The much touted tedium certainly made winning or losing to be something of a draw regardless, particularly after the late industrial age. As a casual gamer, I'm easily amused. I get a small thrill from watching my cultural borders expand. I'm not above playing the game just to see what shape my nation will take by the end of the eighteenth century! But as for concepts like "replayability," and "innovative design," I found that the Law of Deminishing Return came crashing into effect far to early.

*shrug* Oh well. C'est la vie. Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I see that my Chia Pet is in dire need of watering.

[Yook]

Originally posted by paulmagusnet


I know I may be duplicating other's comments, but repetition serves to tell the developers that something is important.

Living in Russia, I don't have the opportunity to buy the retail version and pirate versions don't usually have manuals. I also probably won't be able to use the patch anyway.

I'm typing, not spelling. My brain only performs one function at a time, if I'm lucky.

I'm sorry, I did not mean to imply that you were not spelling correctly. I had to edit my post after the fact, and was commenting on my own imability to spell. I have a tendency to drop the word "I" in sentences, so that instead of "I really must learn..." it read as "Really must learn..." I apologize.

As for the F7-F11 keys, I never noticed it in the manual myself, I just ran across it one day while randomly hitting keys.

Anyway, nice post, as I said. I don't agree with everything you say, but I like how you went about saying it.

-Yook

[yin26]

Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I see that my Chia Pet is in dire need of watering.

LOL! Yes, we should all learn to enjoy the little Chia Pets in life. Excellent reminder and excellent post.

[kailhun]

Originally posted by Thomas Paine

*shrug* Oh well. C'est la vie. Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I see that my Chia Pet is in dire need of watering.

What's a Chia Pet?

Robert

[yin26]

They are seeds that sprout into all kinds of wonderfully cute shapes depending on the potter you buy. This delightful variant is called 'Chia Head,' one of my personal favorites.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by paulmagusnet


I know I may be duplicating other's comments, but repetition serves to tell the developers that something is important.

Living in Russia, I don't have the opportunity to buy the retail version and pirate versions don't usually have manuals. I also probably won't be able to use the patch anyway.

I'm typing, not spelling. My brain only performs one function at a time, if I'm lucky.

Some may argue that patching is anti-pirating technology.

[gachnar]

Originally posted by paulmagusnet
No Stack Movement.

Blah. Check out any of the other 438 posts about no stack movement. Same argument. Been done. Firaxis knows. Venger was more convincing.

Unit combat insanity. While I can accept the use of a highly idealized and simplistic combat resolution system, some recognition of the quality of units must be made beyond attack values.

Standard: Literal vs. Contextual argument. Dont thnk of a galley in the modern age as a galley, think small gunboat. Otherwise, we need a small gunboat.

Example: I made a Guerilla unit. ADM = 4.2.1. Now. If my guerilla unit is attacked by a tank and wins, you'd be fine with that, cuz guerilla forces have been known to beat tanis. But if a spearman does it, its unrealistic. They have the same defense. Perhaps "spearmen" in modern ages are commercially armed saboteurs. Yes it would be nice if the names and graphics changed. Or people's minds. Either way...

Catapults and cannon have artillary functions but the 'cannon' on a tank does not. What is a tank but primarily a very moble cannon.

My tanks can bombard. Edit them.

If I don't have enough money to buy an upgrade or city enhancement, show that information and disable the button. Do not force me to click the button and subsquent dialoge boxes just to find out what should already been known.

I want to know how much money it takes. Its a UI design issue, and the game isn't designed for you personally. I actually feel its the best solution.

I don't always want to buy the whole thing, just speed it up a little here and there.

That is probably a purposeful game design. Why do people always want to make games easier?

My cultural advisor should be able to give me a list of wonders existing and under construction that I am aware of, maby even completion times if my intel is good enough.

You're cultural advisor tells you when other civs are building wonders. Its up to you to find out where.

(sorting in the domestic screen)

Blah. Fixed in the patch.

I can't even talk about the city govener it is so bad and unweildy. But I wish my cities would continue to produce those units I tell it to...

Blah. Added in the patch.

The cities often switch tasks without telling me just to sneak these useless things through.

I want proof of cities switching tasks. They switch tasks after building a unit when the queue is empty. Two options: Use the queue, or actually pay attention to your cities.

An actual build que would be nice, and something more advanced that the simple one thing at a time project builds.

I'm not sure what you mean? You want a queue like:

Tanks (x40)
Tanks (x3)
Barracks
Tanks (x20)

Seems silly. I dont know very many worthwhile uses.

Religion is a fundemental (forgive the pun) influence on how sociaties develop, but in CIV it is a simply a speed bump and a build.

Yeah.. Like their arent enough flames about the game without Catholicism (+3 happiness, -30% Science).

The tech tree concept is very old, and needs to evolve. Why not more than one tree in the tech forest, some with different advancement requirements like culture or religious values or some event in the civ or world.

This would be a completely different game. I dont mind the idea, but it departs from the entire framework of the game. Oh. And game balance would be terribly complex.

There should be a means by which advances are lost from the civilization, just as what happened in the dark ages.

What tech advance was ever lost? My (history teaching) girlfriend would yell at you.

This feature is so mindlessly revolting as to spoil the game for me and anytime I am not absolutly victorious I just kill the game to avoid it. Eventually I just won't play the game to avoid it.

You aren't perhaps being just a bit picky, are you? The 20 hours of game play is fun, but you'll refuse to play the game because of a screen you can cancel in 1 second? What an annoying world you must live in, where everything isn't just how you want it...

The win screen is almost as annoying and really provides a negative incentive to attain that victory condition.

Blah. See above.

I realize that very little new information is here. However, I feel that for every person who adds their post about how much the game pisses them off, someone should post and inform them of how unoriginal and non-productive they were. Bit by bit, people are starting to understand.

[gachnar]

Originally posted by yin26
I believe you just summarized beautifully a number of my exact feelings. Excellent post.

Yes excellent post.

He pointed out things that have been pointed out many times before this, and are being pointed out many times while I am typing.

The only thing he really missed is the lack of bombardment being able to kill units. I bet if we have that debate one more time we'll all agree.

This is yet another in a string of posts saying the same thing... and for no reason.

[gachnar]

Originally posted by paulmagusnet
I know I may be duplicating other's comments, but repetition serves to tell the developers that something is important.

No... it serves to tell the developers that you should be ignored. You're whiny and sometimes insulting tone is a sure way to get all the Firaxians to ignore your post, and possibly future posts.

When someone tells me a problem with my code, I either

1) Fix it
2) Put it on a list of things to fix or try fixing.
3) Decide not to fix it, since I dont believe it needs fixing.

If it falls into case 1 or 2, only one notice is needed. If it falls into case 3, then each time I am told about it, especially when its from someone who knows that I know about it, then my opinion of that person drops.

Of course, you probably dont care about what Firaxis thinks of you, since they were so insensitive to make a game that you didn't fully enjoy.

Living in Russia, I don't have the opportunity to buy the retail version and pirate versions don't usually have manuals. I also probably won't be able to use the patch anyway.

Oh and this just makes my day. I was waiting for this. In my opinion, Firaxis should ignore (and possibly riducule) people who criticize the game when they have stolen it.

You complain about the game. And say they should fix it. But you have no way to legally get the fixes. I bought the game. I have (some) right to support. You have none. I'm sorry they dont sell it there, but I'm positive whatever money you spent, didn't get back to Firaxis.

Yet you think they should listen to you. Thats almost comical. Like me stealing someone's car, then bringing it back the next day and asking if the owners could give it an oil change.

While such piracy might be allowed in Russia, you have no right to even complain. I mean... what do you care? how much money did you spend on it?

[Rakso]

Originally posted by paulmagusnet
The Bad:
The sentry option for units disappeared. Oddly, this has been a standard feature of games of this type for nearly a decade, did it somehow become obsolete.

Actually, it's strange that the Fortify command is really the Sentry command, but it gives an instant defense boost this time.

Someone hates combat, really.

What I missed was the well-written and dramatic descriptions like those in Alpha Centauri. Even without the movie clips, they made an advancement feel like something more than a picture.

Here, we have nothing but palace additions, which is as old as Civ 1!

[maxpublic]

Originally posted by gachnar


No... it serves to tell the developers that you should be ignored. You're whiny and sometimes insulting tone is a sure way to get all the Firaxians to ignore your post, and possibly future posts.

And you're a complete *******, yet you still post and presumably think people should pay attention to you. So you're both in the same boat, eh?

Max