FOR FIRAXIS - Gameplay speed

[Sparky]

Firaxis, I hope you are listening. One of the most serious aspects of the "civ genre" is being overlooked: speed of gamplay. The players' ability to get tasks complete is essential to making a game fun. In recent versions of the civ genre I have noticed that this essential fun factor is sslipping away.

A history:
Civ 1 - Instant point and click. I click on the map and my view is instantly centered. I click on a city and the city display screen is at my fingertips. I move a chariot and within .10 second it reaches its destination. The fast gameplay keeps the game fun, not frustrating.

Civ 2 - Gameplay stil fast, but slowed a bit. (Maybe the advanced graphics) caused the slowdown, but whenever I click to move the map, there's a short delay before the screen is redrawn. Units still move quickly and the game is fun.

Civ 2 MPG - Ack! Problem! Some bonehead put in a casualty timeline. Yet one more interuption (that can't be blocked by the options menu) whenever I try to play a turn. Come on, unit losses are essential to the game; the last thing I need is a message interupting the gameplay telling me that a tank is dead -- I already know that. The casualty timeline, coupled with messages about "city size decrease" and other warnings get in the way of basic gameplay as I'm trying to watch the world evolve and the computer move. (And no, not all these messages can be skipped.) At least the units still move quickly.

SMAC - To be honest, SMAC's gameplay suffers because of the visual complexity. For instance, every time I'm bombarded by artillary in a city, I have to watch each unit in my garrison go through the explosion. Often it's a big garisson -- what could have been a simple, single explosion now takes many seconds to complete (keep in mind that several seconds of waiting is actually a lot and can become VERY frustrating for players). The menus are great, no casualty timeline and options to turn any pop-ups off. Still, the biggest problem in SMAC still remains: unit speed. 3D units were a nice change, but ultimately the make the game hard to play. Even though they are rendered well, they take a full second apiece to move from square to square. With SMAC's large landscapes and large armies, players must now spend what seems like a teedious eternity to move an invasion force EACH TURN.* Even if I group the units and put on "fast piece slide" I still have to watch every individual go from square to square instead of moving all at once.

*For those who would say "get a faster computer" I'm running SMAC on a graphics workstation with 384 RAM.

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The bottom line: slowness is taking a toll on gameplay. Gameplay is true the source of fun for gamers.

Recommendation: Civ III needs a true "fast piece slide." Render the units in 3D for those players who want them, or for skirmishes that don't last long. But remember that hard-core single players need speed. No extraneous warnings. Make a 2D unit opton as well. It would be simple: Render in 3D first (which you would already do), find each unit's best pose, take a snapshot, done.

Firaxis, please take these suggestions to heart. Fast gameplay is what your loyal fans really need.

[CornMaster]

I totally agree. Sparky has hit the mark.

The most important to my mind is the 2D/3D graphics. I prefer 2D on fast piece slide because I can finish a game in a few hours instead of a few days. It would also be nice to be able to only install 2D graphics to save hard drive space. And of course scenarios would be the same way. Either 2D or 3D units or even a mix.

[UltraSonix]

Sparky is totally and utterly and 100% correct. I mean, whenever I tried to use the goto key to "speed up" unit movements in SMAC, the pieces took so long to go from square to square, even on fastpieceslide, that I resorted to shifting the window away from the unit, so that I could then instantly move to the destination city. I had thought this was due to my P166 but now it seems not only I have the problem. I really hope this trend of slowless is addressed!

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I've another unrelated idea to do with game speed. In Civ2 you have the "accelerated start" option, where a few cities would be already built for you - well, how about having an "accelerated game" option. In this option, games are speeded up because everything is halved/doubled - eg shields required to build a unit is halved, science rate is doubled, and perhaps some unit movements are also speeded up, though probably not doubled. Note that I think this sort of system would only last for, say, 50 or 100 turns (and affect all civs in the game equally, of course). And I should say that it should an OPTION, not replacing the current game defaults. This sort of thing would come in particularly in helping to shortening multiplay games (Honey, get off the phone line!). Anyone got any comments on this?

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Fintilgin]

I also think the option to have 2D units would be nifty, although I suspect that the Civ3 world may well be so 3Dized that they could be difficult. While they are fun and bring in the $$, I also would probably end up using 2D graphics if they gave a boost to the speed of the game. Heck, I'd play with Civ1 graphics for stability and lighting-fast play!

I doubt Firaxis will go through the trouble of making a seperate 2D mode, because:

A.) It would have no marketing value. (Sid Mier's Civilization III. NOW in 2D!)

B.) It would be the same as saying the 3D engine was slow.

But, t'would be nice, eh?

Joe

[The diplomat]

Good point!
In SMAC, the end game can get really slow as you have to sit and watch every AI unit makes its move. Especially, when the AI has several formers that just move back and forth between two tiles over and over again every turn. Aargh!!


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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[yin26]

Sparky,

Nice post! I spend most of my gaming time with AoK these days and plan to even more once the x-pack comes out. As you know, those are 2D units...and they look just fine to me. Most likely, though, we are in for 3D in civ3.

But even if they do it well and don't push the enevelope, that's no excuse for the other things you metion, like useless messages and cluttered graphics. The messages should be an option at least and nobody should so fall in love with a graphics scheme that he's afraid to seek "real-world" feedback from players who say things like, "Well, it grows on you." or "I hated it at first, but I learned to work with it."

That was SMAC, in my opinion. Of course, that was also Planet, not Earth, so hopefully the graphics end of things will be crisp, clear and bright. But the interface can never be too streamlined nor the gameplay too fast (if that's what a player wants).

Hope Firaxis reads your post.

[UltraSonix]

I got two more minor things that'll further improve gameplay just a little - a way to get rid of all end of turn messages, or allowing an unsaved-exit-game feature during an end of turn (some of those end of turns are HUGE, especially if you've changed into a government that makes all your 60+ cities go into a golden age). This would come in handy for those of us that need to quit in a hurry for whatever reason...

Also, there should be an extremely detailed menu that allows for the choosing of default buttons not just for some dialog boxes, but for ALL messages.

These two, plus my "accelerated game" idea above could make the game much faster.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Sirotnikov]

One of the most annoying things were not only that civ 2 told you about each and every paratrooper action and every attack made on a coastal fortress (which can be a lot when the evil greeks take their 200 units worth of destroyers and decide that "it's a good day to die"). The most annying thing is that the game would halt and you had to sit infront of the screen clicking OK for every stupid message. Also while this happened CIV 2 would stop responding. What If I have to shut down my computer? What if I need to shut down civ. Oh no, I have to wait and click.

I think the accelerated start is good. However I would like to set each factor my self. Double movement points - yes. Until I get to find where my enemy is We are already in AD. And untill my elephants get to him they meet musketeers. I have them too. Way over in my cities. Annoying, huh? Also, science rate can be too fast. If I wanna have a battle between ancient greeks and romans? I wouldn't want to have one of us deeveloping cannons when we should be only fighting with legions. Or maybe I want to fight with stealth and howizer units on a random map?

[UltraSonix]

Yes, I've got another small gameplay tweak - the game should pick up that you're receiving the similar messages at end of turns, and you'll be given the option of turning off notification of similar event just for the end of turn. This would help with the problem above, and another that I always have in Civ2.

When my civ's really big, and I'm in Democracy, finish discovering all the techs, I change the luxuries rate right up to 100% (cause the tax rate on 0% would already make me earn more than $30,000), the end of turn would come up with billions of "Your citizens love you" messages in every town.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[Grier]

Hey UltraSonix, I have a better way of solving your problem, "stop playing on Chieften".

Only kidding, but I agree that the number of messages recieved each turn should either be reduced or better managed. Maybe somthing like the news box in Stars! would be appropriate.