What does Civ3 actually get right?

[moomin]

So we all know there are issues with Civ3. A lot of the design decisions were, frankly, bad. Perhaps patches will fix them, perhaps they won't. But lets look at what progress was actually made form the previous games; what design decisions are good?

I have a couple of candidates that I personally approve of wholeheartedly:

1. Global moneybased upkeep

I've seen argument about how this enables players to have rediculously huge armies, but personally I'm overjoyed by not having to keep track of where units have been built and constantly re-home my whole army in order to optimize production. Love this.

2. Distinct Eras

Again there are complaints about how this prevents tech beelining, but I like having to discover horseback riding before I taken on atomic theory. Leveling through the eras gives a sense of accomplishment and provides a litte extra interest. I think it's tragic they didn't take the opportunity to auto-upgrade all previous-era units to some default low-tech partisan equivalent on era change unless you spend money to upgrade units to better tech manually - not only would that fix the awful tankkilling
spearmen, it would also improve late-game AI (that just don't upgrades) no end.

3. Railroad teleporting

Not having to see units traverse every tile when traveling far on a railroad is a stroke of genious. Saves ever so much totally uninteresting game-time.

The design decision I hate the most, incidentally, is that roads and railroads bestow production bonuses on tiles. They should provide mobility and intra-city commerce bonuses _only_. Now because of this and how pollution's implemented you have to mine road and railroad every goddamn square in your whole empire. I sure could live withouth that.

[Code Monkey]

The global military support is definitely dead on for a game about civilisations.

While unit stats and costs are in need of some fine tuning, I think the simplified combat is better than SMAC or Civ2's which made certain upgrades into temporary invulnerability upgrades.

While in need of some fine tuning, the corruption model is an improvement and I like it.

Strategic resources are a clever addition that I think adds a lot to the game.

The diplomacy that is in the game is good. The diplomatic AI is also done nicely.

As for your comments about roads and rails, agree very much so. SMAC handled the latter day improvements of resource/commerce increases much better by tying them to tech discoveries and/or city improvements - I liked this much better than the rail every square approach of Civ3.

[EnochF]

Other things Civ III did right:

• Roads give an extra trade in any square (even jungles and forests)
• A "go" command that works
• Even if a unit only has 1/3 of a movement point, it can still get to the next square
• Barbarian villages
• When barbarians raid an undefended city, they don't capture it, they just take some gold or destroy the unit/improvement the city is building
• Culture (love seeing those musical notes piling up)
• Luxuries (great new way to keep citizens happy)
• Rivers between tiles, providing trade bonus to both adjoining tiles
• Small wonders
• Privateers/"gray ops"
• Great organized civilopedia
• Infantry (those guys kick ass)
• Primitive and modern tanks
• Build queue
• Workers and settlers as separate units
• Certain aspects of the editor, like the customization of units, improvements, techs, etc. (pretty useless in its current form, though)

Keep these for the next game. But also keep the good things from Civ II and SMAC.

[Sze]

I really like the ideas of culture, strategic resources, and diplomatic victory, however each of them has major flaws that detract from them.

Culture - great idea. Gives more meaning to a lot of the city improvements. Gives more personality to your cities. Improves the way we think of a city's worth. I like the concept of absorbing backwards cities.
But .... having cities culturally revolt during wartime is just a deal breaker. It makes going to war so frustrating. It makes bombing the city to a low population or razing the city almost mandatory. If there was ONE thing I'd change about Civ III it would be to somehow remove cultural defections of captured cities.

Strategic resources - great idea. Adds more strategy to city placement and dealing with the AI. Gives poor terrain a reason to be settled. Makes wars more interesting.
But .... the way it affects combat sucks. Not having iron or coal or oil really sets you back, too much so IMO. Also the way it prevents so many units from becoming obsolete sucks.

[EnochF]

*BUMP*

We've had several months now, maybe we can add some more things to this list. What Civ III features do you consider successful and worthy for the next Civ game?

[GePap]

As an unrepentant whinner, I can agree with:

Universal upkeep
build queues
culture*
strategic resources/luxuries*
different levels of tanks and aircraft
Barbarians pillaging, not conquering
The new aircraft missions sytem*
mining grassland
small wonders
Right of passage, trade embargoes*
non-spy based espionage*

*all of these are great concepts which the development team implemented in questionable ways. Still, they are in the game and deserve merit.

[Marquis de Sodaq]

I love the addition of culture and strategic resources.

Strategic resources in particular add a sense of urgency to your expansion and conquest plans - you have a goal, and it is important if you want to win. In CivII, you just conquered to gain more turf and people. Now conquest and settlement have more purpose, which I think makes for better strategy.

Culture makes those feel-good improvements actually worth something besides better demographics and riot control. They can help you, lack of them can cause the people to pack it in for another civ. Again, the player is forced to play a more balanced game, whatever the style.

Barbarian sacking is a good change, too.

The diplomatic options are a vast improvement over previous games. Even with the shortcomings, it wins hands down.

I miss the spy unit, tho...

$ upkeep of units is a big improvement, too.

moominparatrooper, as ugly as a railroad mess looks, it is based on how they really were used in the industrial era. Railroads blanket europe and north america, countless spurs were built for resource extraction, not for people moving - thus the increase in production. I agree, tho, it is an eyesore.

[Willem]

Originally posted by moominparatrooper

1. Global moneybased upkeep

I've seen argument about how this enables players to have rediculously huge armies, but personally I'm overjoyed by not having to keep track of where units have been built and constantly re-home my whole army in order to optimize production. Love this.

I agree with you there. In Civ I & II, by the end of the game I always had ridiculous amounts of money in my treasury, and nothing to spend it on. At a certain point, making money was rather pointless. And the current system is also much more realistic. Any country with a standing army pays their soldiers in currency, not in some lump of ore, as the old rules implied. Now if only they would provide more realistic ways of making that money. After all, it doesn't make much sense to pull someone off of a field producing 3 food, 1 shield, and 1 gold, and create a specialist who STILL only produces 1 gold, but nothing else. What were they thinking? Perhaps if they add some complexities into the tax system, in a way that mirrors real world situations, then players might find those complex decisions they crave in the end game.

[Willem]

Originally posted by EnochF
Other things Civ III did right:
[*]Barbarian villages[*]When barbarians raid an undefended city, they don't capture it, they just take some gold or destroy the unit/improvement the city is building
[/list]

I agree with you on the encampments, I like the way they've done that. But I think the Barbarians are rather lame when it comes to attacking cities. They should at least raze the odd town or so, the same way the AI does. That might even help to keep the AI civs in line, by having them lose a few of those size 1 towns they plop down everywhere.

[Heliodorus]

Global monetary upkeep of your armies.
Captured workers (the only advantage justifying the absence of the CTP PW system, which I would have preferred)
The sliding tech-tree scale based on # of civs with tech.
Culture/borders.
Aircraft performance of missions from bases.
Diplomacy options
Best civilopedia ever.
Minor wonders.
No rush buying of wonders/space ships
Luxuries/Strat Resources.
Unit upgrading.
Build Queues.
Bombardment.

Not all of them are ideal, but they were steps forward.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Sze

Culture - great idea. Gives more meaning to a lot of the city improvements. Gives more personality to your cities. Improves the way we think of a city's worth. I like the concept of absorbing backwards cities.

Yes good idea, but they didn't go far enough. I was amazed when I first discovered Music Theory and Free Artistry that there was nothing to build but the usual Wonders. What about Concert Halls, Art Galleries, Theatres? All they've done is retrofit the old structures, without adding anything new.

Originally posted by Sze

Strategic resources - great idea. Adds more strategy to city placement and dealing with the AI. Gives poor terrain a reason to be settled. Makes wars more interesting.
But .... the way it affects combat sucks. Not having iron or coal or oil really sets you back, too much so IMO. Also the way it prevents so many units from becoming obsolete sucks.

I like this as well, though not quite the way they've handled it. I feel it should reflect real world conditions more, supply and demand. If there were more resources but each one could only supply so many cities, then as your empire grows, you would need more and more of them, rather than have a single resource provide for all your needs. This would have made the trading aspect much more dynamic, and would prevent a crippling situation if you find yourself without a single vital resource. Here again was an opportunity of making more decisions during gameplay, by forcing you decide on priorities as to the allocation of resources. e.g. You have 10 cities, but only enough Iron to supply 5 of those. Which of those cities will be given the ore, and which ones will have to go without until another source can be secured, or a trade deal arranged? This kind of desicion making could become vital in the later game and truly reflect real world conditions. As an example, the US is dependant on Mid-East oil not because it doesn't have any of it's own, but because it needs a lot more of it than they can supply themselves.

[DilithiumDad]

I have a thread on things in SMAC that should have been in Civ3:

Things We Miss From SMAC

The other side of the coin is ways that Civ3 is an improvement over SMAC.

1. Less micromanagement. I spent a lot less time per turn worrying about switching workers and specialists and toggling psych and moving supply crawlers, unit upgrading, and rush building in every base.

2. No pop booming. This was a very unabalancing feature.

3. No exploits with supply crawlers.

4. No "Infinite City Sprawl" --new cities cost more and having too many cities hurts big time. Expand too quickly into enemy territory and bases will revert.

5. Improved AI. Unlike SMAC, they continue to expand and found new bases thoughout the game. They mount effective attacks and counterattacks. They steal workers form the heart of your empire. Post-patch, they seem to upgrade their garrison units regularly, especially if they have Sun-Tzu. Your allies will snatch up enemy bases right under your nose, which rarely happened in SMAC. AI is a little more rational about not fighting to the last man. AI terraforming is vastly improved. Captured cities need very little in the way of new terraforming.

6. Corruption model effectively limits human player's expansion.

7. Biggest problem in SMAC was the misbalance between attack and defense. Defensive units count in Civ3. Unlike SMAC, you need to defend all your bases, not just the front. Air units no longer unbalance the game. Ridiculously overpowered helicopters and nerve gas pods are gone.

[korn469]

1) Emphasis on closing loopholes and ending exploits. While it didn't close them all, there are far fewer one trick dog shows in civ3 for the player to take advantage of.

2) 2 pop settlers and one size food boxes. These things killed ICS as an exploit. While i still think that that expansion needs to be a little slower (i advocate 3 pop 40 shield settlers) this was a major improvement over civ2/smac and it makes the game much more playable.

3) Improved graphics. I know that gameplay is everything, but i really couldn't go back to civ2 now except to mine gameplay concepts that civ3 needs. Really it looks so much better that it hurts to play any previous civ game.

4) Emphasis on cutting clicks. The interface is far from perfect and could use a ton of upgrades, but it looks like firaxis did concentrate on lowering mouse clicks, they didn't completely succeed, but it is a step in the right direction.

5) Strategic resources. While its not perfect, some sort of use model would have been much better than random disappearance and a few more resources could have been in the game, it is a very simple way of adding lots of strategic depth to the game. Strategic resources have an almost undetectable micromanagement footprint while adding lots of strategy and gameplay to civ3. Because of trade agreements you might have to think twice before you attack a civ with whom your supplier of oil has a MPP, plus it gives strategic targets to attacks, and it forces choices upon the player when deciding what to build, will infantry be all i need to win, or should i risk trading my rubber to another civ for oil so now that we can both build tanks.

6) Implementation of airpower. The got the stats wrong on air units, but the actual implementation of air units is in a completely different plane of existance that air units in civ2/smac. It gives air units flexability, while still making sea and land units important. It also prevents exploits like using air units to protect your land units from counter attacks, and it prevents the AI from doing something stupid with them. Nothing irked me more than to watch the AI in SMAC build an airforce twice the size of mine, then do nothing with it when i attacked them, and then it would fly them around and maybe 10 or 20 planes would crash because they ran out of fuel. I'm glad those days are behind us.

7) Small Wonders. Great idea, this seems both far and rewarding, I can't believe they didn't think of this earlier.

8) Great Leaders. While they don't add as much to game play as I would like, Great Leaders show alot of potential. A couple tweaks with great leaders and this could add hours of gameplay.

9) Culture. Once again, while not perfect, Culture does add alot of gameplay with very little micromanagement cost for the player. A few rule changes regarding cultural reversion and assimilation along with culture only buildings (how about a theater? or a musuem?), wonders (this is easy, the olympic games!), and specialists (come on firaxis we need poets!) culture would perfect. It is already quite an advance over previous civ games.

10) Global support for units, and war weariness. This ends exploits, allows the AI to compete better, and gives the player a feeling that they actually control an empire and not a collection of city states, what more could you want?

11) Drafting and mobilization. While mobilization could use a little bit of work, drafting works great, and both are really interesting concepts that help shape strategy and make gameplay more responsive without adding much to micromanagement.

12) Barbarians. Again it could use a few tweaks, but it is a big improvement over previous civ games.

13) What should go in unlucky number 13? Ahh yes, a built in editor. While it lacks functionality it is a step in the right direction, and and hopefully before they are finished with civ3 it will have the power it needs.

14) The trade screen in diplomacy. While diplomacy in civ3 isn't as good as diplomacy in SMAC, the trade screen is really without equal in the civ series. The only other thing i could of putting in the trade screen is the ability to trade units (we can already trade workers, why not units?) and then it would really allow you to trade everything.

15) More competitive AI. This feature has its drawbacks (ie dumbing down the game) but the AI in civ3 actually comes to play. While still it is only mildly challenging, it does much better than SMAC where basically you could win under virtually any conditions, up to and including not even building a base with your colony pod but instead waiting till you capture a base and then start a one city challenge.

[Zoid]

The global based uppkeep is a good thing, so is the culture thing. I just love conquering via culture imperialism... The unit graphics is a nice touch and the strategic/luxury rescourses. Other than that...a big fat nothing!