We are doomed. We want a more complicated game, but the casual gamer doesn't

[Grumbold]

Civ can only really make room for more complexity (or diversity) if it adopts ideas to reduce tedious repetition. To do this it has to make some broad changes -

Replace hundreds of independent units with proper armies, navies and air forces that move and attack as cohesive entities.

Replace individual tile-by-tile changes in the terrain (excluding arterial transport links) with an overall budget devoted to increasing agricultural or industrial production.

Replace individual city management with regional or total economy management. Instead of building 50 things in 50 cities simultaneously you should be focussing on which four or five things can the economy produce this year.

That would leave a lot more time to devote to thinking about other details.

[Steve Clark]

Farley, your ideas about customization are called "scenarios". Once they complete the editor, including some sort of an events file, then those things can be accomplished, as they have been in Civ2 FW (expansion pack #2) and Civ2 MGE (expansion pack #3). Now you know why I have been waiting here patiently for what I believe to be the true nature of civing, not the purposeful (is that a word?) generic nature of the regular game.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
Farley, your ideas about customization are called "scenarios". Once they complete the editor, including some sort of an events file, then those things can be accomplished, as they have been in Civ2 FW (expansion pack #2) and Civ2 MGE (expansion pack #3). Now you know why I have been waiting here patiently for what I believe to be the true nature of civing, not the purposeful (is that a word?) generic nature of the regular game.

Well there's still lots of things you can do now that will give you some practise for later on. At least Gramphos was able to come up with his utility, and I understand there's an animation utility available now. About the only thing that's missing really is some events triggers.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Civ can only really make room for more complexity (or diversity) if it adopts ideas to reduce tedious repetition. To do this it has to make some broad changes -

Hi Grumbold, agree completely with most of your points, there's just one exception.

Replace individual city management with regional or total economy management. Instead of building 50 things in 50 cities simultaneously you should be focussing on which four or five things can the economy produce this year.

While I think civ-wide economic management is the best overall goal, one can easily make a system where that is the default, but where players can drill down to the city level for particularly important cities like the capital. I Clash we do it with a hierarchy of economic orders with civ econ orders on top, then provincial ones (similar to cities in civ) and then even individual squares. It allows More micromanagement that Civ3 but does not Require it. If you are interested in seeing the system you can see it in action in Clash demo 6. Its not nuanced yet, but there's enough there for you to see how it works.

-Mark

[Comrade Tribune]

Grumbold, apart from visiting Clash -a game I very much look forward to-, please also visit the Disenchantment thread, if you didn´t, yet. I am discussing a civ-similar project there that, while being very complex on the Macro-level, will totally abolish Micromanagement -with the only exception of Battles, because this is some Micromanagement most players will probably like.

[CharlesUFarley]

You can't tell me your serious? You obviously didn't understand my point so let me explain it again read on...


Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by OneInTen
It's my observation as a software developer that spending more than about 8 hours a day on writing software is counterproductive. If your team is doing all nighters to try to get something done it's really time to step back and ask why they're working such long hours, rather than jsut trying to work harder and harder without finding the real problem.

If you read more carefully what it is that I posted it's metaphoricly speaking. "Spending long hours at the office" just means put more time and effort into the job hence attempting to perfect a product to meet consumer needs and demands. It doesn't mean work yourself into a delusional mind melting state so that you **** up the product in question.

IT is supposed to be about knowledge, and as such it makes much more sense to work smarter, not harder.

Exactly.

Finally, I find it pretty offensive that you suggest Firaxis (and with the insinuation about programmers in general) should be working longer for no extra pay. The Firaxis employees are humans too, who have lives, families, interests, etc. They're not robots who just sit there all day for you. Just because you don't feel 100% satisfied with the game does not mean that they're lazy bastards who need to be whipped into working harder.

First, I never said anything about "working without pay" and I never ever called anyone a "lazy bastard". So don't try and mimic whatever intelligence you think you have by putting words into my mouth and then plagiarizing a fanboy argument that died off months ago. Second, (get this through your head now) all I said was that they should have put better effort into the game, and spent a little more time on it rather than releasing it so early. If they made a better Civ-Sequal than what we have now, I would've definately paid the extra $20 for it, and the poor wittle game devewopers could've gotten their money! And I know two things, one; there are no limits to how a game can be designed - programming language is a pretty powerful thing, depending on the platform and the language in question. And two; a game product is only as good as it's team of developers, in other words the more effort, detail and imagination they put into a game, the better it will turn out, and chances are sales will do very well. And in my opinion Civ3 not only lacks a decent scenario design tool, but it was released poorly tested and full of bugs. And alot of the things that made Civ2 great were raped from it entirely. So again in my opinion they didn't design Civ3 with complete dedication and effort. Did you get all that, or will I be repeating it for you in your rebuttle?

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Steve Clark
Farley, your ideas about customization are called "scenarios". Once they complete the editor, including some sort of an events file, then those things can be accomplished, as they have been in Civ2 FW (expansion pack #2) and Civ2 MGE (expansion pack #3). Now you know why I have been waiting here patiently for what I believe to be the true nature of civing, not the purposeful (is that a word?) generic nature of the regular game.

Obviously. But all of that bibble babble that you boast about was a goal long set for the past 4 years and now with the arrival of Civ3 none of those things were emphasized on or even used. I begin to wonder is it standard policy for a game company to release their game then admit it's not finished and hurl a storm of patches at us to cover up their mistakes? Now they wanna glory us with an expansion (which I will buy if it's everything I want it to be) that could very well be nothing more than a few extra measily civs and leaders! I'll wait to see what they do, but I won't count my chickens before they hatch, which obviously most of you are.

Charles.

[Willem]

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


Second, (get this through your head now) all I said was that they should have put better effort into the game, and spent a little more time on it rather than releasing it so early.

They may not have had a choice. If Infrogrames says ship, they have to ship. Judging from what I've been reading regarding the German translation fiasco, they don't really care about anything other than the bottom line. Don't automatically lay the blame at Firaxis's feet.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem


Well there's still lots of things you can do now that will give you some practise for later on. At least Gramphos was able to come up with his utility, and I understand there's an animation utility available now. About the only thing that's missing really is some events triggers.

Sure, but ask yourself a question should a major reputable game title or company for that matter require improvement from the community through a non-profit means? I personally think it's pretty rediculous for any proffesional game company to release a game that is supposed to uphold a standard, than apon realizing that the standard was dropped, and then out of the frustration everyone with programming knowledge comes rushing in and starts designing mod-kits to fix the various flaws that they left for us. I mean don't get me wrong, without those mods and their authors we wouldn't even bother with Civ3 again. My thanks goes out to them, but Firaxis should have provided those things in the first place.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem


They may not have had a choice. If Infrogrames says ship, they have to ship. Judging from what I've been reading regarding the German translation fiasco, they don't really care about anything other than the bottom line. Don't automatically lay the blame at Firaxis's feet.

Exactly, another point I was making somewhere else was that Infogrames delt a cruddy contract with a ruin the game policy and the only thing I blame Firaxis for is signing the contract. This game has been around for over a decade and should be treated with alot more respect and devotion. And obviously we all wouldn't be in here arguing if it was, we would be playing the damn game. But you make a valid point willem, thanks.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by OneInTen
And now in all seriousness (I can't stand when people think they're smarty pants because they know a Latin phrase or two - I had to demonstrate how that phrase reads to the average person, even one armed with a dictionary) no, I'm not trying to appeal to pity, I'm merely saying I think it's unreasonable to expect game developers to work 16 hours a day "for the love of the industry" or whatever other reason you might think for it.

Again, putting words into everyone's mouths. No one is saying that, but we do want them to work hard and we will gladly pay more if the product provides more!

I think it is instead time for us gamers to realise that the gaming industry has reached a point where it is such an expense to produce a "state of the art" title that one of two things happens - either a) Games start costing more, or b) (more likely) Onoly games with widespread mainstream appeal are released.

Exactly, so we pay more so what! What are you saying, Civ3 wasn't produced with enough resources and thats why it turned out the way it did? If so I can live with that, in fact thats what I've been saying all along.

Game companies already work (in general) on pretty thin budgets and with (comparitive to business application programmers) underpaid staff. You're not going to get them to work even longer hours, especially since if you read the stories of many games companies, they already spend most of their waking hours in the office when it gets close to crunch time.

Blah blah blah.. sure we can sit here and make excuses for not doing our jobs or producing a sh_tty product, but when it all boils down to it, your breathing, your alive and you have one chance in life to do it right so you either try your best or you don't try at all, and if thats Firaxis' best than I'm already bored! Instead we have this "one foot in the grave, I'm a tired old programmer with a family at home" analagy. Do you honestly believe all that crap? You have a product to design, you either give it your all and make as much money from it as possible, or you go at it with a defeatus attitude and probably spoil it. You sound like the second category of programmers, correct me if I'm wrong.

Charles.

[Willem]

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


Sure, but ask yourself a question should a major reputable game title or company for that matter require improvement from the community through a non-profit means? I personally think it's pretty rediculous for any proffesional game company to release a game that is supposed to uphold a standard, than apon realizing that the standard was dropped, and then out of the frustration everyone with programming knowledge comes rushing in and starts designing mod-kits to fix the various flaws that they left for us. I mean don't get me wrong, without those mods and their authors we wouldn't even bother with Civ3 again. My thanks goes out to them, but Firaxis should have provided those things in the first place.

Charles.

Here again, maybe Infrogrames just didn't give them enough time. Now maybe it's just PR, but it sounds to me that they are sincere about allowing players to design scenarios. But that ability would no doubt be the last thing that they develop. And keep in mind that Civ III is much more complex than version II, so there's a lot more opportunities for the program to do strange things, to the point of being unplayable. I understand that they didn't even get a chance to play-test the Modern Era, so they certainly wouldn't have had the time to test the scenario editor. What's worse, no scenario editor, or one that consistently crashes the program?

[yin26]

This is why I'm willing to consider the game once it's actually finished.

[Willem]

Originally posted by yin26
This is why I'm willing to consider the game once it's actually finished.

Well at least you're willing to keep an open mind about it now. So what, you had some sort of epiphany recently?

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem


Here again, maybe Infrogrames just didn't give them enough time. Now maybe it's just PR, but it sounds to me that they are sincere about allowing players to design scenarios. But that ability would no doubt be the last thing that they develop. And keep in mind that Civ III is much more complex than version II, so there's a lot more opportunities for the program to do strange things, to the point of being unplayable. I understand that they didn't even get a chance to play-test the Modern Era, so they certainly wouldn't have had the time to test the scenario editor. What's worse, no scenario editor, or one that consistently crashes the program?

I would rather play an entirely different game than have a Civilization without full scenario design capability; cities, improvements, terrain, units, wonders, leaders, sound etc etc because the reason I got so much enjoyement out of Civilization was the ability to customize my scenarios. Otherwise I would rather it crashed and not play it at all.

Charles.

[yin26]

Well at least you're willing to keep an open mind about it now. So what, you had some sort of epiphany recently?

Actually, that has always been my stance: I posted my review, got to know the game a bit over about two weeks, deleted the game and returned my copy, ranted and raved for a while. Got tired of ranting a raving. Now I lurk and post the occasional quip. Just waiting to see how things will shape with Civ3 until Gold Edition.

[Willem]

Originally posted by yin26
Actually, that has always been my stance: I posted my review, got to know the game a bit over about two weeks, deleted the game and returned my copy, ranted and raved for a while. Got tired of ranting a raving. Now I lurk and post the occasional quip. Just waiting to see how things will shape with Civ3 until Gold Edition.

Well I appreciate the fact that you're not hurling insults at anyone who crosses your path. It's a nice change from before.

[yin26]

With very rare exceptions, I only get involved in such fights after having been directly (and usually ignorantly) attacked. Ask anybody here.

[Willem]

Originally posted by yin26
With very rare exceptions, I only get involved in such fights after having been directly (and usually ignorantly) attacked. Ask anybody here.

Well you could have fooled me.

[yin26]

Well, it's all a matter of record. Feel free to study it and come back fully informed.

[Atahualpa]

Well I am NOT a fan of mixed language threads or forums.
When I come here I dont want to search for threads that I can actually understand.
I understand well german (=native tongue) and english and some bit of french. But even if there would be german posts I would post in english. Just because it is unfair for others who dont know german. And I for sure doesnt want everyone to learn german.

Posting german or a non-english language looks like if you are kind of elite here and are proud that nobody else can understand you. And even if it doesnt, this is a forum where there should not be groups of people talking but where the whole spectrum of people can talk. And the only common nominator we got is english.
If the spanish want their own forum they shall go there and stay there. I dont like to see that they seperate them but well, better as spanish threads would appear here.

I guess people who found this site know the english language and therefore everyone should post english! Cause thats what everyone understands. When now people begin to post in french I suggest they go to a french site.
Mixed language threads is for sure not desirable.

ata

[OneInTen]

Well, you say there are no limits to how a game can be designed - but as a programmer, I can assure you that there are two very important limits that Firaxis face along with the rest of the world. One, it takes time to develop any piece of software, and two, processors run at a finite speed and developers can only do so much with the power at hand.

In most software development (and this is certainly in game development) these two things are not something you can forget. With infinite time and computing power, I could make you the most wonderful game! Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. But I digress.

I don't know anyone from Firaxis personally, and I'm assuming you don't either (correct me if I'm wrong). So we're really guessing as to what they were/are thinking.

However, I can't see any evidence that suggests Firaxis weren't trying hard enough when making this game. As far as I am aware, the people at Firaxis are happy with the game they've produced.

It's probably not the game they set out to make - but you very rarely, if ever, follow a design exactly. Things change when they hit the real world. But all in all I'd imagine they're happy with what they've produced - by all accounts it's sold quite well, and gotten good reviews. There are a few people on these boards and others who aren't so glowing in their praise, but I don't think that would really detract from what Firaxis would consider a job well done.

I wouldn't be surprised though if they didn't consider it a great game. That's OK, I only consider civ 3 to be a good game, not a great game. There's no shame in producing something merely good, if we all decided that we weren't going to do something unless it would be in that top 0.1%, not much would get done.

Then again, I should admit my bias - I certainly don't consider civ 2 to be a great game by any stretch of the imagination. Nearly all the major criticisms of civ 3's gameplay I have heard apply equally to civ 2, and most of them more so.

The only 3 exceptions to this that I can think of are criticisms of the combat rules (a matter of taste, I think that civ3's make for a better game, and civ is a game not a sim), cultural reversion (again, I like the concept of culture in civ 3 - it's far from perfect, but better than none at all), and of the corruption system (personally I think it adds an interesting set of decisions to the game - build close now for lower corruption and lose out on overlap later, or build spread out for later on fully utilising the land and suffer some early corruption).

Given that the criticisms of civ 3 are merely subjective, I fail to see how, based on your dislike of the game, you think Firaxis has failed. I think they've tried and suceeding in delivering a game that in the most part has a fairly low number of bugs, especially considering they managed to achieve this while getting it to market in what was obviously a pretty rough timeline at the end. I know what crunch time can be like and it seems to me that Firaxis did well to deliver something both playable (and although some disagree) in the most part enjoyable.

As far as the financials go, I'm pretty sure Infogrames has done their research and found that at the $50US price point a game will sell X copies, and at the $70US price point a game containing more features will sell Y copies. Given the actual physical materials cost of putting the game in a box is pretty small (lets be generous and say it costs a whole $5US), they've done the math and decided that:

(50 - 5) * x > (70 - 5) * y

I think this is because for a lot of people games are a bit of an impulse buy, and the more a game costs compared to others on the shelf, the less likely someone is to pick that game. I'd be willing to pay a bit more for certain games, you would be too, but in general people aren't, and hence the philosophy is release the game at the normal price, and release an expansion pack to pick up the extra money from those who would pay more. I don't like it, but it does make good business sense.

Finally, because I'm touching on two many subjects already to keep this post focussed, I'd say in my opinion being good at writing software is about compromise. Different people will want different features, and within the team there will often be wildly different ideas about what the best approach is to do things. Ultimately you don't have time to try them all out and do them all, so you have to choose your battles to fight, try to get your way where you can and give ground in others. Any other way and nothing gets done. I imagine it works rather the same way at Firaxis. I'm sure not everyone agreed with every decision, but in the end they did what ever was decided on. As such, I don't think it's possible to come away from a software project feeling as though you've given it your all. I know I always feel after completing something that I made the best of the situation, but if only I could have done a few things differently, or had a little more time, it could have been perfect.

Of course, in reality, chasing that last 10% of perfection takes 90% of the time and generally can't be justified from anything other than my own aesthetic sense of what should be done. And if I was allowed to follow that to it's logical conclusion, no company I worked for would ever make money.

The moral: To be good at writing software you need to know what's good for the business too - perfection is useless if it sends you bankrupt. In relation to games, this means that it's better to get an imperfect civ 3 than for Firaxis to chase perfection, never release the game, and go under in the mean time.

Phew, I hope I made some sort of sense.

[Libertarian]

[...cue Twilight Zone music...]

In this thread, the Opening Post was this:

Hello,

I played Civ II so much, that I decided to play it in French to learn the language.

After five years of high school French (not to mention my French speaking relatives who speak little English), I found myself with my trusty French-English dictionary quickly improving my French just by playing many hours of that addictive game, Civ II. It was a fantastic way for me to learn the language!

Then, Civ III became available.

It seems to me there isn't a language option in Civ III to allow me to play it in French, but I turn to you good folks here to share with me the full scoop.

Is there a way for me to play Civ III in French, because I don't think I can go back to Civ II after playing III?


Sincere thanks,

- x0darap

At one point in the thread, I responded in French. A very simple, tiny little quote that was a translation from a famous Academy award winning move. It seemed appropriate. I got an immediate response, in French, from — get this — the guy who started all the whining about using multiple languages. What a troll.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Well I am NOT a fan of mixed language threads or forums.
When I come here I dont want to search for threads that I can actually understand.
I understand well german (=native tongue) and english and some bit of french. But even if there would be german posts I would post in english. Just because it is unfair for others who dont know german. And I for sure doesnt want everyone to learn german.

Posting german or a non-english language looks like if you are kind of elite here and are proud that nobody else can understand you. And even if it doesnt, this is a forum where there should not be groups of people talking but where the whole spectrum of people can talk. And the only common nominator we got is english.
If the spanish want their own forum they shall go there and stay there. I dont like to see that they seperate them but well, better as spanish threads would appear here.

I guess people who found this site know the english language and therefore everyone should post english! Cause thats what everyone understands. When now people begin to post in french I suggest they go to a french site.
Mixed language threads is for sure not desirable.

ata

Well I appreciate your opinion but I don't happen to share it. I feel everyone has the right to post in whatever language they choose. I'm not a linguist, but I do know that sometimes using a phrase or two in another language expresses a thought much better than you can in English. Granted, quite often it's used to show off, but so what? People can easily see that for what it is.

[Zachriel]

All I can say is

Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur.

Oh! Was I speaking Latin again? Silly me. Sometimes it just sort of slips out.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune
Grumbold, apart from visiting Clash -a game I very much look forward to-, please also visit the Disenchantment thread, if you didn´t, yet. I am discussing a civ-similar project there that, while being very complex on the Macro-level, will totally abolish Micromanagement -with the only exception of Battles, because this is some Micromanagement most players will probably like.

Woah, you want me to read all that?

I'll try and give it some attention when I have a spare half-day. I think I've made my point already though. Eliminate endless repetition and you leave room for more interesting stuff. There is huge scope for what that might actually be.

On the specific point about drilling down from civilization level production to city level production, the whole idea is still fallacious. Cities have never built things and never will. Industries build things. The charcoal, iron ore, smelting and fletching industries don't all have to be located in the radius of the same city just to produce arrows (although that might be efficient). When the English Kings were building castles all over Wales to pacify the locals, resources and manpower were brought from throughout the kingdom to do the task, not left for the (rebellious) local cities to provide. Rushing does not provide adequate alternatives because although that tax money has come from the whole civ, the manpower of all the other cities are still acting individually on other projects.

EU is realtime, which blurs the boundaries a bit, but you only get one big chunk of cash per year to do most of your tasks with. It becomes second nature to think of it in terms of two or three small provincial upgrades per year, some more troops for the army or saving for 3 years to build one big improvement. With nothing going on in 80 percent of your territory you don't have to examine it all to see if it needs tweaking!

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by OneInTen
Well, you say there are no limits to how a game can be designed - but as a programmer, I can assure you that there are two very important limits that Firaxis face along with the rest of the world. One, it takes time to develop any piece of software, and two, processors run at a finite speed and developers can only do so much with the power at hand.

Well again as I said before we can make up all these excuses and cover our butts with things like limited resources and low man power or hey even low performance equipment, but the solidarity here is customers don't care. The finished product = reputation = rumors = reviews = money. To obtain reputation, you require a history of quality, to obtain beneficial rumours (such as word of mouth advertisement "hey that game is good, you should buy it") you need reputation. And for any realistic and well thought out review (which I assure you, I haven't seen an honest one of Civ3 yet!) you require both good reputation and posative rumours. And in the end the software company and the developers such as yourself, get paid for a job well done and you increase "reputation". I am sorry to disagree with you, but I believe that's how it works in reality.

In most software development (and this is certainly in game development) these two things are not something you can forget. With infinite time and computing power, I could make you the most wonderful game! Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. But I digress.

Excuses excuses! Again, judging by the quality of the machines required to run Civilization 3, it's obvious that the machines that are (I say "are" because this game obviously isn't finished) being used to develope this game product are more than met by performance standards. And you keep making reference to "time" as if it's something so rare. I assure you if you studied your Microprose/Firaxis history you will note that Civ3 hit the drawing board in 1995. And production was started in 1999, so they had (do the math) one, two, three.. no four years to get some solid concepts and ideas or at least form a foundation for the future sequal. Now, with that said they had two years (1999-2001) to actually develope the product, although as I said before I completely disagree with that timetable and the Infogrames contract for publication. But I still firmly believe that 2 whole years of solid production on a game product is plenty of time. "Microsoft Flight Sim 2002 - 2 years" "Shogun: Total War - 1 1/2 years" and the list goes on, I'm sure you can be creative and intelligent enough to know with your better sense of things that game companies have created competitve games with excellent quality in less time than Firaxis did with Civ3.

I don't know anyone from Firaxis personally, and I'm assuming you don't either (correct me if I'm wrong). So we're really guessing as to what they were/are thinking.

No, I don't know anyone from Firaxis but I don't think it's knowledge of what they know or how they did it, it's more like common sense.

However, I can't see any evidence that suggests Firaxis weren't trying hard enough when making this game. As far as I am aware, the people at Firaxis are happy with the game they've produced.

How do you ever find the time to come up with such naive blank conclusions like this? You can't see any evidence whatsoever that even merely suggests that the product or the company in question has under-achieved? Then why are you here defending the game? Obviously the forums are full of displeased fans and critics and just because the lower percentage of poeple that actually criticise are online doesn't mean that many thousands possibly millions more aren't too happy with it either. I'm not saying that there are millions of hardcore fans or fanatics but I am saying that there are millions of "fans" they can't all be happy with it. And I don't beleive Firaxis is happy at all with this outcome...obviously you haven't read any of their posts regarding the matter. It suggests to me that they want to avoid the negative crowds and stay away (and I quote) "from the zoo". They have openly declared that they aren't pleased with the outcome and they often pointed the finger at their publisher due to timetable complications and contract issues. Check it out.

It's probably not the game they set out to make - but you very rarely, if ever, follow a design exactly. Things change when they hit the real world. But all in all I'd imagine they're happy with what they've produced - by all accounts it's sold quite well, and gotten good reviews. There are a few people on these boards and others who aren't so glowing in their praise, but I don't think that would really detract from what Firaxis would consider a job well done.

Obviously things change, but sometimes the mere notion of "change" ruins a product (game in this case). Again I don't beleive they are happy at all, the prices are dropping and it will hit the bargain bin sooner than they expected (I spoke to a EB rep). The only sales they made were the 'casual' sales by glimpse or false review, not by someone who really knows this peticular product line. I would like to go a little more into detail with this "review" thing you keep mentioning in the threads, I'm sure I told you this before but clearly it hasn't sunk in. Reviews are not ever to be trusted because the review panels are just plain average people like you and me, but with one distinguished difference - they promote game sales. And such promotion or over-optimisms can lead to false hope or even exageration of a product. In short the 'pied piper'.

I wouldn't be surprised though if they didn't consider it a great game. That's OK, I only consider civ 3 to be a good game, not a great game. There's no shame in producing something merely good, if we all decided that we weren't going to do something unless it would be in that top 0.1%, not much would get done.

I agree with that sentiment, Civ3 is a good game but after a decade of history and years of research and sales it should have been a great game! Three times a charm, they should have learned by now.

Then again, I should admit my bias - I certainly don't consider civ 2 to be a great game by any stretch of the imagination. Nearly all the major criticisms of civ 3's gameplay I have heard apply equally to civ 2, and most of them more so.

Actually the 4 million or so fans are Civilization 2 fanatics from over the years, and I love Civ2 it was great beyond great, but it too was missing some much needed features, which we had hoped would come from Civ3, but did not. So if you never liked Civ2 then your arguments with mine are mute and its like the comparison of apples and oranges. The only way you'll see eye to eye with me is if you desire the same things, which you do not. So I'll just have to write this off as your a casual gamer, not a hardcore fan, but with a little too much to say for your lack of liking the very game that made Civ-History and thats Civ2!

The only 3 exceptions to this that I can think of are criticisms of the combat rules (a matter of taste, I think that civ3's make for a better game, and civ is a game not a sim), cultural reversion (again, I like the concept of culture in civ 3 - it's far from perfect, but better than none at all), and of the corruption system (personally I think it adds an interesting set of decisions to the game - build close now for lower corruption and lose out on overlap later, or build spread out for later on fully utilising the land and suffer some early corruption).

Actually you contridicted yourself, Civilization is definately not a simulation, but to say that Civilization is a "game" not a "sim" makes no sense, because a "sim" is a subcategory of "game", sims are games. But I know what you mean! I don't deny that the new concepts implimented in Civ3 are wonderful. But your missing the very point of my complaints, I'm not griping about what Civ3 has, I'm complaining because of what it doesn't have! And alot of us feel that the very concepts and features they left out where to follow historical tradition of the game. Which again, it did not.

Given that the criticisms of civ 3 are merely subjective, I fail to see how, based on your dislike of the game, you think Firaxis has failed. I think they've tried and suceeding in delivering a game that in the most part has a fairly low number of bugs, especially considering they managed to achieve this while getting it to market in what was obviously a pretty rough timeline at the end. I know what crunch time can be like and it seems to me that Firaxis did well to deliver something both playable (and although some disagree) in the most part enjoyable.

Okay, thats fine. I'm not arguing that you obviously enjoy the game and feel that they did the best they could. But does that mean that I do? Or anyone else for that matter? But the timeline and contract they had with Infogrames was obviously not good enough, because a majority of the hardcore and longtime fan-community is displeased with the so called finished product. And since you can't understand to save your life why myself and others feel cheated or failed, then perhaps you should do some more reading and research, try spending more time paying attention to what people feel is wrong with this game, rather than gloat sitting on your cloud of "everything appears perfect from up here". And no matter how many times people like you come out of the woodwork claiming to be fans, yet show no honest criticisms toward this product, essentially declaring this game utopian and then telling everyone that they are delusional and unrealistic for disliking such a good game. Then why are we all here???????? 2 + 2 = 4. Could it be we don't like the damn game? Could it be we have (oh wait here it comes) reasons my god could it be? heh... Make some sense guy!

As far as the financials go, I'm pretty sure Infogrames has done their research and found that at the $50US price point a game will sell X copies, and at the $70US price point a game containing more features will sell Y copies. Given the actual physical materials cost of putting the game in a box is pretty small (lets be generous and say it costs a whole $5US), they've done the math and decided that:

(50 - 5) * x > (70 - 5) * y

Exactly, and you're not telling us something we don't already know, we know that the computer game market is full of pirate-capitalists and money grabbing corporate scum, the very thing that the consumers all over the world shun but basically accept due to lack of choice. But humor me for a second, the long time Microprose fan community with the benefit of the doubt honeslty wanted to believe that the new arrival of Firaxis Games would never resort to that, but they obviously did! So you argue with me, tell me I have no realistic reason for having a beef with their products then you slap me in the face with a "thats the way it is - spend your money or don't" how do you honestly expect a consumer of any variety to react to such a proposal? I can't think of one, but you wouldn't like it and I'm willing to bet you wouldn't make the money you thought you would. Losing fans means losing reputation, and we've been through that concept already.

I think this is because for a lot of people games are a bit of an impulse buy, and the more a game costs compared to others on the shelf, the less likely someone is to pick that game. I'd be willing to pay a bit more for certain games, you would be too, but in general people aren't, and hence the philosophy is release the game at the normal price, and release an expansion pack to pick up the extra money from those who would pay more. I don't like it, but it does make good business sense.

Well then your agreeing with the "pirate-capitalist" concept which I will admit exists and goes with the competitive territory of the market, in short that's the way the ball bounces. But correct me if I'm wrong, but was that something I was arguing about in the first place, nah I don't think so. Get back on topic, but note in your mind just because they capitalize off of our misleadings doesn't mean we (the consumer) will stand for it. Usually any result of a "pirate-capitalist" maneuver results in two very small but well known concepts "Software piracy" (we too can be pirates! ) and in some stores "refund". Which in the end is a loss of sales. Do it right the first time I say, and stick to your traditional way of doing things to uphold your reputation. Simple.

Finally, because I'm touching on two many subjects already to keep this post focussed, I'd say in my opinion being good at writing software is about compromise. Different people will want different features, and within the team there will often be wildly different ideas about what the best approach is to do things. Ultimately you don't have time to try them all out and do them all, so you have to choose your battles to fight, try to get your way where you can and give ground in others. Any other way and nothing gets done. I imagine it works rather the same way at Firaxis. I'm sure not everyone agreed with every decision, but in the end they did what ever was decided on. As such, I don't think it's possible to come away from a software project feeling as though you've given it your all. I know I always feel after completing something that I made the best of the situation, but if only I could have done a few things differently, or had a little more time, it could have been perfect.

Well you are straying off topic (again) but in light of what you said I agree, compromise is very important. And I agree that a team should be team-mates and obviously the more compromise the more productivity and things eventually get done. Again your not telling me something that I don't know you really have to stop explaining things to me that have little or no relevence to the matter at hand. I argue and will continue to do so that Firaxis and the Civ3 development team could have made Civ3 an open ended customizable product, with a fully optional editor menu allowing the individual user to create whatever scenario or game default he/she desires. Instead they solidified concepts and created too many barriers, probably on perpose (like you said) so they could make more money from expansions. And that's where we are with all of this. Unless you agree, they could have done this, but decided not to - due to marketing ploys, what say you?

Of course, in reality, chasing that last 10% of perfection takes 90% of the time and generally can't be justified from anything other than my own aesthetic sense of what should be done. And if I was allowed to follow that to it's logical conclusion, no company I worked for would ever make money.

The moral: To be good at writing software you need to know what's good for the business too - perfection is useless if it sends you bankrupt. In relation to games, this means that it's better to get an imperfect civ 3 than for Firaxis to chase perfection, never release the game, and go under in the mean time.

This reputicious behavour of feeling the need to explain common sense to me and others really makes you look dumb. I realise the "production matters" and understand what is possible and what is not. And I'm not asking for a "perfect" game, I am simply asking for an open ended editor with the ability to basically create any platform or scenario we desire without limitations. And don't you dare tell me that it's not possible, otherwise you really are a fool. You and I both know that anything is possible in code, but often complicated, and with the "anything is possible" most ideas and concepts could have been used in this game, something as simple as "Stacked movement ON / OFF" or "Multiplayer LAN / HOTSEAT / INETERNET" two name a couple, but you basically get the idea. And unless you can come up with a really good reason and state "fact" from now on as to why they couldn't have done so, I would really like to learn! And make it genuine because I'm sure our dedicated readers are watching your every move now.

Charles (or Chuck).

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Grumbold
On the specific point about drilling down from civilization level production to city level production, the whole idea is still fallacious. Cities have never built things and never will. Industries build things. The charcoal, iron ore, smelting and fletching industries don't all have to be located in the radius of the same city just to produce arrows (although that might be efficient). When the English Kings were building castles all over Wales to pacify the locals, resources and manpower were brought from throughout the kingdom to do the task, not left for the (rebellious) local cities to provide. Rushing does not provide adequate alternatives because although that tax money has come from the whole civ, the manpower of all the other cities are still acting individually on other projects.

EU is realtime, which blurs the boundaries a bit, but you only get one big chunk of cash per year to do most of your tasks with. It becomes second nature to think of it in terms of two or three small provincial upgrades per year, some more troops for the army or saving for 3 years to build one big improvement. With nothing going on in 80 percent of your territory you don't have to examine it all to see if it needs tweaking!

You make a very interesting approach to how to better the micromanagement tedium, I agree with your concept (assuming it is yours) but I think it should be a little more involved than just have a few major tasks to accomplish each anual turn over. But I do like that idea. And instead of moving individual units why not use the concept that Firaxis has already come up with "armies" and to use a great example (but only if you've played this game) Shogun: Total war. They use a really neat battle sequence with real time animation and strategy, I personally think that the wars to be fought in Civ to reduce micromanagement would to limit your units to "armies" (multiple units all in one) and make them a little harder to maintain and reproduce with a realistic army managment engine. Again this pertains to Civ becoming more complex and realistic, I don't think the dummy casual players will agree to that though. And even if they did I doubt Firaxis would look twice.

Charles.

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Grumbold
On the specific point about drilling down from civilization level production to city level production, the whole idea is still fallacious. Cities have never built things and never will. Industries build things. The charcoal, iron ore, smelting and fletching industries don't all have to be located in the radius of the same city just to produce arrows (although that might be efficient).

Grumbold:

Let me get this straight, you're attacking my point on how to reduce micromanagement because you object to one of the major working assumptions of the Civilization series? That there is undiferentiated production that happens in abstract cities, and it allows you to make interesting things. If you object that strenuously, then no likely change to Civ will ever satisfy you... though I guess that is part of the point of this thread.

I could just as reasonably attack your counterpoint by saying that Industries don't make things, individual people with tools do. I'd really love to push around 13.932 million workers for fun in my spare time. (The Sims go to purgatory )

In Clash, the game the example is from, there are differentiated industries, and you can do the things I talked about. And it does reduce micromanagement a Lot. Of course we aren't far along enough to be sure it doesn't get in the way of the fun managing the economy... But I believe the idea could also work in Civ and many other games. Please don't attack it just because you don't like how Civ works its economy!