A key to bad and good game design

[solo]

BAD

After reading and sharing many opinions about things that make CivIII less fun to play, it occurred to me that most of things that irritate us about this game can be attributed to decisions which were made to counter successful player strategies and exploits observed by the CivIII designers in the play of earlier versions of the game.

A good example of this was the design decision to limit ICS (Infinite City Strategy (Sleaze, or Sprawl, it goes by many names)). Increased corruption, in-your-face AI expansion, smaller maps, and other methods were used to hamper the use of the ICS strategy, and appear to have been implemented with this sole purpose in mind. Complaints have surely outnumbered compliments about the corruption model and early AI contact and expansion, etc. Determined players have invented new extreme strategies to implement ICS anyways, and all players have seen their choice of playing style diminished rather than enhanced by efforts to design against ICS.

I might add that as another consequence, a major thing that was lost was one of the most enjoyable parts of any Civ game, the period of time in the early game where one could develop a few uncontested cities and proceed to explore the map and make contact with other civs while doing so.

GOOD

There are many things that are very good about CivIII, too, and after reading and sharing many opinions in this department, it also occurred to me that most of the things we really like about the game are the new features which were designed to enhance the game rather than limit it in some way. A good example here would be the introduction and use of strategic resources, a new and positive addition to the game. The introduction of small wonders and expanded AI diplomacy are others. Many new things have made the game more enjoyable, and in each case I believe that the things we really like are the things that were added for their own sake, and not as a means to limit or counter how we play the game.

What players want most is the freedom to choose, and expanding player choices with new and positive game options is what will make CivIII a better game.

[Encomium]

Better than what??

Civ II had legs for five years and counting.

From what I am reading on this forum a lot of people are already sick of this disappointing Civ III.

I DESPISE the entire Culture Borders and City Flipping crap.

The wandering AI settlers encroaching on your territory.

The massive corruption.

Pitiful use of navies.

Stupid, stubborn AI Advisors.

And on and on. . .

Too bad the AI could not have just gotten smarter instead of constantly CHEATING and trying to frustrate game-players with contrived irritating strategies.

The game is simply less enjoyable on many counts than Civ II. I bet more Civilization Fans will be going back to Civ II by Summer as they abandon Civ III - which looks more and more like a Beta test version than a completed product.

[Capt Dizle]

pretty good post solo

[radegast]

An example really of 'Forum Power'. If you trawl some of the old posts when the features for Civ III were being discussed, there was a lot of cries for 'Disable ICS, its too powerful', or 'bring in cultural differences between Civ's'. Etc. Etc.

So, Firaxis did these things and in response we now get 'Corruption is too much', the AI expands too quick.

Abe Lincoln said it about fooling people, its true also of pleasing people, so you (in this case Firaxis) might as well please yourself.

Someone else (forgive me I don't remember who), argues that a lot of the rule changes were designed to make the silly things the AI does less silly, thereby making the AI seem more intellegent, I give a lot of creedence to that view.

In my view, corruption is overdone, it makes the game tedious and in reality much less fun. But currently I'm playing the "Long Winded Mod" which provides at least one other 'Forbidden Palace' (National Constitution I believe). Now I refrained from building the original FP, preferring to relocate my palace to the Center of the continent I started on (and now control). Later I invaded continent 2 intending to build the FP there once I'd subdued enough of it to make this worthwhile, when I discovered this new FP, so that got built instead.

I now have expeditionary forces of each of the other two continents, the FP will get built on whichever one proves to be the most sucessful (or perhaps the one that produces a leader first).

My point being that many of the games frustrations can be modded around, I hope Firaxis concentrate on making the editor much more functional, and only amending the basic game code to either fix bugs (of which there are actually remarkably few REAL bugs, design flaws maybe but not bugs) or to facilitate the changes in the editor.

More editor options will allow us all to play Civ the way we want to. That to me would be the criteria for good game design.

Now if only they'd let us program the AI as well!

[macaskil]

Let's be fair about the AI

As a human being either

- you were created by an omnipotent God in his own image

or

- you have evolved for 4 billion years

and you still can't beat an assortment of ones and zeros on a computer??????

Think how long it has taken to develop chess programs that can defeat humans. And chess has far less variables than civ3; the "try every variation and see if it works" approach cannot be used, so brute force computing power is no help to the AI. The civ3 AI attempts to copy the tactics of a competent human player (expand everywhere, do science, build military, fight wars) and does a reasonable job IMO. It can fight battles reasonably well. It certainly never makes mistakes like I do (trying to build a settler in a 1 pop non-growing city - doh!).

Only a couple of things annoy me -

if I station ships in the ocean I notice the AI navy units doing a sort of waltz every turn without going anywhere - why? Looking for sharks?

settlers wander everywhere and found cities in deserts etc. One would think they shouldn't do this until all other land is occupied.

AI should take into account quality as well as quantity of military. Mind you, how would they know without spying?

[Kevin Ar18]

Originally posted by radegast
An example really of 'Forum Power'. If you trawl some of the old posts when the features for Civ III were being discussed, there was a lot of cries for 'Disable ICS, its too powerful', or 'bring in cultural differences between Civ's'. Etc. Etc.

I never promoted any of thos things you mentioned, but you are right in that there is a lot of things we asked for in CivIII and some of them we got. But, IMHO, they implemented the stuff wrongly, half-way, or downright annoying. I love many of the concepts in Civ3, but there are so many things that annoy me in the way they did certain things both half way and in simply a bad way.
May I give an example: Sid decided not to make modern units much more powerful than older units. Good concept in theory, except I'm not having much fun. A submarine can't even take down an ironclad. And modern weapons are having little effect on anything except for the land units.

[Harovan]

In my opinion, CivIII has 3 really important flaws:
1) The missing scenario editor
2) The missing multiplayer mode
3) The game interface (no stacked movement, bad diplomacy overview etc.)

All others, that people are ranting about, are in my opinion intended game design.

- The strategic resources are a great idea. I admit, it's still not perfect and the trade etc. could be improved and made more realistic, but generally it's very good.

- The corruption (while it sometimes sucks, I admit) takes place in big empires, take a look at Russia. It is corrupt and has always been, even in pre-communist times. And a huge empire with 50% or more of the Earth's landmass did never exist and probably never will. The game designers had to limit the infinite expansion by a way, as it's unrealistic. And corruption/waste is much more sound than simply limiting the possible number of cities.

- The culture adds an interesting element to the game play. Culture flips are a pain and should be adjusted, that's true, but they work in both direction and can be prevented by building a prosper empire with enough own culture. Not a quickly conquered continent without improvements, but something where the people want to live.

- The AI is much smarter than the Civ2 AI. In Civ2 it was just dumb. Civ2 is great because it has a working MP mode and you can play with other living individuals. That made (and still makes) the kick. So the AI cheats and that's bad? Oh well, accept it as a part of the rules of the game.

- What concerns the antitank spearman, well, it occurs seldom and there were several examples in history, where an inferior country won against the superpower. Vietnam vs. the USA. Afghanistan vs. the Soviets. Enough examples? There are much more in history. Accept it, think the spearman not as a man with a pointy stick, but as some kind of modern militia. Would that be acceptable?

- The advisors... I admit, they looked awesome in Civ2 and were fun. I miss them too. But they were not a bit "smarter" than the present ones.

If the above 3 main flaws will be fixed, and the other options (corruption etc.) will be better adjustable with a more powerful editor, the (already good) game could be made really great.

Encomium: Play Civ2, if it makes you happy, and stop trolling.

[OneInTen]

I think the key to good game design is not listening to whining forum *****es who live in their parent's basement and see the sun once a year, and even then it's by accident.

But maybe that's just me.

[The Andy-Man]

i think one in ten got it in 1.

us dumb arses know what we want, but we cant exactly explain it. they made it harder to ICS by making it 2 pop points per sttler, but the AI expands at a rate thoat would mean this rule dosnt apply to it.


i think some of Civ3's great features were just put in rong (likeair units)