Civ3 Game Design Discussion Thread

[Velociryx]

Please note the title of the thread. I would rather not begin making a habit of asking the moderators to close my threads because they devolve into flame wars.

The goal here is not to whine, not to complain....simply to point out specific *design decisions* that were made during the course of putting Civ3 together that were....weak.

Were they wrong or incorrect? :: shrug:: Not for me to say. In my mind, the answer would be yes, but I wasn't on the design team. Some people may disagree with my words here, and if so, that's cool, but if you wanna flame me for it, send me an e-mail, and let's keep the conversation here on topic, 'k?

I'm going to take a bit of a different approach here than all the other threads I"ve seen on the topic thus far. It is all well and good to propose fixes for patches, wish lists for Civ4, and so on, but in order that there might be some understanding between those who enjoy the game and those who do not, it is important to look beyond that.

To look deeper than that.

It is my hope that this thread will illuminate for those reading it (including perhaps some members of Firaxis) exactly *where* things began going astray.

That begins with the design decisions made in the early goings.

First, and quite obviously, there was a conscious effort made to close in-game loopholes, exploits, and clamp down on the most common ways that human players win vs. the AI.

I applaud that. Excellent move!

It is in the *execution* of that plan that it falls short.

To specifics, in this case:
Anti-ICS: One of the biggest, most powerful tools at a human player's disposal, if Civ3 was to be significantly different from its predecessors, then clearly this had to go....or at least be weakened severely.

They did so in two ways: First and most obvious to the eye, by making the AI expand ICS style....very rapidly, very aggressively, simply denying the human player the opportunity to do the same, or at least limiting the options in that regard. Generally, you settle what you can, where you can and thank God you're keeping pace. That's cool....that's good, even. It sharply defines the early game as a competition for scarce resources (decent land). As it should be, and the early game is one of the most exciting parts of civ3, thanks in part to this very thing.

The second thing was by REALLY jacking up corruption.

That's not so good, and it's not for a couple of reasons.

The model itself would be fine (aggregate corruption levels) if there were no "distance from the capitol" weight, and it was simply corruption due to number of production centers.

Before I uninstalled the game, one of the things I would do is run 'start tests.' Repeatedly start new games, play ten turns and restart....just to get a feel for what the most common sorts of starts a player could expect.

In a 20-game spread, I got 11 Peninsula starts and 6 Coastal starts. 3 "midland" starts.

Given the state of the corruption model (where corruption due to distance is a HUGE factor), on a standard sized map, this means I can safely build two new cities (3 total) with a peninsular start before crippling corruption levles begin to kick in--this mostly due to the lay of the land at the start).

Three.

Coastal starts generally give you a bit more flexibility, allowing for an average of five cities total before crippling corruption sneeks in (counting the capitol).

Midland starts allow for a total of nine.

The disparities between these is simply too high....clear evidence that too much weight is given to corruption due to distance.

Pre-patch, things weren't too bad, because you could keep up a normal pace of expansion and slowly but surely build your palace out to a better location.

Ahhh, but here's where we begin to see symptoms of what is wrong.

It was discovered that people were "bouncing" their palaces hither and yon, taking advantage of an element of the "flip" formula (the element that relied on proximity to the capitol) to snag AI cities with ease. And, in an effort to close that loophole, the palace price was raised to astronomical heights.

It's true....doing so had the effect of closing that in-game loophole.

It's ALSO true that it made 17 out of 20 of my test game starts all but unplayable, because I could no longer keep a normal rate of expansion and relocate my palace. No...what it forced me to do was stop expanding, pick a fight, generate a leader and THEN relocate my palace.

Games like civ have been famous since their inception for being open ended and fostering a wide variety of playstyles, and yet, with the "fixing" of one problem, another (and much deeper) was created....now, rather than flexibility in playing style, I'm playing a game with effectively only "one way to win." I either pick a fight, or suffer with rampant corruption and get overwhelmed by AI civs who don't seem to suffer from it.

Ever.

Thus, the closing of that loophole...the manner in which the loophole was closed, created a more linear game play.

***

Strategic Resources and Luxuries:
For all intents and purposes, this is a *superb* addition to the game. It fosters strategic planning and diplomacy. It also brings forth in this iteration of Civ the notion of a "strategic war" rather than simply a war to exterminate an AI civ. (Especially when taken together with the corruption model....if you see a resource you need, and you see that it is controlled by an AI, you can either trade for it or whack the civ in question to gain control of that resource. What you DON'T generally want to do is take the civ out entire, else you're left with the aforementioned corruption problem. In general, it is simply more profitable to leave the civ weakened an alive, slowly repair your relations with them, and turn them into a client state for your surplus resources).

The problem here though, is two-fold:
In the first case, luxuries are overpowered and strategic resources under powered. Luxuries, because a single "source" of a given luxury type is enough to increase happiness in ALL your cities (magnified by the effects of a Market), and it never runs out. Strategic resources are weak because, whether you build anything that requires that resource or no, there's a chance it'll run out "just because." Invariably, when this happens, the resource will relocate to an AI's territory, forcing you to worsen your corruption problem if you want to maintain a stable supply of the resource.

It would not have taken many more lines of code to implement it thusly (I say this after having held meetings with my own design team for the Candle'Bre project....eventually we'll be incorporating resources as well, and will do so thusly):

Each resource is given a value between 400-900. Each time you build something requiring the USE of that resource, the value drops (the amount of the drop is dependant on exactly what is built). They player gets a general sense of where the value is (a range: 100-300, 300-500, 500-700, 700+, but does not know the precise amount left available to him. This fosters greater strategic USE of said resources, and can influence your desire to trade your excesses. Also, some resources are renewable (ie - Horses. If your herds begin to grow thin, simply don't build anything requiring the use of them, and they'll grow back at X per turn (to a maximum of whatever the initial value was)).

The same basic principal can be applied to luxury items, meaning that they'll serve you in a pinch to control unhappiness, but you must manage them so as not to overdo it, lest you REALLY work yourself into a bind.

As I said, the above implementation *would not* require terribly much more coding, and would greatly strengthen the whole concept of resources and their use. It would also dramatically alter their value, and allow for more "espionage type" options. For example: You could build an explorer and send him "prospecting" to check out the size of an AI player's iron deposits near your border. If the report came back indicating a feeble vein, it may well prompt you NOT to attack....after all, once gained, you would deplete it fairly quickly, so you'd have to weight the potential cost of acquiring it against what it would likely net you. And what does that equate to?

More strategy.

Given that this is a strategy game....I think that'd be a good thing.

***

The Tech Trees:
Another very cool concept was to break the time line up into eras that approximate actual historical eras. Good move.

Again, however, the way that this was implemented creates an extremely linear in-game approach. Simply put, it doesn't really matter WHAT you research, or in what order. The same cannot be said of Civ3's immediate predecessor, SMAC, which had no less than half a dozen popular and quite playable early game tech beelines, each with a dramatically different style of play.

You just don't get that here.

One of the reasons is that, with essentially four distinct tech trees, there aren't all that many techs per era, and correspondingly fewer tech branches. Had some effort been made to bolster the number of techs per era (also not difficult to do....once the tech tree structure is in place, adding more techs is easy....and there's certainly no shortage of ideas!), this part of the problem could have been avoided entirely.

It was not.

Design decision.



***

Combat:

I'll not even repeat the arguments. Everybody knows them by heart. Some like it the way it is (including me....I've never had any particular problems with it), some can't stand it.

The one thing I will say about combat is this:

Mounted units are broken.

Too powerful.

It's just that simple, and after less than half a dozen games played, that fact becomes obvious.

With such an imbalance in the game's combat units, you're right back to a linear playing approach....the game practically FORCES you to use massed horsemen on the attack. For a strategy game to do so in not one, but multiple areas of its design is....not good.

Oh, you can use combined arms and it DOES make the game more interesting and draw it out a bit, but the simple fact is that mounted units are, pound for pound, cost for cost AT LEAST half as expensive as they should be for their current power. Two ways of fixing it are to decrease the % chance of withdrawl, or double the price and require a point of pop for each mounted unit (and even the latter sugesstion might not balance them).

***

The Editor:
Ahhhh the editor. The box promised full-featured, and the ability to create our own secnarios....and we can, now that the hacker community has given us at least a few of the features conspicuously missing from the editor, but with the editor that shipped? About all you could do in it was go tweak corruption levels. Hardly "full featured allowing for unmatched flexibility" and no matter how much of a fan of the game or the company you are, that is plain to see. There's no way around that.

The editor that shipped was not the editor promised.

Even post-patch, some of the fundamentals are missing. Again, everyone here knows these by heart, so I'll not even mention them except to say that even WITH the hackers working diligently at it, there's so much that lies beyond the reach of the editor, that our best efforts can't really make a dent.

And that's too bad, because one of the hallmarks of the series has been its moddability. One of the reasons Civ2 is STILL played regularly is because of the Mod community.

The Civ3 mod community is dying on the vine....not for lack of effort on their part, but simply because you can't build a skyscraper with a pair of chopsticks.

There are others, to be sure.

Other areas of the design where the decision was made to close a loophole and deny the human player an easy win (again, that's a good thing). But when the implementation of those plans hobbles gameplay and forces players to "play this way or not at all," then the game loses much of its appeal for strategy fans.

For a strategy game to be a turn off to strategy fans is....the kiss of death, I would say.

-=Vel=-
(hushing now, to give others a chance to speak)

[Velociryx]

Grrr....I forgot one of the biggies I meant to mention....so I'll add it here.

Specialists:
In SMAC, the late-game specialists were all but broken! Specialists, combined with SMAC's supply crawlers enabled you to totally circumvent the corruption model (since specialist outputs are unaffected by it) and raise your cash and research rates through the roof.

This was dealt with very harshly, by simply whacking the specialists down to one coin and one beaker (taxmen and researchers).

Unfortunately, if they were going to do this, they should have simply taken them out of the game altogether.

Nobody in their right mind is going to give up growth (2 food) to create a taxman or a researcher who only gives them 1 output. That's nuts!

A quick, easy solution would have been to push their availability back and give them an output of 3-4 (which we did in the Mod-with-no-name). This allows you to create viable specialist cities, and actually get *some* use out of border towns that suffer rampant corruption....enabelling them to contribute something to the Empire in spite of all that.

No coding required then, but why wasn't it done when the game shipped?

Surely the game was played at the office while it was being worked on.

Surely *someone* had to see that specialists were never being used ('cept entertainers of course), and the reason behind their lack of use is not rocket science, after all....it's right there on the city display screen.

Design decision.

Close the in-game loophole.

Same with the research cap. There is no reward for busting you a$$ to build a sterling civilization. Nahhh...why bother? You can be a tech follower rather than a tech leader and STILL get your research at a decent clip.

Again, the designers saw that the human player could too easily gain a runaway tech lead over the AI and clamped down on that as a "loophole."

Unfortunately, by doing so, you remove much of the incentive to even PLAY, because no matter how hard you try....no matter how low you squeeze your corruption rates down and tweak your economy to get it running *perfectly* it just doesn't matter.

There's no reward for it.

Again, design decision.

Feature.

-=Vel=-

[The diplomat]

This is an excellent thread!

Another issue that you forgot to raise is that of Armies and Great leaders.

I think that Armies are too weak. For one, you can only get them with a great Leader which is rare. (the rarety of GL is not necessarily a bad thing though since if the player were getting a Gl every 5 turns they would be meaningless!)
However I find that Armies are not as powerful as they probably should be if you take into account how hard it is to get one in the first place! The reason I say that they are too weak is because they do not seem to be as powerful as they should be. In all my games, Armies did not perform all that significantly better than the same combo of single units.

What do you think Vel: are Armies too weak?

Furthermore, the only way a player can move units as a stack is through an Army which is very rare. So the player is still reduced to moving individual units around!
I know it is a design decision but IMHO, stacked movement should be mandatory in future civ games not a "special event" granted to the lucky! it is simply too tedious to be moving single units around in the late era. Why does civ3 force the player to do this?

I hope that I am not sounding like I am bashing. I do love civ3 but I happen to dissagree with how some features were implemented. I believe that civ3 is a great game. The problem is not that the game is bad, merely that hard-core civers will disagree with certain design decisions.

[m_m_x]

while reading your last massages ,the voice of the dude in civ3 video promo saying "we've ruined your life again" has popped into my mind...

they really have kept their promise to u, huh?, but in the opposite way

[FNBrown]

As usual, Vel, your post is insightful, well-spoken, and thorough.

I wonder if you're not just casting pearls before swine, however... Since the last patch, there have been no updates to Civ3.com, and, thus, no official word from the game's producers that any improvements are forthcoming.

Personally, I have enjoyed the game very much, in spite of its shortcomings, and consider it money well spent. I would gladly spend a few more bucks on an expansion pack of some sort that would present a better editor, more diverse tech tree, more realistic combat, a solution for the corruption problem, etc, etc, etc.

On a completely off-topic note... I've been watching the Super Bowl pre-game show. It occurs to me that, if I didn't know any better, I could have watched the last 45 minutes or so and had no idea it had anything to do with a football game...

[Asmodean]

First and foremost, I would like state, since I am not a frequent poster, and my views are thus not widely known to people here, that I LOVE Civ3. I find the game great - but not superb. There are elements in the game that I find to be true genious, and elements in which I would like to see improvements. Therefore I agree with some of what you said, Vel. But not with all. As a result of that, Vel, don't take these comments as either generally pro or anti yóur post, but read them individually.

First, and quite obviously, there was a conscious effort made to close in-game loopholes, exploits, and clamp down on the most common ways that human players win vs. the AI.

I applaud that. Excellent move!

Except that by doing even that, Firaxis took the fun away from some players. Some players like to whack the AI, using the games own loopholes to do so. I think, however that the closing of loopholes is a good thing.

Anti-ICS: One of the biggest, most powerful tools at a human player's disposal, if Civ3 was to be significantly different from its predecessors, then clearly this had to go....or at least be weakened severely.

Which I totally applaud. I've always found that ICS made for excruciatingly boring games, what with the micromanagement it lead to in the end game. On an huge map, playing at Monarch level, you can have app. 28 cities (with Forbidden Palace) with manageable corruption. This I find okay. On the other hand, if you want more, why not just use the editor to up the number of cities you can have before total corruption kicks in. Maybe even give a few more improvements "courthouse powers". I don't do that myself, but I have no problem with the concept.

On the other hand: The fact that the AI now plays ICS style - that I don't like. It's okay in the early game: trying to limit the human players expansion. But continiously building new cities on every available spot of land, is just plain ridiculous.

In the first case, luxuries are overpowered and strategic resources under powered.

Hear, Hear.

The Tech Trees:
Another very cool concept was to break the time line up into eras that approximate actual historical eras. Good move.

I do not agree. I very much liked the research system of SMAC. As you yourself point out, it makes for a non-linear game, which is good. But it's not a major issue for me. I like Civ3 anyway.

Combat:

I'll not even repeat the arguments. Everybody knows them by heart. Some like it the way it is (including me....I've never had any particular problems with it), some can't stand it.

The one thing I will say about combat is this:

Mounted units are broken.

Too powerful.

Then use the editor to change them. Make them more expensive, give them less moves, whatever. That, at least, the editor CAN do.

The Editor:
Ahhhh the editor. The box promised full-featured, and the ability to create our own secnarios....and we can, now that the hacker community has given us at least a few of the features conspicuously missing from the editor, but with the editor that shipped? About all you could do in it was go tweak corruption levels. Hardly "full featured allowing for unmatched flexibility" and no matter how much of a fan of the game or the company you are, that is plain to see. There's no way around that.

The editor that shipped was not the editor promised.

Am I the only one that has full faith, that the editor will be improved in future patches. Firaxis promised that, and as yet I have not been convinced that they will not deliver.

Asmodean

[Pembleton]

I'm probably going to be criticized for not talking about game design in the sense of its abstract mechanics, but I can't be bothered until they take care of worker stacks.

The game could vastly improve mechanically, but if I still have to spend 70% of my time in the later game moving workers to pollution one at a time, and then putting about 8-15 workers to sleep waiting for the next pollutions spot(s) to show up, none of it really matters.

I will only use the auto-manage if it does exactly what I would do. And besides, it never puts more than 2 workers on pollution even if someone forced me not to micro-manage.

[Velociryx]

Armies: Yep....I quite agree. Too weak, and too expensive.

At a minimum, armies should have blitz, ZOC, and a default bombard rating (which increases per era). Their cost should be about 25% less than present. That would make them *usable*. A nice bonus would be to allow bombard units placed IN an army to get an extra shot for each unit in the army (representing placement....infantry forming ranks in front of the bombard units, giving them more opportunities for fire). NONE of this stuff would be hard to code in, because (assuming a fairly modular approach was used in making the game), the only modules in question would be unit interaction, so it should be fairly self-contained.

Alternately, leave the cost alone and increase the number of units allowed IN an army to 4 as the default (perhaps five, but now we're pushing game balance issues), and lower the ratio to 1 army per 3 cities.

I totally agree though, with the decision to make it such that units IN an army cannot be removed and upgraded. IMO, that would go too far the other way in overpowering them!

Also, there should be an option for "Air Wings" and "Squadrons" (just like Armies, but for Air and Sea).

Again, NOT a big thing to code....the *structure* is already in place, it's just a matter of changing the variables.

That none of this was done or considered lends yet more of a linear playing approach to the game, and for a strategy game of this sort of grand, epic scale, that's a shame.

Having said that, I must agree with F N Brown. I don't feel as though I didn't get my money's worth out of the game. For fifty bucks, I think it works out to something like five cents an hour of entertainment....that's a bargain no matter how you slice it.

But civ3 is sooooo much less than it should have been considering the time that went into it, the planning, and their previous efforts. IMO, while good, it's not even in the same category with the rest of the series (which is why I designated it as "civ3" rather than Civ3).

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Asmodean: Excellent points. I too, LOVED SMAC's tech tree (no surprise there, eh?). I think though, that they could have easily given us the best of both worlds! Broken the tech tree up into eras and expanded each era's total number of available techs! This way, it really *would* be possible to have variant strategies, while leaving that whole feel of "moving thru history" intact.

Also, your points about closing loopholes is a good one in the sense that, when shutting down a loophole is executed in such a way that it decreases the immersion or fun factor OF the game itself, then it's a bad call. Better in some cases to leave a loophole alone if you can't fix it without making the game a GRIND!

AI: Agreed....if they'd stop building cities after the Ancient era (unless as part of resettlement in a war) it would GREATLY strenghten the AI, IMO.

Mounted units: Quite true, but the most elegant fix is beyond the reach of the editor, which is to simply reduce their chance of withdrawl....that's what I'm hoping to see at some point!

Editor: I'm with you...still keeping the faith that eventually the editor will be working at least to the point where you can make decent scenarios with it....I only worry that by the time that happens, all our best modders will have gotten so sick of waiting they'll simply leave the community.

Pembleton: Actually, your comment is very much centered around Design Desicions, and it's an excellent point! Why the decision was made to NOT include stacked movement (and given that SMAC *DID* have stacked movement we can only assume that there was a conscious decision made to leave it out for Civ3 (unless everybody at the company suddenly got amnesia). And as to why....I dunno. That's a mystery, my friend.

-=Vel=-

[Bill9999]

Your points to me are hitting the nail on the head. By closing loopholes they have created a monster. All of a sudden we have a game that limits you now matter what your style of play.

I'll throw a couple of out.

I think the largest reason for the limitations is (sorry Soren) the AI. Instead of "teaching" the AI to take advantage of many widely used strategies that have existed throughout the various Civ games, you HAVE increased the ability of the AI to survive, but only marginally so, and then further handcuffed the player into what he can do to overcome the overwhelming odds that the AI cheats to obtain.

In my opinion the game is perhaps too militaristic, the AI is much more aggressive, and the player, as demonstrated in Vel's posts, have really no choice in many situations but fighting. Inheritently that is a GOOD design, it keeps the player off balance, BUT there are very few situations that allow a player to avoid military action. For a builder, like myself, that in itself is a nightmare.

DIPLMOACY

We lose the ability to trade units. We lose the ability to trade cities. And the AI can not recognize a fair trade if it's continued existence depends on it, which at times, is the case. All to close loopholes that players took advantage of. Personally I feel diplomacy is has been made pointless in Civ III.


TERRAIN

We lose the ability to terraform. We can no longer irrigate hils. Forests are worthless. It would seem because the player recognizes more ways to utilize the given terrain than the AI, which still does a poor job utilizing the terrain, especially tied to the specialist issue.

GOVERNMENTS

Lets see what are they really? Three variable factors? They effect corruption model, the effect war weariness, and they effect military support. Yeah, democracy speeds up workers, and has that whole propaganda defense in, and they effect military police levels, and there is the whole choice between paying for hurries, or killing citizens, but in large we are dealing with 3 factors. Generally speaking, usually, only 1 or two of these factors even comes into play in a decision. Oh, Houston, There's the problem. There is no choice of what government to take!!!!!! Lower corruption, peace loving, industrial = democracy, war time, better go with monarchy or communism, whichever your personal favorite to combat corruption is. There are no grey areas. There is no choice. There is no strategy.

The brilliant social / economic model used in SMAC was thrown out. Design decision? Realism issues? Not allowed to use the same code? IMO absolutely the worst decision made in the design of the game. There is just no choice of what to do.

IMMERSION

One more turn....one more turn...It is still there, up until the game is tedious, corruption is crippling, micromanagement kicks in big time, and Bill decides it is time to start a new game. I have finished one game. Ever. In going on 2 months of playing. Why? Are the games really more tedious than the previous? Nope, not in my eyes, but I feel no connection with the game, and by late industrial ages, there is nothing left to do but conquer, and that's not my bag baby, I'm a lover not a fighter...oh yeah, I can hang on for that last 1000 years and see if I can beat out the AI in building a spaceship when they only have 1/2 the technology required, Heh, or I can build the UN. HA! Right! Fundamentally flawed....on higher levels I don't think it is possible to survive long enough to reach diplomatic victory without stepping on enough toes that you would never win. Where is an economic win? Culture win again, not possible, unless you have done some serious warfare in order to keep other civs culture rating down. And how is that a culture win? Sounds like another military win to me.

****SLAP****

Thank You. I'll shut up now...

Bill

[Velociryx]

*Excellent* points, Bill, and you mentioned a few that I'd forgotten to include in my initial post! Cool! Glad you got 'em covered!

Diplomacy: Total agreement, though I must say that I draw some enjoyment from setting up trade deals and stuff, it's only scratching the surface of what could have been done. Someone on a thread about a month ago floated the idea that on the trade advisor screen could be a listing of 'basic offers' that civs were willing to give up for your resources. This would give you an at a glance way of seeing how was offering how much for your spare silk or whatever. THAT would rock, and be much better than having to do the 90-click shuffle to talk to all civs, find out what their offers are, record them, and then select. With the AI refusing to buy/sell/trade cities now (again, to close a loophole) I can't save my allies the way I once could. Oh, I can GIVE them a city, but $hite! After sinking a few hundred shields into it, I'd rather like to get at least SOMETHING for it, you know? Nope....close the loophole. Nevermind what it does to gameplay.

Terrain: AMEN! Forests REEK past railroads, and in most cases, before then. And I've a question regarding that, as well: IFE (another player exploit) was closed out. Forests suck anyway, and yet, your workers HAVE THE OPTION on screen to plant forests?! What gives with that?! It almost makes it seem as though the design team has no sense of itself....or has multiple personalities. On the one hand, they make IFE possible by allowing reforestation as a special ability for workers. On the other hand, they make forests BY FAR the weakest "terraforming" you can possibly do....so which is it? The design, in that regard is VERY inconsistent.

Governments: Too right, again! Three major factors and no real choice. Essentially, the straight jacket of government affects gameplay by overpowering Religious Civs, who can make rapid shifts to whatever government type suits their purpose at the moment (and again, there are essentially two choices: Dem/Com (tho as you say, some would choose Monarchy). That's it tho! And as you point out, you're once more wearing the civ3 straight jacket.

Play this way or die.

Where's the strategy? The elegant subtlety? The CHOICE!?

Gone.

Gone by design, no less.

-=Vel=-

[Master Marcus]

SMAC'S tech tree is my favorite in video games...so far. I'm still playing and enjoying a lot Civ III, and though I share some of your complaints about the game, I still think it's a well-balanced TBS game. My biggest problem in fact is with the "please wait..." time lenght between turns on huge maps. I can live with the combat system, and since Firaxis wanted to make an accessible game for the mass, the lack of complexity is not a problem for me- it's quite refreshing and still a great strat game.

Place your bets in MoO3 instead for the complexity - and maybe it's not too late to contribute in the game's forums ( you're lucky if you have the time, because I don't ), discussing about the most flexible editor possible upon the current technology and so on. Then perhaps we'll have the game of our dreams next fall. I agree it is too late on that matter for Civ III.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Bill9999
The brilliant social / economic model used in SMAC was thrown out. Design decision? Realism issues? Not allowed to use the same code? IMO absolutely the worst decision made in the design of the game. There is just no choice of what to do.

I agree! Why was SE thrown out, why oh why?!?! It was obviously a design decision. However I think that SE in civ3 would have been so great. it would not have been that difficult either. All you have to do is change a few names. For example "planet" could have been changed to "envirronment". Just that would have pretty cool. If they had made really cool historical choices like "mercantilism" or "citizen army", SE would have been absolutely amazing!

The brilliance of the SE is that it allowed so many variations that civ3's governments doesn't allow!

[Bill9999]

IFE. Exactly. Instead of the AI using the tatic, instead no one can do it, which limits strategy. I would argue the point that it is not a cheat, or even it is unjustly labeled an exploit.

If I clear forests, I can use the lumber for building, I can burn it for energy, I can mulch it and use it for fertilizer, I can sell it, I can build boats with it, I can use it for military uses, I can build bridges with it, I can make paper out of it, the list goes on and on.

Clearing forests obviously should then not just gives a shields bonus, but also a food and gold bonus as well.

And please someone tell the logging industry that they can only cut down an area of forest and benefit from in once. Replant it all you want, but the next time you cut it down, you are not allowed to use it in any way.

Instead that is what we get, because the AI can't figure it out.

[solo]

I have 2 things:

1) I do not believe the prevention of ICS by using AI counter-ICS is necessary or desirable. Instead, better and additional ways are needed to strengthen and expand the roles of individual cities. Additional city improvements to boost commerce, science, food production, and yes, even culture, might encourage the player to build up individual cities and their values, rather than to add more and more cities ICS-style. ICS came into being because it was just more efficient to gain extra income, science, and building power by founding more and more cities, rather than fully developing existing ones. If anything, CivIII weakened individual cities, leaving players even fewer options to improve them than were available in CivII. Limit ICS by making city development the smarter strategy.

2) Bring back caravans and freights, not to build wonders, but to re-incorporate a trade model more like CivII’s into CivIII. Trade, and deciding how to manage it in a more detailed way, was one of the best design features in CivII. There is not much more to trade management in CivIII than just connecting up roads, building harbors and renegotiating deals every 20 turns. Ho hum, where is the strategy there? The amount individual cities participate in trade could also help implement 1) above.


My basic premise is that the more options that players have to implement individual strategies, the deeper and more fulfilling the game will become. A frequent complaint with CivIII’s design is that there has been “nothing much to do but hit Enter on most turns”.

[notyoueither]

Is it possible that Firaxis did not want to give up intellectual property rights to Infogrames by incorporating the better SMAC concepts, like SE?

To clarify. Inforgrames owns Civ. Wouldn't rights to any ideas put into civ3 go to Infogrames? So they can still use them, no matter who they farm civ4 out to.

Firaxis owns SMAC, right? Don't they have some interest in maintaining whatever rights they may have to limit the use of their ideas by others?

Am I making sense?

Salve

[cassembler]

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you have been struck by the soon-to-be famous BEER BUMP!!!
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:beer:

Good thread.

I would like to point out the fact that I'm pretty freakin' sure Firaxis ain't gonna let us down... I imagine they'll have to patch the game at least once more before they can implement a multiplayer add-on, just a hunch...

I feel some map editing improvements comming our way...

[Bill9999]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Is it possible that Firaxis did not want to give up intellectual property rights to Infogrames by incorporating the better SMAC concepts, like SE?

To clarify. Inforgrames owns Civ. Wouldn't rights to any ideas put into cvi3 go to Infogrames? So they can still use them, no matter who they farm civ4 out to.

Firaxis owns SMAC, right? Don't they have some interest in maintaining whatever rights they may have to limit the use of their ideas by others?

Am I making sense?

Salve

Yes, you are making sense, in all reality, this could be absolutely true. The common gamer just doesn't understand the legal mumbo-jumbo crapola. No one on the gamer end will truthfully know how the legal side was worded, and I am sure no one involved wants any legal battles over intellectual property, and I am sure that came into play at some time in the design process. Probably more than you and I could imagine. But as a gamer, ask yourself, "Do I Care?"

Do I care whether one company or another has intellectual proprty rights to a name? If it is that big of an issue, and it causes designers and programmers to hold back, even a little, I say publish an absolute crap game, ruin the Civ name forever, then lauch the same game concepts under a different title with everything that it should be.

Hmmmmmmmm.........

[Kilroy_Alpha]

Regarding Armies:

The truth is, armies are only slightly underpowered in the game. If they were much more powerful the first person to build an academy could overrun their neighbors (well, provided they can afford to devote one city entirely to producing armies). This would cause a major balance issue. The problem isn't with the armies themselves, it's with the Great Leaders as a whole. They are overpowered. I would suggest that Great Leaders be allowed to only lend a certain amount of production to a city (perhaps adjusted for whatever era you're in), rather than just building anything you want in one turn. This would make armies more attractive, not because they're so powerful but because the alternative is no longer so lucrative as to make it the only option. Anyway:

Armies: increase attractiveness by implementing some of the suggestions above, don't overpower them though

GLs: hurry improvement should really mean "hurry improvement," not "finish improvement."

Regarding Resources:

Everything Vel said is gold.

Governments:

The model used in SMAC was the best ever. Throwing it out was plain stupid. End of story.

Diplomacy:

My only complaint with respect to diplomacy is that you can't demand resources as a condition for peace with a civ you're at war with. You have to wait 20 turns. You can try to demand it after you make peace but they'll just laugh at you. Suck.


Also, one thing the people at Firaxis always say is that "when realism and fun conflict during the design process, fun always wins." That's good in principle but what does it mean? It means less realism. And why is the Civ series fun? Realistic simulation of the story of a nation from it's conception to the moment it launches itself into space. There's a big conflict here, one that is not easily resolved. A good start would be to focus on realism a bit more, even if it appears to detract from the game. In the end the game will be appreciated more. And who defines fun here anyway? Most fans of the civ series want it to be as realistic as possible - for them, that's fun.

[Alex]

Vel... as usual, hitting the nail in the head.

Civ3 has a lot of problems, but the main one, for me, is that the player is severely crippled in its choices. As you said, play this way or die. We all know that the civ series has always been recognized for its decision-making... Shall I build a courthouse or a longbowman? What if I decide to attack my neighbor?

Now, in Civ3, it is all very simple: I HAVE to build a courthouse, otherwise the corruption levels will be all too crippling. Where is the decision-making?

BUT... and this is really important... I like Civ3, I still think it is a good game. Sure, it could (and should) still use some improvement, but when? How? Firaxis is silent about that. I'm starting to think that there will be no improvements, other than the expansion pack, which will bring a lot more of everything, and that is not a good thing per se, as you have pointed out in another thread.

I still have hope, but barely...

[MarkG]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Is it possible that Firaxis did not want to give up intellectual property rights to Infogrames by incorporating the better SMAC concepts, like SE?

To clarify. Inforgrames owns Civ. Wouldn't rights to any ideas put into civ3 go to Infogrames? So they can still use them, no matter who they farm civ4 out to.

not true i believe

all infogrames has is the legal right to create games with the name civilization in it. after the deal with firaxis, they also have the exclusive rights to publish and distribute civ3. they do not own the code, the design ideas or anything like that

this is why activision was working on a civ game 2 years before geting a license for the civ name, this is why firaxis was legaly able to do smac, even 80% of the ideas behind are from civ1/2

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Bill9999
Hmmmmmmmm.........

Hmmmmmmmm.... indeed.

Especially if as the developers of Civ3 Firaxis maintain some rights to reuse concepts from the design.

Hmmmmmmmm.... SMAC starting in 4000bc on Earth with SE, Culture, Resourses, etc, etc, etc.

Launch the SpaceShip, land on AC. Hope that some of your Allies from Earth also launch to join you so you do not have to face Planet and the Aliens alone....

Hmmmmmmmm....

I'd buy that for a dollar.

Salve

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by MarkG
not true i believe

all infogrames has is the legal right to create games with the name civilization in it. after the deal with firaxis, they also have the exclusive rights to publish and distribute civ3. they do not own the code, the design ideas or anything like that

this is why activision was working on a civ game 2 years before geting a license for the civ name, this is why firaxis was legaly able to do smac, even 80% of the ideas behind are from civ1/2

But along with their rights to the name must go the use of concepts.

Or are rights to concepts of no consequence?

So Firaxis owns the code? They can do anything they wish with game concepts? Excelllllllent.

Salve

[Alex]

ICS came into being because it was just more efficient to gain extra income, science, and building power by founding more and more cities, rather than fully developing existing ones.

Yes, but the reason why it was more efficient is that 10 size 1 cities produced more than 1 size 10 city. Therefore, it would not be enough just to add more improvements and things to build... that would not necessarily be more attractive to the player.

[Capt Dizle]

Excellant thread. I agree with most of the points made here.

I think it is pretty obvious that when the original team left that not enough time was left for a new team to come in and really polish up the game. Besides that, the new team could never replace the experience that left. Finally, Sid did not jump in and immerse himself in the project.

There is little or no choice of strategy in the game. Pretty much the same techs, same city improvments, fewer units. Taking the spy unit and caravan unit out of the game really hurts.

I have said it before, if adding culture then specific city improvements and wonder should have been developed. We are building the same improvements that we did in Civ2, now we get happiness and culture out of a temple. That is lame. Should be one or the other. Players should be faced with a decision in city building. Now, you more or less just build all of the stuff in each city. That is not interesting, not fun.

Speedbump techs are not fun. Every tech should do something. Building fortifications should be important but its not.

Curtailing air power was good, some of the combat changes are good. Some of this stuff is just unfathomable. Who wants to move 150 units individually each turn. Armies are a joke.

The unique units don't really cut it. Some civs have good ones and some don't. Gee, the English really rule the seas don't they.

Getting back to the topic, I think that game design was done by committee. I believe that one enitity told another what to put in, the other did it. That won't work, the person or persons doing the construction have to be able to make changes on the fly or the project will suck. I think it went like this. The design team made a list of things to put in, others (including Sid) had some imput, then the designers went to work. From that point, they either ran out of time, or didn't change because they were married to the list (Sid expects it so we have to deliver) or, maybe, the design team just sucks.

Maybe a little of all of that.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Alexnm
Yes, but the reason why it was more efficient is that 10 size 1 cities produced more than 1 size 10 city. Therefore, it would not be enough just to add more improvements and things to build... that would not necessarily be more attractive to the player.

Exactly. I think that one way to fix this is to make population a bit more important in production. There was a thread a while back that discussed "manpower". I am a strong proponent of making population more important in both production and military. if the player needed population to build an army (recruitment idea hehe) then larger cities would be more valuable than lots of smaller ones. 10 size 1 cities would be weak production centers and would not be able to support a decent army whereas the 1 size 10 city could support a large army! This would kill ICS for good.

If you want to reduce ICS through a corruption model at least make it reasonable. Corruption can depend on number of cities but not number of cities AND distance. That is overkill!

shameless plug: if you are interested in a cool alternative to corruption, check out my new thread at http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=41387

[Willem]

Originally posted by Velociryx

Each resource is given a value between 400-900. Each time you build something requiring the USE of that resource, the value drops (the amount of the drop is dependant on exactly what is built). They player gets a general sense of where the value is (a range: 100-300, 300-500, 500-700, 700+, but does not know the precise amount left available to him. This fosters greater strategic USE of said resources, and can influence your desire to trade your excesses. Also, some resources are renewable (ie - Horses. If your herds begin to grow thin, simply don't build anything requiring the use of them, and they'll grow back at X per turn (to a maximum of whatever the initial value was)).

I agree that, though a great idea, resources weren't implemented very well. However I think your idea is a bit cumbersome and I suspect that it would require more coding that you may realize. A simpler way would be to make more of the resources but they can only supply x number of cities, so the more empire grows, the more you will need. This would give the player more of a role in managing resources since he/she would have to set priorities in the case of a shortage, i.e. I have 10 cities but only enough Iron to supply 5 of them. Which ones do I give the resource to?

This approach would also make for much more dynamic trading arrangements as well. At present, if another civ already has Iron say, there's no opportunity to trade off the 2 extra that I might find myself with. It would be much more realistic this way as well. e.g. The US isn't dependant on Mid East oil because it doesn't have any, but because it uses far more than it can supply for itself.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Velociryx


Specialists:
In SMAC, the late-game specialists were all but broken! Specialists, combined with SMAC's supply crawlers enabled you to totally circumvent the corruption model (since specialist outputs are unaffected by it) and raise your cash and research rates through the roof.

Not to mention that they've gone back to the same Specialists that have been around since the first Civ. I thought it was great in SMAC that they evolved over time, and I have to wonder why nothing like that was attempted for Civ III. They could even have created ones that affected other areas other than the standard three. Like a Technician that helps boost production, an Agriculturalist that boosts food production etc. Looking at society today, I see more and more people becoming specialists in one way or another, but that's not reflected in the game at all.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Armies: Yep....I quite agree. Too weak, and too expensive.

Again I agree. What were they thinking? I don't really find that Armies are any more powerful than the individuals inside, so why is it so bloody difficult to get one, and why so many restrictions? In my own game, I've created 4 different Army units, each being able to carry more than the previous one, that are available as time goes by. And much, much cheaper to build! And I think it's great! I've just finished building an Army of 10 Riflemen so I now only have 1 unit to move around instead of 10. This alone goes a long way to solving the stack movement problem.

And it's not like the AI doesn't use them. In my current game I noticed that the French has an Army composed of 10 Swordsman, as well as a couple of smaller 5 unit ones, poised on the edge of Indian territory and ready to attack. (I'm glad it's him and not me )

[Willem]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Why the decision was made to NOT include stacked movement (and given that SMAC *DID* have stacked movement we can only assume that there was a conscious decision made to leave it out for Civ3 (unless everybody at the company suddenly got amnesia). -=Vel=-

I didn't realize SMAC had stacked movement, how do you get it to work? As for other comparisons with SMAC, the Diplomacy options are very limited in Civ III. e.g. Why can't I interceed on a civ's behalf in order to stop a war, when I could do so in SMAC? For that matter, why can't I ask another civ to act as a spokesperson when my enemy refuses to see my envoy? There could have been so much more done along those lines.

And what ever happened to those classic words: "I demand tribute for my patience." It seems that I have virtually no options in order to goad another civ to get peeved enough to strike first, aside from refusing one of his demands. And that only happens when I DON'T want to go to war.