Civ3 Game Design Discussion Thread

[Willem]

Originally posted by Tarquelne

I very much hope that Firaxis has its own ideas on expanding the role of Culture in the game - both Culture-dedicated improvements and more functions for Culture (or just more development of the functions Culture already plays.) The only part of Culture that works as well as I'd like is the basic border function. Peacetime city flipping, wartime city flipping, border "wars", diplomatic reputation.... I'd like to see all of those Cultural things developed much more.

I say "Firaxis has its own ideas" because I bet that any idea that Firaxis comes up with itself is at least 10 times as likely to actually be implimented. Either because the groundwork already exists in the code, or because some Firaxis member is already enthusiastic about it. Since these Culture changes would all involve significant changes to the code I think that if Firaxis is already planning to add more to Culture it'll get done... and if they aren't anything said here won't make it happen anytime sooner than Civ4.

Well you're probably absolutely right. I suspect that right now, the new patch is at least approaching the testing phase, if not already there. Anything that is going to be changed already has been, so we're no doubt just flapping our lips here. But there's bound to be another patch after that as well, and then an expansion pack.

[Bane Star]

I agree that 'choice' is the real lack in the new civ game, like somehow we cannot do all the things that we should be able to do, I used to log (plant trees cut down trees) terrain with 2 workers to provide shields for out lying towns with high corruption but low populations to even have a shield income
Many of the things previously complained about are editable now, I've added new goverments, expansionism, Heirarchy, geriarchy, technocracy, etc etc new troops, new resorces etc etc
But the only thing I cant stand is restriction in my games, especially in games that are designed with the idea of being a totally open and realistic TBS,


p.s. what does ICS stand for??

[The Andy-Man]

infinate city sleaze



and why should WE individualy have to edit something? waste of time, especially if you dont have a clue, and dont want to bother. should bin fixed already. other wise we are making the game.

[Sandman]

A very interesting thread!

Here's my input:

No-one has yet commented on the oceans. Naval units are of little use to me; the enemy has far too many ports to blockade, they are hopelessly slow, and are far too expensive. The most viable starting position, corruptionwise, is in the centre of a continent, but any coastal cities will be 'lame' because of corruption, making constructing a fleet impossible.

Not that it's much use; with a decent railroad system any seaborne invasion can be dealt with easily. Your footsoldiers can reach any part of your empire in a single turn, your navy will take decades.

Overseas expansion to form new colonies just isn't happening in this game; corruption and rapid AI expansion makes it a total waste of time.

Now, my number one gripe with the civ series is the inflexible city radius, that fat 21 square cross. I hate it, because it stifles my creativity in city placement, and leads to an unrealistic, and boring, grids of cities, all about three or four squares from each other.

Cities with no surrounding ocean square cannot build a harbour, even if they have ocean squares in their radius, so their growth is reduced.

Wouldn't it be better if city radii could blend and merge, so that each one had a unique shape and disposition? Why not prevent landlocked cities from utilising ocean squares, and let those squares be worked by a coastal city? In return, the land city gets more inland squares.

The presentation of the game is bad. The whole game seems... yellow. No movies, a dartboard and a fairground hammer. Why? They totally ruin the feel of the game. SMAC, actually, let's call it AC, despite a map that looked like catfood, had a far more immersive feel. Imagine what it would have been like if Lal had looked like Meier and the end game screen had all the characters in a wrestling match, or blowing up balloons to show their territorial expansion. And why do some of the characters look like British celebrities?

Combat: How about making armies the primary means of fighting? Design them in an AC style workshop, something like five riflemen, a machine gun and an artillery is your main unit. Three heavy tanks, two mech infantry and a helicopter is your fast attack unit. Armies should also be able to spread out and form into a front line, say three squares wide.

Currently the human race has occupied about 50% of the worlds land surface, but in civ at the endgame, the whole world is a network of irrigation, mining and railroads. There should be more wild areas which last later into the game. It should not be possible to irrigate deserts, IMO. More kinds of forest, like in Colonization.

I think thats everything.

[The Andy-Man]

i agree with every thing there. especially the city ideas.

i like this different look at city radius. i mean, 2 cities and be built next to eachother but utilise the aqaurs on the other side etc. idea is brill.


and the same wih the colonisation. no one has expanded into the sahara like in Civ. just not worth it. the cities that are there are really smal in RL to. It shouldnt be possible to build in deserts/jungles/tundras and these titles should produce no food, so to build a city near a lot of these should be pointless. this would stop expanding into them until the proper terraforming techs. of course, they will produce food if there is say, bannanas growin in that tropical jungle etc. and these should be clumped together, i mean, some arteas have non, where as another has enough to found a large city. realistic and strategic.


and with choice, may i say, anything added should be optional (most things anyway). so the player can, for eg, turn of culture and have SMAC style i he prefers, or choose between Civ2 or Civ3 style combat. you get the idea.

[King of Rasslin]

I hate never getting leaders (should be a leader meter)

I hate specialists (Everyone does)

I hate naval combat (Ironclads are too powerful)

I hate horses (if you don't have them, you are dead)

But i HATE it when people rush up with 40 jag warriors and win. I think making units should require not population points, but FOOD.

That way it will take some food to make early units and prevent some serious imbalance with pop rushing.

And i also agree that it is so lame when you end up on a coast and the mid-land enemy always wins because he has lower corruption.

We just need to use mods, because Firaxis won't do it themselves.

[Willem]

Originally posted by King of Rasslin


I hate specialists (Everyone does)

Excuse me, but please don't try to speak on my behalf. I don't hate Specialists, therefore not everyone does.

[Encomium]

Originally posted by Sandman
A very interesting thread!

Here's my input:

No-one has yet commented on the oceans. Naval units are of little use to me; the enemy has far too many ports to blockade, they are hopelessly slow, and are far too expensive. The most viable starting position, corruptionwise, is in the centre of a continent, but any coastal cities will be 'lame' because of corruption, making constructing a fleet impossible.

Not that it's much use; with a decent railroad system any seaborne invasion can be dealt with easily. Your footsoldiers can reach any part of your empire in a single turn, your navy will take decades.

Overseas expansion to form new colonies just isn't happening in this game; corruption and rapid AI expansion makes it a total waste of time.

Now, my number one gripe with the civ series is the inflexible city radius, that fat 21 square cross. I hate it, because it stifles my creativity in city placement, and leads to an unrealistic, and boring, grids of cities, all about three or four squares from each other.

Cities with no surrounding ocean square cannot build a harbour, even if they have ocean squares in their radius, so their growth is reduced.

Wouldn't it be better if city radii could blend and merge, so that each one had a unique shape and disposition? Why not prevent landlocked cities from utilising ocean squares, and let those squares be worked by a coastal city? In return, the land city gets more inland squares.

The presentation of the game is bad. The whole game seems... yellow. No movies, a dartboard and a fairground hammer. Why? They totally ruin the feel of the game. SMAC, actually, let's call it AC, despite a map that looked like catfood, had a far more immersive feel. Imagine what it would have been like if Lal had looked like Meier and the end game screen had all the characters in a wrestling match, or blowing up balloons to show their territorial expansion. And why do some of the characters look like British celebrities?

Combat: How about making armies the primary means of fighting? Design them in an AC style workshop, something like five riflemen, a machine gun and an artillery is your main unit. Three heavy tanks, two mech infantry and a helicopter is your fast attack unit. Armies should also be able to spread out and form into a front line, say three squares wide.

Currently the human race has occupied about 50% of the worlds land surface, but in civ at the endgame, the whole world is a network of irrigation, mining and railroads. There should be more wild areas which last later into the game. It should not be possible to irrigate deserts, IMO. More kinds of forest, like in Colonization.

I think thats everything.

Yes, there is a great deal WRONG with Civ III.

First, on the other site, there is a "LESS YELLOW" thread. You can replace Firaxis' ugly map with more verdant-looking tiles. Check it out.

As for navies, I have long been complaining about the pathetic way Civ III uses navies.

Privateers and submarines on enemy trade routes should damage the enemy's commerce and trade. Blockading harbors is nonsense - the German subs in two World Wars did NOT have to do that in order to almost win.

Navies also did not in reality spend their time bombarding improvements, and wooden ships never had the frepower.

Check out the LWC mod on the Completed Mods forum on the Civ Fanatics site. It improves some of what you refer to.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Encomium



Yes, there is a great deal WRONG with Civ III.

First, on the other site, there is a "LESS YELLOW" thread. You can replace Firaxis' ugly map with more verdant-looking tiles. Check it out.

As for navies, I have long been complaining about the pathetic way Civ III uses navies.

Privateers and submarines on enemy trade routes should damage the enemy's commerce and trade. Blockading harbors is nonsense - the German subs in two World Wars did NOT have to do that in order to almost win.

Navies also did not in reality spend their time bombarding improvements, and wooden ships never had the frepower.

Check out the LWC mod on the Completed Mods forum on the Civ Fanatics site. It improves some of what you refer to.

Is there any thread that you don't feel compelled to spout off at? Let me me know and I'll be sure to stay there. Better yet, you have the honour of being the first on my ignore list.

[Grumbold]

Nice summary Vel. I'm amazed I overlooked this thread for so long.

I believe most of the mistakes in Civ III have stemmed from the desire to cut out or simplify anything complicated in order to strengthen the AI and the determination to "fix" problems irrespective of what else the "fix" will be found to damage or break once enough testing has been done. This process has continued during the production of the patches.

In short I'm not sure they really knew which market they were designig the game for. The casual players are presumably happy at the lessened complexity. However these are precisely the people who will find ruthless expansionist AI and volatile diplomacy hardest to handle. Those people who enjoy the challenge of the AI nations selling techs to each other for sixpence are usually the ones who are crying out for greater complexity or alternatives.

[Analyst Redux]

It is interesting to consider the latest patch, and its most problematic feature--the new, improved (*ahem*) aggressive tech-trading AI, in light of the pattern discussed in Vel's top post. To compare and contrast Vel's critique with the discussed effect of that change in the tech-trading thread....well, it's as if Vel practically predicted that event.

The tinkering with the rules and game play in the patches reminds me of the Dungeon Masters /1/ who used to kill off players' characters who actually managed to survive and advance. Or the sadists who used to think it was cool to design impossible-to-defeat death traps. Somewhere along the line, these guys got the mistaken impression that having successful players meant the DM was losing the game. They forgot that the DM doesn't play the game; he just referees it.

/1/ Revelation of horrible, deep, dark secret: the D&D-playing phase of my youth.

Firaxis seems to have crossed that philosphical divide from the role of trying to set a fair and consistent structure for a game to regarding people winning the game as a challenge to be defeated.

I'm simply discouraged at this point. I'll let the hackers and modders poke, pry and prod this thing for a while, and see what the consensus is on those efforts.

[Calvin Vu]

Great thread. I missed it also !!
Without going into the details, to me, the design flaws can be summed up below:

1) An obsession with ICS and various measures to deal with it. ICS is treated as if it were the one and only way to win the game. The whole design revolves around destroying ICS as an effective strategy against the AI, not just weaken it so that other strategies would be equally effective. The biggest mistake in the counter-ICS strategy is the uniform ICS strategy adopted by the AI civs themselves, regardless of their civ characteristics. It makes the game horrendously monotonous.
[BTW, in one game, when I invaded the Romans after they declared war on me, I found that they probably had more cities than tiles with roads on them. What does a scientific civ do with no roads and a bunch of one-gold/one-shield sleaze cities which do not help their scientific research ? Their military was crummy as well for a military civ since most resources were spent on cranking out the settlers and defending those sleaze cities, I guess. They were long dead before they could build a single legionaire. Pretty pathetic for a scientific/miitaristic civ.]

2) Glorification of brawn over brain: to me, shield production represents brawn since a city can crank out certain number of shields to build something without much you can do about it other than what to build. On the other hand, gold represents brain since you can decide whether to use it for research, to rush buy anything anywhere, or to buy alliances, etc. [areas where human decisions are important]. In Civ3, gold is made very hard to get. Removing the gold from the game then there won't be a civ game any more. Seriously crippling it then it's not interesting any more unless for people who find the cheesy trade deals (on every turn) on the diplomatic screen interesting.
Examples: removal of trade caravans as a way to make profit, a poor Wealth percentage to convert shield to gold, higher cost in gold-rushing buildings, inability to rush buy wonders with gold.

3) An overkill in closing "loopholes". Some of these "loopholes" are sometimes the result of some hard thinking as opposed to the braindead shield-cranking. As with ICS, a weakening of these "loophole" strategies to make them less overwhelming would be good, but an overkill would be bad since the less choices are there in the game, the less interesting the game is.

4) Creating dependencies on certain pattern very much needed to play the game without designing the means to make those patterns less of a chore. For example, if it takes 20+ workers to clean up a polution spot on a mountain then the design team should think of a better way to move the workers there. It it takes consulting the diplomatic screen and talking to everybody on each turn to stay in the tech race then something should be done to make it less like a mummy's exercise routine.

[Calvin Vu]

Two more grudges:
5) The tech tree has been reduced to nothing more than a flea market. Decisions are pretty much irrelevant, a lot less relevant than what you can crank out anyway.
6) Allowing the GL to finish a wonder makes the game unbalanced and the outcome too fortuitous. It also rewards wars which requires more cities than a regular builders would like to have.

[Bane Star]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by King of Rasslin

We just need to use mods, because Firaxis won't do it themselves.

The question Is Can we Mod all these effects??

I hate never getting leaders (should be a leader meter).

Ok So we can add a building that increases chance of leaders, and gives armies.

I hate specialists (Everyone does).

I've seen some great new specialists by some modders

I hate naval combat (Ironclads are too powerful).

I was never one for naval combat in Civ2 or 1, I use ships to 'plot' the map and transport troops from one island to another

I hate horses (if you don't have them, you are dead).

Well real civilisations had this problem too!

But i HATE it when people rush up with 40 jag warriors and win. I think making units should require not population points, but FOOD..

This is a good idea, Up all terrain (appropriatly) by 1 food and make all units require one food to survive... I dont know if this is moddable? anyone??

And i also agree that it is so lame when you end up on a coast and the mid-land enemy always wins because he has lower corruption..

This sucks the most, Many real life capitals are coastal cities, or major rivers, why did they even make corruption like this? corruption should be based on lack of required civ structures, lack of trade between cities/ not connected by roads/railroads, and total city sizes in comparisson to other city sizes. distance from capital should be deleted as soon as computing/interenet service is invented. and reduced due to horses, and mail/tranportation of information.

[Bane Star]

Originally posted by Calvin Vu
Two more grudges:
5) The tech tree has been reduced to nothing more than a flea market. Decisions are pretty much irrelevant, a lot less relevant than what you can crank out anyway.
6) Allowing the GL to finish a wonder makes the game unbalanced and the outcome too fortuitous. It also rewards wars which requires more cities than a regular builders would like to have.

Totaly Totally Agree here, In civ 2 I used to concentrate on the appropriate techs to get Knights ASAP, ignoreing all other techs, Now sure If realistically the other techs are required to gain knights I would understand the need to acquire those techs, But having to aquire almost all the first era tech, before being able to start on the second era, that restricts my civilisations abilitys and style of play (I dont go for knights first for conquest, but instead for game play, I love the medi-eval era and allways will)

[Whoha]

Mobile unit's power was dramatically increased by the tech whoring ai, along with a coresponding decrease in non-mobile units power. I played one game as the romans on large/pangea/16 civs, and with legions i was only able to conquer 2 civs before it got to be legions vs riflemen(i was not tech trading with the ai, only tech extorting, which thanks to the ai's refusal to see my envoy even when i was knocking on his door with a sizeable army kept me from even really catching up).

You have to conquer other civs fast. if i had been using mobile units I would have perhaps gotten the snowball effect where there arent enough tech researchers(there were only really 5 or 6 civs in the game that had more then a few cities, and these were the ones giving techs for territory maps but demanding quite a bit from me... which i refused time and again... from every... single... civ...) and that my civ would have been large enough to produce enough units to fight a horsemen vs muskets or knights vs riflemen.