Dissident's 95 theses why Civilization 3 is an utter success

Dis · March 26, 2002, 14:45

1. borders
2. umm you know. That thing. that thing that is cool.
3...

ColdWizard · March 26, 2002, 14:46

ACooper · March 26, 2002, 15:07

Talk about not delivering as advertised! You must work at Infogames or something.

dowish · March 26, 2002, 15:21

that cool thing is being able to change production without going into the city screen.

TechWins · March 26, 2002, 16:38

I can think of 50 ($) or maybe even 60 ($) big reasons times by about half a milllion as to why Civ3 is a success, or at least in the eys of Firaxis and Infogrames.

Seriously, though, there are some nice aspects of Civ3, and most of those are not gameplay sadly enough.

1) Great pathfinding.
2) Ablity to stack units(at least now we are)
3) Improved city screen
4) The idea of resources (still needs to be refined, though)
5) The idea of culture (still needs to be refined, though)
6) Improved graphics (but Sn00py's are much better)
7) Easier control over cities in terms of maintaining
8) Better AI

However, with all of the graphic mods and playing with the Blitz mod I'm not even sure if what I'm playing should be classified as Civ3....maybe "The Fan's Civ3".

SpencerH · March 26, 2002, 18:26

4. Thoughtful fans making carefully considered choices will always choose a well crafted winning game.

Zylka · March 26, 2002, 20:42

4 - Moaning loudly in the bathroom stall when someone is in the adjacent one
5 - Then putting some peanut butter on a piece of toilet paper, dropping it under the divider & into their stall
6 - Ask them to pass it back to you

Skanky Burns · March 26, 2002, 22:31

Number 2 would be culture.

Good luck with the rest though!!

Capt Dizle · March 27, 2002, 00:29

I am so sick of this culture crap I could puke all over a priest. It works stupidly. Cities should not flip period that is an a bankrupt game concept.

1. There is no reliable way to define cultural effect on individual cities or individual tiles. No map, overlay or mathematical formula. Its plain guesswork (and before anyone chimes up that guesswork is realistic let me say with malice aforethought its supposed to be a STRATEGY game not a guessing game and none of it is REALISTIC!!!!!!!!!).
2. There is no strategy involved in buidling culture. It is plainly idiotic. The player just gets culture from stuff he is going to build anyway. There are no paths, choosing a cultural route versus a research route versus a military path. You build something to make someone happy and you get culture, you build something for research you get culture, you build something and by God by damn accident you get culture.

This is what happens when you let people try to design and implement a game who do not have a friggin clue what they are doing!

3. This lame and worthless concept of culture does far more harm than ruin the game, it threatens future games as well as it shows just how damn stupid the typical gamer in the market is in the first place....because, beleive it or not...some numskulls around here claim to like it.

AnnC · March 27, 2002, 00:35

In my opinion... the culture concept has potential, but the present implementation is awkward.

And city flipping, as it's presently implemented, is just plain bad.

Tuberski · March 27, 2002, 00:36

Quote:

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I am so sick of this culture crap I could puke all over a priest. It works stupidly. Cities should not flip period that is an a bankrupt game concept.

1. There is no reliable way to define cultural effect on individual cities or individual tiles. No map, overlay or mathematical formula. Its plain guesswork (and before anyone chimes up that guesswork is realistic let me say with malice aforethought its supposed to be a STRATEGY game not a guessing game and none of it is REALISTIC!!!!!!!!!).
2. There is no strategy involved in buidling culture. It is plainly idiotic. The player just gets culture from stuff he is going to build anyway. There are no paths, choosing a cultural route versus a research route versus a military path. You build something to make someone happy and you get culture, you build something for research you get culture, you build something and by God by damn accident you get culture.

This is what happens when you let people try to design and implement a game who do not have a friggin clue what they are doing!

3. This lame and worthless concept of culture does far more harm than ruin the game, it threatens future games as well as it shows just how damn stupid the typical gamer in the market is in the first place....because, beleive it or not...some numskulls around here claim to like it.

So what are you trying to say?

You don't like culture?

How about this as your culture expands, instead of cities culture-flipping it makes it easier for you to change that city's allegianceby the use of espionage?

Make it so that the PLAYER has to go to the effort to get that city to flip. Espionage would have to be changed somewhat but I think it would make it a little more STRATEGIC if not realistic.

Coracle · March 27, 2002, 01:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Dissident
1. borders
2. umm you know. That thing. that thing that is cool.
3...

Yea, I'm hard-pressed to think of many either!

But I will add that ending Civ II's "kill one unit and the entire stack is destroyed" is an improvement. The problem with Civ III is that "armies" are messed up, there are no true military leaders affecting combat, and units still fight individulally - not as stacks as they should.

So now we have TWO good things about Civ III.

MosesPresley · March 27, 2002, 03:47

I may be the only one, but I

the culture model. It may be a little quirky, but it works for me just as often as it works against me.

Pius Popprasch · March 27, 2002, 03:52

Most other games are much much worse. That is what makes Civ3 good. I would play it even with a definite crash in the Modern Age.

Dis · March 27, 2002, 06:12

Oh I forgot unit support.

I love unit support in civ3.

I couldn't stand civ2 when I had caravels. But because they had an attack of 1 they caused unhappiness when it was outside a city. A real pain in the ass if you have a small or medium sized city. And even large cities couldn't support more than 2 naval units easily. This made exploration with caravels very difficult. I went for magnetim just so I could get galleons with an attack of 0.

AJ Corp. The FAIR · March 27, 2002, 07:08

Quote:

Originally posted by jimmytrick
...
3. This lame and worthless concept of culture does far more harm than ruin the game, it threatens future games as well as it shows just how damn stupid the typical gamer in the market is in the first place....because, beleive it or not...some numskulls around here claim to like it.

Don't let the Babs hear you saying this, they'll probably immediately settle near your new placed cities, build culture improvements asap and watch your cities become theirs ...

IMO the culture aspect IS an innovation AND works quite fine.

Guess I'm a 'numskull'

now!?!

AJ

lorddread · March 27, 2002, 17:47

The main problem with culture is the game uses it wrongly. Using the Roman empire as an example, the game defines culture as how far out the boudaries of the empire are. But the game doesn't use it this way.

I have had games where the cultural boudary was right next to an AI city with no culture. It sat like this for the last 100 years but never flipped.

The programmers need to rethink the way culture is used.
1. It should help define how far you can expand.
2. It should define how others treat you diplomatically. A highly evolved species (empire) should be looked upon one way, while another who is less advanced and culturally inferior should be treated another way.

Any thoughts

lockstep · March 27, 2002, 18:10

Quote:

Originally posted by jimmytrick
There is no strategy involved in buidling culture ... The player just gets culture from stuff he is going to build anyway. There are no paths, choosing a cultural route versus a research route versus a military path.

While this is true, it can easily be changed using Gramphos' multi-tool and the editor. Create aditional buildings that yield only culture (e.g. theaters), attach them to appropriate techs and reduce the culture points of science and happiness buildings. Voila, cultural path added! See korn's blitz mod for details.

Actually, I'm fairly sure that if there ever will be an expansion pack to Civ3, it will include 'culture-only'-buildings.

SpencerH · March 27, 2002, 18:39

I think that a "real" culture path requires a government that enhances culture and that cannot be created with any editor we have available. "Culture" doesnt come from buildings, civs with culture build things as expressions of that culture.

March 28, 2002, 04:17

uhh....,uhh...,wait, almost thought of one.......,dang it, I just had it..........oh yeah, the intro movie was cool.

AS IS; Civ 3 has very little merit. It was released well before it's time; a definate early beta. I just hope Firaxis responds to all the user feedback instead of living off of all the 'fanboy' hype!