Do the Acivision games have any "keeper" concepts?

[Someone]

In my opinion, they do.

There are two things, I think, that made the Activision games bad:

1. Too many bugs/no tech support or patches

2. Lack of balance! (tanks take forever in cities younger than 3500 years)

However, I am sure that these problems won't appear in Civ III, due to the diligence and experience of the team and the precedent that has been set with Civ, Civ II, and Alpha Centauri.

I also think that, where the Acivision games were difficult to play, they were easy to macromanage. They both included easy tools for saving/loading build queues, manipulating build orders of many cities at once, fairly good pathfinding (could be improved), and click-sortable lists of city statistics (food, shields, arrows, people, happiness, etc.) Though happiness was a numeric quantity in the aforesaid games, it shouldn't be too hard to sort by it using 0 for content, +1 for happy, -1 for unhappy.

It would be a shame if these tools were ignored by the Civ III team. In my opinion, the ease of macromanagement was the only positive part about the CTP's, and, at least to me, it seems such a triviality to include but can add so much speed to the late game, like when you want all your big cities to produce factories.

Any thoughts? Anything to add or refute?

Someone's opinion

[Seeker]

I think Sid was very right in keeping the Settler. Having the sliders, PW, and all that automated stuff leaves the player with a very plain wargame instead of the 'Sim-esque' experience we're used to from Civ II.

Also, it became stupidly, horribly abstract. Crabs and Squids flying back and forth between Jamaicans and Ethiopians...?!

Players need to be engaged in building mines, roads, bridges, etc in short 'building an empire'. All the automation strips the game down to its worst aspect, a simple wargame.

I say LESS automation, MORE sophistication!!

Activision did have some cool ideas: Bigger maps, more sides, 'levels' like space, undersea etc.

[Cyclotron]

The best part of CTP was, if you ask me, the special units.

I hear a lot of people here say that they thought Civ2 was too militaristic, and I am surprised nobody has really suggested that this could be alleviated without de-emphasizing military units by adding non-military ones! I thought that for all its flaws, the one thing that saved CTP were it's special units. I loved using the clerics, corporate branches, slavers, etc. and I think that Firaxis should definitly take a look at the realm of non-combat units.

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- Cyclotron7, "that supplementary resource fanatic"

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Too many special units will focus you on building counters for these units. Then the game will drag on and on and you'll never have much fun. Special units are good, but there shouldnt be too many, or else there will be too many city improvements

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Its okay to smile; you're in America now

[JamesJKirk]

1)I think slavery would be worth keeping, although maybe toned down, not such a powerful slaver unit.

2)MAD from CTP2, you were allowed to pick targets for your nukes, and they launch automatically if you're nuked by a civ they're pointed at.

3)Mouse Control, I found it was much better to use the mouse to direct movement than the keypad.

4)Feats of wonder...I used to always see if I had the ability to complete Magellan's Expedition the REAL way before the computer would build the wonder back in Civ1...I always wished I'd gotten something for it too.

5)Of course the loads of things incorporated into the Medieval Mods...those are truly amazing

6) A differentiation between a riot and a rebellion in a city if it isnt' quelled soon enough

7) More governments

[This message has been edited by JamesJKirk (edited April 24, 2001).]

[SerapisIV]

I like the list of those ideas. Those sound like very good game concepts for inclusion in CivIII, though hopefully balanced/implemented better then CTP2, I didn't buy it because of all the people at Apolyton hating it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Ugh... please no special units. They were severly unbalancing...

[SerapisIV]

Don't forget that the spy and the nuke missile are special units in CivII. Also the various missile types and probe teams in SMAC. Special units will appear, just (hopefully) not like Activision used them (poorly)

I'd have to say public works was a good idea, as was the commodities trading system (i.e. the "flying squids"). The so-called trade routs in Civ2 were conceptually impoverished. Some of the special units we cool. I'd keep the lawyer, the corporate branch, and redo the infector to make him/her more dangerous. If Civ went further into the future, the eco-ranger would be a keeper as well. From the interface, I'd keep the building queues and the national manager which allowed you set the building queues for as many cities as you liked simultanously. The space layer blew and came to late in the game to be of any fun, and while I liked undersea cities, the AI tends to sprawl too many of them (just look at SMAC) or place them in stupid locations (CTP and CTP2). Actually, I'd say that CTP2 gave you the feeling that you were running an empire and not a loose confederation of city states. But I think boarders in Civ3 will mitigate this. Stacked combat was ok as well. Everything else was pretty bad or copied right out of Civ anyway. As long as Firaxis doesn't copy the CTP AI I'll be happy. If the AI in Civ3 can use an aircraft carrier properly, I'll be estatic. And if AI is a decent diplomat that is actually willing to trade stuff and can do so intelligently, I'll hail Sid and his team as minor deities.

[ZoboZeWarrior]

Activision had good idea :
- non conventional war.
- trading
- Public-work (okay no public work in CtP )

But they have three big problems :
- They are confronted to civ purist
- They did a bad realisation (too much bug, some unit power too unbalanced).
- The game isn't so beautifull (3D movies are not so beautifull, I prefere cartoon-like character) and lake of humanity (no advisors ...).

[Gammaray fan]

Non-conventional warfare (not including spies and nukes because they are military units), such as Corporations and Religious units should NOT be included in CIV3, because of the ridiculous nature of the units. Corporations and Religions are not entities that soley benefit the instigating civ at the expense of the recipient civ. In other words they are 'non-conventional', but are not 'warfare' units, and thus don't make sense.
The only way to sensibly include religion and corporations are to make them individual entities run by the AI, as most agreed on the Religion and Corporations threads. The way to go is NOT to increase the number of units clogging up the map.

[RyanR]

Down with automation! I totally agree with seeker, its that micromanagement that made civ so much better, even if people are having a hard time understanding that..

[hexagonian]

quote: Originally posted by Gammaray fan on 04-25-2001 11:09 PM Non-conventional warfare (not including spies and nukes because they are military units), such as Corporations and Religious units should NOT be included in CIV3, because of the ridiculous nature of the units. Corporations and Religions are not entities that soley benefit the instigating civ at the expense of the recipient civ. In other words they are 'non-conventional', but are not 'warfare' units, and thus don't make sense.

Actually, the non-conventionals were not warfare units, but they worked as a means of boosting your production and gold at the expense of another civ without going to war. Granted, they were very hard to defend against in CTP1 - and the AI did not use them properly, but CTP2 toned down their abilities by giving the non-conventionals the ability to see all the others.

I liked them...

quote: Originally posted by Gammaray fan on 04-25-2001 11:09 PM The way to go is NOT to increase the number of units clogging up the map.

...unlike the use of settlers to build tile improvements but that argument has already been decided.

I would hope they add a small thing - putting the number of turns it takes to get to a particular tile at the end of a path.

[Ecthy]

quote: Originally posted by RyanR on 04-25-2001 11:49 PM Down with automation! I totally agree with seeker, its that micromanagement that made civ so much better, even if people are having a hard time understanding that..

I agree. I'm a big supporter o fmicromanagement myself.

[Roman]

One of the major keeper concepts Activision had was the fact that in Ctp2 you could edit the text files to allow up to 31 civilizations per game. I think Firaxis should follow suit and make text files tweakable enough to allow up to (at least) 15 civilizations per game.