c#208 LOST CIVILIZATION

[MarkG]

#208 LOST CIVILIZATION
Duckman expects more from the future civ3

[TCO]

Wasn't that crazy about this column. Another Civ3 review wasn't really needed. And as such it was a pretty blah review. no big new issues here.

Hope the other 2 in the hopper are more interesting.

[MarkG]

yeap, the next two are definately not of the usual type

[notyoueither]

Some good comment. More chrome would be nice. The Modern Era is widely lamented.

However, I have to wonder sometimes... 'I usually only play against the computer'...

What game has he been playing if he is playing against other than the computer from time to time?

[eldoktor]

As a long time gamer and someone who has worked in the industry, I have to disagree with this column. Civ has always been a game that one plays for the strategy, not the chrome. While this columnist makes some decent points, most of the comments are questionable.

The wonder movies were OK, but they were always kind of cheesy. Not to denigrate the work of the artists involved in any way - each of the wonder movies was always worthy of inclusion in a portfolio - but they were done in a style dictated by the technology and time contstraints of each release. They were low-end animation as befitted something that had absolutely nothing to do with game play, but making thirty-odd unique clips, with as much detail as they could get away with, is a huge drain on art resources (or a huge budget increase to keep from tying up the artists you NEED to complete the project).

The "cute council" never worked properly for me, and I never found it "cute" - just annoying. Probably because on lower-end systems (and they're all lower end systems) didn't run it smoothly and the advice wasn't all that useful. The council that remains is just as inane... usually. The problem is that between telling you that you should build temples, etc. there are occasional important bits of info - that you can't access easily.

Fight scenes... well, CTP was a different game. This is a matter of taste, and one that is up to the designers. The Civ III team went back to the old way instead of using stacks. The strategy changes a bit, battles are different... but it's just a design choice.

Now, about the play. The many civilization choices were all essentially the same, with minor variations in attitude (randomized, they were all the same). In Civ III, you have limited choices, but the cultures are different. There's a real reason to try winning with each of the cultures - they all require different tactics and present you with different challenges. I'm not sure I have the time to play more than 16 games.

The choice of archepelago is a meaningful choice - depending on your civ choice, it can make things easier or more challenging. 5 million year old world (the 5K old world is the strict creationist thing ) is also a choice - diplomacy or self-reliance? I _think_ that the immunity you're talking about is specific to Democracy - get the enemy in a war and see if they switch to something like Communism, which lets you propaganda their cities.

Turning off the cultural and diplomatic victories is something I think most players do... after they've managed to win a cultural and diplomatic victory. It's an option designed to give players more options than "kill everyone" and "build a spaceship". The beauty of Civ III is that you don't HAVE to have the option.

Duckman does have some valid points. Privateers suck, but have advantages (and killing them off immediately is good AI or good gameplay). Explorers show up too late for exploring, but can still be useful as scouts during war - get around behind the enemy and spot some tasty workers to capture.

The end game can be a bit tedious, but that's the nature of the beast. The game spans six thousand years, using one engine! It's really, really, tough to make something that handles both pikemen and tanks properly - Europa Universalis covers a much shorter timeframe, and suffers some of the same problems. Most of the late-game problems in Civ III are AI related -if your Civ makes it to 1900, you're probably beating the AI handily - and this is a technical problem. AIs have improved, but are nowhere near human capability.

Duckman's final point, about faithfulness to history, is just plain goofy. Enslavement is still part of the game (captured workers, settlers, etc.), but the mechanism is different, and far less intrusive. Diplomacy and Espionage are still there, but my opinion is that the design team decided to make them less onerous. Yanking specialized unit types was a good call, IMO.

As for wonders, you don't actually think that the Hoover Dam provides hydro-electric power to the entire continent, do you ? Wonders are a game mechanic, and tweaking those is the nature of sequels. New and different, not MOTS, is the way to go (the strange new wonders of CTP were one of the really cool things about it).

There are problems with Civ III, but I don't think this article addresses them. Corruption is horrid, and I do wish they'd taken a more rational view of global warming and polution, but that's the Civ way (Pollution bad! Global warming inevitable!). Other than that, this is pretty faithful to world history. And the game is fun (just not as much fun as it should be to suck up so much of my time ).

Pardon my lengthy response, but I felt the need to respond. And yes, I would play a game with ASCII graphics if the AI was challenging and it had decent gameplay. Why do you ask?

[War4ever]

agree with the above posters comments..... i too didn't like the aritcle that much.....

i think its time to move on to some different aritcles

as for civ3...its ok....but its not civ2

[Proserpine]

eld makes many good points, but it has in my view to be faced that Civ3 was released too early - there were too many bugs in the original release and then there were more bugs in the (large) patches - & that some of the "eye candy" is just a bit useless. The is a lack of some units/choices that were in e.g. Civ2 (such as guerillas), which add or could add to the gameplay, and some of the changes to Wonders are not that great (and the names are poor).

Would it really be that difficult to add a few movie clips for when a wonder is completed?

The difficulty of "seeing" all the Civs (e.g. in the FA screen) is just nonsensical.

Also there is a clear desire on part of many Civers for "random" events - a la SMAC. A missed opportunity.

Overall I fall somewhere between agreeing with the crits in Duckman's article & the comments made in response by eld.

[eldoktor]

Originally posted by Proserpine
eld makes many good points, but it has in my view to be faced that Civ3 was released too early - there were too many bugs in the original release and then there were more bugs in the (large) patches - & that some of the "eye candy" is just a bit useless. The is a lack of some units/choices that were in e.g. Civ2 (such as guerillas), which add or could add to the gameplay, and some of the changes to Wonders are not that great (and the names are poor).

Any game released after October is rushed to production, and suffers in terms of quality. The Xmas rush is just too great a boost for sales to be otherwise.
The problem is that even if you schedule the game to be "done" in time to fix everything, every bump in the road adds a week or two of development time.

Civ III was no more (or less) buggy than any other Sid title when it hit the shelves - i.e. buggy as all get out. Is difficult to convince the world's greatest game designer (and Sid Meier is certainly that) that a design decision should be reconsidered. He's usually right, but when he isn't, he's still Right. The problem is that actual bugs get lumped with design decisions, and testers' comments are ignored. The games are still great - just often so buggy that they're unplayable. The philosophy is "throw it over the wall, they'll buy it, and if they complain, we'll fix it in the patch." It is likely that the Firaxis QA department found most, if not all, of the problems that users did, but for reasons of scheduling and/or ego, the bugs were left in.

Sid is a friggin' genius game designer - but he's not perfect. Sometimes, you just have to wait for the patch; with a Sid Meier game, it's worth the wait (and usually worth playing through the bugs while you're waiting).

Would it really be that difficult to add a few movie clips for when a wonder is completed?

The short answer is yes. They couldn't use the old movies; they're too primitive. New ones require massive commitment of art resources... and you can either hire new artists to do it, or have the artists you need to do the in-game art do movies instead. For some games, movie clips are essential; Civ is Turn Based Strategy, and grognards don't need no stinking cut scenes .

The difficulty of "seeing" all the Civs (e.g. in the FA screen) is just nonsensical.

Yeah, that does suck. There are a couple of reasonable justifications for this. First, sixteen pix, with lines connecting them all, would be tiny and difficult to interpret. Second, I'd bet that the design spec called for eight civilizations max... but they decided to make it 16 after the FA screen was either finalized or too far along to be worth the change. Enhanced game options (15 bad guys!) requires a tradeoff (can't see them all at once).

[Firebird]

Originally posted by eldoktor
It is likely that the Firaxis QA department found most, if not all, of the problems that users did, but for reasons of scheduling and/or ego, the bugs were left in.

Hi,

Acording to my own experience Firaxis QA have most likely NOT found most or all of the problems, although they probably have found some of them.

Firaxis QA has only a limited number of people testing the product, and they will never find all bugs. A couple of hundred thousend civers probably will.

When my company are setting sails for the release of a new product there might be corners of the application that are touched by a late change, but not testet with that change in mind, because the bug only reveals it self in some special case.

I have often seen troubles arising from the fact that you cannot test a complex application fully after every little change, but sometimes this little change affects something nobody thought of.

Computerprograms are often, and todays games are certainly, so complex that no single person can have a full overview of the application and you can't test everything constantly, so bugs does happen. There isn't time to find them all.

Let me say that I certainly agree, that Civ 3 could and perhaps should have had fewer bugs, but it might be a tradeoff that in the end gives us a better game because of better sales-numbers and therefore more money to make patches and start good work on the XP. I hope so, but I woudn't bet my money.

I take my hat of for Firaxis because they make many and good patches and infogrames for letting them do it, so that we can enjoy a good game.

I also agree with you that stuff like wondermovies isn't what makes civ 3 a civ-game. I like chess but I don't see the big realism in the "art". Gameplay is the big isue in these games. And to a large degree for a civ-game it is the modding-capability that does it for the hardcorefans, but of course today you have to have some eyecandy or you will hardly attract new players to the genre.

I think civ 3 has enough eyecandy, though. Firaxis: Use your time on gameplay, please.

Best regards

[Geekinstein]

humm...eye candy? I think the isometric view results in many more mistakes on my part so, for my money, go back to Civ I graphics interface!!! Dump time into AI, & fire all the "artists."

If you want a challenge, chose Deity, and all else random and see if you can win on each and every initial position you get.

I agree with eldoktor, I don' need no stinkin' graphics!!! Give me better AI!!!