1.29 and PTW: Closer but still not great

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, as I slave over my two new mods and anticipate the release of 1.29... I've been picking the game up a bit not having really played it for months. Already I'm feeling that the patch and even Play the World aren't going to bring the game anywhere near where it should be.

In just the last few days I've noted these serious (hard-coded) problems that are still a long way from solved...

I recently played a game as the Babs against the Persians. Now, I know that the occasional bit of randomness is good, but having swordsmen being killed while attacking unfortified archers on plains at least a half dozen times is absurd. As far as I know, randomness in combat hasn't even been touched in 1.29 or in PTW. The best we have is the "preserve random seed" toggled off, which doesn't help if you don't want to have to reload the game 20 times just to get an equitable outcome in a war.

Secondly, resource distribution and exhaustion is a crime as it is. It makes no sense that resources will just go *poof!* and be gone like that. There should be some sort of warning, and it would make sense if you actually use the resource before it disappears...

Economic warfare (i.e. blockades and sieges) are pathetic. Blocking importation of a resource will stop NEW units from being made, but what about existing ones? If you destroy a civ's supply of oil, their tank divisions should suffer for it. Unfortunately, events scripting (macro language) could easily solve this problem, but we haven't even been given that... and without it, I don't think truly decent scenarios will ever really be possible.

Oh, and hopefully that cap on operational range will be dealt with too... thats a real hinderance in modern warfare.

And there are a few things from Civ2 that I realized I missed. One of them was partisans. I hear people complain that the game is too easy, and I think that a combination of no use of roads, resistance/culture flipping, and partisans could make invasions a REAL challenge then. Government-specific units like the Fanatics would've been nice too. I don't know why they got rid of these things.

I had hoped the patch and PTW would resolve some of these issues, but they haven't seemed to address them. They fix minor annoyances, but I think the bigger problems remain. Regretably, I doubt these aspects will ever be solved.

[Jon Shafer]

As far as the Archer VS Swordsman situation.

The Archer has a defense of 1 (slightly increased because all terrain actually gives some bonus). The Swordsman has an attack of 3. This means the Archer has a 1 in 4 chance of damaging the Swordsman. Therefore, a regular Archer VS a regular Swordsman, the Archer has a 1 in 12 chance of defeating the Swordsman while on defense. While these are fairly small odds, a particular run of bad luck will give you numerous Archer victories... that's just part of bad luck. If it was something like Cavalry VS Archer, then I could understand your complaints more.

As far as the other stuff, yes, I feel there should be some improvements.

[Robert Plomp]

Dom Pedro, it's a game.

[dexters]

I think the problem is people's perception of unit strength, not the actual unit itself.

As trip pointed out, Archers beating Swordsman is rather common and the odds aren't that far off.

[Coracle]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
Well, as I slave over my two new mods and anticipate the release of 1.29... I've been picking the game up a bit not having really played it for months. Already I'm feeling that the patch and even Play the World aren't going to bring the game anywhere near where it should be.

. . .having swordsmen being killed while attacking unfortified archers on plains at least a half dozen times is absurd. . .

Secondly, resource distribution and exhaustion is a crime as it is. It makes no sense that resources will just go *poof!* and be gone like that. . .

Economic warfare (i.e. blockades and sieges) are pathetic. . . I don't think truly decent scenarios will ever really be possible. . .

And there are a few things from Civ2 that I realized I missed. One of them was partisans. . . Government-specific units like the Fanatics would've been nice too. I don't know why they got rid of these things. . .

They fix minor annoyances, but I think the bigger problems remain. Regretably, I doubt these aspects will ever be solved.

They won't be. That patch won't solve the problems you relate, and many others, such as the idiotic results of Culture Flipping, or that annoying Settler Diarrhea, or the stupid AI, et al.

Let me just address several of your main points.

Resource allocation. The rates in the basic game are ABSURDLY too low. They can be edited, but their disappearance is ridiculously random. One resource tile can theoretically supply massive armies forever; on the other hand, I had an iron tile become "exhausted" three turns after a road was built on it linking it to a town on an island - a town that had NO harbor! Worse, due to Culture Flipping I had borders flip over my strategic resources and I am then insulted and ordered to get off my own resource that has a garrison and fortress on it! Crazy.

Economic warfare is a joke, as are blockades. I have complained since December that there is no way to use subs and privateers to attack enemy merchant shipping on his trade routes - their historic purpose. There is NO way to do a real WW II or WW I scenario without showing the effect of U-Boats on merchant shipping. In Civ 2 we at least had to risk naval attack to deliver a caravan or freight across the sea. It added a lot to the game.

BTW, espionage also sucks now. It used to be dramatic using spies; now it is a tedious expensive abstraction good mostly for getting the other guy to declare war on you.

Partisans can be modded in. Just replace the useless helicopter unit. Fanatics are part of Fundamentalism which isn't in the game. Too bad; we enjoyed it. They did give us Culture Flipping instead.

The "minor annoyances" should havge been playtested out before tha game was marketed. For that matter, SO SHOULD THE BIGGER PROBLEMS that you speak of.

[Deathwalker]

It's not perfec but after all it is only a game not real life.
And do we always have to complain

[Alex]

Oh, I was wondering when Coracle would come up...

Problem is: Civ3 is different from Civ2 by design. They will not modify the game to make it look like Civ2 because that was never their intention. D. Pedro complains about combat, but Firaxis got rid of the firepower concept since the beginning. Therefore, combat in Civ3 will never be the same as it was in Civ2. If you like it, fine. If you don't, fine too, because you have the right to disagree with the designers.

But I don't get why, at this moment and after all things that happened since Civ3 was released, some people are still complaining. I know, they were hoping that Firaxis would address the problems. Guess what? The firaxians think that Civ3 is fine as it is now, being a different game. It will never be Civ2 again. Give up, guys. And pay a visit to the Civ2 section here at Apolyton; there you'll find plenty of interesting and creative scenarios and mods to Civ2 that will certainly extend your fun.

But Civ3 is a different beast.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by Coracle
Worse, due to Culture Flipping I had borders flip over my strategic resources and I am then insulted and ordered to get off my own resource that has a garrison and fortress on it! Crazy.

Coracle, I'm curious. You mention "Culture Flipping" quite a bit: Are you referring to the phenomenon whereby cities suddenly proclaim allegiance to another Civ, the growth of Civ borders due to the production of culture points, or both?

[DrFell]

Originally posted by Trip
The Archer has a defense of 1 (slightly increased because all terrain actually gives some bonus). The Swordsman has an attack of 3. This means the Archer has a 1 in 4 chance of damaging the Swordsman. Therefore, a regular Archer VS a regular Swordsman, the Archer has a 1 in 12 chance of defeating the Swordsman while on defense.

Sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually wrong... it should be 1/64 (1/4*1/4*1/4) for two regular units. 1 in 64 losses for the swordsman doesn't exactly seem like an unrealistic value for a swordsman attacking an archer. Maybe next time you should bring along more units, no?

[Papa Chubby]

I think it is strange that people constantly nit-pick at Civ3, certainly it has some problems and concepts that could have been worker out better. The Civilisation games are going through darwinian evolution, the best of the game survives and gets improved, while somethings go away. People complain about caravans and freighters going away, well it was annoying to have to spend your time on moving those units towards cities. They replaced it with the user-friendly trade system employed in Civ3, still needs some work, but definatelly better then in Civ2. Resourcess and their allocation, and culturally determined borders are simply an effort to make the game more realistic and complex. These measures are somewhat shallow, but there was no account for these issues in Civ2.

All that we can expect and hope for is that these issues will be more fully thought out in Civ4 . Taking us one more step towards the absolute Civilasation game.

[Carver]

Originally posted by Coracle
Just replace the useless helicopter unit.

Being able to move a foot unit (via rails) to a city with a helicopter, fly that helicopter to any of your cities in the world, unload the foot unit, and send the foot unit into combat or sentry duty all in one turn is quite useful.

...especially if you give helos a capacity of four like I do.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Papa Chubby
I think it is strange that people constantly nit-pick at Civ3, certainly it has some problems and concepts that could have been worker out better. The Civilisation games are going through darwinian evolution, the best of the game survives and gets improved, while somethings go away. People complain about caravans and freighters going away, well it was annoying to have to spend your time on moving those units towards cities. They replaced it with the user-friendly trade system employed in Civ3, still needs some work, but definatelly better then in Civ2. Resourcess and their allocation, and culturally determined borders are simply an effort to make the game more realistic and complex. These measures are somewhat shallow, but there was no account for these issues in Civ2.

All that we can expect and hope for is that these issues will be more fully thought out in Civ4 . Taking us one more step towards the absolute Civilasation game.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Yes, there are many things I would like to see changed in Civ 3 for more realism, complication, scripting, etc. etc. etc., but I realize that major changes in design require a lot of work and confirmation, and are highly unlikely to happen. Continuous whining will not change that (*cough*we all know who*uncough*).

However, submitting ideas and arguing why they're good just might get them into Civ IV.

[Slax]

At times like this when heaps of praise are being thrown around, I like to see a little whine. You go, Dom!

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, I can see that my post generated a little more criticism of ME than of the game, so I'd just like to clear a few things up....

I do like the game. I'm not sad that I bought it at all, and if I was given the option of sticking with Civ3 or going back to Civ2, I would almost certainly stick with Civ3.

Perhaps my disillusionment is partially the product of a run of bad luck. For some reason, ever since I downloaded 1.21, I've been started in the middle of jungles or tundra while the AI gets beautiful starting locations, my last game I had three settlers killed by barbarians including one that I guarded with a spearman and the pair happened to walk into a massive barbarian uprising. I've had swordsmen beaten in attacks against archers in 7/10 battles, Lonbowman beaten by spearmen in 8/10 battles... now, I'm not blaming all that on the game. A large part of that is my keen ability to beat the odds against my favor

And secondly, to defend myself a bit, all of my criticism here is related to gameplay with the exception of the economic warfare factor. When I bought Civ3, I wanted to have a game where I would be creating strategy. If I wanted to play a game of luck disguised as a strategy game, I'd go out and buy Monopoly... So this "it's just a game" argument really is a strawman argument to my case.

And about the economic warfare issue, I would like to note that I said that there wouldn't be an issue if there had been a macro events language included in 1.29 or PTW. That's more of a criticism on the patch and the expansion pack than on the original game itself.

[Dom Pedro II]

Oh, and this thread wasn't SUPPOSED to be whining about Civ3 as much as it was supposed to be whining about how inspite of the hype, 1.29 and PTW really aren't doing all that much... they're putting in all the bells and whistles without doing any work under the hood.

[muxec]

What is download UPL?

[Papa Chubby]

Hey Dom, what I said was not mean as an attack on you personally, and the point about you whining. Well that was Trip. I personally believe that there is always a place and time for critiscism, if that is not the case, then I certainly ain´t the right person to judge the issue. What I meant to imply, that while it is always good for you personally to rant and shout. It would be far better to keep the critiscism constructive, if you don´t like something, try and come up with something that would improve it and would suit your taste. Other than that you are free to write everything you like, but then again, so am I.

[Jon Shafer]

I didn't mean Dom. Just another famous whiner from around these parts. I apologize for any confusion.

I think that constructive criticism is great... sometimes that's the only way to improve on things. However, incessant whining about things that won't change simply for the sake of whining is what I hate. People have better ways to waste their lives...

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by muxec
What is download UPL?

What are you talknig about Muxec?

[Excelsior84]

Originally posted by DrFell
Sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually wrong... it should be 1/64 (1/4*1/4*1/4) for two regular units. 1 in 64 losses for the swordsman doesn't exactly seem like an unrealistic value for a swordsman attacking an archer. Maybe next time you should bring along more units, no?

Ahem, sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually wrong. The odds calculation is significantly more complicated than that. What you have found is the odds of the archer defeating the swordsman without taking any damage. I don't know how to calculate the exact odds of a reg. swordsman being defeated by a reg. archer, but I wrote a program a long time ago that determines it empirically (by running the combat through a random number generator 1,000,000 times).

From this, I determine the odds of a defending reg. archer defeating a reg. swordsman is actually very close to 1 in 8.

[Excelsior84]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
As far as I know, randomness in combat hasn't even been touched in 1.29 or in PTW. The best we have is the "preserve random seed" toggled off, which doesn't help if you don't want to have to reload the game 20 times just to get an equitable outcome in a war.

If you don't like the pure randomness of combats do what I did a long time ago, change the hitpoints. In the example of a regular archer defending against a reg swordsman, at 3HP each the odds for the archer is 1 in 8, which is rather high, in my opinion. Tripling the HPs lowers this probability to roughly 1 in 50, which is far more to my liking. You will, of course, still get screwy outcomes, but far fewer of them. The only real disadvantage I see to this is that combat takes longer, though you can set combat to only show one round.

[lockstep]

From this, I determine the odds of a defending reg. archer defeating a reg. swordsman is actually very close to 1 in 8.

To be more specific, it's 12.374% if there is a 10% defense bonus and 10.352% if there is no defense bonus.

http://www.columbia.edu/~sdc2002/civulator.html

[Excelsior84]

Ah, thanks. A new website for my favorites list.

[Dom Pedro II]

Excelsior, i was in fact wondering if increasing the hitpoints would perhaps balance out the system a bit more. Thank you very much. I'll try it.

[Catt]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
I had hoped the patch and PTW would resolve some of these issues, but they haven't seemed to address them. They fix minor annoyances, but I think the bigger problems remain. Regretably, I doubt these aspects will ever be solved.

Dom Pedro II - some will inadvertantly attack you rather than your arguments when your posts label as "problems" or "deficiencies" legitimate game design decisions by the game designers. Each of your examples of a "problem to be solved" is not actually a problem - it is exactly how the game designers wanted the game to function.

The real "problem" is that Firaxis designed and built Firaxis' Civ III rather than Dom Pedro II's Civ III. The editor goes a long way towards allowing you to design Dom Pedro II's Civ III, but, you're right, some things are hard-coded and won't allow modification.

Catt

[N. Machiavelli]

Only one small problem with their 'Civulator'. It doesn't take into account building and individual citizen bonuses when calculating the defense value of a unit in a city. The number of citizens and buildings are calculated when coming up with the defense bonus. I do not have the editor here at work, but it's something like +1% per citizen and +4% per building or something like that. These bonuses account for alot of 'odd' results when attacking a city, like a modern armour losing against a fortified pikeman in a city.

[BeBro]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
Oh, and this thread wasn't SUPPOSED to be whining about Civ3 as much as it was supposed to be whining about how inspite of the hype, 1.29 and PTW really aren't doing all that much... they're putting in all the bells and whistles without doing any work under the hood.

Well, ok perhaps you can say this about 1.29, but how much info is available to judge about PTW yet?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by N. Machiavelli
Only one small problem with their 'Civulator'. It doesn't take into account building and individual citizen bonuses when calculating the defense value of a unit in a city.

You're right, but there's also the indirect method for using this program. Take the attack strength, calculate the modified defense yourself, fill in the two fields (ignoring everything else but experience levels) and 'Civ-ulate'!

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Excelsior84
Ahem, sorry to be nitpicky, but this is actually wrong. The odds calculation is significantly more complicated than that. What you have found is the odds of the archer defeating the swordsman without taking any damage. I don't know how to calculate the exact odds of a reg. swordsman being defeated by a reg. archer, but I wrote a program a long time ago that determines it empirically (by running the combat through a random number generator 1,000,000 times).

From this, I determine the odds of a defending reg. archer defeating a reg. swordsman is actually very close to 1 in 8.

The exact calculation is as follows:

The probability of a regular archer (at full health) succesfully fending off a regular swordsman (at full health) while taking no damage:

1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/64

The probability of a regular archer succesfully fending off a regular swordsman, taking one point of damage:

1/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 3 * (3/4) * (1/64) = 9/4 * (1/64)

The probability of a regular archer succesfully fending off a regular swordsman, taking two points of damage:

1/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 +
1/4 * 3/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 1/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 +
3/4 * 3/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 6 * (9/16) * (1/64) = 54/16 * (1/64)

The probability of a regular archer succesfully fending off a regular swordsman:

1/64 + 9/4 * 1/64 + 54/16 * 1/64 = 1/64 * (1+9/4+54/16) = 106/16 * 1/64 = 0,1035 (10,3%)

Of course, this is theory, as every single type of terrain gives the defender at least a small defense bonus, as others correctly pointed out.

This is exactly what The Civilization Calculator says (see http://www.columbia.edu/~sdc2002/civulator.html).

I tried to show how the calculation is done (it could be expressed in a more elegant way using combinatorics, but that would be difficult to understand for those that do not do much math), but if it is not as self-explanatory as it seems to me, just tell me and I will explain the formulas in more detail. You can figure out any combat result probability in this way.

I believe that those complaining about archer being able to fend off a swordsman should realize that there is pure math behind the combat logic. 10% (or 12%) is quite a good chance, it's one in ten (eight) times... that's pretty much what I see happening in my games. However, people have the tendency to better realize exceptions to the rule than when the rule applies as expected.

Oh, well... in my last game, I lost my badly wounded elite battleship (1hp) to a fresh veteran galley (4hp)... Yup, I should have had it repaired before attacking that wooden vessel... Hubris...

Also, one of the arguments often seen around here is that "a spearman can defeat a tank". That is a bit misleading statement. A spearman can sometimes fend off a tank succesfully, but is almost totally unable to attack it succesfully.

[JoeDaddy715]

it's funny, trip always whines about people whining.... Isn't that whining too???