Should I return?

[SMIFFGIG]

cyclotron7, i can see where your coming from and i respect what you said. Some of the things i said could be taken as an insult by some people. But they where not percieved as insults as such, but more general statements

e.g. "anyone who says CIV3 is an in DEPTH game, really does not have a clue about strategy games"
I beleive this to be true as a general statement and i am a real big fan a strategy games, i am also sure that the majority of other people who are true strategy fans will agree with this statement/opinion.

However i did not indvidualy insult people for having a different view from mine nor did i take any opinions disagreeing with mine as an insult. To go as far as accusing people of being either drunken or uneducated for doing so, is purely an absurdity and quite honestly uneducated in itself.

Nevertheless cyclotron7 i will take some of your advice at hand, and try to use more examples, however a little sarcasim never went a miss

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG's
e.g. "anyone who says CIV3 is an in DEPTH game, really does not have a clue about strategy games"
I beleive this to be true as a general statement and i am a real big fan a strategy games, i am also sure that the majority of other people who are true strategy fans will agree with this statement/opinion.

The problem with that is then that you have divided strategy gamers into "real" gamers that agree with you, and supposedly "fake" ones that do not. You have pointed out essentially that everyone who does not agree with your opinion on Civ3 is not truly a strategy gamer. Since I consider myself a "real" strategy gamer, and I do not agree with you, I percieve this to be insulting. The majority is something you percieve that may or may not be real, but you should avoid insulting even the minority.

However i did not indvidualy insult people for having a different view from mine nor did i take any opinions disagreeing with mine as an insult. To go as far as accusing people of being either drunken or uneducated for doing so, is purely an absurdity and quite honestly uneducated in itself.

Please don't misread by disapproval of your post as approval for that of Theseus. I don't agree with what he said.

Nevertheless cyclotron7 i will take some of your advice at hand, and try to use more examples, however a little sarcasim never went a miss

True, sarcasm is great... but just remember that while it will not win people over to your side, well presented and uninsulting arguments may.

And my opinion on the subject: Yes, do return. There is no reason not to. The game has been substantially improved, so you might as well try it out now and see if you like it.

[Zylka]

I think you should return

Nice name, btw

[vondrack]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG's
Civ 3 is a game of now, and an un satisfactory one at that. People maybe willing to pay £35 for the game and £35 for the addon. But im not prepared too. Although i was suckered into buying Civ 3, when it came out (purely due to its history) the addon will have no place on my shelves, however i will hapily download and burn it for anyone of whom I know and wants it, to prevent firaxis recieving any more non-hard earned money.

Originally posted by Theseus
Your reply is insulting, immoral, and either drunken or uneducated.

Don't waste my time.

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG's
Cease wasting your own time Theseus and go to another thread, if you find it insulting to bare up to someone elses opinion then there is truly something wrong with you.

Well, I guess that what Theseus considered immoral and insulting was the part about downloading and burning PtW for anyone... etc. That is software piracy and the smiley was in no way enough to change it. If it was a sarcastic joke, it was a very bad one.

I, too, find people that claim to be the "only real strategy gamers", simply dismissing other people's opinions and claiming that just because of their opinion the game is bad, annoying.

On topic (can't remember if I posted in this thread or not). Yes, sure, come back. The game is great, much better than it was out of the box. According to SMIFFGIG's classification, I am not a real strategy gamer (I spent only few thousand hours playing strategy games in my life, so I guess I still need a bit more practice to become a real one... ), so my opinion may not be very valid... but then, chances are, psychobabble, that you are not a real strategy gamer either, so you can still enjoy the game. Just give it another try. It will not be a waste of your time.

[player1]

The probelm with "deep" SMAC is that making good govenment combo or unit combo is not diffcult at all.

On the other hand, it kills incompetent AI completly.

Strange thing is that, although it looks deep, I found both CTP1 & CTP2 (moded) and Civ3 to be more enjoyable.



P.S.
But why is Civ3 dipl. model dumbed down compared to SMAC is beyond my understanding.

[heidlejohn]

Originally posted by Chronus


Hmmm . . . I've found the automatic cleanup/construction keys (CTRL + A, I think . . . somebody help me out) for the workers to be very good and useful.

I am using automatic shift A for the workers. But in the polluting city, a citizen is removed from the polluted tile.
After the clean up, one has to manually put the citizen back on that tile. Why do I have to manually do that when the automated workers have cleaned up the pollution? Another problem is that after the cleanup, when you have overlapping cities, the tile can switch from one of your cities to another, upsetting a food balance or a production schedule that you set up.

Shift A eliminates some tedium, but it does not eliminate the working tile situation after the pollution is cleaned up. Put the citizen back where he was working before the pollution shifted him, or give me some tool that helps me to find the cleaned up tile so that I can set everything back to where it was before the pollution happened.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by heidlejohn
But in the polluting city, a citizen is removed from the polluted tile.
After the clean up, one has to manually put the citizen back on that tile. Why do I have to manually do that when the automated workers have cleaned up the pollution? Another problem is that after the cleanup, when you have overlapping cities, the tile can switch from one of your cities to another, upsetting a food balance or a production schedule that you set up.

Shift A eliminates some tedium, but it does not eliminate the working tile situation after the pollution is cleaned up. Put the citizen back where he was working before the pollution shifted him, or give me some tool that helps me to find the cleaned up tile so that I can set everything back to where it was before the pollution happened.

I second this request. In my last game, I had lots of well-grown cities and it was rather painful to reassign citizens to cleaned tiles. It should have been done either automatically, or a notice should pop up that there was pollution cleaned in the city of Somewhere, allowing me to Zoom to it (just like when the city finishes an improvement or a unit) and put the citizen back on. I guess this should not be that difficult to implement and would help greatly to reduce late game tedium.

[heidlejohn]

Originally posted by vondrack

heidlejohn,

I, too, dislike that "fine-tuning" involved in the trades... but as Jaybe correctly pointed out, we are not required to do so. We can always accept the AI's proposal...

Anyway, I wanted to point out that what we both would probably like to see is a problem very difficult to solve for Firaxians. I suppose that you would prefer having your Trade Advisor come up with the correct proposal immediately (not just commenting what you are juggling with). There is a problem with this - basically, the trades are multiple-variable, multiple-solution problems. You can throw agreements, alliances, resources, luxuries, money upfront/per turn, cities, and workers in... and there is often way more than one possible "correct price" for a given something you want from the AI civ. How could that poor Trade Advisor know what exactly you would like to put on the table? I mean... yes, there would be ways how to implement it (like fixing several variables and asking for the last one to be calculated), but probably none of them would be convenient enough to use. It may be you would find that what we are currently doing is still the quickest way to find the result we seek (even if somewhat annoying quickest way... ).

Even in a simple luxury for GPT trade that you are renewing after 20 turns, you still have the annoying 'closer' sequence. Don't you find this tedious?
You can try a few numbers and still get the same 'closer' message. Why can't we get what minimum they will accept after a few tries? Doesn't this annoy you like it annoys me?

[vondrack]

Originally posted by heidlejohn
Even in a simple luxury for GPT trade that you are renewing after 20 turns, you still have the annoying 'closer' sequence. Don't you find this tedious?
You can try a few numbers and still get the same 'closer' message. Why can't we get what minimum they will accept after a few tries? Doesn't this annoy you like it annoys me?

Well, I use a method that usually doesn't need more than a few tries (say, something like 5-6)... it actually resembles the binary divison algorithm. Depending on whether the initial deal is acceptable for the AI or not, I quickly (1-2 tries) determine something which is the opposite. Then, I test the mid-value of the ok/not-ok interval, narrowing it progressively. I seldom need more than 5-6 tries to get to a level where I do not care about further precising the price...

Well, I do find it a bit tedious (although not a really serious thing), but then... if I really need the money, I should deserve them...

As I have mentioned before, I do not think that implementing a Trade Advisor capable of truly intelligent suggestions would be that easy... doable, sure, but most probably the efforts needed would not be worthwhile, considering the result...

However, I do have an idea that would be VERY easy to implement, while QUITE helpful:

Currently, when I click the amount of lump-sum/per-turn money laying on the bargaining table, it makes it disappear back to the list of things I am able to put on the table. Usually I just click it to bring it back with a new value...

What about changing it so that clicking on the lump-sum/per-turn money on the bargaining table does NOT make it go off the table, but ask for a new value instead? If I really wanted it removed from the table, I'd just put 0 as the new value... This would save us lots of unnecessary mouse clicks/shifts and would certainly help making this bargaining stuff less tedious, while requiring a ridiculously small amount of programming efforts... Firaxis?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by vondrack
However, I do have an idea that would be VERY easy to implement, while QUITE helpful:

Currently, when I click the amount of lump-sum/per-turn money laying on the bargaining table, it makes it disappear back to the list of things I am able to put on the table. Usually I just click it to bring it back with a new value...

What about changing it so that clicking on the lump-sum/per-turn money on the bargaining table does NOT make it go off the table, but ask for a new value instead? If I really wanted it removed from the table, I'd just put 0 as the new value... This would save us lots of unnecessary mouse clicks/shifts and would certainly help making this bargaining stuff less tedious, while requiring a ridiculously small amount of programming efforts... Firaxis?

Firaxis already did that. RIGHT-Click the value on the trade table. It allows you to just modify the amount.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Firaxis already did that. RIGHT-Click the value on the trade table. It allows you to just modify the amount.

Wow, Jaybe, THANKS!
How did I manage to miss it...

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by heidlejohn
I am using automatic shift A for the workers. But in the polluting city, a citizen is removed from the polluted tile.
After the clean up, one has to manually put the citizen back on that tile. Why do I have to manually do that when the automated workers have cleaned up the pollution? Another problem is that after the cleanup, when you have overlapping cities, the tile can switch from one of your cities to another, upsetting a food balance or a production schedule that you set up.

Shift A eliminates some tedium, but it does not eliminate the working tile situation after the pollution is cleaned up. Put the citizen back where he was working before the pollution shifted him, or give me some tool that helps me to find the cleaned up tile so that I can set everything back to where it was before the pollution happened.

Couldn't agree with you more. This is something I was campaigning for in the first patch.

[Adm.Naismith]

Psycobabble, my opinion about your request can be solved by a simple Question with two choices:

Q) Do you mind spending more money on the game?

A1) No problem, I can spend more - Then wait & see for real players review of Civ III Expansion Pack Play The World, coming for this fall.
I have some hopes it can tweak the game a bit and soften many rough point the game still have (IMHO, of course). Of course, if you don't liked the original I bet the expansion pack can't change lead to gold for you, neither.

A2) I want something to enjoy for free - Well, keeping the "enjoy for free" in game area I suggest you to download the last patch and give it a try.

I know the life is short and you must spend wisely the gaming part of it but if you already have Civ III give it another try for a couple of games and judge by yourself.

On a personal basis, I'm still playing Civ III these days, because I have little spare time and I don't want to spend it learning a complex game from scratch. I'm waiting for Medieval Total War release, just for a change. PTW could be an option if it will really
improve the basic.

For quick and easy game I'm loving some nice little classic on my Palm handeld, really at hand in a busy underground train, where my Civ III on the notebook is not at its best place

[FrustratedPoet]

Yeah, please come back JT ... couldn't hurt to give the game another try.

We would appreciate somebody to raise the intellectual level of the troll's around here ... as you can see from this thread they're not very interesting at the moment.

[Cyclotron]

And I thought JT actually left... well, I guess you really can never leave this site...

[Coracle]

Originally posted by psychobabble
I played Civ3 casually for a while when it was first released, and enjoyed the experience, even if it wasn't too different from Civ2. However I gave up after one of the early patches (1.16??) when the speed of AI tech trading just got depressing and then got sidetracked by other games.

I'm contemplating returning to the game, is it worth it? . . .

Depends on what you like. Someone said Civ 3 has "more depth" than Civ 2!! The reality is Civ 3 is more shallow and much less realistic than Civ 2, although maybe the superfificial graphics will impress you. Civ 2 and Civ 3 are very different from each other.

As for speed, with 1.29 it is not quite as slow as it was, but there is a thread up about slow scenarios.

So you decide. Just remember most of the advice you get on this forum is from people who are still playing it, so there is an inherent bias.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Coracle
So you decide. Just remember most of the advice you get on this forum is from people who are still playing it, so there is an inherent bias.

So are you suggesting that the only way he can get unbiased advice on Civ3 is... to ask people who stopped playing Civ3? Excuse me, but people who stopped playing Civ3 are of course going to pan it. That's well and good but... how is that unbiased advice? Furthermore, how would people who stopped playing it have any idea how good it is with the more current patches?

[heidlejohn]

Originally posted by cyclotron7


So are you suggesting that the only way he can get unbiased advice on Civ3 is... to ask people who stopped playing Civ3? Excuse me, but people who stopped playing Civ3 are of course going to pan it. That's well and good but... how is that unbiased advice? Furthermore, how would people who stopped playing it have any idea how good it is with the more current patches?

Everyone is biased, that is, they have an opinion.
I've played Civ3 for seven months including the latest patch and I'm going to stop for now, so I won't be on these boards much longer. So my opinion (I'm disappointed about Civ3 though I love the Civ series) will no longer be be seen for that kind of question.

Forums generally have that kind of bias, i.e., if you are no longer actively playing the game then you are less likely to check out the discussion boards and post on them. Those remaining 'love' the game and usually are active players. So any board has an inherent bias.
Look at the ratio of positive and negative responses to this should I return posting. It was overwhelmingly positive, which is what I would expect on any forum.

BYE. JH