What are the best/worst parts of the game?

[Jaguar]

What parts of the game do you like best, and which parts do you think were badly implemented/bad ideas?

(BTW this is for constructive criticism, not Coracle-style rants. Coracle can post here, but we are going to discuss both the worst and best, not just worst.)


IMO, the best parts of the game are the AIs, the unit graphics, and the unique civs. I like how the AIs can be competent fighters and actually take cities, as well as their quick expansion. (The sending settler stacks across miles of other people's territory to get to some worthless tundra is stupid, though.)

The unit graphics are also really good. I love having the guys actually fire guns and fidget and all that when you move them.

I also like unique civs. Everybody bashed this idea before the game was released, but they all seem to like it now. UUs are great fun, and add another element of strategy. Traits also add strategy to the game.


I have mixed feelings about the resource trade system. It is good, but the civII style caravans and freight should have stayed, complimenting the resource trade system. I also think you should be able to build expensive versions of units that require resources if you don't have the resource.


The worst parts are obvious to me:

Culture flipping. Need I say more? If two civs have equal culture, then it takes 2 units to balance out one resister in the culture flip formula. All right, so if there are 22 MAs in a city with 12 people, all resisters, there is a chance of a flip, apparently because they can overpower the MAs. Now suppose they were drafted instead. They would become 12 conscript mech infantry. 22 MAs (probably vet) can beat 12 conscript mech infantry easily. So are we saying that a resisting civilian is stronger than a drafted mech infantry?

Pollution: It is incredibly annoying, and the orange goo graphic really bugs me. Everyone has enough workers to clean it by the time they're polluting, but you have to move around the workers anyway. It is a waste of time. I would prefer some way of just spending gold to not produce it in the first place (we maintain city improvements, why not pollution cleaning projects?.)

Corruption: Sorry, but it is completely overboard. If the US owned Tokyo, Tokyo would still be more productive than Des Moines, Iowa. Corruption should be about 60-75% of what it is now. Also I don't know what's with this "optimal number of cities." I don't know where they got this idea. Fortunately we can mod this, but the original game should be this way too.

[Jaguar]

oh, forgot to add:

A small number of units flipping during peacetime is ok, because maybe the units get corrupted (a traitor amongst the officers) and many of them are sympathetic to the cause of the rebellion. However, in war, the troops would all be on your side, and they would be prepared to fight. So I think that troops should have more of an effect on culture flips during war.

[Patroklos]

Hey,

My favorite part of the game is the scale. There are few games that simulate worldwide conflict in the same way as Civ III, and I find it superior.

I especially like the WWI/WWII era. allows you to have great world war senarios with the right mix of units.

As far as what I don't like, the most annoying thing to me is the AI not upgrading the units property. I hate fighting swordsmen with tanks.

[Jon Shafer]

Like Pat said, the absolute best part about Civ is the scale. Sure you can find wargames out there. How many of them do you get to see your objective? How often are you fighting for oil, which you can then later use? Or a high-production city, or a strategically located one? That is what's greatest about Civ, and why I enjoy it more than most games.

IMO, the worst part about civ is that it doesn't delve much into the complexity that the scale and scope of the game could provide. Maybe it's one or the other, but I want both.

[Kloreep]

I agree with you on the best parts of the game. UUs are great. I think the replay is a great part, too; watching the rise of your civilization for a second time is fun, especially when it only takes ten minutes or so. I just wish some more events were included in it (like GL generation and small wonder building).

I agree on pollution. There should be a way to completely eliminate it in the Modern era, even if it does cost gold (the savings in a smaller worker force would probably make up for it anyway).

Culture flipping I like. The huge garrison you need in war time is a little extreme post-hospitals, but I think culture would be fairly toothless without flipping. Besides, it doesn't need that large a garrison after resistance is gone if you blitz on past to avoid having your enemy's culture in the city's radius.

Corruption I like. The FP and palace both need to be cheaper, IMO, but the limit on the area of productive cities is good, IMO. Otherwise, the largest civ - usually warmongers - would win practically by default. It also keeps the late game interesting, since it's hard to get more than double any other civ's raw productive power.

[Arrian]

I like the strategic and luxury resouces. I like the unique traits and units, even though I was dubious about them at first. I think the AI is much, much improved from CivII's AI, which is a good thing. I like the unit support system and upgrading. I like culture.

I don't like a couple of the wonders (Longevity, Shakespeares, the UN) and the way the Modern Tech tree is set up. You can still ignore half of it and launch the SS.


Diplomacy is way better than CivII, but there remains room for improvement. The more complex diplomacy becomes, of course, the harder it is to prevent the AI from sucking at it. As some of the more outspoken critics have mentioned, some of the simplicity in the game can be attributed toward an attempt at making the AI competant.
Though I like the trade system overall, I do have a couple of beefs: 1) that your rep can be ruined by trading with a civ that gets crushed in war, resulting in the trade connection being cut; and 2) the degree to which the size of your empire impacts the asking price of luxuries. To clarify, I do think you should have to pay more if you're the biggest, but it gets outrageous. It becomes cheaper & easier, in all ways, to simply invade and take the damn thing by force.

Culture flipping isn't something that overly concerns me, but I do think it could have been implemented a bit better. Still, Firaxis has tweaked it several times to at least attempt to address people's concerns. I would probably have had resistors blow things up (improvements), randomly produce partisan-type units you would have to kill, and deal random amounts of damage to your units stationed in the city. I'd make them hard as hell to quell. That's a lot more complicated than the current system.

It's not important, but I think the scoring system is pretty bad. It, like many things in the game, rewards aggressive conquest - the earlier the better. Further, there is no adjustment for map settings.

Finally, I wish CivIII's editor was as good as CivII MGE's. People made some really cool scenarios with that thing.

-Arrian

[Ethelred]

Like:

UU units coupled with the Golden Age is good.

I like culture flipping especially when going the builder route.

Resources is a nice addition to the game. It awfully abstracted though.

Not having to turn terraform the whole place as was often the case in Civ II. We still don't terraform what the heck was that in Civ II for anyway?


Dislike:

UU units that are only good for starting a Golden Age like the Bleepeteer or the English Man o' War.

Loosing large stacks of units to culture filliping. Don't mind loosing the city that way or even part of the units but not a huge stack.

The Modern Era. It needs an overhaul and Firaxis should have and could have made some simple changes to do so. Two many wortheless techs that people only build because they chose not to win by Space Race much earlier than the techs become available. Whats with being able to go to Alpha Centauri and still not have Stealth or Precision Strikes? Longevity is useless except maybe for milking the score.

[Athitis]

I think the AI in Civ3 is great, and beyond comparison to other games-exept perhaps X-COM, should u have tried it.

The whole culture flipping system, the way u aquire resources and trade them is amazing.

UU rock. Mobilization and Golden Ages are also perfect for Civ.

The sense of scale.

The Industrial and Modern Age. They are just PERFECT. Playing a doomed game only to get to the modern age is worth the try. And the Modern Warfare is awesome-could be far better though!

Cavalry-I love them!

Thing's I don't like personally:

Diplomacy Sytem. Heck, SMAC had a perfect diplomacy system! Why did they altered it?

The City View sucks. I once had a city with population of 34 (!) and it looked to me it had no more than 100 inhabitands; ok, perhaps 200.......

The whole Graphics/Sound aspect. Remember the clear voices, videos and briefings in SMAC?

Well, Modern Age could be better-give us chemical weapons, EMP guns and HACKERS!!!!

Some UU could be better.

Give us the option to design our nation's flag after one acquires Nationalism!

More traits-Some are more powerfull than others.

More units could be implemented

Air units have changed to worse.

Give us lethal bombarbment! My Battleship can't destroy a Warrior! The target unit should be destroyed when succesfully bombarded and having 1 hit point already left.

Great Leaders-Not only from War!

That's all I can think now.

[vmxa1]

The best is that it allows for strategic thinking. All types of things can come up, want to build a unit and you are missing a resource? Better come up with a way to get it. I am not sure that this is the worse part, but I am annoyed by the workers automaton, even the subsets. I played a map from here that had a lot of open desert land and the workers will go over and build roads/RR and sometimes other improvements that no citizens will ever work. Since the cities were all connected by RR, I did not want to hand hold all those workers.
I would also like to know all the techs a given civ has once I have spies. Now you can find out by going to the advisor and opening a trade dialog, by why make me do that? Make it a list like the armies in the military advisor screen.

[planetfall]

Best
1. Suspense: will I survive or not
2. unique civs
3. resource acquisition
4. tech acquisition

worst
1. Pollution: The idea is not bad but once both automated workers and workers on clean pollution clean up the mess. They act like children. New pollution, well what do you want me to do about it. Duh. It wrecks the game to always half to reorder workers.
2. Insane bargaining: too often AI won't trade 1 luxury for 3-4 you are offering.
3. No coordinate system for map
4. scoring system is only territory
5. modern era is way too boring
6. Navy and Air Force are useful or important.
7. no easy way to see the techs acquired by each civ.

That's enough.

-- PF

[ChrisiusMaximus]

My favourite aspects are the scale of the game as mentioned by others but I particulary like the strategic resources and the planning that has to be done to get them.Sometimes some maps have too many of everything everywhere that every civ has plenty and this does spoil this aspect of the game.It would be nice to have more types of resources.

I really like UU especially the early ones and often play Rome or Persia as others have said the modern age can be boring but the early and middle ages are great.

I do like dip and trade but these are the areas most in need of improvement as planetfall said the trade is insane at times,totally unrealistic.I to have had my offers of 3 luxury for 1 of their luxury resources declined which is ludicrous,ok in the real world not all trade is fair but the AI in civ3 is totally unfair in its approach to luxury trading,then on the other hand you can get them to mortgage the palace to buy tech from you even when their furious towards you.

Now on treaties etc I thought that as long as you held up your end of the deal for the 20 turns then your reputation stays intact or good that is but I constantly get AI civs in bad moods with me for playing by the rules,and also when asking one for a ROP they tell me no cause of what I did to another civ under such a treaty or to them last time we had such a treaty both of which have never happened or been requested,this is nonsense is the AI programmed to lie and to tell lies to others about you ,probably sounds like real life but cmon Im trying to enjoy myself.

[Theseus]

:sniff sniff:

No one likes Armies...

Seriously, the best parts for me are the scale and balance, the quality of the AI, UUs, the GA, resources, and last but not least Firaxis' ongoing attention and support.

Bad stuff: There's a lot of little stuff, but I'm very happy with the status of the AU Mod, which is pretty much what I always play now. The trading interface, lack of strong naval options, late game tedium, and flipping with troop loss. I don;t mind corruption, and the luxury thing just motivates me to, uhhh, explore new aquistion methodologies. I'm not much of a scenario guy, but my understanding of the lack of set diplomacy, or however it is referred to, seems a real problem.

[Destroyer]

The worst aspect by far is the air force aspect. Wars these days are won with air superioity, but air units are expensive too short ranged and badly thought out.

The civ 2 idea was far superior, although stealth bombers were a tad overpowered, but extremely vunerable to defending fighters.

[Dis]

best part Ancient age

worst part Modern age.

The modern age is just screwed up plain and simple. Techs like longevity are just worthless unless you turn all other winning conditions off. Because I don't have time to build them, if I try to the ai will win before me.

I wish ai expansione could be scripted so those who want to play a fairly peaceful game could do so. It is difficult to win playing peacefully.

great leaders and wonders I never liked. I played the Aztecs last game and did not even get 1 great leader. I don't think I've ever got more than 1. And I do a lot of ancient age warfare. Getting wonders in the ancient and middle ages can be real tough.

what I like: the early game. You are behind and you play a tension filled game trying to catch up. Early war is also nice. Not too many units so its not tedious, and I never have a problem with culture flip in ancient wars. Traits and UU's are great.

[-proletarian-]

This game was a giant leap over Civ2. That said, here are my thoughts.....

pros:

-the graphics, of course
-unit animations
-resources (strategic, luxuries)
-UU's
-civ traits (industrious, religious, etc.)
-culture
-national borders
-the music!
-having resources actually matter

cons:

-the whole "land grab" phase can be a pain if you're surrounded by a lot of civs early on.

-corruption. I'm not "against" it, but I think the way it is implemented (ie. distance being the main factor) is a little silly.

-POLLUTION! I HATE POLLUTION! Seriously, the onset of pollution in the industrial age has ruined a LOT of good games I've had going. I've actually quit out of games because of pollution. It's just THAT annoying. It really needs to be either scrapped altogether or handled in a radically different way.

-the lack of units. Think about it. There are very few real military choices in this game. In the ancient era it's swordsman for offence, spears for D. Middle ages, it's knights for offence, pikes for D. Industrial, it's cavs for offence, rifles/infantry for D. The modern age is the worst. You really only need two units there, modern armour for attack and MA for defence. PTW won't fix this. Two new units just aren't enough. This takes a HUGE potential strategic element out of CivIII. More units=more diversity=more strategy. Frankly, military strategy is almost non-existent in this game, and that's a shame.


That's my two cents' worth.

[miccofl]

The Best: Being able to change so many aspects of the game; either by modding or altering graphics, sound and text files.

The Worst: (It’s a tie) The AI was not programmed to learn and 3 GB of RAM costs too much.

[aaglo]

Best part:

After reaching cultural victory, the conquered Mao says: "I didn't know that cultural assimilation would be so painful".... or something like that.

And all the aftermath comments given by the rivals. They are hilarious.

Another best part of the game: Music. It's awesome. I wonder if Peter Gabriel is among the paylists of firaxis/infogrames

[gsmoove23]

Love the graphics but I could easily go back to civ2 graphics if it left room for more complexity in the game, especially where it comes to 3d leaderheads and such. Wasted space IMO.

Love culture flipping, love the fact when you conquer a city the people stay behind. Don't love the fact that these people can defeat a huge army. Don't love the fact that u then lose the whole army. Couldn't a certain percentage retreat?

Hate the fact that if I don't cover every single part of my terrain the AI will send a settler all the way from Timbukto to settle it.

Don't like UUs. Pointless IMO. Rather turn them off. Why not just specialized units, the same in all respects but for name and graphics.

Love resources, while I don't particularly miss caravans and freight, wish there was some way to have some cities get more of a benefit from trade then others. Now strategically placed cities and pointless frontier cities all get the same benefit. There are no wealthy trade cities.

[Solver]

I love civ as a genre, and among the good things specific to civ 3 are AI, different civs and UUs, thrill of the early game, workers doing stuff not settlers (finally), endless options, strategic resources.

I see a number of serious problems with Civ 3, though, and it's a shame we have so little info on PtW - I'm curious whether PtW really fixes the problems there are, or not. One major problem clearly is the Modern Age, and the other is Diplomatic negotiations. Diplomacy is also on my civ 3 pros list, a very versatile model bringing you much fun, but I hate bargaining with my Foreign Advisor instead of enemy leaders. Oh, and I hate how useless certain units are unless you use the editor...

[jshelr]

Likes: I must like it since I play it often.

Wants:

A much steeper penalty for being warlike in the modern era. I believe an attacking civ in the modern era should nearly automatically be faced with an alliance of all other civs, excepting those who are already in an allliance with the attacking civ, much like the real situation today.

An AI that builds a strong economy -- my impression is that the AI is prevented from being competitive after the industrial era, perhaps permitting the human player to win and, perhaps, increasing the game's commercial success. Nonetheless, let them build factories and power plants!

[Ethelred]

Nonetheless, let them build factories and power plants!

I think that is related to the difficulties the AI has with pollution. They will build factories but they seem to wait for Recycling.

[hexagonian]

Pro
Dynamic and coordinated AI/AI attacks.

Con
1. Infinite Railroad Sleaze, and only one level of Tile Improvements/no Ocean Tile Improvements
2. The game is formatted to encourage tech buying and trading, so there is little incentive to actually research the tech yourself.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Ethelred
I think that is related to the difficulties the AI has with pollution. They will build factories but they seem to wait for Recycling.

Good Gad! Let them build Workers. Especially the cities that are 20+ population. They should be able to put them on perpetual pollution duty MUCH easier than the player.

My main beef with the modern age is that you cannot keep workers on SHIFT-P when there is no pollution that turn. I refuse to Shift-A my workers.

The Spaceship issue I have solved by delaying parts availability, some until Integrated Defense, and by increasing costs (including Apollo to 1,000). Now there won't be a spaceship launch until in the Future Tech era.

[Destroyer]

Originally posted by aaglo
Best part:

Another best part of the game: Music. It's awesome. I wonder if Peter Gabriel is among the paylists of firaxis/infogrames

Although its not bad, I find the music gets very boring after a while. Its not exactly ground breaking, and compared to many games hardly breaks new ground. The problem is its kind of a background ambience, not really reflecting gameplay - and if you like 10 hour sessions, its nice that you can turn off the music, and listen to your own tunes instead.

For me, this sort of game requires only basic sound and graphics as it is gameplay that matters.

After all, the best selling PC game in the UK was Championship Manager - Oooh, that flashing text!

[dworkin]

I like the armies and the emphasis on combined arms in wars.
The civ traits and UUs, while not up there with SMAC still
require different strategies for different civs and make a change from 'guess I'll have the red tokens today' attitude.
Culture also adds to the game, gives me a reason to actually want Shakespeare's Theatre.

I don't like the lack of any stack limit. During war my 'stack of doom' moves about with a few flankers. Nothing stops it as it crushes all opposition. Kinda dull.
And the Spaceship and UN are too early, very little motivation to gain the other techs, I don't think I've ever seen a stealth bomber.

[vmxa1]

Play conquest, you will get to see them.

[asleepathewheel]

Like:

resources/luxuries
Unique civs-not the bland civ2 civs
change of airforce/sea/artillery power to be complimentary (bye bye howitzer rush)
editor: don't like corruption, can lower. don't like the tech tree. can change.
stacks can't be killed with the top units death
ai gives challenge
espionage control panel (no more overpowered spies)
Golden Age
UUs
Firaxis' response to the fans: group movement. wake/fortify all etc.

Don't like:
pollution by citizens is too much. can't eliminate pollution entirely even when in the future age
culture flips taking out garrisons (not culture flips in general)
espionage prices (editable) and effects (want more options)
hardcoded limits in editor (though some like the air range will be eliminated in PTW)
Lack of fixed scenario diplomacy
weather system/altitude system of SMAX

[Tiberius]

Like
Replayability - great! - even better than in previous civ games
Fun - great!
Challange - it is now harder to win
Balance - different game aspects are well balanced
Culture and culture flipping - my favorite addition; the best "weapon" builders have got since civ was invented
Resources/Luxuries - great strategical value
Civ traits, unique civs and unique units - finally civs have different "personalities" and play different
Golden Ages - the game is more fluctuating now; the outcome is less predictible than in previous civ games
Great Leaders
AI - better than before
Combat - Things that are good in combat, IMO: leaders, armies, bombard units and generally the need to use combined forces; the fact that invaders cannot use the road and rail system
Small Wonders
Roads - the fact that they have other advantages too, not just movement and commerce bonuses

Don't like or dislike
Air units
Corruption
Pollution
Graphics
Barbarians
(Actually I hate pollution/desertification and corruption, but I understand the need for them)


Dislike
UN - a peace of crap
Diplomacy - better than before, but less than I was expecting; lot of room for improvement
Trade - the same
City View, victory screens/movies and other eye candies - not much of a satisfaction
The lack of Scientific, Cultural and generally peaceful Great Leaders
Espionage
Modern Era - boring
Exploration - no need to explain
The lack of Stack bombardment
Government system - oversimplified
ICS - even worse that before

[Demerzel]

Agree with mostly what others have said but have to say about the one thing that is a Major Major Major Dislike and that is

the absolutely god awful piece of sh*te that is the UN implementation. OMFG my one year old niece could do better. Imagine my surprise as I've just built the UN for the first time and that turgid screen appears. Wow, I can hardly stop staring in disbelief at the "win screen". Satisfaction at having whupped arse just vanishes in one "you friggin' what???" moment.

After the step forward that the game took in a lot of directions, I can't believe someone actually said "yup, the UN bit is good enough. ship it out.". must have been the same bloke who thought that not implementing some things that SMAC excelled at, e.g. council, unit workshop, getting the player to have an emotional relationship with enemy factions[civs], was a good idea, etc...

Civ3 is a good step in the right direction but they really dropped the ball with some things that could have made it a big jump into the annals of greatness.

[Athitis]

Originally posted by Destroyer


Although its not bad, I find the music gets very boring after a while. Its not exactly ground breaking, and compared to many games hardly breaks new ground. The problem is its kind of a background ambience, not really reflecting gameplay - and if you like 10 hour sessions, its nice that you can turn off the music, and listen to your own tunes instead.

For me, this sort of game requires only basic sound and graphics as it is gameplay that matters.

We certainly all angree that gameplay is greater than music. Civ3 music however gets better as you play the game; Ancient music sucks-I closed my speakers-, while modern music rocks! It inspires you to go to war! It reminds me of Red Alert sometimes...