Why do I want PTW?

[vmxa1]

Cidifer, just them to hang in 6 months and we will get bundle of some sort for a good price.

[Cidifer]

yeah that's there plan but it would suck to have to wait 6 months before I could play a fun game with all humans. Basically that's what they are saying "once the price goes down" but if they release more add-ons the price may not go down, look at the sims, they've just recently made a bundled version of the game, also whenever another add-on came out the previous ones still cost the same amount (though there were sometimes special offers at alot of places)

[Chronus]

Re interface improvements: The trade advisor will include information about your current deals, so you don't need to contact other civs just for deal checking.

You have GOT to be JOKING! Are you serious? Is there someplace that this can be confirmed?

Hallelujah! I hope this is true!

By the way, having Manhattan be a small wonder is pretty cool as well.

[The Templar]

What would Manhattan provide as a small wonder? Effective mass transit? Fashion? Theater? DJ culture? Sounds odd, especially given that Wall Street is already a small wonder.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Chronus
You have GOT to be JOKING! Are you serious? Is there someplace that this can be confirmed?

It's not the trade advisor, but the foreign advisor - anyhow, here's the confirmation: http://www.gamespy.com/asp/image.asp.../civ3ptw/5.jpg.

Re Manhattan Project: AFAIK, it should possible now to make it a small wonder with PtW's editor, but this tweak will not be included in the standard game.

[vmxa1]

WhaT I hope it would be is that no more of my building MO and now all backward civs know about nukes? You must build your own SW first. Better yet, if I could just disable nukes.

[Nubclear]

(This may sound Coracle, so beware)

I'm not buying it personally because it just doesnt have the bang for the buck. New civs, MP (which in all likelyhood I'll never use), new map features, some new units, and more things to build just aren't worth it to me because they just dont change (in a major way) the way the game feels and plays...

Many of the problems I had with the first game won't be corrected, and many things probably weren't implimented here so that they can be put into the next (and possibly third, fourth) expansion. Has the UN been upgraded? Is there diplomacy in the editor? How about that combat system? What about that annoying feature of the editor where it just can't give you a perfect (or near perfect) map?

Also....I just have a moral thing against companies who are blatantly holding things back simply to milk more money out. Yes, they are out to get money and yes, they do need money to pay their bills...But I do think Civ3 generated enough money. Quite a few games have not gotten to that yet the developers are still able to pay their bills...So to me, PtW seems so held back as if their going for another expansion pack so they can milk 100+ out of everyone. And I just dont hold a company like that in high regard.

But I suppose that's just me, because apparently there are many people who will be buying it. I just won't be one of them.

[Cidifer]

Well you made good points to support your choice...
hopefully we wont get people yelling "WHAT YOU THINK THEY SHOULD GIVE YOU EVERYTHING FOR FREE? THEY HAVE TO EAT"

[vmxa1]

A perfecly rational position. In fact you may be correct about the value. I am making a completely emotional choice to buy and maybe I will even regret it, as I have many others.

[Alex]

My choice is also emotional by nature. I recognize that they are just milking the original Civ3, and that some of the features had to be included in the original back then.

But I'll buy it anyway, it is not a rational decision for me. And, of course, it'll contain the wonderful watercolor terrain tileset by WarpStorm!!

[Random Passerby]

I see an interesting dichotomy that tends to come up in this sort of argument.

Complaint #1 is that Firaxis shoveled everything out the door too quickly and came up with a broken product that had far too many untested features.

Complaint #2 is that Firaxis was holding back too much and withheld too many features to develop them farther for further product expansions.

OK, look--if you eat the cake, then you're not gonna have no cake any more. Is that plain enough for you?

[nbarclay]

Building software in increments is a completely valid software development strategy. It is simply not possible for a finite number of programmers to do everything that anyone could possibly want done at once. That being the case, an incremental strategy lets customers get an initial version of the software with some capabilities now, and other versions with more capabilities later, instead of having to wait for every desirable feature to be implemented before they can buy a product.

Such approaches are followed throughout the software industry, not just with games. And personally, I'm glad I've had Civ 3 for so long without having to wait for the features in PtW to be implemented, and I'll be glad to have the features in PtW without having to wait for the features in whatever expansion pack follows that to be implemented.

Nathan

[Cidifer]

My only problem is with the editor, they basically told us we'd have a good editor and when the game came out it was basically a pile of junk. Another problem that I understand is that they said they were trying to get multiplayer in the origanal game, and then they said it might be in an update. I think that when the game came out they knew it was coming in an expansion but wouldn't just come out and say it because they knew it may hurt sales.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Random Passerby
I see an interesting dichotomy that tends to come up in this sort of argument.

Complaint #1 is that Firaxis shoveled everything out the door too quickly and came up with a broken product that had far too many untested features.

Complaint #2 is that Firaxis was holding back too much and withheld too many features to develop them farther for further product expansions.

OK, look--if you eat the cake, then you're not gonna have no cake any more. Is that plain enough for you?

Ok, either Firaxis is very bad at making games, or they choose to withold features so that they can get more money. I personally believe the latter as opposed to the former (as they HAVE made good games before, and they ARE out for a large profit)

When people argue, you'll find that as a whole there are many contradictions. Its the contradiction you subscribe to that counts.

[wervdon]

(This may sound Coracle, so beware)

It doesn't really, you don't seem to be posting just to get a reaction out of people

I'm not buying it personally because it just doesnt have the bang for the buck.

What I actually wanted to respond to. Same here I very seriously doubt I play multiplayer. The other features are alright, but not worth $30 to me. Also, with my impending graduation, my game funds are rather limited, so I have to make a choice between ptw or moo3, and well moo3 definately looks like more bang for the buck as you put it Not to insult firaxis though, civ3 (even in the form it shipped, but especially with 1.29) was alot of bang for the buck....my guess is for me that it didnt even end up costing 20 cents per hour of time I spent playing it

many things probably weren't implimented here so that they can be put into the next (and possibly third, fourth) expansion.

While, I do agree that they probally intended to do an expansion from day1, I dont think they intentionally made an inferior product to do so. As a programmer myself, I know the biggest limitation in what you can do is time. They could not of published civ3 with the same feature set as ptw without delaying it until about now anyways. I don't know about you, but ive had fun with civ3 over the last year, so im not wishing they had delayed it Also just throwing a bunch of additional programmers on the team wouldn't necessarily speed it up alot (even if they could afford it) since you also increase the management complexity with larger teams.

Has the UN been upgraded? Is there diplomacy in the editor? How about that combat system? What about that annoying feature of the editor where it just can't give you a perfect (or near perfect) map?

Hmmm, now those are some features that i'd probally pay $30 for, hopefully in a gold edition that comes with the ptw features too :P Cept for the last part about the "perfect" map, I dont know what you mean by that. The other big thing id like to see is enhanced diplomacy and better espionage. Such as spy missions to create wars between rivals, or the diplomacy option from smac where you could get two civs to call off their war.

-----
Anyways, that might of made me come off as a firaxis apologist, but I really can't fault them for how they did civ3. It certainely had its flaws, but all in all it was definately worth paying for in my opinion at least. And I wish I could say the same thing about ptw, but from the stuff I've seen I can't unless your really into multiplayer :P

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Tassadar5000
(This may sound Coracle, so beware)

I'm not buying it personally because it just doesnt have the bang for the buck. New civs, MP (which in all likelyhood I'll never use), new map features, some new units, and more things to build just aren't worth it to me because they just dont change (in a major way) the way the game feels and plays...

Many of the problems I had with the first game won't be corrected, and many things probably weren't implimented here so that they can be put into the next (and possibly third, fourth) expansion. Has the UN been upgraded? Is there diplomacy in the editor? How about that combat system? What about that annoying feature of the editor where it just can't give you a perfect (or near perfect) map?

Also....I just have a moral thing against companies who are blatantly holding things back simply to milk more money out. Yes, they are out to get money and yes, they do need money to pay their bills...But I do think Civ3 generated enough money. Quite a few games have not gotten to that yet the developers are still able to pay their bills...So to me, PtW seems so held back as if their going for another expansion pack so they can milk 100+ out of everyone. And I just dont hold a company like that in high regard.

But I suppose that's just me, because apparently there are many people who will be buying it. I just won't be one of them.

Tass, you seem to obsessed with sounding like Coracle... But I believe that your reasoning is pretty... yes, reasonable... even if I do not buy it.

Being a businessman myself, I have learnt something... The profit/income never gets high enough. You can always "accomodate" some extra cash. Thinking of how much money company A made selling product B is misleading... it is much like trying to enforce a universal justice throughout the world (as if there was one...). What matters for me is whether the extra features are worth the extra bucks... For me, they are, I will get PtW the first day it is out... but then the measly $30 they plan to sell PtW for is pretty little money for me, which may not be the case for others...

All I want to say is: it's fine to consider PtW a bad deal and not buy the XP. But I doubt it is possible to reasonably argue that what Firaxis does is evil, unfair, greedy, not moral, and whatnot (and do not forget that it is not Firaxis in the first place, it's Infogreed... err... Infograb... uh?!? Those guys need lots of money, believe me... ).

Also, knowing what you think/feel about Civ3 from your past posts, I doubt that anything called an expansion pack might make the game viable for you. I can't think of many XPs that seriously changed/improved a game... can you? My bet is that you will have to wait for Civ4...

[Random Passerby]

To the credit of Firaxis's detractors, none that I know of actually go so far as to make both complaints themselves. However, the fact that both such mutually exclusive complaints exist in significant amounts undermines both positions,

To clarify, an example: It's, say, August or September of last year. Firaxis is slaving away at [feature X] but isn't as far as they'd like to be and don't have time to get [feature X] fully implemented, tested, and ironed out. They have three options:

1. They can cut corners and rush through the development and release it as is, knowing they can patch it later. This leads to Complaint #1.

2. They can quietly drop it from the feature list and develop it later when they have the time to complete it in full, knowing that they're probably releasing an expansion pack anyways. This leads to Complaint #2.

3. They can give up on releasing the game on time and push back the launch date another quarter. This, of course, leads to its own school of complaint, which to my knowledge CivIII didn't see much of and definitely doesn't seem to still be around nowadays.

Call me naive, but I'm perfectly willing to believe that the primary (by far) reason so many features didn't make the original release was time constraints. Given the large number of issues found in features that DID make the initial release, I find it hard to believe that Firaxis deliberately held back any working (or at least workable) features--if they couldn't get what they did end up delivering up to spec in time, why assume that they could have done so much more? This standpoint almost stands to reason that they deliberately sabotaged some of their minor features to give the game an artificial feeling of being "rushed", thus disguising the fact that they were secretly "holding back" features.

[Nubclear]

Aaaah! So many responses......I'm not going to take the time to respond to each and every one of them I'm just not buying PtW....That's just me. So, no need to defend your positions. Whatever lets you have fun is perfectly alright with me, I dont see the need to MAKE you not like it. Just responding to a post.

And vod: I slap that on there just in case I say a few things or someone mistakens my voice or what not....Just like if you read the EULA, they say they can't be held responsible...

[werdhertz]

Originally posted by nbarclay


The options, many of which involve things like dishonesty, ganging up on the leader just to stop him from winning, and making sure if you go down, your hated rival goes down with you. There are quite a few things in human behavior that I can do just fine without. And that's even aside from how horrifically slow Civ 3 would be as a multi-player game if players don't choose rules and victory conditions that turn it into something else.

Nathan

How can you say that? The idea of multiplayer is to play against people you know, not perfect strangers like say is acceptable with a FPS game. Multiplayer with Civ3, while setting up games in either one of these forums or with your friends offline, is almost SURE to be a heck of a lot of fun without fearing the 'quit before the finish' and 'constant archer rushes' etc.

Edited to add -- Sure the games are gonna last awhile, the SINGLE player games last awhile if you dont play it all day. Thats why you set up dates to continue playing, and thats why youd set up games instead of using something like say random Game Spy.

Plus, dishonesty/backstabbing, ganging up, doing shiesty deals, setting up more complicated deals than ROP and MPP etc, are the funnest part of playing against humans. Spy missions will be advanced by theyre own without even needing new options. What happens when you play 2 human Civs against each other? or while doing this, the 2 Civs are contacting each other and informing each other about the attempt at dishonesty on youre part and leading you along by the tail?

I honestly cannot wait for multiplayer, as i stated before, The possibilities, in my opinion, are near infinit if you dont go about it like youre generic FPS.

[Cidifer]

werdhertz I can assure you that's not how most people will play (though those people who don't may not play it very long), believe it or not most Civ3 players don't frequent this forum, and they still wont when PTW comes out. The casual player doesn't want to have to go onto a forum and spend a long time getting people to join a game, and he really doesn't want to spend weeks making friends just to play a good game. However I think alot of these casual gamers will get discouraged and stop playing, others will probably find forums like this and make friends.

My point is most people wont come into this game with lots of friends to play with so why should that be "the idea of multiplayer?" It doesn't make sense for thousands or 10's of thousands of people, why would anyone agree with that thinking? Personally if I play I'll only play with my friends, but I know alot of people will just be playing with strangers and they'll hate it and regret it, I only hope they will wait to see what people say about the game before buying. I know there is nothing I hate more then a game I wasted money on then played once or twice.

P.S. I am ofcourse talking about those players who'll be getting it mostly for multiplayer so nobody say "but you get 8 new civs too" to me.

[werdhertz]

True, it probably wont be the greatest investment for people to buy the game for multiplayer than discover people quit before 1000 AD.

You dont need a whole ton of friends that like to play it, I myself only have 1 other friend, who is offline, that enjoys it. Even with just one person, in my opinion, wille be rather fun to engage AI civs with. I suppose if multiplayer isnt youre idea of fun than it wouldnt be, of course.

But why should that detract the fun I could have playing it? A lot of people are saying its going to be a waste of money, which it wont be if you utilize it to its full potential, like anything. MY point is, saying multiplayer is going to be useless, a waste of money, and just a way for another corporation to get its greasy fingers on more money is not only ignorant but rather dumb as well.

[Cidifer]

who can say how MP will turn out? all I know is how other players will act (as they have said on these forums, and how they have acted in SP) i know there are quite a few people here who would back stab you, this could maybe have been less sever if there was some type of joint or Co-Op victory mode. EDIT: that's why I plan on playing only with people I know, though I may try MP once all the people who are there to cause trouble are tired with it. Also it's harder to get a game with 1 or 2 friends then with thousands of strangers.

Plus everyone here is speaking for themselves, I didn't see anyone saying that it would be worthless to everyone, maybe I missed it.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by Random Passerby
3. They can give up on releasing the game on time and push back the launch date another quarter. This, of course, leads to its own school of complaint, which to my knowledge CivIII didn't see much of and definitely doesn't seem to still be around nowadays.

This was probably not an option for Firaxis. Infogrames, who was footing the bill for development and hoping to make their money back last year probably said something along the line of "You will ship it in time for Christmas, or we will ship it".

Not all development decision are made by the actual developers. The publishers who control the money, marketing, and distribution channels have a lot to say about what goes in a product and it's schedules.

[miccofl]

I am going to by PTW if only to take the game to the next level. Email games on gigantic maps, hot-seat games (preferably with a hot seat-cover ,) pseudo-real-time multi-player games, being able to set game-year and years per turn, new civs and the ability to add even more, new units, better graphics, etc. are just perks for keeping my software current.

To those who complain that “Firaxis promised us this or that in the original CivIII game and it didn’t come with it,” I have but one question. On the day of CivIII’s release, did Firaxis claim anywhere (advertising, the official site, the box, etc.) that those features were included with the release? If they had, people would be suing them left and right.

Promises; My ex-wife once promised me she had paid the telephone bill. I discovered the phone had been disconnected when I tried to call the electric company to see why the electric was off.
Former US President Bush once gave us the promise: “Read my lips, no new taxes,” we all know what happened there.
In 1984 Bill Gates promised us that 640 KB (yes, that’s a K) of RAM would be more than any computer could ever use, as I sit thinking about buying two more 512MB RAM chips to go with the 512MB I am already using, I have to laugh.

One more thought for the complainers; after reviewing the game manual and other documentation and determining that what you believed was to be included was not, you could have declined acceptance of the EULA and returned the game to the manufacturer for a full refund of the purchase price. This is a little known (since no-one ever reads EULA’s) but standard policy for all reputable software companies.

[WarpStorm]

For those who didn't read it the first time they pressed 'I Accept'


If You do not agree to the terms of this Agreement, do not download or install the Software and promptly return the entire Package to the place You obtained it for a full refund. If you should have any difficulty in obtaining such refund, please contact Infogrames Interactive Technical Support at 425-951-7108. Failure to return the entire Package within 30 days of the purchase date shall be presumed to constitute acceptance of the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

[Theseus]

I'm buying it... trade / diplo status and Med Infantry are enough for me.

As to the whole incremental development debate, all I can say is get ready for the brave new world. ALL software will be delivered this way from now on... look at what MS is doing with corporate licensing for Office. I actually believe in the model too, as, just as for Civ3, the ongoing interaction between the developers and the community allow for better course-adjustment along the way.

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by Theseus
I'm buying it... trade / diplo status

If your talking about the editor....IIRC, Firaxis specifically addressed the issue saying that they wouldnt be in...

[Theseus]

Nope, the improved visibility of current deals in the foreign advisor.

Re the lack of defined AI-AI diplo relations in scenarios, I agree, that really sucks. If I had to guess as to the one improvement (i.e., non-fix) that Firaxis will put into a PTW patch, that'll be it...

[Solver]

Why the fuss about the Editor? What I wanted to have in it is the ability to change the imbalances I find in the game - something that I got, I now beefed up the weaker units how I wanted them to.

I know it won't change the game because PtW is an expansion. Expansions are supposed to add more stuff to the game (like civs), not change the way it plays. Like, SMAX added 8 new interesting factions, quite some new units and techs, but it basically was much the same game - the way it's supposed to be.

[Cidifer]

solver are you just talking? I really don't get your 2nd paragraphs point? If it's also about the editor then how would the editor being improved change the game? if it's not about the editor what's it about? is this just a general statement? I really don't get your possition. What I mean is, is this a reason why you will buy the expansion or why you wont? Just curious becuase I didn't see anyone (on this page anyway) say that an expansion should drastically change a game.