Why did Firaxis leave SE out of civ3?

The diplomat · November 25, 2002, 18:00

In my opinion, SMAC's Social Engineering was one of it's coolest new features.

Does anyone know why SE was left out of civ3? Was it too hard to implement because of the fundamental differences between civ3 and SMAC? Or did Firaxis simply not have enough time?

I was just wondering if SE was left out because of philosophical, technical or perhaps marketing reasons.

(I can say one thing for sure: I will not buy civ4 unless it has some form of SE!)

Alex · November 25, 2002, 18:32

The SE concept, although cool, does not fit in the historical setting of Civ, IMHO. Remember, the SE choices in SMAC revolve around ideology, and this is not the same as government choices.

What Civ3 desperately needs is more government choices.

Madine · November 25, 2002, 18:34

My guess would be they wanted to focus more on other aspects of the game.

The diplomat · November 25, 2002, 18:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Alexnm
The SE concept, although cool, does not fit in the historical setting of Civ, IMHO. Remember, the SE choices in SMAC revolve around ideology, and this is not the same as government choices.

With all due respect, I disagree. History is full of ideology. So why would different ideologies not fit a game because it is historical?

Obviously, you would not have the same SE choices as in SMAC. The future societies certainly would not belong. But I am sure you could find plenty of historical SE choices that would fit civ3.

Quote:

What Civ3 desperately needs is more government choices.

True. One way of doing this, might be to for government choices have SE type effects. You could have a whole bunch of government choices that would essentially be equivalent to different SE combinations. They would have game bonuses as if the player had picked different combinations of SE choices.

ChairmanYang · November 25, 2002, 19:35

I concur on the first matter, Social enginering was very interesting and more realistic than simply picking out the whole government type you wanted.

aahz_capone · November 25, 2002, 23:03

I find what y'all say all good. I'm a SMACaholic and the SE I found the best feature by far. I was miffed that civ3 didn't have trhat (or some variable). I wouldn't mind if it was even done totally differently than in SMAc as long as it had the complexity and HUGE amount of differentials that SE incorporated. There is an enormous lack of gov choices in civ3.

I've tried making all the different govs in the editor (fascism, national-socialism, fundamentalism, corporate republic, virtual democracy, whatever) but the editor just doesn't have enough variables to make any of the different enough from anything else.

I find it a shame that the system has been "dumbed down" since CTP and SMAC for various (and some viable) reason. I still think that with a game that starts as simple as civ with little options or variables in the beginning should have not end to the complexity later (for you learn that in gameplay).

Sheik · November 26, 2002, 01:10

I love a lot of things about SMAC. One thing I wish I could do with the editor is name landmarks. As for social engineering I think Alexmn is right it just wouldn't fit.

Alex · November 26, 2002, 12:52

Quote:

Originally posted by The diplomat

With all due respect, I disagree. History is full of ideology. So why would different ideologies not fit a game because it is historical?

As I said, ideology and government choice are not the same. Tyranny is hardly an ideology in itself. It is a way of ruling something, but it isn't necessarily linked to a broad view of the world or of how things should be.

Quote:

Originally posted by aaah_capone
I've tried making all the different govs in the editor (fascism, national-socialism, fundamentalism, corporate republic, virtual democracy, whatever) but the editor just doesn't have enough variables to make any of the different enough from anything else

And this is why SE would not work in Civ3. As we know, the game was "dumbed down" to appeal to a broader audience, so I think that the complexity inherent to the SE system would not fit in Civ3, as it is now.

In SMAC, every SE choice is tied to a Social concept, like "Police" or "Economy" or "Planet". These categories are sorely missing in Civ3, because the game was... "streamlined", as they like to say.

Despite this, I would also like to see something like this applied to the historical setting in a civ game. Maybe in Civ4...

Jac de Molay · November 26, 2002, 12:54

I think it could have fit with Civ3 if enough effort was made. I always though the SMAC SE was one of the more elegant features I'd seen in a game ever.

The flexibility it gave was fantastic, and it should have been worked into Civ 3.