What is the worst thing in each Civ game?

Optimizer · January 18, 2003, 21:03

As a complement to the other thread I started...

Civ 1: Too unbalanced.
Civ 2: No city view animations, no replay
Civ 3: All the bugs in the original edition.
SMAC: The abstract science-fiction environment. Well, it is a scifi game, but anyway...

War4ever · January 18, 2003, 21:07

civ1 phalanx def battleship
civ2 no replay, hg ruins the game
civ3 massive lame units can def and do defeat superior firepower with ease.. not totally realistic, i can see this in a skirmist, but come one

smac, too dark and dreary

Mark_Everson · January 18, 2003, 22:28

Civ 1: Lousy AI
Civ 2: Lousy AI
SMAC: Lousy AI
Civ 3: Hey, at least the AI is better. . .

Guess what my favorite axe to grind is.

Method · January 18, 2003, 23:24

civ1: unbalanced
civ2...don't remeber. i didn't pay attention to such things back then. i thought it was perfect

SMAC: the AI, and the numerous bugs
Civ3: everything
ctp:havnt played

HolyWarrior · January 18, 2003, 23:46

All civ3 games (and SMAC as well), that Communism is presented as a civilization advance.

Cyclotron · January 19, 2003, 00:06

Civ1: No hit points
Civ2: Caravans were annoying, and spies were overpowered.
CTP: I hated almost everything. For an example, though, we'll say that I hated the way my man-o-war or whatnot was sunk by an abolishionist.
Civ3: You can't program civ relations in scenarios, and the unit graphics are a pain to edit.

alva · January 19, 2003, 00:23

smac : no connection to it ( tech tree )
civ III : not enough strategic choices.

Maquiladora · January 19, 2003, 00:58

civ2: ICS, settlers, losing a load of units by losing one defender.
civ3: ICS, Culture, workers, no ZOCs
CtP2: MP Rush-buy bug, almost worthless trade system
SMAC: Why did they choose those colours?

Sharpe · January 19, 2003, 01:11

Civ 1 - phalanx beating tanks and "I hate when the computer players fortify next to my cities"
Civ 2 - spies overpowered, ICS (by humans)
SMAC/X - poor AI decisions
CTP series - slavers, etc. are too overpowered
Civ 3 - not much variety in choices, reemergence of spearman beat tanks possibility, failure to get rid of ICS

VJ · January 19, 2003, 03:51

Civ 1 - Militiary units

Civ 2 - Lousy AI, easy ways to use 'bugs' of it to your favour.
SMAC - AI was not using the new features, therefore it got crushed
CTP - Too much micromanaging, bad goverment models, pathetic endgame techs
CTP2 & SMAX - Bugs, bugs, bugs...
Civ 3 - Every new feature seems to be skrewed, in one way or another.
Predictable AI cheats make it boring.

Solver · January 19, 2003, 07:55

Civ 1 - phalanx. vs battleship, annoying Caravans.
Civ 2 - still annoying Caravans, isometric view, fundamentalism, overpowered spies, stupid AI.
Civ 3 - lots of useless units, screwed up modern age.
SMAC - bad AI, no rewriting history feeling, some balance issues.
CtP1 - London's Exchange makes you a winner, bugs, weak diplomacy.
CtP2 - no matter what, has to be modded to be playable, PBEM doesn't work, AI is invisible. Great when modded.

Alex · January 19, 2003, 13:11

Civ1 - phalanx vs. battleships (duh!)
Civ2 - lousy AI, overpowered spies
SMAC - Nothing. It is perfect.

Ok, lousy AI...
CTP2 (never played the first one) - unplayable in its original form
Civ3 - the feeling that it is a step back with respect to SMAC. Ok, the AI is better...

moomin · January 19, 2003, 14:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Civ 1: Lousy AI
Civ 2: Lousy AI
SMAC: Lousy AI
Civ 3: Hey, at least the AI is better. . .

Guess what my favorite axe to grind is.

Mark, back when Civ3 was new and Poly flame wars where hot, a gent called Analyst Redux did a tremendous piece of work on dissecting the Civ3 AI - I'm too lazy to search for it now, but do it if you're interested in the Civ3 AI and how it differs from previous releases. It was great stuff.

Nikolai · January 19, 2003, 14:51

Civ1: Too random what military unit wins
Civ2: All those nasty pop-ups!
Civ3: Culture flipping when at war and half of your country's army in the flipping city.
SMAC: Add-on destroyed much of the original feeling. OK, not actually a feature, but...

Sandman · January 19, 2003, 15:09

Civ: Enemy fortifying next to my city.
Civ2: Inflexible city radius
SMAC: Utterly crud graphics; some of it looked like placeholder art.
Civ3: Bland and undifferentiated map

Immortal Wombat · January 19, 2003, 15:16

Abolitionists have 0 attack... and there wasn't a man-o-war unit. But whatever

Oh, and "AI" for all Civ games.

Mark_Everson · January 19, 2003, 15:48

Quote:

Originally posted by moomin

Mark, back when Civ3 was new and Poly flame wars where hot, a gent called Analyst Redux did a tremendous piece of work on dissecting the Civ3 AI - I'm too lazy to search for it now, but do it if you're interested in the Civ3 AI and how it differs from previous releases. It was great stuff.

Thanks moomin, I'll try to find it about 37 pages back. . . Too bad the #$#@% search engine only goes back about 3 months nowadays. Maybe I can get it from "all posts" in his profile.

BTW, anyone who's interested, we could Desperately use comments on the Clash Diplomacy Model. See the link to the thread in my sig.

Cyclotron · January 19, 2003, 17:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Abolitionists have 0 attack... and there wasn't a man-o-war unit. But whatever

This actually happened to me. I was attacking with two ships of the line (or men of war, I don't know what they were called, I uninstalled over a year ago), and the city I attacked was garrisonned by only 1 abolishionist. THe ship in the back row (fighting as a ranged unit) fired first, but failed to destroy the abolishionist. The end result of the battle was that one of my ships was sunk and the other was in the yellow by the time I killed that dang woman.

Dauphin · January 19, 2003, 17:59

Civ1 - Everything relating to military units. (AI fortification/Battleship vs Phalanx etc)
Civ2 - Instances where the AI acquired stealth bombers without ever having researched writing.
Civ3 - Terraforming (lack of) and technology tree mutilation.

DrSpike · January 20, 2003, 06:02

Civ1 was not balanced.

In Civ2 trade is too powerful. Lots of little bugs were never fixed as well.

Civ3 is a little mindless in combat due to the way stacking is organised. The tech model is also annoying.

SMAC: Crawlers and some air units were too powerful by far.

moomin · January 20, 2003, 17:05

Quote:

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Thanks moomin, I'll try to find it about 37 pages back. . . Too bad the #$#@% search engine only goes back about 3 months nowadays. Maybe I can get it from "all posts" in his profile.

Ah, found it. God, that entire thread was great, but this post topped it all. If Civ3 is nothing else, it's still an object lesson in designing a game around the AI limitations.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...693#post700693

Mark_Everson · January 20, 2003, 19:30

Thanks for the link moomin, an interesting read. I don't think I saw it the first time around. . . I didn't read all of it, just the page the quote was on. Sometime when I've got an hour to burn, I'll go back and hit it from page 1.

BTW, we've designed several parts of Clash to make it easier on the AI too. But not by lobotomizing the player's choices

. The economy already knows how valuable different econ development actions are in the local economy so that the AI (or the player) can automatically identify and pick from the best ones. The player can even issue orders such that they only want to build tin mines or whatever if the additional ones are providing a huge rate of return (FE 50%). That way you can automatically 'cherry-pick' the absolute best options if all you want to do is give the economy a little boost in just the right places.

LDiCesare · January 21, 2003, 17:22

civ1: AI Diplomats popping out of nowhere where the aihad only put a fortified phalanx. No stacked combat.
civ2: ToT file format being not compatible with MGE. No stacked combat.
CtP2: Lousiest AI when unmodded. Useless trade (though the system looks pretty, it just doesn't pay).
moo: Starting position is too important.
mom: Lousy AI

Gatekeeper · January 21, 2003, 20:54

Quote:

Originally posted by Big Crunch
Civ2 - Instances where the AI acquired stealth bombers without ever having researched writing.

I second that motion!

And to that end, I've gone into the RULES.TXT file and made it so that dang diplomats and spies don't have as much power — usually by reducing their movement allowance and forcing them to respect ZOCs (but I also made them able to see two tiles instead of the usual one.

Gatekeeper

alva · January 22, 2003, 03:15

Quote:

Originally posted by moomin

Ah, found it. God, that entire thread was great, but this post topped it all. If Civ3 is nothing else, it's still an object lesson in designing a game around the AI limitations.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...693#post700693

A long time since I read it, must be one of the all time best threads on Apolyton.

Thanks

Jamski · January 22, 2003, 03:58

Civ1 : Caravans (I mean it takes 100years to make this trade route?)
Civ2 : Caravans
SMAX : Crawlers
Civ3 : No Caravans/no hurring wonders with cash

Yeah, I missed a feature that drove me mad. What kind of sad sayk am I?

-Jam

Optimizer · January 22, 2003, 07:17

And now, the number of posts here have exceeded the number of post in the "What's the best thing" thread.

Are you guys pessimists, or is it easier to find drawbacks than advantages?

Jamski · January 22, 2003, 10:36

Quote:

Originally posted by Optimizer
And now, the number of posts here have exceeded the number of post in the "What's the best thing" thread.

Are you guys pessimists, or is it easier to find drawbacks than advantages?

It's always easiest to criticise. This is certain. Or maybe there are so many good things, that we cannot pick one as the best in each game...

-Jam

Dauphin · January 22, 2003, 15:19

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so therefore the best things of a game are naturally not the focus of attention.

What use is a masterfully crafted diplomacy, technology, and military set-up in the game if the AI is too dumb to let you appreciate it and there are no MP functions (*cough* Civ3 *cough*) to use it with.

Nikolai · January 22, 2003, 16:11

See it as constructive(?

) critizism that'll help the game to be better!

After all, we all like the civ genre, don't we?