Another unrealistic feature of Civ3

epics · January 23, 2003, 10:06

1)As we all know, in Civilization 3, the more cities you have the more income you gain and thus you are more powerfull, more advanced, more productive and so on...

But if you look onto real world it doesm't realy work like that.
We have many small countries whitch are very advanced ane organized. And also we have many big countries whitch are realy pure organized, are behind in since, and are very poor. The key to power and wealth in real world is infrastructure and administration. Why isn't it inculded in Civ3??!!

In some way it was soluted in CtP with it's Point Of Society Works (I don't remember what was it called but it replaces Worker - i.e. Roads, Irrigation, Mines).
In Civ3 it should be included some expences on cities and citizens, on maintenance of roads, mines etc.

2)Another thing - our luxuries we should sell in our country and that would give us income and happy faces, and the rest we could sell to other countries. But selling would be not the way it is now. The exploitation of luxuries (and strategic resources) should go like that: we find a luxurie, we build there some kind of extracting point and than take it to our capitol. But it wolud be different way of resources: we don't have one, two or three etc. sources of oil (or enything alse) but we have tons (litres) of that resource. And we could sell i.e. 2000 litres of oil per turn to America: they could sell it to citizens (who would be unhappy if they wouldn't have that resource) or give it to military units (units should have consumption of petrol per turn).

Sorry for the grammar

Datajack Franit · January 23, 2003, 11:03

Let's wait for Civ25

Maquiladora · January 23, 2003, 12:51

Its called Public Works (PW) and its no use telling this lot, theyd rather build and push around 100 workers, than set a tax based on production output.

Albert · January 23, 2003, 13:31

Quote:

Originally posted by epics
But if you look onto real world it doesm't realy work like that.
We have many small countries whitch are very advanced ane organized. And also we have many big countries whitch are realy pure organized, are behind in since, and are very poor. The key to power and wealth in real world is infrastructure and administration. Why isn't it inculded in Civ3??!!

I don`t totaly agree with that. The key to power and wealth is based on having something the others want.
If you have oil, you get money, when you get money, you get infrastructure and administration.
small countries in the world without anyting to give, is countries noone wants to trade with, so they can as well wipe them out.

the gulf war is a good exapmle. saddam tried to get the oil of kuwait, but the US was already trading with them, so they beat the sh*t out of saddam.
But the US can not go to war against kuwait to get all hte oil, because they will have the whole arab world agaisnt them.

Look at sierra leone. dont have anything, in other words. Who cares about them.

in civ 3, if you have all the oil resources, and is allied with the big civs, you can easaly trade oil for any tech or money you want.

Maquiladora · January 23, 2003, 14:08

So why dont the Arabs rule the world? If there has to be only one key to world power, its lots of land, fertile land.

Brizey · January 23, 2003, 16:05

epics:

I think you are confusing per captia wealth with aggregate wealth. The best illustrative example is India. The average Indian is very poor, yet the society as a whole is relatively powerful. China is another good example. India and China are like a Civ3 civilization that is very large and produces well, but has a lot of unhappy and content citizens.

The opposite is a place like Luxembourg, which has happy citizens, but little aggregate power.

WarpStorm · January 23, 2003, 18:37

Infrastructure in the game is modeled as roads and structures in the cities. If you just colonized without developing your cities you'd have a high population but no wealth or productivity.

As far as Public Works go, yes, I'd rather have a hundred workers. 90 or so will be given semi-automated tasks like patrol for pollution or railroad to a specified tile, or sometimes even develop this city. The other 10 will be used for high priority tasks. This is in the late game, for most of the game I limit my manually controlled owrkers to about 10-15.

Cyclotron · January 23, 2003, 20:05

Quote:

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Its called Public Works (PW) and its no use telling this lot, theyd rather build and push around 100 workers, than set a tax based on production output.

Whoohoo!

Dis · January 23, 2003, 22:27

some good ideas. infrastructure should improve an economy better than just plopping down cities. I definately agree.

WarpStorm · January 23, 2003, 22:41

Infrastructure does improve your economy. My economy increases with every road I build.

Dis · January 24, 2003, 00:08

actually I should revise my post. Building cities does improve your economy. I can usually increase by 1 or 2 gold.

But it usually isn't enough to just build cities. you need roads to get any kind of economy going.

Theseus · January 24, 2003, 00:43

I disagree with epics original premise.

Towns / cities in and of themselves are not that great (can we say "tundra piece'o sh-t")... it is rather the quality of 'building' that determines economic / scientific output. Which, btw, is analogous to RL. Works for me.

Jaybe · January 24, 2003, 02:27

The elegance of a strategic game design lies in designing the concepts so that all the little details are covered in the overall effect (i.e., it comes out in the wash). In that, Civ3 does a commendable job barring further refinement of the AI.

It would be nice if we had the option to delve into more details of commerce and combat, but then there would be the issue of getting the AI to be able to handle it competently. Also, such an option would probably have to be a game preference and players would balk at having to handle the details all game long.

Dis · January 24, 2003, 02:44

There are many ways to improve this game. But since they were aiming to make the game simpler, that is not possible.

Having a more realistic transportation model would be nice. And would further reward better infrastructure.

epics · January 24, 2003, 03:38

Albert:
small countries like Switzerland (Szwajcaria

), Nederland, Belgium, Luxemburg or some bigger like Irland have little or none of natural resources which they could trade to others and they are well organized and wealthy.

Oh yes another thing: about roads, in Real Life do you get higher profit from havin more roads all around cities? I think one road connected to city in Civ3 should improve its income, but only one, not 21 roads!!!

randomhero · January 24, 2003, 04:12

Szwajcaria przecierz produkuje scyzoryki

bongo · January 24, 2003, 05:50

epics , the idea is that roads encourages trade. Having 20 roads around a city makes sense if you think about those tiles as 20 km2 of land filled with villages and suburbs.

Mazarin · January 24, 2003, 05:53

I do agree that infrastructure should be more important in civ3...but a small empire isn't that bad...as long as OCC wins are possible, I believe in the power of infrastructure

bongo · January 24, 2003, 06:03

Infrastructure(buildings) ARE important. Try managing 20+ cities without them.

Jamski · January 24, 2003, 06:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Mazarin
I do agree that infrastructure should be more important in civ3...but a small empire isn't that bad...as long as OCC wins are possible, I believe in the power of infrastructure

Sure, a OCC is VERY possible in Civ3 due to the way it's set up. If I only want to play a short game, then its fun to be Luxemborg ! Its possible to make one city as good as a whole AI empire, just through having perfect infrastructure. You only have big problems if you can't get iron and coal - I NEED my railways

-Jam

Mazarin · January 24, 2003, 06:25

buy them...as you only have one city, you can get them very cheap (as well as luxuries btw)...I played a OCC on the last CivFanatics GOTM and had to buy coal to get enough production for the UN....but you event don't need this, if you want to make 20k culture

Jamski · January 24, 2003, 06:43

If only they would sell them to me (revenge for the last game where I had "all the coal in the world" tm)

-Jam

epics · January 24, 2003, 08:36

what does OCC means????

randomhero:
no masz racje, ale zapomnia³es jeszcze o zegarkach

bongo · January 24, 2003, 09:12

OCC = One City Challenge. To win the game with only one city.

HolyWarrior · January 24, 2003, 21:49

So you have to raze any conquered cities?

CiverDan · January 24, 2003, 22:38

I think the problem here is that the game does not currectly model the actual population densitities obseved on planet Earth. I haven't tested this, but I think the highest total population in a random/Earth civ3 game is between 500 million and 1 billion. Less than 20% and possibly as low as 10% of the actual Earth population. The game also dont not make it worthwhile to have 30+ size cities. In the game u lose production, gain pollution, and the entertainers do not provide suffient benefit to justify making the cities larger. To solve this is simple: Increase the value that taxman/scientists can provide with certain techs (like the DyP scenerio). Here's another idea. Have a specialist which produces SHIELDS, but only allow these specialists in cities 20+. Make modern ears costs higher to offset additional shields.

randomhero · January 25, 2003, 01:51

epics:

no i przeciez zapomnielismy o serze!

We better stop this.

Cyclotron · January 25, 2003, 02:31

Quote:

Originally posted by HolyWarrior
So you have to raze any conquered cities?

No, you don't conquer any cities.

Mazarin · January 25, 2003, 08:38

Quote:

No, you don't conquer any cities.

Conquest OCCs on small maps are great fun

Emma · January 25, 2003, 13:53

well if your on about how civ is unrealistic... just think of the tech tree. the wheel for example.
it was only in columbus' time that the wheel came to the americas, asia, japan, china, india, africa. only europe and arabia had the wheel.
if you want it realistic then you need civ specific techs.

but then civ would be no fun, as it's all about what would be if....