PETITION: Delay Civ 4 Until Easter...Please Sign!

[Aro]

Originally posted by Spiffor



What bugs? I don't remember anything that made Conquests unplayable.

Same here.

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Spiffor



What bugs? I don't remember anything that made Conquests unplayable.

same here as well

[Robert]

I have played civilization since the beginning.
I have never played civilization anymore after cIIv got released.
I have never played cIIv anymore after cIIIv got released.

Civilization III got some issues, most of them were addressed in patches and of course later in c3c.
But cIIIv was a great game from the beginning on. Of course you have to get used to it. It was a different game then civilization II. Different graphics, you have to learn new key-codes, new rules, new strategies.
For some people that may have been too much. Which is not that strange. If people are really deep into a game (cIIv) it may be hard for them to accept a new incarnation of that game (cIIIv)
I'm a more flexible gamer myself, fortunately. Eventhough I was such a 'reliously cIIv player' I never came back to it after cIIIv.

Please don't say that all civ / cIIv fans disliked cIIIv vanilla or liked it less then cIIv.

About Yin: apparantly he is mellowing right now on his opinion on cIV.
Which shows more how he is pessimistic and negative from scratch on. He posts a PETITION TO DELAY THE GAME while he hardly knows anything about the game. (like he said himself!!)
And of course he is mellowing down now he has had to face nummerous arguments why the release of cIV looks bright.

Of course he deserves credit for being brave enough to mellow his feelings. Though it shows (again) that his prejustice and meaning are worthless. Like this poll is worthless.

And it's really really a simple game to now suddenly say the poll is tongue in cheek.

Yin, be a man and admit that your prejustice about cIV was wrong and based on nothing.
Of course you may still have issues. We all have issues. The perfect game does not exist. And it's never possible to satisfy everybody.

You know that.
Now be a man and admit that you were wrong.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Spiffor


What bugs? I don't remember anything that made Conquests unplayable.

Did I say unplayable? I am terribly sorry for this mistake. My bad. I correct myself. Conquests is playable. What I meant to say was, that it is not worth to be played. But that is of course me. Your quality standards may vary.

What concerns the bugs, there has been a long list, both here and at CFC. I am sure you can dig it out. So I will repeat only the most annoying.

First, the AI in PTW had been improved throughout patches. It did a better city spacing, it went away from checkerboard irrigation but made tile improvements better suiting the economy of the particular government, it did not waste production as often in order to build settlers, and more. All these tweaks and changes were abandonned in Conquests, because Breakaway apparently got the AI code of vanilla PTW. Or even worse: It happens often, that the Conquests AI leaves even holes in its city pattern. Something that hardly happened even in vanilla Civ3.

Second, a very annoying bug, the stealth unit bug. If one side ran by mistake into an invisible unit of another, it resulted in a declaration of war. Better known as sub bug. The standard response of the fanbois was, of course, "I don't care, I don't build subs." But it did not concern only subs. It affected all stealth units. Including those in the conquests scenarios, the bread and butter of the expansion. I have seen multiple times settler/spearman duos running into assassins, of which the AI always built an armada. Instant war, even between historical allies. Very annoying. Many players did not build stealth units because of it.

Units with hidden nationalities were treated not better. If you dared to repair an injured privateer in one of your harbors and the AI had a ship in range, it attacked instantly (mind you it can see all... in this light the stealth unit bug is even more mysterious). The loss of the privateer would be no big deal. The declaration of war bound to it however is. Now you could say, it's historically correct, privateers were hunted. True. But I doubt, that the French or Spaniards would have attacked an English privateer in the port of Plymouth. Same happened, if you tried to cover an own transport vessel with a privateer. Sigh. Another unit not worth to be built, a pity, since the enslavement thing was actually a good feature. By the way, this bug may be not Conquests specific. It was however especially visible in Conquests, due to the enslavement and the resulting number of privateers in the seas.

Next, barbarians. Kind of lame in vanilla Civ3. Very predictable. Went straight forward toward the next unit and attacked instantly. A spearman, fortified on a mountain, could take care of a whole region and be promoted to elite in no time. Place another, and have over time all your spearmen promoted to veterans and elites only thank barbarians. Now came PtW, and a great improvement in barbarian tactics. Boy, were they a nuisance. Stealthy, sneeky, avoiding the guards and going straight for the soft targets. Especially tough, after they got mounted units. Great work, Soren , I salute you, indeed! Now came Breakaway and broke it away. In Conquests, barbarians are even more lame than in Civ3. They just lump together somewhere and do nothing at all. They wait, until YOU attack them. If you approach a unit not in NW-SE direction, they will not harm it. If you approach in NW-SE direction, they will inevitably attack. Wonderful, predictability is back, even improved! Of course you will put only high defense, full health units in this direction. And no, NoAIPatrol=0 (or whatever that option was called) does not help.

There was a whole lot of other bugs and nuisances. Resource scarcity (yes, it is a bug, even though some like it). Imbalances up to uselessness with the newly introduced units. And the corruption problem the AI faced was "fixed" how? By improving the AI? Au contraire. By dumbing down the game.

Mind you, that most of these problems affect mostly the AI. For multiplayer games, Conquests is actually better than even PtW. A pity, that the gist of the expansion, the conquest scenarios were meant to be played against the AI. Most of them are horribly imbalanced for multiplayer.

But if it comes to games against the AI, PtW is the best Civ3 you can get.

[Modo44]

You forgot the freakin' Armies that just went out of use for the AI when Conquests came around.

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
And no, NoAIPatrol=0 (or whatever that option was called) does not help.

Please explain. It seems to work, as far as I can tell.

[Harovan]

I "forgot" a lot of things. Mainly because I can't be bothered to write a novel here.

Yes, armies. Or the fact, that while Industrious got gimped (which is good), with Agricultural a new über trait was created. It was meant as gamble. But gamble traits like expansionist and agricultural are horrible for MP games, because they either put that player at advantage or disadvantage over others - both imbalance the particular game. And since MP is the only good purpose for C3C... I have seen restart requests in PBEM games, because some "agri" boy had no water. By the way, seafaring is also far from being balanced.

What concerns NoAIPatrol, well, they may patrol now, at least to some degree. But they still don't attack, except for that one NW-SE direction, or if an unguarded soft target is in one-turn reach (if horsemen). They are far from their PtW smartness.

[Dis]

how is agricultural a gamble?

agricultural is a great trait, I agree. Almost too powerful. It's consistantly powerful, that's why it's not a gamble. You don't need to be next to water. Agricultural also works well in deserts.

[Robert]

Of course you can focus on the negative things.
I'd rather focus on the positive things. cIIIv / c3c was a great game, is a great game. It has some flaws and problems (as if anything is perfect)

Some people prefer to talk about the problems all day long. I think it doesn't make your life more worthwile.

civ1 got a huge major problem.
When my civ became to big and got too much people, the map became distorted. The top of the map got covered with strange tiles with food over 99 and polution. That always happened. And it became worse and worse.

That doesn't mean that civ1 sucked.
civ1 was a great game!

civ2 had flaws as well.
When I was playing multiplayer games and one of my opponents took my capital, my entire civilization would split in two parts. That sucked big time and always was the end of the game. Losing your half empire that easily really sucks.

does that make civ2 a bad game? Should I continue to voice negative opinions on civ2 for that reason? Of course not.

Games like civ, civ2 and civ3 should receive very positive opinions, why? Because they're games that achive it to have players play it for YEARS!
I am still playing civilization III 4 years after it was released. That's amazing, and many many gamers are with me.

How many games achived that?
Why do people prefer to keep on badmouthing games for such a long time? For sure while apparantly the game proved itself?

I don't understand where this urge comes from?
I think people can't stand it that a game is well received by others and will keep on complaining about the game as long as people enjoy it.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Dis
how is agricultural a gamble?

agricultural is a great trait, I agree. Almost too powerful. It's consistantly powerful, that's why it's not a gamble. You don't need to be next to water. Agricultural also works well in deserts.

In a nutshell: If you are next to fresh water, it gives you a kickstart at least as powerful as a spare settler. If you do not have water in reach, it puts you at disadvantage, because it does not give you any benefit, while other traits do. Imbalances are very bad for multiplayer.

That you can irrigate deserts for one more food is for the early game (where it matters most) useless, except for some special cases. Early cities are underpopulated and you can almost always avoid to work on deserts.

[Boris Godunov]

If Civ4 si done in November, then they should release in November, simple as that. Letting it sit on the shelf until Easter would just be losing them money.

Yin: If you want a new game that isn't "warmed-over" (wtf does that really mean, anyway?), then don't buy a sequel to a game. Being a franchise, Civ has to adhere to a basic form of gameplay. Otherwise, it's not Civ any more. Whining about how the next Civ game isn't going to be a non-Civ game is nonsensical.

[Sabre2th]

Never did I say that nobody liked or that they shouldn't like Civ3. I didn't mean to imply that all people that played 1/2 necessarily had issues with it. All I said is that Civ3 didn't have the impact or immersiveness Civ1/2 did.

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by Aro
"If your first taste of Music was rock'n'roll, then I don't expect you to fully grasp what people mean by "decadence of Music"

My music preferences not withstanding, I have no problem seeing what people mean by "decadence of music."

Because of the problems they had during development, Civ3 fell short of Firaxis's own expectations and those of much of the community. The decrease of features and the number of bugs demonstrate that. Was Civ3 a good game? Yes. Did it have as big of an impact as people wanted/Firaxis intended? No.

[yin26]

Boris:

Since you seem to have a keen sense of curiosity and attention to detail, here you go: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionar...va=warmed+over

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by yin26
Boris:

Since you seem to have a keen sense of curiosity and attention to detail, here you go: http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionar...va=warmed+over

The point was that it's a vague term that one can construe to mean anything that's carried over from a previous incarnation. It's an utterly useless term when discussing a franchise like Civ. If you don't want "warmed-over," then go find another franchise, simple as that.

[yin26]

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=groupthink