why i didn't finish any civ-game for ages...

[slick909]

i really like civ since the original title and its the only game that i'm playing again
and again, but i must confess it'S been ages since i finished a game, simply cause its
not fun anymore when it comes to the point where you outnumber the rest of the world
economicaly and militarily. i also don't really find it satisfying playing on higher difficulty levels, cause it makes it only tough at the beginning, sometimes too tough to be fun for me, and the only thing it does is delaying the point of domination. but mostly
its just not fun at the start (especially tech race).
but there is also a atmospheric component which i'd like to be changed.
it feels the same, playing civ in ancient era and in modern era. i'd like to have much more the feeling of civ to rise, grow and prosper. the way civ handles is just in quantity, more cities, more improvements, more units, just more of everything execpt of
fun.

there some things i really would like to see changed.

in ancient era, expansion should be much more difficult.
the rise and rule mode was a good step in this direction, but i would go further.
it should only be worth founding cities at really good places.
so maybe you'd need a river or a resource to generate money. i think galciv had
a good system (bad planets lose money each turn)

so you could prevent the colonize the last free tundra square rush, which annoys
me most about civ3. your empire would be thin settled and wide spreaded, like
i think ancient empires were.

your starting location should be a really good place and give your captial a head start.
i'd like my capital to be really impressive and my other cities should need long time to nearly reach the glamour of it.

i also think your units should have some action radius, i also don't like the fact
that I meet nearly every other civ before 1 AD. the meeting every civ first rush
is unbalancing the game totally. not to mention how it influences the tech race which follows it and which is dominating gameplay till medival.

in acient era, i'd rather like to concentrate on making my frail empire learn to stand on its feet, to establish and to spread my culture, develop my military defences and to learn the basic technologies for a civilization.

every tech, every contact with a new civ should be a big thing for my civ. i want to
struggle with my economy too build wonders and not with other civs, it should be
a big effort for a civ and they shouldn't race for it as they do now.

anceint era for me is like this 'women & sale off' cliche, everybody takes what he gets,
not thinkin about if he needs it at all.

most of all i want the era atmospherically represented. i want wilderness between my cities and every road i build from city too city should be a victory for civilization against the brute reality of nature. i want too see over time how the wilderness goes back
and my empire grows together. not like the civ-map as it is now, looking like a artificial park.

in medival era i'd like many new villages to arise , there it should pay off to also
colonize spots with no really special resources. but the new villages should be vunerable
not like my big cities which are now like fortresses dominating the surrounding area.

economy should begin to develop and production capabilities should begin to rise,
and it should be a warlike time where village are burnt down regulary by enemy forces and
empires form alliances, fractions fight against each other and civs are betraying each
other having territorial wars and cities changing its owner from time to time.

in late medival there should start a colonization phase, when the better developed continents reach the lesser ones and begin colonizing, opressing and so on the less developed civs.
new cities should arise and production should grow further. my empire should begin to form
shape and turn into a real nation, with borders that will begin to exist for a long time.
industrial age will come and wars in general will change into an economical event, where
you defeat a country to opress it not to conquer it fully.

international relations should become tense and large conflicts with many countries involved should be the new kind of war. economy should become one of the most important matters.

and after the big war phase, democracy should arise and war will be fought with different
means in future. international influence will be the goal, everbody is trying to reach.

and again i want each phase of history atmospherically individual. i want to say, yes i'm
in modern age and it feels like a total different game, than playing civ in ancient age.

[Bkeela]

I think you raise some good points.

I also suffer from a loss of motivation when victory is assured. I suffer the same feeling in MoOII and SMAC. There was one turn based game I never felt this: Colonization.

Colonization had specific goals for each era. First priority was establishing towns, then you secured a good trade system, and eventually conflict between other colonies occurred. But at the very end, you had to face the final conflict with your mother country. It was a trial by fire, and very absorbing.

If only Civilization could have a similar device. Unfortunately, I think Civ 4 is just going to be a graphical update, just like all the other sequels.

[Toby Rowe]

Good points?

One of your points made me think Slick- I doubt if it will happen, but imagine your own peoples setting up villages where they wish, as your government type allows the choice (and as does history). For once we'll end up chasing the AI rather than being irritated by it, assuming the AI choices are as logical as ours. Those pesky citizens keep on deciding the grass is always greener- over there, then I have to defend them, nar, it really wouldn't be fun chasing them....

I've mused about what I want most in Civ 4: and decided that: I don't want a mad rush to build a wonder such that your entire strategy is effected by it (all of us in all 3 games- we need to bin (garbage?) this aspect, or curtail it- In Civ 3- It's too powerful)), and I do want my border respected by other nations. If these two things happen, then however awful the AI is, two major problems in the previous 3 games are solved for me me!

1) All can build all wonders, so no rush to build them first.
2) This allows the programmers to concentrate on forcing us to make a nation the people are happy to live within. If they get the AI right, then the very stroppy AI in Civ 3 will be laughed at, and quickly forgotten.


Bkleeka,

Colonization must be the game we all want updated.
That fat English King who funded my first settlement- I really wanted to say "up yours" Churchill style upon declaring independence, but the war you had to fight was the most boring aspect of it- Don't build colonies on single islands as the troops will always go to them to attack, and like Civ 3 10 years later but with more than 4MB for the AI, always knew your weakest cities.

I'd love an update to this game that used 4 MB of memory only, and cheated only because memory needed space. not as it was easier and got a product to market more quickly- that was simply all he had to make the game within.

I think it was only the war of Independence that the cheats happened, am I right?- I can't think of any play cheats at all. I still have the game on floppy. I'd love a sequel to it.

Toby

[Proteus_MST]

Slick909 makes some good points,
but as Toby points out, the thing with the villages could well turn into a mess where the computer settles without the consent of the player.

But maybe it could be made in a good way:
I assume that Cities in Civ 4 have expanding radii (maybe up to 3 or 4 tiles in each direction as the city grows larger) and has the Civ 3 system of cultural borders.
Villages could only be built by the computer and only within your cultural borders and at least 1 tile away from a large city.
They consist of the one tile where they are settled and either the 4 tiles horizontally and vertically adjacent to this tile (i.e. N,W,S,E) or all the 8 surrounding tiles (I could also imagine a system where no surrounding tile is incorporated).
You can´t build city improvements for yourself in the village, but the computer could build some of the more basic ones (like granaries) and the village also couldn´t grow more than maybe size three, but in all other aspects it behaves like a city, producing manufacture, research and food points (and it also could be renamed).
If a city radius grows into the radius of a village, this village gets incorporated into the city, i.e. the village radius is incorporated into the radius of the city and the inhabitants of the village are added into the population of the city, with the village itself disappearing from the map, maybe with just a name tag marking its former location.
This would represent the fact that during urbanisation in europe many small settlement got incorporated into larger growing cities and where from this day on just to be known as the names of a district of the larger city.

I also agree that wonders should either behave like small wonders (i.e. any nation could build one no matter if another nation already has built one) or that each nation has a special subset of wonders only this nation (or only a few nations) could build [for example pyramids could only be built by Inca, Maya, Aztecs and Egypts]).
Maybe you could even have a phase of initial creation of your civ (like in MOO) where you could spend pouints for certain aspects, like productivity, research, food production, wonders you are able to buuild during the game and other things.

As for the thing slicky mentioned about the ancient times, where no/only few nations should have contact to each other:
Maybe this could be made by just making much larger maps the standard (of course without increasing the movement rates of the units) thereby giving the units really great distances to cover to explore the map.
Maybe you could also have a different set of rules for colonization:
On the same continent you are only allowed to build a city up to a distance of maybe 5-10 tiles away from cour cultural borders.
(i.e. if you are on a small island at the beginning, you still have the chance to spread to isles outside of these 5-10 tiles from your cultural borders, as they ar not part of the same "continent")
Only after the discovery of a technology named "Colonization" you are allowed to establish cities anywhere you like.

[Toby Rowe]

Hi mate,

Once we get Civ 4, not having to run your nation on the basis of building a wonder would be good, for me not having to build any would be better- Imagine a non-cheating AI, that also doesn't need to build one- I reckon the programmers might produce the first tireme more quickly.

At the end of the day, we love the bonuses they give, but I'd prefer to keep this little nation happy. rather than lay a block of stone.

Wonders distract too much fom the ethos of how I think the Civ games should be, they do skew how you play.

I hope Civ 4 bins the concept.- That will be a real break from the series. Nation building not Pyramid building!!

Toby

[Nostromo]

The micromanagement becomes nightmarish after a while, that's what kills me and that's why I rarely finish a game. Even if there's a lot less micromanagement in Civ 3 than previous versions.

[Toby Rowe]

nostromo.

Civ 2 gave you many options in the starting screen.
Don't wanna see the "We love the King day"? No problem, switch it off. Infogrammes took away all the features in Civ 3 that Civ 2 introduced to make it a progression from Civ. Okay, that was the editor, but in Civ 2 you could simply control what was in, and what wasn't for aspects you disliked.

Games are meant to be fun, not a test of endurance. German Strategy games seem to be fixated with the "challenge" ethos over the last few years, as a result they ain't selling.

Toby

[slick909]

I doubt if it will happen, but imagine your own peoples setting up villages where they wish

If a city radius grows into the radius of a village, this village gets incorporated into the city

I never really gave much thoughts about a migration model for civ, like moo3 has. I just wanted most of the cities build in later ages (arosen by me )

but i like your idea of the villages. maybe they should be a new concept, adding money, culture, research without having to control or manage them, just as a tile improvement.

maybe your population growth could generate the villages, which you can place as you like inside your borders and maybe some of them should grow into cities after a while (like moo3 had with outposts or minor colonies).
alternately you could send a settler to upgrade your village our you could do this with spending money for development in a specific village.

[Toby Rowe]

London is a set of villages linked together.

The beginning of the city is near the Tower of London, but nearly every village that used to exist is on the London Underground map today, as the name of the village was kept alive. London Postal district borders are from the the 1930's, Even the Government hasn't kept up with the City into village spread.

If Civ 4 were to model this type of model, they'd have to do better than the British have done on their own Capital, meaning the City is organic, but governments are slow to catch up (Like admitting the size of London now!)

For me, I'd just be happy if borders were defined.

Toby