Back from Civ3...

[DickK]

Jimmytrick -- we'll probably never see the real reason(s) for Brian's exit from Firaxis in public but you could easily be right. Regardless of the details I think we're in agreement that at least part of the issue was probably a big difference between Brian's vision of Civ3 and what Sid/Firaxis/the publisher wanted.

But I don't think its any cooincidence that SMAC, Brian's last project, was expensive to implement, done in loving detail and didn't take the marketplace by storm. Just what triggered the break I don't know but something put Brian in a position where he no longer wanted to be part of Civ3. For the creator of Civ2 that can't have been easy.

[Jac de Molay]

What triggered the break was that BR probably wanted to produce a game with the lasting impact of SMAC and Civ 2, and got snowed by Firaxis who wanted to make ****e, toss-off games. Quantity over quality.

Dave

[Mongoose]

DD, that's rampant speculation. It could be the case...so could some adulturous office romance gone bad...so could any number of things.

Any support for your 'theory'?

[Jac de Molay]

Ok maybe I'm foaming at the mouth just a little

Not really a theory, just a hunch based on what I've seen.

I think civ 3 is the smoking gun. BR's departure is a bad omen of things to come, and the rough polish of Civ 3 foretells that. When you lose someone of his caliber, the entire catalog of games will feel the reverberation in the future.

[Mongoose]

lol Actually, I think you're probably close to the truth, but I've been wrong more times than I can count.

[LodeRunner]

Didn't Bruce Shelly leave the civ team to do an RTS (Age of Empires series). Maybe, Sid just can't stand the idea of rts games.

[Mongoose]

Originally posted by LodeRunner
Maybe, Sid just can't stand the idea of rts games.

I don't think that's the case. Railroad Tycoon, Gettysburg! and Antietam were all realtime. There might be others, also.

[Talent]

Okay this is the deal:
CIV3 IS total and utter ****e (our friend from Michigan is right)
yes it is...we all know that.

the question is this: is it ****e on purpose? of course it is. And yes that is speculation, everything that we discuss IS going to be rampant speculation. This is a forum, not a courtroom (I don't know about you, but I am not under oath here)

I think that the issue is this: why are we all so TICKED OFF that it's ****e? I mean, we've all purchased and played bad games before. You uninstall it and then you move on. right?

I just sat down last week and played over a few days a wonderful deity game of civ2 (just straight...with no senarios or extra frills...) and you know what? it's still a WONDERFUL game!!

SMAC is of course in a class by itself.

But CIV3 is not only a bad game. it's an insult. because it is obvious that the FIRAXIS team was lazy when making the game. (I don't know about you guys, but I don't BUY the thing about movies hindering the gameplay) Just look at the time that was put into Civ2. (Let's not even discuss the huge amount of work that was put into SMAC).

and then consider the huge amount of time that was supposedly put into CIV3; consider how long we waited...and for what?

it seems that everybody is tiptoeing around the real issue out of a misguided respect for a group of people who have let us, the true fans, down.

It's like the emperor's new clothes. Well, I'm the little kid that will stand up and say the truth:

Sid Meyer has become fat and greedy (as a certain bucanneer would probably say)

There was OBVIOUSLY no effort whatsoever put into the creation of CIV3.

CIV3 is an obvious financial tool.

Am I the only one who noticed all the glowing reviews (aparently unbiased and unsolicited) for CIV3?
suspicious? of course!

CIV3 is very simply a bad game. And the only reason it was made was to line the coffers of a greedy bunch of people.

But the thing that really angers me (and should actually anger more some of you guys than me) is that the reason why SMAC is still THE BEST game out there is because before it's creation the Firaxis team REALLY listened to the fans and to the senario creators and other talented folks out there. I am not a senario creator nor do I understand really how they are made (although I love playing them). But I do know that one of the biggest advantages of civ 2 is all the senarios that were made. This gave the firaxis team who were making SMAC a HUGE wealth of ideas and suggestions...which they used.

But do you guys remember all the CIV3 suggestions on this very website? if some of those suggestions had been used (even just half of them) now that would have been a good game!

TOO bad that Sid and his buddies have become too rich and fat to come out of their ivory tower and attempt to make a good game.

As far as I am concerned everyone is cutting them a little too much slack.

I will gladly apply the "three strikes" rule

Gettysburg : strike one.

The dinosaur game: strike two (I mean, talk about getting our hopes up!...that's what really showed me that sid was ALL talk, ALL wallet and NO integrity)

and sim golf. huh!!! what the-? : strike three.

and even after all that, I was so excited and so looking forward to CIV3...and what a dissapointment.

I have given up on Sid and his team. I will never purchase anything even vaguely associated with them.

Let's hope that BR and RoN will be more what we should expect...in the meantime, SMAC/X are still the best games out there...anyone wanta play?

later,

Talent

[Blake]

Talent, I almost entirely agree with you.

Civ3 got good reviews, because it does look quite shiny, the graphics are much better the interface is great, theres a nice wide range of civilisations and a few things to do.

Civ3 was a pretty good play the first couple of games (which presumably, is all the reviewers played). The problem is it has nowhere near the depth of SMAC, play it for a week and you realise that it's actually pretty darn boring, the gameplay is much more linear than SMAC.

I think part of the problem is we have been spoiled by SMAC, a futuretech game allows almost infinite creativity (hence a very large tech tree densely packed with goodies). The other day I was on IRC explaining to someone why Civ3 reeks and SMAC rocks, and I listed all the level 1 techs...
Industrial Base, Applied Physics, Doctrine: Mobility, Centuria Ecology, Social Pysch, Biogenetics, Information Networks, each and every one of these techs has some nifty stuff attached.
In the first level not less than 3 secret projects, 4 facilities and 4 unit components.
The second level:
Industrial Economics, Planetary Networks, Doctrine:Flexibility, Ethical Calculus, Secrets of the Human Brain, Nonlinear Mathematics, Doctrine: Loyalty, and this level is even more packed with stuff to build and do.
Not less than 2 secret projects, 4 facilities, 4 SE settings, 3 new unit components.
And all of these can be had be researching 2 or 3 techs.
To summarise, in the first two tech levels, there are 14 techs, 5 SP's, 8 facilities, 4 SE settings, 7 unit components (plus those you start with) and assorted bonuses (like trade and fungus nuts).

When you compare this to Civ3 you realise that SMAC simply has way more choices of ways to play, directions to take and strategies to pursue.

This is the main reason why SMAC is much better than Civ3 (ofcourse there is also the book of planet, blurbs, voice overs, movies etc - they are icing on the cake - I would happily play SMAC without any of those.)

I wouldn't nessecarly say that Firaxis wanted to release a worse game than SMAC, rather I feel that they had no choice, a game confined to history simply doesn't, and can't, have the depth of gameplay as a sci-fi or fantasy game.

Therfore, it was actually somewhat unreasonable to expect Civ3 to be better than SMAC game-play wise.

Other aspects, like modability, are a whole can of worms I'm not going to open (because I'm not particulary qualified to).

So, to put it quite simply, the only way Civ3 could have been better than SMAC, is if instead of Civ3 Firaxis had made SMAC2. Why didn't they? Well, it's because of what the fans wanted... more people wanted a Civ3 than SMAC2, so Civ3 was made. Also the Income/Effort ratio for Civ3 is doubtlessy better than what it would have been for SMAC2. (the old money thing).

What does this all mean? Somewhere in the second paragraph I lost the plot and started rambling, but hopefully I have explained why Civ3 actually does suck more than SMAC. (and also why, if Firaxis does come through and make SMAC2, you shouldn't boycott it just because they made Civ3 suck)

[Talent]

so what you're saying is that the reason why civ3 doesn't work is because of the historical context rather than a future one.

I disagree, because civ2 worked very well actually.

there are two things on this point:

1. the game does not necessarily need to be a recreation of history in order to be a historical game. Rather it could be a version of history (with all the plethora of possibilities attached to scenarios, etc...) all that would be needed for this would be to expand the scientific tree and the various possibilities of gameplay (governements city styles etc...) CIV CTP kind of went in that direction with there whole ecotopian concept. but not far enough.
What I mean is this: in our world the north american native civilisations were supplanted by the europeans and therefore their (ancient) technologies of ecology, recycling and equality of the sexes were lost until very recently. Also, matriarchal societies died out for patriarchal societies. there are also many tribes throughout history that (for some reason) didn't last until today that had discovered things that we only discovered later. If you base yourself on the idea that a scientific choice is also based on the kind of culture and social structure that you have...then the possibilities become endless!! If the past is considered more objectively, than we can stand in this imaginative past looking towards our present rather than simply standing in the present trying to decipher the distant past. So, if it trully was ALL the possibilities of history than one possibility could be (for example) and environmental matriarchal society in 200 BC. why not?

there are just as many possibilities in the past as there are in the future (the point is how much of your imagination are you willing to use) and for the CIV3 team the answer was NONE!

2. for me the main thing that makes CIv3 unenjoyable is not the limitations of the game but rather the emptiness of the game...there is just NOTHING THERE. even the final defeat screen is just too puerile for words. The game actually has less stuff in it than civ2 did. The jump from civnet to civ2 (and even from civ2 to test of time ) was PHENOMENAL. I feel however that Civ3 was ACTUALLY a step back.

There's also the idea of religion and culture in CIV3 which is not even considered (come on! their whole culture based on a colloseum thing is ridiculous) I am talking about culture, race, tribe, spirituality, patriotism or dissidents etc..etc... CIVCTP again had an interesting element of religion with the conversion thing but in the CIV3 world religion, thought, and cultural beliefs don't even exist!!!

and the whole leaders thing is absolutely ridiculous. Armies do not exist only when leaders appear (they become more effective when you have Alexander, Napolean or Paton at the lead. But soldiers can still organise themselves into an army without heroic figures...

But that's just it, all of CIV3's ideas are weak and not well explored and even then there aren't that many ideas there to begin with.




later,

Talent.

[Blake]

Unfortunately I havn't played Civ2 for a long time so cant make a terribly accurate comparison of Civ2 and Civ3 (altough I do remember that Civ2 was much more fun).

One thing I can say, is that strategic resources makes Civ3 less fun than Civ2, because it gives you even less options of strategies to pursue, ie you can only chariot rush IF you have a source of horses.
I would go so far as to say Civ3 would be more enjoyable without strategic resources at all. (I'm not saying there isn't a strategic resource implementation better than none at all - but Firaxis sure didn't find it).

Great leaders are possibly another, I for one would prefer no GL's at all and making it possible to form armies anytime. GL's enhancing armies would be better, but that would require rebalancing with the wonder building ability. (Firaxis chose the 'bad' way of doing armies, making them exceptional rather than the norm, this was possibly to balance the wonder building ability, in which case firaxis has it all backwards.)

The Culture model may not actually enhance gameplay in any meaningfull way. But I havn't played since the captured cities flipping back thing has been fixed, so I shouldn't comment.

The tile improvments are very boring, by this I mean a plains + farm = grassland + mine, plains + mine = forest etc. Basically it's so boring and ordinary there couldn't possibly be several dominant improvment strategies. There is pretty much only one improvment strategy, which pretty much means no strategy at all.

I *think* the main reason why Civ2 is better is it has a certain simplicity that Civ3 lacks, altough that simplicity is harder to pin down than SMAC's complexity.

But yeah, Civ3's main problem is it's feature sparse, and many of the features are gameplay-neutral (they dont actually enhance gameplay, some even damage it).

[Dranthar]

Hello,

Being a big SMAX fan (no other game has been such a threat to my education ), I've been lurkinfg about these forums for some time now, but this particular thread has sparked my interest enough to start posting.

Okay, now I've played both Civ3 and SMAX, and I can say without a doubt that SMAX is by far a better game. Why? Two broad reasons really:

1. Everything is more exagerated in SMAX. In Civ3, when you drop a nuke, you might destroy half the units there as well as kill a good chunk of the cities population. Drop a planet buster in SMAX, and you descimate EVERYTHING in its radius, as well as create your own minature ocean.
If you cause pollution in civ3, you get squares being polluted now and then (easy to fix), as well as OCCASIONALLY turning a square into desert. In SMAX, you mess with planet, it screws you around royally. Massive mindworm boils pop up and start overwhelming cities, while ocean levels start rising and consume your faction Atlantis style.
In Civ3, espionage can maybe give you some techs, or see their map, that is, assuming your not at war with them, in which case you can't do any covert operations. In SMAX, you can take over units, mind control cities, release viruses, steal techs, steal money, free conquered faction leaders, and destroy base improvements.
Civ3 lets you improve squares by building forests, farms, mines, roads, railways, and fortresses. SMAX lets you do all that, plus you can raise or lower terrain, plant fungus, build boreholes, mirrors, solar panels, condesors, and rivers.
In Civ3, you have a choice of 5 governments, only two of which you'd want to use once you get the techs for them, and even then their bonuses come down to two categories (good for peace, and good for war). SMAX gives you social engineering, the choices of which are greatly varied and have major effects on your faction (including other factions opinions of you).
I think you get where I'm going with this point.

2. Civ3 is extremely linear. There is really only one or two ways to go about things if you want to win, and even then you are really doing the same thing anyway. SMAX gives you do alot more choices for attaining victory. You could turtle in and max out science, be a greenie and beat everyone up with mindworms, play the diplomat and get your allies to do the fighting, or go capitalist and bribe your way to victory.

Anyway, thats my take on things. Anybody agree?

[Dienstag]

I agree with Dranthar, and pretty much everyone else here. CivIII is SMAC's sickly little half-brother. I might never have bought Alpha Centauri if CivIII were a better game (still holding out some hope for the expansion pack), but I finally got around to buying SMAC last Friday. I had played the demo in its time...but the real game is even better!

My girlfiend is (at best) bemused by my Civ-playing habits. But while playing my first game of SMAC (this weekend), I kept thinking "I gotta show her this. This is what it's all about." I've tried half-heartedly to share CivII and (less so) CivIII with my girlfriend, to try to justify the time I spend on them. But SMAC is fundamentally different, something I want to share as equals, something I think she'd really appreciate. I can't say that for the other games. Anyway, why am I writing this? I could be off playing!

[Jethro83]

I definitely find some times when SMAC gets my interest more than Civ III. At this point, I'm actually bored of Civ III. But its just a phase I'm going through. When I'm bored of SMAC, I'll probably go off and play Civ II all over again, or Shogun Total War.

One definitely needs time out from a single game. Even the most diehard fans will eventually get bored and long to play something else.

[DilithiumDad]

I agree with most of the posts about the superiority of SMAC over CIV3. I started a thread in the CIV3 forum entitled "Things We Miss from SMAC". A hybrid game, a CIV3 with more elements from SMAC, would be super. Maybe the expansion will be it.

But in many ways CIV3 is an improvement over SMAC. First there's the AI. Single-player SMAC is no challenge. The only challenge is seeing how fast you can dominate. CIV3 is much more challenging. On higher levels, you will be trailing the AI for a long time. The #1 problem with the SMAC AI is terraforming. AI terraforming in CIV3 is near-perfect. You can conquer AI territory and not have to improve a thing. You can automate terraforming without losing anything. Try that in SMAC!

The AI factions in CIV3 aggressively build bases on every available tile. SMAC AI just sits there and can't even use a transport.

AI combat strategy is much improved. You can actually lose bases if you're not careful, whereas in SMAC there's no way that should happen.

There is a certain lack of eventfullness that makes the midgame tedious. You can whiz through this period, though, by automating terraforming and just making build and move decisions.