Column #119; By Ken Breggot

[Leonidas]

Not every change has to be a radical change; and not all change, is change for the better.

Foe example, Microsoft hit upon a great formula with Age of Empires - so Age of Kings just improved upon it.

Warlords IV will just be an improvement on Warlords III.

Many fans feel PG2 (nice unit icons and hand-painted maps) was the best version of that series, yet PG3D (3D terrain, odd-looking units, fuzzy terrain graphics) completely changed the game, and hence never garnered the same acceptance.

So CivIII should be an improvement of CivII, but it must embody what has made CivII a winning formula. CivII and CivIII will be around a long time, while many 3D "eye-candy" games will be long forgotten. Just look at the 4 years and 30 million dollars that was spent on Daikatana. What a waste.

The only reason to make beloved turn-based games into real-time 3D games is to line the pockets of computer and video card makers (forcing us to up-grade all the time). After all, if we're not constantly up-grading our computers, how are these computer companies going to make their money? Of course they want to do away with turn-based games - you don't have to up-grade to continue to play those games



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Go tell the Spartans, passerby:
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

[SnowFire]

Though this is a bit late, I both agree and disagree with Mr. Bregott. For the most part, I agree that super-radical suggestions are not going to go through. And then there are really conservative suggestions that act like it's an improvement to Civ II. But I think a lot of reasonable, middle of the road suggestions got through that were improvements, but didn't totally rework the game or induce excessive micromanagement.

Just curious, but did you look at the Technology section of the List? There are some radical ideas in there, but for the most part, they're decent, implementable suggestions that are different from CivII, but still pretty simple.

[Temudschin Dschingis Khan]

I disagree with your opinion. I think the complexer a game gets the more fun it´ll become, if you give the player the possibility to use automatic options. But you have to use the new ideas in a sensitive way because if you don´t do that the game will break down like CTP.

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----Mongolia Rules------

[Kautilya]

Excellent essay. I am a relative newbie to Civ ( and in fact to computer gaming in general) but I had the same thoughts after playing about a dozen games.

The basic Civ formula is superb and makes for a really compelling game experiece. However there are two huge problems : weak AI and the awful micro-management once you get up to 25+ cities which, at least for me, reduced much of the fun in playing Civ after some time.

I would MUCH rather have Civ-3 fix these two problems rather than try to invent a whole new game with the same old weaknesses. This is especially so since the more complex the game the less likely it is that the AI will be even half decent. I , for one, would rather have a relatively simple game with a good AI rather than a really complex one with lousy AI.


There is nothing wrong with radical ideas incorporating deep game-play changes per se. But these can done in other games not the Civ series. Perhaps the CTP series? Also there is nothing wrong with incremental changes in the game-play where there is perhaps one or two new features in the game play, a better diplomacy model for instance.

So yes I would also like Civ 3 to be conservative, better graphics, better AI, better automation options and perhaps a couple of moderate,carefully implemented changes in gameplay. But I expect the opposite ie Civ3 will be full of new and apparently exciting new features only to discover that the AI offers virtually no challenge after a few games.

[KhanMan]

Well, I must say that I agree with the column, in general. I'm against doing things like using hexmaps to turn civ3 into a pure wargame, or changing the structure than has been around since civ1.

Personally, I think the biggest change should be in the ai, but not just in the "stupid ai, you attack with warriors!" area. I feel that the game would be more interesting if some of the differences in civilizations that were pioneered in civ2 and SMAC were built up further.

I mean, if you play SP, the game reaches a point where everyone just attacks you, and they all act alike. Maybe we can have one civ that favors heavy millitary, one that goes far into techs, one that is untrustworthy as an ally, one that will keep alliances and act honorably.

There has been advances in this area, with having the mongols more agressive, for instance, but as each game progresses, the civs slowly become carbon copies: all agressive, all untrustworthy. There's no real benefit in keeping peace treaties after 1750.

I would point to Age of Empires as an example of how ais can be programmed with different strategies, and I think that would really improve civ3, over civ2.

-KhanMan the LLSS