The end of civilization as we know it

[Ming]

Yeah... half full... half empty.

It's all up to Firaxis.

I would add three things to Rah's list.
MORE GAME OPTIONS!
MORE GAME OPTIONS!
and MORE GAME OPTIONS!

A choice for changing corruption levels... a choice to include the diplomatic functions... Allowing later diplomatic options earlier in the game... many many options. BUT NONE THAT REQUIRE YOU TO MAKE CHANGES IN THE PROGRAM... just pure simple options when you start the game.

I especially like the idea of letting players customize their civs... other wise, the game will be really unbalanced, and the race for picking civs will be almost as good as the fights over key resources

[War4ever]

Rich.....with all of those changes your proposing you might as well call it civ4

i will concede the fact that the if the game is tweaked into something that you enjoy, i will give mp a whirl i feel we enjoy the many of the same things...... until then, i will keep on civin civ2 style

[Nap Bonaparte]

There are a lot of good points here regarding Civ3 MP potential. I wondered what the early game would be like with the mad rush to find horse/iron locations in addition to finding luxury resources and good river locations for cities. I think that most MP games would be decided rather early on by the haves vs. the have nots.

But the thing that finally disillusioned me was the power of despotic pop. rush. I played out the 1st Apolyton Tournament scenario as the Babs and finally saw how effective despotic pop. rush was. Domination victory by 400AD and all my cities were size 1 or 2. Found a city, pop rush a granary, temple and barracks and then you can crank out a vet horse/swordsman every 3-4 turns depending on food production. Towards the end you can pop rush libraries. This approach makes ICS seem like Sim City.

Combine this with idiocy factors such as keeping everyone with the same number of relatively un-corrupted cities and minimum # turns to learn new techs and I dont see the point of MP past initial warmongering over strategic resources.

[General Maximus]

Originally posted by ravagon


I must say that isn't something I expected to see in a civ2 MP thread!

a HUMAN making decisions is one thing, but a cheating AI taking 25 minutes to attack another cheating AI in early stage of the game is BS.

if you have the units to move, i'll wait, but i will NOT wait for the GAME to figure out what the hell it's doing. a smarter AI takes it's toll, it checks alot of things, then attacks accordingly, it's like watching a newbie micromanage 5 cities. REALLLY BOOORING.

[suas333]

maybe then everyone will return to civ2 MP after they are bored of Civ3

[War4ever]

Originally posted by Nap Bonaparte
There are a lot of good points here regarding Civ3 MP potential. I wondered what the early game would be like with the mad rush to find horse/iron locations in addition to finding luxury resources and good river locations for cities. I think that most MP games would be decided rather early on by the haves vs. the have nots.

But the thing that finally disillusioned me was the power of despotic pop. rush. I played out the 1st Apolyton Tournament scenario as the Babs and finally saw how effective despotic pop. rush was. Domination victory by 400AD and all my cities were size 1 or 2. Found a city, pop rush a granary, temple and barracks and then you can crank out a vet horse/swordsman every 3-4 turns depending on food production. Towards the end you can pop rush libraries. This approach makes ICS seem like Sim City.

Combine this with idiocy factors such as keeping everyone with the same number of relatively un-corrupted cities and minimum # turns to learn new techs and I dont see the point of MP past initial warmongering over strategic resources.

and for diplogaming...don't count on that "friend" giving you a saltpeter/rubber/fill in the blank resource just because another rival is attacking you.

Lets face it... with resources in the game, only the strong survive...and early on that means iron/horses.... without them your not going to make the mid game...much less the end game.why would someone rent you theirs if you have nothing they need.

This game needs drastic changes for SP much less MP

[Ming]

While I see many potential problems currently for MP based on where the SP version is right now... Strategic Resources really isn't one of my concerns. It's really no different than "trade specials" in Civ II. If you are playing a game with good players, if you don't have trade specials anywhere near your starting position, you are going to fall behind. Even an aggessive ICS approach doesn't save you, because the rest of the good players are doing the same. You fall so far behind in sciences, that you don't get even a crack at many of the good wonders.

Don't get me wrong... Strategic resources will be important and can make or break you. But I see the fights for resources as being a plus instead of a minus. If you have the tech lead, you will see them before your opponent does... and that should lead to some real interesting situations.

One good thing about Civ III is that it forces combat. While this might not be good for Diplo style games, it will add more fun to the traditional game. There will have to be a balance between expansion and war. Building wonders will be based on the race for great leaders... and war is the only way to get them

It should make for some more interesting games.

[EyesOfNight]

Actually it's a minus Ming. Look at the way the resources are put on the map as you get them. They occur in clumps. You'll have like 6 dye all in one little spot for one civ, then the other civ gets all kinds of iron in 1 little spot, then the next civ gets all kinds of wine in one little spot. They took the value of resources right out of the game. The only thing resources are good for now is for trading and that's why they occur in clumps. Otherwise it's just a rush to find the grassland squares. Every map looks the same too. Each civ starts on a grass land clump, then there are massive stretches of desert, then massive stretches of plains, then massive stretches of forest, and then stretches of mountains and stretches of tundra. Everything is done in clumps in this game. Every map looks the same and the map customizer doesn't really do ****. Not only that but I somehow feel like I'm looking a very very bland map. The only thing I feel like going out and grabbing are cattle. Whereas in civ2 I felt this great urge to go out and conquer every resource on the map. I salivated when I saw whales and gold, or when I saw silk. Now I see these little clumps and I wonder what the use of them is. I can't even use whales until my culture expands, and I won't even get started on culture. Instead of having a race for resources, you now have a given amount of resources. ANd 90% of the time you are going to be without iron. SO then you go and conquer the guy with the iron. Fun stuff. Yipeee!! Now I get to build some swordsmen. Was it really useful? All I got from that iron was to be able to build some swordsmen. There's no resource bonus, just the ability to trade now and build a few units. Colonies are completely useless. Why build a colony when you can build a city right next to it and keep the resource within your borders? There's so much stuff that's wrong with this game I could probably write a book on it.

[rah]

"ANd 90% of the time you are going to be without iron."


Don't know what game you're playing. 90% is a slight exageration. Unless you're counting only when it appears on your existing road network in your territory.

Luxuries are clumped, resourses much less so.

And I agree with ming that this should encourage more war, and earlier. Granted if there is no AI, somebodies gonna get that wonder. I predict that most wonders will still be built the old fashioned way. How many leaders are you gonna get fighting each other. It's not as easy to pummel a human, or setup those situations where a leader is likely. I'm not gonna attack that stack of elite swordsman fortified on that mountain like the AI does. I will have to be much more concerned about overextending myself against Humans because the AI let's you get away with it most of the time.

RAH

Besides, we'll have to go to war early, just to keep us from shooting ourselves out of boredom.

[EyesOfNight]

You may not care that you have to fight in order to get certain resources because you play MP games with tons of players and you play for months at a time. However not everyone wants to spend their life playing one game. Duels will always be the main way of competitive play and in civ3 duels are impossible. On a small map the iron will very easily be in one guys territory or the other and they sure as hell aren't going to trade it. Game over. No duels, no competitive play. No Competitive play, no ladders. No ladders and you're going to have a very very unpopular game with some social Mpers on apolyton that will amount to the entire MP community.

[common_terry]

civ2 mp is a great game

wanna play me?

icq=137808936

[Ming]

Originally posted by EnigmaticGod
You may not care that you have to fight in order to get certain resources because you play MP games with tons of players and you play for months at a time. However not everyone wants to spend their life playing one game.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... Eyes, I don't play the Diplo games
Most of the games our group plays are usually one night (one session) afffairs. with 3 to 4 players. (any more than that, and it gets a little slow and boring ) I have no intention of spending my life playing a single game (but continuing one every once in a while would be nice)

But you are right... Duels will lose their appeal if it just comes down to the luck of the draw on horses or iron.

I hope one of the game options will be "equal distribution of strategic resources"

Again, as the game is now, there are many serious problems and issues for MP. And again, I think many of them can be solved by providing MANY, MANY, MANY built in game options in the start up menus. But after saying that... MP will have to be different than SP... And I hope that Firaxis realizes that.

[rah]

Originally posted by EnigmaticGod
You may not care that you have to fight in order to get certain resources because you play MP games with tons of players and you play for months at a time. However not everyone wants to spend their life playing one game. Duels will always be the main way of competitive play and in civ3 duels are impossible. On a small map the iron will very easily be in one guys territory or the other and they sure as hell aren't going to trade it. Game over. No duels, no competitive play. No Competitive play, no ladders. No ladders and you're going to have a very very unpopular game with some social Mpers on apolyton that will amount to the entire MP community.

Nothing could be farther from reality.

We don't play with tons of players. (maybe out of a group of 10-20 players)

Any particular game has 3-5 players. I've played no more than a handful of duels in the last 3 years. I don't really like duels personaly, which is sometimes strange because if we're in a 3 man game and one person isn't the best of players, it's really a duel.

98% of our games are 1 sitting only. A continued game is very rare.

Our games are very very competitive which I wouldn't classify as social. (depending on how much everyone has had to drink)

There are quite a few groups similar to ours and there is some crossovers. It's usually based on reputation.

I have never participated in any rankings or ladders from lack of desire. I get good competition without it and don't have to worry about all the gray area stuff that is associated with any type of SCORING.

If you have been unable to to find ties with groups of trustworthy, competitive, reliable and fun players, I could see how you might feel the way you do. But I don't share any of those feelings and don't predict all the doom and gloom that you do.

RAH
Of course this is just my opinion, and as usual, could be wrong


Gee, got distracted while typing this post at work and didn't read Ming's post. We're not twins, nawwwww.

[SlowwHand]

"Clumps" seems kind of natural to me.
I mean, in the real world you have forests and no forest.
Gold wasn't found everywhere, neither is oil.
I haven't played III, but most of what I hear seems more the natural order of things.

Or am I misguided and way off base?

[cavebear]

I've played Civ3 a few times now (mostly in 10 hour sessions), and the resources problem is serious. With certain limited resources like iron or horses, there are essential units that you simply cannot build and the AI civs often have just one (and therefore can't trade) or more (and won't trade). Or you can't trade with them because they won't build any roads near you and you have to have a road to their capital to trade on.

The AI demand trades that they wouldn't remotely consider in reverse (if you offered the same deal).

It is an "awkward" game in SP, and seems impossible to imagine in MP.