Anyone other than me hate Civ3 combat?

[MrBaggins]

Huh? How am I a troll exactly? I have a view, and made my point. I was simply advocating a viewpoint. It may be contentious, and you may not agree with it, but that, does not a troll, make.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Could you please expand on this? Preferably in a thread in the CTP2 forum.

I would strongly advocate not to. I've been there and won't do it again.

[MrBaggins]

Huh?

Won't do it again, huh?

[Harovan]

To correct obviously wrong assumptions about Civ3 stuff is not entirely the same as "expanding on different opinions about CtP2". The tolerance for these different opinions is rather slim there.

[MrBaggins]

and here..

[Harovan]

Yes. As I pointed out above.

[MrBaggins]

Ah, Sir Ralph, I did not mean to insinuate that you were anything but a paragon of understanding, fairmindedness and inclusion. You have to admit that both games have their blind zealots though.

And for the record, I have played Civ3 (w. PTW) for quite a while, like 3 months. I liked a great deal of it. Even though the combat system was a pain in the ass, as was moving the huge quantity of workers, late game. Plus it was a bit slow (and I have a quick system.) There is a certain degree of polish to it, that you can't help but admire.

However, when I got to the point of wanting to do a mod, I found that it was basically so limited as to be useless, at least based on what I was used to (after being used to civ2 and CtP.) So that was the end of that.

[Tiberius]

Automating workers for the late game works quite well.
I don't mean to troll or something, but the PW system was one of the things I hated most about CtP (the only thing I liked was the fact that you could queue tile improvements). It's much more fun to work with workers

That being said, the civ3 combat system surely could be much better. If nothing else, I am dreaming to have a combat system that is (slightly) less random. I can survive some bad rolls against the AI, but against humans it can be crippling.

[MrWhereItsAt]

oetkenjc - I'm listening, as I listened to all those who disliked some aspect of Civ3 when it came out and I had yet to play it - none of those earlier threads were as well-discussed as this one, so I thank you for that.

I did agree with a lot that was posted, such as the combat system, but I found that the more I learned about what you COULD do in the game, the less I looked at the aspects like this. If you can force yourself to really get into a game or two you may well find that, although you are conscious of what you might ideally like in combat, you learn to live with what we have and to make the most out of it.

/me shrugs

Worth a try, right?

[MrBaggins]

Even with automation (which wasn't a panacea,) they were an unnecessary late game distraction.

It always seemed to me that PW have been a good abstraction. I mean, whats the downside? Hardly realism, or game balance, and if anything its easier for the AI to handle. It improves game speed. Plus it reduces micromanagement. Whats not to like?

[Tiberius]

The abstraction exactly I don't want to have everything abstracted in a civ game, and turn it in a war game evertually.

PS and PW doesn't reduce micromanagement.

[MrBaggins]

but the game is ABOUT abstraction. Why is this abstraction good and others bad... if there are problems with it in the first place?

[Peter Triggs]

Sir Ralph,

I remember the first flaming event that you refer to above. Poly is an open site: we can't control who posts here, we just have to take the good with the bad. (Someone once advised me though: "There's a lot of idiots out there. But if you just ignore them, eventually they go away.)

The reason I remember the event that you refer to is that it was so out of place. Alexnm, who's been around a lot longer than almost anyone (I'm Poly member #4933, he's IIRC #54 ! ) once said that the CTP2 forums are so polite that it's almost like visiting Switzerland.

[Tiberius]

Why not abstract combat then? Why do you move units around, when with a mathematical formula you could decide who wins and who loses? Because it's fun.

There are elements of the game that are fun to play with and workers are such an item for me. They already removed two non-combat units, the spy and the caravan, so let it keep at least one of them. (uhh, and some of those CtP units )

[MrBaggins]

Ah, but there is a critical difference between combat units and worker units.

The combat units are in conflict, and that happens in a dimensional setting too. You couldn't abstract this and still have resolution of combat.

Worker units are there to simply fulfill a means to an end; placement of tile improvements, which is not contenteous. You can abstract this and still have exactly the same result. You also reduce micromanagement. Something you should be glad of in Civ3, given the expanded map sizes, number of cities and number of opponents.

What is the UPSIDE to having a couple of hundred workers, instead of the same ultimate outcome without the tedious work and system burden involved?