I'm giving up Civilization. Here's why

[vmxa1]

I too have not played GalCiv in a long time. It was not poorly done, but did not inspire me to play over and over.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Sovereign
I was hyped about GalCiv, because I was under the belief that it would be similiar to Civ series or SMAC set in space, with planets as cities, and stuff like that.

I think people lose interest in GalCiv, as opposed to Civ series and SMAC, because GalCiv is pretty limited in battles and building up of planets.

From what I can remember, many times my planets in GalCiv can't support all planet improvements like my self-sufficient cities in Civ3. So I modded all the expenses by half, and still can't be self-sustaining. Ugh.


There's one other thing. You're very limited in improving the planets themselves, so I'm forced to either mod the "kill worms" planet quality bonuses by ridiclious amounts, such as 500% to 2000% just to get planet class 2, 3, and 4's and 5's to class 15+.

In Civ, you have far more control over your cities / sources (of units and revenue). You can have maximum 20 tile cities if you desire, or limit yourself. GalCiv doesn't have that.

One last gripe. In GalCiv, Earth itself isn't correct. Sometimes it's class 15, sometimes 23. And doesn't show what Earth actually looks like. Plus, Sol has 9 planets, not 3, 4, or 5.

I'll play Civ series, SMAC, and RoN over GalCiv.

In short, GalCiv was a worse disappointment than MOO3 for me.

I kind of like Gal Civ but it does have fatal flaws:

1. Earth's intitial size is limited to 20, now why can't it be a 22-28 once in a while???
2. Only alien races can find precurser items (imagine my suprise when the Alterian disovered a device that GAVE them 100 corvettes or when the Drengin suddenly recieved 8 size 27-34 size planets due to one.) why can't the human be hooked up????
3. The diplomacy screen interface is awkward and clumsy.
4. Its absolutely impossible to protect your territory, ships go through it as they wish.
5. The difficulty levels increase too rapidly and depend on bonuses given to AI for research.
6. There are no modules on starbases to increase your economy or morale: only combat, production, and influence can be increased by Starbases.
7. Battles are limited and are based primarily on who has the biggest baddest ships (SB's can offset these advantages though)

Now a couple of counterpoints:
1. Not every planet should be able to be inhabitable. (unless you are seriously high in the tech tree) Making the worms with a +100 PQ would be cheating ( a 20 size planet would be a 40 with that improvement) and it makes you seriously evil in any event.
2. Planet's are not meant to have every single improvement but most can be built IF you build them in a reasonable order. Use of the sliders is necessary in order to keep your economy in the black.

[Qilue]

Something unusual, an on-topic post.

I should mention that I too have given up playing Civ3, but for a different reason. Specifically the new system where games played using a modified rules file aren't recorded in the HoF.

It seemed to me that Firaxis is trying to impose their morality on my single player gaming experience. So until I read in a patch readme where this 'feature' has been removed, I shall not be buying Civ3 Conquests and Firaxis can shove their morality up their arse.

[asleepathewheel]

yes, I hate this. many people hate this.

there is a way to edit the HoF and add your games, but that's worse than modding yourself a huge advantage.

I hate this, absolutely hate it.

[ChaotikVisions]

I don't see why that matters, you're playing with yourself anyway. You'll know you did well with out a hof entry. But if it really bugged you, couldn't you rename your scenario to conquest.biq and back up the old one. Then toss the renamed scenario in its place so you can play and have the wins recorded in the hof? (Assuming you're using Conquests.)

[asleepathewheel]

doesn't work.

and I can't remember games taht I played last month, not to mention last year. Scores would help that a bit.

[vmxa1]

I am not sure what morality has to do with the HoF. I would suspect it has more to do with them wanting to head off any complaints about cheating.

I think they were wrong and should beef up the HoF, but I don't give it much though. You could make your own spread sheet to track the games.

[Sovereign]

HoF = Hall of Fame, right?

I think Firaxis didn't want custom games to be recorded because of pumping the scores.

For example, Poly people decide on a contest to see who can get the highest score on Hall of Fame.

Someone decides to make a custom game with the following rules:

No unhappy people
Put all 8 luxury items in your contient or island
All city citizens only eat 1 food
Make all terrain produce 50 food
etc.

That way, players would get size 1000 cities, and everybody and their mama would be doped happy on drugs, etc.

The population would be thru the roof and the high score would be insane compared to un-modded, original rules games.

[vmxa1]

That may have been their thinking, but it is silly. I mean, I do not see anyone posting HoF scores. I think I have seen it about 3 times. Those were probably about how the feature does or does not work, more than here is my great score.

This is because everyone understands it can be edited anyway.
If it is to have a use, it is as a history for the indiviual. That is why it shoulld allow all games to be saved and have more data. Even a bunch of open fields for players to add in information.

[Sovereign]

Hmm... hadn't thought of it that way, VXMA.

I was under the assumption that people would brag about their scores over the internet. I've seen such things done with several multi-player online games.

People would boast that they found incredible gear (for RPG on-line games, brag on RPG on-line game boards), brag 100 kill games for multi-player FPS in the game chat / join screens, etc.

Some people love to brag, so I think Firaxis wanted to avoid turning Civ3 into a brag-fest.

Thats why and how I came up to my conclusion in my previous post.


That aside, I agree that the HoF should allow for scenario games. It can help you figure out and compare how well you did with your current game to your last one. I think HoF should add in a few features such as...

1. Amount of warmongering you did
2. Battle victories / losses
3. How many cities you built
4. How many cities you captured
5. Show how much general infrastructure you built
6. Show how much general infrastructure the AI built
7. more ideas like above to compare your and the AI progress

I haven't "finished" a Civ3 game in a long time. I tend to quit once either of the following happens:

1. Turns become too long with too many units to fortify or move around (100's of units like in BamSpeedy's Beyond Sid game)

2. The map gets boring with no interesting battles or diplomacy situations. In other words... "500 tanks kills a civ with 100 total units" situation.

Hence, I forgot if some of my ideas are already in the HoF.

[Dis]

Is there any way for the HOF's for the vanilla civ to show up on the hall of fame for C3C?

[vmxa1]

One of the things I would have used it for was to keep track of the types of maps and civs I have played.

I do not have any idea if I ever played a tiny map for instance. When was the last time I played as Rome or have I ever used Korea. What maps, what civs, when?

That is what I wanted. I should have made a spread sheet, but it is too late now.

[Agathon]

The next civ should really be based more around multiplaying. I have never found the computer to be a fun opponent. The howls of outrage from the smegging of a real person is so much more fulfilling.

[Hagbart]

Originally posted by Agathon
The next civ should really be based more around multiplaying. I have never found the computer to be a fun opponent. The howls of outrage from the smegging of a real person is so much more fulfilling.

It's difficult to make a turn based strategy game based more around multiplayer.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Hagbart


It's difficult to make a turn based strategy game based more around multiplayer.

I don't know - I was reminiscing about Imperium Galacticum in another thread. That was turn based and I used to love it.

Human beings are so much better to play against.