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There was one fundamental problem in older Civ-versions, when it came how effectively the AI-civs could conduct war against the human player, alternatively how they could respond to massive military build-ups prior to fullscale HP-conducted invasions:
The problem consisted in that the AI was restricted to only conduct war by sending military units against you.
Since the human player, traditionally in civ-games, always had the tactical advantage in moving around combat-units, and also an strategical advantage when it came to raw production-capacity, he often could respond to AI war-declarations with a yawn, alternatively quietly build enormous end-game armies, while the AI-civs often where partly too dumb, but just as often; simply too backward in terms of city-developments & production-capacity, to ever be able to respond against in a effective manner.
According to the released info about the Civ-3 development, several pivotal changes have however already been implemented (and more to follow, I hope) that together definitely makes HP war-conducting, much more of a risk-calculating challenge.
The ultimate prize would be if Firaxis manages to make wars in Civ-3 much more about "a means to an end" (= risk-estimated time-limited shortcuts to achieve better civil advantages; both economical, political & in terms of increased production-strength) rather then just a self-feeding and increasingly more risk-free self-perpetuating military goal in itself.
Anyway, below is the under-the-hood confirmed changes listed that I am refeering too:
The problem consisted in that the AI was restricted to only conduct war by sending military units against you.
Since the human player, traditionally in civ-games, always had the tactical advantage in moving around combat-units, and also an strategical advantage when it came to raw production-capacity, he often could respond to AI war-declarations with a yawn, alternatively quietly build enormous end-game armies, while the AI-civs often where partly too dumb, but just as often; simply too backward in terms of city-developments & production-capacity, to ever be able to respond against in a effective manner.
According to the released info about the Civ-3 development, several pivotal changes have however already been implemented (and more to follow, I hope) that together definitely makes HP war-conducting, much more of a risk-calculating challenge.
The ultimate prize would be if Firaxis manages to make wars in Civ-3 much more about "a means to an end" (= risk-estimated time-limited shortcuts to achieve better civil advantages; both economical, political & in terms of increased production-strength) rather then just a self-feeding and increasingly more risk-free self-perpetuating military goal in itself.
Anyway, below is the under-the-hood confirmed changes listed that I am refeering too:
- In Civ-2 you produced & supported combat-units by harvesting shields, which always where self-sufficiently available within your own city-areas. In Civ-3 you must support your combat-units by spending money, which only partially can be "harvested" within your borders. An increasingly bigger share must however also be obtained by establishing multiple trade-agreements with the foreign AI-civs. This means that you figuratively speaking, must place at least one of your balls in the hands of the AI-civs, in order to optain enough money to support your military might - especially in end-games. If you want to make the game even harder and more challenging, you can easily choose to downtweak all the terrain-improvement trade-outputs in the Rules.txt files, making army support-costs even more dependent on peaceful trade-relations with at least 1-2 AI-civs.
- In Civ-2 replacing trade-routes (= embargoing) was far too strenuous to even consider for the HP, and if the AI eventually did it; it only meant that your wealth perhaps didnt grow that much anymore. Big deal.
In Civ-3 it seems that disrupting trade-agreements, both is much easier and have more immediate consequences - especially if the AI-civs start to establish trade embargo-pacts against you. Effective trade-embargos means that massive HP military support-costs now can be thwarted more easily.
This can be counteracted by converting to nationalism and choosing war-economy, and/or establish & nuture ally-treatys in advance. But, perhaps only for so long. Your "trusty" ally starts to recognize his pivotal role here; perhaps he wants to "sweeten the deal" in order to continue the treaty. Conquered new city-areas, of course, give you access to new trade-tiles (which finances a continued war), but that alone only gives you some stop-gap money, considering all the over new design-tweaks thats now seems to effect "art of war". I also dont think the AI will idle on huge dust-collecting city-fortunes anymore, as it did in Civ-2. Not if they tweak the AI in Civ-3 a little better in this respect. I hope they do - at least on the harder game-levels.
(As you can see: Above tweaks alone makes the journey on the warpath, a somewhat more delicate process then it ever was in Civ-2. Especially for multiplayers. And theres more to come...) - In Civ-2, all units depended on one and the same generic resource only: the shields - it was uniformly available more or less anywhere and everywhere on the map.
In Civ-3, every unit has its resource prerequisites. Each unit is tied to one or more special resources, so you're available forces will be dictated by your own resource supply.
In short; the human player is now much more dependent on good relations with (at least some) of the AI-civs, which make investments in peace- and alliance-treatys much more needed and essential priority. In the older civ-versions you could more or less choose to play in "splendid isolation" and, if you where strong enough, just arrogantly ignore the fact that if most AI-civs hated you. Not so in Civ-3, it seems.
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