Civ III, Don't Buy If SP only

[Alexander's Horse]

How old are you?

Originally posted by isaac brock
Alexanders Horse, why do people such as yourself always sink to the level of personal attacks? the dirty, dirty man comment was constructive criticism, and now you've turned this forum into something ugly. I guess a low sperm countdoes go to ones head.

The pot calls the kettle black

Is someone typing this stuff in for you sonny?

[jerkwaterbox]

btw i was laughing at issac but didn't post fast enough

[Imran Siddiqui]

That's because you have no friends

You so mean .

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by isaac brock
Alexanders Horse, why do people such as yourself always sink to the level of personal attacks? the dirty, dirty man comment was constructive criticism, and now you've turned this forum into something ugly. I guess a low sperm countdoes go to ones head.

brock, that didn't make any sense. then again, horse has a lot of experiance with..."angering" people, as I'm sure you've found out by now.

bottom line: civ without multiplayer isn't good for anyone, because it will effect SPers in that the game will be rushed in terms of AI, and it will effect MPers obviously because they won't have a game to play.

[jerkwaterbox]

why do people assume that since there will be no MP the AI will suck?

[Alexander's Horse]

I am completely blameless this time

Originally posted by Wiglaf


horse has a lot of experiance with..."angering" people

I didn't bash SP or anything

The problem is the game will cost 90 dollars in Australia. If I buy SP and then MP that's 180 dollars That's a lot of money.

I simply can't justify purchasing both and I consider it cynical money gouging by Infogames if true.

As others have said, today most games aren't considered complete without MP so I think Infogames/Firaxis will catch a lot of flack if they don't include MP in the first release. It will tarnish their achievement even if the game is really good.

[tniem]

Originally posted by jerkwaterbox
why do people assume that since there will be no MP the AI will suck?

No one assues that. What is being said is that if MP is not being included it is because they did not have enough time to finish the game. Not enough time could hurt a variety of pieces of the game including AI. So while no MP != bad AI, not enough time does and every indication is that Firaxis needs more time.

[johndmuller]

Maybe Firaxis et al are just trying to emphasize the Limited in "Limited Edition".

One thing that might bug me is the thought that some of the MP features might actually be intentionally disabled so as to make more of a market for a presumed later "expansion pack". In other words, we would pay someone $40 a box to "uncomment" the PBEM code.

This kind of thing is pretty common in the computer industry, for both hardware and software, being used to expand product lines and differentiate otherwise identical products (except for hard wired/coded restrictions). While it is possible to offer justifications for this kind of pricing, just thinking that your whatzit could have been a superdoublewhammy whatzit if only a tech had switched a jumper around could raise the blood pressure.

You might notice that the manufacturers don't brag about this feature of their product lines in public, but you can bet your banana that it is pretty high up on their internal bullet point lists. How does Vertical Product Line Flexibility sound? What exactly do you think is the difference between Win XP professional and personal, or between the variations of Win2K? (I don't ordinarily like to bash Microsoft, but their operating systems are such a perfect example of this, I can't help it.)

[isaac brock]

I think they worked on the AI for a long time which is why they started MP in august. The AI will be sweet.

And I, too, have plenty of experience "angering" people, if you ever get a chance to look at the posts i've made in the past. I am truly a jackass. And Wiglaf, just because you don't "get" my post doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. read it. it was funny because it was deliberately hypocritical. or at least it was deliberately hypocritical.

[Wiglaf]

I think they worked on the AI for a long time which is why they started MP in august. The AI will be sweet.

hype, all hype.

We have to face the facts here: a good civ3 AI would take unreal amounts of time. To make the computer recognize and utilize all the dozens of new features the game has - diplomacy, trading, terrain, etc - would be so hard, time consuming, and near impossible it's hard to actually blame Firaxis is they gave up. Look at SMAC - made by the same company. Same premise (civ's half sequel). Mediocre AI that got worse over time as you picked up some of the more complex features that it seemed the programmers didn't even bother the computer about.

Don't tell me there wasn't any hype for that AI. Some reviews insisted it was a tactical genius and a "milestone". And your judgement is made on press releases, without having played the game!

Time will tell, not Firaxis or you or me or anyone else. And hopefully we'll wait more than just a month and a half to find out.

And I, too, have plenty of experience "angering" people, if you ever get a chance to look at the posts i've made in the past. I am truly a jackass. And Wiglaf, just because you don't "get" my post doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. read it. it was funny because it was deliberately hypocritical. or at least it was deliberately hypocritical.

[isaac brock]

And your judgement is made on press releases, without having played the game!

And your judgement is based on yin and his Civ-bashing followers! Why are you any more worthy to decide whether it's good or not than I am?

[TechWins]

And your judgement is based on yin and his Civ-bashing followers!

IMHO Yin does a very good job in criticizing Civ3. I've always believed that I understood Yin and his postion, while many others thought he was a babbling idiot. Yin is entitled to his opinion and he expresses his opinion fairly and accordingly. In no way am I trying to suck up to Yin, no need to and don't want to, I'm just speaking the honest truth.

[civcop]

It's simple

Firaxis makes games. If the games suck, then few people buy them. If few people buy them, Firaxis loses money. If Firaxis loses enough money, the company goes out of business. Thus, their incentive for making a good game is to make money and remain in business (and even to grow). If you say that the version of Civ 3 coming out next month sucks (for whatever reason), then you will be proven right by terrible sales. If sales are good anyway and you say that the non-elite amongst us have no concept of intelligence or the real challenge of a PC turn-based, strategy game, then you could perhaps be right. Even then, the fact remains that you don't like the game...so don't buy it!

Honestly, those who come to these forums time and again to rail about the lack of MP have become annoying. You tell us to not buy the game if it does not come with MP. Gee, thanks for making my decisions for me, Big Brother! You say that playing Civ via MP is the only real challenge. Fine, then keep playing Civ 2 via MP and leave us alone. Firaxis is going to make a game that they believe will appeal to the majority of gamers. If that means SP only then that's the way it is. Deal with it. Please do not take out your frustrations on the rest of us. You may think we who do not play MP as being sub-human or beneath you--and that is your priviledge--but you are wasting bandwidth by whining about it over, and over, and over, and over...

It seems to me that you militant MP types should form your own software game company and show the world what morons Firaxis is composed of by making a better game and putting them out of business. Perhaps you could install a code in your game that gives electrical shocks to anyone who dares to soil your masterpiece by playing it in SP mode.

[Your.Master]

Originally posted by faded glory
Im saying we MPers are way more into the games we play. We look for challenges, not walkovers. Playing a Human opponent is loads more fun than playing an AI.

MPers are not more into the games you play. In fact, you are usually less into them because it is almost impossible to have a good story or overarching theme on the 'net. I'm not insulting MPers, but your statement was really weird. The first thing I ever do in a game is beat it in single player on 1 difficulty level, all levels and secrets (reasonably certain). Then, I might delve into multiplayer and personally find it boring...especially when you go onto Battle.net and cream people who claim to be good players and sure enough have good records (I lost twice out of about 60 times on Battle.net, and only one time was I truly crushed by a deserving victor, the other time I was triple-teamed in a four player "free-for-all".) Frankly, I found that boring. I know there are better Battle.net players and equivalents for the multitude of other games, but those tend to be short-and-not-very-sweet. But that's just my opinion, you like multiplayer. It is fallacy to say that MP is better than SP, though. Still, I find that GOOD games tend to have challenges built into them, but not all humans can challenge a quick mind. Eventually, you get the knack of defeating the computer and stop playing or stop doing whatever you do to win. In Civ and most strategy games' case, you download a scenario for more playing pleasure with some good challenge.

I wouldn't call me a pansy, either - I rarely play online, but when I do, I very rarely lose (must be all that single-player non-challenging practice).

[Deity Dude]

Playing SP is the equivalent of batting practice. It took me 6 games to beat the AI at deity, raging hordes. There are still plenty of humans I can't come close to.

Its kind of like computer chess. Look at the resources they had to put into it to compete with the best players. Eventually they built Big Blue and were finally able to beat the best humans. But civ has alot more decision branches then chess and I doubt Sid and crew have the resources (IBM) or the time (about 3 decades) that it took to get an AI to that level.

And even if they ever did get to that level, who would want to play a computer that was guaranteed to beat you every time. The whole point about playing a human is that it is different every time. You cant memorize algorithms to beat them. Sometimes a better player makes a mistake, sometimes you play better then your ability, etc.

As far as scenarios go (keeping with the chess analogy) thats like taking a famous game from the past, setting the board up at move 17 and playing against the computer. Great practice, but not what I would call a real game.