If you don't like Firaxis' defaults...

[korn469]

i agree with father beast, in my opinion all "official" comparison games need to be played with the default ruleset just so it can be benchmarked to any other game played with the default rules

also i think it is perfectly fine to Mod a game for pleasure, but why should i have to figure out how to fix an inherently flawed game? i don't have time to play all of the games i own which aren't flawed, so why waste my time trying to fix a game that is broken? for me it's time to move on to something else

if civ3 is balanced and you are just a freakazoid who thinks that the US CSU should be a swordman then i agree with with Steve
but if one single jet fighter could destroy 200 modern armor units in a single turn then i don't want to have to fix that

Modding is great, but a great game doesn't require the users to balance it

[player1]

Re: If you don't like Firaxis' defaults...

Originally posted by Steve Clark
Don’t feel you have to accept Firaxis’ defaults for Civ3.

...

I believe there will be nothing terribly wrong with the defaults but they are only a starting point for customizing them into something you might like better. Just like with Civ2, the defaults worked just fine but all of the thousands of custom files allow it to expand and increase longevity.

Still, most people will play with defults in SP, than later in MP (when it comes).

CTP games are exeption because these games vere broked in offical
relesae so some MODing was necessity.

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by yin26
Steve knows he has my support, and ultimately it will be guys like him who keep Civ3 on the HD's of the hardcore players among us who see playing a new scenario of Civ is more entertaining than buying a new game.

Truer words have not ever been spoken here, thanks yin.

I understand that perhaps most don't want to bother any of the files and that's fine. Truthfully, I don't mess around much with regular game. I usually swap out the default units.gif file and replace it with a custom one, but that has nothing to do with gameplay, just a new look and feel. Scenarios are what civ is all about for me, but that's an entirely different beast than the regular game.

I am beginning to understand that Civ2 originally did not come with the powerful tools that alot of us have grown to love (I didn't start playing civ until MGE). If such tools are not in the initial release of Civ3, so be it. I guess it'll be there eventually.

[Grumbold]

I've been quite content to change basic things about Civ II like tile and graphic sets (but lets not talk about vanilla/MGE/ToT compatability issues). On the other hand, I disagree that scenarios are an essential part of the Civ flavour. Civ works well as civ i.e. an attempt to compress the sweep of 6000 years into a 1-3 day game. It does so by making sacrifices about supply, logistics, tactics, terrain, weather, morale, education, command and control, productivity, scientific progress, movement rates and many other things.

Almost all of the scenarios I played merely highlighted why no-one should ever attempt to try and turn the game into something it is incapable of being. There is far better software available dedicated to any tactical or theatre-level conflict you want to recreate. Civ scenarios are for people who lack the knowledge or desire to shell out more cash or trawl abandonware sites for good games depicting the period.

[Steve Clark]

But no one has developed a [fill in the blank] game that plays like Civ, right? That's the point. Civ2 (at least) is simple elegance that has great depth and why would I chose to play an overcomplex game like EU when I can use the familiar Civ2 parameters in an Age of Exploration scenario? I have played many American Civil War games that have been released, both the strategic and tactical kinds. None of the strategic-level ones came close to matching the playability of Alex's scenario. Also, can you tell me of a better strategic-level game set in the Ancient Age than Kull's Seeds of Greatness scenario? The only game/time period that I like better is Imperialism II and Conquest of the New World. But that is just one time period. You can't bring up the AoE-type/WW2 RTS games because those are at a different scale than Civ.

While I know that not a whole lot of folks care about scenarios, many of them have been my favorite games of that time period because I love Civ2 and its design.

[Steve Clark]

I'm not sure if this is real or not, but check out this screen shot...

http://www.civfanatics.com/cgi-bin/autoimage.cgi?civ3images/civ_vikings.jpg

Custom city graphics for a custom civ. Imagine that.

[Grumbold]

I can't say for sure that I've played any of those particular Civ scenarios. I just know that while I can cope with Civ's oversimplifications in order to cover the spread of history in a playable length of time, when I want to focus down on a specific era or conflict I need the sort of additional complexities included that they had to deal with at the time. Civ just doesn't have them. A different mindset I guess.