*Neutral* observations after playing...

[Pyrodrew]

Corruption

Soren:The way corruption works is one of the biggest changes from Civ2, so I am not surprised that people are having difficulties adjusting. Under this new system, you _cannot_ control ever city in the world and expect them to still function. Thus, it takes a slightly different approach than Civ2 (or Civ1 or SMAC) required. Simply put, more cities is not always better.

There are two factors affecting corruption levels: distance from capitol (like Civ2) and number of cities (unlike Civ2).

Thanks. It sounds like distance plays a much stronger role than the number of cities, especially when I read a recent post of someone saying they were successful playing on Regent by building 30 cities packed in tight together rather than expanding out. And if I play the English & start in the UK what incentive would I have to colonize Australia if I'm the 1st one there given the heavy distance corruption element (just begging for another civ to take them over)? Is the only reasonable way to expand directly outward from the center of my empire?

[Ray K]

A representative from Firaxis said this:

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis

...
Simply put, more cities is not always better.

...
- emphasize building a few great cities instead of a bunch of puny ones

...

- think about razing cities when you capture them (although be careful... you might create an enemy for the rest of the game...)

HOLY COW!

I thought I bought "Civilization", a game where you can build an empire and take over the world (at least as one way of winning).

Now a guy from Firaxis is saying that you shouldn't build lots of cities and you should consider RAZING cities that you conquer!?!

This is ****ing absurd. Please find me one historical analogy for this. ONE.

Now I completely understand why all of those modern-era screenshots have all 8 civs. You guys have engineered the game against conquest. Why can't I eventually have LOTS of great cities if I outplay the AI? Why should I raze my opponent's capital?

All of a sudden, Call to Power is starting to look really good.

[lightblue]

This is ****ing absurd. Please find me one historical analogy for this. ONE

I can give you more than one I think. The Crusaders sacked Byzantium/Constantinopel (and that was a Christian city as well). The tribes that sacked the Roman empire didn't really conquer, but rather raped and pillaged their way through. Similarly, I don't think Genghis Khan and his hordes were particularly interested in establishing stable goverments. Or think about how the Spanish sacked the Aztec and Inca cities (though admittedly they did build their own cities on top of them, and I suppose this could be a tactic to get rid of having to subvert the locals after conquering (just raze and build a new city with a settler that is tagging along with your army)).

[Comrade Tribune]

[Smugly adding the observation that no one has conquered the real world so far.]

If you really, really want to conquer the entire world, you should play on Chieftain level. I would be very pleasantly surprised, if, on Deity, this is close to impossible.

I start to like this game better and better. If they had included a decent editor, I would even start to praise Firaxis.

[Dis]

I'm guessing communism is THE ONLY wartime goverment for conquering the world.

All cities are supposed to be the same distance from capitol so this should alleviate the problem for you guys who want to conquer the world (as I do). But I do miss fundamentalism . I wish they had fascism to make up for it.

[Kristjan]

I love this thread... I really do!

Thanks, guys!

[Blunderdog]

If we're going to be tied to accuracy, where's the historical analogy for conquering the entire world?

Edit: Oops! Someone beat me to this witty response.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Blunderdog
If we're going to be tied to accuracy, where's the historical analogy for conquering the entire world?

Edit: Oops! Someone beat me to this witty response.

How much of the world did Great Britain and its spinoffs (i.e. USA) control at the peak of the British empire?

Like I said, I thought I bought a game called 'Civilization'. Taking the possibility of conquering the world out of the game seems like a cardinal sin.

If I wanted to play SimCity, I would have purchased that game instead.

[ProfessorPhobos]

Ray, just because your conquered cities will tend to suffer a lot of corruption(which has a great historical analog- big empires are always frayed at the edges...always...)

and it'll be difficult to control a one-world government, doesn't mean it's not possible.

You can still conquer the world. It's just much harder. (Which is good. It's not like it's very easy in the real world.)

[Dis]

edited out

[Ray K]

Originally posted by ProfessorPhobos
Ray, just because your conquered cities will tend to suffer a lot of corruption(which has a great historical analog- big empires are always frayed at the edges...always...)

and it'll be difficult to control a one-world government, doesn't mean it's not possible.

You can still conquer the world. It's just much harder. (Which is good. It's not like it's very easy in the real world.)

Well, my main complaint is in the cities I have FOUNDED.

According to Firaxis, you should raze the cities you conquer if you are having corruption problems

[FexFX]

Okay here are my impressions after 4 hours of play...(I have not had the kind of time I have really wanted yet...)

First let me say I really love this game!

It is definitely a worthy successor to the Civ name, but could have used some beta testing more for tweaking and feedback than for bughunting.

So Far I have encountered no bugs, but there are a few minor annoyances related to the interface which are mostly usability issues.

My biggest gripe is about the Q feature and its difficulty of use.
Holding down the shift key is annoying, but not my real gripe. My real gripe is that there appears to be no way to remove an item from the Q...The only work around has been to Q up something else in that slot..which is not the same as clearing the Q...which I can find no way to do.

The lack of more than 2 levels of zoom while a bit irksome is not a huge deal to me, but I can see where others might be very annoyed.

There Should be a button to take you to the advisors screen on the City screen, because quite often I find myself wanting to go directly from one to the other. There should also be a way to get to the Civlopedia entry for a Q item fromthe city screen which there is not.

I really like the whole national borders concept, but very often they are not visible to me because they are burried inder the miles of jungle that surround my cities...I like the graphics, but they are actually hindering my gameplay with this behavior...There should be a way to turn off terrain details so I can see my borders clearly, or a patch needs fix it so the National Border is drawn on top of EVERYTHING else.

These are really my only gripes so far. I like the concepts of the new interface, and find many of the new ideas to be wonderful (the new city screen is a great idea!), I just feel some of the implementation is a bit sticky and could be improved on.

So, Great game! Needs a bit of work to be perfect tho!

[Soren Johnson]

Re: Re: Re: *Neutral* observations after playing...

Originally posted by Grim Legacy


Thank you for confirming that. I quickly noticed (some of) the AI bonuses, being used to them in Civ2. I did indeed also note that you've increased them quite a bit still!
I personally do think it is a challenge to try to beat such a difficult game, and I will certainly try so before I yield to choosing Regent levels!
The drawback is that the imbalance is so clear, so that players may get the feeling that they only lost because of the cheating, not because they used inferior strategies. There were some comments on this aspect on these forums earlier.
I do understand it will be virtually impossible to have an AI that doesn't cheat and still is able to withstand the best Civ3 players for the foreseeable future.

Just for the record, is the cheating at Monarch about the same as it was under Deity in Civ2?

Actually, Monarch is not really much different from Regent. The experienced players here can beat Regent most of the time, so Monarch is intended to be the level which will give a consistent challenge to most players. Thus, the AI only gets a 10% food/shield/lab bonus in Monarch... if you want to know what the levels are, just do an Investigae City at the different difficulty levels...

btw, I have seen people make suggestions about the AI having a combat bonus, and I just wanted to be clear that the AI gets NO combat bonuses of any kind against the human at any difficulty level. We believed that would have been too obvious, making the game unfun.

[SuiteSisterMary]

This is ****ing absurd. Please find me one historical analogy for this. ONE.

In more or less historical order?

Rome (at various times)
USSR
Communist China
Modern Day America

[Deathray]

Well, I have to say that its very nice to see some developers on the boards answering questions. Its very rare, and very appreciated among us fans. Thank you Soren. I think that its a good decision to implement penalties and bonuses rather than changing the AI strength. I would rather face an intelligent opponent with some production penalties than some inept fool, and I would rather face an intelligent opponent with production bonuses than some sort of omniscient god type opponent.