A heartfelt thanks to Soren Johnson for listening to us!

[Enigma]

Overall I think that Civ3 has great potential. But I think that there are some issues that need to be corrected, but essentially nothing that cannot be fixed without a patch. This game is also much less buggy than SMAC.

But the good thing is Soren is here, and (hopefully) is listening to what we say! This means a lot to all of us, and I would just like to say thanks. Once you get past some of the quirks (cultural subversion, occaisional buggy resource system) it is a really fun game. The resource system is especially innovative, I plan my military attacks around resources. The AI does too- every attack the French have made on me in the ancient era was directed at my horse supply.

Right now I am in the industrial age, and am desperatly trying to off France as they are my biggest competitors (I am America) and I am doing massive artillery bombardments. Again I have to do a little extra work to get around the cultural subversion stuff (load saves from previous turn) and it can be very frustrating... but it is extremely addictive and I find the tech tree really engaging. Right now I am running Communism (As America !) and conquering France (very slowly) using about 20 artillery units, massive amounts of infantry and some calvalry- her cities are pretty torn up by the time it is safe for my calvalry to attack her entrenched infantry units. But if I conquer her I will be a superpower as far as resources are concerned, this game has a great pace. It is also fun having such large number of military units in each battle- I have about 50 Infantry, 20 artillery, 15 calvary and 10 workers, being supported by only 7 home bases!

You can see all of the love that Firaxis put into this game at times like this. A bit more beta testing to go along with that love would have been nice, but thanks guys! I have happily been going through severe sleep deprevation to show those French who is boss.

This game will be awesome once the next patch fixes it up, and/or we learn more about the game mechanics. What exactly affect cultural subversion- I quash all of the resisting laborers, have a higher culture than the enemy, the base is only about 10 squares from my capital (5 squares from enemy capital) and is connected to my capital with railroads, and gets 4 luxuries in trade. What can you do to stop this subversion- it is really annoying because it almost always happens after I sign a treaty with some pathetic civ I felt too sorry for to destroy, and then they get a city back that was citing on a big luxury patch.

[player3]

I agree; we should all give props to Soren for bending an ear to our concerns. Thanks!

[kmj]

I agree, and would like to thank you and everyone else. There are some valid complaints, but there is also alot of whining from people for whom the game didn't turn out to be exactly as they had expected/wanted. (I don't have a problem with those who say "I think things would be cooler if...", but alot of posts don't exactly go that way.)

I'm having a great time playing, and I'm looking forward to finding out all the cool little quirks of the game as I get to play it and see things from different perspectives. I just wanted to be a voice of gratitude and encouragement amongst all the whining and complaining.

[Wiglaf]

But the good thing is Soren is here, and (hopefully) is listening to what we say!

I love PR too.

[Wolfgang76]

Huzah!!

Yes, its nice to have the ear, so to speak, of one of the programmers. I know that even if they cant get to our requests due to money or time at least they did listen. Kudos!!

[adaMada]

oh yes, been meaning to post a thread thanking Soren ever since Civ 3 came out. Since someone else has beat me to it , thanks !

-- adaMada

[Libertarian]

One more me too. The Firaxis guys have demonstrated enormous maturity and patience in the face of downright flames. Kudos to them.

I hope they fix the bugs quickly. I'm confident they can tell the difference between a bug (Air Superiority Mission) and a whine (Too Much Corruption).

I only wish those of us who love the game were as vocal as those who don't. But that's the nature of the beast. We're playing, and they're posting. The rest of us have spoken with our wallets. And my wallet says, "Great job, guys at Firaxis!"

[Grundel]

Count me in too. Customer support is invaluable, and is something I have rearely seen with any software company. When I saw Soren reply on some of the threads to address issues, it has completely restored my faith in the software community. More companies ought to follow this example. My hats off to you, Firaxis.