Civ3 is Broken

[CyberGnu]

kmj:

Oh look, a rational post that wasn't complete flamebait!

Thank you, thank you *bowing*

In my experience with the game, the improved ai and emphasis on diplomacy, the addition of culture, etc. this game is more historically realistic than CivII.

As I told Soren from Firaxis on the AI chat this afternoon, I think they have made a great job with the AI, I'm just saddened that the actual gameplay didn't live up to the same standards.

The diplomacy is indeed much better now. Culture... I don't know. I like the concept, but I think it is overemphasized. Why does your borders grow because you build colloseums? Why is it that when I concquer a city the first thing I have to crash build is a library? These are only two issues with culture that I think should be rethought.

Borders make much more sense if they are a function of city size and technological level...

And I shouldn't have to build a library when I conquer a city just so that it won't revert back to its old civ... My steelshod boots on their necks should do that!

CivII was basically you against the rest of the world in a battle of military might from the get-go. Compared to Civ3, CivII was just a glorified wargame.

Hmm, I never played civ2 as a wargame... Yeah, sure, you eventually had to wipe out your opponents, but often I'd quit at that point, confident that a computer opponent could never outsmart me if we were equally strong. For me, the lure of the game was the building part.

I disagree. I think game is just as worthy of the name civilazition as 1 or 2. It has added many new and intriguing facets, which make it more about a civilization and less about extended warfare. There would be no way to create a perfectly accurate history "recreation" simulator, and I think Civ3 comes as close as any other game of the genre does.

Honestly, I can't remember how civ 1 worked... It's been a while. In fact, I've never played it on PC, only Amiga... But as far as civ 2 goes, there aren't any ACTIVE inconsistencies with history. What I mean is that while civ 2 lacked many things important through history (most important one probably being disease), there were no features that worked contrary to history.

In civ 3, we have several. The corruption is so out of hand that the British Empire can't function. I'm even willing to bet that if you take the earth map and create United States, Hawaii will be useless due to corruption.

The culture thing is out of control. The largest empire the Earth has ever seen was the Mongol. The mongolian contribution to culture is essentially non-existent...

The assimilation of cities does have some basis on history, but NOT BETWEEN EMPIRES. What often happened was primitive tribes joining a more advanced neighbour, a la british tribes joining the roman lifestyle, creating Romano-brits. But you never saw British cities suddenly deciding to join France due to the state of french literature...

Not to mention the reassimilation of cities. If I have crushed the defendors with even taking a casuality, I shouldn;t have to worry about the city reverting to the former owner because they like his lifestyle. Of course they'd like to go back... But I'm not about to let them.

And the uselessnes of high tech... It's frustrating when my infantrymen get killed my knights. Repeatedly. While being fortified in a city. Not even tanks should be able to root out a infantry man from a city without some REALLY heavy artillery.

Not to mention that bombers can't kill ships... In civ 2, the carrier was the ruler of the sea. In civ 3, we've stopped at WW1, when the battleship reigned supreme. Well, not that supreme, since the Bismarck can be sunk by the Merrimac one time out of five or so.

See what I mean?

[Alexander's Horse]

Kaak is a hard core Civ II multiplayer with a fearsome reputation - he's one of the best. So I think his opinion should be respected - I do.

Kaak however is also a master of ICS so I'm not surprised he's frustrated with the new game

Looks like you are going to have to actually build a few things in your cities Kaak

[CyberGnu]

Kaak:

The simple fact is, we did not get what we were promised; a better game than civ2. The AI is better, kudos. The graphics are better. woohoo! But some aspects of the gameplay poison its vitality and worthiness of the civ name. Do i like this game? Yes. Have I been playing it a lot? yes. HOWEVER, I think it could have been done Better, and I don't feel like i got what I paid for.

Agreeing wholeheartedly, apart from the last statement... I took it back to the store. I don't have a large budget for computer games, so I'm gonna save the money for Heroes 4.

Maybe when the patch comes out I'll try it again... But it's gonna depend on the changes in the patch.

[aderen]

damn bestbuy won't take my game back.
maybe i should send it back to firaxis will take it back?

[IceManXXL]

Aderen: I totally agree, I don't understand why the AI *INSISTS* on moving EVERY damn unit EVERY turn. I just love having an enemy city surrounded by my culture and having to sit and watch it move each and every unit that it controls (which is alot since it just ended a war with an enemy city to the north) in that city ad nauseum, thank god they don't have railroads or I don't think they'd ever stop, it's ridiculous.

I would however like to apologize for my recent flames on the game. It does have some glaring problems, but I have adjusted to most. (though I still don't understand a)tanks being destroyed by swordsmen and/or anything else short of a mechanized unit. b) Battleships being destroyed by arrow shooting triremes c)infantry/riflemen being destroyed by any melee units, unless they are elite and even then, it's pretty weak.)

Corruption, I have manage to limit the problems with corruption, somewhat. I just by build the forbidden palace on the northern end of my empire and rebuild my palace on the southern end. It helps trememdously but I still think the corruption percent is way too high.

Artillery, Misses WAY too much. Had a stack of about 12 or so firing on Rome the other night, Rome only had an elite musketman, and 2 vet muskets defending, it took me about 3 turns before I hit consistently enough to have all three units down to one health. That's counting the fact that I had since destroyed the Barracks, so they couldn't heal in one turn anymore. heh The rate of fire on rifleman and infantry should be a hell of a lot faster than muskets, but they fire at the same rate now. (loading a black powder musket or firing a semiautomatic rifle, which takes longer ya think?)

Oh yeah, using up strategic resources??? Good god, they are hard enough to come by without them being used up!! I had two oil squares right next to each other, one was used up. The best part is, it was used up before I even built ONE modern unit that required it. lol

Pollution, with a solar plant, mass transit, and a recycling center there should be NO pollution. However, most of my cities still produce two units, with all those improvements.

Ok, that was just a rant, it's better than a flame, right?
Still you gotta agree with me on most if not all of those points, they are mostly common sense. I gain technology to improve my military, those units cost more to produce and take more time, so why should I not be upset when those units are destroyed with EASE by units that are 300 years behind in tech?

Other than that, it's a pretty good game. heh

[Tani]

perspective is in order, absolutely, when one is to say if civ3 deserve the "civilization" title.

however, what is mistaken is that people are complaining not because the game is harder, or more challenging now. the challenge is not the issue. let me give an example, if the challenge argument stands, then a game that have the player starts in stone age while the ai starts at modern age would be even more challenging, thus better, but then why stop there? how about none of the players units will ever be able to defeat the ai's units? that would certainly be a challenge, wouldn't it? it is absolutely ok have a game with the label civilization to have challenging game mechanics, but it is entirely different from giving any challenging game mechanics the label civilization! these are two entirely different logical conditions. of course, i'm not claiming this is necessarily a bad game, i mean it can be called a fictional empire building game etc, then it might be considered a good game. but when the civilization label is applied, there would be high and rigid expectations, since we know of, and have experience of, and most importantly, living in a world of civilizations.

CyberGnu summed up the problems with culture and corruption very well. it's not a minor issue. i have posted on another thread on borders. regarding to using culture as border, it's a bad idea, since cultural assimilation is not the same as cities being assimilated from sovereignty to another by "culture." the first differentiates cultural border from physical border, the second is just simply unheard of in rl.

[FrostyBoy]

Has the AI ever done anything quite cool?

I just realised that I've never seen Civ3's AI do anything quite smart, and comparing it to CTP's, it seems to be much worse.

Civ3's AI doesn't seem to know what a borderline is, it doesn't build fortresses on the borders and fortify any strong units on them.


Also I found the diplomacy to be flawed, I remember one game where all 16 civs asked me the exact same thing on the same turn. It was really annoying.. they all asked to trade world maps.. even tho half of them had already asked for it a couple of turns back.

The other stupid thing is, that the AI doesn't think "Oh, I have thrown 50 knights at that damn marine in that fortress and i've lost every one of them, maybe I should stop and think of a different attack?".

Sheesh

[Garth Vader]

I also find cultural assimilation and corruption the two most annoying things about Civ3.

It would be nice if cultural assimilation of conquered cities was replaced by resistors that lasted longer, say proportional to the culture of the city. If there were many resistors and one, or a few damaged military units the resistors could take back the city.

Cultural assimilation should only affect cities that are far from their civ, lack a connection, and have few improvements and little, or obsolete military. Or some combination of the above.

As for corruption, I think it increased for me from Republic to Democracy, so some bug checking and reduction is warrented.

[tmarcl]

Originally posted by kmj


2) Embassies allow you to investigate all your enemy cities; thereby finding the weakest.

I agreed with everything else you said, kmj, but I wanted to say something about this. I've noticed this argument being used a lot against AI cheating, but I don't think it entirely holds water. Number one, the AI generally doesn't have enough money to investigate every one of my cities to find out which is weakest (heck, it generally doesn't have enough to investigate more than two). Now you could say that it got lucky, but not on a consistent basis, IMO.

Secondly, someone gave the anecdote on how they kept their island from being attacked by constantly moving troops to new cities, changing the weakest one. By your argument, the AI is investigating each city each turn-something that they're not likely to do not only for cost reasons (as above), but also for practical reasons. It's not a very efficient war if your army just keeps circling around and around with no victories.

Now, you're probably going to point out that when you're near a city, you see the best defending unit-but that's not true if you turn that option off in preferences. Then you only see the unit when you're attacking the city.

It's an AI cheat, IMO. Not a serious one, but it is one nonetheless.

Marc

[oedo]

seen civ3, played civ3, enjoyed civ3. after all I think it´s better than civ2 (or should I say it will be better than civ2?

but

the corruption thing is annoying, but I think this can be fixed by a patch. and I hope it will be fixed.
what I really hate about this game, is that you can´t rushbuild any wonders.´it´s not even a matter of the right strategy which wonders you get, it´s simply a matter of luck.

... and I´m very disappointed there´re no oedo years anymore

[fikrii]

I totally agree with people who say that Civ III is rushed.

Just for the record, I am a long time Civ player, all the way from CIV1.

One of the things that I don't like are the combat system.

I've played CTP2 (actually traded it in for CIV3), and I think its army system is FAR SUPERIOR to CIV3's crappy same ol' system. I am disappointed by the way CIV3 handle combat with its same ol' statistics system (I had a veteran Panzer blown out of the battlefield by a spearman!). CTP2 handles this with an armor rating (if attack <= armor, you can't get hurt), sadly, this is absent in CIV3.

CTP2 also allows you to make coordinated attack, which allows you to fight with combined arms tactics, using artillery behind the heavy units (artillery/archer supporting the forward units' attack, steadily chipping away at the defenders' hit points, making combat more realistic). This way I don't feel cheated by the (already cheating, well at least at higher difficulties) AI. Sadly, again, CIV3 still uses the same ol' statistic system.

And OK, so it is obvious that the AI cheats on higher difficulty levels (just finished Emperor last night with space race victory). But CIV3 does not include multiplayer (believing that the souped up AI would be enough). Not even hotseat (I totally couldn't believe this)! A multiplayer mode ensures that people can play others who play by the same rules. This is an incredible arrogance of Firaxis (the AI IS actually better, probably the best out there), or may be the project was rushed? Well?

(Just for the record, I think CTP2's AI is braindead)

Also, how 'bout the wonder movies? Shouldn't the player be rewarded for having sweaty palms racing with the AIs on building wonders?

And oh, only 3 movies (intro, defeat, space race victory, checked it out with bink video player)? Come on, you Firaxis folks can surely do better for my 50 bucks.

The one thing (among many things) where CIV3 shines is in its trade and diplomacy system. In CIV1 and 2 I never bothered to check my diplomacy screen and considered them a nuisance. Not here. Trade and diplomacy are paramount to victory! This is realistic.

If I were to rate this game on a scale if 1(lowest) to 10(highest), I'll put it somewhere betwen 8-9.

It's also priced at some $50 (Sid Meier's celebrity status adds up to that, I guess)

I have a question to fellow CIV players out there, why are Alphabet and Writing two separate advances? This has been a mistery to me since the days of CIV1? Just for gameplay reasons or what? I am sure if it's for gameplay reasons, they could easily make up something. It doesn't seem very realistic to me.

Well, anyway, CIV3 is a good game, great improvement from the previous installments, but DEFINITELY could be MUCH MUCH better.

Also, I think the $50 is to a bit too high. If they had priced it at $40, may be I won't complain so bad

[Kaak]

Kaak however is also a master of ICS so I'm not surprised he's frustrated with the new game

In my own defense, I don't ICS or at least, not by the classical definition. Anyone can ICS! Thanks for the respect tho hehe...

[Zylka]

Originally posted by kmj
Zylka -


KMJ, the game is broken. There are many contradictions between the civelopedia, instruction book, and gameplay itself. Since this proves the game is not functioning in its intended purpose, it is by defintion broken.


I haven't noticed any contradictions between the civilopedia and the game. The manual, yes, but these I can attribute to the fact that changes were made during beta tested that could not be fixed in the manual. It happens; anyway, documentation issues do not detract from the game. People who expected a fun, addictive, challenging game got exactly what they wanted, which was the intended purpose of the game designers. Therefore, by my judgement, your statement is wrong and the game is not broken.

Was the game rushed? Yes. Does that anger me? Yes. But face it, that's a product of the current "software culture", if you will. Microsoft taught software makers alot. That does suck. Then again, by my judgement, most games and companies' attitudes suck; in this case, I don't think they do.


What should piss you off is the attitude of outright acceptance so prevelant around here. This game was rushed beyond belief, and for some reason you can not accept that. When people point this out in a polite manner, you feel obligated to drop by a thread that "pisses you off" and share your views -

The fact is some people are not being polite. I have not responded in disagreement with anyone who politely states the issues they have with the game. I have done that. Making a blanket statement: "the game is broken", stating an opinion as a fact, is not a polite statement.


"EVRERY1 THOUSANDS OF PEEPS IZ HAVING A GOOD TIME PLAYING IT WHY CANT U???"


Oh, very intelligent. You'll win a noble peace prize for that one, dipsh!t. I don't care if you or anyone else enjoys the game. I don't care if you take your CivIII CD and microwave it in homage to the Lobster God T'Chuktliutc. If you actually read what I said, I was using it as evidence of the fact I stated above: the game was created for entertainment and it is entertaining people. Therefore it is not broken. QEfsckin'D, jerky. So please don't misrepresent my words and treat me like some stupid aoler. If you want to have an intelligent argument, that's fine; but insults will only prove your own incapabilities.


Perhaps some individuals can't force themselves to have fun playing a game that has horrendous logistics flaws, let alone does not perform in its intended purpose. They do not see the need to "JUST HAVRE FUN WIT DA GAME", nor do they feel the need to tell others not to enjoy it. They voice their complaints in the hopes of having some impact on an upcoming patch, rather than blindly screaming "I LOVE IT I LOVE IT" in hopes of keeping everything the same.


Again, I don't give a flying fart whether you have fun. If you don't like it, bring it back. It's still not broken. There's a difference between voicing your complaints, and selfrighteously stating that your opinions dictate what is correct. I've mentioned in some threads what I thought was wrong with the game.


If you love the game the way it is, fine. Do not download the future patch which will hopefully tend to the complaints we air. By then, you will have hopefully moved on to the next flavor of the month cash-cow. As for us - we will stay on, to play a game we hope to become timeless.


FYI this is the only game I've bought in the past two years. I've been playing CivII as long as anyone else. This game, CivII, and rollercoaster tycoon are the only games I play generally because most games just aren't worth my time.



Did that clarify things a bit?


Yeah; thanks. Now I know what an @ss you are.

CyberGnu -
Oh look, a rational post that wasn't complete flamebait! You could learn something Zylka...


kmj, it all depends on your perspective. If you want a strategy game and don't care about the surroundings, fine, the game works pretty well I guess. But if you want a game that is based on history and empirebuilding, there are a few things that are definetely broken. Corruption and cultural reassimilation of conquered cities being two of the most glaring ones.


In my experience with the game, the improved ai and emphasis on diplomacy, the addition of culture, etc. this game is more historically realistic than CivII. CivII was basically you against the rest of the world in a battle of military might from the get-go. Compared to Civ3, CivII was just a glorified wargame. Corruption is hard to quantify. Does it seem excessive in Civ3? Yes, and I wouldn't mind seeing it fixed. Also, I would like to see the factors that determine cultural reassimilation. Some people seem to feel that they have this under control. Do some wierd things happen that maybe shouldn't? Yes. Does that break the game? I really don't think so.

[b]
In my opinion a third one is the lack of diffrentiation between old and new units... Ony of my battleships just got sunk attacking a galleon.
[b]

I agree that this is wierd... I think there should be a chance, but some things may still have too much of a chance...
Sadly, Xerxes314's combat calculator doesn't include naval units.



So calm down, please?


I was until I was treated like some little ignorant 'netkiddie by Zylka.


Currently this is not a game worthy of the name civilization. It might still be a good strategy game, however.


I disagree. I think game is just as worthy of the name civilazition as 1 or 2. It has added many new and intriguing facets, which make it more about a civilization and less about extended warfare. There would be no way to create a perfectly accurate history "recreation" simulator, and I think Civ3 comes as close as any other game of the genre does.


There are people who have real complaints. There are real bugs that should be patched, and possible gameplay issues that, being fixed, will make it a better game. There are issues brought up by multiplayer people, in advance, hoping they'll be fixed before multiplayer civ3 comes out. The scenario community obviously has real and important issues that they feel need to be fixed. They presented these issues via this forum with a tactful open letter. They didn't say (in true Zylka spirit) "YUTR GAME EIS BROOKEN!!!!".

Me r flaim bait, DAR DAR DAR.

The game is broken, my friend... Corruption does not follow civlopedia descriptions, culture does not work according to superiority basis. Coastal fortresses often do not fire at passing ships (as they are supposed to) air superiority does not work even close to the percentage alloted. The list goes on for straight bugs, you should check out some of the ordered complaints in the bug threads sometime. These are not bugs of personal interpretation, just straight purpose contradicting bugs - and there's a lot of them.

Now, for the logistics faults which aren't technically flaws in the game purpose, you have all the right to disregard them. Just keep in mind that their are justified complaints on these flaws, and many people agree what is and isn't a problem. We hate to see the series go a step backwards to the mechanics of civ1, and that's just what a lot of these do.

[Dis]

a broken game is a game that cannot be played

this game is not broken. I am able to play it from start to finish.

It may have several flaws, but it is far from broken

Just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean it is broken for the rest of us. I have no problems with corruption. My culture works fine for me.

look it up in a dictionary if you have to

[Zylka]

True, and if you can hobble a twisted bike around the block, it's not broken either.

Would it make you happier if we just refer to it as "malfunctioning", or "crippled"?