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Top 10 Likes and Dislikes
I wanted to add my voice to the chorus of commentary. My strategy gaming experience stretches way back to „Utopia“ for the Intellivision console, so I’ve formed some opinions over the past 15 years or so on what makes a good strategy game. That doesn’t entitle me to speak for the entire gaming community, but here’s my two cents worth:
Top 10 Likes
1. Resources and trade. It’s high time for strategy games to include more sophisticated economic models like Civ3’s that don’t require a lot of micromanagement. It makes wars more meaningful and it drives the rise and fall of empires. Civ3’s resource system also keeps the game interesting until the very end. You may build the most powerful ancient empire on the planet, but if you can’t get your hands on, say, saltpeter or oil, the game gets a lot more challenging.
2. Nationbuilding. I don’t feel like I need to build or conquer a massive empire to win. What I need to do to win is to build an effective nation. That means dealing with corruption and keeping my people happy. It means developing my own culture and assimilating other cultures (I love the fact that I can have citizens from many different nations in one city). It involves keeping a technological and economic edge. Civ3 is a great multi-faceted challenge.
3. Diplomacy. The new diplomatic options offer new depth and
the AI usually does a decent job of negotiating. I like the fact that the AI’s negotiating stance depends on whether it respects your Civ, and it seems to do a good job of dynamically assigning values to different items depending on the state of the game and the strength of each side’s position. Increasing maximum civs to 16 is another plus and this will reach its potential when scenarios become possible.
4. War is fun. In other games, I tended to be a fairly pacifistic player not because I am a pacifist but mainly because I found long military campaigns tedious and not very entertaining. The border system and resources in Civ3 often make it necessary to go to war, but not necessarily in order to capture territory. War is about resources, not just about occupying cities. Wars are much more targeted affairs, and I don’t have to occupy all of the enemy’s cities to feel like I’m winning. I just need to find his center of gravity and hit him where it hurts.
5. Less micromanagement. Micromanagement is part of the genre, but the interface, the governors and many of the automated worker features really make a difference. Thank God I don’t have to run my workers around cleaning up pollution manually or shift citizens around in my cities to manage happiness or food vs. shields. I could probably do a better job than the computer, but I’d rather focus on the big picture.
6. Naval strategy. In other games in this genre, I rarely bothered to build up my fleet beyond what was necessary to invade another land mass and patrol the coast a bit. In Civ3, if the AI can get away with it, it will use naval units aggressively to destroy your improvements and infrastructure. The AI also escorts its transports and sometimes organizes well-coordinated invasions. You need a cohesive naval strategy.
7. Gold. The increased importance of gold for armies, diplomacy and espionage makes me feel like I’m managing a state budget rather than playing God. Gold links a lot of gameplay elements in ways that allow for more strategic flexibility.
8. Randomizer seeds. I admit that the fact that I can’t reload the game to get a more favorable combat outcome really frustrates me sometimes. It also liberates me from feeling like I have to play a perfect game just to beat Diety, so I don’t waste time reloading constantly. The randomizer seeds make the game much more challenging in a welcome way.
9. Graphics and interface. The interface is slick and mostly intuitive. Good riddance to all those pop-ups screens. Like any veteran strategy gamer, I’d rather have strong gameplay than eye candy, but the nice graphics are a plus.
10. Bombing raids. The treatment of air units as strategic (rather than tactical) units removes a lot of the tedium from air warfare. Two clicks is all it takes to send your aircraft streaking toward their targets (I love those animations!) Precision strikes are a welcome addition and air power can be used to sever the enemy’s access to key resources.
Top 10 Dislikes
1. Editor. For reasons discussed in other threads, we won’t be getting any decent scenarios for the foreseeable future. I enjoy the long game, but I don’t want to have to start from zero in the ancient era every time I play. And the fact that you cannot play on a decent world map in historical starting positions is an absolute disgrace!
2. Air superiority. I have never seen one of my fighters on AS intercept an incoming bomber. It’s either a bug, the interception % is too low, or the game doesn’t show me that I have intercepted something. It’s also not possible to dogfight to contest airspace or to escort bombers.
3. Watching others move. You can hold Shift down to speed up AI moves, but you can’t toggle a permanent fast move option. This slows the game unnecessarily. Don’t even think about making a right of passage agreement.
4. Foreign minister. Instead of having the minister’s advice box cycle through various tidbits of limited value, I would rather see or have access to all the relevant info at once: leader personality, reputation, regard for my culture, current research, key info from the demographics screen, etc.
5. Demographics. I love the demographics rankings, but if this
data is being collected on the various civilizations, why isn’t this info used in the advisors’ screens and why can’t I see other civ’s stats? It’s not core to the gameplay, but it would be a neat feature.
6. Espionage. I like the fact that the spies are gone, but I find the espionage options a bit on the expensive side. This is an area where strategy gaming needs innovation, and Civ3 didn’t deliver much.
7. Weak navy orders. I think the fortify order for warships should work like the old sleep order, so that your ships are activated when an enemy ship passes within sighting range. I miss too many interdiction opportunities because I lose track of enemy shipping. An escort or form fleet order would save some micromanagement too. A patrol order would have been nice but not essential.
8. Armies and stacks. You can’t issue movement orders to an entire stack, which increases the micromanagement quotient somewhat. I also don’t like the fact that you can’t move units in and out of armies or that pre-modern armies can only attack once per turn.
9. No random events. Random events (and scripting tools) that are unique to each age would give the game more flavor.
10. No social engineering. Instead of treating governments as a technology achievement, I was hoping SMAC’s social engineering framework would be adapted for Civ3 in some form. The current system works just fine, but this would have been a good area for innovation.
All in all, Civ 3 is an excellent addition to the genre. It’s more an evolutionary step than a revolutionary one, however. Firaxis deserves a lot of credit if they can keep a jaded old gamer like me hooked on the series.
Top 10 Likes
1. Resources and trade. It’s high time for strategy games to include more sophisticated economic models like Civ3’s that don’t require a lot of micromanagement. It makes wars more meaningful and it drives the rise and fall of empires. Civ3’s resource system also keeps the game interesting until the very end. You may build the most powerful ancient empire on the planet, but if you can’t get your hands on, say, saltpeter or oil, the game gets a lot more challenging.
2. Nationbuilding. I don’t feel like I need to build or conquer a massive empire to win. What I need to do to win is to build an effective nation. That means dealing with corruption and keeping my people happy. It means developing my own culture and assimilating other cultures (I love the fact that I can have citizens from many different nations in one city). It involves keeping a technological and economic edge. Civ3 is a great multi-faceted challenge.
3. Diplomacy. The new diplomatic options offer new depth and
the AI usually does a decent job of negotiating. I like the fact that the AI’s negotiating stance depends on whether it respects your Civ, and it seems to do a good job of dynamically assigning values to different items depending on the state of the game and the strength of each side’s position. Increasing maximum civs to 16 is another plus and this will reach its potential when scenarios become possible.
4. War is fun. In other games, I tended to be a fairly pacifistic player not because I am a pacifist but mainly because I found long military campaigns tedious and not very entertaining. The border system and resources in Civ3 often make it necessary to go to war, but not necessarily in order to capture territory. War is about resources, not just about occupying cities. Wars are much more targeted affairs, and I don’t have to occupy all of the enemy’s cities to feel like I’m winning. I just need to find his center of gravity and hit him where it hurts.
5. Less micromanagement. Micromanagement is part of the genre, but the interface, the governors and many of the automated worker features really make a difference. Thank God I don’t have to run my workers around cleaning up pollution manually or shift citizens around in my cities to manage happiness or food vs. shields. I could probably do a better job than the computer, but I’d rather focus on the big picture.
6. Naval strategy. In other games in this genre, I rarely bothered to build up my fleet beyond what was necessary to invade another land mass and patrol the coast a bit. In Civ3, if the AI can get away with it, it will use naval units aggressively to destroy your improvements and infrastructure. The AI also escorts its transports and sometimes organizes well-coordinated invasions. You need a cohesive naval strategy.
7. Gold. The increased importance of gold for armies, diplomacy and espionage makes me feel like I’m managing a state budget rather than playing God. Gold links a lot of gameplay elements in ways that allow for more strategic flexibility.
8. Randomizer seeds. I admit that the fact that I can’t reload the game to get a more favorable combat outcome really frustrates me sometimes. It also liberates me from feeling like I have to play a perfect game just to beat Diety, so I don’t waste time reloading constantly. The randomizer seeds make the game much more challenging in a welcome way.
9. Graphics and interface. The interface is slick and mostly intuitive. Good riddance to all those pop-ups screens. Like any veteran strategy gamer, I’d rather have strong gameplay than eye candy, but the nice graphics are a plus.
10. Bombing raids. The treatment of air units as strategic (rather than tactical) units removes a lot of the tedium from air warfare. Two clicks is all it takes to send your aircraft streaking toward their targets (I love those animations!) Precision strikes are a welcome addition and air power can be used to sever the enemy’s access to key resources.
Top 10 Dislikes
1. Editor. For reasons discussed in other threads, we won’t be getting any decent scenarios for the foreseeable future. I enjoy the long game, but I don’t want to have to start from zero in the ancient era every time I play. And the fact that you cannot play on a decent world map in historical starting positions is an absolute disgrace!
2. Air superiority. I have never seen one of my fighters on AS intercept an incoming bomber. It’s either a bug, the interception % is too low, or the game doesn’t show me that I have intercepted something. It’s also not possible to dogfight to contest airspace or to escort bombers.
3. Watching others move. You can hold Shift down to speed up AI moves, but you can’t toggle a permanent fast move option. This slows the game unnecessarily. Don’t even think about making a right of passage agreement.
4. Foreign minister. Instead of having the minister’s advice box cycle through various tidbits of limited value, I would rather see or have access to all the relevant info at once: leader personality, reputation, regard for my culture, current research, key info from the demographics screen, etc.
5. Demographics. I love the demographics rankings, but if this
data is being collected on the various civilizations, why isn’t this info used in the advisors’ screens and why can’t I see other civ’s stats? It’s not core to the gameplay, but it would be a neat feature.
6. Espionage. I like the fact that the spies are gone, but I find the espionage options a bit on the expensive side. This is an area where strategy gaming needs innovation, and Civ3 didn’t deliver much.
7. Weak navy orders. I think the fortify order for warships should work like the old sleep order, so that your ships are activated when an enemy ship passes within sighting range. I miss too many interdiction opportunities because I lose track of enemy shipping. An escort or form fleet order would save some micromanagement too. A patrol order would have been nice but not essential.
8. Armies and stacks. You can’t issue movement orders to an entire stack, which increases the micromanagement quotient somewhat. I also don’t like the fact that you can’t move units in and out of armies or that pre-modern armies can only attack once per turn.
9. No random events. Random events (and scripting tools) that are unique to each age would give the game more flavor.
10. No social engineering. Instead of treating governments as a technology achievement, I was hoping SMAC’s social engineering framework would be adapted for Civ3 in some form. The current system works just fine, but this would have been a good area for innovation.
All in all, Civ 3 is an excellent addition to the genre. It’s more an evolutionary step than a revolutionary one, however. Firaxis deserves a lot of credit if they can keep a jaded old gamer like me hooked on the series.
the conclusion is inevitable because, after the air superiority thing is patched, the rest is a minor chore in comparison with 10 good gameplay thingies
)
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