Why I've stoped playing Civ III

[Plutarck]

While at first I wasn't much a fan of CTP, I actually got to really enjoy playing it until it got to the point where on Diety I could fight with Fusion Tanks when the AI was still using Machine Gunners. The endings to the game sucked though. They all kinda suck in the Civ games, for some reason. CTP2, however, just plain sucked.

I'm not really all that "disappointed", but simply for the fact that I refused to get my hopes up to the best of my ability. But even with that something that is really annoying me is that I was anxiously awaiting a game that seems like they threw away all the Civilization II/SMAC code, did a complete rewrite, and this is a late beta version.

I even have cought myself thinking "with a month or two more of work this game will be cool"...and then I realize this is the release version.

All the other Civ games I played hours and hours and hours without changing or modding a single thing. I just played as-is.

But with this I find I'm unable to do that. There are just too many issues to leave.

Ships take too long to become available. Only towards the middle/end of the middle ages are even sea worthy ships available, when in fact ocean going vessels seem to actually have been in existance before 4000 BC. But I'll just take the sea worthy vessels that have been dug up near the Pyramids in Egypt.

Heck, the 60+ changes so far in my mod are there for a reason. I don't want to CHANGE the game, I just want it to SEEM reasonable to me, and it just ain't doing that now. With all those changes I haven't even yet addressed naval units and technologys, and before those are complete it will require like 10-20 changes (and by change I count changing a unit as 1 change, not 1 for each thing about that unit I change).

Then Missles and Air power aren't quite right and deserve a change. The tech tree in the Industrial Era seems empty in places.


The game just lacks any place to sink your teeth into, which tells me the game is "newy" and more or less beta.

The great unconventional units from CTP such as Lawyers, Corporate Branches, Nanoinfectors (Bioterrorists), the spy special abilitys like bribe...all not present.

They added culture and a bare-bones implementation of Small Wonders and pretty much removed everything else. I can't think of ANY other feature that is actually "new" to the Civ series (short of the "espionage missions" which are nothing more than dialog boxes), yet the amount of features which are gone just go on and on and on...and hell, I didn't even play SMAC which had tons of new features.


I just get the sick feeling that Civ3 should really be called Civilization Light. Because that's what it seems to be; a civilization clone for people who don't really like this kind of game.


When it comes down to it, those of us who are hardcore strategy buffs, history buffs, tactical wizards, and mod-geeks just weren't the target audience for Civ3. The target audience is "Everyone", meaning "Mostly people who aren't big computer gamers, especially those who prefer platform games but want something 1/2 inch deeper".

The money is in the masses, and look around. Intellectuals, those with attention to fine detail, and deep-thinkers are most definately NOT in the majority. Never have been, most likely never will be.

It's just a pity gaming has been taken away from the original gamers and pioneers of the industry and has been thrown to the 3D Disney generation and to the people who didn't want to have anything to do with games before they saw Quake.

The creative people are now just slaves to the deadline and the "Profit IS Virtue" philosophy of today.


But we can't turn back the hands of time, so we have to just make the best of it. In short, squeeze the fun out the unfinished piece or crap. Hack it to pieces and mod the hell out of it, because otherwise we're left with a $49.99 coaster and matching bird-cage liner.

And maybe with a little time the unwitting Deadling Slaves will be able to patch the game to make it actually play like it should have in the first place.

Welcome to the Anarchy Online Generation of Gaming.

Makes you long for Pong, doesn't it?

[Grallon]

That was harsh Plutark


Alright now that I've stated why I disliked Civ III let me tell you about the game that would really knock me off.


1) Civilizations die as Ive said, so one important element would be that each starting Civ would contain the "germs of it's own dissolution" (fully editable of course) that in time would make it collapse - or not if you're really skilled. This was the original intent of Civ I as I recall: "stand the test of time" remember ?

What I mean is a Civ, depending on its original ethno-cultural makup, would face increasing pressure towards destruction as time goes by. Let's take the good old romans as an exemple. Rome was militaristic but when its own successes started to outweight it's strenght it collapsed. However some of it's core values survived in the successor states that arose afterward. I think it was the game "History of the World" that took this idea and made it so that the player would have to select one successor Civ at the dawn of a new era.

2) Environment condition the growth and development of civilizations. This has been modeled inthe Civ series but it's very limited. Take Civ III as an exemple. You have strategic resources you need to accomplish certain actions and built certain units. Great idea - except that when you don't have petroleum you can't built tanks & planes. However in RL, when Germany was faced with a similar dilema - the germans invented synthetic oil/rubber !

3) The Civ series equates civilizations & empires - which it isnt at all. The majority of Net users are from N-A, Europe, Australia - we all participate in one civilization - what is usually known as the West. Yet we live in different societies with different values but overall there is a core set of values shared by all of us. This should be represented in the game.

Instead of the goodies huts we have, we should have minor players that wont really have all the reach of the (8-16) major players but that would still act autonomously. So that when you culture expends and they become in awe of you they become open to new types of relationships like vassalization for instance - which would give specific bonuses. Thus you could control an empire (Egypt - 8 cities) which has influence over some neighboors (Nubia - 3 cities / Judea - 2 cities). In the event of a prolonged period of social/political instability - a collapse might occur which would profit one of those clients (since they're associated with your civilization). Then you'd get a msg: "The integrity of the realm cant be maintained - you now have the option of electing one of your vassals as a new base of operations. Be aware though that some of the advances will be lost in the migration." Then you goal would likely be to re-establish your previous empire - but it might not either.

4) Expend on the concept of resources and increase the prerequisites for appearance and use -->

- natural resources (basic/strategic/luxuries) (evolving in time)
- manufactured resources (dependant on both your tech level & your cultural bias) (this means that an antique religious civilization with access to bronze tech & tin mine might decide to manufacture statues instead of swords)

In that same line of thought there would also be 2 production system running in parallel: city-specific production items (that which is needed to increase the "value" of a particular city) as well as empire-wide production.

Ex: each city would have a production index associated with it that would determine the number of projects you can launch from there (ref Galactic Civilizations). You want to built fortifications ? You can devote all of your 500 whatever a year to it of split it between that and 4 other projects.

Similarly at the strategic level you'd have a yearly budget set which would enable you to create say 10 chariots. You'd then choose the production center which would suspend all it's "internal" activities and get funneled all the empire's resources to produce 10 war chariots. Then it'd be the player's responsability to dispatch the finished product.

No more having to build a connecting road to a foreign Civ to be able to trade with it. You have official contact, you have a map - you can trade. You are limited though. You want to increase the volume ? Then you build a road.

5) There should be 2 types of knowlege: fundamental and applied. The player would have no control over the fundamental research but could decide - upon beind told about a new area of knowlege that it now has 3-4 possible tech that could be derived from it.

Ex: domestication would be a fundamental advance but out of it a militaristic civ would no doubt derive horseback riding and produce horsemen while an industrious civ might select the bull-powered wheatmill and thus increase it's food production and ultimately it's growth.

You'd have the ability to select how much resource you want to spend in that area and consequently how many applied techs you can simultaneously research.

6) All the big social phenomenon such as religion or ideology should not be advances to be researched but consequences of your decisions/ choices. They should appear if a set of circumstances has been met.

Let's take monarchy as an exemple. To be able to establish a monarchy a player would need :

- knowledge of agriculture/potery/domestication (for x number of years)
- a granary & a temple
- a set number of veteran units
- some specialist citizens

then you'd get a msg: " the people were tired of clannish rule - they aspired to more centralized authority - the clan fathers have convened and elected one of their own to rule over all. Here are the benefits of this new form of government"

Or in the case of monotheism:

- a number of temples (for x number of years)
- a number of active trade routes (for x number of years)
- a religious bias
- a certain amount of gold in treasury

then: "prophets have arisen proclaiming that there is but one deity. Here are the advantages you may get from supporting this: - will you try to suppress it (random instability) or embrace it ? If so what shall be the name of this new religion. If you are in a monarchy at the time this happens you'd get a centralized church - if you're a militaristic culture you might end up with a militant religion like Islam. Thus the advent of monotheism would put a spin on your civilization and give you specific advantages that others dont.

7) An element of RPG. Leaders would appear in your civilization that the player wouldnt have full control over. Monarchs, generals, statesmen, explorers

8) An Editor of course with entire libraries of graphics & sounds - and with which you could edit/create events/units/wonders etc


Well that's about it. Comments ?



G.

[SkinJob]

@Plutarck:

I understand your post, i fully ACK, but could you please explain what thigns was so bad in ctp2, that you where so dissapointed and didn't play it at all?

This is no complain or flame or whatever, i am just very curious, because you seem to be a very delightfull civ gamer, i would like to know a more exact opinion on ctp2.

so long,

s-j

[Plutarck]

SkinJob: I should note that "Sucks" is actually only a little below "Below Average" on my rating list. So I don't think quite that badly about it.

It was probably alot about perception. When I bought it I was expecting the sequal to Civilization: A Call To Power, but it really didn't seem anything like it. CTP2 seemed like a kind of spine-off/clone hybrid.

I don't put alot of weight on graphics, but in my opinion they became worse from CTP1 to CTP2, and that was just a disappointment.

The border system was a good addition but was too crude and mostly unimportant. The AI didn't seem very smart, and I didn't expect/enjoy being unable to choose where my population worked. I just expected to be able to choose what squares they work, so that was another disappointment.

So I stopped playing and went back to playing CTP1 again. Months later I went back, tried it a little and didn't hate it so much, and then downloaded the modpack for it.

Seemed to improve it, I suppose, and I played it a little. But I just didn't really like it. Couldn't find any reason to play it instead of CTP1, except for the fact that it was just a pushover now and the apolyton pack for it just made the game seem slow and overly boring.

Perhaps had I started out expecting something different I could have given it a fairer chance. It would really just have been better if they picked an entirely different name for it and made it obvious that it really was a kind of clone that took the series in a more empire-minded direction like CTP1 did.


So I didn't hate it, but it's a game and not a word processor. It has to do better than "not bad" to "not suck", so that there's an actual reason to play it. Just didn't like it enough to want to play it, so there you have it.