Boycott Civ 3

[GodSpawn]

I shall NOT botcott Civ3. I will buy it the instant it becomes available.

You guys that aren't happy with it - get a refund (and a life...)

[Yoleus]

IMHO

As I said in other posts, I LIKE the game but think it is:
1) rushed: some bugs (artillery, air superiority), some flaws (combat), some missing features (social engineering)
2) balanced in an unpleasant way: corruption&pollution anyone? Nice to play "Sid Meier's Housewife III"
3) marketed to death! No MP and no scenarios. I think they are saving lots of shots for future releases (CivIII MP, Gold, Scenarios, ToT, think of CivII)
4) too conservative: I agree Culture is a lovely inovation (so far), but it is the ONLY one upon CivII (unless you speak graphics...), and sincerely I think we came down from SMAC. It is probably meant this way to be sure to sell: I think CivIII is in SId's -Firaxis'- opinion not a product but a way to gain some money for some more ambitious projects: golf and dinosaurs
4.5) oblivious of suggestion from Poly (this is partially connected to 4, as you guess) that appeared in the FORGOTTEN List. They just did it their way (who cares about the TBS fans? They will play in any case!! So let's work for the main market)

So I will buy the game, but I will wait for Final Gold Patched Mp Scenario Edition, if any. I am not in a hurry to pay or play civIII, I am a fan but I have some "alternatives" (other strategy games, a life, etc.). IMHO Firaxis (and Sid as a playtester) did a nice job, but not an awesome one (so far).

P.S: I did not notice the effect mentioned as "BJ", but anyway, I think this forum has been always over-enthusiastic on Civ-something games (artificially, by "policy", by "paladins" or not, I do not know or care). The real opinions come up only later.

[Rasbelin]

I could support your boycott in theory, BUT...

1. ...I have bought the game already.

2. ...very few people wanted to join my Amazon.com boycott.

3. ...I don't see any reason to do so, if people are also seeing BTC as a waste of time.

So I don't take part in this campaign, but I wish you good luck.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Libertarian
And the crazy suggestion that Firaxis planted sycophants here is proof positive, as far as I'm concerned, of a profound and disturbing psychosis on the part of the suggesters.

You should have read a thread a few months ago, accusing Dan of making heaps of 'pretend' Civ 3 fan sites, just to fill the links page on civ3.com... That thread was even funnier than this one!!
And thats saying something

Dan: Keep those crop circles coming

[Earthling7]

I will not boycott Civ3.

I know it needs a couple of band-aids, but they are being worked on. As the game is now, it's very good. Patching could make it great and if the expansion is done carefully, it will be awesome.

[MarkG]

i feel like you hoek, after reading your assumption on firaxis' response and Dan's reply

tell you what, get techumseh and the others to set a deadline for people signing the letter, and then mail the letter and the signatures to me, and i'll spam every firaxian e-mail i know with it(well, not really, i'll just mail it once to the proper people )

if we dont get an official answer from firaxis on it, you can start your boycott campaign....

[Solver]

Markos!
Though I remember the StarCraft editor, that was nice!

[techumseh]

Originally posted by MarkG
i feel like you hoek, after reading your assumption on firaxis' response and Dan's reply

tell you what, get techumseh and the others to set a deadline for people signing the letter, and then mail the letter and the signatures to me, and i'll spam every firaxian e-mail i know with it(well, not really, i'll just mail it once to the proper people )

if we dont get an official answer from firaxis on it, you can start your boycott campaign....

Markos, the letter was posted here a week ago. That WAS the message, it was an open letter. Just to be sure, I emailed it a couple of days ago to the contact address on the official site. But I appreciate your response and your offer. Consider the letter closed, as of now. Please convey it officially to Firaxis. And thanks.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by MarkG
i feel like you hoek, after reading your assumption on firaxis' response and Dan's reply

tell you what, get techumseh and the others to set a deadline for people signing the letter, and then mail the letter and the signatures to me, and i'll spam every firaxian e-mail i know with it(well, not really, i'll just mail it once to the proper people )

if we dont get an official answer from firaxis on it, you can start your boycott campaign....

mark i tried time and again
can you see with firaxis guys where the designers' notes got lost? ceterum censeo....

[Barnacle Bill]

Re: IMHO

Originally posted by Yoleus
As I said in other posts, I LIKE the game but think it is:
1) rushed: some bugs (artillery, air superiority), some flaws (combat), some missing features (social engineering)
2) balanced in an unpleasant way: corruption&pollution anyone? Nice to play "Sid Meier's Housewife III"
3) marketed to death! No MP and no scenarios. I think they are saving lots of shots for future releases (CivIII MP, Gold, Scenarios, ToT, think of CivII)
4) too conservative: I agree Culture is a lovely inovation (so far), but it is the ONLY one upon CivII (unless you speak graphics...), and sincerely I think we came down from SMAC. It is probably meant this way to be sure to sell: I think CivIII is in SId's -Firaxis'- opinion not a product but a way to gain some money for some more ambitious projects: golf and dinosaurs

I agree with some of this, but not all.

Best I can tell, artillery works fine. You should not be able to destroy ground units with artillery. You can't in real life, at least not on the scale of the Civ games. With the number of units in the game and the fact you have the whole world modelled, a unit is approximately a division. I don't think anybody in history ever destroyed an enemy division solely through artillery bombardment. You can seriously weaken it through artillery bombardment before you attack it, or decimate it as it tries to close if it comes out of cover to attack you, but your front line guys still have to finish the job.

I wish it did have some of the stuff from SMAC, but the way units work in SMAC mitigates strongly against modding, IMO, so I don't miss that.

Corruption & pollution are kind of out of hand. I think corruption can be somewhat address via the "Optinum number of cities(corruption) setting in the World Sizes tab of the rules editor. Unfortunately, I don't think you can do anything about polution, while you could turn it off in Civ2, so that's bad.

Don't care about MP, but the starting point for scenario creation capability should be where Civ2:TOT left off, and add features from there. I'm OK with that not making initial release, though. If we had to wait three more months, that would have two bad effects: #1 I couldn't plat Civ3 for 3 more months (although certain bugs right now are inclining me to wait for the first patch before playing again, but hopefully that's weeks not months), and #2 MOO3 won't release until 3 months after Civ3, so if Civ3 was delayed 3 months I wouldn't get MOO3 for 6 more months.

Not real worried about "too conservative", either. I'm an incrementalist at heart. If I like a game, I want the sequel to make it run on current OS's, update the graphics (where that won't hurt the modding capabilities of the last version, and Civ3 will have gone too far if you can't use bitmasp 2-D units in the final scenario editor), fix gameplay issues from the last version, add cool new features without losing any cool features from the last one, and take advantage of the advances in processors since the last version to make the game "bigger" (more units, more races, bigger maps, better AI, whatever). I don't want them to bring out a "sequel" that is related to the original only by its name and membership in the same genre. Such a game should have a new name, IMO.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by techumseh
Markos, the letter was posted here a week ago. That WAS the message, it was an open letter. Just to be sure, I emailed it a couple of days ago to the contact address on the official site. But I appreciate your response and your offer. Consider the letter closed, as of now. Please convey it officially to Firaxis. And thanks.

if you send it to the askthecivteam mail, it is only for the feature and Dan checks it once per week.

anyway, please send me a mail with the letter and the signatures and i'll forward it

[techumseh]

Done!

[Trifna]

Saying you wont buy the game because it isn't PERFECT is little...
90% of the games on the market do not have editors and aren't even good games (and I don,t buy them...)
I think Firaxis made the right decision. They had on their hands a choice of releasing Civ III early (wadn't all they wanted) and to at least make so we have it and change stuff after. Or, they could have put a release date of 2 or 3 months more for some stuff they could in fact arrange in a patch. Okay, we all agree it's a way that is pretty dependant of a patch, but it was the better that could be made in the situation. They said themselves that they didn't had time to put all they wanted in the editor.

So let's wait Firaxian moves and we'll see...

[Yoleus]

Originally posted by Trifna
Saying you wont buy the game because it isn't PERFECT is little...
90% of the games on the market do not have editors and aren't even good games (and I don,t buy them...)

Hey, I agree! I do not wait for a PERFECT game, I just fixed myself a "gaming budget" probably lower than yours, and being the game a bit conservative I want to save my money for a complete version, that's all!

If CivIII were up to my expectations (some games in the past went beyond) I would buy it soon, but IMHO is "less than awesome", so I wait. I just want to spend my money well

[n.c.]

Well, I returned my Limited Edition copy, so I must be a boycotter.