Anyone uninstalled Civ III yet?

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by campmajor!
Firaxis has made some choices. Like excluding the bombardment-to-kill from civ3. In civ2 the best attack unit was a howitzer! A tank was less useful. Now that is unrealistic! To totally wipe out a unit you need ground forces. Just look at Afghanistan, the air force can weaken the Taliban, but the Northern Alliance must use ground forces to take them out.

Let's talk realism then.

Historically, in WW2, the soviet 150mm mobile artillery was a Tiger's second worst nightmare. The massive 150mm warhead's explosion, even without HEAT ammo or anything, was enough to rip any kind of tank apart. (And early in the war, the short barelled Pzkfw IV was not only good as support against infantry, but could actually destroy most tanks at short range.)

THE number one worst nightmare was a dive bombing attack. Even the smallest airplane carried bombs could totally destroy a tank. Even the heaviest tank had rather thin armour on the top.

So please, don't tell me that bombardment to kill is unrealistic. True, the Civ 2 model wasn't too good, but the fact that Civ 3 goes totally overboard in the other direction isn't a solution. They could have modelled the whole combat thing better. (E.g., see the Panzer General series from SSI.) As it is, they just replaced some crap with some other crap.

[Moraelin]

And to answer to the original poster, I haven't bothered uninstalling Civ 3 yet, but I did start playing CTP2 again instead. Civ 3 doesn't even have enough new stuff to be a free mod to Civ 2, much less a commercially sold sequel.

[atog]

I believe the random number generator implementation to be flawed. This particularly affects combat. The way the random seeding works, entire portions of the game are predetermined. I also believe this implementation leads to a phenomena of long stringsof outcomes that would be statistically unlikely in the real world (think 50 heads out of 50 coin tosses). Such a claim is obviously difficult to prove, so I have to leave that in the realms of faith

I see you are ppl who keep reloading the game just because your horseman couldn't beat a warrior defending a 1-pop city. >>>LOL<<<
i believe ALL random factor are predetermined b4 the turn starts, not throughout the game, so try waiting a turn with your horseman (pressing spacebar) and attack the next turn. you might win without losing a single point of health PLUS it might even be upgraded to veteran. ha

I can live with the idea that bombardment can damage territory, but not when there is an enemy unit on the square

Hey, you! do you know in a realistic world, even bomber in second world war have a super high chance missing its target (i forgot the exact number, but it's near 80-90% for sure) so i think that's totally realistic that it would damage anything-- even your own road while you missed your nme.

Then...my Army of ELITE infantry (3 units) moved against a veteran cavalry unit. My army went from green to red in one turn. On the next turn, the cavalry unit, also with 1 HP attacked and defeated my army. This is a nonsense

i notice when you use defensive unit to attack, you are more likely to lose. (it's like the number doesn't matter) (i have always lost musketman to pikeman) **can anyone verify that?

As soon as I won the battle, screen focus shifted from my unit to the middle of the Indian empire (where I had no units or interest), then shifted back

TIP: in your game preference, check the box that says "always wait at the end of turn" i find that's that must.

I threw my veteran immortal unit against an elite roman legionary in a size 2 city. And won the city. This is also a nonsense

So you mean if the game goes like this: a veteran unit ALWAYS lose to an elite unit OR a low attack unit ALWAYS lose to a high def unit, you would more likely to play it???

For a game of strategy to be enjoyable, it must be logical and consistent. If the game, as Civ III does with its references to history, technology and natural resources, claims to reflect some aspects of the real world, the player must be able to transfer what they know about the real world into the game. Battleships should defeat frigates; wounded cavalry should not be able to take out armies etc etc. If the player cannot make a logical transferrence in this way, the game reduces to the random manipulation of numbers, albeit with a fancy graphical portrayal of the results.

personally, i love the game and i cant stand loser who complains about it just coz' they lose 1 war. the world is based on randomness. look that the bright side of it, there ARE ppl who win lottory, even twice! so i think it's completely fair you lose an army to a damaged unit once or twice. consider that calvary won a lottery. if you cant live with that, you might as well decide to not live with the real world.

In conclusion:

That is the worst of gameplay - an attempt to seduce the player into some artificial reality where the way to succeed is to exploit the quirks of the implementation

think of it this way: you are the worst player in the world who cant deal with a good gameplay?

[CyberGnu]

atog, thanks for joining the gaggle of people who thinks that when someone complains about the lack of realism this must mean they can't beat the AI.

How much it must hurt when your universe comes crashing down... Before I deleted the game I regularly beat the game on deity... and I'm one of the most vocal critics here. I guess I should add that I only reload the game if one my conquered cities defect, as I think this is the worst gameplay defect in the game. (BTW, just reloading doesn't help. That's why I always keep an artillery unit in reserve. If a city defects, I reload and attack something with the artillery. That puts a new number in the equation, which usually results in the city not defecting)

Furthermore, the lack of realism only HELPS the AI, not the other way around. On deity, the AI is almost uniformly ahead of you in tech, which means that when my knights kill his riflemen it helps me. Sure, his cavalry can kill my mech. inf., but since I'm aware of the problem I can compensate. The AI can't.

Fixing the broken gameplay decisions can only improve the difficutly of the game, not the other way around.

[gaikokujin]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Gaiko, I think civ3 suffers from what people in the workplace calls the 'not-invented-here-syndrome'. If you are familiar with this, it is basically an inability for some people to use an idea someone else came up with... Even if it is an obvious improvement.

Yeah, sad, as the whole point of design innovation is the incorporation of bits and pieces of previous inventions in a new synthesis.

I think I've mentioned this before, but NOT having stacked combat is like eating with chopsticks when there is a fork available... The only possible reason is pride.

Heh, sometimes I find chopsticks more convienent, depending on the food - ever eat sushi with a fork?

Regarding your view on corruption, I presented a fix for it a while back on similar lines.

First off, change the corruption from from the gross to the net. (I.e., if a city has 6 gold income and a temple + granary, you will after corruption LOSE money on this city, since you'll only have one gold income, but two gold upkeep. Instead, calculate corruption on the net sum, which is four...). I think this makes a lot of logical sense... Look at the british overseas colonies, for example... I'm willing to bet money that self-serving corruption was lower in the colonies than in England proper. Most of that money probably went to paying for local things, however, so the British Empire never saw most of the money.

Second, have two different corruption scales, one for money and one for production. The people you send out to colonize the frontier are the most hard-working, enterprizing people you can find... Certinaly not the procrastinators who post on forums instead of writing their thesis. Production loss should be higher in your capital than anywhere else... Hey, just look at Washington DC...

I had very very much the same thoughts. But at bottom, the economic model is at fault - and so it has ever been with the Civ series. Make it possible to overcome "corruption" and there is the danger that the player will run away with the game. Make it too severe and - you have CivII in its out of the box form. But it is really the binary oppositions - to borrow some PoMo crap - of citycentrism vs. countryside, population vs. terrain, shields vs. money that is at the root of it. Dealing with that would really mean scrapping the fundamentals of the original Sid design, which has now probably outlived itself.

I hope some of this is sufficiently modifiable and, if so and with the patch(es), I'll be happy enough. Like I said, I'm easy to please in practice, but that's not to be confused with an absence of critical perspective.

And the truly great game is the one scalable enough to appeal to the rookie and hardcore alike.

[Sarxis]

I haven't uninstalled it per se; but I also haven't reinstalled it since I got my new, replacement hard-drive.

I have been holding out for the patch.