Why Technology Sucks In Civ Iii

[Monoriu]

Originally posted by TechWins


Monoriu, why do you feel the need to defend Firaxis/Civ 3? It's incredibly obvious that certain techs have terrible prerequisites or lack thereof. Now this would be a design flaw because Firaxis designed the tech tree. At what point do you fail to understand that?



The reason for that is because the AI has some unupgraded units laying around, not because of the AI is all that far behind in the tech tree.

1. Notice I said middle age AI CIV. I know the AI doesn't upgrade its units, but it IS possible to get way ahead of the AI in terms of techs.

2. I know somebody is going to say I am a defender o Firaxis/Civ 3 etc. That's why I have prepared this to prove them wrong:

My updated Civ 3 wish list:

I. Bugs
1. Air superiority is broken
2. Precision bombing is broken.
3. ¡§Million gold bug¡¨ ¡V ability to offer or demand 9999999 gold from the AI.
4. Family size in demographic screen appears to be broken.
5. In the science advisor screen, some advances with long names do not show number of turns till completion.
6. Possible bug: Nuclear plants have a 150% production bonus, against the 50% bonus of all other electricity plants.
7. Coastal fortresses are broken. It won¡¦t fire at enemy ships.
8. Palace screen is broken. In some games, it won¡¦t prompt me to access the screen when an upgrade is due.
9. Possible bug. Cities that are not on the same continent as the capital city and is not connected to any harbour can still receive bonuses from all luxuries if it is connected to an AI port city by road.
10. City sorting in the domestic advisor screen is broken.
11. Hanging Gardens do not seem to expire. I can still see 3 happy faces next to it in the city screen even after it is supposed to expire.
12. Fortified units in a fort don¡¦t seem to make opportunity fires.
13. Icon for building railroads incorrectly lists the command to build railroads as ¡§r¡¨ when in fact it should be ¡§shift r¡¨.

II. Gameplay Fixes and Balance
1. Corruption. There needs to be more ways to deal with corruption. A corruption cap, anti-corruption city specialists, anti-corruption units, more anti-corruption city improvements, or a switch at the beginning of the game to choose corruption levels. The courthouse is very ineffective as it is.
2. City defection. Happens too easily with no warning whatsoever. Losing all units inside the city is completely unacceptable. There should be more effective means to counter it, some sort of vague warning, and the majority of the city garrison of the defecting city should be moved away from the city, not eliminated. It is also too easy for a recently defected city to go back to its original owner.
3. Tech trading. It is too easy to play ¡§tech broker¡¨ now. I can check with all AI civs each turn and buy all the new techs available, then sell it to the rest of the civs for a large amount of gold per turn. On Emperor and Deity settings I don¡¦t need to research anything.
4. Option to choose real random civs when starting game. Right now civs that have a similar cultural background are a lot more likely to start near each other.
5. Option to use civ 2 HP/FP system. (not my request)
6. Option to give individual unit type more hit points.
7. Faster scrolling and shorter time between turns.
8. Global warming. Happens too early and the sun icon doesn¡¦t tell me how likely I¡¦ll get global warming.
9. Change name and graphic of Iroquois unique unit: mounted warrior. It is not historical while the other unique units are. The units stats are ok.
10. Option for melee combat between air units and ships.
11. Option to refuse AI diplomatic victory and proceed to fight the rest of the world.
12. Modify world generator to prevent areas without any source of fresh water from appearing too often. Small islands are ok, but sometimes a large part of the main continent is blocked off from any rivers by hills and mountains.
13. Colonies. Colonies should have borders to prevent them from being aborbed too easily, and I should be able to build a harbour in it to make overseas colonies useful.
14. Mutual protection pact makes it very difficult for AI civs to make peace. Example: Civ a and Civ b have a MPP. Both Civ a and b are at war with civ c. Civ a makes peace with civ c, but when civ c attacks civ b again civ a is forced to declare war on civ c again.
15. Ability to remove/upgrade units in an army at a cost.
16. Submarines: AI can see subs, if I move a submarine inside an AI civ¡¦s border, it will send me a message to remove it even though he has no sub-seeing units nearby.
17. Allow civs to build the non-unique versions of their unique units. For example as the Romans I can¡¦t upgrade my warriors to swordman.
18. Leaders should appear in the capital city. It is too easy to lose a leader when he appears from defensive victories.

III. Interface
1. Ability to move units in stack.
2. Option to choose pop up menus for city disorders, production of military units, pollution, WLT_Ds, appearance and disappearance of resources, and when the city build queue is finished.
3. Option to tell a city to produce a military unit indefinitely until told otherwise.
4. New pillaging option that allows me to choose what improvement to pillage. This is particularly useful for getting rid of forts inside my territory that I don¡¦t need anymore.
5. Show 1/3 and 2/3 movement points remaining in the bottom right info box.
6. Managing large numbers of units is a pain. I need a new command to move a type of unit first, and a new command to move all the units in a tile first.
7. Space bar should end a unit¡¦s turn, but if it has movement points remaining, I should be able to re-activate it within the same turn if I change my mind.
8. Option to access screens with single click.
9. Key board shortcuts need a revamp, some of them are too complex or too anti-intuitive.
10. Option to show grid with city production boundaries super-imposed.
11. Ability to save and load several pre-designed production queues.
12. Once I have built a hydro/solar/nuclear plant, there is no need to show coal plant in city production menu.
13. Once I have built/acquired a wonder that gives a city improvement in multiple cities (e.g.), I should have the option to sell all existing city improvements of that type.
14. Ability to delete save games in game.
15. Ability to see all of my diplomatic and trading agreements in a single screen.
16. Summarise the current ¡§advice¡¨ of the foreign advisor about culture, attitude, military strength, scientific achievements of AI civs in a single screen. Also please show AI civ government status somewhere more prominent.
17. Summarise the relationships of all AI civs in a single screen in table form.
18. When right-clicking on a stack of units, the info box should have a highly visible indicator to tell if the unit has moved or not. (imagine when I have a stack of 40 units in a tile and have to sort which unit has moved¡K..)
19. Too hard to see borders in jungle tiles.
20. Ability to access Civlopedia in city production menu.
21. Show health points of units in the right bottom info box.
22. Option to turn off warning box when I mine an irrigated tile, and vice-versa.
23. Show status of working (including its current work and turns till completion) when right clicking on it. (Auroch¡¦s idea)
24. On the Domestic Advisor screen, mark cities that are in some unusual condition (WLTED, Food Shortage, Illness, Civil Disorder, etc). (Auroch¡¦s idea)
25. Ability for city finder to sort cities alphabetically.
26. Option to turn off the palace screen.
27. Location of embassy creation button (star next to capital city) is not intuitive. Should be able to access the option via foreign advisor screen.
28. When I move a mouse over an action icon (at the bottom of the screen), it only displays the help lines at the instant when my mouse moves over it. If my mouse stays there and the next unit comes up, I won¡¦t get the help text until I move my mouse away and then move it over to the icon again.

IV. New Features
1. Scenario editor and maker.
2. New option to read the ¡§histograph¡¨ the way civ 2 presented it.
3. In game editor that allows me to make and save a custom civ by choosing a background civ, 2 civ traits, and a unique unit from the existing list.
4. Multi-player.
5. Unit casualty list.
6. Future techs give benefits.
7. Ability to trade units with AI civs.
8. Unit sentry mode back.
9. Show wonder benefits in an info box when one is built.
10. Some kind of history log. (Auroch¡¦s idea)
11. Borrow a diplomatic option from SMAC; the ability to ask a civ to 'call off your war against my friend...' . This will allow you to prevent yourself from having to re-declare war with a civ via a MPP without suffering reputation loss. (N. Machiavelli¡¦s idea)
12. Add the ability to 'kick' certain units out of your territory, i.e. settlers and workers. This will allow you to force the encroaching bums out without having to declare war. (N. Machiavelli¡¦s idea)
13. Music. The ability to pick what music to play, and add/delete pieces to the existing list.
14. Ability to disband city if population is low.
15. Strategic resource finder for the entire world.

V. ¡§Exploits¡¨
1. ¡§Lumberjacking¡¨, the practice of repeatedly planting, and destroying forests to get shields, should be weakened.
2. Shouldn't be possible to sell city to AI, re-capture city in the same turn, and sell it again in the same turn.
3. Shouldn't be able to sell luxury for lump sum, then destroy road on the luxury tile and sell it again next turn.

VI. Spelling, Grammar, and Civlopedia
1. Civlopedia to show formulas used for demographic screen
2. Fix raidroad description in Civlopedia.
3. Fix modern tank description in Civlopedia. Textual description says only oil and rubber is required and missed aluminum.
4. In democracy, the domestic advisor addresses me as "Mr" in one city improvement production complete pop up box, then "Sir" in the next, then alternates between ¡§Mr¡¨ and ¡§Sir¡¨.
5. Make a patch for the manual's index. "Diplomacy" isn't even listed. Neither are "Spy" or "Colony". Of course, these things can be found, but at least basic concepts should be listed to save the trouble of hunting them down. That's what an index is for. (Auroch¡¦s idea)
6. Civlopedia should explain the benefits of WLT_Ds.
7. When the Indians cancel a trading agreement, they say: "Greetings. While we have enjoyed trading with you, we feel that this arrangement is not longer good for our people. It is time for the deal to end." (HunterAssassin¡¦s point)

VII. AI
1. AI should upgrade its outdated combat units a lot more often.
2. AI should stop patrolling its borders to shorten the time between turns. Instead, it should fortify units at borders.
3. AI should stop sending settlers to build a city where it is surrounded by another civ. It is irritating, and the city has a high chance to defect: it doesn¡¦t benefit the AI itself in the long term.
4. AI has a tendency to send a large stack of mobile units (e.g. cavalry) to attack deep inside my territory unprotected by defensive units.
5. AI doesn¡¦t use bombarding land units often enough.
6. AI doesn¡¦t defend strategic resource tiles.
7. AI doesn¡¦t defend itself adequately at the very beginning of game. Its too easy to take out an AI civ right after the start at Deity level.
8. AI doesn¡¦t build forts often enough.
9. Diplomatic AI should remember past transgressions a lot more often. Too easy to break peace cities without consequence now.
10. AI assigns too much value to dead end techs such as music theory, and theory of gravity when the relevant wonders have already been built.
11. AI puts too much value on useless border cities in trade.

[Akka]

Originally posted by Monoriu
BTW Venger..... I have to agree with the designers that it makes more sense for aircraft carriers to require flight. When were the first real aircraft carriers made? After the discovery and wide-use of combat aircraft. Why? The main purpose of aircraft carriers is to carry aircrafts. How could somebody design a big ship to carry dozens of aircrafts without knowing what aircrafts are?

You must have misunderstood Venger. Because in the game, it's precisely the problem : you can build carrier (prerequisite : mass production) BEFORE knowing how to make aircrafts. IMHO, the prerequisite of advanced flight is much more logical for carriers.

[simwiz2]

"IMHO, the prerequisite of advanced flight is much more logical for carriers."

Good idea, maybe that will make advanced flight actually be sort of useful

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by Monoriu
1. My point: more techs is not necessarily better. If you can come up with a suggestion to make the game better by adding more techs, fine. But I don't buy the argument that "civ 3 tech system sucks because it has only 82 techs compared with civ 2's 89." 300 is an exaggeration to make a point and you know it.

I don't know about Venger, but _I_ would have actually liked a 300 tech tree. Literally. Heck, make it a 500 tech tree for that matter. Or the _option_ to have a 500 tech tree, and twice the turns of a normal game.

Why? First, because as it is, and with the turn caps in place, everyone has everything. A larger tech tree could make for longer games, better planning, as well as create more of a need to trade techs with your enemies.

Second, the abstraction that 3000 years of human history were fought with bows and spears is just as false as saying that "the last 800 years have been fought with firearms." Yes, they were firearms, but they changed over the time.

I would have also liked that certain techs depend on actually having the relevant resource. E.g., how do you research Iron working BEFORE having access to any iron ore? E.g., how do you discover all sorts of naval stuff without having a single port? How CAN I discover the cavalry BEFORE I even have any access to horses? (E.g., IRL the american indians didn't have any knowledge of horses before the Europeans brought them.) I mean, really, where did my sages get those ideas from in the first place?

I would also like that the tech tree requirements of the EITHER/OR kind. I.e., that there be several paths to discovering something. E.g., I could discover the alphabet EITHER as a result of extensive trading with other nations (like the Phoenicians did IRL), OR as a result of having too many cities and dialects and need a standard (which is why IRL the Chinese ended up with a standardized set of symbols.)

3. I think you can go beyond 4 turns. I haven't tried it myself but many people are saying that they have gotten a tech every 3 turns if you pour enough science into it. Its like a soft cap. But I haven't experienced it myself. Its not really a hard cap.

I have never seen it go under 4 turns. Look at the number when you select it, not after one turn has passed. The game will often auto-advance a turn after you do something, which is why some people have seen "(3 turns)" on the bottom bar. If you see the enemy troops starting to move around after you made your selection, basically that's one more turn that passed there. But it really stays capped at 4, if you include that auto-ended turn.

In fact, at some point I had enough cities, libraries, and universities, that I could go anywhere between 20% and 100% science tax and STILL get 4 turns ETA on any discovery. And I don't mean just modern techs, but scrolling two screens back to select a medieval tech that I had missed, still was capped at 4 turns. If that doesn't look like a hard-coded cap, I don't know what does.

(Ironically, the science advisor would still complain of too little funds even when I had 10 times the funding needed to get stuff discovered in 4 turns. Is that fun, or what? Oh, wait. Having a useless advisor isn't fun.)

As for the cap, how about making the AI actually play well? I mean, instead of a research and combat system that both reward mediocrity and mindless clicking.

[Aurochs]

Re: Why Technology Sucks In Civ III

Originally posted by shamrock
I’ve got to say that the technology aspect of CIV III has been a huge disappointment.

Did anybody else notice that there are now FEWER techs than before? (89 in CIV II vs 82 in CIV III).

And 11 of those techs are blanks, while several others are pretty weak even though they're not totally blank. (Superconductor, Laser, Electronics, Electricity, Economics, Free Artistry, Theory of Gravity, Music Theory...) But research 'em anyway cuz there's nothing useful for your scientists to do.

Yeah, it's a bit sad. I get the feeling they wanted to de-emphasize the importance of technology and diversity.

The modern period is especially disappointing.

Furthermore, some weird connections and prereqs remain or have been added. How can you build a catapult (mathematics) without using a wheel? How can you distribute currency when you haven’t developed bronze working or iron working? How can you create destroyers and aircraft when you don’t even understand electricity?! No, Theory of Gravity is NOT a technology. And why the heck is Recycling needed before I can build Modern Armor or a stealth aircraft?

There is some weirdness, but don't jump to conclusions too quick.

1. A catapult doesn't need wheels. It's not a chariot. You can haul the lumber out to the city you're going to siege on pack mules and then assemble the pieces. Or drag it around on a sledge. Most siege engines were built during the siege from local wood, when such was available.

2. Currency doesn't need bronze or iron. Other (less useful) metals such as gold and copper were available prior to bronze and iron. Stone, beads, etc, were used for currency prior to metals.

3. Aircraft don't need electricity. A mechanical engine with analog controls suffices. Electronic gauges and hydraulic controls do make 'em better, but they're not required. Same for destroyers.

4. Because, as everyone knows, stealth aircraft had a mission-specific design requirement...to take out the enemy's heavily defended strategic stockpiles of used pepsi cans and plastic bags. Prior to recycling, there was no need for such an awesome weapon.

The minimum four turn research limit is particularly annoying. I’m

That doesn't bother me. It's not like the research aspect is really important...

But, OTOH, I've played some 4x games in which techs were too powerful (get a minor tech lead and your units became invincible to the enemy's weapons...the game was yours), or too important (getting a whopping tech lead was possible, and guaranteed success, leading to ignoring other aspects of the game). Civ III's does tend to keep all of the civs at least in the running, if not equally advanced, which keeps the game from climaxing too early and making all the low-tech civs boring pushovers.

And at least the fact that so many techs are nearly (or totally) useless means that you don't have so many unit types and improvements to bother with, and don't have to upgrade so often.

I'd like a better tech tree too, but at least it's not worse.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Monoriu
BTW Venger..... I have to agree with the designers that it makes more sense for aircraft carriers to require flight. When were the first real aircraft carriers made? After the discovery and wide-use of combat aircraft. Why? The main purpose of aircraft carriers is to carry aircrafts. How could somebody design a big ship to carry dozens of aircrafts without knowing what aircrafts are?

Uh...that's the problem, the aircraft carrier DOESN'T require flight. Check the tech tree...

Venger

[Venger]

Re: Re: Why Technology Sucks In Civ III

Originally posted by Aurochs


And 11 of those techs are blanks, while several others are pretty weak even though they're not totally blank. (Superconductor, Laser, Electronics, Electricity, Economics, Free Artistry, Theory of Gravity, Music Theory...) But research 'em anyway cuz there's nothing useful for your scientists to do.

Yeah, it's a bit sad. I get the feeling they wanted to de-emphasize the importance of technology and diversity.

The modern period is especially disappointing.

I'm not sure how to jive this remark with this one:

I'd like a better tech tree too, but at least it's not worse.

So, is the tech tree better, or worse? I vote worse, not only because I think empirically it IS worse, but that with a 5 year thought advantage, it's STILL worse...

Venger

[Frito]

Venger: Is there anything about the game you do like?

[Venger]

Absolutely - but it's also counterbalanced by an equal number of things I don't like, leaving me with a ho hum release that only if patched beyond belief is going to be a worthy follow up of Civ2 to me...

Venger

[Blaupanzer]

A major problem with Civ 3's implementation of the tech tree is that it is so mindless. In Civ 2, YOU had to decide which paths to follow and which to let go. YOU had to decide if you wanted to study a "dead-end tech," one that led to no additional techs, and when to go get that tech. I seldom bothered with Refrigeration for example, as I kept building new cities and feeding them settlers from the old ones. In this iteration, the whole tree is laid out ahead of time with only small variations within eras. Yes, there are optional techs, but come on, how "optional" are Nationalism, espionage, chivalry, monarchy, and some others. Civs 1 and 2 made the logical leap that just because A led to B IRL didn't mean it had to be that way. Civ 3 says just the opposite, each tech advance is a product of X tech and will lead to Y (and sometimes Z) tech. This is an intellectual and in-game step backwards. The number of techs is less relevent than flexibility in the tree. Further, the ridiculous implementation of unit movement rates completely ignores technology advancement. Does anyone think it takes three years for a modern ship to sail one way to Europe, that a fully deployed armor unit only moves three times as fast as a man on foot over grassland, or that motor vehicles take years to cross a continent?

The strategic resources idea is excellent, but for the early era ones (e.g., iron, horses) the order of resource to tech is reversed. In this, I agree with other commenters here. If you'd never seen a horse, why would you develop the related techs? Unless there was iron about, how would people figure out how to use it?

I too wonder why Environmentalism leads to Recycling leads to Synthetic Fibers, independently of why Modern Armor has been attached to the latter tech. Recycling was used extensively by several nations in WW II, long before the solar technology associated with Environmentalism had been thought about.

One last note, the trading system is interesting, but also broken. Other than in weaponry, the central government had little to do with trading, other than encouraging it or discouraging it using military and taxation means. That's just not reflected in Civ 3. The caravan in Civ 2 came closer to that part, but ignored the strategic aspects of trade now addressed.

[volcanohead]

Give the guy a break

I think we should give Venger a break.

He may be homophobic and ill-educated, but if it weren't for people like him and Yin who have relentlessly criticised the poor points of Civ3 this forum would swiftly degenerate into a bunch of newbie rubbish about how kewl the game was.

There. That should piss just about everyone off.

I've a theory based on what I've seen in the game... some ideas are good (if unrealistic, e.g. resources and trade) and well deployed, others are just stupid (e.g. tech tree) and show a really astounding lack of creativity on the part of Firaxis. These observations are consistent with the bouncing of the project from one bunch of people with good ideas to another bunch of people with no ideas, before the game was finished. I wonder if the departure of Reynolds et al. occurred before issues like the tech tree were resolved... That bloody SS party room for laser is just pathetic.

I play the game, and I enjoy the game. But there are such inanities which really should not have made it through that I really think there must have been a DISASTER in Firaxis during development.

Perhaps the patch will help - on that issue remember they've had since the game went gold to work on that, and surely they knew a lot of the issues at that point. I mean, they must have beta tested it - right? But I'm preparing myself for another disappointment.


V

[jadlakha]

Re: Why Technology Sucks In Civ III

Originally posted by shamrock
3. I think you can go beyond 4 turns. I haven't tried it myself but many people are saying that they have gotten a tech every 3 turns if you pour enough science into it. Its like a soft cap. But I haven't experienced it myself. Its not really a hard cap.

If you use common sense, there is a 4 turn cap, it only goes down to 3 when even if you lower the science bar to 10% it will only take 4-5 turns to research, so in other words the tech is almost researched anyways.

[volcanohead]

Why don't you people read the Strategy section? There's a clear explanation there of the 4-turn cap, which is hard apart from when other civs have already researched the tech.

V

[Aurochs]

Re: Re: Re: Why Technology Sucks In Civ III

Originally posted by Venger
So, is the tech tree better, or worse? I vote worse, not only because I think empirically it IS worse, but that with a 5 year thought advantage, it's STILL worse...

Guess I didn't make that clear. It's worse than it should be, but better than it could've been.

It's kinda sad in its weakened form, but were it all I might like it to be, gameplay would probably be worse (at least without massive balancing/testing). That refers to my comments about the possibilities that could be:

• Tech is more important -- high tech gives a worthy advantage (but unfortunately in this case a tech lead all-but ensures victory, tech-chasing becomes a gamebreaker strategy, and anytime you get a tech lead it gets boring)
• There are several different paths to take (but different paths might be quite unbalanced, common problem in sci-fi games)
• More techs are useful (thus there are more units and improvements to choose from, more variety and possible strategies...but unfortunately they become obsolete quicker resulting in more tedious upgrades)

With tech being so tame, and there basically only being one path, those possible unbalanced situations (and the tedium of upgrading everything every few turns) are avoided. The game stays fairly well-balanced among the different civs throughout...even if one falls behind in tech, it can still compete and can catch up. I wish it could be better (than it is), but at least it's not worse (than it is). I'm not comparing it to Civ II's, but to my expectations.


On another common complaint:
As for the 4 turn cap, I think that's fitting. It reflects 'decreasing rate of return', albeit in a very simplific fashion. Simply put, there's a limit beyond which increased funding doesn't help. Once you've got all the smart people doing research, what do you use more funding for? To hire the village idiot too? Once they're using all the latest high-tech lab equipment, what do you give them with more funding? Fancy clothes to wear and toys to play with during breaks? Okay, that might boost morale and help for awhile, and that idiot might turn out to be a savant, but eventually you'll reach a point where there are too many bumbling fools getting in the way of the smart researchers, who are too busy playing with their toys to work anyway. (insert Civ addiction joke here)

Also, there is researcher training to think about...it takes time. Before they can advance to the next step, they must learn much about what's currently known, and try out new ideas. No matter how many textbooks you give them, they can't put that information to practical use until they've learned it. And no matter how much you pay them, they can't read and really understand it much quicker. There's a limit.

In the game, it happens to be 4 turns. Short enough that it doesn't seem to take forever to get a tech, but long enough that you don't get a new tech every turn and end up with fusion tanks blasting around in the dark ages. I like that.

[Fidel]

Re: Give the guy a break

Originally posted by volcanohead
if it weren't for people like him and Yin who have relentlessly criticised the poor points of Civ3 this forum would swiftly degenerate into a bunch of newbie rubbish about how kewl the game was.
V

instead, it is turning into newbie rubbish about how rubbish the game is.
tip: avoid attacking 'newbies' in your 11th post