What is wrong with civ3?

[Herder]

Most of the problems are late game issues. Air issues and such.

The biggest disappointment for me is a lot of little things...

No sentry mode?
Can't see units in a stack without having to click?

Also, the AI, while powerful early really starts to show its incompetence in the late game. The diplomacy rocks and that is the best part of the game IMO.

Not upgrading units, focusing on expanding to areas it can't hope to control, staying in expansion mode when enhancing its current base of power is clearly a better option, etc.

Late game is a morass of moving units one at a time by click, scroll, click, scroll, rinse repeat 500 times per turn. Checking each city every turn to make sure the governor isn't producing Musketeers when you have mech infantry available.

The late game tech tree is sort of a mess and winning diplomatically is pretty much cheesy because you can't "fight it out" if you disagree with the majority (ie you lose the vote but you and anyone else that votes for you takes on the rest of the world.)

While the graphics are nice they aren't great and the lack of atmosphere enhancing movies and "historical" text to back up why we build these things is very disappointing.

Doesn't anyone get tired of pounding the AI's spearmen with tanks and bombers?

When I first got Civ III I played it extensively and did quite a few double takes on things that didn't make sense. Civ III has the potential to be a great game but after a certain point becomes more of a chore than pleasure.

It is very clear to me that the game isn't complete.

[Libertarian]

Try Myst.

[bahoo]

FLAWS

I can deal with numerous bugs. Although I'm not happy being a beta tester, if they do in fact patch out all the bugs I would have to say the game is not majorly flawed except for one thing:

1. Cities peacefully deposing without the troops in them putting up any sort of fight is both ridiculous and historically inaccurate.

[Frito]

Re: FLAWS

Originally posted by bahoo
1. Cities peacefully deposing without the troops in them putting up any sort of fight is both ridiculous and historically inaccurate.

maybe so, but it make for interesting game play.

[Be Quicker]

While I am of the opinion that the combat system is not broken, I think that the solution for the "more difficult" combat, is to use many more units for effective combat, which means more tedium: even in the ancient age it means, moving a stack of 3 spearman, 8 horseman and some catapults (although these things hardly do any damage at all) from city to city to conquer them. This is not added complexity. This is added tedium.

[splangy]

*Bump*

[Phalanx2000]

Yesterday, I had an AI regular warrior (pic depicts him as a club user) come from a plains tile to attack an already FORTIFIED veteran musketman on a hill (not a mountain).

My musketman reduced the warrior to a single red bar, then the warrior proceeded to deprive me of all 4 of my bars until I was dead.

That is bu*****t. The combat system is flawed and there is another post on this forum (dealing with the random seed number) that proves it.

You cannot invoke any realistic argument here. If each icon represented a single, 4-man fireteam or if each icon represented a full army of 10,000 men, the regular (read: green club swingers in animal pelts) warriors would lose 98 times out of 100 to my veteran (read: trained slugthrowers) musketmen. And my incident isn't a "chance" thing - I have witnessed this type of event on no less than 4 separate computers now PLUS I'm not the ONLY person posting on it!

I may be beating a dead horse, but I spent my / HARD EARNED / money on this game. By God, I rightfully expect the f*****g thing to work right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Allemand]

They must be using the same random number system that Risk uses.

One other thing I don't like: the game management tools in Civ3 are not as good as those in Civ2. It's harder to use the map editor; there is no easy way to know how many cavalry, infantry, bombers you have; hard to tell which cities are revolting (in fact, it would be nice if the game paused so you could handle the revolt, like in Civ2); would be nice to see where the pollution is when you want to send a worker somewhere (like in Civ2), etc., etc., etc. Game management is where Civ3 falls down relative to Civ2.

Nevertheless, it's a good game, with some big improvements, despite the bad things.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Phalanx2000
Yesterday, I had an AI regular warrior (pic depicts him as a club user) come from a plains tile to attack an already FORTIFIED veteran musketman on a hill (not a mountain).

My musketman reduced the warrior to a single red bar, then the warrior proceeded to deprive me of all 4 of my bars until I was dead.

That is bu*****t. The combat system is flawed and there is another post on this forum (dealing with the random seed number) that proves it.

You cannot invoke any realistic argument here. If each icon represented a single, 4-man fireteam or if each icon represented a full army of 10,000 men, the regular (read: green club swingers in animal pelts) warriors would lose 98 times out of 100 to my veteran (read: trained slugthrowers) musketmen. And my incident isn't a "chance" thing - I have witnessed this type of event on no less than 4 separate computers now PLUS I'm not the ONLY person posting on it!

I may be beating a dead horse, but I spent my / HARD EARNED / money on this game. By God, I rightfully expect the f*****g thing to work right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i am still waiting to witness such an event. perhaps you 'saw' this at 5 a.m., when your eyes were really tired from playing a broken game?

[Be Quicker]

retreating

while we're at it.

I have observed for sure and not at 5 AM that some of my horsemen that should retreat (i.e. others from the same stack do retreat) do NOT retreat when they are wounded in the red during their attack. So what is up with that? Do units do double damage when they roll 20 or something?

[Fidel]

Re: retreating

Originally posted by Be Quicker
while we're at it.

I have observed for sure and not at 5 AM that some of my horsemen that should retreat (i.e. others from the same stack do retreat) do NOT retreat when they are wounded in the red during their attack. So what is up with that? Do units do double damage when they roll 20 or something?

no, this is a feature....charge of the light brigade. if both units are in red, cav keeps on fighting

[Be Quicker]

LaRusso, thanks for the info!

I guess it's ok... but, since those situations cause almost all my losses, I cannot help but feel that such charges are stupid. Although on the other hand they make the retreat ability less broken.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Be Quicker
LaRusso, thanks for the info!

I guess it's ok... but, since those situations cause almost all my losses, I cannot help but feel that such charges are stupid. Although on the other hand they make the retreat ability less broken.

well, it does balance a bit cavalry and other mobile units, otherwise they may get too powerful. if the outcome of the battle is close, they just keep pressing and whatever happens happens....

[Aurochs]

Originally posted by Allemand
there is no easy way to know how many cavalry, infantry, bombers you have;

Press F3 (Military Advisor), look near the top of the list, you'll see two words 'City' and 'Unit'. Click 'Unit', and it will list all the units by type, with the total number of units of each type in parentheses. (When you have spies planted you can also see the total number of enemy units of each type...for free.)

I almost always do it that way because the 'by City' listing... doesn't list the units which aren't in cities! There should be a 'Wilderness' or 'No City' entry in the city list.

[Th0mas]

Originally posted by Phalanx2000
You cannot invoke any realistic argument here. If each icon represented a single, 4-man fireteam or if each icon represented a full army of 10,000 men, the regular (read: green club swingers in animal pelts) warriors would lose 98 times out of 100 to my veteran (read: trained slugthrowers) musketmen. And my incident isn't a "chance" thing - I have witnessed this type of event on no less than 4 separate computers now PLUS I'm not the ONLY person posting on it!

You're still viewing this from a tactical perspective - CIV III is a Strategy Game with some Tactical bits. This means that occationally a totally inappropriate unit will win a very uneven combat.

Now, you don't see the actual battle take place (representative animations aside) you just get the result. The two sides are NOT lining up neatly at either end of the battle field and taking turns to attack each other.

CIV III combat is modelling things like poor moral, bad communication, the local environment, the uncertainty of war etc etc etc..In many cases it is the tactical commander who makes the least amount of mistakes wins the encounter.

With this Strategic perspective in mind the combat result (although irritating) can be seen as fair. It means that you can't rely totally on anything in CIV III combat - this leaves the Strategic commander feeling permanently uncertain or nervous - just like in Real Life.

That is bu*****t. The combat system is flawed and there is another post on this forum (dealing with the random seed number) that proves it.

On the contrary, nothing has been proved.

I may be beating a dead horse, but I spent my / HARD EARNED / money on this game. By God, I rightfully expect the f*****g thing to work right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..and you got a fabulous product, with a few bugs (patch out by Saturday - hopefully).

Enjoy it or you will be waisting your money.