My Criticisms of Civ3 (with questions for Firaxis)

[HolyWarrior]

This is a nitpick, but when I'm cycling through my cities, they seem to be in order founded--as a result, they're scattered all over the place and I'm never sure if I already looked at that city.
I much prefer looking at the cities alphabetically as in SMAC.
My $.02

[Jodo Kast]

Do it differently....

Try this instead:

Bring up a city. Make changes. Hit the Left Arrow or Right Arrow button at the top to go to the next or prev city.

Make changes, go to the next city. Repeat until you get to the first one.

Want your workers to clean up pollution automatically? Create 10 and set them on Automate and they'll clean up pollution automatically! They won't drop their current task but if they are free they will take the next railroad out to go clean it up.

For this reason, pollution doesn't effect me if I reserve Factories and production for the important cities (set the population to entertainers for growth cities and they won't create as much pollution). I'll up it to 15 workers if the work isn't getting done.

Wanna speed up the game? Create a new scenario with the editor and give everyone 4 free techs and 2000 gold to start with. With 15 civs on a Huge Pangea, the Space Race will be on before 2000AD.

Most important wonder? I think it's the Great Library for Science Win and Michelangelo's Workshop for Conquest Win...

just my 6 cents. Hahaha.

[Libertarian]

Activation: This can be solved by activating ALL the units you want to use by first right-clicking on the unit and then clicking on the unit- doing this multiple times will in effect stack up the activation list.

If only that were so.

Because of my gameplay style (empire building), I have to use a LOT of workers. I've been round and round this thing a million times. I know about the right-click-shift-select thing.

It just doesn't work.

Two or three of the nine units in a mountain brigade MIGHT activate as expected, but then the third or fourth unit — which SHOULD be the next mountain brigade worker — is just as likely to be a transport or tank or (worse yet) another worker somewhere else.

[Ralf]

In addition to Libertarian's 3 suggestions; I would suggest a special airplane and railroad-related grouping-method:

Activate several fighters/bombers and then relocate them all simultaneously to the appropriate target-city. The same could be done with ground-units, as soon as all your cities are railroad-connected with each other.

[Jodo Kast]

Think about it.

Ok smart alec.

Think about it: You have 75 units to control. You create them in a certain order.

The battles rage and your archer and horseman are fortified. Now you may have all of your workers queued up, but the archer is done repairing itself.

And since the Archer's Number is 'up', it gets ready to go.

This has ALWAYS been like this for ALL civilization games. And Call to Power. There are a lot of units and if you make a mistake and move a worker on to a mountain, live with it!!!

You have 70 more units to bother with, get on it. Again, instead of complaining, get over it. It's just a game.

[Libertarian]

Thanks for the, um, input, smartass. But nobody's talking about any such extended queueing. We're talking about bags of objects (units) contained in other objects (tiles), thus:

See Jane click stack.

See worker activate.

Go, worker, go!

See next worker in stack activate.

Work, worker, work!

See whole stack finish.

See Jane smile.

(edited to mollify censor)

[HalfLotus]

This game NEEDS stack movement.

[E_T]

I whole heartedly agree

In my current game, I have 90 workers, spread out over three continents, a war going against the French on one of the continents, with my main war production on my home continent. I have several ships moving supplies to the war, and captured Workers back home (I want them in my capital, so that I can trade them to someone else, the lazy bastards ). I have found this problem very frustrating too. Civ2 shifted around somewhat, but not as bad as this.

They have implemented some form of stacked movement, via the Army. Why can't they do something for the worker units too. [Sarcasm] Introducing the new Unit, The Supervisor. It allows you to stack Worker units and direct them at one time. It cost 200 shields and the Corporation Advance to build. If you have 6 Supervisors in the field, you can build the Management Small Wonder, so that you can build the Supervisor at half the cost. [/Sarcasm].

[Iceword]

Make the application work for the user, not the user for the application. What Libertarian mentioned here are not some ridiculously hard feature to implement; at least, not in the way I see it, and it will great enhance the game experience seemlessly. Why should I fight with the interface to play the game?

[Venger]

Re: I whole heartedly agree

Originally posted by E_T
In my current game, I have 90 workers, spread out over three continents, a war going against the French on one of the continents, with my main war production on my home continent. I have several ships moving supplies to the war, and captured Workers back home (I want them in my capital, so that I can trade them to someone else, the lazy bastards ). I have found this problem very frustrating too. Civ2 shifted around somewhat, but not as bad as this.

Well, I just posted this pic in another thread, why not post it here to? Imagine the logistics on THIS map - I have 150 cities, 200+ workers, 300+ units, and a war to prosecute (also fighting the french, they won't give me the strategic resources of mayonaisse.)

They have implemented some form of stacked movement, via the Army.

But armies suck. Bad. They are actually less powerful that the units kept apart.

Why can't they do something for the worker units too. [Sarcasm] Introducing the new Unit, The Supervisor. It allows you to stack Worker units and direct them at one time. It cost 200 shields and the Corporation Advance to build. If you have 6 Supervisors in the field, you can build the Management Small Wonder, so that you can build the Supervisor at half the cost. [/Sarcasm].

I like it, Supervisor or Work Crew or something. Good idea. Personally, I'd like a container unit that pooled items but allowed them to be added/removed. I noticed CTP2 armies do this...

Yes, I had to do a fairly easy sealift from my home continent (far right) to the Aztec one to my left, and then a MAJOR sealift to get to the other one...

Late game tedium is like a psychic vampire sucking the will to live from me...

Venger

[Fidel]

uh. is it any fun to play a game with 100+ cities. i mean, in ANY turn based strategy game. i admire your patience, venger....

[Heliodorus]

Libertarian - why spend so much time responding to the troll?

Venger - why would you even want such a vast empire to have to micromanage! One of the things I really appreciate in the game is the multiplication of the tech chart based on world size. Now I can play on Large maps and have the game I want. I'll have to experiment with even standard sizes yet. Oh, and on my P2-300 Mhz, I'm not having any problems with large maps (never tried huge, though).

[Venger]

Originally posted by LaRusso
uh. is it any fun to play a game with 100+ cities. i mean, in ANY turn based strategy game. i admire your patience, venger....

Sure it is - because I am conquering the world. Honestly, if you think about it, you likely only deal with 10 cities a turn, because the others are building that turn...

I am moving units on the big war map like the old WW2 command centers used...it's great. If they would only give me a FREAKING CHECKBOX TO DISABLE CULTURAL DEFECTION I might play it again.

Originally posted by Heliodorus
Venger - why would you even want such a vast empire to have to micromanage!

Nobody said empires were easy. Frankly, I cannot wonder why people even bother with Culture/UN/Spaceship wins. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel, I would have already won on any of these fronts...wanna see the histograph?

You can see in 191 where I began the conquest of my continent. Then you can see where I opened a can of whoopass on the Aztecs in 1655, then where I blitzed the Russians just a few turns ago...

Venger

[Leonidas]

quote by Venger:

Late game tedium is like a psychic vampire sucking the will to live from me...

Venger: LOL! I wish that Firaxis had fixed this - it's a real carry-over from Civ 2. I feel your pain, bro. . .


There is a lot to like in Civ 3 - but I'm waiting for the great scenarios from the talented creators here, before I will be able to truly enjoy this game. . .

[player1]

Cultural takeover can be nicely solved:

At first your units are of your nationality.

So if city with totaly your nat. popultaion culturaly revolts it should keep army. It revolted toghter with them.

But if city with for. nat. revolts it should not keep those armies. It should generate more resistance, or do some sort of battle, like automaticly making several enemy conscript to attack your city.

City with mixed nat. should have combination of both (some of your citizens & armies have switched sides).