Whiners vs. Fanboys: This Sunday at the Thunderdome!

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by rid102


Then don't be surprised if other's stick a Firaxis Fanboi(tm) badge on you and classify everything you post as newbie nonsense, for spending your time and efforts asserting your opinion of "well designed game mechanics" is superior.

Like I'll be losing sleep over it

It's a game, nothing more.

I have fun with the game, I enjoy discussing games, I enjoy intelligent debate, ergo, I'm here posting.

The "Civ3 is a good game"/"Civ3 is not a good game" camps are so philosophically divided that it would take divine intervention for anyone on either side of the fence to convince the other of anything.

FWIW, I hardly said my view was superior, only that I have a view that did not lump constructive criticism with whining by my definition. In my opinion there's nothing wrong with the four points I outlined as representative of most whining. Since my view apparently coincides with the game designer's views, I guess that makes me a fanboy in the eyes of people who disagree with me.

Oh, how shall I ever face the world tomorrow?

[Be Quicker]

Originally posted by Libertarian
I've never lost a game of Freecell. Do you have a game number in mind?

617 is pretty difficult

[Libertarian]

I'll check it out.

[Libertarian]

Freecell 617

Start with this:

8-2
8-F1
8-2
8-7
8-F2
F2-8
2-3
2-F2
2-1
2-8
7-8
4-F3
4-6
4-8
4-F4
4-1
4-7
4F-H
3F-4
7-4
7-F3
7-F4
7-4
1-7
1-F1
1-2
1-6
6-H
2-6
F4-6
2-F4
2-1
F1-1
2-F1
7-1
F3-H
F4-2
3-7
3-F3
3-F4
3-4
5-4
5-3
5-8
5-2
5-3

It's pretty easy from there.

F = free cell. H = home. 1-8 = column.

[Deornwulf]

To Code Monkey

What would you make of this argument?

Civ3 is a backward step given the features of SMAC, Civ2 and CTP2 for the following reasons.

1. Lack of creativity in government choices. Civ3 attempts to boil down one of man's more complex creations into 5 choices without any consideration of the evolution of any of those five into more advance forms. (I want social engineering!!!!)

2. No Stacked Movement (Need I say more)

3. Poor quality graphics
a) The wonders (A kids toy in a sandbox?!)
b) The Palace - overlay instead of dissolve (Cheap!!!!)
c) The end graphics (caveman hit bell good!)
d) NO WONDER MOVIES
e) Railroads are ugly!

4. Picture selections for leaders - how much more would it have cost to allow me to choice to be Napoleon or Joan of Arc?

5. Late game tedium - There is no real challenge after a certain point.

6. Unrealistic results of cultural revolution. Civ2 kept more builidings ("Cultural" takeover was present in Civ2, just damn rare)

7. Counter-intuitive keystroke commands (why not just "r")

Feel free to rebut these while I think up some more "whines with substance"

Deornwulf - The English Teacher

[Code Monkey]

[QUOTE]What would you make of this argument?

Civ3 is a backward step given the features of SMAC, Civ2 and CTP2 for the following reasons.

1. Lack of creativity in government choices. Civ3 attempts to boil down one of man's more complex creations into 5 choices without any consideration of the evolution of any of those five into more advance forms. (I want social engineering!!!!)

I really liked social engineering in SMAC. I'd do a little dance of joy if Civ3 had as complex a government system as SMAC. OTOH, the game works without it and, more importantly, I don't find it suffers because of the lack of SE. You now have four (anarchy doesn't really count) extremely different governments and you have to weigh their very broad strokes' (like a hyperactive kid with fat crayon ) effect on your game

2. No Stacked Movement (Need I say more)

There's nothing here to rebut at all. I think they were spending too much time reusing code and not thinking about what would have been the absolute key interface improvement for series.

3. Poor quality graphics
a) The wonders (A kids toy in a sandbox?!)
b) The Palace - overlay instead of dissolve (Cheap!!!!)
c) The end graphics (caveman hit bell good!)
d) NO WONDER MOVIES
e) Railroads are ugly!

Personally, I like the graphics, I think the colour scheme could use some tweaking for contrast (if you get a massive patch of irrigated plains and railroads, goodluck spotting yellow units). On the whole, graphics aren't that big of a deal for something like this - it needs to not hurt the eyes, not delight the eyes. 2D art is one of the costliest things you can do in a game and while I wouldn't complain if the graphics were better, it's not an issue (I never had a problem with SMAC's graphics which turned a lot of people off).

As for the wonder movies, it does give it a rushed feel but I hold to my expansion pack conspiracy theory.

4. Picture selections for leaders - how much more would it have cost to allow me to choice to be Napoleon or Joan of Arc?

It's not that it would have cost much more, but a question of just how big of a deal is it to people in general? You've got to be pretty anal retentive to care if you're playing a male or female at a game that's this pure on the strategy and extremely light on the role playing. If there's anything about this that bothers me it's the heavy handed political correctness of the high percentage of female leaders when history has been composed of anything but.

5. Late game tedium - There is no real challenge after a certain point.

I think people largely create this themselves. I've played a lot of civ3 since it came out and I don't really have this problem because a) I don't play on maps larger than standard, and b) I don't lock myself into conquest patterns. Conquering the world is a lot of work (I'm going for my first dom/conqest victory in my current game). OTOH, I've won and lost plenty of U.N. and Space Race games by playing it lowkey and it's a challenge to the end - victories and losses decided by mere turns.

Regardless, it's so much better than Civ2 or SMAC ever was I have a hard time seeing the problem when it's largely endemic to the TBS game model. There's very little in the game that can swing momentum for any civ once it reaches a certain strength parity difference with competing civs. If you want nail biting action to the very end then you need to change the TBS paradigm and Civ3 didn't even set out to do more than redo what's been done before in a prettier package with a few new innovations. You're bashing Civ3 for something it's not, and more importantly, something it never tried to be.

6. Unrealistic results of cultural revolution. Civ2 kept more builidings ("Cultural" takeover was present in Civ2, just damn rare)

I don't have a problem with the basic mechanic. I'd like to see them disclose the actual mechanics, and perhaps tweak the way military units in the defecting city are handled (e.g. 50% casualty rate instead of 100%) but it's not a game breaker. It adds excitement to conquest - you always wonder if you can move your assault ahead fast enough to stop the earlier captured cities from rebelling. The peace time cultural takeover always benefits me and punishes the AI for being an idiot, I certainly have no problem there.

7. Counter-intuitive keystroke commands (why not just "r")

Amen brother! Why in the sam hell aren't these just entries in a text file that gets parsed at startup such that we can change them ourselves? Did they think someone would get confused that 'R' builds both roads and railroads or were they too lazy to add a simple if/else switch to the function called by 'R'?

Feel free to rebut these while I think up some more "whines with substance"

I agree completely with you on points 2 & 7, think 1, 3, & 4 fall squarely under personal opinion, and 5 & 6 are largely unwillingness to adapt to a new game system.