It's not whiners vs. fanboys it's Sid fans vs. Brian fans

[korn469]

there are two civ camps the civ1 keep it simple and elegent camp and the the civ2/SMAC we like our bells and whistles camp

so i guess the argument is what makes good game play? Sid and Brian took two different points of veiw on this, more is better, and less is more

personally i am in the brian camp i wanted SMAC ++ not Civ1+++
so can people point out the specific instances of design decisions being made by each camp that increased your enjoyment of the game?

i will give two examples
C2SX
Coordinating attack in the diplomacy menu
Plotting with client states or allies to tilt the balance of power in my favor is sorely missed...having machinations going on in the diplomacy meny made the game for me
C13
Strategic Resources
controlling vital hotspots around the globe to feed my warmachine gives me a sense of purpose and can be sources of minor victories spread throughout the game

[Moraelin]

Personally I never even knew Brian existed until recently. And to be honest, I only knew Sid Meier's name because he put that name on every single game box.

But basically, yeah, you've nailed the problem right on. For me more IS better. Well, as long as that "more" translates into more stuff to do in the game, anyway. Simply more mindless clicking isn't better. I.e., simplifying the interface so the same things are possible to do easier is OK, but turning the same game into a simplistic thing isn't.

(If I were to nominate a "THE Greatest Game Ever", it would be Fallout 2... you guessed, on account of sheer quantity of stuff to do. Every single skill was used for something, every single stat was used for something, and the amout of optional side-quests was nothing short of impressive. After several hunders of hours of playing the game with various characters, I still keep hearing about stuff that I've missed completely.)

But from the empire building genre alone, my "finest hour" nominations would be:

1) Colonization's interaction with the native tribes. Forget the simplified "barbarian" screw-up from Civ 3. The native americans from Colonization were The Real Thing. You could trade with them, negotiate with them, send them missionaries, have them train your people, and/or give them guns and horses and turn them into a formidable fighting machine to slow down your opponents. Well, _almost_ formidable, but it beat sending my own men to war. They'd also have their own personality, interests, land, and worries.

2) Colonization's specializations. Not just people working in a certain square, but people specialized to do a job better. Miners, tobacconists, hunters, etc.

3) Colonization's customizing your own civilization over time. As your empire grew, you could choose in which direction you want it to evolve. You could become friendlier towards the natives, for example, so they'd be less hostile. Or you could become more commercial instead and make more money. Or some other things. Basically instead of just starting with some civ traits like Industrious, Commercial, Expansionis, whatever, you could evolve in one or more of those directions as your empire grew.

4) Colonization's fine tuning your towns. Not just build special buildings, but also upgrade existing ones, and make use of your population to give certain of them a boost. E.g., simply having a church did give you some religion for your town, but you could also move a whole unit of population to do religious work, giving the thing a big boost. E.g., simply having a newspaper gave your citizens some desire for freedom, but you could assign a unit of population to boost it into a mighty propaganda machine. Sort of like Civ 3's entertainers, scientists and taxmen, but with a lot more options.

[Capt Dizle]

It seems to me that..

from a gameplay point of view Civ went backwards instead of forwards.

This seems the norm in computer games these days. With each new game we get new art, new graphics, but gameplay is still on a very simple level.

We might find more enjoyment in test based games. Lets pray for a revival of good text based games wherein our brains rather than our patience would be tested.

[WarKing]

Civ3 is still an improvement

With all the bugs and minor haranging about this or that mis-understood or ill-implemented game change, I still believe Civ3 is an improvement. I also firmly believe in increasing game play diversity, adding challenge while not unnecessarily increasing complexity.

Basic Improvements
Civ1 Civ3
Shield Production management->Resource, Economic, and Diplomacy Management, and Cultural Management

Did this really change the game...
That's an enormous debate in itself, to me, however, these new facits made the game more entertaining, I could further diversify each game. In Civ1 every game was the same, expand and conquer! In Civ3, thanks mostly to corruption and an improved AI, you aren't likely to succeed blood-lusting your way relentlessly through the game. You are almost forced to "stop and smell the roses."

Civ3 could have been better certainly, but it's enough of an improvement to pacify my needs for the moment.

Give me more, but don't make me do illogical menu processes to make it work.

GUI makes the difference.

[yin26]

I was waiting for somebody to put it this way ... glad it was you, Korn.

[Grim Legacy]

[Dev]

SMAC good, Civ3 bad~


/dev

[ColdFever]

A spot has been touched in this thread. Many central improvements of SMAC are painfully missing in Civ3, for example a true 3D-planet, units with design possibilities, cultural preferences, detailed regime administration, detailed terraforming and ABOVE ALL: the perception of human values (moral, ethics) besides the pure greed for power.

So what I am personally really missing most from SMAC in Civ3 is a "human" counterpart. If diplomacy just boils down to a "give me the most for it" something is definitely missing. Without cultural, scientific and social values diplomacy degenerates to salesmen talk. To achieve a "human touch" you need not only absolute nicely rendered human pictures, but human values as well. Without human values apart from "more power is better" you end in playing "Civ-Chess": a very interesting and addictive placement of your units (at least for "aggressive" players), but lacking a kind of "Soul" (at least for pacifistic players like me).

And perhaps because of this SMAC lovers are complaining that Civ games are not feeling so interesting anymore - IMHO this is because a central element is missing - to have "communities" around the globe based on cultural, scientific and social values. In SMAC some leaders had a sympathy/antipathy for each other that lead sometimes to "communities" (of course only on a humble level, but it was noticeable) and THIS is what building a "global civilization" finally is all about (at least personally for me).

IMHO it is a pity that so much of the affectionately designed "human stuff" from Brian has been dumped for an expanded (borders, culture, trade) Civ2-modell that is finally based on pure power. And lets be honest: the "cultural" influence in Civ3 is only a representation of another form of power - there is no kind of "affection" between congenial leaders or resentment between different philosophies.

Of course it would be possible to implement "human values" on top of Civ3. For example you could design different religions to chose from (as a counterpart to the planet-lovers, science worshippers or monemakers in SMAC). But I doubt the dev team would have the capacity to do it (and probably most players are fully content with Civ3 anyway).

However I personally hope that Civ4 will include human values like SMAC again. Until then I enjoy both SMAC (for the human spirit) and Civ3 (as a kind of Civ-Chess). Yes, I really like Civ3 and do NOT regret to have bought it. But I still love SMAC, I just can't help it.

Best regards
Kai Fiebach, Germany

[Grumbold]

I think Civ 3 proves that you can get a significantly *better* AI if you dumb down many rules which were far more challenging for the AI than the player(s) to process. However in doing so you risk losing the interest of the players who want lots of variety, not just a tried and tested route to victory, repeat as required for 1000 turns every game. Civ 3 provides a lot of different ways to win but unfortunately I don't find myself playing in lots of different ways to achieve them.

Now if only another company would have the guts to try and produce a Civ clone with their own ambitious ideas added to the mix....like maybe multiplayer and a scripting language out of the box without breaking the basic one more turn feeling.

[Moraelin]

I think you have a very good point there, Grumbold. It's always easier to dumb down a game's rules to the point where even a dumb AI stands a chance.

E.g., see the dumbing down of combat, so even someone who never upgrades units and is utterly unable to secure resources by trade, still has a chance. (I.e., the AI.) E.g., see the corruption run amok, so in the last half of the game, you're not really fighting the AI, you're really fighting your own empire which became artificially inefficient. E.g., see the turn caps for research, because the AI will rather keep 10 obsolete units per city for pointless wars and bleed all its money on unit upkeep, instead of researching.

Unfortunately, while this does add some challenge to the game, it also isn't much fun. E.g., why bother conquering, if all you'll get are some cities that never produce anything? You'll always get 1 coin and 1 shield, but since you have to build at least a temple to keep them from deffecting, as well as keep some units inside, it means you'll LOSE money from having conquered it.

Also, the fact that the AI only uses its advantage for one thing ever (war), combined with the severe lack of options in the first place, means in the end there'll always be one single way to play the game.

[Venger]

I've also seen the Sid/Brian pattern, although I think Pirates is pure genius (don't think Brian was involved).

First...yeah yeah Sid, we know, you design games, if the game is so great, it'll stand without your freaking name. This is only slightly less annoying than Peter Norton's ugly mug on every Norton product...

Second - it seems the best parts of Civ2 and SMAC were completely excluded from Civ3. Just how bitter were they after Brian left?

Alas, the proof in the pudding is coming...

Venger

[Arrian]

Ahh, Pirates! What a game. A game, I might add, that I still play on occasion... bugs and all. EGA graphics? I could care less That little game very well might have turned me into the computer game addict that I am today. This, despite the C-64's horrible disk drive issues.

Oh, yeah, the topic. Very concisely put. Sid v. Brian. Personally, I do miss some of the things that fall under the "Brian" heading. At the same time, Civ III is fun for me. I don't think Firaxis is done patching, but I think everyone knows deep down that many of those beloved CIV II/SMAC features are not coming back (firepower, for instance).

-Arrian

[korn469]

it not as simple as civ3 bad SMAC good

because i really think that the civ3 team thought that there was excess baggage and tried to streamline the game, they may have streamlined it too much, and made the choices too simple

but i think that both approaches to the civ series has merit, but a better alternative would try to come up with a hybrid approach of balancing a simple elegant game with a wealth of options and strategies

[Ixander]

I think Civ3 is a strange beast. When I played it for the first time it sorta felt like a 'SMAC Disney' mod. It was like SMAC but with less options, pretty graphics and remapped names for units and wonders. I really missed the SMAC faction personalities, the Civ3 equivalents made no sense at all: erratic and no sense for reason or even plain commerce... just stupid bots without even a glimpse of artificial personality.

That was the first impression. After playing it for a couple of days I found there was more to Civ3 than meets the eye and I came to appreciate it a bit more, but I found that randomness had replaced the best part of strategy. And the computer civs still made no sense. I missed the philosophical touch of SMAC.
The oddest thing however was that I didn't feel like playing a game, it felt like this game was playing me. My actions were being directed by an utterly stupid computer game. A pascifist civ would be at the mercy of the random generator and the only safe alternative was to play the role of the dominant aggressor.

One and a half week later I am bored like hell and I stopped playing the game. My options are too few: to be 'played' by the computer (pascifist civ driven by randomness) or to be played by the designer (superpower aggressor civ).

A multi-player feature might have broken this dilemma of options but... Ah what the heck, win some loose some. I'm not going to have sleepless nights over it, but the next Firaxis/Sid thingy will be 'try before I buy'. Cheers guys. Enjoy or don't or semi-enjoy... whatever!

[WarKing]

all good points...

SMAC...

SMAC was easier, but maybe more fun than Civ3...but Civ3 is more addicting...so doesn't that mean Civ3 is better????

Can a game be truly fun and addictive at the same time?

Anyway, you don't have to be an aggressor all the time, just in the ancient age...but maybe that's philosophical...

I hate the corruption too...but it makes sense.

On the other hand is the game becoming too realistic to be enjoyable?

Oh well, Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance is quickly restoring my sanity.

Have fun guys!