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

[Libertarian]

ChikenWing:

Great article, thanks!

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Man, you are ignoring so many factors here. You couldnt finish a game if you dont think of long term values. Every military unit is a loss of money if you look at it that way, together with most buildings etc. The first thing a little civer learns in school:

1. It is not possible to describe value of a city with money.

We're getting off topic, but you made me curious. WHAT am I missing? That city LOSES money, it doesn't produce any research, it only produces 1 shield per turn, and most often doesn't have any resources to boot. It also makes all the AI nations even more annoyed at me, because the larger I am, the more they'll hate me. If it's conquered (either culturally or by force), it will also go unhappy as soon as I fight that civ again. (Likely because they attacked me again.) If I let it grow over 6, it will need a market, cathedrals and other stuff that just makes me lose even more money. If I don't let it grow over 6, I have to manually turn everyone into entertainers so it doesn't even try to grow, because otherwise the advisor will ask me every couple of turns if I want to build an aqueduct.

I COULD use that city to build workers (1 every 10 turns, no less.) Except at that point I already have all the workers I'll ever need, and I wouldn't even need as many if I didn't have those extra cities in the first place.

About the only thing that could be said in defense of it, is that at least it's one city that country doesn't have any more. But then I could have razed it instead.

[Sid1]

Thread's On The Money For Me

This is an issue that I've thought about in private for some time. I came to the CivII/SMAC(X)/Civ3 addiction later than the rest of the world becaue I only got my iMac last year. Of course, that's why I can't comment on Civ3 gameplay because I won't have it til March/Apr 2002.

Anyway, I really like the premises behind SMAC(X). The factions are well spread across most political/ideological views; the social engineering makes players choose whether to stick to their ethics or pick a winning strategy. You know all this. Civ3 doesn't appear to have all of the qualities of exploration and a sci-fi backstory that made SMAC(X) so enthralling.

What will be really enlightening is the final first product from BigHuge Games. Considering that most of the folks behind SMAC(X), except Jeff Briggs, have moved overfrom Firaxis, I wonder what Brian has in store. His interviews seem to point away from sci-fi, and towards a real-time strategy game (he says that turn-based versus RTS was why the split occurred). But Age of Empires and Cossacks and Empire Earth seem to have taken over that territory. What's left? I can hardly wait.

[Xentropy]

Originally posted by Moraelin
SOME people will want to go for conquest, but SOME people will want to build a rich and prosperous empire and make their people happy. SOME people will like being scheming and going for diplomacy finesse. SOME people will want to be scientifically advanced. Etc.

THAT is the mark of a truly great game. If different people can see different things in it, and can play it towards fundamentally different goals or in fundamentally different ways, then it is indeed some great design in there.

Agreed wholeheartedly. And Civ3 meets all of those requirements. I have played games with each of those goals in mind, won each of them (on various levels ranging from Regent to Emperor as I got better and started abandoning old Civ2 habits), and had a hell of a lot of fun doing each one!

I think the main problem with those that feel only the militaristic way wins is that they are trying to play Civ3 as if it were Civ2. That'll make you fall flat on your face every time. My very first game was Chieftan and I won, but my second game on Warlord was a loss, mostly because I was trying to play Civ2 in a Civ3 world.

If you adjust your strategies properly, you CAN be any of those things, including non-militaristic, on Emperor level and be successful. Diety level may very well demand a militaristic approach, but then no one is forcing you to play on Diety. If you want difficulty without having to be militaristic, play on Emperor going for the goal you find most difficult to achieve in Civ3. Play the way you WANT to play instead of going militaristic and making it too easy for yourself. Get your challenge from self-imposed limitations instead of giving the AI 8 more free units every time it places a ubiquitous settler for the hundredth time.

Basically, I disagree with the fact Civ3 is too simplistic. I think (and this does not apply to you, Moraelin), some minds on this forum are just too simplistic to change their approaches and make the quite varied number of complex strategies all work. They *do* all work, just not if you're trying to do them the same way you always have.

I play the Greeks frequently because I was always a big scientific advancement player in Civ2. Not even very militaristic. I didn't get the scientific advantage so I could run over spearmen with tanks, I got the science so I could work on internal structure and make my empire powerful, then usually just went for the spaceship win. War bored me. This same strategy (even turning off spaceship victory and just going for a timeout score win) works perfectly well in Civ3, even on Emperor, BUT you can't do it the same WAY. You can't never build a defensive unit and expect the AI to leave you alone like you could in Civ2. Being scientific and internally developmental INCLUDES defending your borders. I don't call defense militaristic, but I certainly call it realistic. You think the Swiss have stayed out of wars by having no military infrastructure whatsoever? No way, they have a very sophisticated defensive network, along with the natural mountain defenses to help them along, and they force people to accept their neutrality through intimidation.

All that said, war doesn't even bore me as much in Civ3 as it did in Civ2. I suppose mainly because I can see REASONS to wage war in Civ3, other than simply to wipe a given Civ off the face of the planet. Resources do this, and I think they're a great change for it.

In summary, I see *more* options in Civ3 than Civ2 had, because in Civ2 I had several options which in my mind, due to extreme boredom, didn't include warfare. In Civ3, I have all the Civ2 options, fun all over again thanks to having to change the way I accomplish them, PLUS warfare.

[VetLegion]

We're getting off topic, but you made me curious. WHAT am I missing?

nothing, as you explain below....

That city LOSES money, it doesn't produce any research, it only produces 1 shield per turn, and most often doesn't have any resources to boot. It also makes all the AI nations even more annoyed at me, because the larger I am, the more they'll hate me. If it's conquered (either culturally or by force), it will also go unhappy as soon as I fight that civ again. (Likely because they attacked me again.) If I let it grow over 6, it will need a market, cathedrals and other stuff that just makes me lose even more money. If I don't let it grow over 6, I have to manually turn everyone into entertainers so it doesn't even try to grow, because otherwise the advisor will ask me every couple of turns if I want to build an aqueduct.

I COULD use that city to build workers (1 every 10 turns, no less.) Except at that point I already have all the workers I'll ever need, and I wouldn't even need as many if I didn't have those extra cities in the first place.

About the only thing that could be said in defense of it, is that at least it's one city that country doesn't have any more. But then I could have razed it instead

you see you can think of half a dozen other factors that have to be considered when evaluating a city

why that particular city was sh1t, well dont get so upset. we all have our sh1t cities every game

[Moraelin]

Well, thing is, if it was ONE crap city, I could happily live with that. But it's what happens with every city once I hit the invisible barrier for corruption.

Invariably, the AI would attack me, most often without any ultimatum or explanation why. I've been attacked by civs that were halfway across the world, and even my Chinese Riders on roads took 13 turns to reach their cities. Their spearmen hordes, I shudder to think how long they took to reach me. What could they possibly want from me? No idea. The cities they charged had no resources or luxuries, and at that distance the corruption would be crippling for them too. There also was plenty of unused space for their settlers, between them and me. I guess Cathy of the Russians simply had that time of the month.

And invariably the only real choice to stop them is to deal them a crippling blow. If I just sit and defend, they won't even want to see my envoy, no matter how much I'm willing to pay for peace. While my war wearines mounts sky high.

That's one example of linear non-interesting choice, that Brian spoke against. Loosely quoting him from memory, if you have to choose between jumping from beneath a falling piano and staying under it, it doesn't even count as a choice to be made. If you have to make that choice 100 times in a game, there will still be the same only real choice 100 times.

So I go and conquer a few cities. I can raze them, but then someone will colonize that space again, feel high and mighty again, and attack me again. More war weariness for me. I COULD in theory give them to some other nation. But even ignoring that I'd make someone else feel mighty enough to attack me, there's another crippling bug there: my diplomacy window has no scroll bars. If I already have more than a dozen or so cities, I could give away my capital city or one of that first dozen of cities, but I can't possibly give away the newly conquered cities. I can't even give them back to Cathy, even if I wanted to.

So there's one choice left: keep those cities. (Linear choices design at its best, really.) Except in 90% of the cases they have no luxuries that I didn't already have, nor any resource I didn't already have. And if they have a duplicate resource, it will just be one more reason for someone to attack me for it.

Repeat verbatim for the 6 other nations who feel like attacking me. More crap cities for me.

It will be exactly the kind of crap useless city I've described. In fact, worse than I've described before. These new cities also raise the corruption in my existing cities, because the total number of cities rose. So in cities where before I was happy with a courthouse, now I have to build a police station, too, and still not get as much production and taxes and science as before conquering those new cities. As I've said before, all that conquest is in fact netting me a loss.

So again, once I've run into that invisible wall, from all points of view I'm not really making any progress any more. Or rather: it doesn't feel like I'm making any progress.

[Xentropy]

Originally posted by Moraelin
So I go and conquer a few cities. I can raze them, but then someone will colonize that space again, feel high and mighty again, and attack me again. More war weariness for me. I COULD in theory give them to some other nation. But even ignoring that I'd make someone else feel mighty enough to attack me, there's another crippling bug there: my diplomacy window has no scroll bars. If I already have more than a dozen or so cities, I could give away my capital city or one of that first dozen of cities, but I can't possibly give away the newly conquered cities. I can't even give them back to Cathy, even if I wanted to.

Um, there are scrollbars in diplomacy. Look outside the "scroll", bottom right of the one on the left, bottom left of the one on the right. Little white arrows will appear imposed over the map if the list is too long. Yeah, those arrows really ought to be ON the scroll instead of on the map, since they're hard to see with certain map tiles in the background where they end up, but they do exist.

[Whoha]

hmm

Well one of the things Brian didnt mention in his article is that it is insanely fun to watch someone play a frustrating game and taunt then when they eventually mess up(its really hard to defend yourself since if they are mad you will be laughing too hard to do so).

Also you cant give those citys away post patch.