My first whine thread

[Evil_Eric_4]

Well, I've been playing for over a month now and I got something to say-This game is tedius and annoying.
Don't get me wrong-I love the 4X genre of games especially the turn based ones.
My problem is war in the civ series.I also love wargames and simulating battles of all kinds however the civ series makes war seem like real work when going to war should be the most fun part of the game.When I first got CTP2 I was overjoyed with stacked movement and combat so I immediately switched from a builder philosophy to warmongering only to discover that the AI wasn't up to the task.That game soon found its way into my recycle bin.
Then I heard that Civ3 was in developement and I got a stiffy.
I thought "Sid and Brian will get it right" so I bought it as soon as I had the cash.
Since I am an experianced civer I didnt bother reading the manual and jumped right in.Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that I STILL had to move units one at a time
To make matters worse Civ3 requires you to build a much larger military.
So I was forced back to being a builder only to find out that the AI will out expand you,out trade you,and out tech you if you dont expand thru war.
OK fine-Ill be a warrior I thought and started building bombardment units out the ying-yang and went to war.
OK so I start bombarding the hell out of my enemies and heres what I found out -Bombardment sucks unless its against units outside of cities.To give an example-recently I sent 10 bombers to bomb a city-5 attempts failed, one dest. a library,one dest. a harbor,two didnt tell me anything at all, and one -ONE- caused one HP of damage to ONE of the defending Inf.
Well at this point I have 2 options -saccrifice half my tank force attacking entrenched Inf.in a large city or wait till next turn and bomb them again.Problem is that my democracy suffers crippling war weariness if I drag this out.Also ,since I couldnt destroy their barracks their Inf will be at full strenth again.
Well I decide to wait another turn and bomb them again and bring up some art.
On the next turn I bombard them with everything Ive got.
I think I must have destroyed every Improvement they had before the computer allowed its units to be damaged in any way.
So my troops triumphantly enter a completely useless city with absolutely nothing but a bunch of resisters.I have to station half my army there to quell resisters.meanwhile my people are getting more pissed about the war(dont they know that they are winning the war?).
Now all this would be ok if it wasnt such a hassle to move all my units one at a time.I mean come on -I move a tank next to a city and the computer decides that I should now deal with that worker on the other side of my empire that has nothing to do.ARRGGH.Ok so I hit shift-a and what does it do? It runs up to the front and starts Improving a tile right next to an enemy unit!AAARRRGGGHHH.Then Im promted to move another tank followed by some ship.Im getting bounced all over the map-very annoying.
I can win on monarch level but to do so means to slow my game down to a crawl while I move 200 units one at a time to crush some insignificant civ that should be destroyed in 2 turns max.
As far as bombardment goes there should be a choice whether it should be tactical(troops,barracks,walls)or strategic(harbors,temples,libraries).There should be an element of randomness but more likely that you hit what you want.I mean defending units dont sit on the steps of cityhall waiting for you to march down main street and engage them -no they defend the entrances to the city.
I held out hope that the patch would address stacked movement(although I knew the chances were about 1 in 1,000,000)but I was disappointed again.
So here I am --A poor builder forced into warmongering.You must conquer cities early because if you wait till modern times all youll get is a city that will not do you any good except to weaken your enemy.
The game designers seem to have gone to great lengths to make sure the human players hands are tied.
Well I guess Im all ranted out.
Feel free to pile on.

OH YEAH AND BRING BACK SENTRY!!!!!!!!!

[Libertarian]

We've been trying to get Firaxis to acknowledge that the main two points you raise — one-by-one unit movement and nonsensical unit activation sequencing — are late-game cripplers.

For whatever reason, which we've no choice but to accept, they've thus far refused even to acknowledge that these are problems. I think they call them "issues", and no one among us has any idea whether they are on the table for attention or not.

We've been told that a statement might be forthcoming at some point. Best of luck in your pursuit of information.

(edited to correct spelling)

[yin26]

Right now Firaxis is taking Total Sales minus Total Returns, factoring the Adjusted Holiday Predictions (again minus Total Adjusted Holidy Returns Predictions) and realizing they actually stand to sell minus 29 boxes.

Yes, it's quite possible more people will return the game than actually bought it. Shows you how stupid some of the warez people can be, I guess.

In that light, all this quiet you hear might well be the Firaxis team huddled in the dark corner of Hunt Valley waiting for Uncle Sid to throw in the towel so they can go home and play the X-Box.

[ACooper]

Since I am an experianced civer I didnt bother reading the manual and jumped right in.

Maybe that's the problem?

[Libertarian]

Not likely.

I did read the manual, crossfooting it with the read-me and Civilopedia as well as notes from this forum and from CivFanatics. Nowhere — neither here nor there nor anywhere — will you find anything whatsoever to assuage your travails with late-game tedium.

Not even hope.

[Evil_Eric_4]

Ahh back from work(the real kind )
thanks for the replies guys although I was just venting and already know that nothing in the near future is going to alleviate my frustration with the endgame.
Maybe civ4 huh?

****gy-I read the pertinent stuff as it came up in my first game.
A game I quit halfway thru the Middle Ages as I had built every available WoW and was light-years ahead of the 2nd place civ.
chieftain of course

Happy holidays everyone

[Xentropy]

ROFL... the forum censored s-h-a-g-g-y. Sad.

Annnyway...

I never have a problem with out-of-order activation more than once. Why? If it activates something out of order, give it a wait order. It'll put it at the end of the activation order. It will REMAIN at the end of the activation order for the next turn, too. So over time, you customize your activation order through those means. At least, that's what I do. Haven't had a problem yet.

Stacked movement, though... I REALLY want stacked movement. Stacked movement would help the activation order become even LESS of an issue, too, since units would activate in stacks.

It woudn't be easy to implement stacked movement, I agree, even though some have said they could use something similar to the army code to do it. Thinking about it briefly I come up with: Make an object that inherits the statistics of an army called a stack, then start customizing it for what stacked movement should do. Make it invisible rather than using the army icon, give it no unit number limit (or at least a high limit, at least 10 units--moving in stacks of 10 would still be a huge improvement over 1), don't let it attack (so units can only attack one at a time), make it easy to take every unit out of the stack with one click, or add every unit in a tile to the stack with one click. Problem gets run into though when it comes to between turns. The stack gets attacked. But it has no attack stacked. Does it get captured or destroyed? Of course not, so how do you solve it? You could automatically unstack everything between turns, but then you'd have to create stacks every turn, which while an improvement overall, wouldn't be ENOUGH of an improvement and people would still *****. Or you could let stacks attack, but then you'd have to write the rules on how stack attack works, since it couldn't work the same as an army (or you'd be giving everyone free armies with many units from turn 1). So really they can't use the army code in any way shape or form for this.

Even with the difficult implementation, though, it's really something the game needs, much more so than some way of changing the activation order other than using the wait command. Wait's enough for me, since it saves that wait between turns. Stacked movement is important enough to DESERVE the totally new code that'd have to be written to implement it, in the opinions of almost everyone in this forum.

[justjake73]

Minor note - if I recall right Brian Reynolds left Firaxis shortly after SMAC came out.

I actually like Civ3 except for a few problems, such as cities that create pollution every 2 to 3 turns even when they only have 3 or 4 yellow skull signs. There is also the remaining issue of "civ sprawl": I get the maps of every nation by 500 BC, I'm playing on a Huge COntinents map with 80% land and I see the AI have already covered their continents with cities!

I like the removal of diplomats as actual units, and the addition of borders (no more "nyahh nyahh I'm not in your land!" and having to build tiny cities just to cover the gaps). The addition of strat resources and war weariness makes the AI think twice about attacking me, especially when I'm their only source of Rubber or Saltpeter.

[Dis]

now you have your first whine thread out, you are no longer a forum virgin.

and Brian Reynolds left Firaxis during early stages of civ3 development I believe. At least a year after SMAC came out.

[Evil_Eric_4]

ROFL... the forum censored s-h-a-g-g-y. Sad.

I laughed at that too-- sure hope the conversation doesnt turn to Scooby-Doo.

Minor note - if I recall right Brian Reynolds left Firaxis shortly after SMAC came out.

Perhaps thats why they didnt "get it right"

now you have your first whine thread out, you are no longer a forum virgin.

Stop it Diss your killin me