This game is boring

[Special_Olympic]

Originally posted by codemast01


If the purpose in CivIII is to expand but there is no reason to expand, then there is no reason to play CivIII.

That pretty much sums it up and that's why I've stopped playing after having the game for a month. I actually get the horrors when I think of playing this dismal excuse for a game.

[Special_Olympic]

Originally posted by Dissident
hehe

I have yet to play the game after the patch came out .

The patch doesn't do anything to improve the gameplay, so it's still the same old slog.

[TechWins]

The essential problem of the game, as stated before, is the amount of expansion that is capable of being done. The more expansion, the more workers, the more cities, the more units, the more late game lag, the more tedious micromanagement, the more same old, boring game. Now lets analyze how all of these problemes have become more frequent than compared to Civ2, at least in my opinion it has. All of these problems could be solved, or at least not as problematic, by doing three simple things.

1) It seems as if cities grow much faster than they did in Civ2. Even though, I have no actual proof that this is true, I know for fact that cities grow faster in Civ3. Yes, you can go change the food value for each terrian but it just doesn't seem right/fair that you have to make a certain terrain incapalbe of producing terrian just because the game was poorly thoughtout. The way to change the speed of city growth would be to have the food boxes be significantly larger. In turn this might actually give granaries some type of value, because granaries are worthless as is with cities growing like weeds. Basically, cities need not to grow as fast and Firaxis needs to make

2) Terrain bonuses have been so poorly that it really effects the game quite considerably. With grasslands/plains being allowed for mining it increases early game production far too much (what is the point of irrigating grassland when your cities already grow incredibly fast, so you just go ahead and mine them). [However, you can irrigate grassland and just pop out Settlers left and right without feeling much effect of population loss] With every terrain experiencing a road bonus, IIRC, it gives you such a huge gold bonus, which enables you to produce a plethora of units because you have the money to support all of those units. Jungle and desert have been made completely useless because of their poor terrain bonuses. For jungle and desert to have even some minimal value they should have been assigned a bonus resource, oasis for desert and banana for jungle. Now the latter isn't as important as the first two but if these ideas would be used a lot less micromanagement would done.

3) The AI finds it vital for it to go build a city in every piece of land as possible. Have no fears, if there is a 1 tile island of desert it will be soon be inhabitated by an AI city. I don't care how much better (I don't neccasarily think it makes the AI all that much better) it makes the AI; the constant expansion by the AI just makes the game boring. It makes you prone to expand more just so you can keep up with the AI expansion. Less stupid expansion by the AI and I think the game would be a lot better. Also, the AI needs to tone down it's strategy it has in each city of: found new city, build unit, build unit, build unit, build settler to found a new city, build unit, build unit, build unit, build a settler to found a new city, build unit, build unit, build unit, build new settler to found a new city... A much better strategy for the AI would be: found new city, build unit, build unit, build improvement, build unit, build a settler to found a new city, build unit, build improvement, build unit, build a settler to found a new city, build improvement, build unit... What I'm trying to get at is that the AI needs a little more variety in what it produces each city, some infastructure never hurt anyone you know.

Of course I can go make a few of these changes via the editor, but many people refuse to make the changes themselves for various reasons, so what are they to do? However, there are a few other changes that can't be made. The simple solution, IMO, is for Firaxis to open up their eyes and listen to the fans on what needs to be changed. I say listen to the fans because it is obvious by now that they are incompetent of making Civ3 a great game. This is not a personal shot at any Firaxis member, yet it's just to show that they don't understand the game of Civ3 very well and what would improve the game greatly. I don't think I need to explain on how those three things would solve the problems I listed earlier, but if I do need to explain please just ask, that even includes a Firaxis employee.

[habadacus]

I agree with your disdain for the AI's impression of what makes a good city site. I tried to play Marla's map with 16 civs and the AI civs have populated every barren square of tundra they could. I can understand the AI spamming settlers to gain control of valuable land, but why does it work so hard to settle wastelands? It just contributes to the horrendous slow down in the passage of game turns.

[Venger]

I admit it is with some smug satisfaction I see people turning on Civ3 like a rabid dog...

I fear the core changes needed to make the game live up to it's potential are not going to be tackled by Firaxis, at least until they can charge you for it. Screw that.

I've moved on, am about to finally play some SMAC and CTP2, played Empire Earth (just what we all needed, yet ANOTHER mine build click mine build click cluster yank), and have Mechwarrior 4 and a bunch of Force Feedback crap to plug in. And a hot wife. So Civ3 is hibernating on my drive, for the forseeable future...

Venger

[TechWins]

I admit it is with some smug satisfaction I see people turning on Civ3 like a rabid dog...

I have not enjoyed Civ3 from the beginnning. At first I couldn't get the game to work on my PC, then after a few days (not to mention many loud shouts of anger and punches on my poor desk) I got the game to work for me. I played one game and I thought it was extremely boring. I then didn't play for a few weeks until I gathered up a bunch of graphic and mod changes. I played the game with over 20 changes and I thought the game was kinda okay. I continued to play the game with my interest dwindling. Now I don't even care to play the game the least bit. It's pretty damn sad, I bought Civ2 for $15 and bought Civ3 for $50 and I got more playing out of Civ2 in the first week than I did with Civ3 in the 2+ months I've had Civ3.

If the three things I mentioned earlier would be fixed I'm sure the game would be much better, however, those three things don't have a chance of hell of being fixed. The reason for that is because Firaxis doesn't visit the zoo that is Civ3 General and Firaxis couldn't think of those three simple ideas if their life depended on it.

[TechWins]

And a hot wife.

So does that mean you finally married your pretty, little blow-up doll?

[darthx86]

Wow, the natives are restless. I'll provide a dissenting opinion:

I, for one, still enjoy the game quite a bit. I am also entertained by the number of people who have put it aside, yet continue to peruse the forums (and in many cases, badmouth the company).

Amazing.

(And btw, Neverwinter Nights looks to be sweet!)

[David Murray]

Originally posted by darthx86
I am also entertained by the number of people who have put it aside, yet continue to peruse the forums (and in many cases, badmouth the company).

It's called internet addiction darth....

*sips some more coffee*

Not that I'm addicted, or anything.

[Special_Olympic]

Originally posted by David Murray


It's called internet addiction darth....

*sips some more coffee*

Not that I'm addicted, or anything.

I'm not addicted either and I mean that.

[darthx86]

Originally posted by David Murray


It's called internet addiction darth....

*sips some more coffee*

Not that I'm addicted, or anything.

Yeah, I managed to pull myself away from my umpteenth viewing of Shrek, and here I am.

[Setsuna]

Hmm, my post(s) in this thread seems to have dissappeared. Imagine that.

[Barnacle Bill]

I admit that I have rather lost interest in the game as-is, but it is salvagable. Here is what I think needs to be done:

1) Editor needs to achieve the same degree of mod/scenario capability as existed in the final iteration of Civ2 (TOT).

2) At least the option (via the editor) for bombardment to kill units and for modern units to shoot back when being bombed by aircraft - ideal would be editor a check block for each individual unit for "can be killed by bombardment" and an "air defense" factor which (if non zero - pre-20th Century units would be 0) would be used to shoot back at bombarding aircraft each round in which the aircraft is bombing it.

3) Individual maintenance cost per unit - the cost to maintain a mechanized infantry division and a legion are simply not the same. In fact, the cost to maintain a "first world" mechanized infantry division and a low-tech "3rd world" non-mechanized infantry division are not the same. Wealth per capita in Civ3 goes up constantly, so equal maintenance cost for all units means the number of units supported per capita keeps going up. In real life, the cost of military maintenance goes up faster than per capita wealth (at least since WWII, maybe longer) so the number of units you can support per capita goes down. This should fix the "too many units in late game" problem.

4) Hard borders - instead of the system where the AI violates your borders and you *****, repeat, finally you get to give them an ultimatum (by which time they are closer to the far side of your territory than to their own so accepting your ultimatum just speeds them on their way to found a city in your rear), it should simply require a declaration of war before you can move into any land tile in someone else's territory (the current system is fine for water tiles). If a war ends, any units land tiles in the former-enemies territory should be transported to the nearest tile owned by their nation or one with which which they have a right of passage agreement. This should address part of the problem with the AI colonizing too agressively.

5) No tile already in some civ's borders should change ownership to another civ except in conjunction with a city changing ownership (or being destroyed).

6) In deciding to build cities, the AI should place a priority on sites where the borders can be readily expanded to connect with its existing territory, and should place a priority on building culteral improvements in new cities until that has happened. Conversely, the AI should avoid placing cities where part of the usable 2-tile radius is already in the borders of another civ (see #5) except to claim resource squares. This should fix another part of the AI colonization problem.

7) The AI should absolutely never found a city in a location which cannot be readily connected (borderwise, not necessarily by road/railroad) to its capital unless it is a coastal site or can readily be connected to an existing port AND the capitial is either a port or connected to one. This should fix the last bit of the AI colonization problem.

8) All units which become obsolete should have an upgrade path to one which does not, and the AI should place a higher priority on upgrading obsolete units than on building new ones (building wealth instead of new units in any city already garrisoned until it has upgraded all existing obsolete units if this is needed to raise the cash for upgrading). To prevent the building of obsolete units due to lack of resources, there should be a cheap no-resource unit in each era which it could build without them and/or it should be possible to build a unit without the resources at greatly increased cost and maintence on units you lack resources for should be increased by the same factor.

I could think of a lot of really big changes to improve the game, but the above I think are rather small (codingwise) and would address most of my current major gripes that I can't fix for myself via the editor.

One more to throw out there which is big is a change to the way culture causes cities to defect. I would like to see it no longer happen the way it does. Rather, if a foriegn city is being influenced by your culture it would have a chance of a citizen converting to your culture. Citizens "on the wrong side of the border" would cause unhappiness. In addition to civil disorder (or perhaps as a random possible consequence of civil disorder), a city on the border of the cive which owns it could rebel. If the dominant culture in a rebel city is a civ which has already been destroyed, that civ is revived. Otherwise, a rebel city would become independent with some generic leader based on the dominant culture in it (non-historical with vanilla names like "Smith" or whatever from the appropriate culture), and be able to build any unit its mother-civ (the one it rebelled from) could build, and effectively act like a 1-city civ (using the city name as the civ name). Rebel civs whose borders adjoin might merge if both have the same dominant culture, but not automatically. Rebel civs would only colonize if there is unclaimed territory that would link with its current borders, and would not explore (they would have the map their mother-civ had when the rebellion occurred). Rebel civs would not declare war, but could be declared war upon. They would only make deals involving trade of resources, or joining a full-fledged civ (or merging with an adjacent same-culture Rebel civ - under the name of whichever was the largest before the merger). They would only consider joining the full-fledged civ whose culture is their dominant culture, and the chance of them doing so would vary by the percentage of their population which has that culture. They may initiate an offer to be annexed, or respond favorably to one. If due to foriegn cultural influence the dominant culture in a Rebel civ changes, so would its leader.

[Libertarian]

Hope springs eternal, doesn't it?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Libertarian
Hope springs eternal, doesn't it?

I think a more accurate description is that, as the game stands now, I'm having more fun imagining how I would change the game if I could swap jobs with Sid than I do playing it