Playing styles & boredom & corruption

[ACooper]

I think one of the main problems with the boredom is playing style. Do you really need to control 150 workers? Do you need 40 artillery and 100 tanks, etc.? Do you need 100 cities? The answer in my case is no. But that is my playing style and does not have to be yours.

IMHO the same problem has happened in the whole series and all building type games in general. Micromanagement has always been a major complaint in all areas of life, business and gaming. When you try to micromanage a game in particular it becomes boring.

How much efficiency is lost by using automated commands? I use them always, but once again that is my playing style and in no way reflects the way you should play. I have found that their routines are within my acceptable level. But I'm generally pretty patient.

I guess my point here is that late game tedium issues may be more a function of the way we play more so than the game itself.

Also, one of the major complaints about Civ2 was ICS. I seem to remember reading that one of the developers solution to this problem was to make it harder to build these tremendously huge empires. This is one reason (among others) why corruption was modeled the way it was.

Maybe the easiest solution for both problems would be to keep empires small to medium and highly efficient. At least that's the way I try to play, your mileage may vary.


That's the way I see it, though I might be wrong.

[ACooper]

Nobody has an opinion?

[TinCow]

I think we play very similarly. I always go to war very quickly to secure the continent that I'm on and to gain the space I need to prosper (usually about 25-30 cities). If there is another close by continent or smaller resource islands around, I grab those early as well. After that I hunker down and try to out-produce and out-tech my opponents, starting to build up military again in the late industrial age in case I need it to stop an AI opponent from winning towards the end.

I also always put works on auto. This is the first Civ game I've found where the works actually do a decent job of improving the terrain properly. Sure they don't quite do things in the order I would do them, but big damn deal. It's worth a lot more for me to not have to move 50 workers every turn than to finish that mine or road a couple turns earlier.

[DilithiumDad]

I never played Civ2, and I came to Civ3 from SMAC. In that game, you won by building massive numbers of cities and micromanaging even vaster numbers of citizens, supply crawlers, other units and massive terraforming. Civ3 is designed to reduce micromanagement. You are heavily penalized for building too many cities, even through your domestic advisor keeps urging you to found more. New cities only produce one shield and one commerce, unless they are size7 and you are commercial or industrious, which can double productivity to 2 shields or commerce. not only are new cities worthless, but they wreck the efficiency of your already established cities because of the "city number" effect.

Making lots of cities is bad news, but conquering new cities is even worse. They are totally corrupt, resisting, rioting, unhappy and they revert after destroying all your units stationed there to quell resistance! Taking cities near your opponents capital is even worse, if that's possible! So don't do it! Conquest is opposed by war weariness, destruction of size 1 towns, and removal of the "instant heal when conquering" found in SMAC.

I agree with your assessment that a lot of the complaints are from people trying to play as though this were civ2 or SMAC and not adapting to changed realities. The game favors peaceful play and a small number of well-planned high-population cities.

[Velociryx]

Good thread, and good points put forth so far, but I would say this, in musing about it:

How much is the fun-factor of a game impacted when the design mechanics of that game straight-jacket you into a particular playing style? Does it feel as though the in-game choices you make really matter at that point?

What I mean by that is this:

Let us assume for a moment that someone at Firaxis "pegged" the optimal size of a standard map empire at 14 cities.

Build less than that, and the AI will beat you, if not individually, then in ravenous packs.

Build more than that, and you'll paralyze your empire via corruption.

Essentially then, there IS no choice....you play the game as the designers intended, or you fight against the design itself, and while that is a battle you can certainly win, doing so is a lesson in patience and grim determination. There's no fun involved at that point.

One of the principle keys for designing good games is positive reinforcement. By definition, this rules out, or at least should downplay negative reinforcement, but in this game, it does not.

Examples of how it is and how it could be:

How it is: Build X-number of cities BELOW the corruption threshold and you get swamped by the AI, as your pathetic number of cities and aggregate production cannot keep pace with the AI's sprawling, corruption immune empires.

How it could be: Building smaller empires results in corruption immunity....not negation, but immunity. For cities built physically close to the capitol (where there'd be little corruption anyway, under the current model), this is expressed in the form of production and commerce bonuses.
****

How it is: If you get unlucky and begin the game anywhere besides a floodplain or plains containing wheat stalks/cattle, you may as well restart. On Emperor and above, the AI's expansion bonuses will eat you for breakfast.

How it could be: More balance to starting locations. More attention paid to ensuring that every terrain type has at least SOME good features (banannas, salt flats, SOMETHING to engage the player and give a sporting chance).
****

How it is: Your settler appears at the tip of a peninsula or on the coast. Given the current corruption model, this is HORRIBLE news for you, as it effectively cuts by 1/4 the number of relatively corruption free cities you can build (1/2 without relocating the palace--early game). This means that you MUST burn a Great Leader to put yourself in a better position on the map (why must you? Because the sheer cost of the Palace and the time involved in building it in a corruption ridden city makes it impossible to do otherwise!). Not only is this not historically accurate (some of the most impressive ancient era civs were founded in utterly wretched terrain!), but given the scarcity of Great Leaders, having to burn one like that is shameful.

How it could be: Reduce or eliminate the corruption due to distance and focus on corruption via total number of production centers. In this manner, if your capitol starts at the tip of a 12 tile peninsula surrounded mostly by water, you'll have something OTHER THAN a useless fourth+ city. It would also enable you to found cities on islands and other continents as per the British Empire.
****

I could give more examples, and will if it is requested of me, but....I just realized it's three, and I still haven't gone to lunch, so I'm gonna go tank up on sweet tea....

-=Vel=-

[Arrian]

Ok, I'll throw my 2 cents into the wishing well.

I have won 1 game (out of many) via domination. I find that, beyond a certain point, I don't want any more cities. Once I have the resources I need, and enough luxuries (so long as I have access to all 8, either locally, or through quasi-reasonable trade with the AI), I see no point in conquering anyone else.

Vel's absolutely right about the starting positions. I restart constantly until I get a good one, because it is absolutely CRUCIAL - and though sticking it out in a bad spot may be virtuous, it's also painful. A coastal Capitol, in most circumstances, is bad, particularly if you're on a penninsula, or even just a long, thin continent. Corruption will KILL you. I think, particularly as the game progresses into the later stages, that "distance from capitol" should be less important that "total number of cities" for corruption. Compact empires would still have the advantage of easier defense, but you could have a sprawling one - so long as you don't make like the Borg (ICS).

I seem less upset by some of the late-game tedium than others, perhaps because I get rid of most of my workers once railroads are complete (all natives are put into cities, captured workers remain for free pollution control). Also, I accept a certain amount of micromanagement, because I don't trust the computer to do anything important - and terrain improvements are important. So I do it myself. Stacking, however, would be nice.

I agree totally that the level of annoyance people feel about various things in Civ III varies greatly depending on playstyle. I think those that want to conquer the world are *generally* more upset than the perfectionist builders. I'm kinda in-between, leaning toward perfectionist builder.

-Arrian

[ACooper]

I guess I'm just trying to come up reasons why we all see the game so differently. For example, point for point on game issues I aggree with Libertarian almost all the time, but we disagree on the importance of the issue and on the total gameplay experience. Since we are both looking at the same game, it must come from the way we are looking at it. It has to be a difference in style because I really enjoy the game, I would like to see a few things done differently, but for now...until the next patch(es) come out I'm having fun with it.


BTW, I only used Libertarian because his name and views of the game are well known. No endoresment or harm meant.

[player1]

I agree wich Vel about corruption.

Distance factor is just TOO BIG.

While num. of cities factor is TOO SMALL.
When did you have more them 3% of corruption in main city.

It would be nice if you could control these numbers in EDITOR.

Also Corthouse logic is BORKEN.
It looks like they reduce distance factor and corruption in that way.

But if city is just to much far away, distance reduction is not enought so Corthouse doesn't help.


P.S.
What do you people think about this idea:

Multiple Forbidden Palaces

Every time you get additional 8 cities (on standard maps) you can opt building additional Forbidden Palace. Of course every new such "palace" should be more expensive (1st 200, 2nd 400, 3rd 600, etc...).

Of course you should be able to "move" for. palaces like "ordinary palace".

[Libertarian]

Shaggy, you'd better sit down for this: I agree with you.

My own play style was empire building. I deselected all victory options except for world conquest. (I disabled world domination because it was a bit too easy.) You cannot begin to imagine the tedium of directing the units necessary to build an empire and conquer the world with an interface that simply wasn't designed to facilitate one of its own victory conditions.

I assure you that it was no help to be ignored and ridiculed for raising my complaints about it. Granted, I became difficult to deal with, but please understand that I was greatly frustrated. I wanted to play this game, yet I couldn't. Not in any practical sense. Late in the game, my turns were taking literally hours — not from slow animations or anything like that, but simply from trying to coordinate the massive components and units that comprised my empire.

Playing at Chieftain would have been no big deal. But at the more advanced levels, winning by conquest is the hardest victory. And every move counts. Fighting my way through a thicket of counter-intuitive and counter-productive interface issues simply became too much to bear.

Yeah, I guess I'm mad at Firaxis. They left me out to dry when I supported them. Now, they won't even acknowledge me. Even after I made a sincere attempt at burying the hatchet. There were people in that thread who decided unilaterally that I was not sincere. They hijacked the thread, made a mockery of what I was trying to do. And so the attempt was ruined.

One fellow said I thought myself overly important. He's probably right. I'm just a customer who used to love the game. Now, I despise it, and I have no respect for the company that built it. So clearly, I'm not important at all.

When our Exile arrives, we're going to immerse ourselves in it. If nothing else, the Broderbund mystery series have been wonderful tools of immersion. And that's something I need right now.

[Darth Sidious]

my playing style

is that i am perfectionist.

I wan't my workers to be efficient to the max.
Before giving it an order, i will first look at the big picture of my empire to see where they are most needed, then at the city it has to work, see what gives the most benefit per turn of work it has to do.
Also do i check my happiness and tax rates every turn to be sure not to have disorders and not to waste a dime on luxury when not needed.

I don't really care about micro though, but in late game it simply becomes all of the same, extra game mechanics would make it better.
The downside of extra mechanics might be that the game gets to complicated for less serious players.
There are more players that just play the game once in a while than there are players that are playing it 24-7 and are posting on this forum.

[Darth Sidious]

also

I guess my style doesn't really fit the game because my style is agressive. For me in a strategy game, there only is one victory condition and that is world domination.
Also for me in a game, there never is peace, i must constantly fighting and conquering, that's what i play for.

This is mainly because i am a starcraft player i guess, starcraft makes you agressive.

[yin26]

For a city-building, unit-centered game NOT to have designed itself to make city-building and unit management a priority is inexcusable. 5 years ago maybe cutting some slack was in order. My guess is Firaxis gave very little consideration to the late game. ALL indicators support me.

There's the source of the problem.

[ACooper]

Originally posted by yin26
For a city-building, unit-centered game NOT to have designed itself to make city-building and unit management a priority is inexcusable. 5 years ago maybe cutting some slack was in order. My guess is Firaxis gave very little consideration to the late game. ALL indicators support me.

There's the source of the problem.

You've whine continuously about ICS and OCC. Isn't this a way to curb the problem?

I'm asking an honest humble question on your opinion for a better solution.

[yin26]

And you whine about people whining. Just to make that clear.

One solution is to play small maps with several aggressive opponents. But that results in a certain kind of game. There are many of here who WANT a long build-up and a sprawling empire.

You say: Don't play that way -- it's your playing style that is to blame.

No, sir. For an empire-building game to be designed in such a way that creating an empire is actually BEYOND tedious is, I think, inexcusable. Sure, a person can simply 'go with it' as you have and accept the poor design.

But in the meantime, others of us will while, propose, suggest, e-mail, pester, you name it as long as there is any hope that Firaxis will sit down and really streamline a number of things. If this bothers your enjoyment of these boards, I'll gladly give you some of your own advice:

Don't come here.

[ACooper]

See Yin, I ask for your ideas honestly and humbley and you can't give them.


How can you have an "Empire Building" game and not have ICS?
If they make restrictions on ICS how can it be an "Empire Builing" game?


You talk out of both side of your mouth and you are certainly a disagreeable lout.
You stay here in a forum for game you've never even bought.
Really shows your intelligence! Egotistical, self-important jerk! You accuse another company of bad PR? You, sir, are bad PR!

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