Firaxis, and Why Civ III is not what we *want* it to be...

[Libertarian]

The problem is that each gamer has their own idea of what they want to see in civ3. It would be mpossible for Firaxis to make a civ3 that pleased all the civ fans here at 'Poly. To even come close they would have to devise a super-editor that allowed each player to change the game to their liking and that would be extremelly difficult to pull off. They made a civ3 that pleases some players but upset others. That is inevitable. If they had done the opposite, they would have pleased those gripping now, but at the expense of those content now.

That's an ignoratio elenchi.

What you've actually shown is that people are groping desperately for some way to make the game interesting. What if they did this? What if they tried that? Maybe this other thing would help.

Primarily two attributes keep a single-player game interesting: (1) the player is forced to make meaningful decisions, the consequences of which have pros and cons no matter which way he goes, and (2) there is a reasonable chance to win (or lose) throughout the entire course of the game.

Civ3 fails miserably in both of these.

What are interesting decisions in the early game — do I forego building this to accomplish that? — settle into pure unadulterated drudgery as the game moves into the modern age (or even the industrial age). Instead of should-I-build-a-worker-or-another-settler, all the the fundamental matters of development are accomplished. You have a hundred workers; you have all the cities that the map will support; you have all the basic improvements necessary to ensure empire growth.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't shift at this point to something that will force you to make interesting decisions again. Rather, you can pretty much set everything on automatic and just sort of watch. Problem is, the interface won't release you from interaction. Whereas before, your clicks had consequences, now they do nothing more than advance the game along to its next excruciating turn.

This is the point at which many people, including people who hate war, go to war — often for no reason other than that there's nothing else interesting to do.

Unfortunately, the game's interface and design doesn't lend itself well to conducting manual enterprises in the modern age. If you go to war, you must be prepared to fight not only the enemy, but the interface as well. Thanks to bizarre unit activation sequencing, you will be routinely yanked away from your theaters of battle. Maintaining any sort of continuity is a hopeless exercise in futility.

Meanwhile, you have not been relieved from the prior tedium already described. You still must click-click-click to keep the game moving along. Here comes the frigging Domestic Nag, bothering you about hospitals. You click a hundred times to dismiss her. And she is as dumb as a stump. She will ask you whether you want to abandon your wonder two turns before completion.

By this time, the conclusion is in sight. Whoever has the greatest lead in the linear technologies wins the conquest or space-race game. Whoever has the greatest lead in the linear culture model wins the culture game. The only mysterious victory is the diplomatic one. But many players turn it off, having reported that they lost despite impeccable diplomatic relations over the entire course of the game.

Once you've achieved victory, you've no choice but to drive it home. Otherwise, you'll be penalized if you want to continue play, i.e., your score will suffer if you wait. So, even if you have resigned yourself to playing along with the doltish rule-set you've been given — building railroads on every tile, etc. — you get a penalty instead of a reward.

Many years ago, Sid said that it's interesting decisions that make for a fun strategy experience. He was right. And Civ3 has those for the opening part of the game. But then they vanish, leaving you to clean pollution in a world where you can't eliminate it; to mollify people who can't be made happy; to feed populations that can't support themselves; to build things you don't need.

And when you've stuck it out, you run headlong into a violation of yet another fundamental rule of gaming. For your efforts, you get a beep and a message box declaring your victory. It is sudden. And it is insulting with its anticlimatic ruination of your experience. Winning is supposed to result in a climactic display of honor and glory for a job well done.

People would be happy if they were given interesting decisions to make. It doesn't matter so much what they are. Just something that makes sense and is supported by the interface.

Now, when consumers of such a game begin to complain to a company whose official policy is to ignore questions and complaints, you end up with the current state of affairs — a game that returns more than ten pages when you search for it on ebay.

[OneInTen]

Libertarian, what you describe is not only a fault in Civ 3, but a fault in every game in the genre that I have played.

My belief is that it is caused by the exponential growth curve your lead tends to take. The problem is the rich get richer without even trying, until they reach a point where they can't lose without making an effort to and the game becomes somewhat dull.

If you get twice as powerful than the rest of the civs in 100 turns, you can bet your bottom dollar that in most games, by the time another 100 turns have passed, you'll be 4 times as powerful. And then 8. And then ridiculous amounts.

Come from behind victories are simply very, very unlikely from the AI (the human player can pull it off against the AI only because the AI doesn't use its advantage anywhere close to effectively, and the AI's production bonuses on higher difficulties help it more in the early than the late game).

I've been kicking around a game design in my head since before civ 3 came out, and this point is one I consider one of the most vital to address, if not the most vital.

If you manage to get twice as powerful as the other players, if you slack off and only play as well as the other players from that point, you should at best maintain your lead. You should have to continue to exceed the play of your enemies to build a bigger lead - and the bigger your lead becomes, the better you should have to play to extend it, it shouldn't just grow by default.

Additionally to this, the AI players should behave like any group of intelligent human players would, and aim to gang up to take the current leader (whether human or AI) down a notch and back to the pack. Simiarly, an AI in the lead shouldn't jsut allow itself to be overcome, and should instead use intimidation against some of the weaker opponents to try to force them into fighting on its side.

In my opinion the lower level AI doesn't even need to be particuarly good at the game so long as the high level AI is programmed to interact with the other AIs and players in such a way that will enhance its own position.

Anyway, I've gone of on a bit of a tangent perhaps, but if you know of any game that works the way I've described, I'd love to heard of it. But at the moment, I can't mark civ 3 down for the late game tedium because it seems to be a consequence of the way all the games in the genre are written (I have ideas of how to fix it, but until they're implemented, I'm only guessing if they'll work). If anything civ 3 is slightly better than most since the corruption model at least attempts to limit the lead in production any one player can take, and the tech research model with the min and max times ensures that no one civ can get too far out from the pack.

[Libertarian]

But that's like breaking Michael Jordan's knees so the game will be more "interesting". It won't be. The most balanced college basketball game I ever saw was back in the olden days when Dean Smith had just unveiled his Four Corners Offensive. Duke beat NC State 10-8. Uh huh. Ten to eight. In basketball. It was the following year that the shot-clock was introduced.

Balance isn't enough. The player must be given interesting decisions to make. Making interesting decisions is the very soul of strategy.

[OneInTen]

But the point is that the only way a decision can ever be interesting is if it affects the game. If the game is surely won or lost anyway, no matter how many choices you are given the decision does not matter. A game where you had a choice of one of 100 units, each of which you knew would crush the enemy easily, would not be interesting, despite the number of different paths one might take.

Therefore a good strategy game is a balanced one, as only when the game is in the balance can one make the "interesting" decisions.

Further to this I think that most people like to win, but be challenged along the way. Therefore I think most people's ideal game is one where the AI is good enough to hang in there with the human but when it realises the end of the game is near, back off just enough so the human wins without realising that the AI has let them.

[OneInTen]

Oh yeah, I'd also very much like to know what TBS game doesn't suffer from the game already being over before the end and therefore having a lack of interesting decisions at the end.

I'm sure it is possible, but if nobody has yet managed to make such a game, then it must be pretty damn hard to do.

A general solution to this class of problem would have huge effects on not just this genre but others (for example, adventure games which tend to have a maximum level beyond which there is no further improvement).

[DrFell]

Re: Firaxis, and Why Civ III is not what we *want* it to be...

Originally posted by Rothy
Civilisation II, and Championship Manager 97/98, and Elite Frontier II, are 3 of my all time favorite games

Along with Lemmings and perhaps one or two others, those are my all time favorites too

[Velociryx]

Well...if I could chime in....the game we're making doesn't quite exist in computer form yet, but the way it's shaping up, it looks like there's be a lot less late game tedium than in many other games of the sort.

Granted, our first release will be just "the basics" but it's a sign of things to come, and I DO have some solid, tangible ideas to keep late game tedium from becoming a factor, including:

1) Random events/Scripted Events. There's an old Alan Parson's project song that very much guides my thinking here, and one line in particular goes: "...but the game never ends when your whole world depends on the turn of a friendly card."

Good line, and a great gaming mechanic to keep things dicey to the very end.

2) The bigger you grow, the harder it is to grow more. With built in limits to stuff like that, you don't get the usual, build troops, rush, expand, rinse, repeat, done. You grow to a point, and can grow further...but the effort involved becomes ever greater....to the point that it simply becomes more efficient...more EFFECTIVE to grow vertically instead. Mind you, there's less we can do with this particular aspect of the game we're making in the very early releases (again, for the sake of simplicity), but the *ideas* are there...just waiting till we're advanced and on our feet enough to begin implementation.

And I'm always lurking in forum threads like this one soaking up ideas....

-=Vel=-

[ACooper]

Originally posted by Libertarian
But that's like breaking Michael Jordan's knees so the game will be more "interesting". It won't be. The most balanced college basketball game I ever saw was back in the olden days when Dean Smith had just unveiled his Four Corners Offensive. Duke beat NC State 10-8. Uh huh. Ten to eight. In basketball. It was the following year that the shot-clock was introduced.

Balance isn't enough. The player must be given interesting decisions to make. Making interesting decisions is the very soul of strategy.

Dean Smith? Duke? Huh?

[Libertarian]

Dean Smith invented the offense and popularized it at UNC, where he used it sparingly as a tactical system.

However...

It spread like a sick disease, and other schools (especially ACC schools) began to adopt it as a strategy. The final blow was the 10-8 game I cited.

If you're not familiar, the Four Corners Offense was basically playing "keep-away". Just as the name implies, four guys would park themselves on the four corners of the half-court. A pivot guy would meander around distributing the ball to them, where they would each just stand still and dribble it for several minutes. A team could keep possession for a long long time. It was originally intended to be something to run out the clock in the last few minutes when you had the lead.

But it got to the point that the first team to score would shift immediately to the Four Corners, and the rest of the game was one huge yawn.

[nato]

1) Random events/Scripted Events. There's an old Alan Parson's project song that very much guides my thinking here, and one line in particular goes: "...but the game never ends when your whole world depends on the turn of a friendly card."

Good line, and a great gaming mechanic to keep things dicey to the very end.

You mean you could be playing along just fine, and then BAM! out of the sky a random event could wreck your whole empire? A random event you have no control over and can't defend against because it is ... random??

I hate to be critical but I think thats a really bad idea. I think people who like strategy games will really hate it.

Too much like the old land mines in chess thing... just how I see it.

[Velociryx]

Nooooo! I definitely can't stand those kinds of empire wrecking big events that you can do nothing to prevent! I'd never even consider putting those kinds of events in the game (in fact, check out the core rules to the game....you'll see, appended to the end that there are some pretty nasty random events, but the very worst of them doesn't begin to approach what you describe).

The kinna thing I'm talking about would be more along the lines of, even if you're holding on by the tips of your fingernails, a bit of skill at holding out just a LITTLE bit longer, and the sometimes amazing hand of fate and fortune can lead to a turn of events or a bizzare combination of events that serves to be just the thing you needed to save your A$$.

On the other side of the coin, if you're totally dominating the game, your opponents may find themselves on the receiving end of JUST enough luck to give you the willies....

-=Vel=-

[FrantzX]

I work in a Planet X, a video game store at the local mall. Whenever I see someone looking at a Civ III box, a walk up to them and talk about the game. I almost always get them to buy it, and so far, we haven't had any returns.

[Libertarian]

What is the time limitation for returns at your store?

[ACooper]

In 1968 Duke lost 10-12 to NCSU in the ACC tourn.
In 1986 the 45 second shot clock was introduced.


Other than the facts your point is well taken (sort of.....)

[FrantzX]

Seven days if you don't like it. No set policy for defective stuff, but if you have your slip, we'll most likely take it back.