Civ 3 game design

[vee4473]

I posted this comment in a reply to another post, so please forgive me if you have read this before.

Let me first say that I am a long time Civ fan. The original Civ hooked me..hard.

I loved Civ 2 even though there were aspects to the game that I disagreed with. Same with Civ 3. (especially the corruption!)

My little point is this:

The point of ANY game is to learn the rules of that game and then devise strategies to win.

Does a chess player complain if he disagrees with the legal movement pattern of the knight or queen? Saying to himself, "If only the knight was allowed to move in this pattern that I think is fair, I could checkmate this clown!"

No, they know the rules and play by them.

Maybe we should all look at Civ3 in that respect? With exceptions to glaring unfairness...


Perhaps the changes to some aspects of play took many players off their stride and forced them to devise new startegies..


Or am I wrong?

[yin26]

I think most players welcome having to devise new strategies as long as those strategies are rewarding ones. The fact that it's simply better to raze far off conquered cities, for example, is certainly easy to accomodate: Click a button. But is it rewarding? The same for founding a sprawling empire: It's quite easy to ignore the levels of corruption, but is it rewarding? Or war weariness: You can avoid war weariness by A) not getting into wars, which is fine, I guess, though a bit dull or B) end wars quickly, which is sometimes impossible and, in fact, why should you end JUSTIFIED and PROFITABLE wars quickly just to keep citizens from revolting? And take a look at science progression: You can throw pile upon pile of money at research and get no faster results. Sure, this keeps the computer in the game longer, but is it rewarding? It also makes the very few late game techs last longer, but is that the kind of challenge you want: Forced longevity?

You see, those changes aren't very much fun, nor are they rewarding. I think I said it best (if a bit cryptically) when I said:

Civ3 rewards mediocrity.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by yin26
The fact that it's simply better to raze far off conquered cities, for example, is certainly easy to accomodate: Click a button. But is it rewarding? The same for founding a sprawling empire: It's quite easy to ignore the levels of corruption, but is it rewarding?

yes, when you find out later in the game that you have vivid empire of cities that actually do some work instead of just sitting there making tanks every 30 turns

Or war weariness: You can avoid war weariness by A) not getting into wars, which is fine, I guess, though a bit dull or B) end wars quickly, which is sometimes impossible and, in fact,

it was really rewarding on the game i'm currently playing when all my democratic cities turned from riots to happiness after i ended a war with the romans who had just 2 cities on the other side of the planet, allowing me to continue my real war with the americans

[MOHonor]

Yeah it's probably important vee to know that yin26 doesn't own the game. There's some wisdom for ya "don't accept strategies from people who don't play the game"!

[yin26]

So unproductive cities make the game vivid? Curious. And I suppose you can find some rewarding moments when war weariness works as intended, but now you're just focussing on the exception rather than the rule.

Why should a profitable war against a civ that started the war in the first place put your cities into chaos? Sure, if your troops start losing or make no progress, that's different.

[yin26]

Hey, the newest Yin Groupie showed up! What took so long?

Gee, why don't I play the game anymore? ... beats me!

[MarkG]

Originally posted by yin26
So unproductive cities make the game vivid?

i said the opposite

Why should a profitable war against a civ that started the war in the first place put your cities into chaos?

cause each goverment is supposed to be a balance of good and bad things. if you didnt have war weariness in a democracy, then that game would be a "democracy race"
and because real democracies are not like the US(which for the last 10 years is at all times sending troops to all sorts of places around the world)

[yin26]

Right. Real democracies hate successful campaigns to dismantle proven aggressors. And cities producing 1 gold make an empire so vivid it's simply blinding.

[vee4473]

I must agree that it is unfair that riots occur when waging a war with a civ that starts one...

perhaps the game should have taken into account whether you are just rampaging across the globe or reacting to an invasion, when deciding whether or not to have the citizens riot..

After all, according to the current civ design, I think that you would have riots in your cities even if you were engaged in a war that started only because the AI decided to conquer you or make dumb demands no matter what...

[YC4B4U]

Getting back to the point

IMHO Civ games are intended to, in most respects, simulate the rise and fall of civilizations as has occurred in our collective history.

We each have our opinions of what should occur if A does B to C. If that doesn't happen we all get a bit miffed.

Board games are more obviously games of strategy with defined rules and I don't believe a comparison can be made with the current mindset. In addition there is no diplomacy in Chess...

With regard to war weariness and corruption I believe these are intended to make war mongering and empire building more difficult. I don't like the way it is currently managed, perhaps making war weariness cause corruption (loss of production) and containing corruption with police or military units. But I don't now how that would affect game balance.

[zergling]

No no no. Cities will not riot if you fight a defensive war, but once you fight an offensive one and start taking enemy cities, when your enemy start begging for a peace treaty but you rejects, cities will then start to riot.

Do you think Allied cities would not fall into disorder if Hitler was willing to negotiate a peace treaty but Allied forces keep rolling into Germany?

[MOHonor]

For those of you just joining us

yin26 doesn't play or own the game he's describing

Reader discretion is advised

[zergling]

then why the hell he talks about Civ3 anyway. He knows nothing about it.

[vee4473]

Good point,

I wasn't really trying to compare a game that is supposed to simulate empire building with a board game...sorry if i didn't express myself correctly.

My main point was in comparing how people are reacting to the rules of civ3, not the overall goal of the game...

Such as how some are disgruntled over how they think that a courthouse should decrease corruption by X amount, but Infogrames made it so that it only decreases it by Y amount...(I count myself as one of the disgruntled...)

Just like someone might say that there is no friggin' way that that lousy pawn could have taken my Knight...rules of movement or not! In the real world my knight would have kicked his butt!

In other words, you can't think that the way that you see the world should have unfolded, is the way it would have.

You know...I just had a revelation....the reason Civ will NEVER be perfect to everyone is the same reason that there will NEVER be peace on Earth...


Everyone has their own vision of what should happen in the world and of what is right and just or unjust...People fight over it every day.


Cut the designers of Civ some slack...After all, It must be impossible to create a game that simulates history in a way that will make EVERYONE say "yeah, that is the way it would have happened."

[MOHonor]

Originally posted by zergling
then why the hell he talks about Civ3 anyway. He knows nothing about it.

My favorite diagnosis was dumb-ass-idness.