Civ3 Game Design Discussion Thread

[Willem]

Alright guys, Vel kindly asked that this not turn into a flame thread, and I agree heartily. This constant bickering that's been happening lately isn't going to do one bit of good. If anyone hopes to get the ear of Firaxis, and end up with a better game, then they'll have to learn how to discuss their views like the civilized adults I'm presuming we all are. If I'm getting sick of reading it all the time, I can just imagine how they feel about it.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Willem
Alright guys, Vel kindly asked that this not turn into a flame thread, and I agree heartily. This constant bickering that's been happening lately isn't going to do one bit of good. If anyone hopes to get the ear of Firaxis, and end up with a better game, then they'll have to learn how to discuss their views like the civilized adults I'm presuming we all are. If I'm getting sick of reading it all the time, I can just imagine how they feel about it.

Aye.

Salve

PS. Good post Charles.

[Willem]

Alright, now that I've put that childishness to bed for the moment, I'd like to mention another area of the game I can't agree with. Zone of Control! Does anyone agree with me that they've gone to far in the opposite direction? And along the same vein, the "free shot" that bombard units have. Overall I like the idea of a porous border, but I feel helpless not having any mechanism in order to stop the flow of units, at least nothing that's effective.

My last game I had this steady stream of Indian War Elephants passing through my territory, mainly through one of my frontier areas. I have no idea where they were going, I kept losing their trail, but it was one after another and there was nothing I could do about it, short of risking those outlying cities in a war. If even a fortress would act like the old rules did, I'd at least have some way of stemming the flow. But I have nothing. And even if we were at war, all I have now is one chance of taking off a single hitpoint as they're passing through. And even that's not certain. Sometimes they fire, sometimes they don't.

And again, this is a loss of control thing.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Pollution.
Surely there is a better way of penalizing large production / huge city populations??

* In addition to polluting a tile, a polluted square should have a chance of destroying irrigation and other tile improvements.

* Make pollution affect the output of a city in general. Each pollution icon in the city window could reduce the production and commerce of a city by 1.

* Have one or two more buildings that reduce pollution created by improvements. These would cost 5-10 gold a turn to maintain, thus you would be spending gold each turn to clean up pollution.

[Architect]

There's a post I've been wanting to do entitled

"Soren Johnson's Civilization III"

that really sums up what others have pointed out about the problems with this game. Interestingly enough, I am a Civ I guy, never played much Civ II,CTP,SMAC, just couldn't get into them like I did Civ I. So when I heard that Civ III was back to basics I was really excited.

And because of that excitement I have had a good couple of months playing alot of Civ III, but like another poster on this thread I don't finish many of the games I've started because I lose the drive to play around Steam Power. I also know that if I get to Steam Power first and have coal, the game is over. In 30-40 turns I will be 4-5 techs ahead of the AI (at least on Monarch), and they will all be giving me GPT and be my tech whores. I really can't bring myself to try a more difficult setting because I think it will just move the location where I start to win out another 30-40 turns. Yeee Haa!

First, nothing against Soren, but he's not Sid or Brian and that's a fact. Soren sounds like a well meaning guy, very talented. So why do I think the game should be called "Soren Johnson's Civ III"? Because I've read numerous posts from Firaxis people claiming that Soren reads through all these boards looking for exploits and then changes the game to address these exploits! This tells me he has alot of power over the game design. Hence we have no city trading anymore, tech trading in our turn (bug or not we can't figure it out), palace hopping now impossible, and countless other loopholes closed with no thought other than protect the AI. Then I read he did something to pop-rushing that will kill it in the next patch. Oh boy can't wait, one less choice for me because the AI can't do it as well as me! Maybe this is a bad impression I have of what is going on at Firaxis, but I don't think I'm too far off.

Somebody (SID) needs to take a big axe the whole strategy of protect the AI by changing the rules and think a bit about making the game fun again.

The stupid AI be damned.

All the subtle complexities of terrain, combat, technology, build orders, trading, etc have been reduced to something that is manageable in the C++ code of the AI first instead of giving options to the people who are playing the game. It was so much better when we could find ways to get around the AI because the game was complicated enough that we could quite grasp it all in one sitting. The game was complicated enough where sometimes there was intuition involved in decision making. Now everything is pretty much reduced to a big "if" statement.

And what pisses me off the most is I have to play the game like a computer to beat it: methodically and stupidly with no thought to aesthetics or creativity. Do these statements below sound like a computer to you? Its how I think when I play CivIII.

I have to expand like mad without thought or reason, must have the perfect pattern and layout with just the right amount of cities to balance perfectly corruption blah...

I'm so tired of the boring trading I just accept the default offers to get it over with....probably what the computer does...

I can't stand managing my workers in the late game so I just let the COMPUTER manage them poorly.

Wow, what a rant, felt good...

I think the way to fix this game is simple... Add back the complexities that were removed to make the AI better and add in cheats that let the AI get by these complexities. Don't spend another line of code making the AI better because if that means your going to simplify the rules of the game to compensate for the AI, then your writing a game for a computer and not a person.

When you find a computer that will give you 50 bucks for a game, let me know...

[Capt Dizle]

Very good post. Let me point out that all the stuff Soren took out would be fine in MP. Sauce for the goose.

So, if and when MP comes out it will be this washed out Civ3 version unless Soren starts putting stuff in...nah, not going to happen.

[star mouse]

Better methods of combating ICS

The methods chosen to combat ICS are not the best way of doing it, in particular the corruption model.

The design of having a city working one more tile than there are citizens is the loophole at the heart of ICS. Change this, and the strat becomes harder to implement with no other gameplay changes needed.

First gameplay change: Each city cannot work more squares than the city population, including the city centre. Thus, a size 1 city only works one square instead of 2.

This immediately causes a problem - how can a city grow? In the early game under Despotism, cities without food-producing bonus tiles usually grow because they are working an extra square and producing 2 excess food a turn.

Second gameplay change: make food-producing bonus tiles more common, so each produces 3 food in Despotism. Alternatively, refine the whole system so tiles produce slightly more food overall but cities also need more food to grow.

* Citizens eat 3 food
* Grassland produces 3 food, 5 with irrigation
* Plains produce 2 food, 3 with irrigation
* Despotism reduces food production by 1 if it exceeds 3
* Cows and wheat produce 3 extra food
* Game produces 2 extra food

Another problem this raises is that a city has to be built on a bonus tile in order to grow.

Third gameplay change: Towns of size 1 need not work the centre square, so it can take advantage of productive bonus tiles.

[star mouse]

Re: Better methods of combating ICS

Originally posted by star mouse
The methods chosen to combat ICS are not the best way of doing it, in particular the corruption model.

Another gameplay change: The size of the foodbox must be strictly proportional to city size so that smaller cities can grow faster than large ones (because the large ones are working squares that don't produce food).

For example, a size 1 city might require 16 excess food to grow to size 2, 32 excess food to grow to size 3, and so forth.

[OneInTen]

I'd have to say the weakest design element is the AI, but for somewhat different reasons that other people.

I don't believe the fixes to game exploits are bad, quite the contrary. The palace thing is a good fix, and really I would have gone further and made it impossible to switch from the palace to a wonder. Even with the game as it is, I was able to snag every single major wonder at monarch level, in part because of the palace headstart. It's just too easy and I wouldn't be unhappy if that was changed. The forest thing is one that could go either way really ... it does make some sense as a reasonable strategy.

But they're really fixing holes not in the AI, but in the game. I don't think the game was meant to be played with palace placeholders or chopping down trees ad infinitum, they're just unforseen side effects of the rules, and so the rules were tightened to bring about the game originally intended.

What my problem with the AI is is that it's weak at the highest level - that of game theory.

In my mind, the AI should treat all players equally, whether human or other AIs. On this measure, civ 3 seems to be fairly good ... I've got an inkling that it treats them differently, but not drastically so.

On the other hand, what the civ 3 AI does extreamely poorly is playing to win. I never get the feeling like the AI is there to win the game, more that it's there to try to slow down my own victory.

If the AI players see that a player (human or AI) will win in 10 turns by spaceship, and they're all 100 turns away, then by all means they should form alliances and smash that player before he can win the game!

But instead the AI is far too willing to sit back and let the game be won. That's not really acceptable AI behaviour in my book. I want the AI to be brutal, to go to war any time it will benefit it, to play the alliance game, to further its own cause.

As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Yet the AI civs don't seem to try to boost other civs to help them against a common enemy. There's no true alliance of necessity.

The lower level AI is adequate. Not anywhere near perfect, but probably as good as we're going to get with the computing power and development time available to the game designers. It produces stuff, and works tiles in a less than optimal but not horrible manner.

But it's let down by the laxidasical upper level management! If it has the advantage it should shoot to kill. If it's behind, it should scrap together in whatever way it can to catch up. Instead it just sits there oblivious to the game state.

If it did this, the game would be challenging no matter how incompetently it managed tiles or used its military.

Basically, I don't care whether the AI is a good or bad player - if it uses diplomacy in a manner that even slightly resembles how a human could or would, then it would be an excellent and difficult oponent.

Everything else about the game I find it hard to say definitively whether it's good or bad. It's easy to throw out ideas about game features as a paragraph or two on a forum. But I'm yet to be convinced by pretty much any post in this thread or others that the person making the suggestion has really thought through the way it affects all touch points in the game, how the game play itself will be changed, how other features interact, etc.

For all the features and faults of the civ 3 design, at least it's proven to work as a game, be playable, and at least to some enjoyable. What I think would be really interesting is if some of the suggestions made by fans were expanded to really explain in detail how it would work within the game, what difference it would make to other features, and so on.

For example, it's all very well to say, for example, we need stacked movement. OK, I accept, the people want stacked movement. But what should the interfece be? How should units be added and removed from stacks? What sort of units can go in stacks? What actions can a stack take? What if units in the stack have different movement speeds? And so on - often the feature opens more problems than it solves in it's raw state.

That I think is what game design is really about - not just putting together a whole host of features, but describing in detail how they work as individual features and most importantly how they go together.

Basically, I feel that while anyone who has a reasonable amount of experience in the game or genre can look at your feature description and in a short while come up with "what if?" or "how does?" style questions, you haven't yet designed anything, you've only offered an idea.

As such I don't really have anything I think can be designed into civ 3 at this point, or probably at any point. All the things I really care about are that big a departure from how civ (all 3 in the series) works that it'd be too radical a departure to try to describe how it would fit with the other features - because it wouldn't.

So I'm left with two conclusions. Firstly, the current rules and most of the design are adequate to make a great game, however the AI design is sadly astray and therefore the whole game suffers. Secondly, that if we're going right back through the drawing board of the civ 3 design process, the first mistake in designing civ 3 was starting with civ 1/2 as a base.

[macaskil]

Have a look at CTP2. It has many of the features asked for in this thread - eg stack movement, more and better techs, improvements and units. My favourite is the "Corporate Branch" which attacks by establishing a franchise in a city. They look like a bunch of suits. All we need is a McDonald's "M" to appear in the target city!

Unfortunately it also has

- ugly graphics
- no "culture"
- no strategic resources
- useless AI. In my current game Ireland has been attacking the USA for thousands of years by sending the occasional armada with a couple of units which then get trashed. In civ3 it would have annihilated them in a few turns
- pollution is worse than civ3. And you can't even clean it up until you've got the required tech late in the game. However you CAN reduce it by shutting down factories etc - though oddly enough this doesn't cause unemployment!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Willem
The one thing that struck me when I first played Civ III was that, even though culture is an important aspect of the game, there were no cultural buildings to be built. Aside from the standard ones of course. I was amazed when I first discovered Music Theory that all I could build was the same old JS Bach. Where are the concert halls, the art galleries, the theatres etc. etc. etc.?

At least, cultural buildings can be added with the current editor. In korn's blitz mod (available in the 'Civ3 Files' forum), the number of culture points created by happiness and science buidings is reduced by 1, and three 'culture-only'-buildings are added:

• forum - ancient age, 2 culture points per turn
• theater - middle age, 4 culture points per turn
• museum - industrial age, 6 culture points per turn

So far, I have finished 4 test games using this mod, and the new buildings definitely add strategic choice IMO.

[Willem]

Originally posted by OneInTen

For example, it's all very well to say, for example, we need stacked movement. OK, I accept, the people want stacked movement. But what should the interfece be? How should units be added and removed from stacks? What sort of units can go in stacks? What actions can a stack take? What if units in the stack have different movement speeds? And so on - often the feature opens more problems than it solves in it's raw state.

But there already is stack movement, it's called an Army unit. But so many restrictions have been placed on their use that it's become pointless to use them. 400 shields so I can move 3 units around, big deal! Not worth it! Make them available right from the first of the game, let them hold more units as time goes by. I've done it with my game, I've converted my Palace to a small wonder that can build them, and there's no problem with it. As I mentioned before, in my least game the French had an Army of 10 Swordsman poised to strike the Indians. If the AI knows how to use them, why so many restrictions?

[Willem]

Originally posted by lockstep


At least, cultural buildings can be added with the current editor. In korn's blitz mod (available in the 'Civ3 Files' forum), the number of culture points created by happiness and science buidings is reduced by 1, and three 'culture-only'-buildings are added:

• forum - ancient age, 2 culture points per turn
• theater - middle age, 4 culture points per turn
• museum - industrial age, 6 culture points per turn

So far, I have finished 4 test games using this mod, and the new buildings definitely add strategic choice IMO.

Well yes, I've been adding scads of them myself. Concert Halls, Art Galleries, Radio Stations etc., etc. I've probably added more buildings than were originally included in the game. And I've added Reduces War Weariness to all of them, since that's one of the functions of culture. It takes people's minds off their problems, at least for the moment.

But I have to ask myself, why wasn't this done in the first place? Why do I have to go through all this work to create what should have been there in the first place? Did no one stop to think that maybe there were more possibilities than simply converting a Cathedral to fit the new rules? I suspect if someone took a count, that there are less buildings now than there have been in any Civ game. e.g. Whatever happened to Stock Exchange, and why was it removed in the first place? Again, less options, less choice.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Willem
I suspect if someone took a count, that there are less buildings now than there have been in any Civ game. e.g. Whatever happened to Stock Exchange, and why was it removed in the first place? Again, less options, less choice.

The original Civ had only 20 buildings (not counting the palace), compared to about 30-35 buildings in Civ2 and 28 buildings in Civ3. Stock exchange is an interesting example - it was not included in the original civ (as there were virtually no 'level 3' buildings), introduced in Civ2 and dropped in Civ3. One can argue if Civ3's 'Wall Street' small wonder (5% interest on your treasury, capped with 50 gold) is a fully-flegded substitution for stock exchanges; anyhow, they were also re-introduced in Korn's blitz mod.

BTW, I really like the fact that I don't have to build individual SDI's for every city in Civ3; this is the perfect field of application for a small wonder.

Afterthought: While Civ2 had about the optimal number of city improvements and Civ3 could bear more of them, SMAC - at least for me - was an example that it can become tedious to build the same improvement over and over again.

[JohnE]

Interesting Perspective for Vel

Someone pointed out rightly that the game is meant for mass consumption, and that brought some interesting thoughts to mind.

Most of my real-life friends who play this game are more casual strategy gamers than myself, and especially more casual than Vel and the other strategic masterminds around here. I win regularly on Regent, and am about to move up. Of my six friends who play, one gave up because it's too buggy for her, one gave up because Chieftain was too hard, one struggles on Chieftain, two struggle on Warlord, and the last struggles on Regent. If they left the exploits in, the game wouldn't be a challenge for most of my friends and they would lose interest more quickly.

The deeper strategic issues that spoil the game for more dedicated players like you, Vel, don't enter their consciousness. That's not because they're not intelligent because two of them are downright brilliant and they're all smart. It's because they are simply more lackadaisical about the game. I think they are more typical of the market than you are.

( Not personal or meant to be offensive, just a statement of my opinions. )