The lack of "strategic depth" in Civ3

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by Tarquelne
Yes. So the issue becomes - _is_ there a "simplistic one-way formula to a sure win."
I think the answer is "No." If you've found a formula its because either your not playing on a high enough difficulty level, or the game doesn't have a high enough difficulty level for you.

If by "higher difficulty level" you only mean giving the AI civs even more production advantage than the current production advantage at deity level then I have no interest in such a game. As a matter of fact, IMO, if some common sense is put into the game, the AI production advantage at deity level can be reduced from the current level and the game will still be harder to beat. The game can then be balanced in a much more elegant way without having to resort to clipping this ability and that ability as an afterthoughts to fix glaring holes.
Going back to the chess analogy, I learned in those old days that by extending my pawn line too much in an attempt to cramp my opponent, I actually weakened my position by abandoning my defence and gave them more room to attack me later. The current single-mindedness of the AI civs with the ICS presents the same mistake. The raiding horse strategy wouldn't be half as effective if they didn't bring all those cities right at my doorsteps so I can literally just get out of my cities and into their cities to get the gold, use their cities as the rest stops, and use their roads as a quick path to destroy their civilizations. Everything is readily served right in front of me so I can just start a conquering war with just as few as 5 horse units at the beginning and use their roads to bring more and more reinforcements in later on.
If the game designers had developed the AI civs along different paths according to their strengths then the game will be much more diversified and interesting than the current city-city-everywhere strategy. I can cite examples if anybody is interested but I don't want to make this too long.

I agree the basic combat system is, well, just that "basic." Very simple, little "depth." How about the rest of the game?
If the strategy requires a lot of "maintinence" - if you have to make interesting/difficult decisions to continue to carry out the strategy - then "Yes." Though prehaps it should be said to have "tactical" depth.

Sorry I can't think of anything difficult other than the fact that the AI civs can research at a very fast rate which is hard for me to catch up sometimes if I'm too far behind at the beginning and they just snap up all the wonders !!
At the beginning, it's just a matter of expand to survive and I can expand to around 6-8 cities before I start to get hemmed in on all sides. The corruption model (together with the cultural reversion risk) rules out expansion on another continent/island (also, at deity, the AI civs have a lot more spare production to grab the land before I do anyway) so there's not much decision left other than developing the cities I have or attacking the neighboring civs. Tradings or dealings with the AI civs aren't that complex either. I just have to follow the track with not much else to do. The only big decision is whether to get into a war or not, and if I get shut out on an island, that would be ruled out too and there would be no meaningful decisions left to make the game interesting for me to continue.

[Ironikinit]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Sadly, I think that the biggest neon sign pointing toward the lack of strategic depth in the game is the fact that the Civ3 Strategy section is....well....not dead, exactly, but not what I'd call vibrantly exploding with strategic thought, either.

The Civ 2 strategy forum is two years older than the Civ 3 forum and doesn't have all that many more posts on it, a good deal less I reckon if you go by posts per day. Granted, Civ 2 was out for a long while before the forum started.

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Civ2's combat model is more advanced because it contains the FirePower aspect. This allows for tremendous variance in modeling various units. If you disagree that this allows for a more highly detailed combat system, then I invite you to check out any of the *numerous* threads in the general section on that very topic.

I disagree. I always have. I think that *numerous* people are wrong about it. Just like you think *numerous* people are wrong about Civ3. So lets skip the "numerous people" argument.

SMAC:

a slightly inferior force, wind up on top....not based on luck, but based on superior maneuver.

Look, I agree that SMAC's combat system was more complex.... but still simplistic. For a wargame (like TOAW, say) all three games have an "overly simplistic" combat system. Compared to each other there isn't all that much difference. SMAC certainly has a edge - but not Civ2. Civ2's basic resolution was more complicated that Civ3's, but that extra complication (FP) doesn't do much at all.

Thus, the notion of maneuver is relatively less important, since there are fewer total factors influencing combat.

Actually, the only thing left is maneuver, since there are few terrain modifiers. What's missing is seeking advantagous ground.

Another reason that the Civ3 model is a weak design is that it does not take into account the fact that a Elite Infantry's battlefield experience is any more or less valid in the modern era than an Elite Warrior (they both have 5 HP). It's patently *silly* to think that the Warrior's battlefield experience will help him much at all on a modern battlefield.

It doesn't. The Warrior still has low stats.

SMAC)....the difference here is that in SMAC, you must do so through masterful control of the terrain....in Civ3, you just build lots of warriors and bulldog your way through....because the system has only two chief elements, you WILL eventually win. In other words...luck.

I get it! I have better production and am able to focus more units at a given point because I'm _lucky_! Interesting use of the word....

Techs:
Think about what you said for a moment. You acknowledged that Civ3's tech tree was not as deep as Civ2 or SMAC.

Dude...'member all those nifty subtle, deep strategic decisions you mentioned? Where do you suppose they *come* from???

Trading
Unit movement
CIty placement
Improvement timing
Techs (I said not "as deep" not "utterly shallow")

If your answer is anything other than "The acquisition of tech" then I would highly recommend reading the rule book more closely before playing your next game, as it would seem that you lack a pretty basic understanding of the game itself.

Actually, I recommend that YOU actually try to see the strategy in Civ3 rather than simply noticing that tech is no longer such a dominant factor and that you have to seek other methods for gaining advantage.

[QUOTE
The fact of the matter is, tech is THE most important aspect of the game. Tech DRIVES the game.[/QUOTE]

Hi. This is a Civ3 thread, not Civ2 or SMAC.

You see where I'm coming from.

Yes - a pre-Civ3 perspective. In Civ3 you have to work harder to gain advantage, not just race up the tech tree.

My point is....if the tech tree lacks depth and meaningful long term choice/benefits, then the game itself is going to lack strategic depth.

Ah, like chess, TOAW, panzer general and all those other games....

See...the essence of strategic depth is not having deep, interesting choices to make. That's part of it, sure....but the CORE of the issue is having multiple choices to make, all of which lead to vastly different gaming experiences, and many of which that can be argued to be equally viable.

I disagree. That's what DrFell was talking about with strategic "diversity." Probably. "Vastly different gaming experiences" isn't the most precise statement I've seen. While I can't think of any Civ3 games that were "vastly" different from other Civ3 games, I can't think of any Civ2 games that were "vastly" different from other Civ2 games.

Let's take a closer look at the Peninsular start, in which you provided a number of other "alternate strategies" one could persue.

My statement was that if you find yourself in such a start, you WILL fight, or you will not have a good sized, thriving empire.

To which you responded that these were some of the other things you could do:


QUOTE:
You could relocate your whole empire - move to an island or down the coast while your homeland gets overrun. (I did that once, and won in the end.)
You could wait untill a non-central city is developed enough to build a FP without a Great Leader. (I've done that.)
You could do without the FP in your large empire. (I've done that.)
You could try to get by without a large empire. (I've done that, too.)

You say there's "no strategic choice." Are you sure you're aware of all your choices?

END QUOTE:

So let's do a quick compare shall we?

Fighting vs. Relocating the Empire: Relocation is clearly the weaker strategic choice....doing so costs you both time and cities, and on the higher levels of play (Monarch and above), given the AI's production and unit bonuses, that's not generally something you wanna consider, unless you're just mashochistic. Better to fight your way out of the corner and subdue the continent you're on.

Unless you think you can't win. Or fighting would be more expensive that starting in a more advantageous position. Depends, doesn't it? I'd generally rather fight than relocate, too. But I think I properly analyze the difficult position I was placed in and reacted well.

Let the FP build naturally vs. Fighting: Sure, if you wanna spend 300 turns in poverty, you can do that. And based on this "strategic choice" I now see why you find yourself in a position of poverty in Civ3. No wonder!!! Very weak strategic choice.

I guess I just don't have your god-like Civ playing abilites. I was playing on Emperor level, a not very good starting position, and I simply didn't feel that war would have been a good idea, so I waited, say, 50 turns, rushing buildings and adding pop to my city untill I could build the FP in less than 30 turns. I DID IT IN LESS THAN 300 TURNS.

Letting a non-central city develop: Again....300 wasted turns. No thanks! And another reason you often find yourself in a position of poverty in your games!

You're basic argument seems to be "Tarq, you aren't very good at the game." I'll have to disagree.

Do without a large empire: Shooting yourself in the foot again, cos remember,

... I guess I really just don't have your god-like Civ abilities. I can't always choose to have a large empire. You can, huh? And I can't invariably win any fights I start.

So yes....I'm well aware that there are other "strategic choices" besides getting in there and fighting if you find yourself with such a start...but the presence of those other choices do not amount to strategic depth at all, because compared to rolling up your sleeves and mixing it up with the AI, those are non-viable choices. They're strategically weak.

Not if your position is so bad you can't win the fight! You keep making that assumption and I really don't think it's a good one. Hmmm... I think here we have an _excellent_ example of how Civ3's less detailed (compared to SMAC) combat system helps the game's strategic depth. In SMAC, since there was so much more to the combat system, and because the AI couldn't handle it well, I bet you could really win almost any fight.

Remember - I quit games quite often because my position is too _good_ at the start. MANY of my individual civ games, then, lack depth in themselves beacuse the military option is so clearly the best one. I quit those games. If you want to see me say "To get good strategic depth in Civ3 you may have to start many games." fine. I just said that. But that certainly isn't the same as "Civ3 has less strategic depth than Civ2 or SMAC."

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by Myrddin
I agree that CivIII is limited at the grand strategy level, mainly because of the power of the offensive units - meaning it makes sense to wage aggressive war after obtaining knights, cavalry and tanks. This skews the game towards getting these key techs.

Alternative ways of gaining territory don't work well, since the AI won't trade cities, cultural conversion is erratic and subversion is expensive and ineffective.

I think the offensive units were too powerfull. I made them significantly more expensive. I'd call this a balance issue, since that all it was for me: I noticed that the military option was too attractive, so I "legislated" against it. I agree that they cause a strategic-depth problem.

[Tarquelne]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Calvin Vu

The game can then be balanced in a much more elegant way without having to resort to clipping this ability and that ability as an afterthoughts to fix glaring holes.

It's a sad fact that, apparently, all the best game-AI programmers don't actually work at programming AI's for games.

[QUOTE
Sorry I can't think of anything difficult other than the fact that the AI civs can research at a very fast rate which is hard for me to catch up sometimes if I'm too far behind at the beginning and they just snap up all the wonders !!

Again that focus on tech....
I don't understand how you can isolate the tech race from the rest of the game. "The game isn't difficult exept that I sometimes fall way behind in tech. Otherwise I rule."

The corruption model (together with the cultural reversion risk) rules out expansion on another continent/island

People keep saying that, yes. I wonder how I do it? Sometimes - not always. Maybe you mean "I can't always easily expand to other land masses."?

so there's not much decision left other than developing the cities I have or attacking the neighboring civs.

Sure there is. Start another game and (hopefully) end up in a more interesting position if your current game is too easy. Thats what I do.

Tradings or dealings with the AI civs aren't that complex either.

The whole game isn't as complex. The AI is also better. (My basic argument.) Do you mean to say "The tradings or dealings with the AI civs are too simplistic to be interesting?"

I you're so good at the game that you can win on Diety level by just "following the track" then, I'd think, of _course_ you wont see much depth in the game. But I don't see how Civ2 has more.

Hmm... HEY! As I think about it, what I keep see here is how Civ2 strategies don't work as well (or at all) in Civ3.

Since I started reading this forum I suspected that the vast majority of the dissatisfaction with Civ3 was the fact that it didn't use the same design philosophy as SMAC or Civ2. Now I'm pretty much convinced that this is the case.

[GePap]

Strategic depth for me

I am not a 'fanboy', and I certainly have disagreements with this game- but to think that this game has less strategic depth than Civ2 is silly.

On corruption- after the two patches, and fiddling with the editor, I no longer find it a worhtwhile issue. At most, I lose 10% of income to it, and I have no 1shield, 1 golc cities anymore. So large expansion is possible...

.....but large expansion odes not mean strategic depth. The new resource system, and I include luxuries, makes for much deeper playing. I find myself going to war just for ground, early in the game, whereas in Civ2 I could hold tight, wait for a big tech lead, and then crush the other guy, not because I had to (I ussually go for Spaceship) but because I had run out of stuff to do. I think luxuries are underappriciated, for example. If you have lots of them, you can sink far more money in reserch or troops without worrying, and usually you do have to trade. I find myself needing to make deals with even trully weak opponents simply because using my time to crush them is not worth it, if I can pay- none of these issues would ever come up in civ2.

Culture can also be important in trying to get land, to get resources, to keep the land- plus it does influence relations, so again, this adds depth to a game, forcing one to spend more time in the local economy.

Just those two aspects, plus the nature of bombardment and new airmission types, plus ICBM's with no range limits, all call for more complex decisions than civ2 ever called for.

The greatest weakness of Civ3 in terms of strategic depth is the lax diplomacy, and that can be fixed. Now, is Civ3 more FUN than Civ2? That, I don't know. BUt does it call for new, and longer term strategic planning? Yes, yes it does.

[Tarquelne]

"and fiddling with the editor"

I was just wondering.... Civ2 went through over a dozen patches, right? And is probably one of the most heavily modded games ever, right? Why do so many people seem to be throwing up their hands and giving up on Civ3 over issues that can be changed with the editor?

[Ironikinit]

I was just wondering if DrFell ever came through with that saved game.

[korn469]

just my thoughts

Tarquelne

RIght - more difficult to balance, and, if past games are a good indication, lots of "stuff" means that each individual item matters less. There's that "fewer options, more care with each decision" thing again.

The better AI and the Resources have made all the difference for me. Fewer options, but more interesting/difficult ones.

this right here is where we differ
first off i will define a few things

Strategic Depth: It is the state of a strategy game having a large number of equally viable strategies and counters that use vastly different tactics to achieve the goal of winning the game. Not only should each strategy be of roughly equal power, it should be roughly equal in terms of difficulty to execute, and the more difficult to execute more prone to counter a strategy is, the more potenial power it should have. Each strategy should have roughly equal rewards in terms of gameplay. Simply put, Strategic Depth does not come from a large number of possible options alone, it comes from a number of viable options.

Tedium: Forced to repeatedly make a choice that is either inconsequential in terms of strategy, or repeatedly forced to make a choice that one has one worthwhile outcome.

AI: Has some correlation to strategic depth, but is more of a measuring stick than anything else.

Ok now let me give particular examples of where the Civ genre failed when it comes to strategic depth. My first example is culture.

Culture is a wonderful new system in Civ3 that should add to the strategic depth of Civ3, yet it falls far short of its potential. In my opinion, while having a cultural consideration in the game does boost the overall depth of the game the current culture model as a subset of the game lacks any real strategic depth. First off, culture only comes from building improvements and wonders in your cities. There is no alternative ways to generate culture unlike there is for example with taxes or science. Besides buildings, the play can use both specialists and diplomacy to maximize their taxes or science, whereas the player doesn't have any other options for generating culture. Furthermore, the buildings that provide the most culture also happen to be many of the buildings the player would build first even if culture wasn't a consideration. By simply not making a subset of culture only buildings Civ3 denys the player viable options when it comes to developing a strategy to maximize culture generation. So the only options for generating culture is to follow your normal buil order for the most part. Not only is the model to produce culture rigid and not open to any meaningful variation, few strategies exist to counter culture besides have more culture. There should be buildings and wonders that nullify to an extent the effect of culture. Also other methods of counteracting culture should exist.

Suggestions to add strategic depth to the culture model:

1) Add in cultural specialists, call them poets or artists (musicians, actors, etc. take your pick) and make them function in the same way as tax collectors and scientists do. (i would recommend all specialists to produce either +2 or +3 of each resource)

2) Add in a rule that says each Happy citizens adds +1 to the culture of a city and each unhappy citizen add -1 to the culture of a city. When a city is in a golden age each happy citizen adds +2 culture to a city, and each cultural specialist adds an additional +1 culture to the city.

3) Add in Culture only wonders and improvements.

4) Add in events, such as the Olympic games (lets say it happens once every ten turns and provides a number of extra culture points) which provide a boost to a city's culture.

5) Add in wonders and improvements which would counter the effects of culture, such as the Berlin Wall preventing a civ from losing any cities to cultural subversion.

6) Make some buildings only give culture in a time of peace.

plus various other ideas like that

SMAC had failures in its strategic depth as well. While their was a great number of choices when it came to terrain improvements, the forrest and borehole combination was of such power that it was the only viable strategy for optimizing overall civ output in the majority of games. All of the choices in the game only provided the illusion of strategic depth, when a one best strategy existed that limited a rational person trying to optimize the outcomes to a single choice.

Overall i think that SMAC has more strategic depth than civ3, yet Civ3 isn't too far behind. While it may lack the strategic depth of SMAC, it makes up in other areas such as having good AI to really force a player to exert good strategies, a streamlined interface, good graphics, etc.

In the fastest transcend challenge for SMAC, the outcome of the game was already a given, the player would transcend, yet that series of games had a great deal of strategic depth because the player must always make the right choice in every single situation or the real measuring sticks, aka other players' scores would outdue them.

[Libertarian]

I might add that, sociologically speaking, Civ3 does not really implement culture at all, but rather hegemony.

[notyoueither]

Wow. Tarq. Keep going. This is good.

Civ3 = less strategic choice. Hmmm.

I'm going to win by culture. I'm going to win by conquest. I'm going to win by making everyone like me. I'm going to win by industry.

All four are viable. OK. The UN sux. They got that realism right.

Less choice???

Yes, less meaning in tech. You can buy it.

Yes. Less meaning in combat. Dag Nammit. They could do navies better! Ahem.

But...

More meaning in the map. Resources.

More balance in building decisions. Can't see a one-dimentional approach being successful. That Spartan woman would be culturally assimilated in fairly short order with her single focus on the military.

More meaning in the map. It is how you win the advantage in combat, even more than SMAC. Terrain modifiers win and lose wars when they are in the balance. Whereas with SMAC it was more the Uber units regardless of terrain. If there is no balance, there is no challenge in either Civ3 or SMAC.

Hmm... Enough for now.

Salve

[Libertarian]

I submit that whoever might presume to lecture Vel on the strategy components of Civ3 ought to put up or shut up by opening a thread in the Strategy Forum that proves itself superior to Vel's famous series.

[notyoueither]

I submit that Tarq is carrying his own weight and should not be required to be a creative genius to have a voice in the forum.

If he wishes to address Vel, I will judge the exchange on its merits.

Salve

[Libertarian]

I submit that Tarq is not arguing, but rather lecturing.

-----

Evidence

I disagree. I always have. I think that *numerous* people are wrong about it. Just like you think *numerous* people are wrong about Civ3. So lets skip the "numerous people" argument.

So he disagrees. Whereas Vel gave the reason Civ2's model was more advanced ("Civ2's combat model is more advanced because it contains the FirePower aspect."), Tarq merely takes a posture, straining the argumentum ad numerum gnat and ignoring the firepower camel.

People keep saying that, yes. I wonder how I do it? Sometimes - not always. Maybe you mean "I can't always easily expand to other land masses."?

What Vel meant was clear, not only from the context of his post, but from the context of his strategy series. Expansion is problematic and "culture" (actually hegemony) is one of the reasons why.

Sure there is. Start another game and (hopefully) end up in a more interesting position if your current game is too easy. Thats what I do.

Dodging Vel's point, Tarq ties strategic depth to the starting position, effectively contradicting nearly every point he'd made so far.

I get it! I have better production and am able to focus more units at a given point because I'm _lucky_! Interesting use of the word....

Mere rhetoric.

Hi. This is a Civ3 thread, not Civ2 or SMAC.

And like a Salieri march, here's just more of the same.

-----

Once again, if Tarq has something substantive to offer on the matter of strategy, then he ought to offer it. Taking potshots at someone else's post by stripping it line-by-line from its context and then just basically exercising the cyber-equivalent of sticking out your tongue merits little more than a raised eyebrow and a sigh for having wasted a mouse click.

[notyoueither]