Zylka’s 95 theses on why Civilization 3 is an utter disappointment.

[Zylka]

Now since this thread turned into a ridiculous flame war the first time round, I’d like to try again in hopes of rational debate. This thread is geared towards influencing change for multiplayer. If you have problems with criticism and complaint, I’d advise you to avoid posting below.

It has become painfully apparent that, in frustration, the bulk of the logical critics of Civ 3 have left these newbie-infested forums unscathed for quite some time. Optimists may not rejoice, for we will be back to crush your collective head in like a melon subject to a baseball bat - when that wonderful time that multi-player is released comes about. Yet with the temporary absence of our genius, will Firaxis uphold its tainted reputation in screwing up the mp release, as well? Not if we can reiterate long held dissapointment. The following 65 thesis of protest to firaxis are the result of 6 months of sh*ty gaming for all true Civ fans. No shortcoming or broken promise will be withheld, or forgiven, in our quest to dissolve the rampant corruption (pun intended), which plagues the once classic Civilization Series:

Software/Packaging

1 - The pathetically packaged “collectors edition” tin which sums up your entire operation. Anyone end up getting those designer notes? Anyone’s tech “poster” end up enlarging itself into an actual poster, or aligning its print to the paper? I do hope those biscuit tins are large enough to hold your customers shattered expectations.
2 - Bugs upon release. I won't specify the overly horrendous and inexcusable variety of the aforementioned, otherwise it would be Zylka’s 1,425 theses on why your programmers suck.
3 - Lack of multi-player upon release. Anyone in their right mind would have waited an extra few months for it to be included, but that doesn’t work with planned obsolescence, now does it?
4 - Lack of Scenarios. One of the many steps backwards in regards to civ2.
5 - “Maps” included. Seriously, those shouldn’t have taken more than 20 minutes to make, so you’re either lazy, or incompetent. I vouch for the former with a touch of the latter.
6 - Lack of editor upon release. Current editor is a sad consolation worthy of a swift kick to the gonads.
7 - Lack of windows format, or anything close to not being a pain in the as* for minimizing. Alt + tab makes for an incredibly messy scheme, often crashes the program, and does not work without another program already running.
8 - Patches. Not enough changes, not fast enough. Quite amusing how over half of the listed “changes” for each patch have consisted of fixing typos. Care to borrow my ms-word spell check, next time?
9 - Speed. Why is it so slow, even on a hotrod of a computer? Was an incredibly dated processing engine used for this game?


Graphics

10 - The water is jade, the mountains are red. What (other than reality) inspired you to choose such an unrealistic terrain palette? And no, fixes by the mod community don’t count in saving your collective as* (thank you, Sn00py).
11 - Mountains are way too obtrusive on the land’s layout. It does not look good, quite irritating in fact. Perhaps you should have made them even more unrealistically gigantic and thornlike, I don’t think the common idiot can decipher them as mountains, yet.
12 - Civ score caveman "animation". I won't even attempt to vent my frustration on the fact that an already flawed game had some of it's production diverted to that pile of sh*t.
13 - The 3-D advisors and Leaders are so lame. Again, I would rather you had just used static pictures, with the saved amount of work put towards the intrinsic side of the game. Then again, (neo)classical portraits of leaders don’t sell as well as goofy looking 3-D animations.
14 - Joan de Arc’s cleavage really sexed up civ. No really, you sexed it right up and into a filthy whore of half-wit humor.
15 - Modern resources look horrific. The sight of a tire for rubber, a neon-green slab for uranium, and a garbage can for aluminum literally makes the modern map look like a garbage dump.
16 - Firing of nuclear missiles was done in such a lame manner, it makes red alert look professional in comparison. OOH BOY LOOK DAR SCREEN IS SHAKING BOOM I R USE EXPLOSIFFS!
17 - The “loser” screen. Stupid, not at all well done, tacky.
18 - More shots of the “Evolution” Tower of Babel, please. That’s what we paid for, right?
19 - Why do all naval units have such a melodramatic firing animation? Battleships don’t violently rock back and forth with active turrets, they do weigh a good 50, 000 tons, after all. This may seem petty, but it’s yet another piece of crap decision to make the game a little more radical/explosive oriented exciting for the market’s idiots.
20 - Civ colors. Saints preserve us, an Easter-egg was not a good source for influence. Looks silly, mmk?
21 - Cities need a subtle, blending grid outwards. Current form looks like a clumsily dense mass of buildings sticking up out of nowhere, more of an outpost than anything.

Gameplay

22 - Corruption. It's not, nor has it ever been realistic. It was a pathetically obvious overlay fix for an unexpectedly high timeline speed. Next time, hire logistics programmers before you make such crucial decisions.
23 - Culture, and city reversions. Nice try implementing the abstract of immigration/emigration, it was done horribly. Whole cities do not leave and join empires, “individual” populations (by that I mean 1 city size) should have been the integer. Even a choice route bank specifying to what city(s) immigrant populations should add on would have worked better. Of course, the emigration would have worked on a non-choice level, deriving from cultural formulas according from city to city. See? Even I would have made a better logistics advisor than whoever you had. Problem is, I don’t associate with two-bit operations. No wait, my solutions are too difficult for a drooling moron to comprehend – that wouldn’t work for marketability!
24 - AI cheats. However, it does its job just fine – and anything short of a human must cheat to be challenging. The issue here is admitting it cheats, against what was previously implied, and the programmer’s ego.
25 - AI exploit issues. Tends to militarily expand in odd spaces past their periphery territories, often leaving huge power vacuum areas which are easy to pick off repeatedly throughout the game.
26 - Trade was a half noble/ half cowardly streamlining change. Smart people want more options and more manual control, that includes setting up individual routes from city to city, be it moving the caravan itself. A combination of the two would have been nice, but that would’ve taken more than an hour lunch break to come up with.
27 - Domestic nag. Kill, murder, destroy, gone.
28 - War weariness. Why is it that a celebrating democracy crumbles on the exact turn that some sh*t island nation half way across the globe declares war on it? I fully realize that you were bent on making warfare near useless in this game, but this is just absolutely unacceptable. Closer to real life next time, is that yet clear?
29 - Limited terra-forming is needed.
30 - ICS has become even more a horrible necessity than it was in civ2. REX compounds the problem. Players used to work like hell to secure that perfect setting for a city; a river running through it, a nice patch of grassland, rich resources within hinterland radius… now it just doesn’t matter. Filling up the map is an immediate necessity, and it doesn’t matter where you choose to settle. Huge mistake.
31 - Ships which should, do not have even minor AA abilities.
32 - Resources. Oh goody, my civ has a near infinite cluster of gems. The concept of strategic resources was a noble one, but poorly executed. No civilization should have the need (due to shortage of) a resource as widely available as aluminum. Horses as a strategic resource - seriously? Oil is understandable, yet this kind of limiting factor will wreak havoc on multi-player. You must add an option which turns strategic limitations off. Back to the basics, to give multi-playing equality of opportunity.
33 - Lack of unit obsolescence. This ties in to dependence on strategic resources, and should be dealt with accordingly for multiplayer
34 - Modern ships do not take 20 years to trek the globe, in parallel with soldiers who can travel a continent via rail instantly (realistic given the time frame). Modern naval units really should have been given a one move infinite range, followed by a 2 or 3 single square allowance, and the standard 1 attack move. I’m pretty much talking about giving modern ships a chess queen’s move, followed by the specifics necessary for combat.
35 - 89 technologies in civ2. 82 technologies in civ3. An increase was widely expected, but a decrease is just as good! Did the other 7 techs run off to join Snow White?
36 - Submarines are useless.
37 - Wonders are handed out on a near random basis, with great leaders and lack of ability to rush production. The only plus being that caravans were taken away in wonder production.
38 - Bombers are useless.
39 - Bombers can land on aircraft carriers. Next time you’re landing 50+ meters of wingspan on a quarter mile deck meant to hold fighters, tell me so that I might take a picture.
40 - Nuclear warfare was completely botched. An immediate counter launch chance upon initial launch system
should have been adopted, but that would have made things more realistic, right?
41 - Spying was completely botched. What suggestions would you like, seeing as how it’s irreparably screwed up?
42 - The tech tree. Simplified, and dumbed down with almost no real choice of direction. I’m beginning to wonder if the repeatedly aforementioned market range is that of the 8-12 year old developmentally disabled.
43 - Civ specific units. Yet another attempt to push this game over the not so fine line between classy and red-alert tacky. You’re lucky we can disable them.
44 - Privateers are useless.
45 - There are less governments than civ2. Unacceptable. It should have been expanded with the likes of democratic socialism, fascism, totalitarianism, whatever. Fundamentalism could have easily been dealt with to make for a more realistic model.
46 - Barbarians are absolute pushovers.
47 - All your base are belong to us? You say you want a revolution? How about grow the f*ck up. Lame cult classic sayings have absolutely no place in the game we were expecting.
48 - Armies are useless, especially in the modern era. Who in their right mind would give up a wonder for a useless army?
49 - Whoever decided that cruise missiles should have a range of 2 squares should receive an on-the-spot **** punching. A fitting follow up would be Jimmy’s suggestion to put them on a mental disability leave as soon as possible.
50 - Colonies are useless.
51 - Whoever decided that howitzer type artillery has a 2 square firing range deserves a swift elbow to the sternum. 155 mm canons are not capable of lobbing shells 500 mile distances. It is so bloody easy to exploit this, in rendering armored warfare near ineffective.
52 - The Iron Works is: A – rarely possible B – Useless, for the amount needed to build it.
53 - UN based victory??? Do I even need to pick on that one? Just who thought it up – seriously, which member of the team was it? Again, you’re lucky we can opt out. See a pattern here? Good players want MORE OPTIONS.
54 - Helicopters are useless.
55 - Unit hit points & firepower were brought back to a halfway point between civ 1 and 2. They should have logically been brought to a higher level than civ2; further specified so more accurate ratios could have been assigned according to unit type. Then the whole “my tank lost to a fehking spearman” complaint would have been less frequent, if not absent.
56 - Units can not use enemy roads. It’s fine enough that you can’t use enemy railroads, but roads??? Again, you’d like to render warfare in it’s entirety obsolete, I see. What’s the story here - are you a bunch of hippies, or what?
57 - A nuclear warhead halves a city’s population (point based) and infrastructure – whilst a warrior, a few hundred men with spears (or molotav cocktails, it’s irrelevant how you want to justify it), can destory EVERYTHING in an instant? Something is wrong here.
58 - Bombers can not sink ships
59 - Razing cities is a ridiculous option. It should only be an open choice to smaller cities, preferably 3 and under. A unit of a few thousand (or less) soldiers can not effectively murder and destroy an entire city of over a million people with them sitting idly by. It has not, does not, and will not happen - It’s just that simple.
60 - Bombers can not target specific improvements.
61 - Even less civs than number 2: too few to pick from. Redundant streamlining.
62 - “Random number generator” has been proven time and again to be completely out of whack.
63 - AI trades very poorly
64 – I want the two hours of my life which I spent writing this back.
65 - You have sold your souls to a ship of fools.

Now before all rhetoric is lost in telling the critics to go away and stop playing the game, do remember that the majority of us do believe civ3 is an overall improvement on civ2. Take, for examples, a few of my own pros hinting to why:

I applaud the improvements made to the AI.
I applaud the higher number of units.
I applaud the increase in number of AI at a time.
I applaud the implementation of borders.
I applaud the removal of bribing.
I applaud (some) of the graphic improvements.
I applaud the addition of stacked units upon popular demand.
I applaud the recent changes to cultural reversion upon popular demand.

Yet in light of the much larger opposing list, this is not enough. This game is civ2, sprinkled liberally with stupid, in a 3-d vein. At current stance, drastic change is needed.

Just as you have heard my thoughts, you have heard critical solutions from many of the brilliant minds at Apolyton. Keep in mind that these vivid theses, which I have now nailed to your door, are in no way a complete list of common complaints. Take, for example, the doctrines of Cal-Yin-ism – if you need more convincing of the universal disappointment. I am not doing this because I am angry, nor am I doing it because I have too much time on my hands (well, for the most part ). I am doing this for much needed change, and as fair warning. Single player is so easy, so overly streamlined, and so mediocre for replay value, that I have no want or need to continue playing. The only attractive reason to have hope in civ3 is the thrill of playing another human being, and therein lies the theme in its entirety:

Listen up, Firaxis. You had better get multi-player right.

[Zylka]

And

Since this is not assumed to be complete, feel free to add your own thesis. The list can only get bigger

[Zylka]

66 - My biggest, newest problem: even with the patch, cultural reversion of newly aquired cities is inevitable. I have loaded nearly 25 infantry in a recently captured size 19 city, only to have it revert back the next turn. I mean wtf is up with that? There are technically more f*cking troops than citizens (given conscripting ratios), and they can still revolt back to the home empire?

Quality effort on the patch.

[Tuberski]

Why didn't you just post the last 30, I've already read and agreed with a lot of the first 65.

See, this newbie can post with out flaming or attacking.

But just because it says Feb of 2002,doesn't mean I am a newbie to the games. And does being a newbie mean that my opnion has less weight than yours?

[korn469]

i agree with many of your takes on the game and have tried to fix those things in the blitz mod, but you got one completely wrong

30 - ICS has become even more a horrible necessity than it was in civ2. REX compounds the problem. Players used to work like hell to secure that perfect setting for a city; a river running through it, a nice patch of grassland, rich resources within hinterland radius… now it just doesn’t matter. Filling up the map is an immediate necessity, and it doesn’t matter where you choose to settle. Huge mistake.

civ3 fixed ICS and you should take it off of your list, here's why:

ICS worked because it exploited the rules in civ2, REX is completely different, and it doesn't present the same game breaking problems as ICS in civ2 did, ICS was a problem that ruined civ2, REX is easy to fix

but if you want a more comprehensive breakdown of ics, here you go
_____________________________
1) It exploited the growth rules. Ten size one cities grew much faster than one size ten city.
2) It exploited the unit support rules. Ten size one cities supported far more units than one size ten city.
3) It exploited the production rules. Ten pop points worth of settlers would give the player an equivilent of twenty pop points worth of production.
4) It exploited the happiness rules. Ten size one cities were far happier than one size ten city.
5) It reinforced the bigger is always better philosophy. No matter how many cities you had, a few more always made your stronger. The only limit to expansion was the player's patience
6) Once you started ICS it was self sustaining. Using ICS principles to continously churn out settlers meant that each settler came faster and faster since settler production was limited only by shields.

Civ3 has implemented various solutions to most of the exploits so that it really takes away the power of exploits.

1) Each city level has a fixed size food box which completely eliminates the smaller cities grow faster exploit. A size ten city in Civ3 with a granary takes the exact same amount of food to grow as a single size one city without a granary does.
2) With the different support levels for each city size means that larger cities aren't as poor support wise as what they were in Civ2.
3) In Civ3 it takes twenty pop points worth of settlers to give you the equivilent of twenty pop points worth of production.
4) No changes here
5) Corruption kicks in after you go beyond the optimal number of cities. This means that infinite expansion can slow your overall rate of production down.
6) Population limits means that in Civ3 continuosly churning out settlers isn't an advantage.
__________________________

one other one

24 - AI cheats. However, it does its job just fine – and anything short of a human must cheat to be challenging. The issue here is admitting it cheats, against what was previously implied, and the programmer’s ego

and what cheats are you talking about?

by the way who is the girl in your pic? she's hot!

[faded glory]

wheres that jackass flamer Iron..whatever. Who ruined the last thread.

[Aeson]

14 - Joan de Arc’s cleavage really sexed up civ. No really, you sexed it right up and into a filthy whore of half-wit humor.

Got a good laugh from this considering your avatar.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Aeson


Got a good laugh from this considering your avatar.

[Kenjura]

Re: Zylka’s 95 theses on why Civilization 3 is an utter disappointment.

Outstanding! I'll make a few notes where I disagree. If I don't quote it, I agree completely.

Originally posted by Zylka
7 - Lack of windows format, or anything close to not being a pain in the as* for minimizing. Alt + tab makes for an incredibly messy scheme, often crashes the program, and does not work without another program already running.

Actually, this depends greatly on your OS, video card, and various other things. I use the windows key when there is nothing to alt-tab to. I agree that the non-windows compliance is annoying, but most modern games are full-screen hogs as well.

Graphics

Heh, I'll take civ2 graphics if they'd fix all the other problems. I think the terrain problems could have been easily fixed by using 3d. I mean, the level of complexity of the 2d terrain models is so ridiculous that 3d might even have been easier. Not to mention most modern 3d cards have poor 2d support, meaning 3d would scroll much easier and look better. It could also animate and do nifty things like zoom.

21 - Cities need a subtle, blending grid outwards. Current form looks like a clumsily dense mass of buildings sticking up out of nowhere, more of an outpost than anything.

The city view should be removed. It's not only pointless, but poorly executed. Any time that goes into fixing it would be better spent elsewhere.

Gameplay
29 - Limited terra-forming is needed.

The only terraforming I've had to do is make roads over mountains for wheeled units. But turning flat land into other flat land and such ideas might be good.

32 - Resources. Oh goody, my civ has a near infinite cluster of gems. The concept of strategic resources was a noble one, but poorly executed. No civilization should have the need (due to shortage of) a resource as widely available as aluminum. Horses as a strategic resource - seriously? Oil is understandable, yet this kind of limiting factor will wreak havoc on multi-player. You must add an option which turns strategic limitations off. Back to the basics, to give multi-playing equality of opportunity.

Resources need to be overhauled severely. If they don't want to deal with resources that reproduce themselves (i.e. horses) they shouldn't bother. Where is lumber? I mean, half the units in the game use it! Every civ should have access to some resources, but the quality would vary. Perhaps highly available, good-quality resources would allow superior units. For instance, good, strong, tall trees allow bigger wooden ships. If they don't want to implement such a complicated resource system, they shouldn't have made one at all.

34 - Modern ships do not take 20 years to trek the globe, in parallel with soldiers who can travel a continent via rail instantly (realistic given the time frame). Modern naval units really should have been given a one move infinite range, followed by a 2 or 3 single square allowance, and the standard 1 attack move. I’m pretty much talking about giving modern ships a chess queen’s move, followed by the specifics necessary for combat.

I agree with the problem but not the solution. Units move too slowly. I toyed with the idea of war-time (slower increment) and normal time, but that would preclude production. It does NOT take 2000 years to build a harbor. However, the changes required to make the time realistic and keep the game playable would make it a new game. Still, ships should all move faster, especially in the industrial age.

38 - Bombers are useless.

In my few massive industrial- and modern-age wars, I've had some use for bombers. I complement teams of 8 offensive units with about four bombers. The four bombers make short work of enemies outside cities, and occasionally help against city defenders. Given the amount of bombers we had to use against germany and japan to get any real results, I somewhat agree with the mechanic.

39 - Bombers can land on aircraft carriers. Next time you’re landing 50+ meters of wingspan on a quarter mile deck meant to hold fighters, tell me so that I might take a picture.

Ah, but what about Pearl Harbor? Piece of crap movie, sell-out director.

41 - Spying was completely botched. What suggestions would you like, seeing as how it’s irreparably screwed up?

The suggestion to firaxis is this: play master of orion!

43 - Civ specific units. Yet another attempt to push this game over the not so fine line between classy and red-alert tacky. You’re lucky we can disable them.

They could've been done well...if there were at least one per age per civ.

47 - All your base are belong to us? You say you want a revolution? How about grow the f*ck up. Lame cult classic sayings have absolutely no place in the game we were expecting.

The hell? Where does that appear?

48 - Armies are useless, especially in the modern era. Who in their right mind would give up a wonder for a useless army?

Build a military academy, that will free up your leaders for wonders. But still, armies are useless. The fact that the only way to upgrade them is by exploiting a bug is inexcusably horrible and proof of Firaxis' satanic ties.

58 - Bombers can not sink ships

I really don't care about this issue, personally. If there's an enemy warship within 8 squares of one of your bombers, and you still can't manage to scrounge up a ship to relieve it of its one hit point, you have a very poor navy. If we were going for historical accuracy, this game would need many swift kicks to the groin.

59 - Razing cities is a ridiculous option. It should only be an open choice to smaller cities, preferably 3 and under. A unit of a few thousand (or less) soldiers can not effectively murder and destroy an entire city of over a million people with them sitting idly by. It has not, does not, and will not happen - It’s just that simple.

There should be requirements. In the first two eras, enemy conquerers often razed cities. In the industrial age, city size and building materials (brick, iron, etc) would make burning cities far more difficult. In the modern age, only nukes or prolonged, gratitutious bombing should be able to devastate a city.

I applaud the improvements made to the AI.

I do not applaud all the new problems these improvements opened up.

I applaud the higher number of units.

I do not applaud the uselessness of most of them.

I applaud the implementation of borders.

The developers should go to hell for allowing the AI to seek out tiny pockets of your territory to settle.


I have a few additions.

The AI.

66 - AI Values.
The AI value system is poorly balanced, even in its own domain. For instance, the AI seems to think that my three luxuries aren't enough to buy one of his. EXCESS luxuries are useless, and the value should be calculated as such: useful only if their target trader finds it useful.

67 - Opponent values.
The AI does not even venture a guess at the values of other players. Half of trading is knowing what the other guy will pay for your stuff. The AI shouldn't be under the illusion that I'm willing to pay three techs for it's world map. The AI should know that I will ask one of it's luxuries for one of my own.

68 - Trading advice.
The AI does not communicate with other AI. France does not tell Germany that, despite asking me 6000 times, I don't want to buy The Republic for nine thousand gold. Thus, Germany comes and asks me as well. They try to include me in their horrific game of tech trading.

69 - AI secrets.
The AI does not guard its secrets. Selling world maps is the easiest way to get enemy settlers in your territory. They do this to each other, and the result is like some sort of Picasso painting: cities of multiple civs, all splattered randomly, with no regard to corruption, constantly changing hands due to culture. Also, the AI will happily sell the secret of cavalry or tank building to someone, then get in a war and wonder why they lost their technological advantage. Tech trading does not happen much in real life. Look at our government and their secrets.

Warfare.

70 - Gaining Military Alliances.
It's relatively easy to gain a military alliance. Consequently, civs produce a tangled web of alliances randomly. Odds are good that if Germany is allied with France and Persia, France and Persia aren't actually allied with each other, and may even go to war with one another. Military alliances with an AI as a player are useless because of their tactics.

71 - Using Military Alliances.
If you get an alliance with an AI against another AI, it will be a painfully long time before they send a single warrior to help you. Instead you should be able to do the following:
Borrow or purchase military units from the AI, gaining them instantly.
Gain assistance supporting your troops. Effectively, the AI would give you some of their military budget for troop support. It would value this differently than just handing out money in trade.
Have your ally pressure your enemy. Your enemy should reevaluate its standing in the war, perhaps offering peace in favor of being crushed by multiple enemies.

72 - AI declaring war.
The AI rarely declares war for any good reason. Even if they want a particular resource that you won't give up, they never seem to actually attack that resource. Instead, they send whatever troops are available in a stream toward your weakest target. They are easily distracted from even the most valuable targets (like your capital) by an undefended worker or weak unit. They are very easy to defend against if you are careful. They should determine what goals they have, then gather an army, then, when the army is near its goal, finally declare war, perhaps in a surprise attack. This is what humans do.

73 - AI defending.
It seems when you attack an AI, it's every city or unit for itself. Defensive units cluster in cities, indifferent to your pillaging and cutting off supply routes. Offensive units in the area attack the first of your units that they see, providing no more threat than well-armed barbarians. Cities easily fall to the blitzkrieg strategy, because the AI never launches a well-prepared counterattack. It isn't hard to take any given AI city.

74 - Technological balance.
Firaxis maintains that firepower is unnecessary, that it has been integrated into the numbers. Well, then, change the numbers. In the thousands of gameplay tests that players have done, the balance has been PROVEN wrong. The differences in technology do not stand out as well. If you have to, double all the numbers. Or add +10 per era to everything. Whatever needs to be done, do it.

75 - Movement speed.
The biggest annoyance in preparing for war is how long it will take. Not only will it take 40 turns to achieve your target technologies, upgrade old units, build new ones, and mass your units in ships or rallying points prior to attack, and this whole process may take hours depending on your era...but then you have to spend 12 turns getting there! Can you imagine if it took twelve years to sail the ocean? There's nothing more annoying than pushing your troops square by square, spending half your turn managing your domestic stuff back in your home country. And of course, if you do mount offensives, this is the only way.

76 - The role of warfare.
It seems the developers have determined that warfare is a poor means of acquiring things. But time and time again, I've found no better solution. Good offensive strategies coupled with a sound defense secures your position forever. I'd far rather mount an offensive on a neighbouring country to get it's coal than have to give it the technology it needs to know what coal is, then wait for them to get two coal deposits, then pay horrific prices for their coal. I don't have that kind of time to wait for my railroads. In every difficulty from chieftain to monarch (I don't bother higher than that , and I'll tell you why later), warfare has been the best way to get anything. It gives you more cities (higher score, more science, more money, more production, etc), more resources (no dependence on trading), and, of course, it's fun.

77 - Victory conditions.
They're all stupid. My first regent-level game was a long struggle that lasted well into the modern age. I finally won by space race, which was disappointing. Had I the stomach to wait for many hours, I would have definately won with culture. I could have handed out gifts aplenty for a long time, and may have eventually won the UN election. Domination is impossible, even if you cheat in chieftain and are very patient. My only pure military victory took me some six hours, and I had modern armor. In 3000 BC. I can't imagine trying to get a military victory in 1500 AD in a normal game. I generally play until it's very clear that I am the winner, then I start a new game. The score victory is perhaps the most realistic, but you have to wait until 2050. When you have the spaceship complete in 1800, that's a long time to wait for your enemy to catch up to you.

78 - Scoring.
The score system is crap. It's based almost entirely on your territory and population. The number one way to get territory and population is warfare. Forget this culture crap. You eventually run out of new culture to build, while your enemy catches up to you. Time and time again, I dominate the scoreboards with my aggressive warmongering. So much for peaceful solutions to winning.



That's as many as I've thought of. Perhaps I'll find the inclination to improve civ3 with the meager tools I have (like an editor where you can't ADD or DELETE UNITS!!!!). I'll probably just buy Master of Orion III.

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Aeson


Got a good laugh from this considering your avatar.

It has place on a message board, not a world domination game

[ACooper]

You promised 95 theses and you only delivered 65!!!!!
I think I found out your secret identity!!!!

Come on out Sid, show yourself!

[Zylka]

Originally posted by Tuberski
Why didn't you just post the last 30, I've already read and agreed with a lot of the first 65.

See, this newbie can post with out flaming or attacking.

But just because it says Feb of 2002,doesn't mean I am a newbie to the games. And does being a newbie mean that my opnion has less weight than yours?

Good on the lack of flaming. You're not a newb if you have the right attitude. Guess it all depends, no?

[KrazyHorse]

I'm not a history expert, but I don't think bombers are historically responsible for too many ship kills, especially against larger ships like battleships and carriers

Good Lord. I'd go so far as to say the 90% of the capital ships sunk in WWII were lost as a result of bombing or torpedoing from the air.

[Coracle]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse

I'm not a history expert, but I don't think bombers are historically responsible for too many ship kills, especially against larger ships like battleships and carriers

Good Lord. I'd go so far as to say the 90% of the capital ships sunk in WWII were lost as a result of bombing or torpedoing from the air.

Firaxis knows NOTHING about Military History.

I can think of only ONE battle where a battleship (not a battlecruiser, which were more lightly armored) was sunk by surface gunfire - Surigao Straight during the Leyte Gulf campaign in 1944. An old Japanese battleship was sunk by American BB's.

Warships get sunk by AIRPOWER; battleships almost exclusively by airpower.

BTW, the Bismarck was scuttled after being shelled. It was not sunk by gunfire.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by Coracle



BTW, the Bismarck was scuttled after being shelled. It was not sunk by gunfire.

Isn't that splitting hairs? If you scuttle a ship chances are it cannot be repaired.

That's like someone being shot, and the reports says they died from loss of blood.