What exactly is wrong with Civ 3??

[Ginger Elvis]

I can't put my finger on it but the game is nowhere near as fun to play as Civ 2.
I love the whole culture idea but I'm finding it real hard to see a game through to the end.
I usually wipe out a couple of neighbours and then go for a peaceful victory but for some reason the game gets really slow and boring from about the 1500s onwards.
I could play Civ 2 with my eyes shut, loved the multiplayer and redesigning stuff on te editor but I can barely bring myself to play the game anymore. SO, what exaclty has gone wrong??

[Saint Marcus]

Game slows down after a while.
AI using ICS.
AI agressively trading tech.
AI refusing to acknowledge borders.
Spearmen defeating tanks.

It's also too bad that civ3 doesn't have a real scenario editor, an event script, or an MP option, though the latter two weren't in the original civ2 either (only in the CiC/FW/MPG expansion packs).

[SITS]

The problem I have with finishing Civ3 is that it turns into a one big click fest. Also there are many turns where you cannot build any more city improvements and you basically end up building units.

[Spiffor]

My biggest problem when I played large / huge maps was the waiting time between turns. Although I truly love Civ3, and I find it exciting (I just had my ass wiped by the Brits... I swear I'll kill them !), this waiting time made me lose the incentive to begin a new game. But now that I play on standard maps, I love Civ3 as it deserves.

[watorrey]

They give you a problem to solve and no way to solve it... corruption.

[Coracle]

Re: What exactly is wrong with Civ 3??

Originally posted by Ginger Elvis
I can't put my finger on it but the game is nowhere near as fun to play as Civ 2. . . I can barely bring myself to play the game anymore. SO, what exaclty has gone wrong??

What has gone wrong??? We've been putting our fingers on precisiely what has gone wrong with Civ III for months on the forums. Check the threads.

Civ 2 was indeed more fun, more challenging, and simply WORKED BETTER. It also gave the appearance of more realism. Civ III was slapped together and rushed to market for the Holiday buying season. It has dozens and dozens of problems, just a few of which include:

Idiotic mod with stupid values, espeically for units and resources.

Bugs and more bugs, and crashing.

Inadequate Editor.

No scenario-building or Cheat Mode.

The awful tech trading and Diplomacy in the hated patch 1.17.

SLOW.

Ugly colors for land and water.

Impossible to see resources, such as coal.

Culture Flipping citiies and vanishing garrisons IS A CROCK.

Too much corruption in outer cities. This was an obvious last minute designer patch to slow down a civ's development.

A constantly cheating AI.

Pathetic use of naval units and naval warfare.

Resources - far too few.

No chance for an immediate counter stroke if an enemy launches nukes at you.

Useless armies, and no Military LEaders who can affect combat.

Attacking units cannot use enemy roads. Stupid and unreal.

Razing huge cities is an absurd, barbaric option - often made necessary by the dopey Culture Flipping.

Far too few units and too few techs.

And dozens of other things.

But that won't stop Firaxis from trying to sell the suckers MP, Expansion, scenarios, and other disks. No sale.

[BucksRock]

I can't put my finger on it but the game is nowhere near as fun to play as Civ 2.

Lack of immersion, "nothing to do syndrome", and most of all the feeling that the other civs are there just to impede you, not to compete against.

[Aeson]

Civ 2 was indeed more fun, more challenging, and simply WORKED BETTER.

I can see how you derived the "fun" portion of that statement, as it is an opinion. The "WORKED BETTER" is most likely due to system configuration, I've had less crashes in Civ 3 than in a comparable amount of time in Civ 2. I have no idea how you get the "more challenging" portion of your statement though. I could beat Civ 2 Deity straight out of the box, even playing OCC games it was a foregone conclusion that I'd win, the only question was by how much. Civ 3 Warlord or Regent is about on par with Civ 2 Deity.

[simwiz2]

why civ3 loses its fun:

*too much time between a click and the game responding (NOT AI turns) for example zooming to a city takes too long, sometimes things take so long i forget what i was going to do that turn ! Im not sure if this is because of my computer or if its just the enhanced graphics.

*Not enough things to build - industrial age, when theres nothing to do but pump out infantry/artillery, nothing left to build, i often ask myself: "why am i still playing this?" (answer for me is because i cant get CS to work on my computer, if it did civ3 would be off my harddrive)

*Modern age, with original stats, is nothing more than brute force. Civ3 modern age is no better than civ2's modern age, in civ2 you crank out howies in civ3 you just pump modern armors. Probably one of the worst oversights by firaxis, that you can still blitz a civ in 1 turn easily. And firaxis seems to think that tanks are the ultimate weapon, who needs infantry. Tanks cost about the same, have more movement, and can usually beat mech infs if deployed in sufficient #'s. Attempting to blitz a competently-defended city with MA's, without bombardment, should cause you to lose most of your military. And firaxis made it the strategy to win the game by.

*AI unable to use artillery. It means ONE THING: any attempts to fix this blitz-mess firaxis gave us for military "strategy" results in a COMPLETELY CRIPPLED AI. If bombardment is made more improtant to achieve victory, how is the AI to win? In fact the WWI period is one of the best times to attack, you can take cities easilty with artillery+infantry, and the AI is HELPLESS. what chance does a 6a unit have against a fortified 10d unit in a city? The AI simply must learn to use artillery, if civ3 is to have any replay value.

*MP - nowadays, mp is almost a necessity when expecting a game to have any amount of replayability.

[The Rook]

I agree with much of what is said here. I will also add that the diplomacy in the game sucks. It's OK for the anceint era. but as we progress towards the modern era, politics should become more and more important. The modern era in Civ3 seems to be all about conquest. That just isn't like the world we really live in. I don't mind war, but it seems wars are fought over the stoopidest reasons in Civ3.

AI "Gimme a map of the world and 15 gold!"

You "No"

AI "You have insulted me. Prepare for war!"


I'm really looking forward to a Civ type game that has a complex diplomatic engine. Maybe I am asking for too much, but I really thought that THIS was what Civ3 would have to offer over Civ2.

[jackshot]

Originally posted by The Rook
I'm really looking forward to a Civ type game that has a complex diplomatic engine.

Man, isn't that the truth.

[Capt Dizle]

SMAC was better. At least there were understandable reasons for AI behavior. If you ran an SE choice the AI is adverse to, then you have bad relations.

If you asked the AI to team up with you against another, they would want a large payment. In Civ3, a few hundred coin and you can bribe the whole world into war.

Silly. Lame.

[PerpetualNewbie]

I never played any of the earlier Civs. Sounds like they must have been quite enjoyable, if not much of a challenge. (Per Aeson. )

Anyway, I find this game fine, but there are a few things in the design that I would not have done this way.

1. Corruption. (I just don't like someone poking me in the eye with a sharp stick without being able to do a darned thing about it. It reminds me too much of April 15.)

2. Great Leaders. Military conquest becomes a viable builder strategy, since you can build wonders merely by doing a lot of fighting. I would prefer to have great leaders be able to only make armies, or be able to sell them for a reasonable number of shields, rather than completely building the thing. Seriously, I find that a good strategy is to start storing up Shields, then if I snag a leader, can switch to Sun Tzus and hurry the Sistine, otherwise, just switch to Sistine and start storing up for Leo's or Cop's.

3. Better governor/automated workers. To be able to specify a pop level, and have the automated workers build only enough irrigation to reach that. And that automated workers would not develop tiles the governor can't use, if there is anything better to do.

4. I don't mind tech whoring per se, but it does eliminate any reason to research techs, drastically devaluing one of what should have been the better guns-or-butter features.

5. Railroad gives infinite move. I think I would have just doubled or trebled movement allowance, i.e., a road square counts as 1/3 movement point, a railroad would count as 1/6 or 1/9. As it is, you can bounce defenders and attackers pretty much anywhere, reducing logistics decisions to none.

6. More diplomatic options, like pressuring or bribing Bismark to make peace with Liz.

7. War weariness. Like corruption, but there is a way to solve it -- declare peace and tick off your allies. Wonderful solution, that. Generally gets all your trading terminated... Oh, or you could change gov'ts and lose several turns of production. Sometimes I think Shaka declares war just to negotiate a peace treaty. Sounds very "The Mouse that Roared"-ish.

[Kevin Ar18]

I'll add a few
1. Lack of discovery
Discovery is no fun anymore - you can just trade maps in a flash and know how the world looks. I used to enjoy exploring other AI's territory and the whole world for that matter, but in Civ3 you can't do that. Instead you can communcate with anyone you can get communcations to even though you have not met them, then you can just trade maps.
2. Lack of realism - the weapons in the game do not pack the kind of punch that you would expect - aka nukes, modern units over ancient ones, and cruise missles
3. Cartoon feel - cartoon people and leaders, simple 3D rendered models of wonders instead of nice drawings or pictures, pretty dialogues instead of dialogues full of enough useful iformation
4. Bordom of any spy operations - it's too expensive and really doesn't have the challenging element of trying to defend against it like you had to defend against diplomats
5. AI's that you can't make friends with
6. Corruption that won't let you expand
7. An AI that builds everywhere without letting you enjoy the game at a reasonable pace (this is for the people that like to build stuff not get a high score or win a game by some set rules)
8. Inability to customize and build your Civ in detail - such as using terraforming and farmland
9. Culture - it continues to expand to infinity; it forces you to raze cities which I dislike; it should not affect industrial and modern era (instead there should be borders discussed through diplomacy)
10. Civs maintain zone of control over the sea in ancient era (this if fine in modern times, but not ancient times) - this goes along with inhibiting exploration somewhat.
11. Turns that take too long for the AI to take it's turn (anything more than 20 seconds is getting too much)
12. Slow design - the whole design of Civ3 is slower - aka the menus and other things
13. No accurate world map
14. Inclusion of Civs that you would not expect and omission of some rather more prominent Civs (akin to Civ2)
15. Use of pollution but don't offer a way to completely eliminate it.
16. Lack of informatin regarding trade operations (can't keep track of when what will expire).
17. Lack of intelligence info on a Civ akin to Civ2 to help you make decisions - but then again since you can't really make friends with the AI, diplomacy is kind of boring in that regards at least.
18. Changing of terrain due to ICBM or so called "global warming" with no way to fix it - aka no terraforming.
19. Anti-intuitive interface in that things can't be found by just using the game - for example hidden menus and options in the game that have no link or button to get to them but are activated by some key or keystroke.

well, I'm starting to get nitpicky now. It's not that they are things I may dislike, it's just suggestions like #19 are not really the reasons I've gotten bord of the game. If there were not some of the major flaws, I would probably overlook a lot of unimportant little bugs.

[Barchan]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
If you asked the AI to team up with you against another, they would want a large payment. In Civ3, a few hundred coin and you can bribe the whole world into war.

Few hundred coin? They're rippin' you off, man! Sometimes the AI will agree to a mutual defense pact for a single tech or luxury. This, mind you, while you're actively at war with its stronger neighbor. As soon as one of your units gets attacked, they declare war pursuant to the MDP and promptly get their a$$ kicked up into a low geosynchronous orbit. All for a few measly furs.

Bah!