Unbelievable Culture flipping

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Phil_de_geezer
Another problem with culture is that it tends to benefit larger civs. A large civ with temples in all its cities would be likely to have a better culture rating than a small civ with cathedrals, libraries and universities. I think this is a bit odd as i initially thought culture was intended to help small civs. In this respect i believe culture flipping should be more localised.

Culture is there to help small civs! But, there's a difference between small, and small. In general, the people with the most change of building up culture are those who build, instead of battle. But, no battle means no huge territory. So either you have lots of cities with only few cultural buildings, or few, culturally blooming, cities.
If from the other hand you had a large territory, and somebody took away part of it, you're both small and without culture

Of course there is a balance here, too few cities cannot ever make so many buildings that they'll overcome large number of cities with only temples in them. And that is so rewarding: striking the right balance, to have huge culture. After Fitz posted about 12x cultural leads on Monarch, I started some experiments, being very single minded to culture, and flipping. It is possible to have 10x Totalculture on Emperor than the third civ (5x the second, at best. But when is the second civ the one next to you?). And some AI civs are real suckers, it's quite normal to have 20x the culture of the Zulu, even if they have more cities. With 10 times the culture, one defender will silence 10 citizens in a freshly caught, WLTKD city. If that's not enough for you, I don't know what is.

DeepO

[Coracle]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Tens of thousands of gamers, not units. And that is my opinion.

I am not calling you names Solver, why are you calling me names?

Same reason they call all critics of Civ 3 names - they cannot refute the logic of our arguments, so they get personal. It's rather sad and juvenile.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Coracle
they cannot refute the logic of our arguments

Arguments? That would mean counterarguments, and some reaction when somebody proofs (some of) your arguments to be non-existant, or contradictory.

DeepO

[Coracle]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I am supremely confident Firaxis will have this awful problem fixed for PTW. The hue and outcry heard regarding the flippin flip so far would be magnified by a factor of 10 if allowed to go multiplayer.

No one in their right mind would invest time in a MP game only to see it decided not by player skill but by the arcane and inane vagarities of some barely comprehensible, illogical mathematical goobledeegook.

Military units do not go poof.

Neither do populations of MILLIONS as a result of "razing".

Man, you raze a city and don't even leave a pollution tile?? Where'd all the corpses go?? What happened to the buildings and sewers and roads, etc?

[DeepO]

So now Firaxis is responsible because you made the 'moral' decision to kill off millions, as you can't work with the game-mechanics? Nature's rules are what they are, you work around them irl. So why don't you do the best you can with Civ-rules?

DeepO

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Good to see Coracle back, and in fine form too. Tubes, you make me laugh, isn't that about the 27th absolute last time you responded to Coracle?

I believe that the guys at Firaxis were sitting around trying to come up with something new to put in Civ3 and Briggs came up with the culture idea. And probably Sid said, thats the dumbest idea I ever heard.

Then they decided to put it in, just to see if they could sell such an idiotic concept to the public.

Thats my theory anyway.

That was before he was banned for a week....I missed him!

Besides, I'm only on here at work, I need something to do while I'm here.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
jt, let's at least get straight facts before we say things like what you just said. It bothers me that you are "sure" about a figure you have no informaiton about, have never attempted to find, and have no means of knowing. The next time you are "sure," see that you really are...

First of all when I said "put on the shelf", I did not mean return the game. I meant stop playing.

Surely you will admit that if a game sells 500,000 units that tens of thousands of those games will stop being played at some point.

Most of the time the point at which people stop playing is when something occurs that spoils the game.

The culture in Civ3 is counterintuitive and not particularly well documented. It is certainly not readily apparent to one when they first play that a city is going to flip. You have to experience it, scratch your head, and figure out what the heck happened.

Firaxis intentionally dumbed the game down (at least from SMAC's level of complexity) yet culture is a very difficult concept to get.

I have no doubt that tens of thousands of people have quit playing shortly after having lost a large stack of troops. I would bet my life on it. You can poo pah and nay say all you like.

First the troops go poof and then the game CD goes poof.

Civ3 may prove to have legs but they look shaky to me.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Surely you will admit that if a game sells 500,000 units that tens of thousands of those games will stop being played at some point.

OK, let's analyze your sentence:

I am sure that tens of thousands of gamers have put Civ3 back on the shelf after losing multiple military units to the idiotic poof.

Alright. This is technically probable, because what you say here is that people put the game on the shelf after having a city flip... but not necessarily because of the culture flip. And yet...

Most of the time the point at which people stop playing is when something occurs that spoils the game.

... this sentence talks about people quitting the game because of CF (I assume that is what you mean by the thing that spoils the game).

Therefore, I see clearly now that you are using reasonable assumptions erroneously to pursue false conclusions.

The culture in Civ3 is counterintuitive and not particularly well documented. It is certainly not readily apparent to one when they first play that a city is going to flip. You have to experience it, scratch your head, and figure out what the heck happened.

Or, you can read it in the manual. There are quite a few things that you can't understand when you first play a game... any game. Not to mention the fact that this has nothing to do with my post.

Firaxis intentionally dumbed the game down (at least from SMAC's level of complexity) yet culture is a very difficult concept to get.

I've never played SMAC, so I can't comment on the relationship of complexity. I am, however, very surprised that you would consider culture difficult to get, especially because it seems so simple to me. It sounds like you want the game dumbed down.

I have no doubt that tens of thousands of people have quit playing shortly after having lost a large stack of troops. I would bet my life on it. You can poo pah and nay say all you like.

I don't doubt it either, but that has nothing to do with culture flipping. The fact that people happened to have a city flip on them, and then at a later date stop playing the game, is meaningless and most certainly can't explain your argument that many people dislike CF.

[YuMMz]

It is amazing how far off topic this thread is from what it was originally intended for. The original purpose was to explain how this city could possibly flip and a couple people have rationally explained it and how I can figure out how to prevent it in the future. Now with this knowledge I can prevent culture flipping. While I will never whole-heartedly agree with the way it is currently implemented I can play with it (I still would not mind the option of turning it off).

[Theseus]

Off-topic: jt, I'm sold. I agree with your conception of a problem with the game, and I think you're pretty logical and concise about it. OTOH, it's a game, with a specific set of mechanics, and a tradition of making the player "figure stuff out." I'm OK with that... if you're not, well, hmmm, either play another game, or, better yet, tell me cool answers you come up with.

On-topic: I like the implementation of CF... a LOT. Forget reality, it's a game thing. I don;t use expansionist CF much, as it's a little too slow for me, but worrying about losing an acquired city? Cool.

Do I invest the city and bet on the effect of the garrison? Do I bet on my own culture? Do I purposely let the city fall back, and re-take it, decreasing pop in the meantime?

I very much like that a big part of the algorithm is distance to capitol... the decision set SHOULD be that much harder at the heart of my enemy's empire.

Having read a lot of discussion on this, I have maybe a slightly different answer...

Control the high ground.

[Capt Dizle]

Cyclo, you are just arguing to be arguing. Debate. Bully for you.

[notyoueither]

jt is much better when he is being civil, and you should not discourage him Solver.

jt is highlighting a thorn in the paw of some or many gamers. Unfortunately, Poly's 20K log ins represent only a small fraction of the total audience for a game like civ.

We are the hard core. We are the ones who will persevere and find a way to still play the game we love. We are the ones who will come here and pour through 1000 threads to find solutions for our problems.

The casual gamer will not persevere in many cases. When they find something that seriously disrupts the game play for them they may well shelve the game. That is a loss for civ.

Recently, a Firaxian suggested to jt that being uncivil was counter productive. It seems that jt listened. I for one am willing to extend him the same courtesy that Firaxians will.

Be civil. Game on!

[The Pioneer]

Originally posted by UberKruX


files section. sn00pz

Sorry if I sound ignorant but can somebody explain to me where to find the file and how to use it. Sorry if this message is out of place in this thread but the graphics look real cool.

Thanx....

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by The Pioneer


Sorry if I sound ignorant but can somebody explain to me where to find the file and how to use it. Sorry if this message is out of place in this thread but the graphics look real cool.

Thanx....

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=46849