Status of Vel's Strat Guide

[MattyBoy]

Like many, I used to learn a lot from Vel's SMAC/X
strat guides and was pleased to hear when it was published. Unlike many, I have barely visited any of the Civ 3 forums.

Does anybody know whether Vel ever managed to publish a Civ3 startegy guide?

I haven't bought or seen Civ3, so I am mostly just interested for Vel's sake, I suppose.

[Solver]

IIRC, Vel has said that he will not be writing a Civ 3 strategy guide.

[Adm.Naismith]

Matty Boy, go to Strategy Forum and search around for some Vel great pieces of strategy (but mind of patch version, some tricks don't work with current 1.21f).
AFAIK Solver is right: no complete Vel Strategy guide for Civ III will ever be available because Vel decided that Civ III is broken by design. He's spending some time designing a MOD to improve the game as far as the new PTW editor will let him.

Please consider to send a Forum Private Mail straight to him; AFAIK none know Vel strategy thinking better than himself

[Alex]

Hm... so Vel is going to make a mod... I thought he had abandoned that idea too (right after the 'mod-with-no-name').

[Adm.Naismith]

Well, I'm not really active on the forum, so I may have miss some news, but he started a thread (see strategy section) and post about it a week ago. AFAIK he (and others) are simply waiting the next patch before building anything (just to avoid to remade everything again on a new .bic or to mess without considering newly added features).

[Arrian]

Yeah, Vel's back on the Strat forum, but I don't think he has any intention of doing a guide.

-Arrian

[Velociryx]

Hey all!

Strat guide....*sigh*

The interest and the desire is certainly still there, but I'm struggling with the notion of being unable to write the kinna strat guide I want to write, given the current constraints.

I fear that there's just not enough material there to make the kind of strat guide I would want to write.

I HAVE been revisiting the idea of it though....going back over the old strat threads....using that as a starting point and gathering some old thoughts to be mixed with the new....see how much material that amounts to.

As a measure of comparison, the final SMAX guide was around 85,000 words. My estimation is that I've currently got about half that amount for Civ. IMO, not nearly enough to make a "good" strat guide.

-=Vel=-

[Solver]

Vel, guide is not the amount of words, it's the amount of good strategies put into it. I believe you like Civ 3, too, right? And I certainly believe you're an excellent player for it (you got to be!).

Also, you should face that Civ 3, even now, without its expansion, is more popular than SMAX ever was. IMHO, Civ 3 has enough material for you to discuss.

[Velociryx]

Oh, I know it's not all about word count, but the word count speaks directly to the depth of the game.

What I mean by that is that you can describe the basic moves to be found in chess in...something like a thousand words, but if you do that, then you still don't have the essence of chess.

To capture that essence....to give the reader a feel for all the nuiances and subtleties of chess would (and in fact, has) taken literally volumes of books on the subject.

I'm still wrestling with Civ. I like the game....I want to LOVE the game. Perhaps my re-visitation of the old strat threads, combined with some of my later notes and tangential thoughts that have occured thanks to some excellent threads recently on the strat forums will leave me with something I would regard as "enough" or close to it....

-=Vel=-

[jshelr]

Having only recently started to play, and having missed civs i and ii, I've followed the strategy forum with interest and the techniques learned made me competitive on emperor. However, I think that what's been lacking is micro management techniques, where, IMO, lots of new players have substituted shift-A for any knowledge of what's going on and have used governors to completely avoid learning about cities. (Guilt feelings showing.) I wonder if Vel could flesh out the guide by starting from basics many of you know well, but which remain a mystery to some of us new people and certainly can't be learned by RTFM. I'd pay up to $4, Canadian, for a good guide.

[Velociryx]

Can do, man...will add it to da list....

-=Vel=-

[Solver]

Vel, what's missing for you to love the game? I know you're a sucker for sci-fi, but that's something Civ 3 will never have (and never should).

[Lord Merciless]

I think there are several reasons why Vel can't find enough strategies to make a guide:
1. Civ 3 introduced several new, unproven concepts such as Culture, resource model, abstract
diplomacy, and airpower. Almost all of the new concepts were not well balanced. Only through
extensive playings can the right balance be found.

2. Civ 3 offers significantly fewer complexities than SMAC, whether it's about units, terrain improvements, base improvements, diplomacies, or the planet itself.

3. Finally, Civ3 still lacks the MP feature, something Vel devoted a great deal of his attention to in SMAC.

I think when the Civ3-PTW is released, the game will be better balanced enough and have sufficient features to make a Strategy Guide worthwhile.

[Velociryx]

Total agreement with you...Civ is Civ, and Sci Fi is Sci Fi....two different animals.

As to what's missing for me...what makes the game more of a frustration to play than a joy, it'd be things like this:

1) Linear approach. I'm reminded of the movie, "The Golden Child" :: old man's voice echoing:: "Stay on the path!" And that's true. Play the game the way the designers say so, and you excel. Deviate from the methodology they lay out before you, and you screw yourself. That's linear gameplay. Their way or no way. For a game that's supposed to model (perhaps not historically accurately model, but that's another story) the history of human civilization, and given the open- ended nature of the subject matter, that seems a hellish harness to saddle players with.

2) There are things about the game that simply aren't FUN. Things about the game that are there to take up my effort, attention, and time, but do not add so much as a single ounce of fun to the game. I'm talking about things like:
a) The need to constantly babysit my workers. The AI just can't get the job done correctly, which means I gotta do it myself. That means moving tens, and eventually scores of workers all around the terrain optomizing. This speaks to both having the AI do silly bits of terraforming if automated, and also blithely wandering right into harm's way if an enemy army approaches.
b) There is no THOUGHT required when making terraforming choices. Mine the hills, mine the bonus grassland, irrigate when you need to, railroad and road everything. End.
c) even when you finish terraforming, you can't afford to disband your workers....Pollution. Sadly, although pollution is a fact of life here in the real world, the method of modelling pollution in the game adds exactly zero to the fun factor. It's busy work. Sure, the solution is to simply automate it away, but at that point, why include it at all?
d) Rails make the game completely un-fun. Worse, they really muck up the landscape, but...you gotta have them, and you gotta have them everywhere to stay competitive and keep pace.

3) Lack of deep, meaningful strategic choice - This relates back to the first item, but is its own unique category. The in game choices I am presented with are....not meaningless, but very nearly so.

Examples:
Research or Don't Research? Given the AI's cheat bonuses (monarch and above), not researching is sooooo much better than researching that it's not even a real choice.

What tech do I want to research? Meaningless choice, and that's a pity, cos it *could be* one of the driving, most compelling aspects of the game. At Monarch and above, the combination of AI research bonuses and tech whoring means that you go up the tech tree so fast that specific techs and the order you research them in don't really matter. Add to that fact that the already somewhat light tech tree is broken out into four distinct "tech shrubs," and the problem is magnified, reducing technological innovation (one of THE driving forces of civilization in our history) to the role of prankster and court jester in the context of the game.

Resource and culture implementation: Two outstanding ideas with weak implementation. Both could be greatly strengthened and improved with even marginally better implementation.

4) An unrealistic combat model. Grossly unrealistic. The proper fix to the "well what if my civ doesn't have resource X" problem would have been to make no-resource alternative units available in all eras. The quick, "cover it up" fix was to hamstring the combat system into what we have now. Post 1.21, things are a bit better, as you can alter the model with bonus hp's, but prior to that, combat was....spooky and frustrating. Of course, the argument can be made (and in fact, I've made it myself) that Civ3 is not a wargame....it's not....wasn't meant to be....but since warring IS a part of civilization, and since players spend a good bit of their time warring, it woulda been nice...it woulda been awesome if the combat model had been.....engaging. Dynamic. Maybe more on this side of realism than not.

Still, I agree with something JT said in one of the chats. Even at its worst, Civ is still good gaming....no denying that.

But with a few nips, tucks, and tweaks, it coulda been GREAT, fantabulous, mind alteringly awesome gaming.

-=Vel=-

[Alex]

Vel, what about a new mod? I mean, now we have this improved editor and all (you did read the readme, didn't you?), so I think that a "Velociryx's Official Civ Mod" would be awesome to play with...