Still Stinks Out Loud

[Brutus66]

Zacharial, I really enjoy your posts.

Britain had a very strong anti-war movement.

Disagree. That's like saying they had a strong facism movement. It existed, but I don't consider it to be strong.

And as far as Viet Nam goes, I think Nixon would have been the first one to tell you that the enemy (as he saw it) was right here in the US- the protesters and the news media.
To a point I have to agree with him- the news media did everything it could to make that war worse than it was by bringing the battlefield into peoples living rooms. It certainly hurt the morale in this country and by so doing aided the cause of the enemy. Uncle Ho loved the idea that the American people were seeing it all on the 6:00 news.

Anyway...
You said the unit composition issue was easy- it's simply abstract.
That's exactly the psychology on this board that drives me bonkers- over the months I have seen all kinds of faulty gameplay mechanics rationalized and excused. A privateer sink a sub? Well, maybe he was caught on the surface and rammed!! Bollocks.
The folks on this board obviously really enjoy the game, and good for them. Try to point out the fact that it has some shortcomings is like trying to tell them the emperor has no clothes.
As an example, I will point to how all the other civs were "furious" with me for no apparent reason. My thanks to whoever pointed out that this meant that the AI players had no respect for my civ and wanted to attack it.
My point is: How is the casual player supposed to know this? We don't all sit in front of the internet every night posting hundreds of messages until we are at the "deity" level on a forum. Only you guys are going to know this kind of thing. The casual player is going to be confused wondering "what am I doing to make these other leaders so angry at me?" It's just not very well conveyed.

You are able to upgrade your DEFENDERS all the time, but the same is not true with ATTACKERS. The upgrade chain breaks are there to force you to use some kind of strategy, instead of just mindlessly pumping out attackers

Thanks for the input on that, vondrack. It makes sense, but personally I still think it's a waste. Maybe you shouldn't be able to upgrade them until later on. I hate to have a unit perform real well, become elite, etc., just to have them worthless in the next age.
Something about your argument is flawed though...spearmen upgrade eventually to infantry. Although infantry are not as ideal for attacking as tanks are, do you use them only for defense? There is always that period of time just before you reseach tanks that infantry come in handy. I know you are going to say you prefer cavalry, but I prefer a force of combined arms on the attack.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Brutus66


And as far as Viet Nam goes, I think Nixon would have been the first one to tell you that the enemy (as he saw it) was right here in the US- the protesters and the news media.

Such a source. A dead liar that wasn't impeached because he resigned the day before the Impeachment would have begun.

I take it you are not aware that Tricky Dicky had an Enemies List. And that he got won his seat in Congress by intentionaly with full knowledge LYING about his opponent. Not just a tiny little thing either. He called her a communist in a time of great paranoia. He later addmitted that the claim was a lie.

The protestors and the media were not the enemy. LBJ maybe but not American Citizens exercising their constitutional rights. LBJ made the war impossible to execute properly with his constant meddling. Right down to the size of the bombs that could be dropped if he actually allowed the bombs to be dropped on a specific bridge. Any specific bridge.

The key person in the media was Walter Cronkite and no rational person would ever call him an ememy of the US. He was litterly the most trusted man in America and he earned that rep. Tricky Dicky earned his nickname. Thoroughly.

Keep in mind that by the time Nixon was in office the War was very much in trouble allready due to LBJ. There was really little Nixon could do to win it militarily at least without invading North Vietnam and he had allready engaged in enough impeachable acts with his ilegal secret war in Cambodia. He did a lot of other things right though and was able to get the North Vietnamese to stop stalling and start negotiating. Who knows what would have happened if Nguen Van Thieu hadn't been so incredibly corrupt and if he hadn't rigged the last allegedly free election in South Viet Nam which he actually lost by the REAL votes. He destroyed that countries last chances by sucking the money out of it and using corrupt and incompetent Generals.

By the time he absconded with the remaining money in the treasury and flew to France even Nguen Cao Key couldn't save the place.

That's exactly the psychology on this board that drives me bonkers- over the months I have seen all kinds of faulty gameplay mechanics rationalized and excused. A privateer sink a sub? Well, maybe he was caught on the surface and rammed!! Bollocks.

'Arghh We caught the Poxy French on the surface and sent them to the botoom' said Bollocky Bill the Sailor.

Not rammed. Boarded.

You need more imagination to deal with abstracted games. Its NOT a wargame and no Civ game ever has been.

The folks on this board obviously really enjoy the game, and good for them. Try to point out the fact that it has some shortcomings is like trying to tell them the emperor has no clothes.

Well if you say it while standing naked yourself you will tend to get that sort of reply. Tripling the compexity of the game is not really a good idea just to placate a few people that really want to play a wargame.

As an example, I will point to how all the other civs were "furious" with me for no apparent reason. My thanks to whoever pointed out that this meant that the AI players had no respect for my civ and wanted to attack it.
My point is: How is the casual player supposed to know this?

By noticing what makes them furious and what they do when they are. Its just the their attitude in general.

We don't all sit in front of the internet every night posting hundreds of messages until we are at the "deity" level on a forum. Only you guys are going to know this kind of thing. The casual player is going to be confused wondering "what am I doing to make these other leaders so angry at me?" It's just not very well conveyed.

Its part of the game and the learning process. If Firaxis had gone into all the detail that a some are asking for the game would take up a DVD not a CD taken two more years to finish assuming they didn't bother upgradeding the graphics as happens in nearly every game that takes that long to complete, AND the manual would be the size of the New York phone book.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Brutus66
You said the unit composition issue was easy- it's simply abstract.
That's exactly the psychology on this board that drives me bonkers- over the months I have seen all kinds of faulty gameplay mechanics rationalized and excused. A privateer sink a sub? Well, maybe he was caught on the surface and rammed!! Bollocks.
The folks on this board obviously really enjoy the game, and good for them. Try to point out the fact that it has some shortcomings is like trying to tell them the emperor has no clothes.

You are missing the point all the time. It has been said hundred times that the units are defined by their A/D/M values (and special abilites). How we call them is completely unimportant, from the combat system point of view. We may call the 1/2/1 unit a "Basic Weak Defender" and the 16/8/2 unit an "Advanced Mighty Attacker". You would probably have no problem with Basic Weak Defenders defeating Advanced Mighty Attackers once in a blue moon. But Jesus... would it be fun? Isn't it better to have Spearmen running around and Tanks rolling through the enemy territory... and from time to time experience a funny thing happen, seeing these pitiful spearmen actually win over the tanks? IS IT NOT MORE FUN, I ASK? Are you really unable to use your imagination and dream of heroic deeds of brave warriors fighting war machines they were never supposed to meet?

There is no "faulty mechanics" in there (concerning the combat system), it works EXACTLY AS DESIGNED. People that enjoy the game grasped the concept. Period. You haven't. Yet.

Originally posted by Brutus66
My point is: How is the casual player supposed to know this? We don't all sit in front of the internet every night posting hundreds of messages until we are at the "deity" level on a forum. Only you guys are going to know this kind of thing. The casual player is going to be confused wondering "what am I doing to make these other leaders so angry at me?" It's just not very well conveyed.

Now, this might have been a legitimate complaint. But you worded it VERY differently. Next time, you may wish to just ask the question... "what am I doing to make these other leaders so angry at me?" instead of talking about how much Civ3 stinks.

Originally posted by Brutus66
Something about your argument is flawed though...spearmen upgrade eventually to infantry. Although infantry are not as ideal for attacking as tanks are, do you use them only for defense? There is always that period of time just before you reseach tanks that infantry come in handy. I know you are going to say you prefer cavalry, but I prefer a force of combined arms on the attack.

I can't see any flaw in my argument. I use infantry for attack just about as often as I use spearmen for attack. That is, seldom. We are not speaking about possible uses, we are speaking about typical uses. Spearmen and infantry are primarily defenders. Even though they may be used for attack, too, of course.

[Brutus66]

IS IT NOT MORE FUN, I ASK?

It would be if I just had a handle on the size of the units I was commanding.
From the A/D/M values, I can see how powerful one unit is in relation to another, but I don't have any feeling for what it represents.
I have no problem with imagination- there's just something that bugs me when I have a bunch of tank units on the board and I really don't know if they are armored divisions or platoons. Am I witnessing something on the scale of Eisenhower's combined armies, or just a few battalions of the Third Army? It would just help me visualize.
I am a fan of games like Combat Mission and Steel Panthers. I know what each unit represents exactly. The armor thicknesses of every facing of each vehicle have been precisely modelled in CM. There's elements of chance certainly involved- occasionally a Sherman tank defeats a King Tiger with a lucky shot; but I never have to shake my head and say "that was completely impossible!!!". In the unpatched version of Civ3, I witnessed sailing ships defeat nuclear subs on two occasions. That just isn't going to happen in the real world, and it's unacceptable to me.

I still maintain that this game was shipped in a far-from-finished state. Shipping games before they are complete is becoming more and more of the norm in the industry and is an act directly hostile to customers.
I also won't back off that Infrogrames (and Firaxis by association) acted completely unscrupulously with selling the "limited edition".
And I won't recant that some members of this forum are indeed sycophants to the developers, and you know who you are. If you deny it, you're lying to me or to yourselves- I've seen the chat transcripts with some of you falling all over the likes of Soren Johnson. And everytime a Firaxean deigns to post on the board, it's treated with the reverence of a message direct from Olympus.
Before you accuse me of being a troll, I will tell you that the only reason I am passionate about my complaints is because I am a fan of the genre and deep down I think some of these issues are that important. Now that I have had my say, I won't bother you any more with disagreeable posts (how many I wonder will copy and paste that quote into a reply post and say Hallelujah)- at least until the next patch comes out. Until then, I'll continue to lurk and gain some strategies from time to time.
In the meantime, you can probably find me at Star Trek conventions trying to convince folks dressed up like Spock that Star Fleet isn't real, or on new age forums arguing that magnet therapy simply doesn't work. I'm sure they'll be pushovers compared to the likes of vondrack

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Brutus66
Am I witnessing something on the scale of Eisenhower's combined armies, or just a few battalions of the Third Army?

Whatever you want it to be, as long as you remember it's just a game.

In the unpatched version of Civ3, I witnessed sailing ships defeat nuclear subs on two occasions. That just isn't going to happen in the real world, and it's unacceptable to me.

Sometimes nuclear submarines just explode and sink for no strategic purpose whatsoever (Kursk). Amazing how a little thing like getting the torpedo launch sequence out of order can have such dramatic and potentially ruinous consequences.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Brutus66

It would be if I just had a handle on the size of the units I was commanding.
From the A/D/M values, I can see how powerful one unit is in relation to another, but I don't have any feeling for what it represents.
I have no problem with imagination- there's just something that bugs me when I have a bunch of tank units on the board and I really don't know if they are armored divisions or platoons. Am I witnessing something on the scale of Eisenhower's combined armies, or just a few battalions of the Third Army? It would just help me visualize.
I am a fan of games like Combat Mission and Steel Panthers. I know what each unit represents exactly. The armor thicknesses of every facing of each vehicle have been precisely modelled in CM. There's elements of chance certainly involved- occasionally a Sherman tank defeats a King Tiger with a lucky shot; but I never have to shake my head and say "that was completely impossible!!!". In the unpatched version of Civ3, I witnessed sailing ships defeat nuclear subs on two occasions. That just isn't going to happen in the real world, and it's unacceptable to me.

I still maintain that this game was shipped in a far-from-finished state. Shipping games before they are complete is becoming more and more of the norm in the industry and is an act directly hostile to customers.
I also won't back off that Infrogrames (and Firaxis by association) acted completely unscrupulously with selling the "limited edition".
And I won't recant that some members of this forum are indeed sycophants to the developers, and you know who you are. If you deny it, you're lying to me or to yourselves- I've seen the chat transcripts with some of you falling all over the likes of Soren Johnson. And everytime a Firaxean deigns to post on the board, it's treated with the reverence of a message direct from Olympus.
Before you accuse me of being a troll, I will tell you that the only reason I am passionate about my complaints is because I am a fan of the genre and deep down I think some of these issues are that important. Now that I have had my say, I won't bother you any more with disagreeable posts (how many I wonder will copy and paste that quote into a reply post and say Hallelujah)- at least until the next patch comes out. Until then, I'll continue to lurk and gain some strategies from time to time.
In the meantime, you can probably find me at Star Trek conventions trying to convince folks dressed up like Spock that Star Fleet isn't real, or on new age forums arguing that magnet therapy simply doesn't work. I'm sure they'll be pushovers compared to the likes of vondrack

As others have said, what you're asking for is more of a wargame than a Civ game. And I agree with you. I would rather have things more defined, complex and articulated. But they're not. Excuse my lack of a euphanism, but Civ 3 is an incredibly dumbed down game for appeal to a broader audience. The reason I like it as much as I do is because of the scope. How many wargames can you play where you command an entire nation's army? And you have a reason to fight? In Steel Panthers, you use your brigade, or sometimes in extreme cases, your battalion (never division unless it's a scenario), then use it to take an objective ... because that's how you win. In Civ you go to war and take cities to expand, for a resource, or to curb the power of your neighbors. You have strategic goals and missions, rather than just tactical battles to be fought. If the tactical accuracy of a wargame and the strategic scope and purpose of a civ game were merged into one, then I'd never leave my screen.

Though I don't particularly like some things in the Civ 3 design, I know what the team has had to go through, and how much work they've put in, and how much extra effort to help us out of their own time they've submitted to respect and admire them for that. Infogrames is the devil, but we all know that. I won't get into that, just blame anything non-gameplay based on Infogrames, simple as that.

[vmxa1]

Can we leave the polictics out things. No matter what side one is on, some one is on the other. I get enough of it on the news, thank you.

As I read the thread, I see many people post here in an attempt to answer your question and maybe defend the game, but not attack you. Yes we do get some of that flame on, just ignore it. Most are here to get some knowledge or share some in rare cases.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Brutus66
It would be if I just had a handle on the size of the units I was commanding.
From the A/D/M values, I can see how powerful one unit is in relation to another, but I don't have any feeling for what it represents.
I have no problem with imagination- there's just something that bugs me when I have a bunch of tank units on the board and I really don't know if they are armored divisions or platoons. Am I witnessing something on the scale of Eisenhower's combined armies, or just a few battalions of the Third Army? It would just help me visualize.

Well, thinking about this... you are of course right, there is no precise definition of any unit in Civ3. However, it only makes things easier for me. If I take a city with the Tank unit, I imagine it was a Tank Division or whatever... but when a Tank loses to a Spearman (though I must admit I haven't experienced this legendary event yet - but I have seen my Battleship being sunk by a Galley, which counts, I guess... ), I imagine that it was just one Tank luckily defeated by a bunch of funny, yet incredibly brave characters...

Originally posted by Brutus66
I am a fan of games like Combat Mission and Steel Panthers. I know what each unit represents exactly. The armor thicknesses of every facing of each vehicle have been precisely modelled in CM. There's elements of chance certainly involved- occasionally a Sherman tank defeats a King Tiger with a lucky shot; but I never have to shake my head and say "that was completely impossible!!!". In the unpatched version of Civ3, I witnessed sailing ships defeat nuclear subs on two occasions. That just isn't going to happen in the real world, and it's unacceptable to me.

As others correctly pointed out, these are very different types of games, focused entirely on the warfare. Civ series never was designed that way. That's perhaps what makes you dislike the combat system so much. CM/SP do their best to resemble reality, while Civ(any number) does things in a much less-constrained way - it has to, as it depicts time period thousand times longer than the games you mention. It has to simplify things in order to make the game playable (this is not to say I would be unable to think up hundreds of improvements to Civ3 that would add more depth/fun to the game... I just say that what we have now is great in terms of complexity, playability, and fun... and certainly doesn't stink out loud...).

Originally posted by Brutus66
I still maintain that this game was shipped in a far-from-finished state. Shipping games before they are complete is becoming more and more of the norm in the industry and is an act directly hostile to customers.
I also won't back off that Infrogrames (and Firaxis by association) acted completely unscrupulously with selling the "limited edition".

I would probably never argue with you on this one, unles in a really arguing mood... . Even though I am quite happy with my tinbox (mostly because it is the first game tinbox I have ever seen - we do not have that many here in this banana republic), the original game was definitely not completely finished. At least compared to what we have now.

Originally posted by Brutus66
In the meantime, you can probably find me at Star Trek conventions trying to convince folks dressed up like Spock that Star Fleet isn't real, or on new age forums arguing that magnet therapy simply doesn't work. I'm sure they'll be pushovers compared to the likes of vondrack

Good luck!

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by vondrack
(mostly because it is the first game tinbox I have ever seen - we do not have that many here in this banana republic)

You have bananas in the Czech Republic? You must be referring to some world map provided by Firaxis.

How much longer must we put up with this lack of realism?!?! I want tanks that blow things up. I want body counts. I want a land of milk and honey. I want Pyramids that actually work.

(And vondrack, you really should stop relying on Civ3 for your geography reference. )

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Zachriel
You have bananas in the Czech Republic? You must be referring to some world map provided by Firaxis.

(And vondrack, you really should stop relying on Civ3 for your geography reference. )

Yes, we do have bananas here... at least you can buy them any time, which was not actually the case before 1989...

What I was referring to speaking of the banana republic was: 1) our idiotic laws, which I have to cope with more and more frequently... they just make everything so damn difficult and stupid... you just feel the bribery and sheer idiocy when you read them and struggle to obbey them, 2) the fact that the rest of the world considers us a banana republic for the most of the time. There are online shops that automatically reject orders coming from this part of the world, for example (based on the assumption that it is not safe to do business with us). As I do a lot of business over internet, it is something that takes a lot of time/effort to overcome.

BTW, that was the problem with my tinbox... I wanted to have one because of the tech chart (ok, it wasn't a good reason, I know... ). Not a single internet shop was willing to ship it to here, so I ended up getting a copy through eBay. Could have been a licensing issue though... LE was not meant for Europe, I think.

Anyway, I know you were kidding...

Oops... have I threadjacked this thread, too?

[Barchan]

Originally posted by Brutus66
Disagree. That's like saying they had a strong facism movement. It existed, but I don't consider it to be strong.

Sorry, but I have to jump in here. The anti-war movement was very strong in the UK, particularly early in the war. Remember, the UK left "the flower of British manhood" in the fields of France. The horrors of Verdun and the Somme (300,000 casualties for a few weeks of fighting) were still fresh in the mind of the British, and they were initially extremely reluctant to go to war. They cheered Chamberlain when he declared he had secured "peace in our time." Of course, once war broke out and the Germans threatened to cross the channel, people got a good bit more behind the war effort, and being bombed created a greater resolve to fight and win than anyone thought possible. But in the beginning, there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm for war.

And sure, in retrospect, there was very little "war weariness" in WWII in the US. Still, I'd make two points:

1) If not for the atomic bomb, there might have been a change in US sentiment if the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands had gone badly. Overall, the war was very carefully planned to specifically minimize US casualties because the leaders knew that heavy losses could turn off the population's support for the war. After all, the US didn't really want into the war in the first place; if not for Japan's attack and Hitler's declaration of war, the US might have stayed out until it was too late. Anyway, as a general rule, the US tended to expend a lot more time and ammunition bombing and shelling defenders and insisted on much better numerical odds (3:1 or better) before attacking enemy positions than did, say, the Soviets. This was not because the US valued its troops any more than the Russians did, but because popular support could not be counted on if it looked like things were going badly.

2) CivIII is a huge game and covers a much wider range of conflict than just WWII, which (IMHO) should *not* be the benchmark popular attitudes to war. I'd have to research it, but I'd be willing to wager that governments have collapsed more than once due to the waging of a long, ruinous and unpopular war (in fact, I think the Czar was removed from power in no small part due to Russia's performance in WWI). It's not just hippies in the street demanding peace, after all. It's farmers sick of handing over all their crops to the government to feed the troops, workers laboring long hours for low wages to support the war effort, mothers distraught at sending all their sons off to die in distant fields, and just ordinary citizens fed up with "meatless Tuesdays", endless rationing and no luxury goods. Ask the former Soviet Politburo exactly how "war weariness" over the cold war put them all out of jobs.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by vondrack
Yes, we do have bananas here... Oops... have I threadjacked this thread, too?

Bananas are never off-topic. WHERE ARE THE BANANAS? We had bananas in Civ2. Why not Civ3? Everybody knows they are an important source of potassium (an essential strategic resource) and a type of brain food. They should give you +1 science for any city with bananas.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Barchan
The horrors of Verdun and the Somme (300,000 casualties for a few weeks of fighting) were still fresh in the mind of the British, and they were initially extremely reluctant to go to war.

Good example showing how war weariness still existed nearly a generation later. The French had the same weariness, which is one reason they built the Maginot Line -- to avoid war. Instead, in their complacency, they created an opportunity for invasion.

(Of course, as you mentioned, it is just a game, so the exact details are abstracted.)

[Antonin]

Yeeee haw! I haven't been here in while, but it looks like nothing has changed.

It's a computer game, not a history lesson.

If you don't like it, don't play it.

Instead of fretting endlessly about a game, get a life.

[Antonin]

Originally posted by Barchan
Ask the former Soviet Politburo exactly how "war weariness" over the cold war put them all out of jobs.

And don't estimate the degree to which war weariness over the endless struggle to pacify Afghanistan demoralized the Red Army and poisoned Soviet society. Many, many soldiers came home with a very cynical opinion of their government and its policies.