The Biggest Thing Civ III is Lacking...

[Jon Shafer]

Is a more non-linear gameplay. Other than your game situation (# of cities placed where, units and civs), every game is identical. You research the same techs, you use the same units, and worst of all, you can basically only take 'one' path. The game play style no matter what you do is nearly always similar. You can play 'builder' or 'warmonger', but that doesn't really count as different 'flavors' of the game. At some point you're going to have to build, and at some point (nearly always) you'll have to go to war. Suggestions on how this could be changed to make the game less 'linear'?

[jordie]

I think different tech trees for different cultures would be good. Not overly different so you couldn't swap, but different enough to allow different gameplay styles.

[Bromley]

Well, I was surprised that they hadn't included ToT-type events. I thought the idea was to take all the best elements of the previous releases and incorporate them?

[Pyrodrew]

Has anyone tried to see how 1.29 AI & PtW AI perform if the requirements to move to the next Age were all removed? I fear this may hurt the AI, but maybe the AI knows better now. (?)

[Demerzel]

not sure how you could really. it reminds me of rts games where each level normally boils down to create base, build resource gathering units, create a few units, hold off inevitable early AI rush, expand base, send out units to find AI base and finally get enough units out to kill it.

in rts you can spice it up with being forced to exist with a few units and no base or being given a base and having to repair before killing the enemy.

scenarios generally are the best way i find to break up the sameyness of civ, e.g. I remember the islamic, roman & WWII campaigns of Civ2 fondly.

maybe as suggested above, a more varied more unique for each civ tech tree would help. again using rts games as an analogy, most have the same units for each side but just different names or just different colours. StarCraft was good in the fact that you had to adapt for each race, you couldn't use the same strategies for each one - that kept things new for you whilst working through the game.

[Pyrodrew]

Well, I was surprised that they hadn't included ToT-type events.

I was expecting some of the best elements of SMAC, CtP, & ToT combined. Civ3 AI brain with those game elements.
I expected more beginning game options with the worlds too.

20% water world?
70% desert world?
Barbarians continue until Modern Age?

Well, at least the editor allows us to change some stuff.

[vmxa1]

The mention of the civ2 scenarios reminded me that they had Moo scenario for civ2 and a dino one. I guess the dino stuff is in pTW someplace, but I have not seen any Orion.

[vondrack]

Instead of creating different techtrees for different cultures... what about (radically) increasing the number of dead-end techs? Make the most basic techs into sort of a "stem", but all the others "branches" and "leafs" (with techs having more significant impact being placed at the leaf positions, thus needing more research). Wanna be a warmonger? Pick the branches/leaves oriented at warfare. Wanna be a wonder builder? Pick the leaves that offer wonder building... etc. This might actually mean that you would HAVE to choose your way of playing the game (assuming that it would not be able to simple trade for every tech you lack, as it is now - but that's partially because everybody needs everything...).

[Firebird]

Originally posted by vondrack
Instead of creating different techtrees for different cultures... what about (radically) increasing the number of dead-end techs? Make the most basic techs into sort of a "stem", but all the others "branches" and "leafs" (with techs having more significant impact being placed at the leaf positions, thus needing more research). Wanna be a warmonger? Pick the branches/leaves oriented at warfare. Wanna be a wonder builder? Pick the leaves that offer wonder building... etc. This might actually mean that you would HAVE to choose your way of playing the game (assuming that it would not be able to simple trade for every tech you lack, as it is now - but that's partially because everybody needs everything...).

Good idea Vondrack!

IMHO there are lots of ways to make your Civ3-experience evolve. In Civ2 you couldn't change the meaning of wonders and improvements, but in Civ3 you can even make new ones. You can differentiate the civs much more by making UUs or setting up starttechs (f.ex. to give each civ its own techtree). In ptw you could even give them kings with different abilities. I love the new resource-system (wich you can also use to differentiate the civs).

What I miss the most is events (big surprise ), a way to set up diplomatic relations (and hold them so allies stay allies) in scenarios and to a lesser extent teamplay (one can always simulate that by saying: One teammember goes to AC means the team wins).

[Grumbold]

Its the old battle. They simplified the game to refine it down to something close to the Civ I experience. Clean, crisp and easier for the AI to perform competently. Perfect for a target audience more used to playing simple RTS than more complicated games of the past. Many gamers who have spent their social lives playing Civ games instead want more.
More diplomacy.
More units.
More techs.
More ways of making their civ unique like choosing their own UU's.
More challenges.
More editor tools to script entirely new variants.

Civ III was aimed at the former market and hit it pretty squarely (if anything the AI might be a little too ruthlessly expansionist for some "casual" gamers taste.) Now we need a new Reynolds to produce a variant which grabs all the good parts of all the old TBS' games and merges them into a new game, adding fresh layers on top as s/he goes. Then we have to pray the vision turns out to be a workable reality, unlike MoO3 where the pruning shears had to come out time and time again to whittle back much of the innovation to produce something the designers felt was fun to play....

[Alex]

Well, in games like SimCity, which are open-ended by nature, you can have a giant metropolis or a small country town; you can have an income of millions on your budget every year, or you be completely broke and see your city deteriorate... No matter how you play the game, you are never "punished" for doing this or that. You're not aiming for a specific type of victory, unless you decide how you want to play the game ("hmm I want to have a wealthy city in 2020").

This is not the case in civ games. There is different victory types. You can lose the game to an opponent. You can be exterminated as a nation. Therefore, when you play the game, there will always exist a 'right' way to do it. Do this and you'll become powerful; do that and you'll be left behind. This is simply inevitable.

As in real life, the more money you have the more your empire will be able to do things, and, as in real life, if you go to war and you're not prepared to win, you'll quickly slide down.

The game cannot be less linear, because its internal logic follows the real life logic, and this is a linear one. What you can do to add some variety is: tweak the rules using the editor, play some scenarios, try different types of maps, and even engage in some multiplayer matches (most humans will be less predictable than the AI -- not all of them ).

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by vondrack
Instead of creating different techtrees for different cultures... what about (radically) increasing the number of dead-end techs? Make the most basic techs into sort of a "stem", but all the others "branches" and "leafs" (with techs having more significant impact being placed at the leaf positions, thus needing more research). Wanna be a warmonger? Pick the branches/leaves oriented at warfare. Wanna be a wonder builder? Pick the leaves that offer wonder building... etc. This might actually mean that you would HAVE to choose your way of playing the game (assuming that it would not be able to simple trade for every tech you lack, as it is now - but that's partially because everybody needs everything...).

Excellent idea! Maybe I find it so good because I've been thinking the same thing for a long time Actually I was hoping for such alternative-techtrees before Civ3 hit the shelves.
I see this as some sort of specialization. Let's say the romans discovered Iron working and then, instead of going for construction, they would choose to research "Specialized-Iron Working" and then an "Even-More-Specialized_Iron Working" tech (I know the names are ridiculous , I'm hoping for some help on this one). Obviously this sort of specilization would give them better and better weapons, but they would lose precious research time.
Maybe these alternative (or specialized) tech branches should be also linked to civ specific traits (like in my example, this tree would be available only for militaristic civs; this would also prevent tech branch trading).

This is only slightly different from Vondrack's idea and a promising *possible* improvement. At least I hope so

[remeo]

will be difficult since some nations don't conquer the world by the time 2050 or that you are forced in a war cause you play germany and its 1939...

althoug the idea of special tech branches for explores/militaristic or so is a good idea

[Demerzel]

As so many people have favourite ages, it would be possible to have the game start at the beginning of that age and end when the age ends. a much expanded tech tree could be used for that era.

that way you could avoid some of the massive tech jumps/amalgamations that Civ3 uses in its tech tree and use the more gradual technology improvement that happens in reality and has been promoted by others above in that you could also put in more esoteric tech advances that you wouldn't choose to research in a "full" game but would do in the "age" game.

for example for warlike players, you could have a series of techs that would improve the fortress aspect of the game starting with iron age hilltop forts, moving onto roman style forts, onto norman mot-and-bailey castles, to norman stone castles, etc... and thats just to the early medieval period. you could take just a few from all periods of time or just one era and really enhance just that part of the game. the number of small things from real life that you have to ignore when doing something like Civ3 is quite immense.

the number of techs you could have for a builder would be quite immense and would be nice as on higher difficulty levels military action is forced upon you to keep your civilisation on par with or better than the rest. I'd like to have those GLs via peaceful methods or be able to use peaceful methods to win out rather than spend 90% of my time either conquering or fending off AI advances because I tried to use culture wins.

[GePap]

I think that SMAC was a better game in terms of allowing for different styles (to a point, since ht evictory aims were the same) of gameplay. To that effect, seeral SMAc ideas, if simplified, could work well to make civ more varied;

1. Allow blind research: then the player simply can't just follow a path. You could add more dead end techs, and since you don't actually get to choose, but do get to sterr the research more towards one side or the other, you do get more variation.

2. Stripped down Unit creation: the type of unit creation of smac is simply too complex for Civ game, but a sort of stripped down one is OK. Example: until horseworking, can't have any units that move more than 1, until iron, can't have units of attack or defend 3, so forth and so on. To allow for Unique units one would have to give general tech bonuses, so you could say all Iriqiuos mounted units get +1 attack for ever, and then an Iriquois player would favor attacking units, so forth, and you could even do it by age. This type of system also allows agressive or defensive players to design their military according to their aims, not premade tech paths.
This might be graphically challenging but not difficult to implement, as SMAC shows. You could also bring back the SMAC method of being able to give units extra special abilities, sch as police units and so forth.

3. Birn back the social enginnering window: you can also think of the EU window. Your government type is not the only thing thast determines how your society works, there are other factors. Now, for a civ game this window shoul be more complex than smac. That way not all democracies re the same, nor all dictatroships. Allowing for more varied sociaties makes for better gameplay in a civ type game.

and as a small addeddum, bring back random events like disasters. They give the player extra to deal with, so not only do they make the slow parts of the game possibly more interesting, but also add challenge.