The official verdict: NO "unit workshop" in civ3!

[Theben]

to quote Dan Magaha on this very forum:

quote: We will *not* be using a design workshop, nor will there be any type of "mix and match" unit designer...What we said was that there will be significant tools available for mod creators and everyday users alike to create their own units and import them into the game. While the design workshop was an interesting feature of SMAC, its design constraints are wholly inappropriate for a game that covers as much ground as CivIII.

I was kinda hoping for one, but it wasn't that important. Let's see what they give us. Hopefully more unit slots than civ2, and to be able to give ALL specials to ANY slot (FE, "fanatic" capabilities or partisan uprisings from any slot).

[This message has been edited by Theben (edited February 03, 2001).]

[ChrisShaffer]

Yippee. I hated the unit workshop in SMAC, I'm thrilled to see it won't be in Civ3.

[Ralf]

DAN MAHAGA quote:
"While the design workshop was an interesting feature of SMAC, its design constraints are wholly inappropriate for a game that covers as much ground as CivIII".

Good and wise decision! Above is the key-argument (my underlining).

In SMAC you played around with futuristic strap-on weaponrys only - its obviously MUCH easier to combine imagined & made up chassis and weapons in a pure SciFi-game like SMAC, then it is in a game that also covers historic ancient, medieval and early-modern eras. That says itself.
Even late-modern eras could offer the game-designers some problems: Why, for example, should it be possible for the civ-player to design a tank-unit with modern Gulf-war armour, but only with WW-2 era turret-cannon? Or vice versa? Would it make any sense? Would it be realistic?

Roughly the same argument: its obviously MUCH easier to combine imagined & made up futuristic value-systems and political ideas in a SciFi-game like SMAC, then it is in "a game that covers as much ground as CivIII" - can also be accounted for then trashing the "Social engineering" idea. And I hope they do.

Keep in mind that SMAC is SMAC and CIV is CIV - dont mix them up. Both "Unit workshop" and "Social engineering" seems too SMAC:ish in my ears. I believe that Firaxis wants to distance themselves from above SMAC-solutions, arguing that "it aint Civ". I tend to agree.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited February 03, 2001).]

[bagdar]

Allright, that's what I wrote in the other thread. Twin Galaxies has to be clearer if it writes anything about Civ for us crazy fans.

[Roman]

Dan is right to say Unit Workshop would be inappropriate for Civ 3 and therefore should not be included.

[Roman]

Oh, yeah, I agree with Ralf's assesment of the Unit Workshop and to some degree also of SE as being good for SMAC (futuristic), but not fitting for Civ 3. Hovewer, SE could be implemented to some extent, as a choice between religions/philosophies. What do you think Ralf?

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Roman on 02-03-2001 07:07 AM Hovewer, SE could be implemented to some extent, as a choice between religions/philosophies. What do you think Ralf?

Yes, maybe. But, that could be achieved by adding an parallell extension of Civ-2 style governments-types. The player choose an government-type, but added to this he can now also choose a specific Religion- (or philosophy) type. That would lead to a more basic version of SE "mix and matching", then in SMAC - but anyway.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited February 03, 2001).]

[Shadowstrike]

Like we haven't seen it coming.... When I took my first look at the Civ3 units, I knew that the Unit Workshope was a gonner.... Oh well...

[raingoon]

Korn, I'm on record opposing SE for several reasons, but I'll add one more -- flexibility in social choices means less rigid decision-making. Which means the stakes are lower, in practice. You don't have to take the good with the bad, you can pretty much fine tune it the way you want. That's leaning toward a sim, and if anything Civ should lean toward RPG.

Also, it's much harder to play balance a game where big parts of it are not functionally rigid, but loose. I would prefer Civ 3 take the full step forward and implement a new religion model to go along with the new trade model. The lack of flexibility in government choices is exactly what is needed for a funner game.

[Steve Clark]

quote: Originally posted by RonHiler on 02-03-2001 12:04 PM Without a unit workshop, I won't buy the game. They just made it CivII+, in my opinion. Bad decision. Very questionable. You now have a static, repetitive game. There will be no replayablility, with the same units every time.

With all due respect, that's a pretty myopic view. Have you not heard of custom scenarios and events? A static, repetitive game?!? Maybe you've been playing too much of SMAC, ToT or CtP but not enough of Civ2?

[korn469]

raingoon

hey there! long time no see

i respect your opinion but i totally disagree with most of it. i think that with tweaks an improved SE system would allow the players to develop unique civ that would involve the player on an emotional level, like a character in an RPG game. i am not on the net much as i used to be but when i am on i'm playing diablo 2 so i know all about the way a player becomes attached to characters in an RPG (however i have a piss-poor laggy ISP and i play hardcore...in diablo2 hardcore lag=death, i think i am in the running for most characters created though) and i think that the best way for a player to get emotionally involved with his civ's buerocratic institutions is to use SE

i can and will conceed that the SE system in civ 2.33 is far from perfect and has many irrational loopholes that prevent a player from making hard choices to fix those loopholes and to make SE function more rigidly i suggest that firaxis do the following things
[*]change the default choices so that instead of being perfectly balanced they give negative modifers, this is because that any organized institution should be better than chaos[*]the longer a player uses one SE choice the harder it should be for the player to switch out of that choice[*]besides having an easy to afford upheaval cost there should be a period of upheaval associated with changing SE[*]when you change SE there should be a transitionary state when the new SE choices gets hit by a it's normal penalties and penalties from the old choices representing the strife a changeover causes...the longer you used a certain SE the longer the transition would take[*]SE choices would cause certain structures to work less effectively or not at all while other structures might get bonuses because of your SE[*]add the senate back to civ3

the flexability of SE really adds more levels of thought to the game and needs to be included in civ3 along with a slightly more unforgiving system of SE controls

that in my opinion beats a few rigid and uninspired cookie cutter choices of governments...hmmm i'm at peace i better switch to democracy...ok i'm at war now, time to go to fundy! whoo-hooo i love making HARD choices

korn469

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by korn469 on 02-03-2001 12:37 PM SE is more flexable, more emersive, and more FUN than choosing a single form of government as in civ2,

Well, thats your viewpoint, and some civers will certainly agree with you, and maybe Firaxis as well, although I dont believe so.

I base above believe on below Firaxis Civ-III website quote:
"The short answer is simply the best strategy game experience you've ever had! We will accomplish this by keeping the components that made Civilization I and II incredibly addictive and fun games and adding NEW elements and features that complement and enhance the existing system. In addition, we've built a completely new graphic engine that will provide the most stunning maps, animations and graphics you've ever seen in this genre of game. Here are some of our key objectives in developing the best Civilization game you've ever played:"

My underlining/capitol letters. You see: there is NO talk whatsoever about keeping any old components (like the SE-system, or the concept of futuristic SciFi-tecs) from SMAC. Only from Civ-I and II - and (of course) adding totally new and fresh components as well.
Maybe im over-interpret, and maybe my prediction is totally wrong. But, it seems to me that SMAC-features, to a large degree, is going to be side-stepped in Civ-3, and if im right I think thats a good thing.

The problem with SMAC-style Social Engineering (SE, for short) in Civ-3, is mainly two-folded (well, three-folded counting Raingoons excellent post):

1: I have already toched this one in above post. Anyway; its obviously MUCH easier to combine imagined & made up futuristic value-systems and political ideas in a SciFi-game like SMAC, then it is to combine real-life value-systems and political/religious ideas in a game that suppose to cover real-life historic & present day realities - as in Civ-III. It just a game, yes - but it can nevertheless easily be a hot potato - producing endless discussions about "wrongly" applied, or "obviously" unbalanced and historically "incorrect" Social Engineering results.

These pitfalls can be avoided more effectively by keeping Civ-2 style "stand-alone" governments-types. Just DONT fractionize the game by "mixing and matching" buckloads of SE half-components with each other.

2: One persistant critisism of both SMAC, and (to a larger degree) CTP/CTP-2 is the "detached feel" that many players have complained about. This problem sticks its ugly head up, each time the player cannot relate to, and/or easily see through the correlations between his own inputs on one side, and the games outputs one the other side.

In SMAC the problem was partly those hard-to-relate futuristic techs, and partly those "half-component combination" systems (like SE and the unit-workshop). The the latter produces endless variations and combinations - yes, but at a cost. The snag is also that any "transparent" and "easy to overview" game-mechanical correlations between inputs and outputs, very easily gets "flushed down the toilet" in the process.
The problem got even worse in CTP/CTP-2: Both the old CTP "public works" idea and the "expanding city-areas" idea, just added salt to injury. Firaxis should really keep those CTP-ideas away from Civ-3, at all cost.

I have played many earth- and space-based strategy-building games where i had rather foggy idea how this or that gradual improvement actually added to the overal output. And IF i could see an exact output-change, i still often couldnt understant why the output changed the way it did. I simply lost the connection - it all ended up with that i just added "yet another fractionally incremental improvement", because - in one way or the other, that i didnt clearly understood - it supposed to be beneficial. It all felt - well, if one was "detached" from the game after a while.

PS: Im all positive about adding things like health and life-view parameters to Civ-3. I just dont like the idea of them appearing as half-components in some multi-fractional SE-system - thats all.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited February 03, 2001).]

[Roman]

Ralf, I agree that it would be nice for say religions/philosophies to appear in similar form to governments in Civ 2. SE style implementation, though, wouldn't be bad either. I don't actually see any major difference between these two ways of implementing those concepts.
As to your Firaxis quote, I dug up this on the Civ 3 website:

"In 1998, Firaxis Games released Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a turn-based science fiction strategy game. Alpha Centauri was extremely successful and had many game play innovations that advanced the turn-based genre. Firaxis Games will utilize many of the cool innovations made in Alpha Centauri in CivIII. In Civilization III you'll find borders (but even more realistic than in SMAC), unique benefits depending on the Civilization you choose, enhanced and more realistic diplomacy AI, build- queues and more ways to delegate commands for those who want to minimize micromanagement at later stages in the game. These are just some of the innovations that will be found in Civilization III and that made Alpha Centauri the highest rated PC game ever!"

Another quote from the site:

"This game isn't simply about a face-lift or adding more "stuff" to the existing design. It's not even just about keeping and refining the good, addictive aspects of Sid Meier's Civilization I and Civilization II and combining those with what was new and innovative in Alpha Centauri - though this is a major thrust of our efforts. It's also about amplifying some previously unexplored areas of gameplay and enhancing some others in ways that give players more options and fun choices to build their empires the way they want to."

It appears Firaxis does plan to use many SMAC concepts, but whether a form of SE will be among them remains to be seen.

[Ralf]

Ooops! I totally missed those ones! Well, ultimately I guess we all just have to wait and see - and avoid drawing too elaborate/extensive conclusions from short Website-quotes!
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited February 03, 2001).]

[RonHiler]

Without a unit workshop, I won't buy the game.

They just made it CivII+, in my opinion. Bad decision. Very questionable. You now have a static, repetitive game. There will be no replayablility, with the same units every time.

Mods are all fine and well, but they'd suffer from the same problem. They'd be fine for one or two plays, until you learned the unit strenghts/weaknessess, then you'd be done.

Ron