faults of civ3 / smac

[brianshapiro]

in SMAC i was allowed very easily to never pay attention to the production and units that could be produced because everything was automated, and i didnt want to pay attention anyway because of the complexity of the unit workshop, large types of units / unintuitive types of improvements for bases. i just look for the type of unit and build it, most base production goes on without me/

so i was very glad that Civ3 was much simplified, when building units or improvements it feels youre much more aware and control , and that your choices are clear and important.

--that is to everyone who would say SMAC is a superior game. civ3 is a much more coherent and structured game to play. though i miss some simple things from alpha centauri , like consequences to atrocities. i liked 3d terrain, but understand why 3d terrain was excluded, there would only be 2 or 3 levels at most and raised terrain would be limited on any map. I liked the idea of landmarks though and wish this continued in civ3.

but, with civilization 3, every game seems to start out the same way, with the same rudimentary decisions, and then drag out the same way near the middle of the game. Every new game feels like the same game, and I almost always stop before the modern era. civ3 becomes more boring than people admit.

some of my suggestions for civ4 (other thread) address this, like basing tech advance on resource collection would make each culture unique and each game play out differently based on geography

also boring is that in most games the map is just one or two large pangea chunks without interesting features, more smaller chunks if archipelago, everything is expected, like large stretches of jungle, etc. It does more to make each game play out the same way. Sometimes i get interesting landmasses, but these surprise me.

this is why i aired some dislike of the map generation in the game.

The corruption system also limits the variation on games, empires always have to be continuous and contained.

How can people stand playing this game over and over, or continuously for that matter?

These criticisms said I still like the game and the ideas and effort of the designers . just i think new things should be done in addition to take care of where the game fails.

i think any attempt to rebuild civ should take into account what it does to the playing of the game ; sometimes i get the feeling the designers dont play games through very often except with their cheat modes on.

but it would be fun if for every game generated it felt like a whole new and intricate world, which the civilizations flesh themselves out of. simplification in civ3 was a good idea, but sometimes it feels too much a standardized experience.

[vmxa1]

Those are not unreasonable sentiments, I just don't know what can be done to improve the next game and address them. Maybe one problem is that the team that is involved in the design is not varied enough to have some unique perspectives.

[pedrojedi]

Well, some things in SMAC are really one of a kind experience. The diplomacy options and consequences were a great jump in bringing concerns and reality of real world to the game.

The workshop is nice too, I enjoyed having options to build units, even if sometimes it got too complex and boring.

The 3d terrain was really annoying to me, and I always saw that and other features of the terrain with a ugly face

Well, I understand the way you put the boredom of initiating and playing a new game, but usually I overcome this trying to play different stiles, different levels of difficulty, and, more importantly, different tribes, which often make me re-think strategy and timing. Overall, I still love the game and its replayable nature.

I'm not aware to the suggestions of that other thread, but I'll sure look and read it. It seems quite interesting!

I had recently a great surprise with the random map generation, as I initiated isolated from the rest of the world, which was a new and unusual situation, at least for me. It required a different approach to research and development, and eventually was a fun game, even though I lost it.

At first I really hated the new corruption system, but came to admit it made more sense to real world, and, besides, helped making the player think about a new variable, instead of just changing government to Democracy, Communism or Fundamentalism (God, I miss that!).

Well, my message at the end is: I love this game! It is still my gold reference to strategy games, and if I stop playing it for a while, it's because a) short time b) another newer game that I got c) I'm sleeping.

[Immortal]

I definitely agree that corruption is a major problem i civilization 3, its crippling for a large empire (which I like to build). I also had problems with AC's unit workshop, I didn't have the creativity to make some really powerful units by myself.

[brianshapiro]

its supposed to be crippling for large empires though. and it makes sense the restrictions it puts on empire building, just that with the restrictions the game is made more boring in certain ways.

youre just one grouping of cities fighting another grouping, one by one coast, another by another coast, each having terrain which is uninteresting. you dont want to capture their cities maybe, but raze them, which has you remain a boring grouping of cities the whole game. if you capture cities then you fight corruption the rest of the game. start out each game picking the same techs, if you play the game a standard domination/conquest way attacking when you can build up a horde of units, then stopping attack when you defeat them or have massive disorder (because its hard to do wage conflicts any other way). the map may as well be always square and the cities spaced out in regular 5 x 5 grids.

its true i havent played on higher difficulty levels but knowing how it is there doesnt seem much else that can be done with the game.

if time in the game could be dealt with differently, there could be room for smaller warfare. if the model were different there could be real colonies that could revolt. there could be smaller minor civs that must be dealt with like in other games where more diplomacy/trade is really required for gameplay (trade is almost dispensible in most games!), or so smaller warfare can take place. or if culture in the game were less abstract there might actually be something more enjoyable about building.

i dont know . im just beginning to feel that not just theres something wrong with civ3 but theres something bad with the whole civ-series model that needs to be overhauled, maybe combining ideas from other games.

the unit workshop in alpha centauri felt useless ,except for when i felt like playing around and making neat units like a flying/colonization, and i didnt want to deal with it.

ill maybe repost some of my ideas on the future civilization games forum, or for whatever projects are currently ongoing, but i dont know how much hope there is there.

[athorpel]

If you don't like the randomly generated maps you can make you own with the editor.

If you don't like corruption you can turn it down or completely off in the editor.

There is a lot to explore in the standard game but it Will become stale.

The editor makes the game truly replayable. You can make the game into anything you want. There are lots of mods out there or you can roll your own.

You hit on my two largest gripes with the game. In fact I quit playing for several months until the 1.29 patch came out and corruption became something you could control completely with the editor.

I like huge maps. I am basically a builder in play style. Corruption Really tweaked my annoyance nerve. I was so annoyed the game became unplayable... for me. I turned corruption off completely. I now play the game and have fun. The computer gets the benefits of this lack of corruption also so I don't feel like I am cheating. No city is unusable, no city is a drag on your economy. Having whole regions being pits of entropy just didn't ring true to me. There are no places on Earth that are so totally unproductive.

Purchasing espionage missions is still expensive even with the super charged corruption free economy. Science still has the four turn minimum for researching new tech.

that's my plug for Civ editor use

[brianshapiro]

yea its not fun designing your own maps , or playing on them.
its ok that you can change corruption through the editor, i was just saying why something should be done in the next game

[Chemical Ollie]

Corruption is bearable after the 1.29 patch. But to improve the game furter, there should be bigger difference between republic and democracy. The bonus of faster workers in democracy is not worth the higher war weariness. There should also be a considerable corruption decrease, as there were in CIV2.

But I still find the game enjoyable.

[Vercingettyrex]

I've come back to playing CIV3 with the release of the new patch and I think it's a better game than CIV2. The warfare, diplomacy and trade are a big step up.

I know that corruption is a big gripe here. I've got mixed feelings about it. The current game I'm playing has my forces and cities spread across 2 distinct continents. This was necessary as I had to get resources on the 2nd continent. However I've captured a lot of cities there and their production is minimal. I'm even toying with the idea of shifting my palace but to be frank it hardly looks worth it.
On the other hand I like facing the challenge of how to make the most of the situation. It also limits the degree to which an expansionist policy can actually work. I think the corruption model is correct however just as bit of fun I'd like to make some suggestions as to how to make it less of a brick wall.

1.) Leader units in addition to creating armys and rushing builds can also be added to a city to give it 0 corruption for all time.

2.) Colonies once founded can exist in perpetuity even inside another states border. They can not be founded inside another states border but once placed they can only be removed by force. This would then reduce the need to use cities for resources.

[pedrojedi]

Or maybe there should be a different designation for a citizen that does not work, since there's the entertainer, the lab worker and the taxman. The idea is having a citizen that could turn into a IR taxmen, or a judge or prosecutor. He does not collect more money, but reduce the corruption, something about 10 or 15%.