What are the the most and least fun aspects of Civ?

[The Joker]

I just got off ICQ with korn, and we talked about what would make the game fun.

He suggested that I should make a thread where we can talk about what it was in Civ that made the game fun to us, and what parts were dull. We should then try to have more of the fun parts and fewer of the boring ones in GGS, while keeping the game realistic.

So, I might as well start:

Fun things:

- grand scale strategy: Thinking out ways to attack my enemies where and when they were weak, and use this to destroy them!

- Diplomacy: All sorts of diplomacy was fun to me. It was just sad that the AI never were any good at it, and that the options were really limited.

- Prioritizing on a macro scale: You always had to prioritize your limited ressources, so you got the highest technological development possible, while not leaving yourself open to attacks by having a weak military, and also keep your people happy and your production at a high level.

- The start of each game was always the most fun to me. The world was unknown, you had no idea what possibilities were out there, and what this game would be like.


The not very fun aspects:

- Managing a huge military with over 100 units around on the screen tile by tile.

- Moving around workers in every singe city to maximize production, since the AI always placed the workers at the poorest spots.

- Moving around a lot of settlers placing roads and irrigation in all city squares.

- The endgame (after 1000AD) was never much fun. Usually you had way to many cities to really care about them or nurcher them, and you always knew who was going to win (this was usually you) the game, even though you also knew that it would take at least 500 turns before you could build a spaceship or take out the other civs.


What do you guys think?

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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.

[Guildmaster]

I'm pretty much in agreement with you there.

Diplomacy in Civ was pathetic to say the least, certainly not indicative of a modern computer game, it kinda reminded me of old text-based games I used to play on my Dad's Zenith when I was a kid.

The ability to form your own demands and treaties for the AI via. the word structure thingy will be a crowning achievement if we get it to work really well.

Tediously moving units around the board was sooooooooooooooooooo boring I cannot begin to express how boring it was.
I always wanted a "Theater of action" effect in battle, where I only had to move the units that were there.
Or even if the units were in the theater of action the game got really boring when I can be at peace with a neighbor for a few turns and build a railroad connecting his empire with all my cities while I build about a hundred howitzers, then declare war and completely overrun his entire empire in only 1 turn and still have more. All this while his most advanced air defense network in the world sits and watches the whole thing like it's a movie. One gets bored when all you do in a game is figure out newer more creative ways to beat it... like pouring all your money into spies and simply buy all his cities. That's even more cheesy and much worse because I don't lose any reputation among other pittly nations.

Also it was stupid that the entire game of Civ2 was decided in the first few turns. No matter what level you were playing on you could tell who was going to win by 3500 BC and almost nothing you or anyone else short of cheating could do about it.

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The night is young and so are we... Let's make love and dance the night away
- Debelah Morgan

[ElmoTheElk]

Hum, this is a VERY good topic I think! It is a major priority to have this pointed out well.

First reaction to Joker's post:
I mostly agree with your opinion, however here are some differences:

- managing a large military was very boring, I agree with that. However, looking forward to our game, isn't it just a necesary part of the game? I cannot think of a solution for it (besides making it easier to manage the military actions like an more advanged GoTo feature).

- The endgame wasn't necesarily boring: even if you know you are going to win, you could do lots of fun things like researching. A thing to just make it more fun is making multiple things to do even when you already rule the world.

My reaction to Guildmasters post:

- I think you have mentioned one of the most weird aspects of Civ2: The game is decided in the first x turns of a game! I think this is one of the most important things to 'change' in our game. It's not at all realistic. For example the Americans are currently definatly one of the (or even THE) most important civilization(s) in the world. BUT if you look back in time 500 years? ...
It is also possible to loose all your reputation/influence/power too. For example after a war of financial crisis. So: Fluctuations in this 'power' are much greater than in Civ2.

OK That's it for now. More to come later...

[amjayee]

Mostly also I agree with these.

At best (meaning at the beginning phase of the game) civ2 was cunning strategy, fun empire building, and exciting exploration, combined with caring for those heads and units representing the people.

But I think the worst parts of the game were those that were repeating, those that were made in the same way every time.

Empire management was tedious. Basically in civ2 this was building 40-50 cities, all of them more or less alike each other. You always build the improvements in the same order, you always move the people around in the same way... Well, at least this was the case in late game. I agree with Joker that early game is fun, since you really care about those cities, you know each one's special values, and you are happy to manage them. But unfortunately winning the game requires building (or conquering) at least forty cities, and that is too much. This means you have to attend to the needs of way too many cities, and the game turns into hasty building of excactly the same improvements in every city, and this is work, not computer game. This was the main thing that made me angry in civ2.

Also science was usually choosing the same technologies in roughly the same order. Science definitely needs to be something more, the tech tree idea is too old and restricting.

Building the spaceship was one of the least fun things to do. Just mindless building of same parts every time with no special meaning.

Generally, I think the biggest problem was that the system was way too old. The main idea and structure was copied straigthly from the original civ, just added some techs and units, and some new rules. This became really restricted. I truly hope that they can make some completely new ideas for the game system in civ3, or quite clearly I will not play it very much. It is quite certain that I will sleep in a tent outside the computer game store that claims to be the first to sell civ3, and buy the game; but if it turns out to be nothing than civ2+ or civ2++, not civ3, I will not play it very much, almost barely because of disappointment.

[The Joker]

I agree with everything that you have said here.

But Elmo, don't you think it would be even more fun if you weren't sure you were gonna win 100s of years in advance? We should implement the rise and fall of great powers idea, primarily via nationalism and ethnicity, which would make it possible to rise from obscurity to glory in 200 years, and then fall back into obscurity in 200 more.

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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.

GGS Website

[Guildmaster]

Less than 200 years I think. Japan up until the Mei ji restoration of the 1850s was basically mideval. 50 years later they defeated a global superpower in Russia, who was one of the most advanced nations in the world at the time.
the USA was esentially nothing militarily up until the 1940s when WW2 broke out and our industry kicked in. Even in WW1 we didn't have much impact. So it took us 4 years to go from the smallest military of all the major powers to become the most powerful most advanced military in the world.

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The night is young and so are we... Let's make love and dance the night away
- Debelah Morgan

[heardie]

Ahh, now this thread I liked. Now you have talked about things that are not fun. But thy can be modified to be fun

quote: Managing a huge military with over 100 units around on the screen tile by tile.

Well, I think we have that covered. Unit stacks, armies, and the pre-planned turns seem to fix that.

quote: Moving around workers in every singe city to maximize production, since the AI always placed the workers at the poorest spots.

The way to fix this: Better AI (Are we even using the workers ala civ2?)

quote: Moving around a lot of settlers placing roads and irrigation in all city squares.

I actually didn't mind doing this. But what we can do is set the AI large scale strategies, such as irrigate home city, improve home city, improve all citys, build road to x, etc

quote: The endgame (after 1000AD) was never much fun. Usually you had way to many cities to really care about them or nurcher them, and you always knew who was going to win (this was usually you) the game, even though you also knew that it would take at least 500 turns before you could build a spaceship or take out the other civs

We have talked about this before, and have already decided that civs can, and will, fall more than civ2. Try and find the page Rise and Fall of Civilizations

quote: Diplomacy: All sorts of diplomacy was fun to me. It was just sad that the AI never were any good at it, and that the options were really limited

Just read the combination of harel's diplomacy list and mine. If we can get 1/4 of that in it will b one unbelievable diplomacy system

AND OVERALL:
To fix mainly all problems we need: Better AI!

[The Joker]

Guildmaster:

Exactly! Power should move around really, really fast.


Heardie:

Those were some of the sollutions I had thought of too.

quote: (Are we even using the workers ala civ2?)

Nope. We're having it replaced by the econ model, so you only control taxation, and what you want those money to be spent on.

quote: I actually didn't mind doing this. But what we can do is set the AI large scale strategies, such as irrigate home city, improve home city, improve all citys, build road to x, etc

There should be ways for us to make it less time consuming. For instance, I think roads and irrigation should some times be built automatically by the people. And there should be other ways around it, too, like those you suggested. This will require a good ai, though.

quote: We have talked about this before, and have already decided that civs can, and will, fall more than civ2. Try and find the page Rise and Fall of Civilizations

I actually think I invented that idea a long time ago !

I also agree with your overall cure: Better AI. We just need a working game, and we can start hiring AI gurus from around the world to help us with this.
[This message has been edited by The Joker (edited November 03, 2000).]

[Guildmaster]

Ok, I thought we weren't going to use "workers" on tiles and stupid stuff like that. I thikn we can assume that if we have a tile, and there are people on that tile, they will probably be working that tile for whatever resources you want to gain from it be it a mine or food or whatever.
Also, here's something I always wanted...
In Civ2 it takes about a five hundred years to build a railroad from coast to coast and that's working from both ends. But in real life, I think it took just a few years if that. Bridges, roads, all sorts of stuff. Stupid and tedious.
I really preferred the PW system in CTP but I think we should revamp that to our own system of labor and apply Work Hours+Materials, etc. Then contract it out or have the army build it or whatever. The point is it gets done in a more realistic ammount of time.

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The night is young and so are we... Let's make love and dance the night away
- Debelah Morgan

[ElmoTheElk]

Rise and Fall:
I think we all agree that civs should rise and fall VERY quickly when the time has come to that. For instance: This will also make it possible for multiplayer or AI to join a game alreay in progress (and not like in Civ2 that the new civs that were founded after crushing one has not a change..) Important feature should be that it is very difficult to manage an empire reaching over multiple continents when the tech levels are not very advanced. (Hum,... this will also give the research aspect a extra feature!).

Winning game:
I agree that it's not as much fun to manage an LARGE empire because of the city/military managment and also knowing that you're going to win anyway. It is more fun not knowing who is going to win within X turns (as Joker said). Maybe it's an option to use multiple ways to win the game (and not the boring spaceship used in Civ2). Like ruling a specific area, rules (but not crushing) all civs or even researching 'World peace'

Moving workers:
I don't think that our city screens will be anything LIKE those used in Civ2 (and CtP/Civ3/AC!). We could really make something here that is DIFFERENT from the other Civ-games, showing we are not a clone, but innovative. However we have to come up with our own city-screen-plan. I think we can do that, right?

Managing:
A way to make 'moving your military'/'building irrigation, etc.' more fun is to give the player more options to automate these things. Well developed GoTo functions and auto-irrigate or somthing similiar.

Overall:
A better AI is very important in new games currently developing and espacially in strategy games. We'll have to come with a strong and impressive AI: This will give the game a strong point to base on.

WOW! I am pretty excited about our current progress. Let's all keep up the good work!

[The Joker]

Guildmaster:

Actually I think that in many cases you wouldn't even have to tell the people what ressources to produce. The econ model would do this pretty much on it self. You would just tax the people, and try to turn economy in the direction you want it to. And you would build units and spend money on research, education etc.

Railroads:
I agree. We have to find a good way to do this. But I think that you would just drag the path of the railroad you want and it would be built.


Elmo:

Rise and fall:
Yes, multiplayer would be another good reason to have rise and fall implemented.

Winning the game:
I don't really know what we are going to do about winning the game. But I agree that we should have several paths to victory.

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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.

GGS Website

[amjayee]

Building:

Yes, most of it would be automatic. You could for example fund the building of better irrigation system in region x, and perhaps tell where to build, where to improve; and the people build. Everything should have a labor cost, material cost and money cost. When those are given, the thing gets built in somewhat constant time, of course depending on the amount of people working. Abour roads and railroads, I think there would very soon automatically&free of charge appear simple dirt roads between the cities. If you want better transportation, you can build paved roads, like the Romans did. Then later you could build railroads. You just tell, from where to where to build, you are givent the costs, you pay, and people build.

About winning the game, perhaps we should have some kind of complex scoring system. I mean, it should be quite rare that someone conquers the world for example. It would be more fun to just play and try the best, then you would be given a score with which you could measure your progress compared to AI civs, or boast to your friends. This way you would not need to play the game until space age, or start from stone age. Also this would bring more sense to scenarios, since the scenarios could have their own scoring system, where some aspect of the game, like economy, could be emphasized. If we can come up with this kind of fair scoring system, the game would get totally new meaning, and get more variety. And most importanly to me, who always hated conquering the world, you could just play, trying to reach something that is (almost) impossible to achieve, and get a score determining how well you did. Like in Tetris and other great old games. In Tetris, you will never reach the end. You know how well you played from the score.

I always hated conquering the world; it always ruined the vision I had of my "country" I was building. For me it was completely satisfactory to build and try to survive. But I don't know what other people think of this.

[ElmoTheElk]

quote: Originally posted by amjayee on 11-06-2000 07:03 AM Building: About roads and railroads, I think there would very soon automatically&free of charge appear simple dirt roads between the cities. If you want better transportation, you can build paved roads, like the Romans did. Then later you could build railroads. You just tell, from where to where to build, you are given the costs, you pay, and people build.

This is partitially the way done in Settlers 3 (an sort of rts) where roads appear automaticty when it is used very often. More usage: better road (and then YOU could upgrate them to paved roads/highways/railroads)

quote: About winning the game, perhaps we should have some kind of complex scoring system.

I agree with this, however I hope that this is not the only option to end a game. It should be possible to win in other ways like I mentioned before. Otherwise maybe the will to keep on playing is not as it would be with an specific goal.

quote: I always hated conquering the world; it always ruined the vision I had of my "country" I was building. For me it was completely satisfactory to build and try to survive.

Hum, I liked it. It was really fun to build your own "country", however 1. it was also fun to crush all the other civs and 2. it was sometimes neccesry to expand your territory to make your civ grow.


[This message has been edited by ElmoTheElk (edited November 06, 2000).]

[The Joker]

Amjayee:

Yeah, everything would have a cost. But later on you could just outsource a building project, meaning that it will be constructed via the market, and that it would only cost money to you.


Winning:
I think we should keep both Elmo and Amjayee's options open. There is no need to settle this now at all. And in the game it would be cool to have both options.

------------------
Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.

GGS Website