Anyone uninstalled Civ III yet?

[Grumbold]

This is the precise difference between the tactical and strategic viewpoint. The tactical people see a number of tanks rumbling up to combat range with a formation of pikemen and opening fire, then say that the unit stats should automatically grant the tanks victory in the course of hours. The strategic see an ongoing struggle lasting a considerable period of time during which all sorts of other factors come into play.

If Firaxis wanted an exact tactical game based on historical accuracy then civ would not have abstract combat concepts, abstract movement rates and attempt to cover 6000 years in 1000 turns. Once Firaxis tweak the AI and/or users issue some mods offering resource-free units at every age, the whole situation should vanish. If pikes were automatically upgraded into militia - even with the same stats - then far fewer people would have this conceptual problem that the name causes.

[crayonx_2K]

Yin26! You probably don't remember me, but I remember you from the SMAC forums two and a half years ago! Boy, you really created some serious havoc over there...

But, you're right, Civ II does goet boring after a while (it was my 4th game too where I got bored). That's why I'm looking to custom maps and mods now, to keep my interest going, cause after my 500th turn and waiting 3 minutes per turn, the game seems more like work than a game.

Combat is definitely oversimplified, but I think that's just to capture a wider audience. You can kind of tell that the game was made to be more than what it turned out to be.

If you play every day you will get bored. I'm putting it away for a few days of weeks. Uninstall? Maybe eventually when I need to clean out my hard drive.

I haven't played EU, but I just saw EU2 in the store the other day. I'm not really into RTS, though, so may it may not float my boat...

crayonx

[dennis580]

Originally posted by yin26
I can own the AI. Beat Emperor my first try. The game is dull, boring, tedious, poorly made and horribly ... no, irresponsibly ... supported both by the developer and the publisher. It's for rookies and people who will play anything and everything to kill a few hours but for some ungodly reason haven't yet stumbled upon any of a thousand better games.

You'd be better of simply staring at static on your t.v. screen trying too look for patterns.

I think Yin about sums up what Civ3 is. Although drmole post shows that Civ3 is also good to laugh at. I will probaly give Civ III one final try when the first patch is released. I haven't touch this since a week after it's release.

[dennis580]

Originally posted by Ralf
Ciilization 3 have been rewarded with mostly 90+ magazine-review scores; some few and far between 80-90% scores, and none (or extremely few) below 80% scores. That type of official game-magazine/ game web-site reception really speaks for itself.

Personally, I think its a great game, with even greater potential, once its properly patched up & complemented with a beefy addon-package.

GamesFirst has just given Civ3 a 2 out of 5. This 40% rating will signifantly lower the redicoulous 90% rating Civ3 had after 13 reviews on gamerankings. We can only hope more sites follow suit and blast this overated peice of garbage.

[CyberGnu]

Grumbold, if you take a strategic stance it gets even worse!

If you are arguing that these units are more than just a collection tanks then strategic thinking and logistics has to be incorporated, which makes even more UNLIKELY for a spearman to defeat a tank battallion.

A batallion of swordsmen led by a well trained commander from a modern army could most propably defeat a commander from ancient times, just by drawing on the ackumulated wisdom of the ages. Hey, just reading Clausewitz, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli should be enough to give a good leg up.


And the saddest thing with all this is that it actualy worked in Civ2. Sure, there were problems with howitzers being overpowered and such... But the ancient vs. modern unit worked very well.

How many times did you see a legion kill a fortitiued rifleman in civ2? I don't think I've ever seen that... But in civ 3, it happens way to often.

In civ2, what happened to a knight attacking a tank out in the open? Yep, he got slaughtered. As it should be.

Amazing that a game can actually regress in their latest iteration...

[yin26]

crayonx: Funny, I *do* remember that name (unless I'm just still too hungover from a night on the town drinking here in Seoul). Cool!

As for EU2 being an RTS -- it isn't. You pretty much *have* to play with the game paused (it is designed that way, so don't worry). While the game is paused, you can issue all your orders, etc., no problem. You can also adjust the game speed itself to run very very slowly if you like.

The benefit of that system is there is a lot more strategy involved. I mean, if you can count the number of turns before unit X reaches square Y, etc., I suppose that allows for more precise planning, but it also takes away from the sense that you are playing in a living world. So in EU, you might have war break out on a number of fronts. In Civ, the turn-based thing makes this easy to manage ... on top of econ and all else.

In EU, this is still rather easily managed when you pause the game, there is a certain fluidity when you release the pause button that gives you a nice sense that you can't always handle issues all at once in lands spanning around the map. Of course you *can* and you eventually learn how to, but that manages to keep you somehow more on your toes than a turn-based game but nothing like the nervous twitching of a standard RTS.

It's great. Try it!

[Bubba_B]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
I'm sorry Bubba. A few classes of critical analysis should take care of that problem, though. Or maybe reading comprehension, if your problem lies at a more basic level.

Feeling guilty? Even a stoopid guy like me knows BS when he reads it.

Classes on critical analysis.....

Naw.......I'll keep my common sense.

Here is a class on common sense:

- You don't like Civ 3, you unistall it and move on. (Common sense)

- You don't like Civ 3, you unistall it and post threads on the Civ 3 forum. (critical analysis)

- You don't like a game, but others may. (common sense)

- You don't like a game, so you bother others who do with long winded, rambling threads about why. (critical analysis)

Sorry but I don't need a labotomy.......err....I mean education.

[gaikokujin]

Originally posted by crayonx_2K
Yin26! You probably don't remember me, but I remember you from the SMAC forums two and a half years ago! Boy, you really created some serious havoc over there...

But, you're right, Civ II does goet boring after a while (it was my 4th game too where I got bored). That's why I'm looking to custom maps and mods now, to keep my interest going, cause after my 500th turn and waiting 3 minutes per turn, the game seems more like work than a game.

Combat is definitely oversimplified, but I think that's just to capture a wider audience. You can kind of tell that the game was made to be more than what it turned out to be.

If you play every day you will get bored. I'm putting it away for a few days of weeks. Uninstall? Maybe eventually when I need to clean out my hard drive.

I haven't played EU, but I just saw EU2 in the store the other day. I'm not really into RTS, though, so may it may not float my boat...

crayonx

EU is a great game, and is not really a "true RTS", since it is easily paused or slowed to whatever speed suits your fancy. I'd call it more of a "simultaneous move" game. It is definitely not a clickfest. This kind of adjustible TBS - simultaneous move toggle should be be mandatory in real strategy games these days.

EU2 looks even more impressive - they've actually grown the game both forwards (to Napoleonic) and backwards (to Jean d'Arc) in historical scope! Given more versions, they may even reach true Civ scope. In seeming preparation for this, they've relieved some of the excessive "eurocentrism" (though inherient to this era, of course), by making China, for example, a player. It was one of the Earth's great powers in the late midieval period, after all. In mid-15th century, Ming China most likely possessed the world's most powerful navy. I could imagine some alternative histories here, kicking the Portuguese dogs out of the Indian Ocean... I hope Apolyton features this game here someday.

In fact, I'm so jazzed I'll go out and by the game right now, and SE4 to boot, in search of just the right Christmas game for some teenagers I know.

As for CivIII, while I don't quite approach it with Yin26's "attitude" (I'm just a sucker for games in this genre and don't care about the money), I certainly share most of his beefs. I was appalled the first time I saw how the AI mined tarnation. It wasn't enough that one of the more unsavory features of CTP - the true benchmark of dullness in this genre - "grasslands/plains mining" (just what was being 'mined' there?) - was reproduced in CivIII, but it also was allowed to run amok over the hillsides as well. I've taken to imagining these "mines" as something else: in the grasslands/plains, shield productive 'suburban villages'; in the hillsides, more 'remote' villiages probably making moonshine or what not. The same goes for "corruption", it's really something else: an inability to extract central government revenues from cities far from the center. The uncollected remainder (the "corruption") is really revenues locally spent (of course, shields are alwayas 'local', but that is another notorious Civ-specific economic game structure issue).

But what these sort of fantastical contortions indicate is: unbalanced gameplay. It is a truism of game design that under "stress testing" (i.e., the implementation and playtesting cycle) a given set of design features will often mutate with unexpected results. Most are bad and must be weeded out or "adjusted; a few are actually good and can be exploited for additional effect.

Well, it is clear this is an unfinished process with CivIII. Hence on the one hand, the over-proliferation of "mines", workers, "corruption", terrain that the economic model cannot utilize (but occupies with a plethora of cities); on the other, the stunted development of the colony and army features (well, Sun Tzu, you get embalmed in the Sistine Chapel...huh?). For example, when it became apparent that corruption wasn't really "corruption" anymore, why not rename it "local vs. imperial revenues" and give the player the option to trade off increased extraction of the imperial share ("lowered corruption") against increased unhappiness and/or negative cultural effects, with irts attendent risk of defection, etc.? That is one possible way of finessing it.

Further, CivIII is, to paraphrase one of the AI advisors, "technologically backwards". It's science beaker slider must be on 10% - even a dog like CTP had (however clumsy the implementation in the interface) stacked movement and abstracted tile improvements as Public Works. One could go on, for sure.

[Raleigh]

I dk, I bought EU but had trouble getting into it b/c its real time component made me just pause all the time reducing it to the equivalent of a turn based game, only in a much more annoying way. Like the critics here, I kept trying to give EU a chance but the tedium of stopping the game to see where everything was, was just too boring. Also, I realize it is a strategy game but (1) the sound effects are ridiculous and (2) the tech system is so ho hum. Yes, level 16 land weapons. Oh boy. Also, their trade system was ridiculous. The merchant competition system although cute, gave you little incentive to establish overseas empires, because to maintain them you lost your foothold in europe as well. Plus, its auto-assign (merchants) was far less savvy than a micro-managing player.

I find the diplomacy and trade here very good, a far improvement over civ2.

I do agree there is a certain amount of tedium but no more than civ2 and part of it is b/c there are so many more units here, since combat here is a bigger part of the game. I like that focus, although I don't like the way they implemented much of the combat. SMAC had a better system with morale.

[CyberGnu]

Ah Bubba, but you failed to realize WHY people post long posts about why civ3 is bad/not-as-good-as-it-should-be: We hope that this will cause
A) An extensive patch effort
B) A lession for the game producers for either the next civ game or similar games such as the fabled Master of Magic 2. If they finally make MOM2 and it is as disappointing as civ3, I will literally cry... and the only way I can work towards a better MOM2 is by battling crap such as civ3.
C) The eventual destruction of publishers such as IG and Activision.

So, while you might not agree with some of the points made on these threads, that doesn't make them vacca feces.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Regarding the problems with the random number generator, I think this is a 'feature, not a bug'. Soren from Firaxis alluded to 'a unit always has a change to defeat another unit, regardless of odds'. This explains how my 12hp army of modern armor got killed by a defending spearman... Without the spearman getting a scratch, mind you.

after so many games, i have yet to see such outcome. my experience is just as good as grumbold's

civ2 combat was a nightmare, though

[CyberGnu]

Gaiko, I think civ3 suffers from what people in the workplace calls the 'not-invented-here-syndrome'. If you are familiar with this, it is basically an inability for some people to use an idea someone else came up with... Even if it is an obvious improvement.

I think I've mentioned this before, but NOT having stacked combat is like eating with chopsticks when there is a fork available... The only possible reason is pride.


Regarding your view on corruption, I presented a fix for it a while back on similar lines.

First off, change the corruption from from the gross to the net. (I.e., if a city has 6 gold income and a temple + granary, you will after corruption LOSE money on this city, since you'll only have one gold income, but two gold upkeep. Instead, calculate corruption on the net sum, which is four...). I think this makes a lot of logical sense... Look at the british overseas colonies, for example... I'm willing to bet money that self-serving corruption was lower in the colonies than in England proper. Most of that money probably went to paying for local things, however, so the British Empire never saw most of the money.

Second, have two different corruption scales, one for money and one for production. The people you send out to colonize the frontier are the most hard-working, enterprizing people you can find... Certinaly not the procrastinators who post on forums instead of writing their thesis. Production loss should be higher in your capital than anywhere else... Hey, just look at Washington DC...

[Q Classic]

I moved 3 artillery units by rail into a nearby city and started a bombard. First unit: -2HP; second unit -1HP. The Roman unit has 1 red bar left. My 3rd bombard does not damage the Roman unit; instead it destroys the improvment on the square, thus cutting myself off from my saltpetre resource...I believe this is a bug. I have noted also that when bombarding naval units, you CANNOT bombard a unit that only has a single HP left. Artillery does 0, 1 or 2 HP damage in a turn so the Roman unit should have gone first. I can live with the idea that bombardment can damage territory, but not when there is an enemy unit on the square.

it's in the manual, it was a game design decision. you cannot destroy enemy units by bombarding.

------

But the AI seems to want to move severly damaged units out of enemy territory...

???

[UncleBeef]

Originally posted by drmofe
I believe the random number generator implementation to be flawed. This particularly affects combat. The way the random seeding works, entire portions of the game are predetermined. I also believe this implementation leads to a phenomena of long stringsof outcomes that would be statistically unlikely in the real world (think 50 heads out of 50 coin tosses). Such a claim is obviously difficult to prove, so I have to leave that in the realms of faith.
DRM

1.) The random numbers are somewhat deterministic for the very good reason that it prevents the most gross misuse of the "save anytime" feature. Otherwise, you could fight a battle over and over until you won. Currently, you can save, fight a battle, and if you loose, decide not to attack that turn or fight somewhere else to reseed. This is still cheating as far as I'm concerned, but it's better than getting new random results each time.

2.) The random number generator has been studied in pretty good depth in other threads and it has been found to be random.

The argument that I have no counter to, and in fact have to agree with, is that combat is flukey and random because each fight is composed of so few rounds. Doubling the hit points of all the units should make statistical abberations less common.

I also have to agree that the game is clearly a rush job, but that's not always the fault of the development house or the people that wrote the game. Sometimes the publisher and the suits make a stupid demand that the game be shipped on such and such a date, ready or not, and the developers don't get a choice about it. As long as they patch the game in a reasonable ammount of time (2 months or so) I don't fault them for this.

[Warhammer]

You gotta loves threads like this. People complain about civ3 being easy, then talk about EU being the best game, and more realistic. Yeah right, I have never lost a game of EU, and all that it does is become a micro-management nightmare towards the end of the game. You go to the EU boards and they say, "Oh, that's cause you played a major power they are all easy to win with! You need to play Hesse-Cassel and win with them!"

The same guys that talk about a lack of realism in civ3, gotta love it!

If you hate the game so much, quit posting on this forum and play a game you guys like. Being so intensely negative about a game will cause designers to give up on you and design it for those with more reasonable complaints!

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by campmajor!
Firaxis has made some choices. Like excluding the bombardment-to-kill from civ3. In civ2 the best attack unit was a howitzer! A tank was less useful. Now that is unrealistic! To totally wipe out a unit you need ground forces. Just look at Afghanistan, the air force can weaken the Taliban, but the Northern Alliance must use ground forces to take them out.

Let's talk realism then.

Historically, in WW2, the soviet 150mm mobile artillery was a Tiger's second worst nightmare. The massive 150mm warhead's explosion, even without HEAT ammo or anything, was enough to rip any kind of tank apart. (And early in the war, the short barelled Pzkfw IV was not only good as support against infantry, but could actually destroy most tanks at short range.)

THE number one worst nightmare was a dive bombing attack. Even the smallest airplane carried bombs could totally destroy a tank. Even the heaviest tank had rather thin armour on the top.

So please, don't tell me that bombardment to kill is unrealistic. True, the Civ 2 model wasn't too good, but the fact that Civ 3 goes totally overboard in the other direction isn't a solution. They could have modelled the whole combat thing better. (E.g., see the Panzer General series from SSI.) As it is, they just replaced some crap with some other crap.

[Moraelin]

And to answer to the original poster, I haven't bothered uninstalling Civ 3 yet, but I did start playing CTP2 again instead. Civ 3 doesn't even have enough new stuff to be a free mod to Civ 2, much less a commercially sold sequel.

[atog]

I believe the random number generator implementation to be flawed. This particularly affects combat. The way the random seeding works, entire portions of the game are predetermined. I also believe this implementation leads to a phenomena of long stringsof outcomes that would be statistically unlikely in the real world (think 50 heads out of 50 coin tosses). Such a claim is obviously difficult to prove, so I have to leave that in the realms of faith

I see you are ppl who keep reloading the game just because your horseman couldn't beat a warrior defending a 1-pop city. >>>LOL<<<
i believe ALL random factor are predetermined b4 the turn starts, not throughout the game, so try waiting a turn with your horseman (pressing spacebar) and attack the next turn. you might win without losing a single point of health PLUS it might even be upgraded to veteran. ha

I can live with the idea that bombardment can damage territory, but not when there is an enemy unit on the square

Hey, you! do you know in a realistic world, even bomber in second world war have a super high chance missing its target (i forgot the exact number, but it's near 80-90% for sure) so i think that's totally realistic that it would damage anything-- even your own road while you missed your nme.

Then...my Army of ELITE infantry (3 units) moved against a veteran cavalry unit. My army went from green to red in one turn. On the next turn, the cavalry unit, also with 1 HP attacked and defeated my army. This is a nonsense

i notice when you use defensive unit to attack, you are more likely to lose. (it's like the number doesn't matter) (i have always lost musketman to pikeman) **can anyone verify that?

As soon as I won the battle, screen focus shifted from my unit to the middle of the Indian empire (where I had no units or interest), then shifted back

TIP: in your game preference, check the box that says "always wait at the end of turn" i find that's that must.

I threw my veteran immortal unit against an elite roman legionary in a size 2 city. And won the city. This is also a nonsense

So you mean if the game goes like this: a veteran unit ALWAYS lose to an elite unit OR a low attack unit ALWAYS lose to a high def unit, you would more likely to play it???

For a game of strategy to be enjoyable, it must be logical and consistent. If the game, as Civ III does with its references to history, technology and natural resources, claims to reflect some aspects of the real world, the player must be able to transfer what they know about the real world into the game. Battleships should defeat frigates; wounded cavalry should not be able to take out armies etc etc. If the player cannot make a logical transferrence in this way, the game reduces to the random manipulation of numbers, albeit with a fancy graphical portrayal of the results.

personally, i love the game and i cant stand loser who complains about it just coz' they lose 1 war. the world is based on randomness. look that the bright side of it, there ARE ppl who win lottory, even twice! so i think it's completely fair you lose an army to a damaged unit once or twice. consider that calvary won a lottery. if you cant live with that, you might as well decide to not live with the real world.

In conclusion:

That is the worst of gameplay - an attempt to seduce the player into some artificial reality where the way to succeed is to exploit the quirks of the implementation

think of it this way: you are the worst player in the world who cant deal with a good gameplay?

[CyberGnu]

atog, thanks for joining the gaggle of people who thinks that when someone complains about the lack of realism this must mean they can't beat the AI.

How much it must hurt when your universe comes crashing down... Before I deleted the game I regularly beat the game on deity... and I'm one of the most vocal critics here. I guess I should add that I only reload the game if one my conquered cities defect, as I think this is the worst gameplay defect in the game. (BTW, just reloading doesn't help. That's why I always keep an artillery unit in reserve. If a city defects, I reload and attack something with the artillery. That puts a new number in the equation, which usually results in the city not defecting)

Furthermore, the lack of realism only HELPS the AI, not the other way around. On deity, the AI is almost uniformly ahead of you in tech, which means that when my knights kill his riflemen it helps me. Sure, his cavalry can kill my mech. inf., but since I'm aware of the problem I can compensate. The AI can't.

Fixing the broken gameplay decisions can only improve the difficutly of the game, not the other way around.

[gaikokujin]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
Gaiko, I think civ3 suffers from what people in the workplace calls the 'not-invented-here-syndrome'. If you are familiar with this, it is basically an inability for some people to use an idea someone else came up with... Even if it is an obvious improvement.

Yeah, sad, as the whole point of design innovation is the incorporation of bits and pieces of previous inventions in a new synthesis.

I think I've mentioned this before, but NOT having stacked combat is like eating with chopsticks when there is a fork available... The only possible reason is pride.

Heh, sometimes I find chopsticks more convienent, depending on the food - ever eat sushi with a fork?

Regarding your view on corruption, I presented a fix for it a while back on similar lines.

First off, change the corruption from from the gross to the net. (I.e., if a city has 6 gold income and a temple + granary, you will after corruption LOSE money on this city, since you'll only have one gold income, but two gold upkeep. Instead, calculate corruption on the net sum, which is four...). I think this makes a lot of logical sense... Look at the british overseas colonies, for example... I'm willing to bet money that self-serving corruption was lower in the colonies than in England proper. Most of that money probably went to paying for local things, however, so the British Empire never saw most of the money.

Second, have two different corruption scales, one for money and one for production. The people you send out to colonize the frontier are the most hard-working, enterprizing people you can find... Certinaly not the procrastinators who post on forums instead of writing their thesis. Production loss should be higher in your capital than anywhere else... Hey, just look at Washington DC...

I had very very much the same thoughts. But at bottom, the economic model is at fault - and so it has ever been with the Civ series. Make it possible to overcome "corruption" and there is the danger that the player will run away with the game. Make it too severe and - you have CivII in its out of the box form. But it is really the binary oppositions - to borrow some PoMo crap - of citycentrism vs. countryside, population vs. terrain, shields vs. money that is at the root of it. Dealing with that would really mean scrapping the fundamentals of the original Sid design, which has now probably outlived itself.

I hope some of this is sufficiently modifiable and, if so and with the patch(es), I'll be happy enough. Like I said, I'm easy to please in practice, but that's not to be confused with an absence of critical perspective.

And the truly great game is the one scalable enough to appeal to the rookie and hardcore alike.

[Sarxis]

I haven't uninstalled it per se; but I also haven't reinstalled it since I got my new, replacement hard-drive.

I have been holding out for the patch.