The end of civilization as we know it

December 11, 2001, 22:03

I think civ is pretty much done. Civ3 will never be popular MP (Even though Firaxis will release an MP version in an attempt to rape the public). The SP version is going to be only enjoyable with massive amounts of moding, and that usually marks the end of a game when that happens. You can always tell when a game sucks when there are official mods that people suggest to download as soon as you get the game. I downloaded a mod for the graphics on civ 3 and I couldn't believe how great they were. It makes me wonder how Firaxis could spend years developing this game and have such horrible graphics when 1 guy in the course of about a month somehow made graphics that looked godlike compared to the original. Civ3 is nothing more than a horribly done expansion pack. So back to the point, civ3 will never be a popular game. That leaves two options...play civ2 MP for the next 3-4 years (or maybe even more), or not play at all and wait for Civ IV (Which somehow I don't think will ever even come out after the civ3 fiasco). In any event, civ2 is just going to continue to die more. You can already see it. The forums for civ2 are nearly dead. MP playing on the zone is dying as well as on the forums. I myself have already moved on to another game. So that leaves just one last question, how much longer will civilization go on? I give it 1 year until only the most die hard players are left. 3 months after the release of civ3 MP and those forums will pretty much die too.

Smash · December 12, 2001, 01:49

You may be right

A slight downturn was expected.Maybe 3 months if the game was...well...what it is.Somewhere between total crap and total fantastic.
But even now when I fire up good ole civ2,it looks..well...ancient.Its still a great game...but now I am spoiled by fancy looking units.But this latest version has left me wanting....what to do?
Its times like this when I wish I had the resources to make my own damn version and get it right.I mean Gates type of resources.I could probably get 90% of the people to do it for nothing also.

If there ever is a Civ4,they better have some actual civ players making it.There are reasons why I avoid CtP and SMAC like the plague(SMAC not too bad,,but that sci fi stuff is not for me).

ravagon · December 12, 2001, 01:52

There are those who say that graphics are actually not the mark of a strategy game ...

Also civ3 is going through a period of tweaking/balancing/bugfixing and as such is not at its "final product" stage. That it probably shouldn't have been released before near the end of that stage isn't really in question but its still (IMO) too soon to write it off at this stage ...
Its also too soon to write off any MP capability before these issues are resolved and MP's release.

Smash · December 12, 2001, 02:16

of course good graphics don't make a good game but they don't hurt.Civ3 art is not good.Animated units are.

Yes civ3 is not finished.But I don't like the direction they have chosen.
I kinda knew when I kept reading on the suggestions/ideas forums.Some of the stuff scared the heck out of me.Now I know why.
As soon as they announced trade was more or less gone and changed to some obscure process...well that raised a flag.I never let my expectations get too high.It started to dawn on me that civ2 players didn't really want a drastically changed game.Thats why we kept playing it.

I do like civ3.
Strategic resources is a very good new idea.
great leaders are another neat idea.
Diplomacy is better..but that can be double edged.I think it was expanded too much.It dominates too much of the game play.
Golden Ages...another good idea.Bad for mp though.I think.
Special units---not sure about them.Kinda like but they do make for tremendous imbalance

But I love civ2.Put these ideas in civ2 and I am very pleased.

Rasputin · December 12, 2001, 06:53

the problem is that civ 3 isnt a sequel to civ 2 (which is what us diehards wanted) it is a sequel to CTP 2 and SMAC... so it is full of different things that totally changed the game, i enjoy it, but i think MP is a long way off

Ming · December 12, 2001, 10:19

EnigmaticGod... While (at this point in time) I disagree with you that the Civ series is toast... You raise a lot of valid points.
But many of us still see Civ II MP as a playable game, and I expect to continue to play Civ II MP for a long time to come. I hope a lot of our normal group feel the same way, and it appears that they do.

Civ III has a lot of problems, and I see it is even worse for the future of MP. MP will have to be REALLY different for it to be any good. My hope is that they figured out that SP and MP are two entirely different things, and that they couldn't release MP for that reason. Maybe when MP comes out, there will be a lot of different built in options that will allow us to make the needed choices to make it an interesting and faster moving game without having to download mods and making sure that everybody is using the same one. I remain optimistic... (for now)

But maybe we should turn our attention to somewhere else.
From what I understand, Free Civ is more like what many of us wanted for Civ III than the game that was released. Maybe it's time for us to look into Free Civ and see if it will serve our needs.

I don't really know... but it might be worth checking out. Are any of the regular MP crowd well versed on Free Civ?

drake · December 12, 2001, 10:24

I see nothing wrong with civ2 mp. Theres still a few dedicated groups to play with. I think thats all that is needed to keep the fire burning, if only on a very small scale.

Supposedly, there is going to be two large diplo games after the first of the year....that should generate a bit of interest I think.

I'll play civ3 mp if and when it comes out, atleast for awhile. Civ isn't dead. But as you can see, only the true civ nuts are still playing civ2 mp. The rest have sold out to the glitz of civ 3 or packed it up.

War4ever · December 12, 2001, 10:46

I wouldn' say that civ3 is a sequel to ctp/smac, more like they took alot of the "praised" features out of those games...

that said, MP looks scary. the trade system wont' work in MP, no one is going to accept 20g a turn for iron , so your swordsmen can come and take whats left of their empire....well a newbie might, once

the terrain is just awful looking and i do mean awful....what is that , jungle? forest?

animated units are nice....but they don't add that much, i would rather have gameplay then nice looking units..

Smash when i load civ2 i get the same impressions.....

my biggest concerns are that the map fills too quickly with both ai expansion (a good thing) and culture....increased borders make the board feel smaller...

larger maps are not an option for this guy as the ai turns can take forever to load up......

i miss my caravans/dips/spies....

i dislike two different settler units ala smac... public works seems more appropriate

i don't mind connecting roads with workers, but when they undo improvements that is puzzling..so the automate doesn't work.

the game has the same flaws as its predecessors.... with radically different approaches...and the exploration period seems too short.

its a shame , i had high hopes for civ3 but it never grabbed me like civ1/2 did.

patches aren't going to fix the major flaws of this game......

too many unbalancing features for mp.....and if you turn them off , then you have a game with new graphics.....

Could anyone imagine Deity or Xin Yu moving 150 workers/artillery/tanks/boats......

i still play civ2 MP when time permits..... and it looks as if die hard TBS players will play it until civ3 is primed for MP or until some other civ type clone (maybe a new series) comes along and provides that same feeling.

one last note....only for about 10 days did i have that euphoric feeling of just one more turn.....considering i had that feeling in civ1/2 for about 8 years or so, i feel as if civ3 is a MAJOR disappointment..... and i have since deleted my pirated version.

drake · December 12, 2001, 10:52

Yes, I really dont understand or appreciate them taking out caravans and spies. Whats up with that? I always thought it was great fun to send out a few boatfuls of freights and send them out to foreign ports.

Deity moving 150 units is NOT a pretty site

DaveV · December 12, 2001, 11:18

Quote:

Originally posted by Ming
From what I understand, Free Civ is more like what many of us wanted for Civ III than the game that was released. Maybe it's time for us to look into Free Civ and see if it will serve our needs.

I experimented with FreeCiv, and I found it lacking at the time I played it. It has some markedly different features from Civ 2, and I thought there were as many or more bad changes than good. The worst was that tech cost stayed flat during the game, so my research time kept getting shorter and shorter. Shield grassland is very rare, and I think ICS is overpowered. This dates back to about a year ago, so things may have changed since then. CapTVK seems to be up to date on FreeCiv.

The advantage of FreeCiv is that it's open source, and a dedicated group of people would be able to modify it. But then you're back in the dilemma of playing with a non-standard variant of the game. I don't think a "perfect" game will ever be made; I'm willing to wait and see what happens in the future with Civ 3.

Rasputin · December 12, 2001, 13:47

Quote:

Originally posted by War4ever
that said, MP looks scary. the trade system wont' work in MP, no one is going to accept 20g a turn for iron , so your swordsmen can come and take whats left of their empire....well a newbie might, once

i guess it depends on whether you have access to the same resources, you might be missing horses, so your swordsmen agaisnt horses might be fun. i think there will be more oppurtunity to form an alliance with certain other players based on shared resources, a bit like real world. I will protect you if you give me access to more resources sort of thing.

Quote:

the terrain is just awful looking and i do mean awful....what is that , jungle? forest?

fortuantly there are some good graphic downlaods in civ3 forum

Quote:

animated units are nice....but they don't add that much, i would rather have gameplay then nice looking units..

totally agree

Quote:

larger maps are not an option for this guy as the ai turns can take forever to load up......

large maps no problem once you turn off show enemy moves.i play with huge world map and i only have a P3 with 32MB Ram

Quote:

i miss my caravans/dips/spies....

they were both way too powerful and i glad they gone!!!!

Quote:

i don't mind connecting roads with workers, but when they undo improvements that is puzzling..so the automate doesn't work.

use SHIFT-A to automate, this then doenst let them undo previous improvements.

Quote:

Could anyone imagine Deity or Xin Yu moving 150 workers/artillery/tanks/boats......

defiantly a thought not worth dweilling on, and probably the main reason Civ3 MP wont work

rah · December 12, 2001, 17:42

Wow, such pessimism. Even though I originally felt the same way, after really thinking about it, this could be a wonderful MP game.
Obviously it will take a little work though.

1. Allow all civs to chose their own two characteristics. and their own UU from a short list (I wish we could do this in SP). I think it would add some variation. This would eliminate all the wimpy UUs, since no one would choose them, Unless they wanted to try a unique stratagy.

2. Find a way so that starting positions would be a little more equal. (there is variation in CIVII but we still make do) But it would be more important in civIII since there is more variation.
THIS IS THE MOST CRITICAL TWEAK

3. Tweak the automate worker options just a bit more.

4. ADD A STACK MOVE COMMAND.

5. Remove free info from the diplo menus. ie, cities, techs.

6. when clicking on enemy stacks, just show one unit.

7. don't show borders till contact with that civ has been established.

8. reduce the mins and maxs for tech develop.
And allow progression to next era without completing current.

9. Make monarchy good for something.

With these few changes, I think the the game turns would move rather quickly. By the time you get 150 workers, most of them should be on auto anyway, (with minor tweaks to the auto commands) Moving stacks would help immensely. The go to command actually works. No caravans to slow things down.
The different winning conditions would actually mean something without AI's. Imagine rushing to complete your spaceship while someone is closing in a culture win or domination win. And while a newbie thinks the UN will win him a game.

AND NUKES, expensive but almost worthless, what fun.

Even the corruption at the current levels wouldn't bother me if everyone had to deal with it.

The simplified combat would even help since a techno lead wouldn't guarentee auto romp and stomp. This would lead to more games being continued.

No more defending with just a couple of vet mustkets.

The culture conversions would add great fun;

There is no cheat mode so playing with two computers would be much harder. The diplo options are so expensive and unreliable that to use them would be a big risk, so probably won't be used.

The only way to get leaders is through fighting someone.

This game has a lot of potential, and I hope they do it right.

And I do think there will be a FEW resource trades during the game. OR SOME REAL GOOD FIGHTS OVER THE EXISTING ONES>

Rich.
The cup is half full, not half empty.

General Maximus · December 12, 2001, 17:58

i have to agree with MOST of you on Civ3. The length of time the AI takes was killing me(i now know how to turn it off)

Civ3 is not a sequel. Rocky 3 was not about rocky doing community service, it was about rocky boxing and his life. It was a sequel. Civ3 is an entirely new game with graphics to get the first person shooter kids interested. I am glad that i downloaded Civ3, no harm done, i deleted all remenants of it. Civ2 wasn't working right with it installed anyway....which is a C-O-N-spriracy in itself.

i will stick with Civ2, with various unit and terrain modpacks, and continue to play tribe games, and MP with Zonies....

to each his/her own....

SlowwHand · December 12, 2001, 19:10

Gawd. What a bunch of doom sayers.

ravagon · December 12, 2001, 20:45

Quote:

Originally posted by General Maximus
i have to agree with MOST of you on Civ3. The length of time the AI takes was killing me

I must say that isn't something I expected to see in a civ2 MP thread!

Ming · December 12, 2001, 20:47

Yeah... half full... half empty.

It's all up to Firaxis.

I would add three things to Rah's list.
MORE GAME OPTIONS!
MORE GAME OPTIONS!
and MORE GAME OPTIONS!

A choice for changing corruption levels... a choice to include the diplomatic functions... Allowing later diplomatic options earlier in the game... many many options. BUT NONE THAT REQUIRE YOU TO MAKE CHANGES IN THE PROGRAM... just pure simple options when you start the game.

I especially like the idea of letting players customize their civs... other wise, the game will be really unbalanced, and the race for picking civs will be almost as good as the fights over key resources

War4ever · December 12, 2001, 20:59

Rich.....with all of those changes your proposing you might as well call it civ4

i will concede the fact that the if the game is tweaked into something that you enjoy, i will give mp a whirl i feel we enjoy the many of the same things...... until then, i will keep on civin civ2 style

Nap Bonaparte · December 12, 2001, 22:06

There are a lot of good points here regarding Civ3 MP potential. I wondered what the early game would be like with the mad rush to find horse/iron locations in addition to finding luxury resources and good river locations for cities. I think that most MP games would be decided rather early on by the haves vs. the have nots.

But the thing that finally disillusioned me was the power of despotic pop. rush. I played out the 1st Apolyton Tournament scenario as the Babs and finally saw how effective despotic pop. rush was. Domination victory by 400AD and all my cities were size 1 or 2. Found a city, pop rush a granary, temple and barracks and then you can crank out a vet horse/swordsman every 3-4 turns depending on food production. Towards the end you can pop rush libraries. This approach makes ICS seem like Sim City.

Combine this with idiocy factors such as keeping everyone with the same number of relatively un-corrupted cities and minimum # turns to learn new techs and I dont see the point of MP past initial warmongering over strategic resources.

General Maximus · December 12, 2001, 22:36

Quote:

Originally posted by ravagon

I must say that isn't something I expected to see in a civ2 MP thread!

a HUMAN making decisions is one thing, but a cheating AI taking 25 minutes to attack another cheating AI in early stage of the game is BS.

if you have the units to move, i'll wait, but i will NOT wait for the GAME to figure out what the hell it's doing. a smarter AI takes it's toll, it checks alot of things, then attacks accordingly, it's like watching a newbie micromanage 5 cities. REALLLY BOOORING.

suas333 · December 12, 2001, 23:13

maybe then everyone will return to civ2 MP after they are bored of Civ3

War4ever · December 13, 2001, 01:22

Quote:

Originally posted by Nap Bonaparte
There are a lot of good points here regarding Civ3 MP potential. I wondered what the early game would be like with the mad rush to find horse/iron locations in addition to finding luxury resources and good river locations for cities. I think that most MP games would be decided rather early on by the haves vs. the have nots.

But the thing that finally disillusioned me was the power of despotic pop. rush. I played out the 1st Apolyton Tournament scenario as the Babs and finally saw how effective despotic pop. rush was. Domination victory by 400AD and all my cities were size 1 or 2. Found a city, pop rush a granary, temple and barracks and then you can crank out a vet horse/swordsman every 3-4 turns depending on food production. Towards the end you can pop rush libraries. This approach makes ICS seem like Sim City.

Combine this with idiocy factors such as keeping everyone with the same number of relatively un-corrupted cities and minimum # turns to learn new techs and I dont see the point of MP past initial warmongering over strategic resources.

and for diplogaming...don't count on that "friend" giving you a saltpeter/rubber/fill in the blank resource just because another rival is attacking you.

Lets face it... with resources in the game, only the strong survive...and early on that means iron/horses.... without them your not going to make the mid game...much less the end game.why would someone rent you theirs if you have nothing they need.

This game needs drastic changes for SP much less MP

Ming · December 13, 2001, 10:36

While I see many potential problems currently for MP based on where the SP version is right now... Strategic Resources really isn't one of my concerns. It's really no different than "trade specials" in Civ II. If you are playing a game with good players, if you don't have trade specials anywhere near your starting position, you are going to fall behind. Even an aggessive ICS approach doesn't save you, because the rest of the good players are doing the same. You fall so far behind in sciences, that you don't get even a crack at many of the good wonders.

Don't get me wrong... Strategic resources will be important and can make or break you. But I see the fights for resources as being a plus instead of a minus. If you have the tech lead, you will see them before your opponent does... and that should lead to some real interesting situations.

One good thing about Civ III is that it forces combat. While this might not be good for Diplo style games, it will add more fun to the traditional game. There will have to be a balance between expansion and war. Building wonders will be based on the race for great leaders... and war is the only way to get them

It should make for some more interesting games.

December 13, 2001, 12:54

Actually it's a minus Ming. Look at the way the resources are put on the map as you get them. They occur in clumps. You'll have like 6 dye all in one little spot for one civ, then the other civ gets all kinds of iron in 1 little spot, then the next civ gets all kinds of wine in one little spot. They took the value of resources right out of the game. The only thing resources are good for now is for trading and that's why they occur in clumps. Otherwise it's just a rush to find the grassland squares. Every map looks the same too. Each civ starts on a grass land clump, then there are massive stretches of desert, then massive stretches of plains, then massive stretches of forest, and then stretches of mountains and stretches of tundra. Everything is done in clumps in this game. Every map looks the same and the map customizer doesn't really do ****. Not only that but I somehow feel like I'm looking a very very bland map. The only thing I feel like going out and grabbing are cattle. Whereas in civ2 I felt this great urge to go out and conquer every resource on the map. I salivated when I saw whales and gold, or when I saw silk. Now I see these little clumps and I wonder what the use of them is. I can't even use whales until my culture expands, and I won't even get started on culture. Instead of having a race for resources, you now have a given amount of resources. ANd 90% of the time you are going to be without iron. SO then you go and conquer the guy with the iron. Fun stuff. Yipeee!! Now I get to build some swordsmen. Was it really useful? All I got from that iron was to be able to build some swordsmen. There's no resource bonus, just the ability to trade now and build a few units. Colonies are completely useless. Why build a colony when you can build a city right next to it and keep the resource within your borders? There's so much stuff that's wrong with this game I could probably write a book on it.

rah · December 13, 2001, 13:38

"ANd 90% of the time you are going to be without iron."

Don't know what game you're playing. 90% is a slight exageration. Unless you're counting only when it appears on your existing road network in your territory.

Luxuries are clumped, resourses much less so.

And I agree with ming that this should encourage more war, and earlier. Granted if there is no AI, somebodies gonna get that wonder. I predict that most wonders will still be built the old fashioned way. How many leaders are you gonna get fighting each other. It's not as easy to pummel a human, or setup those situations where a leader is likely. I'm not gonna attack that stack of elite swordsman fortified on that mountain like the AI does. I will have to be much more concerned about overextending myself against Humans because the AI let's you get away with it most of the time.

RAH

Besides, we'll have to go to war early, just to keep us from shooting ourselves out of boredom.

December 13, 2001, 14:36

You may not care that you have to fight in order to get certain resources because you play MP games with tons of players and you play for months at a time. However not everyone wants to spend their life playing one game. Duels will always be the main way of competitive play and in civ3 duels are impossible. On a small map the iron will very easily be in one guys territory or the other and they sure as hell aren't going to trade it. Game over. No duels, no competitive play. No Competitive play, no ladders. No ladders and you're going to have a very very unpopular game with some social Mpers on apolyton that will amount to the entire MP community.

common_terry · December 13, 2001, 14:48

wanna play me?

icq=137808936

Ming · December 13, 2001, 15:31

Quote:

Originally posted by EnigmaticGod
You may not care that you have to fight in order to get certain resources because you play MP games with tons of players and you play for months at a time. However not everyone wants to spend their life playing one game.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA... Eyes, I don't play the Diplo games

Most of the games our group plays are usually one night (one session) afffairs. with 3 to 4 players. (any more than that, and it gets a little slow and boring

) I have no intention of spending my life playing a single game (but continuing one every once in a while would be nice)

But you are right... Duels will lose their appeal if it just comes down to the luck of the draw on horses or iron.

I hope one of the game options will be "equal distribution of strategic resources"

Again, as the game is now, there are many serious problems and issues for MP. And again, I think many of them can be solved by providing MANY, MANY, MANY built in game options in the start up menus. But after saying that... MP will have to be different than SP... And I hope that Firaxis realizes that.

rah · December 13, 2001, 15:50

Quote:

Originally posted by EnigmaticGod
You may not care that you have to fight in order to get certain resources because you play MP games with tons of players and you play for months at a time. However not everyone wants to spend their life playing one game. Duels will always be the main way of competitive play and in civ3 duels are impossible. On a small map the iron will very easily be in one guys territory or the other and they sure as hell aren't going to trade it. Game over. No duels, no competitive play. No Competitive play, no ladders. No ladders and you're going to have a very very unpopular game with some social Mpers on apolyton that will amount to the entire MP community.

Nothing could be farther from reality.

We don't play with tons of players. (maybe out of a group of 10-20 players)

Any particular game has 3-5 players. I've played no more than a handful of duels in the last 3 years. I don't really like duels personaly, which is sometimes strange because if we're in a 3 man game and one person isn't the best of players, it's really a duel.

98% of our games are 1 sitting only. A continued game is very rare.

Our games are very very competitive which I wouldn't classify as social. (depending on how much everyone has had to drink)

There are quite a few groups similar to ours and there is some crossovers. It's usually based on reputation.

I have never participated in any rankings or ladders from lack of desire. I get good competition without it and don't have to worry about all the gray area stuff that is associated with any type of SCORING.

If you have been unable to to find ties with groups of trustworthy, competitive, reliable and fun players, I could see how you might feel the way you do. But I don't share any of those feelings and don't predict all the doom and gloom that you do.

RAH
Of course this is just my opinion, and as usual, could be wrong

Gee, got distracted while typing this post at work and didn't read Ming's post. We're not twins, nawwwww.

SlowwHand · December 13, 2001, 21:12

"Clumps" seems kind of natural to me.
I mean, in the real world you have forests and no forest.
Gold wasn't found everywhere, neither is oil.
I haven't played III, but most of what I hear seems more the natural order of things.

Or am I misguided and way off base?

cavebear · December 13, 2001, 21:52

I've played Civ3 a few times now (mostly in 10 hour sessions), and the resources problem is serious. With certain limited resources like iron or horses, there are essential units that you simply cannot build and the AI civs often have just one (and therefore can't trade) or more (and won't trade). Or you can't trade with them because they won't build any roads near you and you have to have a road to their capital to trade on.

The AI demand trades that they wouldn't remotely consider in reverse (if you offered the same deal).

It is an "awkward" game in SP, and seems impossible to imagine in MP.