It's not whiners vs. fanboys it's Sid fans vs. Brian fans

[yin26]

As I have said, Civ3 rewards mediocrity because the vision and the talent behind it were all mediocre.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by korn469
Is Civ3's greatest flaw also one of its greatest strengths? did making game design choices simple enough for the AI ruin the fun? if that is not it then what is civ3's greatest design flaw? this reminds me of be careful what you ask for you just might get it

everyone wished and wished for an ai that wouldn't get its a$$ handed to to it every single game, and here it is...except now we are all complaining because the game becomes tedius and that there aren't enough choices to make

You can have a simplistic game that is reasonably solid. The Reach For The Stars remake is like that. It has a good AI, is pretty well balanced, and most of it makes sense. I consider it wayyyy better than CivIII.

The greatest design flaw of CivIII is it has something clownish about it. Everything -leader faces, extremist governments, game mechanics- seems to say: 'Don´t take me serious, it´s all just a joke.'

hehe i think even if brian had of stayed and added in a ton of new features that everyone would have complained because the AI was so overwhelmed by decisions that it couldn't do anything at all...so either way people were going to be unhappy

But then at least Multiplayer would be worthwhile...

and this is to all of the civers who despise the SciFi aspect to SMAC, that is just a facade, the game is really just a/d/m etc. anyways (at least to me) then i say i wish for SMAC 2, i don't mean the setting i mean the options, and i don't mean a rehash, i mean going above and beyond the game in every category

civ3 takes two steps forward and one step back, and i just wish it had taken four steps forward and no steps back

As I see it now, it´s just 3 steps back. CivMinus0.5.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by yin26
As I have said, Civ3 rewards mediocrity because the vision and the talent behind it were all mediocre.

'Mediocre' is not really the term that comes to my mind. When I first played the game, I thought only the colours are sickly, and the leader faces clownish. But now I have realized everything about the game is like that.

Whoever the lead designer really was, I would have grave reservations about letting him board a plane...

[yin26]

Civ3 is clownish, tedious and dull. Something tells me no more than 1 or 2 out of those 3 can be fixed...if we're lucky.

[Baloo]

Count me in the "Brian's lovers" faction.

Ever since I saw that Civ III was "just a good game, not an excellent one which every Civ games ought to be" I blamed the departure of Brian & his team for the debacle. I maybe a bit tempered now (perhaps 'cause I stop playing Civ 3 and managing France in Europa Universalis 2 ), but I couldn't help thinking what if the workhorse of Firaxis hadn't left the company. I know from the 90's that Sid always has this loony thinking where his own ambitions must precede realistic, tangible gaming (case #1: Dinosaurs, case #2: Golf game). This guy's name is just for marketing purpose, while he himself should be relegated to the Firaxis office's backchair - never again contributing his loony ideas for new games.

[ACooper]

I think it is "whiners" vs "fanboys".

There are many of us who aggree with the "whiner's" points but can't stand the negative way they post (or the fequency on the same issue). There are many valid points that both have come up with.


BTW (OT), almost all of us aggree that stacked movement would have been nice, I think Firaxis knows it by now also. Let's give it up. It'll either happen or it won't.

[ACooper]

Originally posted by yin26
As I have said, Civ3 rewards mediocrity because the vision and the talent behind it were all mediocre.

Why in the world are you still here if you hate everything so much?

[Sharpe]

I agree with korn - civ 3 is truly the successor of civ 1 , not civ 2 - regretfully that isn't a good thing. It does really appear that a "Sid" vs "Brian" design style conflict existed.

Just look at the tech chart for example, there are less techs in civ 3 than civ 2 (and considerably fewer than SMAC/X). There are about 10 "blank techs", techs that don't provide anything in civ 3 versus only 3 or 4 in civ 2. As well, much to my disappointment, many of the nuances of civ 2 are gone, like the free tech at philosophy, the extra naval movement at nuclear fission and the faster spaceship with fusion power. I read part of John Possidente's strategy guide and it seems like every other page there is a box saying that this thing was in civ 2 but has been removed in civ 3.

It feels as though there isn't much choice of strategies in the game - you must expand all out in the ancient era, you must acquire through trade or expansion the strategic resources (which never ever appear in my territory), you must build up your culture to prevent being taken over or to try to convert your opponents on your continent and you must build large armies, fully expecting to have to reconquer many cities when they convert back to their original civs. There is less buildings to build, less units to choose from and you don't seem to have much of a chance of building wonders.

I mean, why did they not include many of the great ideas from other games - Imperialism and Colonization had a variety of resources, many of which could or had to be improved to be more useful. Starcraft had completely different units for each side that required different strategies for each race, AOK had the unique civ abilities and techs. formations and the rock-paper-scissors units that would have been great in civ (for example, metallurgy increasing the attack of gunpowder units and ships, helicopters that have an attack bonus versus tanks, infantry that could move in square formation for a defensive bonus versus cavalry, but a penalty versus artillery units, cavalry that could move in scout mode - more movement but less powerful, the ability to build small medium or large units, mercenaries for hire, etc.)

Having started nearly 10 games of civ 3, it just doesn't have the "Civ" feeling of the other games. Hopefully if they add more units, buildings, wonders and make some more changes in the MP expansion pack, maybe it can still turn out to be a great game, but right now, it is probably worse than civ 2 and SMAC/X.

[Terser]

A theoretical conversation that could have taken place in late 1999:

Firaxian: "We're going to include this awesome unit, an amphibious assault ship like the marines use. It'll be able to carry a couple of infantry units and two transport helicopters!"

Infogrames exec: "Hmmmmm, I seeeee. Well then, this amplifidius assault plane will increase Civilization III's unit sales by how much, hmmmm?"

Firaxian: "It's an amphibious assault ship"

Infogrames exec: "So...what...100,000 units? 200,000 units? How many asses is it gonna put in the seats, if ya know what I mean?"

Firaxian: "I really don't know...stuff like that is impossible to say..."

And it is. And a conversation like this may have taken place. Or it may not. I like to think it did, because I believe that computer games are basically analagous to works of art. They are labors of love that become a part of the lives of both the creator and the player. If they are made with the overwhelming goal of short-term profits they will have no soul--they will be lacking in the little details and touches that divide the good games from the great.

I like CivIII well enough. There have been several occasions where I have stayed up until 5:00am playing even though I know full well that I have to be at work at 8. But there are two many parts of the game--combat, diplomacy, war weariness, resistance(I could go on)--where I feel like corners were cut to save time and/or money. Too often, I find myself thinking, "Wow, that's pretty awesome, but ya know, it would have been even better if they'd done this..." I honestly never felt that way playing "CivII," or "Age or Empires II," or "Baldur's Gate."

If software design truly is a work of art, then you're not going to be able to quantify the profit potential of a particular aspect of the game on an Excel spreadsheet. You're going to have to trust in the vision of the designers and the intelligence of the consumers to recognize the intangible things that make your product great. Well-deserved profits will follow.

In closing, I would also like to think that a conversation like this took place as well:

Firaxian: "We've got a Special Forces unit in the works. It will be invisible to everything except foot soldiers, armor, and mech infantry. It will have very weak attack and defense but it will still be able to pillage. Also, it will have a "Native support" function: on any turn in enemy territory it will be able to try and create a riflemen unit from the countryside's population. The chance of success will be random, but the type of government the enemy uses will be a factor."

Infogrames exec: "So...Special Forces translates to....how much gross profit from the CivIII project? Any idea of the approximate amount?"

Firaxian: "Impossible to say. What I can guarantee you it will do is maintain the legacy of the Civilization games as a cut above the rest, as an innovative series for which no detail is too small or no new feature too difficult to implement. It would practically assure future sales for an xpack, as well as for CivIV. And it would have a spillover effect for MOO3 and other Infogrames titles..."

[Smash]

Civilization II is simply the greatest game ever made.No intelligent person can think otherwise.

I've seen enough civ2 bashing from people that never really played the game.Civ2 players hate SMAC....well hate is strong but.....Don't even mention CtP.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by Special_Olympic
Thr graphics are so bad in civ2 I can't stand to play it.

You really care about the graphics that much? Try playing it for a few minutes, you might find the graphics are sort of irrelevant...

IMO, the graphics were one of Civ2's greatest strengths. I could change any graphic I wanted, and totally customise the game. You can't do that with any ease in Civ3 or CTP...

[Xentropy]

First, I want to clear up an (apparent from this thread) misconception: Sid himself most certainly does not ask to be placed in the title of his games. That started happening at the behest of publishers when they decided he'd had enough good games under his belt to be worth becoming a household name to help selling them.

Next, just my opinion on a few key points. Some of it may surprise those of you that have classified/ignored me as a fanboy:

I, personally, loved Civ1 and Civ2, hated Colonization, never could get into SMAC very much, and like Civ3 okay.

Now, my reasons, or at least what I believe to be the reasons after having not played most of the above games for quite a while.

Colonization: Micromanagement hell. Every turn, including the very earliest turns, were as bad as manually controlling 50 workers in the modern age in Civ3. Control is good; forcing you to place every member of every colony into a specific job is time consuming and mundane. Oops, little Johnny has turned 18 and become a man, what would you like him to do today? And now that you're done with Johnny, here are the other 500 children this colony had this year, place away! I never got over the micromanagement aspects to get into the game enough to know whether most of Moraelin's points about the gameplay are valid. A definite case of sliding the bar way too far in the "Brian" direction, as this thread puts it.

SMAC: I think a mixture of several nitpicky things made it impossible for me to completely "suspend belief" and get into the game. The gameplay didn't bother me, though it may have been slightly too micromanagey, especially on the neverending terraforming front. But what REALLY bugged me was three things: tech names (tried SO hard to just ignore them and try to learn what each one does, never succeeded, having to look it up EVERY time gets old), bad color scheme (too much red and green, and I am most certainly not the type to care about graphics above gameplay; why this exception? I don't know, I guess the massive headaches the game gave me, and I'm not even colorblind!), and last but not least, the endless terraforming mentioned above. The game turned into turn-based Populous. I loved Populous, but not when each raise land takes 30 minutes of gameplay. I think, overall, this game mixed "Sid" and "Brian" fairly well, but fell short on several key fronts regarding presentation. A real shame. I'd have loved to have gotten that "just one more turn" feeling from this game.

Civ1/2: I found these two games to be very similar... Civ2 was just a natural progression and improvement from Civ1. Brian did a great job, and the end result was NOT micromanagy, something Brian has a problem falling into, judging from his work, yet complex enough over Civ1 to make things more interesting and varied. If I had to pick a favorite TBS, throwing out time frames and everything (i.e. ignoring Civ2's outdated graphics and somewhat outdated interface), I think I'd choose Civ2.

Civ3: Good game, worth the $60 I paid for the CE (though I'd have been just as happy with the $50 SE ;>), but a slight disappointment. I hope to see patches improve things, but this game got so much ALMOST right it's frustrating. I still play the hell out of it, and since given the dearth of good games right now for someone that can't stand first person shooters and "me too" real time strategy games, Civ3 is just about the ONLY game out right now, can you blame me? I think Civ3 is not as good as the fanboys think it is and nowhere near as bad (it's not a beta, for example) as the detractors call it. It's a solid TBS that doesn't quite live up to what it should be and doesn't come CLOSE to living up to the hype. But then, nothing could have lived up to the hype, the hype was insane. Good enough game with enough noticable room for improvement to once again make me lust for game design. And good enough for me to play it 12 hours straight and lose track of time. Good enough to get me fired if I'm not careful ;> (And just when I start to get tired of defaults, bam, improved editor and multiplayer show up. This is my hope, anyway, and I know it's the direction Firaxis wants to go with it.)

Just for completeness sake, I'll mention CtP, but not much: Lawyers? I don't even want to start on CtP. It's not part of the "true" Civ series anyway, IMHO. Less so than Colonization! I like to pretend it never existed because it's so far out of the realm of fun for me. May as well compare the Civ-series to Microsoft Excel for fun value. Gee, which wins?

So, yeah, I guess I'm not Sid *or* Brian, since my tastes fall all over the board. I liked Pirates a lot, not a big fan of Railroad Tycoon, loved both Civ1 and Civ2, detested Colonization, wanted to like SMAC more... I'm middle-of-the-road. I like complexity but hate micromanagement. There IS a difference, and a thin line between. Finding a game design that toes the line properly is difficult, but I hope to see it happen again someday.

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by korn469
everyone wished and wished for an ai that wouldn't get its a$$ handed to to it every single game, and here it is...except now we are all complaining because the game becomes tedius and that there aren't enough choices to make.

"everyone"? Somehow I really don't think "everyone" was even playing either Civ 2 or SMAC on the top difficulty setting. Nor that "everyone" was even going for conquest in the first place. Yes, the AI was beatable on any difficulty setting, but there were a heck of lot of us who couldn't care less. E.g., I'm the pacifist kind of guy who was going for transcendence victory just for the heck of it, even though I could have easily conquered everyone instead. Usually I did have the troops to conquer everyone without breaking a sweat by mid-game, but somehow I never did. I just went for making my people prosperous and happy instead, like I did in any other empire building game. (MOO, MOM, Tropico, Colonization, you name it.)

Civ 3 added... what to my gaming pleasure? Now I'm forced into more pointless wars by the more aggressive AI, and the only way to be safe is to conquer half the country that attacked me, so they'll never be a threat again. And I get what, out of that? More corruption. And to actively promote world aggression, so the other countries will fight each other instead of fighting me. And even if I manage to stay peaceful, the total lack of other options means it will just become boring if I don't get into a war. Effectively I have a playing style enforced upon me that I didn't want in the first place. I CAN conquer everyone, but I DON'T WANT to be a virtual Hitler.

Besides, at the risk of repeating myself, it looks like the "I do conquest on Deity" crowd wasn't THAT well cattered for in Civ 3, either. As I've said, most of the "challenge" seems to come from hitting artifficial limits, than from the AI's acting well.

Let me illustrate with an example from another genre. Let's take racing games. A lot of people have complained that the AI in some games doesn't drive aggressively enough, is overly cautious at corners, and is generally easy to beat by someone who abuses the system and power-slides instead of correctly braking at corners and/or downright plans the curves around well aimed bouncing into walls.

Now let's say someone wants to make a racing game that's not so easy to defeat. Only they make it by puting in a random chance that a tyre will explode, that your engine would malfunction, and that your car would go into a spin because of going over an invisible grease spot. Sure, it would be realistic, and sure, it adds a probability that you'll lose a race. Would it be fun, though? Doubt it. Only more frustrating.

Well, that's about what I think about Firaxis's approach to making Civ 3 harder.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Moraelin

Civ 3 added... what to my gaming pleasure? Now I'm forced into more pointless wars by the more aggressive AI, and the only way to be safe is to conquer half the country that attacked me, so they'll never be a threat again. And I get what, out of that? More corruption. And to actively promote world aggression, so the other countries will fight each other instead of fighting me. And even if I manage to stay peaceful, the total lack of other options means it will just become boring if I don't get into a war. Effectively I have a playing style enforced upon me that I didn't want in the first place. I CAN conquer everyone, but I DON'T WANT to be a virtual Hitler.

Then why are people talking about OCC and 5CC? And winning.

Must be Hitler's all of them. Except, they didn't conquer anyone.

The bottom line is that the game is very different. It's different enough that it takes many playings to discover all its possibilities (I have not gotten anywhere near that yet).

Salve

[Moraelin]

SOME people will want to go for conquest, but SOME people will want to build a rich and prosperous empire and make their people happy. SOME people will like being scheming and going for diplomacy finesse. SOME people will want to be scientifically advanced. Etc.

THAT is the mark of a truly great game. If different people can see different things in it, and can play it towards fundamentally different goals or in fundamentally different ways, then it is indeed some great design in there.

Returning to my Fallout 2 example, that was one RPG where you could actually be a thief or a diplomat or a scientist, not just slaughter everyone in your way. Just about every situation that was part of the main quest had several solutions. To steal some plans from a base you could either go through the front door, guns blazing, or bulls**t your way inside as a recruit and use your wit and fast talking to get what you need, or sneak in and get the job done, or a few other variations and combinations. Side-quests could only have one or two solutions, but there were enough of them for every kind of approach.

So what I'm saying is that Civ 3 is a step back from SMAC in that aspect. It catters to one single group, and even to those it doesn't catter that much better.

Strictly speaking there's also cultural conquest or UN conquest or spaceship, but those are so mechanical and dry, even I've just disabled them. Culture is so badly modelled, it's really just a bad joke. It's yet another game of numbers, and maximizing this over that, and not even a well done number game. Spaceship would be good and fine, or at least no worse than in Civ 2, except it contains such slaps in the face as a party lounge that's the only use for researching lasers. It serves no purpose other than to shove in your face how many useless technologies you've researched, and got no use out of. And UN is the worst joke of them all.

Either way, even if you wanted to go for culture or whatnot, you'll still end up in pointless wars. And the AI will raze the cities it can't keep, so having high culture can actually work against you. So it's back to square one: let's fight everyone.

[ColdFever]

Originally posted by Moraelin
SOME people will want to go for conquest, but SOME people will want to build a rich and prosperous empire and make their people happy. SOME people will like being scheming and going for diplomacy finesse. SOME people will want to be scientifically advanced. Etc. THAT is the mark of a truly great game.

A very important statement - I also found myself most of the times playing a kind of war game that the aggressive AI is embossing, even if I try to avoid it.

Of course war belongs to the human nature - but to me there is little alternative in Civ3 to choose from. I played various games but I perceive that the computer players only distinguish themselves by aggressiveness, not by attitude or even "inspiration".

So to me Civ3 really plays like Civ-Chess: get a good position and go for it - there is no need for ethics, morale and all the other "civilized" stuff...

[LaRusso]

civ1 - excellent, for its time
civ2 - great, for its time
civ3 - great, for its time

CTP - awful, for any time
CTP - awful
(but I do not lurk around CTP fora to state that 1000 times - Yin, please take a note)

SMAC - had interesting ideas but was too big and had too many stuff to build. I love Sci-Fi stuff, but it gets tedious after Super Plasma Bazoong Armor whatever....

Now if we agree with Korn that there are two camps, perhaps Yin may explain us if only mediocrities can enjoy Civ3 (while, I presume, only brilliant minds could enjoy Civ2 and EU)

[Ancientfool]

If I remember a rumor I read years ago... SMAC was great but didnt sell that well. CTP was also full of options and fell on its face when the AI didnt understand how to use those options..... I think the CIV3 team took those lessons to excess and decided for a mass-market, bare bones (for AI purposes) kinda game.

They overlearned the AI and marketing lessons of recent TBS games.

[yin26]

I've already explained why I'm still here. Truth be told, Civ2 is old news now, and EU is an acquired taste that I only picked up out of desperation to figure out what the heck all these people were praising the game for. Glad I gave it a chance.

Civ2 = Played it to death and got more than my money's worth out of it.

EU = Actually hated the first few hours but forced myself to get to the core of the game and, in turn, got more than my money's worth out of it.

Civ3 = Liked the first 2 games then got a sneaking suspicion ... which was proved right by my 4th game ... that it has no soul. But I will say I got my money's worth out of it. Then again, I was playing from a borrowed CD.

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by Special_Olympic
Thr graphics are so bad in civ2 I can't stand to play it.

Go look at the details in these Civ2 units: http://csc.apolyton.net/units8.shtml

The Civ3 atmosphere and terrain graphics (using sn00py's stuff) are far superior to Civ2, but the units graphics in Civ2 is still better at this point. The fundamental purpose of the units graphics is to quickly differentiate one type of unit from the next. In Civ2 it was easily, esp. using Tim Smith's HiRes stuff or any of the custom units you see in CSC. In Civ3, I still have a hard time telling the difference between a spearman and a swordman and sometimes a warrior, esp. at the default zoom.

[ChikenWing]

U guys should read this article, its by Reynolds, pretty interesting

www.gamespy.com/devcorner/april01/reynolds/

[LaRusso]

yup. IMHO they implemented all of his ideas

[tishco]

i played shogun total war in between smac+civ2 and civ3, and i want units paper scissors stone.
when i confidently set my pikmen defending a city against a horse i want the pikman to win easier.
my two pence

[Arrian]

Xentrophy,

I just wanted to say that you summed up my feelings on SMAC better than I have ever been able to. Like you, I wanted to like SMAC... but didn't, for the exact reasons you state. I played it for a little bit, but ended up running back to CIV II after a couple of games.

I've never played Colonization... though I do recall being tempted to buy it. Too bad you didn't get into Railroad Tycoon, but one of my close friends who is a fellow Civ nut doesn't like it either, basically because it's just about building things and making money. I love trains, so I guess that helps.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

As for being forced to fight in Civ III... well, on the higher levels, yes you are, particularly after the patch. I still haven't decided how I feel about that. It seems reminiscent of Civ II MGE, which included a nastier AI than the original. Around the time you hit late industrial/early modern times, every single AI civ became hostile, and you soon ended up battling it out. It seems that Firaxis has taken Civ III in that direction. The patch definitely screwed up my strategy for a bit, as I was not used to being sneak attacked in 2000bc by a warrior (that sucked... warrior v. warrior fight, I lose w/o inflicting so much as 1 hp in damage, Babylon captured, game over. How humiliating). But I'm adjusting. Part of me appreciates that the AI will do things that I would do to it. On the other hand, sometimes it can be frustrating.

-Arrian

[korn469]

i should have clarified, the too most vocal groups of fans are the so called Fanboys who love the game because of the Sid approach, and those whiners who hate the game because it didn't take the Brian approach

of course there are people who hate civ3 because its not starcraft 2, or the sims online, or quake 7...but that is not the people i'm talking about, i am referring to diehard vocal fans of the civ franchise

[Moraelin]

Actually, LaRusso, I'd argue that Civ 3 missed at least half of his points by a mile.

E.g., Civ 3 goes completely against the part where he says that having only linear non-interesting decisions is not fun. THAT is what over-simplifying everything has brought about.

E.g., he clearly states that the way to go is to emphasize rewards and downplay punishment. And that he doesn't want to force the player to use external cheat programs, because suspension of disbelief goes out the window then. And that if you go out of your way to punish the player and stop said player from bypassing those punishments from within the game, he WILL use external programs. Yet Civ 3 saves the random seed.

E.g., he is for helping those who are behind, not for having non-movable invisible walls that you run into when you're ahead. He clearly states that if it gets to a point where you're making no more progress, it's no longer fun. Yet Civ 3 has... what? Corruption run out of control. In every single game I've played, came a point where any new city would actually net me a LOSS. (1 coin, minus cost of temple to keep it from defecting, minus the upkeep of 2 or 3 units there to keep that city = I'm actually losing money there.)

And so on and so forth. That's just three random picks out of a mile long list of stuff that they seem to have missed completely.

[VetLegion]

civing at the speed of thought. that is what I want, I dont give a sh1t is it designed by brian, sid or yin26

TBS should be fast on a 450 Mhz machine.

[VetLegion]

In every single game I've played, came a point where any new city would actually net me a LOSS. (1 coin, minus cost of temple to keep it from defecting, minus the upkeep of 2 or 3 units there to keep that city = I'm actually losing money there.)

Man, you are ignoring so many factors here. You couldnt finish a game if you dont think of long term values. Every military unit is a loss of money if you look at it that way, together with most buildings etc. The first thing a little civer learns in school:

1. It is not possible to describe value of a city with money.

[Cypselus]

Nice article, and describes exactly what's wrong with Civ 3.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by korn469
i should have clarified, the too most vocal groups of fans are the so called Fanboys who love the game because of the Sid approach, and those whiners who hate the game because it didn't take the Brian approach

of course there are people who hate civ3 because its not starcraft 2, or the sims online, or quake 7...but that is not the people i'm talking about, i am referring to diehard vocal fans of the civ franchise

Korn, I see what you mean, and yes, I am definitely hard-core 'Brian approach', but I liked CivI, and I admit that the Sid approach may work, it just doesn´t work in CivIII, because that game was made by neither Sid nor Brian. They didn´t even make clear exactly who is responsible, for good reason...