Libertarian, it finally happened

[Heliodorus]

My disillusionment is finally complete.

Playing the Romans on Monarch, I played a wonderful and interesting ancient and medieval game consisting of a series of organized wars against the Germans and then Persians. I seized my island, roughly 35% of the entire land mass of the world, a great, well-stocked continent of about 30-35 cities (large map). At peace, I fought pollution with my LEGION of captured workers and a small number of Romans quite effectively until, after recycling, the pollution menace was virtually extinct.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, I plotted for approximately 40-50 turns to overthrow the French civilization, located on a small island about 8 squares off my southern coast. I built 8 aircraft carriers stocked with 2 bombers and 2 fighters each. I had a fleet of 12 destroyers, 4 battleships, and 10 transports. The transports boasted 40 tanks (including 3 armies), 8 artillery, 8 settlers (for razing purposes), and 8 workers (to clean their infernal pollution that they left unattended - we romans care about our planet) and 16 infantry...

After that 40-50 turns of building an invasion force, I invaded. Over the course of about 10 turns, I took several French cities immediately, and then slowly crawled across their island with my tank force and infantry support, bombing over and over again every turn...

But I began to realize that having to activate all of my bombers every turn was a nightmare. Having to bomb each city each turn was delaying the game, crawling my tanks across the island at one or two squares per turn was a bad idea since it would have been faster (but not MUCH faster) to load everyone back in transports and take them to the next invasion point... My fighters could not escort my bombers on missions even when they were in range, so my bomber force kept being destroyed (fortunately ampel bomber power remained to rebase from the mainland to the fleet), several of my carriers "attacked" undetected submarines by moving into their squares having not seen them (this happened to destroyers, too), and I wasn't able to hunt down the subs except to move something through EVERY square of ocean... In the end, I decided it was a moot point.

I COULD have wiped out the French, and then spent another few turns reorganizing and going after the Egyptians, Iriquois, and finally Aztecs... but if I really wanted to enjoy my game, it became apparent that I needed to start a new one. Once my race to complete Hoover Dam was complete, not one turn more was compelling.... It seems that way every game. Once I complete Hoover Dam - it's only a matter of deciding which type of victory I want, UN, cultural, space race (I don't have the patience to go for conquest)...

In the final analysis, I got my money's worth out of Civ3. But it only gets a C grade in my book. It won't be able to keep the fascination past the industrial age - and eventually I'll grow tired of playing the older two ages.... Ah well...

All power corrupts, right Sid...? And we rise to the level of our incompetence, just like John Romero... right Sid?

[ACooper]

OOOOHHHHH! Do you get to join the secret club now?

[Libertarian]

Heliodorus:

My heart goes out to you. Practically every concern that I have with Civ3 reduces, in the end, to its late-game tedium. I've enumerated those concerns enough times and in enough detail that I'll spare you another litany.

God bless you, my sun.

[ACooper]

My question is this... If you (not directed to anyone in particular) enjoyed civ1 or civ 2, how can civ3 be seen as so tedious? It's the same concepts of moving units around, etc, etc.

Bombers work differently but they involve less interaction now. i.e. select the bomber, select bombard, select target as opposed to the old way of move,move,move,...,move,attack (unless your bomber was out previously theh it would be move,move,...,move,land in freindly city.)

You have always had to move workers and tanks around pretty much the same way.

Why attack Sid for using the same basic board game concepts that have always been the foundation of the Civ series?

I don't get how people can be so disgusted with it.


BTW, I have finished 5 games now and yet to have a problem with the interface that wasn't my fault.

[Special_Olympic]

Originally posted by ****gyRA
My question is this... If you (not directed to anyone in particular) enjoyed civ1 or civ 2, how can civ3 be seen as so tedious? It's the same concepts of moving units around, etc, etc.

Bombers work differently but they involve less interaction now. i.e. select the bomber, select bombard, select target as opposed to the old way of move,move,move,...,move,attack (unless your bomber was out previously theh it would be move,move,...,move,land in freindly city.)

You have always had to move workers and tanks around pretty much the same way.

Why attack Sid for using the same basic board game concepts that have always been the foundation of the Civ series?

I don't get how people can be so disgusted with it.



BTW, I have finished 5 games now and yet to have a problem with the interface that wasn't my fault.

Give it time and you too will hate this game.

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by ****gyRA

You have always had to move workers and tanks around pretty much the same way.

Why attack Sid for using the same basic board game concepts that have always been the foundation of the Civ series?

I don't get how people can be so disgusted with it.

I am not that tired of it, but it is somewhat tiresome since I have played Call to Power II. Once you know there is a better system, you really don't like going back to an old one.

[ACooper]

I've played civ3 3 or 4 nights a week since November 1st. I've played all the previous incarnations of civ since they were first released (on my HD right now is Civ1, Civnet, Civ2, Civ2MGE, Civ2TOT,CTP1 and CTP2) Every single one of those games has needed patched. (Several patches in fact)

Why do you assume that since you don't have patience nobody else should. It's a good game. Weak in some areas, strong in others. It will be even better.

Maybe in time I will hate this game, I can't see the future. That is for me to decide and if I do I won't hang around here to whine.


BTW, Favorite game is still the original Civilization. (I just love it when the volcano errupts because I don't have a Temple.)

[Libertarian]

Sh*ggy:

(What on earth does s-h-a-g mean in whatever dialect that necessitates its preemption?)

Continuing our civility from the other thread, let me answer your question as best I can. Yes, we know that if we exercise great care, we will not fall victim to interface issues. If I slow down, I will notice that it was in fact a worker back home that activated, and not the tank that I had expected.

What we're trying to tell you is that even after we have surrendered ourselves to the demands of the rigid interface, we are bored to death.

As I see it, my choices are between these two evils: (1) fight the interface — that is, pull focus back to my battle theater each time the interface yanks me away; or (2) yield to the interface — that is, execute orders to whatever unit activates in whatever order.

The first choice is the lesser evil, in my view, because if I lose the continuity of carrying out my battle campaigns and terrain improvements in accordance with sensible theaters of activity, I have lost my immersion in the game. But chosing the lesser evil means that I must remove myself from the game as well to manage the interface.

For years, such interface management was the killjoy of so much software (not just games — word and image processing, spreadsheets, databases, etc.) that developers began to encapsulate the complexity of interfaces so that users could concentrate on their OWN work, rather than the work of the programmers.

I made a good-faith effort to ameliorate the problems with late-game tedium by playing on smaller maps and using fewer workers. It was a bit better, but not much. Turns still take hours for me late in the game, not because the movement is slow, but because I have to BE... SO... CAREFUL. And I constantly have to guide the software to where it ought to go naturally: the proximate theater of activity. It's truly maddening.

And then insult is added to injury when I encounter such enigmatic features as the Domestic Nag, whom I must dismiss more than a hundred times with the same message over a matter that I consider trivial — PLUS — really important messages fly by so fast that I cannot read them. And trust me, I can read at a pretty good clip.

When you put it all together, it adds up to an utter dread of each turn, so much so that my last game, which I haven't touched in quite some time, is still saved and still unfinished.

It is my hope that you can muster just enough empathy to hear what we are saying. Perhaps we have not conducted ourselves well in the past, owing mostly to our anger and frustration at receiving no meaningful acknowledgment. But our behavior aside, our complaints are objectively valid.

[cutlerd]

Geez...name a civ game against AI that doesn't bog down in the late game? SMAC? Give me abreak. Unless flying hyped up super chopper after super chopper is your thing. SMAC's late war problem is even more heinous because you can build millions of 1 pop sea cities everywhere on the damned map!

CIV2? Once you got tanks and your opponents fully railed their civ it was all over. Kaput! You spent the next hour after hour moving armour and spies like a hot knife through butter and once howitzers showed up fagedaboudit! I never even really got to use those nifty CIV2 TOT genetic space monkey units much and I found that I kept having to abort CIV2 games after I got tanks and railroad because it got too boring. I knew I'd win.

CTP1? The AI could never use space units or the non combat units properly. Once you got Corporate Franchises you built two of them, shuttled them to the other continents, franchise every enemy and neutral city in existence, and outproduce the crap out of everyone. My the time you got armour CTP was almost over and by the time you got Robot Walkers the game was just tedium.

CTP2? AI was so bad I could never get through a full game...but hell that game got tedious even before the industrial age!

The problem with any CIV type game is:

1. There are a hell of a lot of units to move around

2. At some point in the game against AI you KNOW you've won it but you haven't met the actual victory conditions.

Personally, I find CIV3 holds my late game interest longer than any of the other games. First because there are enough different types of victories that going for one type makes the end game different than going for another.

Second, the AI is better and that plus the fact that you cannot completely out tech everyone on the planet means in a huge map 16 civ game I usually always have a rival or two to keep me interested.

Third, the time between complete domination and the end of the game is truncated more in CIV3 than in the other games, which means I often have to race to actually finish dominating the world by the end of the game. In other words, even if at a certain point in CIV3 I know I can beat up every other civ in the game, actually managing it before the end of the game at 2050 AD still remains somewhat of a challenge. In CIV2 or SMAC the point between getting the dominating units and the end of the game was so long that there was no race or challenge involved.

I agree with many that CIV3 needs a stacking function with regard to movement, but did CIV2 have such a thing?

I find myself completing more CIV3 games to the very end than I ever did of SMAC or CIV2 or CTP.

Devin

[Trifna]

Libertarian, may I ask you the traduction of "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum"? I do not have any latin knowledge...

[techumseh]

Originally posted by ****gyRA
My question is this... If you (not directed to anyone in particular) enjoyed civ1 or civ 2, how can civ3 be seen as so tedious? It's the same concepts of moving units around, etc, etc.

I really don't know why it is, but it is. I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it's because I've played all the other games too. But there's something less immediate or tangeable about the results you get from strategies, particularly military ones. I'm just guessing, but I wonder if those who regularly use the conquest strategy in Civ2 (like me) are less satisfied than those who traditionally go to Alpha Centauri.

Another thought is that because the AI colonizes every scrap of land (and you have to as well, because the early game is even more of a city founding race than Civ2) you get this oversize empire which requires excessive management much earlier in the game. I know planning the location of new cities is less fun too, because you really need to put cities just about everywhere.

[Libertarian]

Originally posted by Trifna
Libertarian, may I ask you the traduction of "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum"? I do not have any latin knowledge...

"Do not multiply entities beyond necessity."

It's popularly known as Ockham's Razor.

[Murtin]

Bombers work differently but they involve less interaction now. i.e. select the bomber, select bombard, select target as opposed to the old way of move,move,move,...,move,attack (unless your bomber was out previously theh it would be move,move,...,move,land in freindly city.)

Well, actually the procedure was hit "G", hit initial letter of wanted city one or a few more times, hit Return. Man, do I miss that feature!

Gimme my GoToCity order back! And more keyboard shortcuts overall. I hate all this point-clicking where it really isn't necessary.

[Libertarian]

I've been hesitant to mention this, but something else I don't like is the business of relocation taking a turn. In my opinion, that greatly hinders the effectiveness of air units, and results in the bizarre circumstance that my ground units often advance in battle faster than my air units can.

I've presumed some sort of military precedent about which I'm ignorant. But game-wise, it is perplexing.

[cutlerd]

<>

Presumably it was put in to force you to have at least a modicum of thought about where you base your bombers. Without it, assuming what you are asking to see is the ability to rebase and bomb in the same turn, and given that rebase is unlimited range, then there would be no reason to use any sort of thought at all on placement of bombers. Stick them anywhere on the map and have them available to strike anywhere on the map on any turn. So the likely answer is play balance.

If you need a real life justification, air fleets and air wings require a hell of a lot of logistical support. You cannot just base a set of modern military bombers on a long term bases at any old airport without proper logistical support. So you could certainly hypothesize that the turn delay between rebase and strike represents it.

I prefer to think of it as play balance myself.

Devin

[player1]

Originally posted by Heliodorus
...several of my carriers "attacked" undetected submarines by moving into their squares having not seen them (this happened to destroyers, too), and I wasn't able to hunt down the subs except to move something through EVERY square of ocean... In the end, I decided it was a moot point.

You should have submarines of your own. That way you could easily detect enemy submarines.

P.S.
If only there could be unit stacking (for movment & bombing purposes).

[Murtin]

(What on earth does s-h-a-g mean in whatever dialect that necessitates its preemption?)

It's commonly used in Britain for "f*ck". So if there is to be preemption at all, I'd say it's a pretty good candidate.

[ACooper]

Well, actually the procedure was hit "G", hit initial letter of wanted city one or a few more times, hit Return. Man, do I miss that feature!

That was a quick shortcut that I had forgot about, but really what's the difference?

I'm just guessing, but I wonder if those who regularly use the conquest strategy in Civ2 (like me) are less satisfied than those who traditionally go to Alpha Centauri.

That might be the crux of the whole difference of opinion. I almost always tried for the space race option. My wars have always tended to be short and quick for a specific objective. Maybe all these differences come from different playing styles. I don't produce as many workers as some. (Usually about 100 per game) Maybe that's why it's not as tedious for me. If I go to war it's hard and fast.

Two complaints (but not the only two) from my playing style are when you go war the other Civ refuses to meet with your envoy for loooooonnnnnnnngggg time and the whole war weariness thing in Democracy bites me every time. I always end up with more entertainers in my cities than laborers. But at the same time I will not hesitate to turn every city to building calvary or tanks or whatever I need.

What I would like to see a bit easier is a way to force the other civ to meet with me, even if they end up laughing at me as I offer them everything just to stop the war.

(Wait a minute - I sound just like Libertarian: "Just talk to me! Please!" - I understand the feeling better now when I put it in that context)


I really think it comes down to game styles and personalities and no one should take anything personally.

[ACooper]

I got the nickname ****gy in college because of my uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character.

Should I admit that?

[Murtin]

That was a quick shortcut that I had forgot about, but really what's the difference?

When it comes to air units returning to base after mission, not much, I admit. For nearly every other kind of long range move supposed to end in a city, I'd prefer it to the point-click method, though.

[cutlerd]

I agree with Shaaggy. Civ3 is less conducive to world domination type play and more conducive to other styles of play.

IMO it is not hostile to World Dom, but CIV2 was pretty much all about world dom. In CIV2, once you got the tanks, world dom was a no brainer. You could pretty much put your brain on auto pilot and coast to a victory with the entire world under your boot heel.

In CIV3, World Dom takes a lot more effort (this is a good thing IMO...think about how hard it has been to conquer the world in real life....no one has ever come close!), and I think this extra effort is annoying to some people.

You still have to move tanks around turn by turn rather than using your opponent's rail network to blitz all over his civ in one turn.

You can't just espionage a non-Democracy right out of the game.

Capured cities have to be nurtured and dealt with. You cannot, as in CIV2, just take over a city and then move onto the next one.

The annoying thing about CIV3 for my style of play is that the space race comes too soon. I think the space techs should be moved out so that you really have to work on getting the ship built before 2050.

Devin

[player1]

Originally posted by cutlerd
The annoying thing about CIV3 for my style of play is that the space race comes too soon. I think the space techs should be moved out so that you really have to work on getting the ship built before 2050.

If Space parts could be more expensive (3-5 times), researching other non-Space related techs WOULD BE an option.

Diplo win is more like an exploit then an vicory. It is like a CHEAP Space race (only one part).
But if voting would be infuenced wich both relations and TRUST (cheating passage pacts, nuke wars, etc...), plus need of 66% votes (not 50%) it would be OK.

[cutlerd]

Hmmm....why do you think voting is not influenced by trust and relations? I know that when I play a real bastard in the game, I lose the UN vote every single time.

Devin

[shyaway]

so, u said, civ3 is same as any other previous civs? no stacking movement

but keep in mind that... we (human) expect more over time

and with the technology (real world) rising, the game we get should also be better/improved

just give it 5 mins, sit down, think a lil bit
has civ series changed/improved over the years?

for those that played throughougly (sp?) the series, u have better say than i, since i played too many games to remember what it was like, LoL (i did play smac and maybe civ2, and some other)

1 think i remember for sure is... i did not have problem w/ stack movement not being in game pre-civ3

what makes it so that i jump on the band-wagon with Lib? i can't really tell, but it really is needed (at this civ3 time)

and no, i didn't just jump on after i read his posts and such, i only been to this civ forums recently and already found the late game tedium b4 i found this great place =)

dang it, always ended up typing too much
okay, bye

[Akka]

Originally posted by cutlerd
I agree with Shaaggy. Civ3 is less conducive to world domination type play and more conducive to other styles of play.

In fact, I think it's completely to the other way. I nearly never tried any world conquest in Civ1 and Civ2, while I never do anything else in Civ3.

IMO it is not hostile to World Dom, but CIV2 was pretty much all about world dom. In CIV2, once you got the tanks, world dom was a no brainer. You could pretty much put your brain on auto pilot and coast to a victory with the entire world under your boot heel.

In CIV3, World Dom takes a lot more effort (this is a good thing IMO...think about how hard it has been to conquer the world in real life....no one has ever come close!), and I think this extra effort is annoying to some people.

You still have to move tanks around turn by turn rather than using your opponent's rail network to blitz all over his civ in one turn.

You can't just espionage a non-Democracy right out of the game.

Why would you WANT to espionnage any civ ? Considering the costs and the chances of success, I find that ALL the governments are "immune to propaganda", except PERHAPS anarchy.

Capured cities have to be nurtured and dealt with. You cannot, as in CIV2, just take over a city and then move onto the next one.

The annoying thing about CIV3 for my style of play is that the space race comes too soon. I think the space techs should be moved out so that you really have to work on getting the ship built before 2050.

Devin

The fact is, perhaps it's harder to conquer the world in Civ3, but it's about the only victory that is somewhat fun. Space race is just wasting the place of half of the modern age technologies and reducing this age to nearly nothing, while diplomacy is ridiculous (especially when you come from Alpha Centauri and are used to the World Council options) and culture is anticlimatic.

[The Eliminator]

Late game tedium is the biggest problem in Civ3. The turns take way too long, and there is no possible way that people can blame it on "impatience." Bottom line is that the engine is too slow. Civ2 was incredibly smooth to the end.

Just like this dude's problem, in Civ2 if you had an invasion brewing, you could execute it in no time flat. In Civ3, it gets so boring, that you have no alternative but to restart. I have had the game since Halloween, and I have only played into the Modern era once. ONCE.

Libertarian is right with the tedium bit, and it really is unfortunate that Firaxis has not even let us know if they intend on dealing with it. I can't see myself playing this game in a month or two. Civ2 however, I was playing in September.....