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Sir Ralph
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Long live teh Schwampel!
Dec 2001
time: 06:37
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Wholeheartly signed, although I am aware, that it is just wishful thinking.
Other than Yin I think, that Civ4 has a big potential to become the ultimative turn based strategy game, if the announced features come true. While it does not break very far from the tradition (it is still Civ as we know it), it has some elements reminding SMAC (civics - adding some elements of social engineering, unit promotions - allowing to customize units, although not quite as much as with the unit workshop), and it is at least as moddable as CTP1/2, which is awesome if it comes true as announced.
In short - it could be THE civ game we all dreamed of. If there was not that devil, that puts bugs in computer games. Remember Conquests. It could have been THE perfect Civ3 expansion, making the absolutely best of what Civ3 was, if it was not for the presence of said devil. He completely and utterly ruined Conquests into something not worth to play.
Please, both developers and publishers, take your time. Go through the code and find that damn devil of bugs. Exterminate every sign of his presence. Every horn, every hair, every claw, every hoof. Find and wipe off his footprints.
Charge what you must, and if it costs twice or thrice as much as a normal game, so be it. This is not a normal game. It is Civ. I play normal games perhaps for three, at most four weeks. But this game I intend to play three or four years!
Don't let Civ4 become a second Conquests. Easter sounds ok, summer 2006 would be even better.
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Sabre2th
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I'm all for a bug free Civ and of course want as many features (within reason) as possible, but I don't understand why people are so convinced the game is going to have so many issues when released. Granted, it's happened in the past, but under very different circumstances. I'm willing to believe that Firaxis can learn from the past.
Think of it this way:
If Firaxis pulls off Civ4, which it's starting to look like they might, they'll have at least partially redeemed themselves after the Civ3 fiasco (which wasn't completely their fault). If they mess this up too, then they risk losing the majority of their long-time fans. If they're smart, they know that and won't take any chances with this one.
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Sir Ralph
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Long live teh Schwampel!
Dec 2001
time: 06:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Spiffor
What bugs? I don't remember anything that made Conquests unplayable. |
Did I say unplayable? I am terribly sorry for this mistake. My bad. I correct myself. Conquests is playable. What I meant to say was, that it is not worth to be played. But that is of course me. Your quality standards may vary.
What concerns the bugs, there has been a long list, both here and at CFC. I am sure you can dig it out. So I will repeat only the most annoying.
First, the AI in PTW had been improved throughout patches. It did a better city spacing, it went away from checkerboard irrigation but made tile improvements better suiting the economy of the particular government, it did not waste production as often in order to build settlers, and more. All these tweaks and changes were abandonned in Conquests, because Breakaway apparently got the AI code of vanilla PTW. Or even worse: It happens often, that the Conquests AI leaves even holes in its city pattern. Something that hardly happened even in vanilla Civ3.
Second, a very annoying bug, the stealth unit bug. If one side ran by mistake into an invisible unit of another, it resulted in a declaration of war. Better known as sub bug. The standard response of the fanbois was, of course, "I don't care, I don't build subs." But it did not concern only subs. It affected all stealth units. Including those in the conquests scenarios, the bread and butter of the expansion. I have seen multiple times settler/spearman duos running into assassins, of which the AI always built an armada. Instant war, even between historical allies. Very annoying. Many players did not build stealth units because of it.
Units with hidden nationalities were treated not better. If you dared to repair an injured privateer in one of your harbors and the AI had a ship in range, it attacked instantly (mind you it can see all... in this light the stealth unit bug is even more mysterious). The loss of the privateer would be no big deal. The declaration of war bound to it however is. Now you could say, it's historically correct, privateers were hunted. True. But I doubt, that the French or Spaniards would have attacked an English privateer in the port of Plymouth. Same happened, if you tried to cover an own transport vessel with a privateer. Sigh. Another unit not worth to be built, a pity, since the enslavement thing was actually a good feature. By the way, this bug may be not Conquests specific. It was however especially visible in Conquests, due to the enslavement and the resulting number of privateers in the seas.
Next, barbarians. Kind of lame in vanilla Civ3. Very predictable. Went straight forward toward the next unit and attacked instantly. A spearman, fortified on a mountain, could take care of a whole region and be promoted to elite in no time. Place another, and have over time all your spearmen promoted to veterans and elites only thank barbarians. Now came PtW, and a great improvement in barbarian tactics. Boy, were they a nuisance. Stealthy, sneeky, avoiding the guards and going straight for the soft targets. Especially tough, after they got mounted units. Great work, Soren  , I salute you, indeed! Now came Breakaway and broke it away. In Conquests, barbarians are even more lame than in Civ3. They just lump together somewhere and do nothing at all. They wait, until YOU attack them. If you approach a unit not in NW-SE direction, they will not harm it. If you approach in NW-SE direction, they will inevitably attack. Wonderful, predictability is back, even improved! Of course you will put only high defense, full health units in this direction. And no, NoAIPatrol=0 (or whatever that option was called) does not help.
There was a whole lot of other bugs and nuisances. Resource scarcity (yes, it is a bug, even though some like it). Imbalances up to uselessness with the newly introduced units. And the corruption problem the AI faced was "fixed" how? By improving the AI? Au contraire. By dumbing down the game.
Mind you, that most of these problems affect mostly the AI. For multiplayer games, Conquests is actually better than even PtW. A pity, that the gist of the expansion, the conquest scenarios were meant to be played against the AI. Most of them are horribly imbalanced for multiplayer.
But if it comes to games against the AI, PtW is the best Civ3 you can get.
Last edited by Sir Ralph on 26-07-2005 at 13:04
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Sir Ralph
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Long live teh Schwampel!
Dec 2001
time: 06:37
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I "forgot" a lot of things. Mainly because I can't be bothered to write a novel here.
Yes, armies. Or the fact, that while Industrious got gimped (which is good), with Agricultural a new über trait was created. It was meant as gamble. But gamble traits like expansionist and agricultural are horrible for MP games, because they either put that player at advantage or disadvantage over others - both imbalance the particular game. And since MP is the only good purpose for C3C... I have seen restart requests in PBEM games, because some "agri" boy had no water. By the way, seafaring is also far from being balanced.
What concerns NoAIPatrol, well, they may patrol now, at least to some degree. But they still don't attack, except for that one NW-SE direction, or if an unguarded soft target is in one-turn reach (if horsemen). They are far from their PtW smartness.
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Sabre2th
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Never did I say that nobody liked or that they shouldn't like Civ3. I didn't mean to imply that all people that played 1/2 necessarily had issues with it. All I said is that Civ3 didn't have the impact or immersiveness Civ1/2 did.
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Sabre2th
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quote:
Originally posted by Aro
"If your first taste of Music was rock'n'roll, then I don't expect you to fully grasp what people mean by "decadence of Music" |
My music preferences not withstanding, I have no problem seeing what people mean by "decadence of music."
Because of the problems they had during development, Civ3 fell short of Firaxis's own expectations and those of much of the community. The decrease of features and the number of bugs demonstrate that. Was Civ3 a good game? Yes. Did it have as big of an impact as people wanted/Firaxis intended? No.
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25-07-2005 07:22
. Remember, I've known you since pre-Civ3. You'll make some concillatory statements during production and then its Defcon 5 right before release or soon after. And you'll yo-yo between Defcon levels all the way until release.
Otherwise I would´ve realized a few ideas of my own...
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