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Altuar
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Boston, MA
Nov 2001
time: 00:16
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 05-11-2001 10:17
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#1
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an AAR and some thoughts. (addressed to the Firaxis team as well)
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Support Apolyton
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First of all, let me say hi. I am new to the forum. I do not normally post in forums but so far for Europa Universalis and Civ III I have made an exception - because both are extremely good games which I would like to see improved. EU had excellent support from its developers who actually did listen to people on the forum - and integrated some of their suggestions and feedback in the patches.
I got civ III on thursday night and I skipped work on friday, and played it through the weekend. I have played 1 game on regent and 2 games on Monarch. The regent game I skipped because I was already too powerful way early in the game.
On the 1st Monarch game, after the ancient-age expansion wars, I played until the inevitable war at the late-industrial age broke out. Then I realized that my fighters were useless. (yes I read the manual and I know how to conduct air superiority missions and yes I understand that there is a 50 percent chance of interception)
So for the 2nd game, I used the editor to remove air units from the game. This time, I went for Monarchy instead of Republic and actually had a very enjoyable and challenging war during the middle ages (with pikemen against knights). After conquering Chinese in Africa (ugh), I switched to Democracy in the early industrial age as soon as I found it, and me and my neighbors continued building up their civs in uneasy peace. My glorious Greek empire ran from all of Europe in the north to Arabia in the east to middle of Africa in the south.
It was not to last. By the time the Romans and I had advanced into modern age, it seemed inevitable that both of us needed room to expand. (Romans were the most powerful civ in the game and I was the 2nd) Poor babylonians sacrificed themselves for the cause of world peace. I conquered their cities in southern tip of Africa while the Romans got their cities in India and Indochina. Talk about historical flavour: I could imagine my armies "colonizing and civlizing" the barbarians.
Now that the colonial space had run out, Romans seemed aggressive. So I built up my defenses, fortified my borders with them (a huge line running from Northeastern Europe down to Pakistan) and manned them with artillery and riflemen. As soon as I discovered modern armour, I started stockpiling for my wet dream of a challenging war in the modern age which always went unrealised in Civ II and I (you were either too powerful or weak by then). And so, in the year of our lord 1860 (I dont understand why people complain about slow scientific progress in the game), World War III broke out, with me, Egypt and Persia (Europe, North America and Australia) on one side and Rome, China and the remnants of Babylon on the other.. (all of Asia, and South America)
And what a war! After some 20 turns or so, it became unmanagable for reasons I will state now... but apart from that, up to and including that point, this has been the best civ (and indeed gaming) experience I have had so far. Now, for the things that stopped me from going on with the game....
1- (Jet) fighters cannot intercept for human players. This will probably be corrected in the first patch. For anyone who needs it, I do have savegames which exhibit the problem.
2- For cities that are JUST captured from enemy, cultural assimilation procedure is flawed. Although cultural infulence is a very nice design decision, its implementation is flawed. My gripes with the system focus on two points:
a- It doesnt make ANY sense for the cities that have been JUST captured to revert back to the enemy civ. Some time should pass before cities that have been captured should be checked for cultural assimilation. Why? I have army units in that city for god's sake, they are there for a reason: To SUBDUE the resistors. As it is, when a city deposes your governor and switches sides, not only the presence of your units are IGNORED, they also DISSAPEAR. To make things worse, a city just captured cannot build ANY culture imporvements (temples, etc) because there will be civil disorder in the city until foreigners are subdued. As the system stands, it is impossible to conduct an offensive war from middle game onwards. The cycle runs like this: you capture an enemy city. It starts with 0 culture. You garrison your units in there to protect it and subdue the poplulation. You lose the city and your units in it. And there is NO defense against this. Nothing you can do - you will lose the city. Everything aside, this is a weak design decision: imagine a Civ II where units got randomly destroyed and you lost enemy cities, with you being able to do anything at all.
and b- There is no info available to the human player when a cultural change might occur.
Please note that these observations has been made when my cultural rating was the highest in the world. The cities I captured were next to my own, which had high cultural ratings themselves.
3- Please, oh PLEASE do fixed/historical starting locations.
4- With firepower removed, we see the old Civ 1 battles where Swordsmen defeat Modern Armor. This is from experience and not an exaggeration. It all boils down to dice rolls. An since units now gain hitpoints according to their experience, sheer luck becomes a bigger problem. The solution for this (seems) quite basic: re-introduce firepower, with 1 for Ancient, 1.5 for Middle-age, 2.5 for Industrial and 3 for modern age units. Would make all the difference in the world. And while you're at it, make sure the damn AI disbands their obsolete units. Oh, and provide a managable way to upgrade units when they become obsolete. As it is, one has to upgrade them individually.
5- Zones of Control. Ok, it makes sense for ZoCs to be removed from most units and given only to late-industrial and modern units which are actually mobile in the battlefield. I have nothing to say against that. But building forts, according to Civ-o-pedia, should give units garrisoned in them ZoCs, regardless of what that unit actually is. This seems to be broken. Again, I have savegames.
Now for the things that have been done right, in my humbe opinion.
Trade. YES! The new system at once abstracts trade yet makes it useful and managable.
Unit design and tech progression: It actually makes sense, according to the government style one chooses, to go to war in all ages. Units are well balanced and integrated with the city-imporvements that there is some over-production which is best used in war, especially now that building 'Wealth' generates anything but.
AI: Although it seems to be cheating, once you get over it, the game becomes challenging. And the diplomatic AI is truly amazing, this is easily the biggest change since SMAC. Not only they actually fight with each other, they also wait for opportune moments to declare war on each other and the human. There doesnt seem to be (in AI's evalutaion) any difference between human and AI players, so the old Civ II and SMAC problem of 'gang up on the human player in the late game' syndrome is gone. In other words, they act rationally: they seldom attack you if they dont sniff some gain.
And the wonders do not stop there: they actually build improvements in their cities (quite unlike SMAC and Civ II AI's) and they have an uncanny ability to build critical wonders in time. If only they upgraded their obsolete units...
Most of the changes in the game since Civ II are transparent, but they are NOT minor. In actual gameplay changes, this is a major improvement to the series, which had been quite the same since Civ I. SMAC and Civ II were more similar to Civ I than to this. Civ III is great, but it needs some patches. Brian Reynolds supported Civ II with zeal, let's hope Sid et al will do the same.
Last edited by Altuar on 05-11-2001 at 11:16
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