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Heliodorus
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Colorado
Nov 2001
time: 22:17
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Atlas Shrugged? Recommended reading for me?
Only thing I know about it is that it was the first book that Officer Barbrady read after he learned to read, and then he promptly gave up reading (South Park).
Static vs. Dynamic:
I once interviewed for a stock-room job at a manufacturing plant - the kind of thing where you have to manage the Just-In-Time inventory system. The interviewer got me onto my hobbies toward the end of the interview, and I talked about my love of board games. He asked me if I played chess. I said no, that I didn't like chess because it was a closed system; I preferred dice games because there was a dynamism created by the random element. I didn't get the job, naturally, because elitists love chess for some reason. Bah. The fact that a computer can beat a human being at chess is evidence of the limitations of the game, not the greatness of computer thinking.
Point being, redundantly I admit, that we'll always be able to pin the computer down with its "thinking" style in a dynamic game. that was true in Civ 2 and other games. Analyst's brilliant deconstruction of how the Civ3 AI manages reveals how the design of Civ3 was manipulated, and that manipulation induced boredom.
But something seems to be missing in all of this, which stems from my question: Why was Civ2 so much fun even if the AI was so "weak". The element of it that was joyous was always the storyline of a Civ game.
There are a lot of criticisms of Civ3 features and whatnot. But from the point of view of improving the game, I strongly believe that the critical element to work toward is the fostering of the mystical element in the players' minds. Why is the storyline of a particular game dying out? How can we improve the game to breathe new life into the storyline?
Adding elements to the late game that create strategy decisions. Adding elements that make the computer competent at warfare throughout the ages. Adding elements that make warfare fun during all ages for humans to wage. Reducing interface tedium, of course.
It's still possible to fix Civ3 to make it as fun and dynamic as Civ2, I think. If nothing else, I'm enthused about the idea of trying
 It'll be fun!
Hey, Yin, what do we have to lose, eh? I mean, the disasters of tweaks should at least provide some great laughs, don't you think? Reminds me of the time we hit the old civ cheat thingie and made all of our triremes "flying" 
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Dr Zoidberg
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Communist Party of Apolyton
Jan 2002
time: 06:17
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quote:
Originally posted by korn469
Unfortunantly when comparing the scope and variety of intellectual challenges, SMAC beats Civ3. From designing your army, to creating an utopian existance for your subjects SMAC presented the player with many options that don't involve building or warmongering directly. SMAC has better, deeper, and more interesting diplomacy on every level except for the trade screen where Civ3 soundly beats it, but that one victory is a hollow one because SMAC raised the bar for diplomacy and Civ3 only halfway delivered on it. Civ3 removed all of the nuance from diplomacy and basically made boil down to "i have this item, what will you give me for it?" then its over. Diplomacy in SMAC had more nuance, and should have been a stepping stone, and not a high water mark. Then their is unit design, Social Engineering, Atrocities, the Planetary Council, Economic Victory, etc. Civ3 lost alot of SMAC's scope and it suffers for it gameplay wise, because players have to focus entirely on parts of the game which have been dumbed down to give the AI a fighting chance. Then to top off that, it seems like firaxis forgot to add the buildings for the industrial and modern eras. There are far too few buildings in those era, and the player quickly runs out of everything to build.
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My sentiments exactly, and even if the AI was embarrassingly easy to defeat in SMAC (even for me, not being a very good strategist really) I had tremendous fun and never once felt bored by the game.
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Libertarian
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Vel, got it. Thanks.
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Analyst Redux
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Atlas Shrugged—there’s a blast from the past. Ayn Rand is a phase who advertises herself as an endpoint. Her message is seductive to those of us who regard ourselves as intellectual elites since, as Rand herself emphasized, it is not a philosophy for the masses, but a philosophy of the elites, by the elites and for the elites. But it is definitely wiser to balance her ideals against more practical realities.
A world of self-selected elites will not create the utopia Rand depicts in Gault’s Gulch (which she conveniently stocks with rich soil, abundant minerals and the descendents of wealthy families), they will create Enron. You can’t have both “freedom from coercion” and “freedom from fraud”. George Will, of all people, makes that point in his most recent column. Functional free markets require transparency, in order for investors to make informed choices. Absent “coercion” (i.e. effective government oversight and regulation), there is no transparency, and absent transparency, the intellectual elites that Rand has so much faith in (by assuming that intellectual superiority and moral superiority are the same thing—a seductive idea for intelligent, but unworldly, young people), these elites will not give you an investor’s utopia; they will give you Enron. Will argues, quite interestingly, that loyal Republicans who believe in unrestricted free markets have the greatest interest in strict regulation of those markets.
So as not to utterly derail this thread, I can make this relate to our exercise here. What this thread, and other similar attempts by the consumers here to communicate with the producers, is an attempt by the non-producers—the people Rand would have considered the system's parasites (not to put too fine a spin on it)--to coerce the producers. We are demanding transparency. We are demanding input into a production process when we have not contributed either capitol, labor or risk. In Rand’s world, if you like a product, you buy it. If you don’t, you get out there and make a better one. If you can’t/won’t do that, you don’t count, because your contribution to society is non-existent. The people who try to squelch commentary on this board by variations of the argument “if you think you can program a better game, do it, otherwise, shut the hell up!” are, in their own way, perfect disciples of Rand.
Rand’s philosophy has never been any way to run a railroad (forgive me, I couldn’t resist the pun), but in the economic model of America in the dawn of the 21st century, when 2/3 of our economic activity is produced by consumer spending, it is most especially out of place. Our message board, with its insistence that a producer of a product must be responsive to that product’s consumers if it wishes to survive, is an accurate reflection of our broader demand-driven economy. It is the diametric opposite of Rand’s producer-driven utopia. Even in the midst of a recession, it’s hard for me to look around myself and lend much credence to Rand’s vision that, in the event the consumers gained the upper hand over the producers, the economic world would all go to hell in a handbasket.
So press on people. Leave Rand behind in the dustbin of historically interesting, but practically misguided, philosophers where she belongs. Continue to demand, demand, demand. Demand Firaxis' accountability and transparency to the ultimate bestowers of its capital—the purchasers of its products--because that is how the real economy works today. Rand will spin in her grave, but that’s ok. She was wrong.
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Heliodorus
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Colorado
Nov 2001
time: 22:17
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For some reason I always mentally equate as synonyms Ann Rand and Anne Rice. I wonder why that is?
But to keep this on thread, I never mentally distinguished between Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds.
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Libertarian
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Well, let's get at least one thing clear, George Will's musings notwithstanding. Noncoercion is merely a derived premise of Objectivism, and is not the axiomatic foundation that it is of libertarianism. In fact, Rand openly despised libertarians, deriding us as "Hippies of the Right".
Moreover, having seen Will squirm in a discussion of Austrian Economics with an evasiveness rivaling that of a greased cat, I'm convinced that he never read Human Action. The Cliff notes, maybe, but that's about it.
Yes, this is topical. What we are doing with our complaints is not coercion, coercion being defined libertarianly as the initiation of force or fraud. Our force is a response to what we perceive as a fraud that was initiated upon us. At least, that's how I see it.
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Libertarian
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[pssst... Helio... Just for the record, it's Ayn... Rhymes with "mine"...]
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Cunctator
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Italy
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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The best thread i red on apolyton.
Analyst Redux, your analisys on the game AI beeing "better" is perfect. It clearly shows how rules and AI performance are strictly connected. Indeed i think that the "late game tedium", so well expressed by Velociryx in his first post, is not caused by the design decision that you pointed out in the list. While I agee on all your 10 points, speaking about how they "enhance" AI, only few of them detract from the game, terrain enhancement and ZOC comes to mind; some, like air missions, are OK (sadly the AI don't use "supporting units" properly), others are an acceptable tradeoff. What makes the late game boring, to me at least, is:
1) Lack of choices, besides warmongering or micromanaging tiles, from industrial era onwoard.
2) The absence of a "dipomatic level"; UN is HIMO the worst aspect of the game (AI related concerns or game rushed?).
3) A lousy modern era: no need to say more, a lot of advices on the forum about this.
What i mean is that cut down things that the game doesn't handle correctly or that can be easly abused is HIMO a good choice, because these ultimately lead to imbalances. Surely Firaxis went to far away along this line, throwing away the baby with the dirty water, so to speak.
Just a few words on the terrain enhancement matter, because this really detract one of the funniest part of the game: planning city founding. Vel, may be you will consider this aspect in your promising mod.
In Civ III you can put a city everywhere, no matter desert, tundra, jungle, lack of resources: if it's not to far away from you capital it will develope in a big thriveing city. There's no strategy involved in placing cities (look at how efficient the AI is ), and as a secondary effect a surplus production that makes easyer to build everyting in your core cities and tons of units, worsening the well known late game tedium. This is due to the fact that you can maximize shield or food prodution on every tile at the advent of railroad (a lot earlier than Civ II, by the way), choosing the desired ratio between food and shields.
A viable workaround could be differentiate terrain tiles, lowering total shield production and makeing them food or shield specific, ala Civ II. Now i'am playing with a modified bic so that:
- no mines on plains and grassland
- no base shield and no irrigation on desert
- no base food on sea
- only 1 shield when mining mountain
- three times the effort to cut jungle
This way i have:
Flood plains: first rate food tile; total max production: 5
Grassland: second rate food tile; total max production: 5 (no shield)
Plains: half way tile; total max production: 4 (1 shield)
Hill: first rate shield tile: total max production: 5
Mountain: second rate shield tile: total max production: 3
Forest: half way tile, viable as shield producer in grassland; total max production: 3
Jungle: lousy terrain, hard to develop: total max production: 1
Desert: lousy terrain; total max production: 2
Tundra: lousy terrain; total max production: 3
That said, any effort in enhancing the game will lead to a less competent AI, as Analyst Redux clearly pointed out.
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DilithiumDad
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Analyst, your post makes a lot of sense. In comparison to SMAC, they eliminated things the AI did not do well and made the stupid things the AI did become smarter.
In making suggestions for a patch or expansion, we need to look at how ell the AI is going to implement them. Simple things like adding more buildings and units will be taken up by the AI easily. Special rules that apply only to the AI are another way to keep them competitive, the best example is widely supported idea of freee automatic unit upgrades for the AI.
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Analyst Redux
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I should probably address a few comments to the late game tedium issue. I am in basic agreement with virtually all of the complaints and observations about late game tedium. My own pet peve is pollution. That Civ III actually *increases* the probability of late game pollution, makes it physically impossible to rid your cities of producing pollution and provides inadequate tools for dealing with automating pollution cleanup...the whole pollution package makes me want to grab a Firaxis programer by the collar and just start smacking: "WHAT...*smack!*...ABOUT...*smack!*...CLEANING...*smack!*...POLLUTION...*smack!*...DO...*smack!*...YOU...*smack!*...THINK...*smack!*...IS...*smack!*...FUUUUUN!?!?!?*smacksmacksmack!*
Whew. Glad to get that out of my system
Endgame tedium, however, has always been the bane of this series. As others have noted, it was less noticeable in SMAC because there were so many more possibilities for verticle development, you didn't run out of things to do, and there were more distracting window dressings/bells and whistles (the plot breaks, the voiceovers, the SP movies, etc.) that gave you a break from unit management. But while the lack of window dressing was, in all liklihood, an economic necessity this time around, the lack of verticle development is, I believe, a deliberate design decision, consistent with my thesis.
Verticle development is on that long list of things the AI seemingly could not be taught to do. One of the great things about Civ II and SMAC was the possibility of super cities: manipulating tile improvement, terraforming, food trade, etc. to create monstrous cities that, if you stuffed them with wonders, could become mega-producers worth 5-10 other cities. If you are going to change the system to produce crippling disadvantages to building out (as this one does), you'd think that then, you'd reward building up. Obviously, this one doesn't, and IMO, it's one of those deliberate decisions designed to level the playing field for the AI, which never built a super-city in its life and couldn't be taught to. So you reach a point in the game where crippling corruption rates prevent further expansion, a lack of tools prevent further verticle development, and the culture rules make further conquest rather pointless (because you must either raze cities or watch them revert).
In short, you quite rapidly reach a point where you can't build or expand and it's pointless to conquer. So the second half of the "4x" game becomes a "1x" game. All you do is hold in place and maximize research until the tech tree yields the UN or a space ship. Yes, that is, indeed, quite tedious. And, Cunctator, I'm afraid that it is also inherent in the stripped-down, AI friendly, rules design.
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Heliodorus
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Colorado
Nov 2001
time: 22:17
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Analyst, two questions:
When you say "can't be taught to," are you being generous to the design team in that they actually chose not to pursue such teaching?
Is it fair to say that the basic source of AI behavior for Civ3 was a previous Civ version's AI?
I guess I'm a little more disappointed in what Firaxis has released here, if the answers to either question is yes.
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Analyst Redux
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quote:
Originally posted by Heliodorus
Analyst, two questions:
When you say "can't be taught to," are you being generous to the design team in that they actually chose not to pursue such teaching?
Is it fair to say that the basic source of AI behavior for Civ3 was a previous Civ version's AI?
I guess I'm a little more disappointed in what Firaxis has released here, if the answers to either question is yes. |
When I say "can't be taught to" I'm employing passive tense, in a deliberately vague linguistic construction, because I don't pretend to know whether the failure was one of effort or ability. That the AI never built super cities was observable fact. The why is open to debate. That the game's rules have been changed to preclude the possiblity of any player, human or AI, from building super cities is observable fact. The why is open to debate. I have advanced a theory that I believe is true.
It is fair to say that it is my opinion that the basic source of AI behavior for Civ3 was the AI behavior for SMAC and Civ II. Some have argued that the expansion aspect of the AI has made a large leap from Civ II, in that the AI now doesn't stop its expansion at some arbitrary point, but that leap was already made in SMAC. Similarly, the mass-units-to-attack behavior was built into the SMAC AI. It appears to have been fine tuned to a more aggressive attack release point, but not particularly changed. The first wave of any AI attack in SMAC aimed to pick off vulnerable units in open ground, i.e. mainly formers and crawlers. This, of course, is exactly what the Civ III AI does. In all versions, attacks occur front on, en masse, against one or two targets at a time. No combined arms, flanking maneuvers, sparrow-hawk strategies, etc., just mass attacks. There are plenty of games on the shelf that make less grandiose claims about their AI which can at least accomplish those kinds of basic military stretegies against you.
The single most significant warmongering AI improvement I see is that, when you declare war and move into AI territory, you better be ready for one mother of a storm of counterattacking units. In prior versions, units would be held in reserve, and you'd wind up with the easier task of defeating the AI piecemeal. In this game, you've got to take on the whole AI army in a counter-attack wave. It's not a very sophisticated change, however, as it simply means I've had to recalibrate how many units I need to bring to a front to start a war.
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Libertarian
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Analyst:
Your contributions are surely a welcome addition to the forum. I admire your dispassionate and systematic dissections. Thanks for sharing your insights with us.
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Comrade Tribune
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Vienna, Austria
Nov 1999
time: 06:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Sikander
I tried to explain why we would never see a decent AI for a game like Civ until there were huge advances in AI technology and computing power. I used a comparison between Civ and Chess, an AI that can beat me regularly using only my home computer and a thick book of openings and useful patterns.
Chess: 64 identical squares which cannot change
Civ: Thousands of squares of numerous different types, each of which can have a number of additional properties which can change (ie roads, cities etc.)
Chess: 32 units (16 per side), one of which can be moved on each player turn (exception: castling). Limited upgrades (pawn reaches back line)
Civ: Potentially hundreds of units, all of which can move (in any sequence) every turn.
The list gets crazier from here obviously. I feel a bit guilty because on that long lost forum I suggested that the game had to be simplified in some ways in order to give the player a good challenge. (Not that anyone listened to me, but the idea is obvious from a design standpoint) I suggested giving the player a lot more challenges in maintaining control of his empire (which historically is a lot more realistic) and turning over a good deal of the operational tasks over to AI generals and ministers who would help the balance by the fact that they would be no better than the generals and ministers of the other civs. The advantage would be that the player could be kept busy solving management problems which would require thought and creativity and would hopefully be satisfying. Where the AI could not compete in management efficiency the choice could be made to either let it alone (the SMAC solution) or to change the game in certain ways so that the poor AI doesn't have to play the same difficult game that the player does. These areas should of course be far from the HP's view, not in direct combat for instance.
I have always understood Sid's disappointment with the game as it tended to be played, as a wargame. Civ has always been a wretched wargame, in many ways 30 years behind the boardgames being released at the same time. The idea behind the game was nonetheless fascinating, and I have been somewhat surprised to see how many people tend to treat these games as turn based warcraft clones. It is this tendency which has pushed Civ 3 over the edge, (though equal credit must also go to economic factors. It is obvious that in comparison to SMAC this game has a fraction of the graphics, voice overs etc.)
Given the choice between a closer (but duller) battle with the AI which I will tend to win anyway, or a sandbox game (like SMAC tends to be once you learn one of the many strategies to beat it), I'll take the sandbox, at least in a competition between Civ 3 and SMAC. At least SMAC was a lot of fun. I enjoyed comparing my performance and methods with others playing SMAC, and taking the many dynamic elements of that game and twisting them into new configurations.
Civ 3 should have been a brand new design, but instead it was just another tired retrofit of a game engine which is far past it's prime. After playing many hours of Civ 1, Colonization, Civ 2, Master of Magic, SMAC/X etc. the last thing I needed was to have the game engine stripped down and left naked before me. I know it too well already. |
I agree with nearly everything you say, except for one thing: It is possible to have a challenging (not as good as Chessmaster, but challenging) AI for a civ-similar game, that is more complex than any civgame ever was, and here is how I would do it:
(Sorry for the cliff-hanger, but this is going to be a LONG post; coming soon.  )
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Arrian
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Kneel before Grog!
Jul 2001
time: 00:17
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Endgame tedium, however, has always been the bane of this series. As others have noted, it was less noticeable in SMAC because there were so many more possibilities for verticle development, you didn't run out of things to do, and there were more distracting window dressings/bells and whistles (the plot breaks, the voiceovers, the SP movies, etc.) that gave you a break from unit management. But while the lack of window dressing was, in all liklihood, an economic necessity this time around, the lack of verticle development is, I believe, a deliberate design decision, consistent with my thesis.
In short, you quite rapidly reach a point where you can't build or expand and it's pointless to conquer. So the second half of the "4x" game becomes a "1x" game. All you do is hold in place and maximize research until the tech tree yields the UN or a space ship. Yes, that is, indeed, quite tedious. [/QUOTE]
Well, that pretty much sums up the endgame problems. I love the early-mid game in Civ III (lets say up until I've build the Hoover Dam...or maybe a bit earlier, I don't know). I tolerate the endgame. I put to you this question, Analyst, what can be done? Can this be fixed, or must the whole Civ concept change - a vastly different Civ IV?
-Arrian
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Libertarian
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quote:
You can’t have both “freedom from coercion” and “freedom from fraud”. |
That is true only if you define coercion as force of any kind, including initial force. Libertarianism does not oppose force; it opposes coercion, and defines it as force that is initiated ex nihilo. Fraud is merely a form of coercion, employing deceit — rather than a club — for mugging its victim.
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Comrade Tribune
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Vienna, Austria
Nov 1999
time: 06:17
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OK, I believe I have a workable approach for a Civgame that would surpass CivIII by a wide margin.
To begin with the beginning: Exactly whom did Firaxis want to please? My hypothesis: They never really asked themselves that question.
If they wanted to please the mass market, then why didn´t they create a better Intro? Wonder Movies? More Fluff? Most importantly: Why did they create a Civgame? 
On the other hand, if they want to please hardcore strategy gamers, they really don´t have a clue. AND THAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH POST-REYNOLDS FIRAXIS: After Reynolds is gone, and Sid has mentally wandered off into Simgolfland, there is no one left who understands their customers. It´s not that they can´t program, it´s that they don´t know what to program, because they don´t know what we really want. I would be totally surprised by their ineptness, if I was told that the CivIII designers`spare time hobby was playing strategy games. I think it isn´t, and they simply don´t know what motivates us.
And here is where I must admit that those who said that some part of the responsibility belongs to the fans were right, Yin´s list notwithstanding. I was not involved with the List, so I may be wrong here, but I think the List contained mostly ideas and features , things we wanted to see in the game. What it probably did not contain, however, was an explanation, why we want this or that feature, or, even more generally, how we tick. I guess everybody assumed -as I would have- that was understood. And this is where the entire community went wrong. The CivIII designers simply don´t understand us strategy gamers.
(Observant readers will notice that I haven´t yet started to adress my topic; but I said my explanation will be LONG. )
Last edited by Comrade Tribune on 17-01-2002 at 07:12
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Analyst Redux
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quote:
Originally posted by Arrian
Well, that pretty much sums up the endgame problems. I love the early-mid game in Civ III (lets say up until I've build the Hoover Dam...or maybe a bit earlier, I don't know). I tolerate the endgame. I put to you this question, Analyst, what can be done? Can this be fixed, or must the whole Civ concept change - a vastly different Civ IV?
-Arrian |
A more tedious endgame is somewhat inherent in the design, but you don't have to cramp the design to the point where the back half of the game is a 1x formula.
SMAC actually had a number of useful solutions. Allowing the development of sea bases greatly postponed the termination of the "explore" stage of the game--and the AI was good about founding sea bases (if not any good at developing them). SMAC's verticality allowed the "build" phase of the game to continue through to the last turn, and to even be used as an alternate strategy. The tradeoff, as noted, is that since the AI doesn't grasp the value of verticality, using it is exploiting a feature the AI can't. Strictly an exercise in self-satisfaction.
Restoring the practical enjoyment of late-game conquest requires a more global set of solutions. From the beginning, players of this series have screamed for a more practical set of tools for dealing with late-game unit managment. Those ideas, mostly good, seem to perpetually fall on deaf ears. Don't ask me why. Give me those tools, and a corruption formula that makes distant cities something other than utterly worthless. Then, substantially retool the culture flip equation so that it doesn't become a sure-fire, no-effort thwart to invasions. [Random thought: 50% chance of permanently destroying a civ's palace when capturing their capital. A civ without a palace can never again gain a city by culture flip.] Once you do those things, late game conquest might be both practical and fun.
It'll still be more tedious than the early game, as that is inherent in the difference beteen managing a few cities an managing several dozens. But there will actually be reasons to care about playing the late game again this way.
Note to the political philosophers: I'm not going any further down that road in this thread, no matter how much you tempt me
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Comrade Tribune
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Vienna, Austria
Nov 1999
time: 06:17
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Now, I have a theory: I believe that hardcore strategy gamers fall into two categories, with some in-between. I call them the Powergamers and the Sandbox Enthusiasts.
The Powergamers
What the Powergamers want from a strategy game can be described in one word: Challenge. They want to find the shortest path to victory over a mind quite as devious as their own, and therefore no AI (Chess exempted) in our lifetime will satisfy them. They will break every possible AI in a short while, so the #1 priority with Powerplayers is not an improved AI at all, but Multiplayer.
That doesn´t just mean the game should include Multiplayer. To satisfy the Powerplayers, the game must be designed to in every way accomodate and facilitate Multiplayer. In short, with this type, MP is the most important part of the package.
So what is important for MP? Quite a number of things:
-The game must be super-solid. Nothing more annoying than losing connection/the game hanging up all the time. For this reason alone, MP as an afterthought is the Death Kiss. The game must be programmed to acommodate Multiplayer from Day 1; otherwise it will never work in an entirely satisfying fashion.
-The interface must be programmed with Multiplayer firmly in mind.
-There must not just be many strategies (CivIII on Regent or Monarch level arguably has many strategies); the important thing is that all strategies must work equally well. The moment the Powerplayers discover the 'best strategy' that works better than everything else, Multiplayer falls apart. Not only must the designer understand that, he must prevent the problem by a no less than enormous amount of external playtesting.
-Last, but not least: To be MP playable, the game must not take TOO long. This is not to say it must be finishable in a single session, but there are limits. This is why EU isn´t really suitable for Multiplayer, even though it does contain the option. But the heart of the game, the Grand Campaign, takes so long it can barely be finished at all; certainly not would you ever find an opponent for Grand Campaign MP. There is the serious possibility that one of you might die, before the game is finished.
Next installment: The Sandbox Players
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Comrade Tribune
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Vienna, Austria
Nov 1999
time: 06:17
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The Sandbox Enthusiasts
Now I come to the part I understand best (I am 20% Powerplayer and 80% Sandbox Enthusiast).
What we want from a game is a bit more difficult to explain. But when all is said and done, I believe it comes down to two things:
1) Lots, and I mean awful lots of different toys to play around with and explore.
2) The toys must make sense.
(2) is because Sandbox Players usually have a very keen sense of logic and care a lot for the topic of the game. If a Sandbox Player plays CivIII, you can bet he knows a lot more than your average guy about history, and will be disaffected, if the designers`understanding of the topic is superficial and/or they don´t take it seriously. (This is where EU is shining: The designers obviously know a lot about their subject, and they take it very seriously.)
First and foremost, we want to experiment with a rich environment. SimCity will not appeal to Powerplayers, but it will have an enormous appeal to us. The best way to disgruntle us: Take away our toys. For example: All my favourite CivII units have disappeared in CivIII. My favourite units happened to be the Spy, the Partisan and the Crusader. You might argue that the Partisan was too weak, the Spy was too strong, and the Crusader has been replaced by Cavalry; but that argument would totally miss the point. Because my point is not about the function of these units in the game; my point is about the function of these units in the environment. Unlike Powergamers, Sandbox Enthusiasts don´t think "game". They think "environment". I liked my Spies, Partisans and Crusaders! They were cute. Taking them away single-handedly killed half the atmosphere for me. The minimum expectation of all us Sandbox Enthusiasts for CivIII was more units, more buildings, more wonders, more toys. Taking things away in this department was the one sure-fire guarantee for disappointment.
Now to the challenge part: The term 'challenge' (Powerplayers, please take note!) has a totally different meaning for us. We don´t play to win, we play to experiment. Therefore we don´t necessarily need a tough opponent. But we need some sort of challenge. If everything works equally well, experiments are meaningless. This is why there is a limited budget in SimCity, people move away if they don´t like your place, it would be even better if they could elect another Mayor, if you do badly. But there is no opponent; the challenge there is is provided by the environment itself.
And here is the basic misunderstanding: What the fans said is they wanted more of a challenge. What Firaxis totally failed to grasp -and what the fans themselves, in all probability, did only vaguely understand-, is the kind of challenge we wanted. We wanted a more challenging environment, which, of course, ideally, included stronger opponents, but not in the first place. What we wanted -and I am pretty sure I am speaking for all Sandbox Enthusiasts here-, is an environment intriguing and complicated enough to be challenging in itself, which CivIII, of course, utterly and totally fails to deliver. However, part of the blame belongs to us, because it must be admitted that I am not sure beyond reasonable doubt that we really, unmisunderstandably, communicated this decisively important, but in itself pretty complicated fact to Firaxis.
Now so far, the aspect of my theory most surprising to everybody, including myself, is that stronger AI opponents were really no one´s first priority. Because Powerplayers want great MP more than anything, and we Sandbox Enthusiasts want a degree of complexity where the game itself is the #1 challenge, with a stronger AI being a nice addition, as the sugar-coating on the cake, but not the be-all-end-all we perhaps helped Firaxis to very mistakenly believe.
*Tomorrow: So what should have been done instead?* Sorry, people, I am dog-tired.
Last edited by Comrade Tribune on 17-01-2002 at 08:49
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BanastreTa
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New Haven, CT, USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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ComradeTribune,
Very insightful analysis re: powerplayer vs. sandbox.
Although I sense I'm not quite as disappointed with the game as you are, I think my breakdown is very similar--largely a history buff/keyboard Napoleon who likes a little bit of strategic challenge thrown in (so, I was especially impressed by the description of the Sandbox player).
This is a good, straightforward methodology for analyzing some of the practical areas wherein the game breaks down. It's also a good way, I think, of conceptualizing the "antigestalt" of Civ 3, how the constituent parts seem nice enough, yet don't add up to be an altogether satisfying whole.
I like.
The headline: "Don't take my toys away!"
BT
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Cunctator
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Italy
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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Late game is a problem but i don't think the whole civ concept needs to be overhauled.
Substantially what we need is something really new in the end game. The SMAC council was a promising innovation, that could bring completely new strategies and interaction with the other civs. The end game should open new ways to play the game.
Besides, inherent weight introduced in the end game by the civ formula, more units, more cities, more of everything to manage, should be directly addressed. I mean that "automation" is not the solution. It cures the symptoms, not the sickness. Automation is needed when things goes out of control but don't make a better game, only a less tedious one (yes, civ3 absolutely needs this, don't flame me. I think that in the end game we need some game mechanics that enlarge granularity. Looking at the old wish list a good example was the "region" concept: you don't need to manage dozens of worthless cities but a few regions, a sort of supercities. Ultimately this enforce vertical building. The same goes for the military part of the game, with the exception that there is an alternative. If they keep the tons of units that currently we can build in the game they have to introduce an adequate warfare system, one that require more strategy than amass a bunch of units and throw it against the opponent. Otherwise a "chess like" system with fewer units to manage is more suitable.
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16-01-2002 20:03
Farenheit 451, someone? 
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