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Raingoon is back with a message to Firaxis: what to do and what not to in CivIII in his latest article entitled "Memo To Firaxis: Now That CTPII Is Out". Comments/questions welcomed here, or you may contact the author directly.
If you would like to write for The Column, a weekly feature here on ACS driven by user-submitted papers, please read and fill out our Article Submission Form.
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Dan; Apolyton CS
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:12
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Once again a lot of brilliant ideas from Raingoon. Will he never stop?
Wish you'd come back to us.
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"It ain't broke, so BREAK it."
- Raingoon
GGS Website
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hHydro
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Vancouver, Canada,
Nov 2000
time: 05:12
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True, Social Engineering as it was used in SMAC might not have a place in Civ 3. I think the reason why I LIKED the social engineering might be transferrable though.
SE had two great points as I see it. One was that it helped the replayability immensely. Aside from having 7 factions, was the incredible fact that any given faction played completely differently under democ/freemarket/know than it would under Police/green/power or Fanat/planned/power, ad nauseum.
Two, (and to an extent, this is what made the 7 factions different in the first place) the SE 'table' provided all the statistics (police, planet, econ, probe) that made it so easy to customize the factions in the first place. There aren't many hardcore modders out there, but I bet there are a lot more people how at some time tried to create their own faction.
This system of "+2 food, +2science, -1money" could still very much have a place in a historic earth game.
...Whoops. That's not really the thread though is it?
uuh... great post raingoon. Negotiable borders are a great idea, though I'd hate to be the poor sod who has to program AI for it.. 
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Mercantile
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Westcoast of Canada
Dec 2000
time: 05:12
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many great ideas expressed by Raingoon of course. i agree that ctp2 is way too slow especially with all those civs running around. I echo the 16 civ max and the neogotiable borders. I believe Sid needs to look at ctp2 feats and faults to make a brilliant game. Nice half time chat btw
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Ralf
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Sweden
Mar 2000
time: 06:12
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quote:
Originally posted by zyxpsilon on 11-26-2000 12:31 AM
They MUST listen to their fan base if they ever want to interest even more new customers.
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Thats true, Zyxpsilon! But, on the other hand: They shouldnt listen TOO much either.
Its also a question of what is workable and feasible solution for the programmers point of view, as well. Many gamers just take this or that Civ-2 or SMAC solution, and then try hard to come up with much more complicated and more "accurate to our real world" type of suggestion, as a replacement.
They just dont understand what exponentially increasing AI-calculation problems and AI-developing and debugging problems, that adding this or that complicated suggestion, actually would create for the developers. That is, if they actually where foolish enough to slavishly implement it.
There are workarounds for making a better AI - and, at the same time; add some very few and carefully selected new parameters (my favourite is the "health" concept), but thats about it.
There are many other features, changes and addons they can do, that dont charge the AI the same way of course.
But, anything unnecessary complicated for the AI; like replacing resource-shields with multiple sub-variants, for example - is from a AI-programming point of view, more or less suicide - especially, if its added to all the other equally "make the game more complex" type of suggestions.
My bottom line is this. On one hand:
They BETTER listen to us fans, because we represent an enormous amount of Civ play-test and game-experience time, that would be very foolish for them to ignore.
On the other hand:
They should always remember, that once the Civ-3 game is released, there are only two player complains, that towers highly above anything else:
- "My God, this Civ-interface/game-feedback really stinks!"
- "What a piece of crap this AI is. Its useless".
Any player-suggestions that makes it harder for Firaxis to successfully combat above problems, should unceremoniously be ignored and scrapped. If this means that perhaps 95% of all player-suggestions must be ignored: they must do this.
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 12, 2000).]
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26-11-2000 09:28
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