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yin26
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This space reserved for Darkstar.
Apr 1999
time: 14:12
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(Some of) You guys are missing something VERY important here. If there are to be "only" 7 civs (has that even been made clear?), then we must logically conclude that they are doing a great deal about the UNIQUENESS of each of those civs! That would take a GREAT DEAL of play testing if each civ is truly unique. Not to mention art sets, sounds, the whole thing.
Now if you ask me, I'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather have 7 truly unique and interesting civs to play than 64 so-called civs whose only differences are player color and AI aggressiveness. One of the great things about SMAC, of course, was the difference in each faction. We can debate just how well that was done, but it was a step in the right direction if you ask me.
So, this is not a matter of "The computer can't handle more than 7 civs." We all know it can, especially if they are not different from each other. However, 7 honestly, truly unique civs would put a TREMENDOUS drain on the programmers, artists, sounds guys and play testers to make sure it all works, looks, sounds and plays well. And yes, if this is what they are really doing, then adding even 1 more civ would translate to a hell of a lot more work.
This looks like Sid once again making the right decision to go for quality over quantity. If you want a game with at least the mental image of lots of civs to play against, play Europa Universalis. Just keep in mind, though, those civs are hard coded on a pre-determined map and have no real difference from each other besides starting location and starting resources (oh, and diplomatic stance). Not only that, but EU only spans 300 years and is therefore much more limited in terms of what could unbalance the game.
If this 7 civs detail is really true, AND if it indicates what I hope it does, Civ3 will be MUCH better than I had imagined!
Of course, I still think you should be able to put 2 or 3 of each AI under a different name, etc., and setup games with MORE civs with the warning that the game "Was not playtested that way and could lead to imbalances." And rather than make us hack a .txt file, please just make it a option from the get go for people who want to play against more opponents at once despite the lack of playtesting.
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Kautilya
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St Louis, MO
Feb 2000
time: 23:12
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Hmm I think 7 is the no. you can play in a particular game not the total no. of Civs you can choose from which is much larger. So it's like Civ2 where you have lots of Civs to choose from but you can choose only 7 at a time.
Anyway not everyone wants unique Civs. One of the basic ideas of Civ is that you start off from very basic origins so it makes sense that the Civs are similar at the begining. They become different later by choice of strategy. I personally think the right way to unbalance the game is through the Wonders that players choose to build and the strategic choices the players make rather than initial attributes.
BTW the countries in EU are very different. They have different religions, different military capabilities, different access to colonies, different initial technologies,different monarch capablities etc. In fact they are more different than the factions in SMAC.
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belusa
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Brussels, Belgium
Apr 2001
time: 05:12
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I believe there will be 16 civs in total, from which you'll be able to pick a maximum of 7 civs to play in a game.
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Kautilya
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St Louis, MO
Feb 2000
time: 23:12
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"Do the civs in EU all have different art for each unit,
different sounds, etc?"
I think there are some visual distinctions between the units of different civs (of course there are only three kinds of land units so it's not much work). No distinction between the sounds AFAIK.(anyway the sound in EU is crap). You are probably right that there is much more scope for differentiation in Civ since there are a lot more units,infrastructure etc.
[This message has been edited by Kautilya (edited April 29, 2001).]
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Ralf
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Sweden
Mar 2000
time: 06:12
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quote:
Originally posted by yin26 on 04-29-2001 03:59 AM
7 civs in a game = Play balance. Nothing to do with computing power.
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Well, you know what I think about the latter.  Anyway...
quote:
With a limited set of civs, they can really work hard on making a competitive game, since they well know that there are lots of expert civ players out there who will be VERY disappointed if the comp can't put up a good fight.
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My underlining. Good point! This should be the MAIN issue here. We can all draw conclusions from the CTP-2 failure. All the hailed features (hailed by many, not all) turned out to be very quickly forgotten, once it became apparent that the AI-civs where sitting ducks (well, more or less).
A very big slice of attention should instead evolve around: How can each AI-civ be more responsive and competitive! How can the game-mechanics and the rules be designed to achieve that goal? How can the built-in limitations in Artificial Intelligence be cleverly worked-around as much as possible? How can they add "AI-friendly" rules and features, thus enabling as "straight roads" for the AI-civs as reasonably possible? How can we make the text tweak-files more extensive and more accessible, letting the know-it-all civ-veteran "spoonfeed" the strategic AI-civ priorities and build-choices much better then ever before (in this latter respect the CTP-2 game where actually very tweakable, the way I heard it).
The AI:s ability to put up a good fight both in terms of defending its cities on an tactical level, but also achieving a substantially better overal strategical strength and producing-power (without to much give-away cheating) is absolutely vital and far, far more important then moaning about the limited civs issue, as if that where the very end of any hopes for an enjoyable game-experience.
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited April 29, 2001).]
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ASHBERY76
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ENGLAND
Jan 2001
time: 05:12
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7 civs is no way enough considering that 2 or more civs get destroyed early in the game your left with hardly any it sucks.
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I think it is definately an indicator of that sort of direction, yes. Apparently firaxis is putting a lot of work into leader personalities, and with the unique units and different generals it will be even more apparent.
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Fiera
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Proud Member of the Spanish Gang
Mar 2000
time: 06:12
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quote:
Originally posted by yin26 on 04-29-2001 03:59 AM
7 civs in a game = Play balance. Nothing to do with computing power. More like programming time. With a limited set of civs, they can really work hard on making a competitive game, since they well know that there are lots of expert civ players out there who will be VERY disappointed if the comp can't put up a good fight.
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Aha, so they could well come up with a modpack tested for playing with, say, 12 civs at a time. This Modpack could come something like a year after the original release, if they need programing time. I'd be happy with that.
But I'm afraid they won't do it. Instead, they'll come with the "seven civs are hard-coded" crap, and they'll move along to a new game, a new job, or whatever...
If the seven civs are hard-coded in the game, tell me, whose fault is it? Mine?
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Chronus
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I think To_Serve_Man brought up a good point. The technology charts will need a lot more techs to compensate for all that trading that will be going on. Or, perhaps it can simply take a lot longer to discover something. Whatever the case, I have to agree: more civs will mean zipping thru the tech tree a lot faster.
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LzPrst
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Mars Colony
Apr 2001
time: 05:12
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i think its vital that small civs should be part of the game.
i mean look at the political world map how it has changed over the last 2000 years. there must be possibilites for new civs to emerge and for minor civs to become major civs.
for example holland. tiny nation completely unimportant in the major european theater then BOOOM! a global trading empire taking in more cash than britain or france. or the USA, originally british colonies suddenly tearing themselves from the motherland and becoming a new nation.
the duchy of moscow, the mongols, the roman empire, france, italy and germany, japan, the friggin changes of powerbalance in the 20th century alone, from european colonial powers being the big boys to the division into east-west shows that there must be minor civs present that can change!
"flexibility!!!" (that spartan chick in SMAC)
there should only be 7 big ones, but those should change status during the game, through wars, revolutions, economic collapse etc, making them into minor civs and other minors would become majors. i know that it will be he*l to code, but it would be worth it.
LzPrst
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I cannot understand what all the debate is about, especially since nobody knows what the maximum allowable number of Civ's is going to be. We don't even know what a "minor civ" is, but yet everyone is either for it or against it, that really bafles me? How can you have an opinion of something in which the facts are not known? General arguments can be made, but it seems that these are arguments based upon someone else's deciphering of the infomation that Firaxis has provided and then turned that information into what they consider fact.
If Firaxis does go for the "Faction" type set-up as in SMAC (Alien Crossfire), I hope they are all equal in a way that attributes are counterbalanced. In SMAC, they were not absolutely balanced. IMHO there was a clear order in which the "Factions" could be listed. They were not properly balanced. I haven't played it in over a year, but I think it was "University" that was heavily favored. Correct me if I'm wrong; better yet give me a list in which you would rank all the "Factions."
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hexagonian
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Gnawing on your mind...
Jun 1999
time: 23:12
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui on 05-01-2001 03:39 AM
Of course, Yin, there might not be 7 civs at all in the game. Going back to Europa Universalis, the 7 might be the number of MAJOR Civs, which are unique... however, there may be a vast quantity of MINOR Civs, allowing for perhaps 16 Civs in a game, but only 7 being of the MAJOR variety. But no one has explained to us about minor civs, only that they will be in there.
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Isn't anyone concerned about about these minor civs? Granted, from a realism perspective, this idea sounds very good, but from a playabilility standpoint, these civs sound like cannon fodder for a warmongering human player.
This is where the diplomatic aspect of the game really needs to be developed, because the whole game will fall on its face if these minor civs end up being easy targets. A possible solution would be to have regard drop to the point that all other civs will gang up on the civ that attacks the minors. But this would actually prevent the AI from picking on the minor civs within the game, because then the AI would end up weakening a potentially strong human opponent, making the game easier for the human player.
I would rather see the development of a solid set of 7 civs that will give the human player all he can handle.
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29-04-2001 11:02
Additionally, in the random game starting with 64 civs would:
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