Back to the Future: 10 Problems with Civ3

[Hail]

credits first!

Spoiler :

taken from the excellent document A Big Vision for Civ4 (pages 7 - 11)
great work!

some copy-paste:

Premature Climax:

Players can clinch victory by combining an Ancient Age settler-explosion with one strong conquest in the Middle Age. After gaining a huge lead, players go through the motions of improving their already superior army and winning predictable battles. This is why the second half of the game is predictable and even meaningless.


Unrealistic Opponents:

What fans want in a “realistic [opponent] AI” is the ability to form a relationship with the AI,
good or bad.


Conquest-Only Game Play:

Destroying neighbors and seizing land feeds all pursuits – the economy, the space
race, and culture. Since conquest is the best strategy, it becomes the only strategy.


Exploit to Win:

To win the game at “Deity”, there are some vital actions to master. One is asking for a
“Right of Passage” agreement, setting up attackers near multiple enemy cities, and
conquering them in a single turn – gaining an undefeatable lead. Another is having the
discipline to lower your science rate on the last turn of research for each technology,
to squeeze out gold.


Bean Counting:

There is a common pitfall in most strategy games when it comes to time management.
Micro-calculations displace strategy and interaction.


Diplomatic Victory:

The “UN” Wonder is a lightning rod for criticism. There are ideas to improve the UN,
but the bigger challenge is fixing the disappointing nature of a Diplomatic Victory.


Land Driven Economy:

In Civilization, more land earns more gold. And more gold gets a larger army. And a
larger army takes more land… This dull cycle may be adequate for games competing
in the “war game” genre. But many fans assert that Civilization has a wider focus than
mere war games, and therefore, a land driven economy is holding the game back.


resume:
all people make mistakes, but what differentiates the wise from the fools, is that the wise to not make the same mistakes twice

 

[Bill Bisco]

Sometimes its better to live with the baggage of some design decisions than it is to deal with the baggage of the supposed cures of the side effects of that system

 

[CaptTightpants]

Thanks for digging this up! Yes, a lot of these principles seem to have been forgotten, shall we say...

Here's another quote that jumped out at me too, from the beginning of Chapter 4:

“Concentrate on the problem that really lies at the core of your game interaction.
… What’s the challenge of the game? How will the player interact with the
game? What does the user do? These are the crucial questions, and so at the
very outset of the game conceptualization process, you must concentrate on these
questions. After you have answered these questions, then you can ask yourself
what topic best serves these goals?

...

To design a smart vision, we had to be principled in analyzing suggestions for
Civilization 4, even our own suggestions. We had to do more than simply ask “what
would be cool?”, or “what historical topic would make a killer feature?”

No – a catchy topic was never enough. Instead, we focused on “what does the user
do?”, and tried to solve the problems we identified in our earlier analysis.

It also saddens me to see so much passion and intelligent thinking from the fans in this document, and to see that the proposal to open up Civ 4 to modders (p. 4) indeed came to fruition... only to see much of this accumulated thought and experience set aside in the current iteration of the core game.

 

[bonafide11]

I don't really get the criticism that war and large empires shouldn't hold an advantage. Of course they should! Taking land from opponents should be a significant boost to your empire. Having more cities should equal more production, more research, and more gold, if you can balance the economy (or in Civ V's case, balance the happiness).

 

[Thormodr]

Very good post.

As we all know very well, Shafer absolutely adored Civ III.

It's no coincidence that Shafer 5 is patterned after it.

The direct parallels are quite apparent and it perfectly explains to me why I can't stand

Shafer 5 as I didn't care much for Civ III either.

 

[cf_nz]

I don't really get the criticism that war and large empires shouldn't hold an advantage. Of course they should! Taking land from opponents should be a significant boost to your empire. Having more cities should equal more production, more research, and more gold, if you can balance the economy (or in Civ V's case, balance the happiness).

The problem becomes (as mentioned in the OP) that once one strategy becomes superior it becomes the only strategy. The game becomes all about conquest. If you like that style of play, great but some people would like variety. I think Civ V had a good idea tying things to population (a few large cities/lots of smaller ones) it just needs a lot of tweaking.

 

[Gatsby]

The problem becomes (as mentioned in the OP) that once one strategy becomes superior it becomes the only strategy. The game becomes all about conquest. If you like that style of play, great but some people would like variety. I think Civ V had a good idea tying things to population (a few large cities/lots of smaller ones) it just needs a lot of tweaking.

Yes, plus the fact that historically speaking empires built on vast military conquests have not lasted very long - think about the Mongols, Alexander the Great, the Ottomans, Imperial Japan, even the Roman Empire. IRL the path of military conquest often leads to imperial overstretch (particularly in the form of excessive maintenance costs and political instability) and eventual collapse. Civ4 went some way towards reflecting this with increased maintenance costs for large sprawling empires, but only mods such as RFC and Revolutions bothered to include aspects of instability and collapse due to excessive conquest.

 

[Gatsby]

Very good post.

As we all know very well, Shafer absolutely adored Civ III.

It's no coincidence that Shafer 5 is patterned after it.

The direct parallels are quite apparent and it perfectly explains to me why I can't stand

Shafer 5 as I didn't care much for Civ III either.

Civ3 and its expansions did bring alot of new key elements to the game - culture, borders, armies, great scientists, civ traits, diplomatic victory for example. Imo Civ5 hasn't contributed anywhere near as much innovation as Civ3 did.

 

[Hail]

Thanks for digging this up! Yes, a lot of these principles seem to have been forgotten, shall we say...

Here's another quote that jumped out at me too, from the beginning of Chapter 4:

“Concentrate on the problem that really lies at the core of your game interaction.
… What’s the challenge of the game? How will the player interact with the
game? What does the user do? These are the crucial questions, and so at the
very outset of the game conceptualization process, you must concentrate on these
questions. After you have answered these questions, then you can ask yourself
what topic best serves these goals?
[...]

exactly! and what does the user do during the first ~40 turns of a civ5 game?
press next turn! imho looks like strange game design

I don't really get the criticism that war and large empires shouldn't hold an advantage. Of course they should! Taking land from opponents should be a significant boost to your empire. Having more cities should equal more production, more research, and more gold, if you can balance the economy (or in Civ V's case, balance the happiness).

expanding should be beneficial, however once the snowball(more land -> more cities -> more production -> bigger army -> more land -> ...) is rolling the game feels won and fun button-clicking becomes turn to turn tedium.

Civ3 and its expansions did bring alot of new key elements to the game - culture, borders, armies, great scientists, civ traits, diplomatic victory for example. Imo Civ5 hasn't contributed anywhere near as much innovation as Civ3 did.

no one is taking the credit for those innovations from civ3.
the point is that civ3 has problems and not only these issues remain in civ5, but are magnified by the design decisions that where made by firaxis

 

[Naokaukodem]

Land Driven Economy:

In Civilization, more land earns more gold. And more gold gets a larger army. And a
larger army takes more land… This dull cycle may be adequate for games competing
in the “war game” genre. But many fans assert that Civilization has a wider focus than
mere war games, and therefore, a land driven economy is holding the game back.

In Civ4 you had an obscure maintenance system that was a kind of lottery. But, ay the and, more land meant more cottage and more gold/research also...

In 5, we have an happiness limit. In most of my games I was far to occupy all the land at the end of my games. That makes a big difference...

The only thing i reproach to Civ5 is precisely that having land unoccuiped in 2050 is not realistic and seems... pretty odd. I would have liked some revolutionary migration/new civ creation during the game system instead.

 

[Tantor]

I believe CiV has one of the greatest potentials of all vanilla civ`s. I like the 1upt, hexes is good, limited resources is good, etc, but it lacks a little depth and needs some balancing. I`m sure balancing will be done through patching, and depth will be added in expansions.
Civ 3 was very good too, but the snowball effect made it boring after a while.

 

[wapamingo]

I was surprised to read the Civ3 list and find every single point a parallel with Civ5.

Guys, stop defending Civ5 from the "vanilla" stand-point and comparing it to previous Vanilla versions. By doing this, you are saying that the developers covered their eyes with their hands and refused to look at the previous work done on the title and what the community has done for the title.

 

[luisfpf]

I agree with OP but for me the main issue is still the AI.

I am currently playing Egypt in a huge pangea map / Marathon / King, a few turns ago I was at war with 3 powers (Soghai, Arabia, Othomans) i had each one off them caught in shoke points, but the funny thing is that songhai wich had the larger army kept sedding dozens of his UU cavalry into the choke point wich was protected by 4 trebuchets + 3 longswordsman + 2 Knigths + 1 GG.

The result was something like Songhai - 50 units, Egypt 0.

So yes i still think that the major problem is the AI.

 

[GenericPlayer]

One thing I did like about Civ III was the colonies. No need to build a city in the middle of Arctic tundra just to get access to a strategic resource

 

[pickle]

The snowball effect among the AI is the biggest problem in the game, it never happens that civs rise and fall then rise again. they simply grow and swallow their neighbours. a massive sprawling empire should have stability issues. and if you aren't careful it should collapse.

there are two major problems I think
1. snowball effect, civ A attacks civ B because they are nearby and a bit weaker. Civ A wipes Civ B off the map and now has more land, gold, military and research than anyone else so they all get stomped.
2. the AI civs are completely unable to regroup. they attack you, if you can survive the initial wave of attackers there will be nothing left of their army and you will be able to roll through them no problem. the devs tried to fix this by making cities able to attack but they are far too weak, a city should bombard with similar strength to the current best siege unit.

 

[Thormodr]

Thanks for digging this up! Yes, a lot of these principles seem to have been forgotten, shall we say...

Here's another quote that jumped out at me too, from the beginning of Chapter 4:

“Concentrate on the problem that really lies at the core of your game interaction.
… What’s the challenge of the game? How will the player interact with the
game? What does the user do? These are the crucial questions, and so at the
very outset of the game conceptualization process, you must concentrate on these
questions. After you have answered these questions, then you can ask yourself
what topic best serves these goals?

...

To design a smart vision, we had to be principled in analyzing suggestions for
Civilization 4, even our own suggestions. We had to do more than simply ask “what
would be cool?”, or “what historical topic would make a killer feature?”

No – a catchy topic was never enough. Instead, we focused on “what does the user
do?”, and tried to solve the problems we identified in our earlier analysis.

It also saddens me to see so much passion and intelligent thinking from the fans in this document, and to see that the proposal to open up Civ 4 to modders (p. 4) indeed came to fruition... only to see much of this accumulated thought and experience set aside in the current iteration of the core game.

It is pretty sad isn't it.

I remember the 165 page or so list of fan suggestions for cIV

and how the designers really listened to their fans. It's glaringly obvious that Shafer

and company thought that they knew better.

Hopefully we can start a similar thread for Civ VI to ensure that we get a quality

game. If the developers will actually listen again.

We all deserve better.

 

[Hail]

It is pretty sad isn't it.

[...]
Hopefully we can start a similar thread for Civ VI to ensure that we get a quality
game. If the developers will actually listen again.
We all deserve better.

disagree. starting a similar thread for civ6 would only be a waste of time and effort.
2 reasons:

• ideas by themselves do not have any value. what is important is holistic thinking. how will game concepts intervene? what will the player do? what are/is the challenges of the game? no one idea or concept can answer those questions.
• copyright BS and mine ideas are better thinking

P.S. what you have is what you deserve. life is simpler than you think
P.S.S. Trip(Mr. Shafer) did participate in the long forgotten "what you want in civ4" discussions and is mentioned in the Thank you list on page 27 in the aforementioned document

 

[Helmling]

I don't really get the criticism that war and large empires shouldn't hold an advantage. Of course they should! Taking land from opponents should be a significant boost to your empire. Having more cities should equal more production, more research, and more gold, if you can balance the economy (or in Civ V's case, balance the happiness).

What there needs to be, though, is balance. Civ needs to control itself more with controlling territory, even after a conquest. In the real world, nobody has held a vast empire together for very long at all. There are always challenges to maintaining an empire that come from within--that has never been represented in Civ.*

*except maybe the old Civ 2 trick of going for a big empire's capital first so that it splits in two.

 

[Peregrine]

Helmling, that was Civ1. If your capital is seized in Civ2, you must simply build a Palace elsewhere (if possible).

 

[bonafide11]

I think Civ IV had the best solution for preventing extreme expansion -- maintenance costs. If you settled too many cities too fast, your economy would go to hell and you'd be screwed. It was realistic. You could offset it by building courthouses and choosing the right civics and developing economy, but this all took time and strategy to balance it. Civ V tries to do something similar with happiness preventing extreme expansion, but it doesn't work right nor does it seem realistic. I would much prefer expansion affecting the economy rather than happiness.