10 Reasons Why Conquests Went Wrong

[player1 fanatic]

Hmm...
I remember that MoM has also some bugs introduced in the patch.
Like that AI Heroes stoped using magic items (or something like that).

 

[kevincompton]

Sullla said:

1) Lethal Bombardment: This change, without a doubt, was by far the worst thing that BreakAway Games did to Civ3. The stand-alone game offered a great balance between artillery and regular units, with artillery being able to damage other units but unable to defend themselves. Most importantly though, they could NEVER kill other units; the only unit which could was the pricey, one-time use cruise missile. Regular units were the only ones which could actually kill units or capture other artillery pieces, so it was necessary to use a combination of both to achieve best results. Intelligent use of combined arms like this added a great deal of strategy to Civ3, and helped elevate it quite a bit beyond its two predecessors (where catapults were 6/1/1, for example). Bombardment on ships and planes worked the same way, and intelligent players fighting wars in the Modern Age would frequently use both. Bombers, for example, could hit targets much further away than artillery but had the weakness of being shot down or having the city they were based in captured. Battleships could defend themselves against attack without need of a protecting unit, but could only hit targets along the coastline. Bombardment in standard Civ3 was thus able to offer a very large advantage to the player, but the fact that units still had to expose themselves to attack in order to finish off another unit for good kept bombardment units from running away in strength and the player from exploiting his/her edge in artillery to ridiculous degrees.

This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Bombs destroy. What happened in pearl harbor? What happens in any war? I think this change has been a long time coming, bombers were useless until this change was made. In real combat a bomber has the ability to destroy landed aircraft at a base and destroy ships at sea, not just afflict DESTROY! Think before you type.

 

[Justus II]

Sullla said:


This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Bombs destroy. What happened in pearl harbor? What happens in any war? I think this change has been a long time coming, bombers were useless until this change was made. In real combat a bomber has the ability to destroy landed aircraft at a base and destroy ships at sea, not just afflict DESTROY! Think before you type.

I know I've been in this argument before, but I have to disagree in part. I do like the lethal sea bombardment, as certainly air power is capable of sinking ships without requiring naval gunfire to 'finish them off', but I agree whole-heartedly with Sulla's comments regarding land bombardment. It is not realistic for air power to Destroy units, it's never happened in history, ground units always need to go in and root out the defenders. Not only that, it is very unbalancing, especially for the human player who is much better at bombardment than the AI.

 

[warpstorm]

Lethal bombardment is one area where I do agree with Sullla.

 

[Hygro]

Amen funky brotha.

 

[Breunor]

Hmm...
I remember that MoM has also some bugs introduced in the patch.
Like that AI Heroes stoped using magic items (or something like that).

Its reasonably common for bugs to get introduced in patches. It did happen to MoM, but each patch fixed up a lot more than it introduced. Unfortunately, there were legions left, including the most serious ones (memory bugs).

If I understand some of the problems people have with Conquests, some people seem to think the game got worse, at least the core game. I know a lot of game reviews parised the extra scenarios, though.

 

[Hygro]

and the game still crashes sometimes when I hit f3 :sigh:

 

[player1 fanatic]

If I understand some of the problems people have with Conquests, some people seem to think the game got worse, at least the core game. I know a lot of game reviews parised the extra scenarios, though.

The only problem with Conquests I have with things that worked fine before the Conquests.

Like barbarians or AI use of armies.

There are some balance concerns too, but they can be fixed by modding.

 

[troytheface]

in the iraq war they had troops surrendering to u.s. spy drones. A case where lethal bombardment was indeed sufficient without ground troops. Although bombers are of ww2 style the new system allows them to destroy planes and ships...an accurate implementation- in so far as ww2 style ground troops being destroyed by air power alone- i believe that the battle of the bulge turned when the weather improved enough for allied planes to take flight....lethal bombard is no problem for me

 

[kb2tvl]

I want to echo Sir Pleb's statements. I, as a player, would have been willing to have ptw to get broken into two expansions and each expansion would have fixed bugs and release new material. Particually, if each expansion would have given a few secenarios and a neat movie.

Existing bugs or inconsistencies should get cleaned up and civ fanatics are willing to pay for more matieral if "fixes" were implemented. Its the small stuff that drives me nutty. Things like a city going into civil disorder and I was using a govenor or workers causing infinite loops(railroads, fog of war and hiding from the enemy) or automating workers and the AI sends 300 workers to clean up a polluted pillaged tile on my border with a warring civ... I could go on...

I was hoping that automated workers would get user made settings OR police men would be a buildable unit OR there would be a "semi" govenor where I would make manual settings and the govenor would remove workers to prevent civil disorder OR happy citizens V unhappy would be more like the custom mod citizens OR I would be able to stack select a unit instead of clicking 300 times to select the unfired arty on the bottom of my infantry stack OR to fortify a stack without clicking 300 times to get to the bottom OR I could go on...

It is not I am unwilling to pay for these these changes via expansions.... No, I would be willing to support these "scope" changes if I could get something else along with it. That is what I am miffed about. Not that the existing is below expectations but the willingness to change it is not there.

 

[Thorfin39]

I am not sure if I am a fresh perspective or just a rehash.. I've played CIV in some format since the first one came out so many years ago.. But I have only recently "joined" communities of Civ players, with this one by far, my favorite (and most informative)

I, along with my eight year old, are addicted to Civ and often fight over 'puter time when we have free time (he plays hockey as well, so he's not sitting in front of the computer for days on end..

the points made SuIIIa are excelent..

1. I would agree that Lethal bombardment is too powerful in it's present form.. I would move the lethal edge much later in the tech tree.. I would not abolish it, but it's too powerful.. The only exception is aircraft to naval units.. I would keep that aspect.. (and while on that topic, I would like to see a factor of ships sinking that are injured and trying to make it back to port)

2. Airplane range.. since I rarely play on anything less than 160 X 160 and often month to two month games that are greater than 200, I have no problem with Aircraft range

3. Thinking back to the way I play, never really considered it bad.. I often "go to war" with a heavy bombardment force to soften up targets, destroy improvements around cities and lay seige to cities but I understand your point..

4. Leaders I have little problem with, but they certainly could be tweaked to be more representative of history.. Scientific leaders, I am not really fond of.. but when they show up, I use them, often the first thing I rush is Forbidden Palace when I have a large civ of 30 or more cities, so I can make my ciov more productive away from the capital (I hate how unproductive a large civ can become, even in Democracy, where I would think there are county, and state Gov HQs that take direction from the nation's capital)

5. I am a civ war mongerer.. so my opinion on Armies is the more the merrier, but you're point is well taken.. I just wish that I could remove units from an army (but that would make them even more unbalanced and way too powerful, even for me..) I just wish the AI would utilize them much more effectively.. Give me three Armies and I always accomplish my military goals.. It's too easy, so I agree with you (but can;t change my habits)

6. Agreed, I always build units I know I can upgrade.. I only chose swordsman (prior to MDI, If I could wipe out a civ early, or need something early to ward off an attack.. now, swordsman have become a primary unit in my military and horsemen have become a second thought in the ancient world..

7. This wonder is way too powerful for the age.. If I am not at war, I often exploit the units to cities far away from my capital to help rush items like temples, barracks or aqueducts (I sometimes hate myself for doing that)

8. no great opinion on..

9. Volcanoes were neat the first couple of games.. Now, I dislike them they are annoying.. Marshes. I have less of a problem with.. If I know I want to settle an area (for strategic locations, resources or whatever) I often bring four or five workers to a place and they work in concert to quicken the job (assuming I just didn't edit to allow cities), so for me, Marshes represent no major issue..

10.. Governments.. Frankly, I think they all need a little tweaking.. especially if you play a large map and have a large empire, you are almost forced to play Communism to get the HQ as a third palace.. I would like to see a state, regional or provincial capital building that effect the city similar to a capital or Forbidden palace, but with less effect of course.. Democracy is a pain to play because or war weariness, but I use it when I know I'll be at peace for a while..I can handle Fascism and Communism, but prefer to pay gold for rush jobs instead of citizens.. generally I don't use Republic or Fuedalism.

and 11.. That one drives me nuts that I can't trade maps after getting map-making, but I understand the logic for delaying the ability.. It also drives me nuts how unwilling a civ might be to trade maps if I have fallen behind in a game (it happens) Of course, I wish other civs, especially those that base their background on Commerce are unwilling to trade goods, like wines, that I have and they don't, and vice versa.. if they have an exportable good in excess, how outrageous the price can sometimes be.. If there is one model I would like to see Civ four improve, is the economic model.. more goods, more trades, more economies (especially late) tied to each other and more lack or resources causing wars..

Anyway.. good post that has me thinking about my own game play..

 

[akots]

I've read through most of the thread and think that Conquests are OK. The AI has to be improved and this is the main reason for complaining about "what went wrong". But AI was very poor in vanilla and PTW as well. IMO, many ppls expected that AI will be improved in C3C over Civ3 which did not happen. But the added features are fun and interesting, especially for the multiplayer games adding more balance there. To put it short, AI sucks and should be more intelligent. C3C is a great expansion pack if AI stupidity is disregarded. Conclusion: Play multiplayer, especially PBEMs!

 

[kryszcztov]

I've read through most of the thread and think that Conquests are OK. The AI has to be improved and this is the main reason for complaining about "what went wrong". But AI was very poor in vanilla and PTW as well. IMO, many ppls expected that AI will be improved in C3C over Civ3 which did not happen. But the added features are fun and interesting, especially for the multiplayer games adding more balance there. To put it short, AI sucks and should be more intelligent. C3C is a great expansion pack if AI stupidity is disregarded. Conclusion: Play multiplayer, especially PBEMs!

Conclusion : play PBEMs with no AI !!
I agree that the poor AI is the source of many things that went wrong, though there are things which aren't related to the AI and are bad as well. In this vision, we can only hope that Civ4 will have a much better AI (that Python thingie may allow designers to improve or tweak the AI with patches, which is very good). But we can't forget that, according to official sources, C3C will never be completed, unlike Vanilla and PTW.

EDIT : It appears that Civ3 was a bit rushed due to time pressure, and some people in the team went away during the creation, and of course Firaxis gave Breakaway Games the power to design Conquests (why oh why ?). Conclusion : never rush a game, and never change a team while still in the production or the patching process. Some games were well followed by the team, even years later. If Firaxis wants to keep a good fanbase, they should complete their games, instead of always adding a sequel and take it for an excuse.

 

[Antrine]

There is no 'good' fan base left... we are the scattered, dead, lost and dismayed!

Pull up chair, er bring one, I am just now polishing my corner of the graveyard. Bring some polish?

 

[Kemal]

But the added features are fun and interesting, especially for the multiplayer games adding more balance there. To put it short, AI sucks and should be more intelligent. C3C is a great expansion pack if AI stupidity is disregarded. Conclusion: Play multiplayer, especially PBEMs!

I'm sorry but I can't agree with this at all (well, except that more people should try PBEM of course ), my experience is that most PBEMs actually end up shutting down/removing some of the major new features that c3c introduced (such as scientific leaders and the Statue of Zeus, or forcing both human players to either play both as agricultural or none as agricultural) because of, as has been said by most here already, the unbalancing issues these features bring to the game.

Personally I think c3c is better as a SP game than a MP game, but I agree with SirPleb in finding that i actually liked the gameplay of PTW better, even though it may have had less features and civs etc.
And I also agree with others that it is a disgrace that they have not fixed the Scientific GA, even if the influence it would have on the game would be minimal. It is something they promised would be in the game, but it never made it in any form.

 

[kryszcztov]

Yeah Kemal, they promised stuff, and then they promised that Civ4 will be good. I don't think Firaxis especially needs pressure right now, but they need to know that they get some more each time they promise something and then say "wait for the next game".

What's disappointing is that last year I whined all over this forum because I wanted C3C to be 100% compatible for all languages, and guess what : it didn't happen ! And guess what ? I talked about the issue to Breakaway Games people when they did their chat (which can be found at CFC), and they said "yes, yes, yes"... I had said that I wouldn't buy C3C if it wasn't fixed, and guess what ? I went straight away to buy it ! Poor me !

I know I dislike to speak of that, but if Civ4 doesn't meet my expectations, I guess I'll have to either ignore it (highly improbable) or either get it by illegal means. Or maybe there will be a better game at that time (and yes, it's possible !).

Lastly, naming "Civ3 : Complete" the latest pack is a joke, isn't it ?

 

[akots]

@Kemal: They fixed a lot of multiplayer bugs in patch 1.22. IMHO, before C3C 1.22 patch multiplayer was essentially not playable. The issues of balance certainly exist and certain features have to be disabled to make the game balanced but games without AI are more or less OK.

And I must strongly disagree on playability of PTW because of Palace jump corruption exploit which dramatically unbalances both single player game and multiplayer as well. Or course, you can agree in a MP game to a rule which prohibits the Palace jump. but this makes it as (un)balanced as C3C.

 

[DJ Bonebraker]

10.. Governments.. Frankly, I think they all need a little tweaking.. especially if you play a large map and have a large empire, you are almost forced to play Communism to get the HQ as a third palace.. I would like to see a state, regional or provincial capital building that effect the city similar to a capital or Forbidden palace, but with less effect of course.. Democracy is a pain to play because or war weariness, but I use it when I know I'll be at peace for a while..I can handle Fascism and Communism, but prefer to pay gold for rush jobs instead of citizens.. generally I don't use Republic or Fuedalism.

I agree with this part. That's one of the reasons I created the Tweaked Out mod (see link in sig). Democracy doesn't reduce overall corruption enough to be useful late game (I still have a ton of cities that never have more than 1 production and 1 commerce no matter wether I build courthouses and police stations or not), and Feudalism was broken. I fixed it. Originally, to compensate for the outrageous unit support cost, Feudalism was supposed to eliminate maintainance costs for improvements, which is one of the things I fixed in Tweaked Out (I think, it's been a while since I made any changes to the mod), which makes it much more attractive. I also added another late-game libertarian (as opposed to the opressive governments that everyone seems to want to play) government as a more realistic alternative to Democracy or any of the opressive governments. I mean, really, you should have extra unhappy people just for being fascist or communist.

The government I added was Social Democracy, and required the technology "Socialism" to get (communism is a prereq for socialism). The charachteristics of Social Democracy (which I based on modern socialistic states, such as France, Sweeden, Japan and Germany) are as follows:

Corruption/Waste: Communal
War Weariness: Low
Unit Support (town/city/metropolis): 1/2/3
Support Cost: 1
Military Police: None
Hurry method: Payment
Worker efficiency: Same as Democracy
Other: Tile commerce bonus

I also made a few other changes that helped balance things out a bit more, such as reserving lethal bombardment for later game units like Battleships, Heavy cruisers, Bombers, Artillery and Radar Artillery. Of course one of the things keeping armies and artillery from being too powerful is a hidden nationality stealth attack land unit that I added called the Mercenary. I actually used several artillery to bombard an enemy city senseless before sending in my army (consisting of 2 vet mech inf and 2 vet mod armor), only to have the enemy send an endless horde of mercs who stealth attacked my artillery, and mobile SAM, after which they unleashed the remaining 2 bombers in their airforce to slightly weaken my army before sending in the rest of their 150 or so mercs. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that my super badazz army lost to a horde of 6/6/1 units with stealth attack Of course, I managed to re-take the city next turn by moving two arty into range, and sending in several more modern armor.

I guess the whole moral of that story is that you can have your darn-near useless artillery, I'll just use the shields on something better, like tanks and modern armor (aircraft are almost equally useless once rocketry is researched, since all you need is a SAM battery and you can shoot down anything they send at you). You can just keep stockpiling your lethal bombardment artillery, and aircraft, and I'll just use my modern armor (with a few mobile SAMs of course) to blitzkrieg your ass and take all your artillery. As a matter of fact, I like lethal bombardment, since it actually makes the artillery/radar artillery worth building (when, for the same amount of shields I could build a tank or modern armor which can take/defend cities). Before that, the only thing artillery was good for is wasting money and shields that could be used on better units, and getting captured. Then again, it just might be my bad luck, but I have yet to get even a 30% success rate on any bombard attacks....with RADAR artillery, which is why I have such a low opinion on it. I've also only ever gotten 2 military great leaders without "cheating" (making a mod where you didn't have to have an army to build the Heroic Epic) in an entire 3 years of playing Civ III. I guess you could say that the RNG and I have "issues."

About the only things I agree with Sullla on are the AI, Barbs and AI army usage.

I mean let's look at a game where the AI is done right: Age of Empires II: Conquerors. The AI (even on the hardest difficutly levels) doesn't start with any more resources, techs, units, etc than the human, yet it still can pose a serious challenge to the human player. Why? Good programming that allows the AI to maximize efficiency of resource gathering, exploration, building and troop deployment. I just hope that Firaxis looks to the shining examples set by Ensemble studios when designing Civ IV.

As for the Barbarians (and I'm sure that fellow Civ II players can sympathize with this one), what happened to the good ol' days in Civ II when the message "There are rumors of a massive barbarian uprising near XXXXXXX" would make you break out into a cold sweat, change the production oders of XXXXXXXX to military, rush the strongest unit you can afford to, and send every spare unit running to defend that city? I mean now, when I get that message, I could care less. Oh well, some outlying town gets ransacked, and my "huge" surplus of 5 gold got taken, whoop-te-doo. I'm currently working on a fantasy mod (Final Fantasy, that is) that will put the fear of Barbarian uprisings back into complacent Civ III players (the "normal" barbarian unit has 3/3/2 and +1 HP bonus )

The AI army usage gripe has been run into the ground, and I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said.

Anyways, that's just my $.02 on this subject. I feel that Conquests did more things right than wrong, overall, and some of the things that are wrong are fairly easily fixed through modding, so I really don't have any complaints (especially after getting generally disgustipated by some of the bugs in PTW).

 

[Antrine]

Ok, let's talk about Barbarians that count. Mine for months now are 5/5/all terrain of 1 (which is 5) and a hitpoint +3. That is for land default barbs loads of them. At sea it is 10/5/9 with hitpoint +2. I place them as barriers to expansion/settlements or to imped sea lanes. No game can completely eliminate them, as I often place them on mountains in barricades etc. But we all try. It makes the wonder that doubles advantage over barbarians worthwhile. General game difficulty are all 100% barb or on par, no matter the difficulty setting. Well all difficulty settings are now disabled but one anyway.

Modding may yet save this game, however...

Do the noble thing Firaxis, sub out the code to someone else! Volunteers are waiting in line for cheap!!!

Generally, only armies take out the difficult barbs. Fortunately every Civ gets loads of them and uses them well stocked each game. Don't ask how, it is a long convoluted saga of tweaks and changes!

I like your ideas Hikaro Takayama, especially your new government type! I love hidden nationality units as well, just because the AI USES them! And invisible keeps the human player a leg down, which is needed for game balance.

 

[chucknra]

I thought the AI wasn't good at hidden nationality units???