10 Reasons Why Conquests Went Wrong

[Hygro]

Aggie, I am pretty mixed on the matter. Like I said, especially for catapults, the artillery change is good. But once you hit artillery, its purely bad.

One change I really like is how there are fewer resources.

 

[dgfred]

More importantly...artillery hitting only troops in the cities make it way to easy for the human player to capture cities. Realism is nice, but I rather have a balanced game. Artillery was powerful in Vanilla Civ and PTW, but it is probably twice as powerful in C3C. If you add the lethal bombers and the uber-unit army, you get a very flawed game. Very difficult variants in PTW are two levels easier in C3C because of this.

You guys, who are exellent players, are the best judges of balanced play .

I have followed you guys in the SGs and value your opinions . Keep 'em coming.

 

[Grille]

I agree with Hygro on the catapult (...cannons) issue. Although, then again, the trouble is the AI still doesn't use (any types of) artillery units effectively. Like Aggie said, this point is kind of argueable since use of cats seems just like another one-sided option... Anyways, the cats have sometimes featured my archer rush if iron/horses were not found in my territory. These games might have been lost otherwise (np with that). But making and realising the cat plan let me really enjoy such game - and that's what counts for me.

(Btw, scarce resources may be another shot in AI's foot, but that depends on the individual game).

Bombers are indeed overpowered. On top of lethal bombardment, I could have a huge bomber stack ready to cripple the AI on any theatre within 2 turns, then bring doom to another AI elsewhere 2 turns later. Imagine that remote resource colony city on another continent: formerly, I could possibly stuff such city by airlifting ground units, but it would take quite some time to bring the troops back. Now I could completly wreck the nearby AI metro with bombers (or just raze a metro with the help of 1 single cavalry). Boring.

 

[gmr7494]

That's certainly true for the individual, but remember these represent units, not individuals. Artillery and air support aren't designed to eliminate units, just weaken them, disrupt their cohesion, etc., making them easier targets for the ground offensive. In fact, the U.S. Army's fire support doctrine defines an artillery Destroy mission as inflicting 30% casualties. (Suppress is 10%, disrupt is 20%, IIRC). The prior implementation of non-lethal bombardment fit that quite well. Lethal sea bombardment is more reasonable, as I do look at ships as representing individual ships or small flotillas, and they can certainly be sunk from the air.

I agree to an extent to what you're saying, but I still don't see how artillery can be considered non-lethal. If those units don't move and you pound them enough with shells, then they'll all die. It seems to me like it's an AI issue. If the computer is dumb enough to take a shelling and stay in one place, then so be it.

 

[Justus II]

I agree to an extent to what you're saying, but I still don't see how artillery can be considered non-lethal. If those units don't move and you pound them enough with shells, then they'll all die. It seems to me like it's an AI issue. If the computer is dumb enough to take a shelling and stay in one place, then so be it.

While the Commander (AI) may be dumb enough to tell them to stand there, most of the troops will figure out pretty quickly how to take cover, trust me! There are no examples in history of bombardment eliminating all defenders, so the ground forces don't have to fight their way in. Even in a city, actually ESPECIALLY in a city, there's too many places to take cover and wait it out. The best you can hope for is that you weaken their resolve enough that they withdraw and abandon the city, but even then the units live to regroup elsewhere, which is what a red-lined unit is.

 

[Hygro]

Sullla, it was Trip who had that screenshot of the completely decimated lands.

 

[Breunor]

I haven't played Civ before Conquests. Its a shame if the game went downhill somewhat -- although the extra conquest scenarios really look good to me.

One comment I would like to make, though, is realtive to most other complex strategy games, computers or board games, the errors/bugs here are unbelievably mild.

I always thought that the most interesting.challenging strategic game I ever played was Master of Magic. The bugs there are so legendary that they dominate the game. EUII, another amazing, challenging game, also has a lot of bugs, but that game has been very well supported by its lead programmer. Even complex board games frequently have serious flaws.

Anyway, I hope they fix the bugs they have. The 'lead' ones that Sir Pleb mentions do seem to be pretty serious.

Breunor

 

[jkp1187]

I disagree with you profoundly on many of your points of complaint. C3C made the game fun again for me. To address one point that hasn't been made...scientific great leaders give peace-loving, commercial civs stranded on an island (like one in a MP game I'm playing now,) a chance to actually GET A LEADER IN THE FIRST PLACE. It is only unbalancing if you cannot modify your existing strategies to take this into account.

I do agree with you about lethal land bombardment. (Lethal sea bombardment is such an obvious thing, however, that I even used to mod my vanilla Civ III games so that it was possible.)

Concerning the Statue of Zeus...it can be a great equalizer, particularly if you're given a starting location on an island with no resources. If not, even if you POSSESS ivory, it's not certain that the investment would be worth the cost...but it depends on what your overall goals for the game are, I suppose.

 

[nullspace]

I already posted that I agree with most of the points Sullla posted, but it doesn't mean that conquests is bad. Conquests added many new features that make it more interesting (or just different) than PTW. And some things are balanced better than they were before: costs of buying tech and military alliances increased, new resourceless units in the industrial and modern eras, and new antiaircraft units. IMO, conquests is much better than PTW.

The thing is, the AI doesn't know how to deal with most of the new stuff. Many of the things Sullla said are exploits only because the AI doesn't know how to use them right, or how to fight against them. This is true for bombers (AI doesn't really use ground AA), artillery, armies, marshes, contact trading (AI doesn't risk its ships at sea, so it doesn't make contact), governemnts (AI makes wrong choices and switches too often), and specialists.

The human player can use these just fine, and have fun with all the new variations and options. The bad thing is, the game is much easier if you know how to exploit the new features and the AI's weaknesses. In other words, conquests is great if you want a fun but not challenging game. It's bad if you want a difficult game against a competent AI. As it is now, conquests just pits my bag of exploits versus the AI's big deity and sid production bonuses. I'd rather have no exploits versus a competent emperor or demigod AI.

 

[Dogzilla]

I disagree with almost everything said in the original post, and it took me longer to read than "Anna Karenina". The one thing I DO agree with is lethal bombardment...It should, like in real life, take troops on the ground to finish the job.

 

[planetfall]

I disagree with almost everything said in the original post, and it took me longer to read than "Anna Karenina". The one thing I DO agree with is lethal bombardment...It should, like in real life, take troops on the ground to finish the job.

Get real. Lethal bombardment is a MINOR change and not a major problem. Have you ever played a game with lethal bombardment and had to use 50 bombers for more than 20 turns?

1. They are not as effective as you might think
2. They are a real hassle to play and move from city to city
3. They really really slow down game play
4. It is more effective to stop when down to one red dot in most cases. You want more and more elite not more and more dead enemy. Only elites can get GL and these get converted into armies.


If you don't like lethal bombardment, go into the editor and turn it off. No big deal. This is just a player preference. Go back to the real problems of C3C that cannot be changed by players:

1. revised corruption model
2. no AI armies
3. AI not using specialists properly
4. lack of good balance in the game
5. overly strong communism. AI's always are in one government.

PF

 

[planetfall]

Oh, after seeing null space. Another change, in PTW all you could do is go in the editor and check/uncheck lethal bombardment.

In C3C, you have new defenses against bombers:
-- flak
-- mobile sam
-- sams

You just need 4 flak/mobile sams to have a good impact on incoming bombers.

PF

 

[RegentMan]

That's true, planetfall, but the AI doesn't seem to realize this.

 

[Hygro]

Get real. Lethal bombardment is a MINOR change and not a major problem. Have you ever played a game with lethal bombardment and had to use 50 bombers for more than 20 turns?

Yes I have. I've never had such an easy war. I had a game from the beta when most of the rules were being solidified. I was in war constantly that game (certain bug), and I had a very large empire.

On the south was the chinese with a 4 city wide border. On the west was a chokepoint to the sumerians.

I started the war with swiss pikemen. 14 of em. Fewer pikemen than I had cities. (this was on demigod and I sacfriced a military to expand at an AI rate with a bad start and not bothering to trade much). I held them off for a short amount of time while I researched flight (doubled my army in that time--still tiny), and next thing you know the world was mine. Armies 10 times more powerful than mine lost with great ease.

Bombers have 12 attack, and 3 hits. they are leathal. 2 bombers will take out almost any unit, with no risk to themselves.

 

[ukrneal]

A thought-provoking post.

I have never gotten as far as air superiority really being all that critical. I'm still trying to mod the game enough to get to that point. I find the game has been either won or lost by that point already. So the key element for me, in terms of balance, is that I never get there!

I like some of the changes to ancient time bombardment, and I do like the MDI. But I can't stand the problems with leaders, armies, and map trading. I actually like what they tried to do, but find that they haven't implemented it well.

And that is my biggest problem. On paper, I like the additions. The problem is that the computer either can't use them at all (specialist and armies come to mind) or use them even worse than other features (marsh). Not enough thought has been put into the effects of some of the new features (and how the AI will use them - if it does at all) and, therefore, implementation is sometimes terrible.

By the way, I detest the vocanos and marsh terrain. When I make my own maps, I almost always remove them, with the exception of those with oil or some other goody.

Additionally, the higher the level you play, the worse these problems seem to become in my opinion.

 

[The Last Conformist]

You do not have any need for MGLs if you've got 50+ bombers. Armies are worthless if there are no enemy defenders to punch thru, and building SWs and City Imps shouldn't be an issue by the time bombers come around. If you really need that airport now and can't money-rush it, simply disband a bunch of units there (it's much more reliable than getting a MGL when you need it anyway).

Short story: The AI doesn't have a clue how to defend against large numbers of bombers.

 

[dexters]

Breakaway's attempt to shift the emphasis from the well know Stack of Doom Artillery tactic to focus more instead on lethal air power is actually quite interesting.

From my own experience and from what I've read others describe their games, airpower is something the AI is more comfortable in using and this means a stronger emphasis on airpower means a stronger AI (ironically). Seaborne invasions are now much more challenging because of the potential of enemy airpower sinking invasions fleets - something that was never an issue before. Increasing the importance of airpower also means that the AI can, and usually will, strike deep into your territory if it has bombers within range and the AI is never shy about building bombers. It builds lots of them.

Therefore, the shift to lethal bombardmend and airpower may well unbalance the game. I really don't know and can't say conclusively. But what I want to point out the game was never balanced on the bombard issue. Humans have always had the advantage. When airpower was NOT emphasized (Civ3 vanilla and PTW) The AI's relative competence in building an airforce (as opposed to an offensive artillery force) is often wasted. They build an airforce that does pitiful damage and airpower is ignored and considered 'luxury' units by human players more interested in mass producing artilleries and other land based units.

What Breakaway and Firaxis has done is expand the late game dynamics up into the sky, which is a welcome dimension to the gameplay.

One point of agreement is Firaxis really dropped the ball on the patching of C3C. I'm really bitter about the fact that they left so many game breaking bugs unfixed (broken barbarians, sub bug, army bug SGL bug) to name a few. almost all of the above have do with AI stupidies that were either fixes in PTW and its patches or were never really problems before.

The AI has to be able to competently perform all the in-game features. This was what made vanilla Civ3 so fun to play because I knew the AI could do everything I could do (not all equally well but they knew how to use features). The C3C AI's inability to use MGLs and creating armies, and sulla's point about its inability to deal with the new specialists really disturb me. It seems like Firaxis took the easy way out and threw in a bunch of features that looked good on paper (because humans can use it) but they secretly know the AI has no chance in hell of using the same features. It's 2004, I don't want to go back to Alpha Centauri where there were lots of features... ONLY FOR THE HUMAN PLAYERS. I expect more from Firaxis.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Funnily enough, I seem to've seen fewer AI bombers in C3C than in PTW or Vanilla. Hopefully just a glitch, or something prompted by some change in my playing style.

Oh, and is it just me, or does the AI never use aircraft against 1HP units? Seems it still "thinks" that it cannot kill units off with aerial bombardment.

 

[socralynnek]

Somehow, some of the original reasons are why I say : Conquests is really good.

Especially reason 11 and 4:
I really like COMM. and Map Trading now, and I love SGLs.
And the two new governments aren't that bad and I like the mechanism they introduced with SoZ.

That said, I also find lethal land bomb. and the way artillery bomb. works now annoying.
And it's sad that the AI doesn't use armies.

Hmm, and I like the new terrain and the specialists...

Just my two cents...

 

[planetfall]

That's true, planetfall, but the AI doesn't seem to realize this.

Sorry, I thought the concern was being attacked unfairly by AI not too much human advantage. You are correct, I have not seen the AI build stacks of 4 air defenders.

PF