Commander Bello
Say No 2 Net Validations
Weaknesses of Civ, which are to be addressed in Civ4
[Edit] Inserted flaw #5 (micro-management) and the link to a suggestion about how to deal with it in post#5
One of the most obviously successful strategies for Civ3 is to settle. Found your first town, build settler, found the second city, build two settlers, found cities #3 and #4, build four settlers and so on...
Except for a little bit of money (commerce) and the quicker relocation of units (including settlers) there is almost no incentive for building up a good infrastructure. For sure, there is no incentive to switch to something else than settling like hell.
Please, don't misunderstand me. I am totally aware of the fact that this is, what Civ is about - settling and trying to get a huge empire.
What I am disappointed of is that this is the only strategy which will work in every game. If you follow this strategy, you can't do many things wrong. The game just becomes automatic...
After a while, all free places will be settled - and then?
If you've done well at the beginning, there is nothing much left to be done. You're either in the upper third of the field, than you will be racing towards the space race win, or towards the cultural win, or you are somewhere else
than you will try to get your opponents into war against each other. For obvious reasons, the later will be easier if you own a big empire, again.
Now, whining about this reduced set of strategies is easy. What could be done to add more variety to the game?
I'll try to give some hints or ideas.
1) The deterministic structure of the game:
During recent discussions (mainly started by complaints about the "spear/tank" incident) a lot of players pointed out that they like a certain portion of randomness, stating that someone who loves deterministic games should go play chess. The argument always has been that the game would become purely predictable, if stronger units would just win their battles.
Funny enough, a lot of the same players don't care about the same predictability in other areas of the game.
You want to get a good military? You go for swords, knights and cavalry (and the UUs of the same kind). In principle, these are the units which decide the game.
For swords, you need just two techs: Bronze working -> Iron Working. After that, you have the strongest attacker available (if you've got iron in your territory)
For knights, you need just three techs: Monotheism (for what reason ever) & Fuedalism (with good attackers and defenders) -> Chivalry (with the option of getting the Knights Templar in addition)
For cavalry, you need just seven out of 22 techs: Fuedalism & Engineering -> Invention (already giving you 3 out of 4 good units at this point of time) -> Gunpowder (adding the best available defender) -> chemistry -> metallurgy
(adding the best available bombardment unit) -> Military tradition (for the cavalry). Following this path, you've got all available land units except for the Knights, and you have the option to race for it. Again, you've just needed a third of all techs of that age for the maximum military effect.
These three pathes are so obvious that almost everyone will identify and follow them, if going for a good military.
Furthermore, as the path towards Education will kill the effect of three strong wonders, you are almost forced to take the military path, if you would own one or more of them (Oracle, Great Library, Temple of Artemis). And, being
on the same continent with your opponents, you can compensate for anything if you go for the military advances. Any other nation will fall to your musket/cannon groups, while your cavalries roam the enemy territory.
2) No intra-nation trading
What kind of infrastructure do you have to build? Roads.
Roads provide you with everything you need: commerce, ressources, reduced corruption and what is called "trade" in the game.
Are there any means to improve your economy, besides roads? No. All you can do in addition, is to enhance the effect of roads by building markets (but they just make sense with roads being present) or to lower the effects of this
unbelievably bad conception of corruption/waste by building courthouses.
3) No influence of other nations on yours
You are in contact with 5 other, more advanced nations? So what? You may just buy some techs from them. Or you may go to war with them. There are no other influences upon your civilisation. Even the cultural flip may be easily
prevented.
4) The double effect of corruption/waste:
At later times of the game, corruption and waste will severely limit your options to build certain things. Let's assume, you have a city with a potential production of 63 shields. We assume that 16 of them will be lost due to
waste, so your net production is just 47. Now, if you're going to build a bank in that city, this will take 4 turns, with additional 19 shields being lost. The total loss you have to face is: 4 (turns)* 16 (waste) + 19 (overproduction) = 83 shields. This means, you've actually lost more (131% !!!!) than one turn's complete (gross) production!
Although for improvements it just makes sense to rush them, for units it might be even worse. If you were going to build a frigate in said city, it would take you two turns, with a loss of 24 shields net, and 66 shields gross. This is just ridiculous!
But, it comes even worse. If you were going to build 2 frigates in said city, this would happen twice! No increased effectiveness in this city, although the inhabitants already should be quite experienced in ship building....
In principle, this means that the people just blow up their shipyard after the construction of the first frigate, just to start all over again at the next turn.
My ideas to limit flaw #1:
As I've pointed out in this thread already, having more UUs available, which would trigger not one Golden Age on their first win, but maybe some "silver ages" of just 5 turns after the third win of such a new UU, would give everyone a chance for a come-back. Please read the thread for more information, as I am not going to quote myself too much.
The next idea: why have such a deterministic tech tree? Why not having something like this:
Tech D depends on techs A - C. If you would have discovered tech A, nothing would happen. If you would have discovered techs A and B, there would be a 5% chance (all numbers are just examples, please don't argue about "it should be 8.4% instead!") per turn, to get tech D. If you would have discovered tech A and B, *and* would have accumulated 50% of the beakers needed for tech C, the chance to get tech D would go up to 15% per turn.
This way, even backward nations would have the chance to come up again. Furthermore, your strategy might change, if you suddenly would get tech D, while you are still waiting for tech C. Why not switching to tech E instead, if it would fit you better?
Of course, this would require quite some re-engineering of the tech tree - but aren't we talking about a different game at all?
Flaw #2:
As indicated in this post (here) , there could be some finished goods ("hammers") in the game, which would be distributable between your own cities as well as being sellable to other nations. This would reduce the effects of flaw #4 as well, since you could make some cities just convert their shields to hammers and use those to hurry the production at other cities. Of course, my idea would be that this redistribution of finished goods would happen mainly automatically, so that tedious micro-management would be avoided. About how to do the redistribution, this might be subject to further discussion.
Almost unnecessary to mention, that food should be distributable as well. Why not having a production powerhouse in the mountains, next to iron, coal and whatever, being alimented by farming areas in grassland regions?
Flaw #3:
This is an enhancement of the cultural influence and adding the idea of "mood" to the game.
Say, you are in contact with 8 other nations. A,B,C and D are democracies, E is a theocracy, F is communistic and G and H are fascist regimes. You are under monarchic rule. Now, for some reason, E would be the richest and most
advanced nation you know about. There would be quite some chance that your people would get envious and would demand to catch up with nation E. They could start to demand to switch to a theocracy as well, with this demand growing more and more, as times (turns) go by. This could start with causing unhappiness, and lead to emigration, displayed by a border town loosing one pop, which would be displayed as a wagon train, moving towards the next town of nation E. Of course, you could use your military to catch them again, but this could cause some irriation on the side of nation E as well as additional unhappiness in your empire.
On the other side, if you were the more developped / successful nation, other nations' cities could loose population who would go to your empire. Since they would be volunteeringly immigrating your nation, they would automatically become citizens of your nationality, and would stay happy for let's say three turns. But, since integration causes some problems as well, they could cause a production delay of one turn upon arrival at your towns.
However this concept would be implemented, it would just lower the isolationistic tendency of the game.
Flaw #4:
About the corruption/waste feature so much has been posted already, that I will just point towards the solution for flaw #2.
I would like to learn about other people's thoughts towards these proposals.
[Edit] Inserted flaw #5 (micro-management) and the link to a suggestion about how to deal with it in post#5
One of the most obviously successful strategies for Civ3 is to settle. Found your first town, build settler, found the second city, build two settlers, found cities #3 and #4, build four settlers and so on...
Except for a little bit of money (commerce) and the quicker relocation of units (including settlers) there is almost no incentive for building up a good infrastructure. For sure, there is no incentive to switch to something else than settling like hell.
Please, don't misunderstand me. I am totally aware of the fact that this is, what Civ is about - settling and trying to get a huge empire.
What I am disappointed of is that this is the only strategy which will work in every game. If you follow this strategy, you can't do many things wrong. The game just becomes automatic...
After a while, all free places will be settled - and then?
If you've done well at the beginning, there is nothing much left to be done. You're either in the upper third of the field, than you will be racing towards the space race win, or towards the cultural win, or you are somewhere else
than you will try to get your opponents into war against each other. For obvious reasons, the later will be easier if you own a big empire, again.
Now, whining about this reduced set of strategies is easy. What could be done to add more variety to the game?
I'll try to give some hints or ideas.
1) The deterministic structure of the game:
During recent discussions (mainly started by complaints about the "spear/tank" incident) a lot of players pointed out that they like a certain portion of randomness, stating that someone who loves deterministic games should go play chess. The argument always has been that the game would become purely predictable, if stronger units would just win their battles.
Funny enough, a lot of the same players don't care about the same predictability in other areas of the game.
You want to get a good military? You go for swords, knights and cavalry (and the UUs of the same kind). In principle, these are the units which decide the game.
For swords, you need just two techs: Bronze working -> Iron Working. After that, you have the strongest attacker available (if you've got iron in your territory)
For knights, you need just three techs: Monotheism (for what reason ever) & Fuedalism (with good attackers and defenders) -> Chivalry (with the option of getting the Knights Templar in addition)
For cavalry, you need just seven out of 22 techs: Fuedalism & Engineering -> Invention (already giving you 3 out of 4 good units at this point of time) -> Gunpowder (adding the best available defender) -> chemistry -> metallurgy
(adding the best available bombardment unit) -> Military tradition (for the cavalry). Following this path, you've got all available land units except for the Knights, and you have the option to race for it. Again, you've just needed a third of all techs of that age for the maximum military effect.
These three pathes are so obvious that almost everyone will identify and follow them, if going for a good military.
Furthermore, as the path towards Education will kill the effect of three strong wonders, you are almost forced to take the military path, if you would own one or more of them (Oracle, Great Library, Temple of Artemis). And, being
on the same continent with your opponents, you can compensate for anything if you go for the military advances. Any other nation will fall to your musket/cannon groups, while your cavalries roam the enemy territory.
2) No intra-nation trading
What kind of infrastructure do you have to build? Roads.
Roads provide you with everything you need: commerce, ressources, reduced corruption and what is called "trade" in the game.
Are there any means to improve your economy, besides roads? No. All you can do in addition, is to enhance the effect of roads by building markets (but they just make sense with roads being present) or to lower the effects of this
unbelievably bad conception of corruption/waste by building courthouses.
3) No influence of other nations on yours
You are in contact with 5 other, more advanced nations? So what? You may just buy some techs from them. Or you may go to war with them. There are no other influences upon your civilisation. Even the cultural flip may be easily
prevented.
4) The double effect of corruption/waste:
At later times of the game, corruption and waste will severely limit your options to build certain things. Let's assume, you have a city with a potential production of 63 shields. We assume that 16 of them will be lost due to
waste, so your net production is just 47. Now, if you're going to build a bank in that city, this will take 4 turns, with additional 19 shields being lost. The total loss you have to face is: 4 (turns)* 16 (waste) + 19 (overproduction) = 83 shields. This means, you've actually lost more (131% !!!!) than one turn's complete (gross) production!
Although for improvements it just makes sense to rush them, for units it might be even worse. If you were going to build a frigate in said city, it would take you two turns, with a loss of 24 shields net, and 66 shields gross. This is just ridiculous!
But, it comes even worse. If you were going to build 2 frigates in said city, this would happen twice! No increased effectiveness in this city, although the inhabitants already should be quite experienced in ship building....
In principle, this means that the people just blow up their shipyard after the construction of the first frigate, just to start all over again at the next turn.
My ideas to limit flaw #1:
As I've pointed out in this thread already, having more UUs available, which would trigger not one Golden Age on their first win, but maybe some "silver ages" of just 5 turns after the third win of such a new UU, would give everyone a chance for a come-back. Please read the thread for more information, as I am not going to quote myself too much.
The next idea: why have such a deterministic tech tree? Why not having something like this:
Tech D depends on techs A - C. If you would have discovered tech A, nothing would happen. If you would have discovered techs A and B, there would be a 5% chance (all numbers are just examples, please don't argue about "it should be 8.4% instead!") per turn, to get tech D. If you would have discovered tech A and B, *and* would have accumulated 50% of the beakers needed for tech C, the chance to get tech D would go up to 15% per turn.
This way, even backward nations would have the chance to come up again. Furthermore, your strategy might change, if you suddenly would get tech D, while you are still waiting for tech C. Why not switching to tech E instead, if it would fit you better?
Of course, this would require quite some re-engineering of the tech tree - but aren't we talking about a different game at all?
Flaw #2:
As indicated in this post (here) , there could be some finished goods ("hammers") in the game, which would be distributable between your own cities as well as being sellable to other nations. This would reduce the effects of flaw #4 as well, since you could make some cities just convert their shields to hammers and use those to hurry the production at other cities. Of course, my idea would be that this redistribution of finished goods would happen mainly automatically, so that tedious micro-management would be avoided. About how to do the redistribution, this might be subject to further discussion.
Almost unnecessary to mention, that food should be distributable as well. Why not having a production powerhouse in the mountains, next to iron, coal and whatever, being alimented by farming areas in grassland regions?
Flaw #3:
This is an enhancement of the cultural influence and adding the idea of "mood" to the game.
Say, you are in contact with 8 other nations. A,B,C and D are democracies, E is a theocracy, F is communistic and G and H are fascist regimes. You are under monarchic rule. Now, for some reason, E would be the richest and most
advanced nation you know about. There would be quite some chance that your people would get envious and would demand to catch up with nation E. They could start to demand to switch to a theocracy as well, with this demand growing more and more, as times (turns) go by. This could start with causing unhappiness, and lead to emigration, displayed by a border town loosing one pop, which would be displayed as a wagon train, moving towards the next town of nation E. Of course, you could use your military to catch them again, but this could cause some irriation on the side of nation E as well as additional unhappiness in your empire.
On the other side, if you were the more developped / successful nation, other nations' cities could loose population who would go to your empire. Since they would be volunteeringly immigrating your nation, they would automatically become citizens of your nationality, and would stay happy for let's say three turns. But, since integration causes some problems as well, they could cause a production delay of one turn upon arrival at your towns.
However this concept would be implemented, it would just lower the isolationistic tendency of the game.
Flaw #4:
About the corruption/waste feature so much has been posted already, that I will just point towards the solution for flaw #2.
I would like to learn about other people's thoughts towards these proposals.
