Balance between civs

[tehfreak]

Commercial civs, especially the English in C3C, have a great advantage in researching through the ancient era quickly: if you build lots of cities early, your commercial 1 gold/city bonus will add up, allowing you to get more beakers for each notch on your science slider. In C3C English cities built on the coast have double this effect b/c of the extra gold/city for the seafaring trait. If you are playing England on pangea map, then yeah, they're not going to be so hot, are they?

You can build lots of cities early -> pangea
You can have a decent UU -> arch

Getting half of both (continents) gives you a mediocre combinaison, unless you are playing C3C.

I'd like somebody to tell me how can FireAxis make the game that unbalanced (we wouldn't be talking of tier1,2,3 civs otherwise) (balanced traits could be a bit tricky to do, at least give us = UUs) when other companies like Blizzard have all their REAL-Time strategy games 100% balanced, without telling us to buy tons of expansions ?

I think they didn't spend enough time testing the game indepth -> strategies and game techniques (outside finding bugs).

I mean, where were the beta testers when they released the american UU ?

I like the commercial trait after a little warmongering, since there is a better chance that conquered cities can be made productive. I can see why you put them in the bottom tier; the trait combination is a little awkward. Though I like the 3-man chariot, terrain limitations do apply. I guess somebody has to be in the bottom tier!

We are even used to it.

These facts will always get some strategies and fun out of MP, as there are civ you WON'T play because they aren't competitive (unless you overwhelm your opponent) and to some extent, boring.

Maybe there are too many different civs, but (heh!) how could we sell our expansions without them ?

I like Civ3, I bought it and I'm not saying not to play it, I'm just giving my opinion on some points I would like to discuss on. I would be curious to know what you civfanatics have to say about this.

FireAxis isn't looking like a serious company as much as some others do IMO. It's like if they were in a hurry when they made the game. It was the same for PTW, think about the MP when it was released.

 

[tehfreak]

There are probably spelling errors that I didn't find, I'm still learning english =)

 

[HalfBadger]

I'm not sure what you are trying to say, are you stating that the various civs are unbalanced or asking if we think they are?

I think style of play, between war monger, builder etc can change what one considers balanced or not, as well map size, world shape, difficulty levels all can make or break a Civ.

 

[Padma]

As a Conquests beta tester, I can assure you that Balance was one of our uppermost thoughts.

 

[tehfreak]

Should we buy conquest in order to have a balanced game ? As an exemple I'd take persians vs americans in ptw -> Expansionist - industrious with no UU vs Scientific - industrious with a wonderful UU. I'd cry if I'd have to play Americans vs Persia in a MP game.

What does America have that Persia doesn't ? Persia is much stronger in the beginning and I don't think expansionist helps our USA mates later on.

I know conquest has many improvements and I'm rather interested in buying it, but I feel bad about giving my money away because they sell expansions instead of making balance change patches. (At least they fixed most MP bugs)

This said, I did not discuss this with anybody yet and I'm not the kind of ****** that will argue he's right until he dies -- Please do not flame me