Civ3...endangered?

[Argetnyx]

Civ3Q editor, you're referring to the Civ3 Conquests editor, yes?

Yes I do.

I can see why you might find the editing for Civ4 confusing, I prefer it though because it's all based on Python scripts. Since it's based on scripts it gives you more power, albeit at the expense of ease of use. It's not too much of an issue for me though as I've been programming for over a decade...

Also, Python rocks!

I've only been alive for a decade and a half, I'm also not very good at programming

 

[timerover51]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bratmon
No, your lucky. 99.9% of people at my school have never even heard of civ.

Also, your sig "At 15, I am currently one of, if not, the youngest civIII fanatic! " I'm 13.

I'm 12. I just got civ 3, and i'm really enjoying it. I still like Civ 2 better, perhaps I have to get familiar with the civ 3 gameplay style.

Hmm, at 57, I assume that I am one of the older players then, and have been working in board and miniature war game design since 1985.

As for Civ3 verses Civ4, I do not regard the graphics of Civ4 as any improvement over Civ3, except that they require a lot more memory on your video card to run them. The combat system is highly regressive, reverting to a single factor for all combat, when I would had hoped for an improvement over the combat system of Civ3, which is limited enough. Note, I have Civ4 for both the Macintosh and Windows OS, and presently, I have removed if from all computers as consuming valuable space on the hard drive, without even loading it onto one of my external hard drives in case I might want to play it sometime. I suspect that the "sometime" will not occur.

 

[pianoman1242]

Also, your sig "At 15, I am currently one of, if not, the youngest civIII fanatic! " I'm 13.

i think i'm younger. i just turned 13 last week

 

[Padma]

Hmm, at 57, I assume that I am one of the older players then, and have been working in board and miniature war game design since 1985.

I would say you are one of the oldest regulars, yes. (There are some quite older than us, however. The oldest regular poster I know of - he posts frequently in the Civ4 forums - turned 75 this year.)

And I remember playing board and miniature wargames in the 70s and 80s.

 

[timerover51]

I would say you are one of the oldest regulars, yes. (There are some quite older than us, however. The oldest regular poster I know of - he posts frequently in the Civ4 forums - turned 75 this year.)

And I remember playing board and miniature wargames in the 70s and 80s.

I started playing Panzerblitz and Sea Power II in 1970, when I started college. Started playing SPI games once in the army in 1976, when we had a regular wargaming group at Fort Richardson in Alaska. One of my favorites was Conquistador, one of the few board games that I have ever seen that had a viable solitary scenario. You had to duplicate the Spanish achievements in discovery and in the New World in 21 turns. I never did manage to do that. I started playing Dungeons and Dragons while in Walter Reed Army Medical Center in March of 1977, while waiting to find out of I would be able to walk again. The doctors viewed it as good therapy for me. I have been gaming in some form or another ever since. I have lost track of the number of games that I have, not to include rulebooks for various miniature games covering from Ancient Times to the far future, plus a fair number of various fantasy games as well.

One of my frustrations with Civ3 is thinking about what could have been done in the game verses what actually was done, and what could be done with access to the source code. I regard some aspects of Civ4, like the single stat for combat, as highly regressive, and failing to take advantage of the computing power available, while going for the apparent glitz of 3D graphics. If I were designing a computer game today, I would require that it be capable of being run on a regular laptop with no more than a 64meg Video card or Intel 950 for the Mac version, 1 Gig of memory, and on the Windows XP and Mac OS 10.4 operating systems, with the option of running it on a 32meg card at 800 X 600 screen setting and 512 megs of RAM. If you have a desktop or tower with a better video card, you pick up more graphic details.

 

[Snarkhunter]

I started playing Panzerblitz and Sea Power II in 1970, when I started college. . . . I have lost track of the number of games that I have, not to include rulebooks for various miniature games covering from Ancient Times to the far future, plus a fair number of various fantasy games as well.

One of my frustrations with Civ3 is thinking about what could have been done in the game verses what actually was done, and what could be done with access to the source code. . . .

Summer '67 with a home-made, & fall '67 with AH's Battle of the Bulge. PB I remember fondly, I had played it a few times but gave it to myself as a college graduation present in '74 & played it every night when I got home from work. but the very best incarnation of it was a computer version on the PLATO system I discovered 3 years later: impulse movement, hidden units/limited intel (with variable sight range, depending on the scenario designer; I created a '41 russian scenario taking place at night with a range of one square & the winner was the one who controlled a village to get troops in out of the cold), variable damage levels, etc. PZK is still in many ways the best 2 player wargame I ever played, but the General line from SSI is the best series. And I have boxes of games I don't look at much sitting in my bedroom--the only actual wargames I look at much are the Barbarossa series from GMT, especially since I can use ADC to set them up & keep them going for months or years.

As for source code. . . well. . . you could always reverse engineer it Bound to be a disassembler or two floating around you could grab. 'Course, reading assembler can be painful

kk

 

[Steph]

If your friends think Civ4 has better graphics, you can:
a) Buy them glasses
b) Quickly run away from this dangerous psycopaths who obviously have a twisted mind.

We have a new powerfull editor, thousands of nice units, many good mods, and more coming, we are far from dead!

 

[Argetnyx]

If your friends think Civ4 has better graphics, you can:
a) Buy them glasses
b) Quickly run away from this dangerous psycopaths who obviously have a twisted mind.

We have a new powerfull editor, thousands of nice units, many good mods, and more coming, we are far from dead!

Nice, that last bit sounds like some kind of revolutionary call. WE ARE FAR FROM DEAD!!

 

[timerover51]

As for source code. . . well. . . you could always reverse engineer it Bound to be a disassembler or two floating around you could grab. 'Course, reading assembler can be painful

kk

Actually, I have the contacts to totally take the game apart, source code and all, and then put it back together in a thoroughly revised form. However, that would require tossing copyright law out the window, and since I have some scruples, and also my own small game company, that is not an option. It is tempting though, but that is one temptation that I do not plan on yielding too.

We have a new powerfull editor, thousands of nice units, many good mods, and more coming, we are far from dead!

Steph, will your editor run under the Mac OS?

 

[tom2050]

As for Civ3 verses Civ4, I do not regard the graphics of Civ4 as any improvement over Civ3, except that they require a lot more memory on your video card to run them. The combat system is highly regressive, reverting to a single factor for all combat, when I would had hoped for an improvement over the combat system of Civ3, which is limited enough.

I completely agree in reference to both of your comments. When I first loaded Civ4 up, and took a look around in the game, then realized they reverted to a combat system involving 1 number, I was shocked and appauled at the same time. Although civilization is not a combat game, I would say combat plays the largest role for most. Now the fact that they gave units advantages against other types of units was a good idea, but having a combat system as such severly limits what you can do with the game.

Hopefully Civ5 goes back to an Attack/Defense system, but also allows specific units to have intristic advantages/disadvantages against certain other types of units. Then, e.g., you could give spearman a 1.2.1 with 50% bonus vs mounted units and perhaps 25% penalty vs infantry units. Other things, such as certain units getting bonus'es based on the terrain they are on would be excellent as well.

Something of that sort is not only fairly simple and goes along with how Civ has worked throughout it's time, but the things modders could do is enormous with such a system. Taking the best of Civ3 and 4, put em together, and 5 will be much better!

Tom

 

[Steph]

Actually, the combat system with one value is not so bad.

Imageine two spearmen units fighing on a flat plain. One is 1/2, the other is 1/2...

It means the attacking spearman has 66% to lose. Why?

They have identical skills and weapons on a flat terrain. The chances would be even.

I prefer a system where you have a bonus against cavalry for instance.

 

[ecuwins]

Actually, the combat system with one value is not so bad.

Imageine two spearmen units fighing on a flat plain. One is 1/2, the other is 1/2...

It means the attacking spearman has 66% to lose. Why?

They have identical skills and weapons on a flat terrain. The chances would be even.

I prefer a system where you have a bonus against cavalry for instance.

From a historical perspective, a "spearmen" type of army is most effective in defensive formations. So the combat odds kind of make sense.

The principles of shield wall and spear hedge were almost universally known among the armies of major civilizations throughout history, and so the similarities may be due to convergent evolution instead of diffusion.

Phalanx Formation

 

[Steph]

From a historical perspective, a "spearmen" type of army is most effective in defensive formations. So the combat odds kind of make sense.

That's why there is a 10% bonus for grassland + the bonus for fortified unit (in a defensive formation). Two spearmen fighting "head on" in open field should be relatively even

 

[ecuwins]

I think you are missing the point. Are they really fighting "head on"? One unit is attacking and one unit is defending, hence the separate values for offense and defense. Everything about a spear type army is better suited for defense(weapon, shield, tactics, ect...), thus the spearmen gets 2 for defense and 1 for offense.

 

[Steph]

Already factored by defensive bonus for terrain and fortify.

And the same apply for everything. Take two 6/3 knights...

Do you think that in a real war, one would just sit down and wait for the other knight to charge ?

No, both with actually meet in a charge. And the chance to win would be similar.

 

[Gamemaster77]

But different units are suited for different tactics. If a spearmen charged at a unit and an archer chared the archer has a better chance of winning. It has time to load and aim at the target.

As for the knight thing no it wouldn't wait. But it wouldn't have enough time to become fully prepared.

 

[Steph]

Yes, that's why I think a system with one strength but bonus vs specific type of units is indeed better.

 

[Gamemaster77]

I like that but some units are better torwards every unit as they're attacking which is why there should be both

 

[Argetnyx]

For your argument, what about tanks? They are specifically attack units. If they are used defensively, they are stuck in the same position and can be easily targeted by enemy artillery. They do not have the ability to hide as often as infantry units. They would not charge at an attacking force, since there would not be as good a range for their guns. There is no way for a one factor strength system to work.

Also, for the spearman: The Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae killed way byond their numbers by using only spearmen. The spearmen on the defensive can also prepare for the coming forces.

 

[CommandoBob]

Advantages of Each
The advantage with seperate attack/defense values is that the user/gamer/player has a quick and dirty way to determine if attacking or defending is the best way to go. However they are determined (and I don't know enough to discuss the nuts and bolts of that!) those values are easy to grasp and manipulate.

The advantage of the single strength value, modified by whom is attacking whom, is that it can give more realistic combat results between units of different types (melee, archery, mounted, etc), where one has an advantage over the other. Pikes defend better against Knights than Longbows, for instance.

The Biggest Difference
The tricky part with the single strength value for the user/gamer/player (not the programmer) is keeping track of what modifies it.

In the C3C world, all that modified the values was the terrain, so it was very easy for the gamer to look at the map, see the units and tell if an attack was a good idea or a bad one, just based on the units and terrain. Terrain times Defense compared to Attack; pretty simple. (As players, things like unit health and leader fishing also figured into the equation, but they didn't change the basic odds.)

In Civ4, the equation got more complex, since it became Terrain times Strength times Unit Type Value/Bonus (of the Defender) compared to Strength times Unit Type Value/Bonus (of the Attacker). Adding in the various promotions of each unit also made things muddled and confused for the gamer, since more math was involved in order to calculate the odds.

My Bottom Line
I think that the system in Civ4 is more accurate, but also more "magical'/black box-ish, since the math is somewhat involved, and that fact (the involved math) makes it seem more complicated than it really is.

I think that the system in Civ3 is easier to use.