CIV3 Flaws

[MJG1032]

i've been playing civ3 for a couple months now and have enjoyed the game except for a few major flaws.

1) Ridiculous amounts of Corruption
I know why corruption is present in civ3 and i think that it is a very realistic and necessary part of the game, but i would capture a few cities from my enemy far away from my capital and forbidden palace, and throughout the course of the game i would never get those cities producing more than two shields because of the corruption. this includes when they were celebrating WLTK day and had a courthouse and police station and i was the Romans (a commercial civilization) and my government was democracy. what is the point of even taking over the cities if i'm just going to have to pay for every improvement and receive nothing but an extended border? (yes, i have seen the corruption calculator, it's a very good program but pretty confusing at times.)

2) AI taking too long/too long between turns
after i end my turn, the AI begins its turn. even with all AI animations off it still takes minutes for the turn to end because for some reason, every AI unit must use all of its movement points before it will be satisfied. i don't care if an egyptian worker is nearing my border! get on with the game!

when my people suffer from war weariness, almost all the cities go into civil disorder. it takes serveral minutes at the end of each turn for the computer to, one by one, tell me that thirty of my cities have ended WLTK day and gone into civil disorder. I DON'T CARE LET'S JUST PLAY THE GAME.

3) RAMPANT AI CHEATING
this is the reason that i have stopped playing civ3. i simply cannot stand how much the AI cheats. i usually play on Regent difficulty level. for example, i invest all my money in scientific research so that i could be the first to discover calvary. well what do you know? as soon as i got calvary, so did all the other AI players. only a few turns before this they were many advances away from military tradition... all of a sudden i look at them again and they're in the industrial age. what the hell? they were technologically backwards five turns ago!

i always rush several archers in the beginning of the game and attack and defeat my nearest adversary while he has only a couple cities. i totally destroy him, but mysteriously on the other side of the continent he founded another city, magically produced a worker, and found 100 gold. this happens EVERY time. it's ridiculous. i defeated him, but he won't die. he must cheat in order to stay alive.

the entire battle system is beyond laughable. i use one of my elite calvary (attack of 6) to attack a conscript rifleman (defense 6, who was, by the way, the very last unit defending the city) and the rifleman defeats my calvary without losing any health. i send in another calvary and he does the same thing. i finally sent in my army comprised of three calvary and they defeat the conscipt after losing much health.

i used my veteran longbowman to attack a veteran warrior, and my longbowman gets the warrior down to one health, but the warrior mysteriously rallies from behind and defeats me at the last second. he had no defensive bonus whatsoever. why did he win? the AI didn't want to give up the settler that he was guarding.

but of course, when they need a city they can always count on their archers to take care of my veteran pikemen (why was i storing 86 gold in a distant frontier city anyway? strange, i recaptured it that same turn and "liberated" 0 gold)...

4) Idiot AI
very often, i'll try to negotiate a right of passage with a rival, but they won't accept it because they say that i've attacked other civilizations while under this protection. uh, no i haven't... this is the first time that i've even offered this agreement to anyone...

i organize a military alliance with japan to destroy india, and when i finally destroy india, JAPAN DECLARES WAR ON ME! uh, sorry, but weren't we TRYING TO DESTROY INDIA? what did i do wrong?

funny story...
i was whooping greece in a war, but they still had five cities left. i negotiate peace with them and i offer them 200 gold per turn for two of their cities. they agree. i declare war immediately. i negotiate peace and offer them 200 gold per turn for two more of their cities. they agree. i declare war immediately. i offer 200 gold per turn for their last city besides the capital. they agree. i declare war. i talk to them again, and i get them to give me four workers, all their gold, and a world map. stupid AI...

5) City Deposition
this is what infuriates me most about the AI's cheating, apart from their ridiculous battles. isn't it enough that they get free units on monarch and deity levels? that is BS in itself.
here's the story here...
i was Rome, and one of my many rivals on the other side of this huge map was France. anyway, it was the industrial age, i had been playing the best game of my life (i still have the saved game if you want to see it...) and i had managed to build EVERY great wonder except for The Great Library. almost all of these great wonders were located in Rome (my capital) or Veii (the city next to it). well, france (who happened to be admirerers of my culture) decided to travel to the total opposite end of the map and build two cities next to Rome and Veii. "Gee," i thought, "those will depose to my control in no-time." well, it turns out that they NEVER deposed, nor did they ever even build one city improvement or receive any luxuries. the only garrison was a spearman. egypt did the same thing and their city never deposed either. of course, when i even settled anywhere near a large city of a rival, i was under the constant threat of losing my cities EVEN THOUGH MY RIVALS HAD NO CULTURE.

by the way, about deposition, it's stupid that the military units in the city are given to the new owner of the city... it would make much more sense if they were killed (honestly, why are they loyal to you one turn and trying to kill you the next turn?).

i wish that the AI wouldn't cheat... i didn't buy civ3 so that i would be disapointed and frustrated. the AI isn't ruthless enough... they hardly ever go to war, even when i have ten unguarded cities and am off with all my units fighting a war on the other side of the map.

anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings. tell me what you think.


-MJG1032

 

[damunzy]

A.I. Cheating:
As to the cheating in the hard difficultly levels....they can make the AI only so "smart" that in order to make a challenge for the more advanced players they have the A.I. start with an advantage (and play with advantages also).

A.I. Military Cheating:
I have seen the weird battle results go in my favor some times....although it seems to go in the A.I.'s favor more often (I think that the anger from losing a unit stays in my mind better than the joy of not losing one...so it may just seem that way...)

Corruption:
This horse is dead...long dead....but I agree, corruption sucks...but there are ways around it....I would suggest learning Civ3 strategies instead of trying to use Civ2 or strategies that work for other games (I am guilty of still using Civ2 strats).

Culture Flipping:
I mostly play Japan and I have had a good time of culture flipping...ofcourse every city has a temple and all the other culture makers I can build....what civilization are you playing?

Overall I agree with you...to a point. I would suggest taking some time off from the game and trying out another...then try coming back again. Look at Zachriel's webpage, he is on CFC somewhere, and pick up some of the strats from otehr good players on here...don't turn into a Zouave.

 

[Tassadar]

i understand your frustation, i had several experience about the almost undefetable ( warrior, galley,...) with a settler.

cavalry against rifleman, i learn to use cannon, bomber or artillery prior to city assault, and since patch 1.17 there accuracy has been lowored, i had to use twice as much as before, my catapult miss most of the time now

when i got iritated by those change or unfair thing i just tak a deep breath and i find a way to have fun ( genocide a.i)

 

[Mr Adeoye]

yes i agree to some extent with your fustration but remember civ3 has been made to push ppl to the more peacefull ways of completing the game eg cultural instead of conquest.Thats why on the top levels it's made almosy impossible to win by conquest.

 

[simwiz2]

"when my people suffer from war weariness, almost all the cities go into civil disorder. it takes serveral minutes at the end of each turn for the computer to, one by one, tell me that thirty of my cities have ended WLTK day and gone into civil disorder. I DON'T CARE LET'S JUST PLAY THE GAME."

you can have this handled automatically by the city governors, if you right click a city, select contact governor, and select YES next to Manage Citizen Moods, and select In All Cities. They will save you a lot of tedium, and they also usually stop disorder the turn before it starts, saving you a turn of production. using this cut my turn times almost in half.

 

[royfurr]

Originally posted by Mr Adeoye
yes i agree to some extent with your fustration but remember civ3 has been made to push ppl to the more peacefull ways of completing the game eg cultural instead of conquest.Thats why on the top levels it's made almosy impossible to win by conquest.

To contrast your point Mr. Adeoye, it seems to have been many, many players experience, that the game tends to push people into warfare. Even to survive, let alone to win. Personally I prefer to win by domination, rather then total conquest, its obviously easier, or a culture win that is ultimately the result of warfare destroying the opponents culture or at least wrecking it so yours is higher (its obvioulsy smart to build as much culture as possible, even if you are a warlike player, so as to minimize culture flips chances, if nothing else. Yes yes, some people simply play a straight attack attack attack with jaguar warriors etc but I have not seen that work unless the player has real good luck on "die rolls"). The point I am making is that simply building massive culture and assimalitating cites (or, straight out attack attack attack only) seem to have a much lower probablility of success at wining then a combionation of warfare and some culture.

MIG1032's last point is the most disturbing, in a sense. Those cities SHOULD have culture fiipped to him. Why didn't they? There of course may be other factors which MIG1032 hasn't told us that relate to that. Not sure what they could be but its certainly possible.

Regarding his other points, all of us who have played for a while and continue to play have clearly come to be able to accept them, if not like them, and of course we have a chance at winning anyway. We accept that we have endless fields of 1 shield cities on all but our home continent and, perhaps, if we had held off on building the FP there, on a second continent. (Or we get around the problem. to an extent, by palying pangea.) We accept that the dam_ ai spearman will defeat even a Modern Armour on some battles, (sometimes a few in a row!!). We accept that the ai somehow has every blasted tech we do and more, even though they have no banks or significant commerce generating improvemtents, lower pop cities, and no money. We accept that
the ai's will trade with each other at ridicioulous (sp. - sorry) low prices but want WM, 200 gold, 50 gold/turn, Gunpowder and Education plus Silks in return for Printing Press. lol! And I will not even begin to list the problems with the patently poor attempt to simulate (yes, simultate, that BY DEFINITION is what a computer program does to make this seem "life-like") Naval warfare and Naval domination.

We accept these things because we like some of the newer concepts like culture and resources over the more primitive Civ 2 game. And we don't mind the greater challenge of the Three over Two. But-

The game is becoming, (and at some points becomes so much so that we quit and start a new [civ] game), a lot of work to play. Fewer people will pay money to do that then will if it isn't more work.

The fun factor has gone down, and the frustration factor has gone up.

Frankly, this is a dangerous trend for Fraxias and Infogames, if they want to continune to make a profitable product that people will play (ie buy). All the people who get so frustrated with civ3 and simply stop playing, wheither they complain on the forum or not, will be people who at the very least will not be automatically buying civ4 when it comes out, on Day One, just becuase its a contiuation of the civ franshise. They MAY go to forums like this one and check out other peoples experience and May buy later, based on what they see, or they may not even bother with that. These people are not happy consumers with Firaxis or Infogames products and will be less likely to buy in the future- no matter how much WE make fun of them for "not being able to deveolp strategys" etc.. Hence, in a business sense, some of the things that MIG1032 is complaining about, despite their being "... a dead horse", and things that are old hat to us longer term players, ARE things that are "bad" for the game.

IF Fraxis wants to make them happy, and us harder core types, they REALLY REALLY need to improve the editor. That way it can be more easely adjusted by eveyone, to be as challenging as some of us want, as easy as others want (in both ease of win, AND in ease of play), and possibly for all us, as little or more WORK to play as we might like or can deal with. The editor needs to easely adjust not just unit values, but game play parameters, like how much corruption per distance from capitol, or add in optional stuff, like a module that generates trade routes that subs attack and merchants ships maintian. And fixing things that don't work well, like "stack" movement ANd true sceniaro building ability would probably alone save the franshise.

Sorry for getting a bit OT, but the frustration has been building up lately, and had to vent. Now, back to the war with the Iroquois, those sneak attacking bastards ...

Civ on, all.

 

[Bamspeedy]

you can have this handled automatically by the city governors, if you right click a city, select contact governor, and select YES next to Manage Citizen Moods, and select In All Cities. They will save you a lot of tedium, and they also usually stop disorder the turn before it starts, saving you a turn of production. using this cut my turn times almost in half.

I do use the governors, but on a huge map, if I have 100-200 cities, then just the 1 second it takes to inform me that a city has ended WLTK day, or has gone into WLTK day can take 2-3 minutes just by itself (1 second times 150 cities = 2.5 minutes).

after i end my turn, the AI begins its turn. even with all AI animations off it still takes minutes for the turn to end because for some reason, every AI unit must use all of its movement points before it will be satisfied. i don't care if an egyptian worker is nearing my border! get on with the game!

Yes, I have noticed this, too. On border cities, their offensive units will leave the city, go around in circles, only to end their turn back in the city. What's the point! It's just wasting time, can't the AI learn to just fortify until the unit is actually needed? I just turn all animations off at this point, but then I have to continually scan my territory to see if one of the 'friendly allies' is trying to sneak a large stack of units into my territory for a sneak attack.

I notice the biggest increase in time between turns is when I have a ton of workers on automation. It seems after completing a terrain improvement, each worker scans every single tile to decide which one to improve next.

 

[God]

I find it very tedoius when my all my cities go into "we love king day". Imagine if you had to do that for 117 cities. I just went off and got something to eat. It took so long!

I agree with the military cheating. Why can't my regular healthy modern armor beat a freaking conscript rifleman.

How come the AI's tanks can kill my mech infantry 40% of the time while i can throw 10 elite tanks at AI mech infantry and do 1 damage? Its ridiculous.
The same favoring for the AI happens with other units. Swordsmen and spearmen. AI swordsmen will cut thrugh your spears but for me it takes 2-3 swordsmen to take down a spearman.
Also it is very frustrating losing to some obsolete defender. A man with a pike shouldn't be able to beat a guy with a rifle. How the hell is a man with a basic riflemen supposed to kill a tank with all the latest technology.
The difference between units of different era's should be increased.

 

[Sullla]

Please no more posts about the combat system; we all know that the game should have included a firepower system for more modern units, but there's no reason to go on and on about it. It has been proved many times that the results not biased in favor of anyone, just a pure probability of attack vs defense.

the entire battle system is beyond laughable. i use one of my elite calvary (attack of 6) to attack a conscript rifleman (defense 6, who was, by the way, the very last unit defending the city) and the rifleman defeats my calvary without losing any health.

Actually, this isn't that surprising; only cities larger than 6 can conscript so the rifleman had a defense bonus equivalent to city walls. I'm guessing the rifleman was fortified too. And then there's the terrain bonus for defender too... (was this city on a hill?) It's more likely the calculations were 6 attack vs. 10 defense after these adjustments; so your results are not that atypical at all.

The fact that the AI takes too long to move can be fixed by not playing on huge maps. I've never played larger than a "large" map because I don't want to wait forever. Just play smaller maps and the problem dissapears.

this is the reason that i have stopped playing civ3. i simply cannot stand how much the AI cheats. i usually play on Regent difficulty level. for example, i invest all my money in scientific research so that i could be the first to discover calvary. well what do you know? as soon as i got calvary, so did all the other AI players. only a few turns before this they were many advances away from military tradition... all of a sudden i look at them again and they're in the industrial age. what the hell? they were technologically backwards five turns ago!

Actually on Regent difficulty there is no cheating at all; you and the AI are on an even footing. The nature of the tech system means that each time someone discovers a tech, the cost to research it goes down. Therefore you would do better to either sell your advances as soon as you research them or just buy them from the AI without doing your own research. I don't really like the system either, but it was the only way Firaxis could prevent humans from just trading techs and getting so far ahead that the AI could never catch up.

I agree with you completely on respawning, it's implausible for a civ to magically reappear after being defeated and should be removed.

Corruption and the strange decision making the AI makes are something you just have to live with. If you don't like them, you should probably try another game because Civ3 is only going to frustrate you. The AI is actually quite good and manages to defeat many players on Regent (the even difficulty setting); clearly though it will occasionally make decisions that no human would ever do.

 

[Akka]

Originally posted by Sullla
Please no more posts about the combat system; we all know that the game should have included a firepower system for more modern units, but there's no reason to go on and on about it.

Yes there is a reason : to continu to tell it to Firaxis, so they can perhaps eventually put it in one of the next patch. It's not that they're not aware about it, it's just that they need to know HOW MUCH it is wanted.

Actually on Regent difficulty there is no cheating at all; you and the AI are on an even footing. The nature of the tech system means that each time someone discovers a tech, the cost to research it goes down. Therefore you would do better to either sell your advances as soon as you research them or just buy them from the AI without doing your own research. I don't really like the system either, but it was the only way Firaxis could prevent humans from just trading techs and getting so far ahead that the AI could never catch up.

I must admit that I have a strange feeling about the AI research system, even on 1.16 and that I always got the feeling that they had a strange ability to stay just behind the player, even though they did have only a handsome of cities without any improvement. The tech devaluation does not explain it all in my opinion. Perhaps just some paranoid feeling, but...

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by PaleHorse76
[B...don't turn into a Zouave. [/B]

I AM Zouave, and I'm tired of being tortured by this Culture Flipping idiocy.

I once played peacefully with the Romans as neighbors for millennia. Then, 5,000 years after the game began, Actium, a ROMAN city of '12', decides to join my civ. Was I happy? Hardly. I thought it absurd.

I once had a tile with a road, mine, iron, and garrisoned fortress within a city's production radius. Then, for reasons known only to the bean-counting AI, the Aztec BORDER flips over that tile - and I am expected to just meekly leave. As I won't leave, I get labelled a warmonger forever even by civs on another continent I wouldn't meet for another thousand years, which was nine hundred years after the Aztec were eliminated!! That's as stupid as Japan in the Industrial era still hating Greece for destroying Troy.

So many more flaws: a simplistic sloppy mod; pathetic naval warfare; settler diarrhea; wandering workers; Corruption; and so much more. My personal favorite is giving War ELEPHANTS the ability to airlift.

The heck with it. Masochist that I am I have to finish a game of Civ III!! Just read the below litany of complaints from another Civ fanatic.

Software/Packaging

1 - The pathetically packaged “collectors edition” tin which sums up your entire operation. Anyone end up getting those designer notes? Anyone’s tech “poster” end up enlarging itself into an actual poster, or aligning its print to the paper? I do hope those biscuit tins are large enough to hold your customers shattered expectations.
2 - Bugs upon release. I won't specify the overly horrendous and inexcusable variety of the aforementioned, otherwise it would be Zylka’s 1,425 theses on why your programmers suck.
3 - Lack of multi-player upon release. Anyone in their right mind would have waited an extra few months for it to be included, but that doesn’t work with planned obsolescence, now does it?
4 - Lack of Scenarios. One of the many steps backwards in regards to civ2.
5 - “Maps” included. Seriously, those shouldn’t have taken more than 20 minutes to make, so you’re either lazy, or incompetent. I vouch for the former with a touch of the latter.
6 - Lack of editor upon release. Current editor is a sad consolation worthy of a swift kick to the gonads.
7 - Lack of windows format, or anything close to not being a pain in the as* for minimizing. Alt + tab makes for an incredibly messy scheme, often crashes the program, and does not work without another program already running.
8 - Patches. Not enough changes, not fast enough. Quite amusing how over half of the listed “changes” for each patch have consisted of fixing typos. Care to borrow my ms-word spell check, next time?
9 - Speed. Why is it so slow, even on a hotrod of a computer? Was an incredibly dated processing engine used for this game?


Graphics

10 - The water is jade, the mountains are red. What (other than reality) inspired you to choose such an unrealistic terrain palette? And no, fixes by the mod community don’t count in saving your collective as* (thank you, Sn00py).
11 - Mountains are way too obtrusive on the land’s layout. It does not look good, quite irritating in fact. Perhaps you should have made them even more unrealistically gigantic and thornlike, I don’t think the common idiot can decipher them as mountains, yet.
12 - Civ score caveman "animation". I won't even attempt to vent my frustration on the fact that an already flawed game had some of it's production diverted to that pile of sh*t.
13 - The 3-D advisors and Leaders are so lame. Again, I would rather you had just used static pictures, with the saved amount of work put towards the intrinsic side of the game. Then again, (neo)classical portraits of leaders don’t sell as well as goofy looking 3-D animations.
14 - Joan de Arc’s cleavage really sexed up civ. No really, you sexed it right up and into a filthy whore of half-wit humor.
15 - Modern resources look horrific. The sight of a tire for rubber, a neon-green slab for uranium, and a garbage can for aluminum literally makes the modern map look like a garbage dump.
16 - Firing of nuclear missiles was done in such a lame manner, it makes red alert look professional in comparison. OOH BOY LOOK DAR SCREEN IS SHAKING BOOM I R USE EXPLOSIFFS!
17 - The “loser” screen. Stupid, not at all well done, tacky.
18 - More shots of the “Evolution” Tower of Babel, please. That’s what we paid for, right?
19 - Why do all naval units have such a melodramatic firing animation? Battleships don’t violently rock back and forth with active turrets, they do weigh a good 50, 000 tons, after all. This may seem petty, but it’s yet another piece of crap decision to make the game a little more radical/explosive oriented exciting for the market’s idiots.
20 - Civ colors. Saints preserve us, an Easter-egg was not a good source for influence. Looks silly, mmk?
21 - Cities need a subtle, blending grid outwards. Current form looks like a clumsily dense mass of buildings sticking up out of nowhere, more of an outpost than anything.

Gameplay

22 - Corruption. It's not, nor has it ever been realistic. It was a pathetically obvious overlay fix for an unexpectedly high timeline speed. Next time, hire logistics programmers before you make such crucial decisions.
23 - Culture, and city reversions. Nice try implementing the abstract of immigration/emigration, it was done horribly. Whole cities do not leave and join empires, “individual” populations (by that I mean 1 city size) should have been the integer. Even a choice route bank specifying to what city(s) immigrant populations should add on would have worked better. Of course, the emigration would have worked on a non-choice level, deriving from cultural formulas according from city to city. See? Even I would have made a better logistics advisor than whoever you had. Problem is, I don’t associate with two-bit operations. No wait, my solutions are too difficult for a drooling moron to comprehend – that wouldn’t work for marketability!
24 - AI cheats. However, it does its job just fine – and anything short of a human must cheat to be challenging. The issue here is admitting it cheats, against what was previously implied, and the programmer’s ego.
25 - AI exploit issues. Tends to militarily expand in odd spaces past their periphery territories, often leaving huge power vacuum areas which are easy to pick off repeatedly throughout the game.
26 - Trade was a half noble/ half cowardly streamlining change. Smart people want more options and more manual control, that includes setting up individual routes from city to city, be it moving the caravan itself. A combination of the two would have been nice, but that would’ve taken more than an hour lunch break to come up with.
27 - Domestic nag. Kill, murder, destroy, gone.
28 - War weariness. Why is it that a celebrating democracy crumbles on the exact turn that some sh*t island nation half way across the globe declares war on it? I fully realize that you were bent on making warfare near useless in this game, but this is just absolutely unacceptable. Closer to real life next time, is that yet clear?
29 - Limited terra-forming is needed.
30 - ICS has become even more a horrible necessity than it was in civ2. REX compounds the problem. Players used to work like hell to secure that perfect setting for a city; a river running through it, a nice patch of grassland, rich resources within hinterland radius… now it just doesn’t matter. Filling up the map is an immediate necessity, and it doesn’t matter where you choose to settle. Huge mistake.
31 - Ships which should, do not have even minor AA abilities.
32 - Resources. Oh goody, my civ has a near infinite cluster of gems. The concept of strategic resources was a noble one, but poorly executed. No civilization should have the need (due to shortage of) a resource as widely available as aluminum. Horses as a strategic resource - seriously? Oil is understandable, yet this kind of limiting factor will wreak havoc on multi-player. You must add an option which turns strategic limitations off. Back to the basics, to give multi-playing equality of opportunity.
33 - Lack of unit obsolescence. This ties in to dependence on strategic resources, and should be dealt with accordingly for multiplayer
34 - Modern ships do not take 20 years to trek the globe, in parallel with soldiers who can travel a continent via rail instantly (realistic given the time frame). Modern naval units really should have been given a one move infinite range, followed by a 2 or 3 single square allowance, and the standard 1 attack move. I’m pretty much talking about giving modern ships a chess queen’s move, followed by the specifics necessary for combat.
35 - 89 technologies in civ2. 82 technologies in civ3. An increase was widely expected, but a decrease is just as good! Did the other 7 techs run off to join Snow White?
36 - Submarines are useless.
37 - Wonders are handed out on a near random basis, with great leaders and lack of ability to rush production. The only plus being that caravans were taken away in wonder production.
38 - Bombers are useless.
39 - Bombers can land on aircraft carriers. Next time you’re landing 50+ meters of wingspan on a quarter mile deck meant to hold fighters, tell me so that I might take a picture.
40 - Nuclear warfare was completely botched. An immediate counter launch chance upon initial launch system
should have been adopted, but that would have made things more realistic, right?
41 - Spying was completely botched. What suggestions would you like, seeing as how it’s irreparably screwed up?
42 - The tech tree. Simplified, and dumbed down with almost no real choice of direction. I’m beginning to wonder if the repeatedly aforementioned market range is that of the 8-12 year old developmentally disabled.
43 - Civ specific units. Yet another attempt to push this game over the not so fine line between classy and red-alert tacky. You’re lucky we can disable them.
44 - Privateers are useless.
45 - There are less governments than civ2. Unacceptable. It should have been expanded with the likes of democratic socialism, fascism, totalitarianism, whatever. Fundamentalism could have easily been dealt with to make for a more realistic model.
46 - Barbarians are absolute pushovers.
47 - All your base are belong to us? You say you want a revolution? How about grow the f*ck up. Lame cult classic sayings have absolutely no place in the game we were expecting.
48 - Armies are useless, especially in the modern era. Who in their right mind would give up a wonder for a useless army?
49 - Whoever decided that cruise missiles should have a range of 2 squares should receive an on-the-spot **** punching. A fitting follow up would be Jimmy’s suggestion to put them on a mental disability leave as soon as possible.
50 - Colonies are useless.
51 - Whoever decided that howitzer type artillery has a 2 square firing range deserves a swift elbow to the sternum. 155 mm canons are not capable of lobbing shells 500 mile distances. It is so bloody easy to exploit this, in rendering armored warfare near ineffective.
52 - The Iron Works is: A – rarely possible B – Useless, for the amount needed to build it.
53 - UN based victory??? Do I even need to pick on that one? Just who thought it up – seriously, which member of the team was it? Again, you’re lucky we can opt out. See a pattern here? Good players want MORE OPTIONS.
54 - Helicopters are useless.
55 - Unit hit points & firepower were brought back to a halfway point between civ 1 and 2. They should have logically been brought to a higher level than civ2; further specified so more accurate ratios could have been assigned according to unit type. Then the whole “my tank lost to a fehking spearman” complaint would have been less frequent, if not absent.
56 - Units can not use enemy roads. It’s fine enough that you can’t use enemy railroads, but roads??? Again, you’d like to render warfare in it’s entirety obsolete, I see. What’s the story here - are you a bunch of hippies, or what?
57 - A nuclear warhead halves a city’s population (point based) and infrastructure – whilst a warrior, a few hundred men with spears (or molotav cocktails, it’s irrelevant how you want to justify it), can destory EVERYTHING in an instant? Something is wrong here.
58 - Bombers can not sink ships
59 - Razing cities is a ridiculous option. It should only be an open choice to smaller cities, preferably 3 and under. A unit of a few thousand (or less) soldiers can not effectively murder and destroy an entire city of over a million people with them sitting idly by. It has not, does not, and will not happen - It’s just that simple.
60 - Bombers can not target specific improvements.
61 - Even less civs than number 2: too few to pick from. Redundant streamlining.
62 - “Random number generator” has been proven time and again to be completely out of whack.
63 - AI trades very poorly
64 – I want the two hours of my life which I spent writing this back.
65 - You have sold your souls to a ship of fools.

 

[damunzy]

Yes, you ARE Zouave.
And that was a very funny post, who did you quote that from? Sounds like a Poly guy.

My point is simple. If you are tired of the game maybe you should find something else to play. This is something I have done.

 

[simwiz2]

That was Zylka from Poly. The whole thread turned into a flame war, and both Zylka and someone else got banned for a few weeks. When he was unbanned he posted the thread again.

 

[plomeros]

I had a good laugh of these posts. Zouave, I loved your letter. Interesting enough, I wrote a silimar letter some months ago, and was assaulted as a madman by a hoard of underaged civ fanatics that didn't want to hear their favorite game being slandered in any way, shape or form. Now, this league of admireres are nowhere in sight.perhaps they got slaughtered by those deadly barbarians, that originally were drafted to fight Ramses III but that still sees active service in various armies...

I agree that it is important to loudly, clearly and boldly state that civ3 sucks! Firafax should hear this, and make the necessary changes. I like the Civ concept too much to see it raped by an idiot AI, graphics made by Bozo, the only 3 year old clown in the computor business and that fat ape in the end, bashing his power meter and grunting a bit. Wow, now that's entertainment....

 

[Dinorius R.]

Zouave, I have to say that was the best, most unrelenting diatribe ever. Wit, humor, passion, a-cussin' and a-swearin', it had everything. It does present a problem though, I mean after that, what more can possibly be said? No way to top it.

Perhaps you should try to write something complimentary about Civ3 (oh, just once for the experience, come on, even if you don't mean it). Despite all the criticism, much of it justified, you're evidently still playing Civ3 just like the rest of us, so there must be something about it that keeps you coming back for more punishment. What is it, I wonder?

 

[Nuke on a Stick]

Aces! Another "Rant and rave about the flaws of Civ 3" thread!
You never can get tired of these, no siree!

[plasma]

Sure, there are problems with the game, and talking about them does help Firaxis. But *****ing nonstop about the game without offering any real solution is pointless beyond words.

 

[ainwood]

...... And I didn't like X-wing, because lasers actually go at the speed of light, and sound doesn't propogate in a vacuum, and the enemy don't fly and dogfight as well as me and ......

 

[Exile_Ian]

I was tempted to challenge a number of the points raised in the more vitriolic posts above but I figues those posters don't want to hear an alternative view. (But many of the points raised are based on lack of experience of the game - let me tell you that City Flipping has never been an issue with me - I've won more flips than lost - and always where I expected to).

The point though isn't whether Civ3 has flaws (it does ok?) - but whether those flaws make the game unplayable or unenjoyable (and that's really a matter of personal opinion). I still enjoy playing the game - I have no interest in playing Civ2 ever again - and I look forward to Civ3 improving as patches become available). If I didn't think that, I wouldn't bother playing it - and Civ3 would join the pile of games I never play anymore. Even if i did that now, I still wouldn't be moaning about the waste of money because I've had more hours of fun with Civ3 than any game I can remember.

I guess these negative posters are genuine fans of Civ3 though - otherwise they'd have moved on by now wouldn't they?

 

[damunzy]

Originally posted by Exile_Ian
I guess these negative posters are genuine fans of Civ3 though - otherwise they'd have moved on by now wouldn't they?

Good point...and that is why I keep coming back to the game after unistalling it 3+ times now. Now when MP comes I will be there.

 

[cat98]

My first thought, upon reading the title:

BLASPHEMY!!!

My second thought, upon reading the word corruption:

Well, hes got a point there...

My trird thought, upon reading a bit more:

BLASPHEMY!!! MAIM AND KILL AND MAIM AND KILL AND- We are the Borg, lower your shields and surrender your ships, you will be assimilated, resistance is- DIE! DIE! DIE! EVIL ONE! GO FORTH MY MINIONS AND DESTROY THIS FOWL CREATU-futile.-GRAWWRR!!!- 99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 b-Fire-ATTACK!!!....................

My fourth thought, upon revewing my third:

What the blody'ell was that?