Civ3 is great but....

B

bst1

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 27, 2001
Messages
70
Now that we're at 1.17f and the more glaring bugs (like air superiority) are fixed the game is quite fun. However there are still a few things that need work in my ever so humble opinion.

1) Easier way to access information regarding diplomatic agreements, trade agreements, and the like with other civs.

Having to actually contact the other civs to check the status of agreements is cumbersome, not to mention unrealistic. Surely your trade advisor should keep this information in a nice concise format for you to peruse at your leisure.


2) Worker AI

After watching my automated workers scurrying all over the screen I have come to the, albeit tenative, conclusion that the AI coding does not place enough priority on distance to the prospective tiles that need upgrading. I don't know how difficult this is to change, or if it's even practical, but it would be nice if my workers didn't walk all the way across the screen to road a tile that's not even in a city radius when there's another tile 4 squares away that's in a city radius that needs a road also. I may be wrong on my analysis of what's causing this problem.


3) Various other small bugs

Check the Support forum here for more info on these. One that comes to mind that can be especially troublesome is the occasional crash caused by a fighter on air superiority intercepting a bomber. You'll see the fighter move to intercept and then the game just sits there (unit animation and music continue but game never progresses).
 
Originally posted by bst1
1) Easier way to access information regarding diplomatic agreements, trade agreements, and the like with other civs.

Having to actually contact the other civs to check the status of agreements is cumbersome, not to mention unrealistic. Surely your trade advisor should keep this information in a nice concise format for you to peruse at your leisure.
Click to expand...

I'll agree with that. Especially since I'm running a slower system, and it takes a minute for the diplomacy screen to load.

Either the trade advisor or the foreign advisor should keep track of these things. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to click on the lines that show a trade is going on on the foreign advisor screen and have it tell you what those trades were?
 
Most people I know either dislike or hate 1.17 and its Human vs the World attitude with outrageous and extortionate tech trading, among other things.

The only good thing about it is stack movement.

I've stopped playing Civ III as I await a more complete and effective patch.
 
The only reason I went back to 1.16 is I hate the pansy turquoise boarder color of the Americans (which I play the most). I tried to switch with the Aztecs dark green and the game freezes up! Switching back don't help either. You got to reload the entire game. I know, I know... 'what a loser!'
 
bst1 - you are sooooooooooooo right about all those points.

Watching the screen flick wildly around from one unit to the next is enough to drive me nearly epileptic.

It's not just with Workers, but all units that Civ3 has this trouble.

I hope and pray (and I'm not even religious) that forthcoming patches address the "active unit" problem. I wish it would work out if there is any unfinished business in a particular area before moving to another area. I can't recall Civ's 1 or 2 having this problem, so I know there are better active unit algorithms out there.
 
Does anyone know why the workers, when automated, suddenly wander deeply into 'enemy' territory while at peace, to help them build roads and irrigation... I had 10 workers on one tile about 30 moves away from my nearest city. I just noticed that when I was looking for workers to clean up some pollution, and they were all gone. If the other civ feels like it, he might declare war and capture the workers, with my mighty military forces standing incapable of rescuing them.

I think you should be able not to worry about the workers as there is so much else to manage on a very large map.

Clearly, if your neighbours are furious with you and have conducted sneak attacks before, the automated workers should concider wandering about in their turf.



Originally posted by bst1
Now that we're at 1.17f and the more glaring bugs (like air superiority) are fixed the game is quite fun. However there are still a few things that need work in my ever so humble opinion.

1) Easier way to access information regarding diplomatic agreements, trade agreements, and the like with other civs.

Having to actually contact the other civs to check the status of agreements is cumbersome, not to mention unrealistic. Surely your trade advisor should keep this information in a nice concise format for you to peruse at your leisure.


2) Worker AI

After watching my automated workers scurrying all over the screen I have come to the, albeit tenative, conclusion that the AI coding does not place enough priority on distance to the prospective tiles that need upgrading. I don't know how difficult this is to change, or if it's even practical, but it would be nice if my workers didn't walk all the way across the screen to road a tile that's not even in a city radius when there's another tile 4 squares away that's in a city radius that needs a road also. I may be wrong on my analysis of what's causing this problem.


3) Various other small bugs

Check the Support forum here for more info on these. One that comes to mind that can be especially troublesome is the occasional crash caused by a fighter on air superiority intercepting a bomber. You'll see the fighter move to intercept and then the game just sits there (unit animation and music continue but game never progresses).
Click to expand...
:nuke:
 
I control my own workers for probably the first 4000-5000 years. I get my roads down on the important tiles first, mine the tiles I want mined and irrigate the ones I want irrigated. Then I put them all on shift-A automation. It's way too much of a pain to manually move 50 workers around every turn.
 
Originally posted by Fr8monkey
The only reason I went back to 1.16 is I hate the pansy turquoise boarder color of the Americans (which I play the most). I tried to switch with the Aztecs dark green and the game freezes up! Switching back don't help either. You got to reload the entire game. I know, I know... 'what a loser!'
Click to expand...

you're lame :D
 
I agree! But I would like to add to your list of problems. I just lost several (like maybe a dozen or more) units because a city defected back to its owner 2 turns after I captured it. This is a problem I noticed in my very first game but after each patch I hope maybe they quietly fixed it and didn't say anything. The idea of the citizens overthrowing an invading army is ridiculous.
I will not play this game again nor buy anything from its maker until this is fixed! Did they do any play-testing?

Also, the so-called diplomacy is simplistic and assinine! Civ II had it better. Often, if you reduce what you are asking for after the AI (and I use that term loosly) has made you an offer, the computer player will refuse the better deal and even be insulted.
Also, there is no way to affect the computers players relations with each other except to enter a war pact or trade embargo.
Putting pressure on one nation to make peace with another is very important in world politics!

Railroads are much too powerful. There should be an boarding and deboarding cost. As soon as I get railroads, I can capture an enemy city, use my vast hord of slave workers for build railroads, move my units on the new railroads to capture the next city. Sometimes you can get three citys in a row in one turn this way! Since, turns are a year long or longer this might seem OK, but the defender doesn't get any chance to react.

How come you never catch a computer player trying to place a spy in your city? I have found the whole espionage route to be worthless. Maybe the "AI" knows this.

Does anyone make armies? I have found them to be a waste of
a leader which is much better used for a quick wonder. Now isn't that a silly idea.

I have never been able to get as far as the space race. The game always seems to end before I can build even the first piece.
Hint, never let anyone else to build the United Nations, and never
allow a vote.

And lastly, my number one peeve: There is absolutly no advantage or payback to assigning resources to research early in the game. This is especially true in the higher difficulty levels. I usually just find one poor citizen to be my scientest, and save my money to buy my science.

P.S. Has anyone been able to play a game peacefully? With the
computer players all ganging up on you and refusing to make
reasonable deals, I have found it impossible to avoid war. Games seem to be won or lost solely on the starting position in regards to resources and luxuries and no amount of skill can overcome a lack of these.
 
The AI workers don't have a clue what they are doing.

I spent the entire game trying to maximize shield production by mining all grassland tiles that could be helped by railroad bonus (shield and cows), and irrigating the rest.

I started a pretty involved war, and didn't want to be bothered finishing jungle clearing etc. so I put my workers on Automate. They then went ahead and changed all my mines to irrigation.

I decided to see how the AI thought my tiles should be, so I saved the game, and let them go to work..... and work they did...on all the WRONG projects. i saw my shield production drop fairly dramatically in all my major cities.

So, when I re-loaded the game, I slapped all my workers up the side of the head, and continued to micro-manage their activities.

On a completely different note, I absolutely HATE this game. I no longer get any sleep, and I just can't seem to get any work done at my job. I get home from work, and when I look at the clock, it is already 2 am....:D
 
Originally posted by Barker
The AI workers don't have a clue what they are doing.
Click to expand...

Actually, they don't have a clue what you are doing. That's why I never automate my workers.

But, if you don't want them to destroy all your mines, you can use the "shift-a" command, automate but don't destroy existing improvements. Then you only have to worry about them irrigating grasslands that you would have mined.
 
On a completely different note, I absolutely HATE this game. I no longer get any sleep, and I just can't seem to get any work done at my job. I get home from work, and when I look at the clock, it is already 2 am....
Click to expand...

I'm with you on this. I do the same exact thing. I struggle with whether I should give this game up altogether because it puts everything else in my life as second priority. I keep coming to this site during work because I keep thinking about the game.:mad: :lol:
 
i may be wrong but i think human automated worker work differently than a.i worker. it s strange. it look like if you let the game take care of your worker they will do thing to annoy you unsteed of helping you.
So my question is, does a.i do propagenda on my auto-worker ?

p.s. since i play red alert, i learned to manage every single units by myself.
 
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