Conquests Beta Patch Now Available

Originally posted by Commander Bello
Nevertheless, I am one of the whining guys who really don't like the idea to have to micromanage EACH of my appr. 120 cities. Ok, I have to admit that it seems to be a beginners attitude to play on huge maps and to make use of the landscape...

Indeed, for a HOF game having up to 400 cities on a huge map is normal. And how to micromanage them efficiently is a question which is better to address to SirPleb or Moonsinger. Myself, I get crazy at around 150.

Just adding policemen or contractors does not add much to what has to be decided. I would say that it is doing the opposite. Because before there were contractors, it was neccessary to think whether to build Hospital in a corrupt city and let it grow on its own or micromanage population so, that for a number of overlapping cities (6 or 7) there are only 2-3 Hospitals. This is indeed huge work, a couple of hundred mouse clicks and some thinking. And now, you can build Hospital in every city with ten clicks. Which means less micromanagement.
 
Originally posted by akots

[...]
Because before there were contractors, it was neccessary to think whether to build Hospital in a corrupt city and let it grow on its own or micromanage population so, that for a number of overlapping cities (6 or 7) there are only 2-3 Hospitals. This is indeed huge work, a couple of hundred mouse clicks and some thinking. [...]

Some thinking? If I have to take the decision for a cluster of overlapping cities, at which of them I will build hospitals, I just have to look at the map.
Where are the ressources, which tiles will be worked in what way, and - not to be forgotten - how is the strategic situation of those cities.
That takes me just 5 minutes, then I am done with that.

So, I really don't see why this would be something to be called micro-management. :confused:
 
Originally posted by akots

Thus, it would be great if the corruption coefficients are indeed decreased for the lower difficulty levels to a higher extent than they are now. This would make these levels essentially obsolete but people would like it and enjoy. Just relax and have fun and everything will be built. These people are the kind which never mess with default rules/editors, use AOL as ISP and ATT as phone company, and shop in K-Mart. Which is again fine with me.

No, these are people like me who only have a few hours per week to play with computer games. Between work and my postgrad studies, I'm very busy, so I simply *don't* have time to mess with default rules and editors (although I'm on holidays this week, so I've actually had time to look at the editor over the past few days). I don't mind micromanagement, as long as I'm not spending all of the limited spare time I have doing so. In fact, I have been looking forward to experimenting with the new Specialist types once I finish the Conquests.

And NO I wouldn't use AOL if you paid me to.

Basically, I am a long-time Civ fan (I was obsessed with the original DOS version, and played Civ2 more than any other game I can remember), and I like a challenging game. However, I don't have time to worry about exploiting the game mechanics through strategies like RCP. I see Civ3 as a fun, relaxing game (but that does not preclude it from also being an "intellectual puzzle" at the same time).

Basically, I have had concerns about corruption and the limits it puts on expansion for a long time. I have been hoping that C3C would add new tools to combat corruption, and so far it looks promising.

However, I don't want to see the Forbidden Palace scaled down from it's original purpose (i.e. a second palace), and that is why I started posting in this thread.

I know there are other ways to fight corruption than simply building improvements or using specialists, but many of them seem more like exploits of the game mechanics than real strategies.

I'm a little offended at the way you assume anyone who doesn't want to exploit every little feature of the game is a simpleton. Five years ago, I would have been happy to spend all day working out optimal city placements and ways to use workers and specialists optimally... but these days I have other commitments that take up most of my time. So, yes, I put workers on auto most of the time, and yes, I find corruption a nuisance. But this is simply because I don't have the time to tweak every little detail. As it is, it usually takes me more than a month to finish an epic game on a standard map - and I don't think I'm in the minority in this respect, either.
 
Originally posted by Marlor I'm a little offended at the way you assume anyone who doesn't want to exploit every little feature of the game is a simpleton.
Thank you Marlor. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. In another thread concerning the same issue, one of the posters claimed that:
Originally posted by Anarres: More importantly - if you can't be bothered to find out the difference between Rank Corruption and Distance Corruption you have nothing to complain about!
And then later asserted (concerning the FP):
Originally posted by Anarres: Please accept the wisdom of those who know - it was very broken.
Please accept the wisdom? Wisdom my ass. And no, I shouldn't be forced to figure out the difference between rank and distance corruption in order to build an FP; these two terms refer to the inner workings of the game engine, and quite frankly, no, I should need to have no more knowledge of how they work than I should need to know how Half-Life optimizes the rendering of polygons when drawing NPCs.

Look: the bottom line is that FP worked fine through PTW for 98% of the people who play CivIII. Yes, there were 2% of the hardcore players who found and exploited a loophole allowing FP to be used as part of a strategy for greatly reducing corruption. Does that make me a simpleton for not exploiting the loophole? No. It simply means that I have more important things to do with my time.

And yes, before the CivIII forum gods explain it again, yes, we all understand the basic concept of RCP. But we also understand that FP worked a certain way for two years, and now it works differently.
Originally posted by Marlor So, yes, I put workers on auto most of the time, and yes, I find corruption a nuisance. But this is simply because I don't have the time to tweak every little detail. As it is, it usually takes me more than a month to finish an epic game on a standard map - and I don't think I'm in the minority in this respect, either.
Couldn't agree more. Brilliantly put. I work 50 hours a week, I have four kids. But I also have two advanced degrees, work as a software engineer/database programmer, have multiple certifications, and consider myself of at least average intelligence. I play CivIII when I can, and I enjoy the hell out of it. And I paid just as much for my copy as these so-called experts did for theirs. So I don't have time to meticulously manage every last detail of each epic game that I play. This still doesn't mean I should be penalized because an elite group of players chooses to cheat. And it sure as hell doesn't mean I should be condescended to and criticized when I post to a thread complaining about unannounced changes to a game I just paid $30 for.

And, before I leave this rant, thanks to Travis from Firaxis/Breakaway for confirming that the FP is, in fact, not working like if should in the Beta 1.12 patch (sorry, Anarres), and for giving some kind of timetable as to when we can expect a fix. Even a minimal amount of communication from the dev team helps to restore my faith that the game will be up and running again soon.
 
Yumbo, the FP was broken. You may not have noticed BUT IT WAS BROKEN.

Just because you don't want to find out how doesn't make it not true!

You seem to think I was calling you a 'simpleton'. This is your paranoia speaking! You can't say the FP wasn't broken in PTW and Civ3, and if you can't be bothered to find out how it does work (when it would actually only take you 20 minutes to understand it) then you definitly can't say it wasn't broken!
Originally posted by Anarres: More importantly - if you can't be bothered to find out the difference between Rank Corruption and Distance Corruption you have nothing to complain about!
:rolleyes:

I 've never been so misquoted in all my life! Why didn't you quote what I said the sentance before that? The first part of the paragraph:
If you don't want to know about how corruption works then accept the fact the FP should be build about 5 to 15 tiles from your capital and will provide reduced corruption from cities around it.
I provided a good description of how to build the FP in this current patch, and before I went in to the details I gave a tongue-in-cheek response to the (almost certain) replies I would get complaining people didn't want to know about the details of corruption.
Originally posted by Anarres: Please accept the wisdom of those who know - it was very broken.
Again you take a quote out of context!! Here is the full quote:
Yumbo: you also seem to be under the impression the FP wasn't broken. Please accept the wisdom of those who know - it was very broken. Saying you used it and liked it doesn't change the fact that you could have exploited the bugs if you wanted to, massively increasing your productive output. This was not acceptable to many players, and rightly so considering many people play in competitions where you compare yourself against other humans. Also, the RCP fix has nothing to do with the FP changes at all! The FP changes are related to the rank corruption bugs that have existed since day 1 (and have been exploited since day 1 too).
And it was in response to your post about how the FP didn' tneed touching at all:
I never meant to characterize it as complicated. But most casual players either didn't know about the exploit, or didn't bother. It was used by a relatively small percentage of players, and due to the wide publicization of the exploit, we have a "fix" that is impacts a great number of people and that is worse than the problem it solves.
What's your problem?!? My response was perfectly reasonable, and you are the one showing no respect at all. If you think I give a toss about how much someone plays the game or what their attitude is to it you are sorely mistaken! :mad:

I can't understand your anger at me, or at others that you class "elite player who chooses to cheat". I certainly can't see the need to quote me out of context and flame me in a different thread to the one I made comments in!
 
by Yumbo:
Please accept the wisdom? Wisdom my ass. And no, I shouldn't be forced to figure out the difference between rank and distance corruption in order to build an FP; these two terms refer to the inner workings of the game engine, and quite frankly, no, I should need to have no more knowledge of how they work than I should need to know how Half-Life optimizes the rendering of polygons when drawing NPCs.
Oh well, there's absolutely no reason to be harsh.
The way the corruption stuff works at the moment, you are currently forced to figure out the details about the inner workings. The 'wisdom guys' point out buggy things that actually would help you to avoid putting too much effort in own corruption research (whether the info derives from game experience, excessive editor testing or reading a whole lot of posts on internet boards). It's only in your own interest.
:)
 
I have a very good idea:

Tavis, you tell us, in some detail, how the FP is supposed to work in the next patch, and those who do not want to know the inner workings of the system simply do not read the relevant post.
 
Maybe, this could be a way to satisfy the majority?

Just an idea...
 
Originally posted by The Last Conformist
I have a very good idea:

Tavis, you tell us, in some detail, how the FP is supposed to work in the next patch, and those who do not want to know the inner workings of the system simply do not read the relevant post.

I certainly don't have a problem with finding out how the FP will work in the next patch. My only issue would be if the FP's effectiveness was reduced from how it worked in Civ3.

I think most people who are complaining that they don't want to "know the inner workings of the system" are simply saying that in order to fight corruption effectively in the current version, this kind of knowledge is required, when it really shouldn't be.

So Tavis, I'd be happy to hear how it will work.
 
Commander Bello: Bringing back the CivIII/PTW system might very well satisfy the majority, but it would mean bringing back a buggy system. I think anarres has already explained what's wrong with the traditional system in this thread, but as a refresher I thought I'd quote USC's explanation from 'nother thread:

In C3/PTW, rank for FP-centric cities was based not on the number of cities closer to the FP than a given city, but rather on the number of cities closer to the Palace. If the FP was in "Kansas City" and the Palace was in "Honolulu," for example, then due to the buggy behavior, the vast majority of cities in the US (except perhaps a few in California) would have rank 1, i.e. they would have marvelously (exploited-ly) low "rank corruption".
 
The Last Conformist,

at least that would make (as it seems to me) a majority of people happy.
And, if you read my post entirely, I advised to open a discussion about the plans for a new FP (if they really have those plans). And the time the discussion takes then can very well be used to make it bugfree, either way - the old or the new concept.
As far as I understood Tavis, the current model is faulty as well.

So, if we would have to live with a bug for the next future, I would prefer to have a well-known bug.
 
Well, Tavis said black-on-white that the current system is faulty; I don't think we can get any clearer on that.

And I didn't say bringing back a buggy system is necessarily the wrong thing to do. In this case, it would apparently make most players happy, and a case could certainly be made that it wasn't worth fixing in the first place (altho I'd disagree strongly!).
 
OK.

First, to Anarres. I apologize if my reply was harsh. I will try to keep things a bit more civil.

However, I stand by my assertion that a number of the things you said in the other thread were very condescending; remember, you opened your posting on that thread by declaring that you were only going to post to one of these 'whining' threads. And no amount of contextualization will conceal the condescedning tone of the two quotes I pulled out in my last post.

That said, let me boil this down. In Civ III/PTW, when my empires grew to a certain size, corruption would become an issue, as it should. Eventually, I would build the FP; I would look for a city a good distance from my capital, perhaps on another continent, and build or rush the FP. Now I had two cores of productive cities. I still had significant corruption; cites between my FP and Palace cities were usually pretty corrupt, and as I expanded my civ beyond the FP, those cites too were increasingly corrupt. But I accepted the corruption as a part of the game, and worked to combat it.

The important thing to note here is that the FP allowed me to have two productive circles of cities, whether it was built on the same contitent or not. It allowed me to enjoy the process of growing an empire more. It enhanced my enjoyment of the game, and was a feature I was quite used to having around.

Now, with C3C, that feature is completely gone. When I complain about it on the forum, I am told to stop whining and (incorrectly, as it turns out, according to Tavis) that the new FP functionality is actually what Firaxis intended all along. I am told that the FP must be placed within 15 tiles of my capital, and am told to just accept this.
Originally quoted by Grille: The way the corruption stuff works at the moment, you are currently forced to figure out the details about the inner workings.
Yes. I understand this. But if this is the case (and we both agree that it is), then that is a MAJOR problem. I should not need to understand intricate game mechanics in order to use a feature as simple as the FP. Not as a casual player. And I would venture that even the project leaders at Firaxis would agree with this.

Now, if I want to get out my slide rule and calculate Rank and Distance and figure out the absolute optimum time and place to build the FP and read articles here and through other sources to help me make my decision then, yes, I have that right also. But it should not be a requirement for playing the game.

One last thing:
Originally quoted by Anarres: I can't understand your anger at me, or at others that you class "elite player who chooses to cheat".
Let me go on record as saying that I never intended to characterize Anarres as a player who cheats. In fact, I would say just the opposite: you strike me as one who has dedicated a significant amount of time trying to help close exploits and loopholes. I applaud that. But when the solution to an exploit used by a small minority ends up negatively impacting a vast majority, then that majority has a right to feel frustrated and not be characterized as whiners when they voice their concerns.
 
Originally posted by The Last Conformist
I have a very good idea:

Tavis, you tell us, in some detail, how the FP is supposed to work in the next patch, and those who do not want to know the inner workings of the system simply do not read the relevant post.

I have another idea. Put a high level description of how the FP (and SPHQ) actually effect corruption in the Civilopedia entry. A few sentences would be all it takes to accurately decribe the algorithm.
 
Originally posted by Yumbo


But when the solution to an exploit used by a small minority ends up negatively impacting a vast majority, then that majority has a right to feel frustrated and not be characterized as whiners when they voice their concerns.

How about when the vast majority are using an exploit? It's a matter of fact that the ai never placed it's FP more than two cities away from the palace, bumbling through the game with one core. Whereas the human players can exploit the way it worked to create 2 cores anywhere, thereby outproducing the ai every time.

I've seen alot of people post over and over about how they miss their old FP. Let me post here once to say i LIKE the new FP. i like it very very very much. Please do not cave in to the squeaky wheel. Please do not change it back.
 
How about when the vast majority are using an exploit? It's a matter of fact that the ai never placed it's FP more than two cities away from the palace, bumbling through the game with one core.
Let's not confuse faulty AI programming with exploits here.

I recently played a game in which I was at war against an overmatched Japanese civ (AI). For some reason, the Japanese civ kept sending spearmen into my territory; probably to attempt to pillage my roads and stuff, but I think we can all agree that a lone spearman is not going to get far, and would be better off back home defending his beseiged cities.

Certainly, no one would say that a valid solution to this problem would be to eliminate the ability of spearmen to move.

But that is basically what you are saying here. The AI isn't smart enough to build the FP effectively, so cripple the FP.

I say, make it so the AI can intelligently make use of the FP. Shouldn't be too hard. AI won't build FP until it has 20 or more citeis, or always selects the farthest city to build FP in, and always uses a GL if available, or determines which city will provide the most benefit empire-wide and builds it there (in fact, this would give the AI a significant advantage over the casual human player), etc.
 
Originally posted by Buckets

How about when the vast majority are using an exploit? It's a matter of fact that the ai never placed it's FP more than two cities away from the palace, bumbling through the game with one core. Whereas the human players can exploit the way it worked to create 2 cores anywhere, thereby outproducing the ai every time.

Well that's obviously a deficiency in the AI, and I don't think that we should be punished for it.

The AI also has many advantages over human players. A simple example is when an empire gets large, almost all players give up on a lot of micromanagement of cities because it becomes tedious, the computer doesn't have that problem. The AI also has a far better capability of picking an optimal solution to any problem due to it's knowledge of the game mechanics. I'm sure the Civ3 gurus could provide better examples. The AI has no problems beating me anyway ;)

All I know is that the game is a lot more fun with the old FP, as the tedium of corruption is lessened by the second core. Since I (like most people) play games to have fun, I think that the old FP is far superior.

Plus, I don't think that the FP functioning as stated in the manual can be classed as an exploit.
 
When i first picked up civ 3 back in 2001, i had no idea what was going on. I built the FP who knows where and only found out at this website that the farther away the better. Nowhere in the manual or civilopedia does it say that. It seemed weird to me that i should have an empire with 2 cores, but there ya go. That's what people said it did so that's how i used it.

Do you see my point?
 
No, not really.

My first game, I was a bit vague, too. But eventually, I figured out that in acting as a second palace, it reduced corruption in the city it was built in and surrounding cities. And I began to use it accordingly. For 2 + years.

Now, in contrast to the Civilopedia entry, the one in my copy of C3C, the FP works differently than it has for those last two years.

Do you see my point?
 
Originally posted by Buckets
When i first picked up civ 3 back in 2001, i had no idea what was going on. I built the FP who knows where and only found out at this website that the farther away the better. Nowhere in the manual or civilopedia does it say that. It seemed weird to me that i should have an empire with 2 cores, but there ya go. That's what people said it did so that's how i used it.



I only really started visiting this website less than a month ago, and I've been building the FP to act as a second core since I bought the game well over a year ago.

It makes sense that since it acts like a "second palace", and cities near the original palace have low corruption, that you should build it in an area of high corruption to lower the corruption there.

Basically, the FP is one of the main tools that allows expanding Civs to avoid ludicrous amounts of corruption - and one of it's main features is that you can target it at a specific area. Since one of the "four X's" of the whole Civilization genre is eXpansion, I think a tool that allows players to expand should not be discarded.
 
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