Discovery too easy?

[Sirp]

In my view, Civilization 3 makes it too easy to discover information about the world the player is in. For me, one of the most intriguing and enjoyable parts about earlier versions of Civilization was the unknown - not knowing the geography of the world, and having to painstakingly discover it. Also, meeting foreign empires, and having to slowly sus-out exactly how powerful they are adds to the intrigue. An air of mystery and exploration hangs over much of the game.

However, in Civilization 3, in my experience it is much too easy to find out all you want to know. To start with, as soon as you come in contact with other Civilizations, you can see how powerful you are compared to them. In the original Civilization, you had to wait until the end of the game to see an equivalent graph. For me, meeting the Persians, and then immediately being able to look up how powerful I am compared to them takes much of the intrigue and mystery out of the game.

Also, the ease with which trading of maps and contact with other Civilizations takes place makes the game more interesting in my view. Once map making is discovered, every Civilization generally knows the geography of the entire world - unless there is a substantial body of water seperating continents. I would much prefer it if this trading of information was more difficult, and the mystery is heightened for much more of the game. One way of doing this, could be to have an option that allows trading "world map, except for territory map" - Civilizations would often be perfectly happy to trade maps of all the world they have discovered, except they don't want to reveal their own territories, since this gives their enemies intelligence needed in planning an attack. This way, it would make it much more difficult to discover much of the map.

Do other people have similiar/contrary opinions? Does anyone have any other ideas as to how the explorative aspect of the game could be enhanced?

 

[WarlordMatt]

I don't think it's so bad. I kinda like to see how I measure up to other Civs I've discovered so if they're better than me I can try to improve my empire to surpass theirs.

 

[john heidle]

I also do not like the availability of enemy information. There seems to be no progression, i.e., as soon as you make contact you know about as much as you will ever know unless you try difficult, expensive, and random spy missions.

I would prefer to see some kind of progression re the availability of enemy information:

1) make contact = x
2) get a map of their territory = 2x
3) embassy = 3x
4) trade routes = 4x
5) espionage tech = 5x
6) small espionage wonder = 6x

X here means the usual 50% more. You might also require an embassy to have levels 4 - 6. Embassies often serve as listening posts where a lot can be learned about a country, i.e., bank(s) have just been built in city C. Maybe every 5 or 10 turns you can get a random intelligence report about an enemy civ which reflects these levels. There could even be some misinformation in the report too to reflect the uncertainty of intelligence information.

 

[allhailIndia]

Actually I like his gamut of information rather than having to wonder about how well I really was doing in Civ2. It is quite helpful in planning your strategy easily

 

[The Last Conformist]

Well, accurate power graphs are better than inaccurate ones! In SMAC, the military power graph was a joke - I more than once found myslef having the nominally weakest military while simultaneously conquering 2-3 other factions - and the other graphs could be quirky too. The Civ III graphs at least represent what they try to represent pretty well.

I think the amount of info you've got access to is pretty right. A tweak or two wouldn't hurt - why is my map of alien continents instantly updated when a city changes hands, even if I got no contact with either the attacker or defender - but basically it's alright.

What bugs me is the AI's inability to make use of its info on me. Would it really be so hard to program it so that it realizes than a 50% advantage in troops won't help when I've got a 100% lead in industrial capacity?

 

[Tweedledum]

Originally posted by Sirp
However, in Civilization 3, in my experience it is much too easy to find out all you want to know

Just because you CAN find out doesn't mean you MUST. If you don't want to know, don't look at the histograph and don't trade maps. Personally, I always do - I assume the AI knows anyway and all I'm doing is levelling things up

Bottom line - if you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question

 

[Zouave]

Is that The Ostrich Strategy??


BTW, ostiiches don't really bury their heads in the sand - unlike some people.

 

[Sirp]

john: well it is cool how once you have a spy in their capital you can see their entire military. I think that's a great feature. Also being able to "discover plans" is good; if too expensive.

However, there should be more of a progression as in, I think it would be fair to say that the US today probably has information on the location of any substantial military force in the world.

Tweedledum: sure you don't have to, but then you will be at a disadvantage to the AI, which does the AI equivalent of this. The game is clearly designed to be played with this being done, solving it by simply not doing it is a kludge in my humble opinion.

My main problem with the whole thing I guess, is that intelligence is one of the most important aspects of managing a Civilization, particularly militarily; however it doesn't seem like a valuable commodity in Civilization 3, while I feel it should be. (along with the other big military flaw; navies simply aren't important enough).

 

[royfurr]

LOL!! There is another thread currently running where the people want MORE info about the relative strength of other civs ...

Me I kinda think its basically ok now, would like a more accurate evualation of military strength then one based on simple unit count (workers worth as much as modern armour- sheesh!). One person did post that Soren had said the ai DID take unit types into account and that only the Military Advisor does a simple unit count approach ... and maybe in 1.21 that is so ... you'd hope the ai designer would know. But the behavior commonly seen is that the ai will attack when it doesn't have a chance and the only way this makes sense is if it is bungling the military strength evaulation. I do not include the obvious case of desperation attacks trying to stop me from soon winning by spaceship etc.

One big deal: I don't know if this actually helps me, but I make a point NEVER to trade my world/terriorty map to ANYONE. I try to keep a solid culture spread map so there are no open spots to temp my neighbors (until I kill off the ones on my continent) into sending settlers into my terrotory. My goal is to have my internal spaces be a big black unknown blotch to my enemys.

Anyone else try this? Does anyone know if this works or not? I have never had an ai civ land explorers onto my terriroty, a tactic I sometimes try, to spy out the lay of the land if I don't have updated info.

Sorry for misspelling terriorty so much.

civ on.

 

[Sirp]

royfurr: I have no problem with people wanting to be able to discover more about other Civilizations through espionage etc. I also do think that it would be good if you could get more primitive spy facilities early on - after all, spies and espionage are not a modern invention, as Civilization 3 depicts.

However, I think that intelligence should be a valuable commodity, rather than something that is so easy to obtain.

I do think that "blacking out" your territory by refusing to trade maps would be a good idea in a game against human players; but frankly I don't think the AI is anywhere near good enough to effectively exploit the information. Still, as I said I think that it would be good to have an option to trade your world map minus your territory map.

 

[damunzy]

Originally posted by Sirp
Tweedledum: sure you don't have to, but then you will be at a disadvantage to the AI, which does the AI equivalent of this. The game is clearly designed to be played with this being done, solving it by simply not doing it is a kludge in my humble opinion.

If they would design the A.I. to not know the information then I could live without it, but in just about every game I have played the A.I. knew exactly what was going on even in territories it didn't have sight in. I would rather have the information than be blind.

 

[Dell19]

I quite like how you can discover what the world is like quickly. You would expect, when you meet a new civ that they would be willing to trade maps so that you can both gain and be able to tell what the world is like.

 

[Sirp]

Dell19: Well in the real world, very little was known about other Civilizations for a very long time. European Civilizations had "contact" with Middle Eastern Civilizations, which in turn had contact with Far Eastern Civilizations, yet neither side knew much about each other at all for many many years. Africa remained unexplored by everyone outside it for many years. The way this is "simulated" in Civilization 3, every Civilization on the europe-asia-africa land mass would have a complete map of the entire land mass and contact with every other Civilization on the land mass by about the year 600.

Not that I'm expecting Civilization 3 to even attempt to accurately simulate real world history - Civilization 3 is a game; it doesn't even attempt to be a simulation. However, I do think that it would be more enjoyable if this explorative/intelligence aspect played a much larger part in the game, and since real life events back it up, I think this is an even bigger reason to use it.

I will rephrase my original conjecture however: I think that one should be able to discover almost anything one likes about other Civilizations, however one should have to undertake intelligence/espionage/exploration efforts to do so. It shouldn't be as trivial to gain access to a map of the entire world as it is now. Notice that there is a very promising-looking explorer unit that pops up at about the time european civilizations started to explore the world in real life, yet I don't think that anyone would dispute that this unit is almost always useless, since you already have a complete map of the world.

 

[Dell19]

Originally posted by Sirp
Dell19: Well in the real world, very little was known about other Civilizations for a very long time. European Civilizations had "contact" with Middle Eastern Civilizations, which in turn had contact with Far Eastern Civilizations, yet neither side knew much about each other at all for many many years. Africa remained unexplored by everyone outside it for many years. The way this is "simulated" in Civilization 3, every Civilization on the europe-asia-africa land mass would have a complete map of the entire land mass and contact with every other Civilization on the land mass by about the year 600.

Except this is more related to the fact that the AI expand so quickly and therefore the human player has to as well. In real life people would have still swapped maps but they wouldn't have explored everywhere. In Civ 3 the players expand too quickly so when you trade maps, everywhere has already been discovered...

 

[allhailIndia]

I think this thread deals more with the various civs having info about each other then the whole world map. I beleive it is more important to know EVERYTHING about an opposing civ throughout the course of contact with him. Spies were not just Mata Hari and charcters from spy novels, but people in the ancient days who could disguise themselves and appear to be somenone else in order to get info from another civ.

To hell with maps, I want to know how strong an opposing civ is and where his units are

 

[Sirp]

Dell19: The fact that the AI expands quickly (and for the record, I don't think it expands too quickly, I expand faster than it) is of only coincidental importance to the issue. I think the main problem in real life, is that swapping maps isn't exactly a zero-sum transaction (even moreso for trading technologies). But also, who is going to want to tell someone else what the map of their kingdom looks like? It would allow a perfect opportunity for an invasion. Also in real life, people could simply lie about what the map looks like, or deliberately give innaccurate or misleading information.

Anyhow, the fact remains that certainly, by 1000AD, there were strings of Civilizations that spread from Spain to China, with long chains of "contact" between the Civilizations, yet with each Civilization having a relatively limited knowledge of the "map".

After all, what is the use of an explorer, if you can just trade maps with other Civilizations so easily?

There are the following types of areas you might tell another Civilization about:

- your territory
- unclaimed territory
- another Civilization's territory

I think that telling another Civilization about your own territory would be silly - you don't want to give them clues as to where you might be invaded.

Telling another Civilization about unclaimed territory is also seemingly pretty silly - you don't want to tell them about possible colonization/expansion opportunities.

Telling another Civilization about a third Civilizations territory does make some sense - if you are allied against the third Civilization and want to tell your ally about them.

On the other hand, it would be difficult to keep many things secret. For example, travels of merchants etc would soon make it very clear where a Civilization's major cities are, and some details about them.

Trading maps wouldn't work well, because there simply wouldn't be enough trust. No Civilization would give accurate information about unexplored territory; each Civilization would have to explore it themselves. (unless they managed to capture maps off an enemy which is also feasible).

 

[Richard III]

Well, I think it's not quite realistic, but I am happier with Civ3 than civ1 and 2, in that it was very easy in the earlier two to find yourself in AD 1976 and still have large chunks of the world unknown. Which, compared to reality, is just ridiculous, even in closed societies. What, the Mali or Paraguayans can't pick up a phone and buy an atlas?

 

[allhailIndia]

Originally posted by Richard III
Well, I think it's not quite realistic, but I am happier with Civ3 than civ1 and 2, in that it was very easy in the earlier two to find yourself in AD 1976 and still have large chunks of the world unknown. Which, compared to reality, is just ridiculous, even in closed societies. What, the Mali or Paraguayans can't pick up a phone and buy an atlas?

of course the flip side is that the entire world is visible by 1000 A.D, not that I am complaining of course

 

[punkbass2000]

In regards to map-trading, I don't see how this much different from Civ2. At least I thought that's what you were comparing it to, though it may CTP, which I haven't played.