Long Lasting Defects of Civ

corvinus78

Chieftain
Joined
Jul 2, 2002
Messages
2
Location
Italy
Hi to everybody. I have just subscribed to this forum. I'm italian so please pardon me for the sintax errors.

I have recently started to play Civ3 after having played for years Civ1 and Civ2 as most of you. Before reading further I would like you to know that I think Civ3 is just the best game ever made IMHO.

Anyway I have been a bit disappointed because the defects which were typical of Civ1 and Civ2 had not been corrected.

1) In my opinion is extremely unreasonable that a catapult can wound severely a Battleship. And it happens. As well as it happens that a tank can be wounded by a spearman.
I think that the randomizer should be less powerful in determining the result of a battle. It should be much more important the terrain, the health of the unit and most of all the evolution of the unit.
Many times, when war experts are talking they consider a factor which is the casualties ratio. For example the objective of the new technologies applied to the US military is to reduce the casualties ratio to approximately 1:100 (one marine should be able to kill 100 enemies before being killed).
So I think that Civ should work in a similar way, by centering the distribution of probabilities for the randomizer in a different way. Let's make an example:
attack factor 1 vs defense factor 1=casualties ratio 1:1
attack factor 2 vs defense factor 1=casualties ratio 1:2
attack factor 3 vs defense factor 1=casualties ratio 1:4
attack factor 4 vs defense factor 1=casualties ratio 1:8
attack factor 5 vs defense factor 1=casualties ratio 1:16
and so on...
This would be the center of the probability distribution of the randomizer (in case of equal terrain and equal conditions) so that there can be some flexibility but in this it would be avoided that a tank can be wounded by a warrior. And it would be much more important thwe deployment and the movements of the troops instead of their sheer number (we all know that at high levels of difficulties you have to use so much units to kill enemy units)

2) In my opinion it would be better that the levels of difficulties would be based on the intelligence of the AI, rather than based on other things like: increasing the difficulty in killing enemy units (I think that instead it should be the same for all levels of difficulty), increasing the speed of technological advancing of the enemies (this should be the same for all the civs at any level), increasing the productivity of the enemies (this too should be the same for every civ).
To summarize: I think that civ should take some good things of the chess games, where the level of difficulties are not based on having a horse making different moves, but based on the different "intelligence" of the AI.
I know that a civ game is much more complicated than a chess game but this is something that I would like Sid Meyer to point at (even if I have heard about rumors on his Ancient History degree thesis about the possibility for a trireme to destroy a submarine, is it true??? :) ).

Now I repeat what I have said before: Civ3 is for me the best game ever made. So, take this considerations as something constructive, ok?

bye!!!!!
 
1. Have you checked the combat calculator? And let's not get into the 'killer spearman defeats my panzer' discussion...
2. Difficulty has no effect on the outcome of a battle (except against barbarians). Tech research/valuation works probably different than you think though. It has something to do with how many civs you've contacted. Generally, AI is somewhat different. It does cheat though, there's a whole thread on that issue somewhere.
The odds of a galley (tririmes don't exist in civ3) defeating an attacking submarine is 1.5%.
3. Welcome!

I'm not in the mood to supply the corresponding links to the mentioned threads right now, maybe later.
Constructive comments are always welcome! Take my advice: take some time to read the articles in the war academy.

Where in Italy do you come from?

Salutations!
 
It is far from "the best game ever made", which you'll discern from reading all the critical threads and posts.

Your attack/defender issue is based on the goofy values that came with the game, and those have been edited long ago by many players with new mods posted on the other forum. So if you play with Firaxis' values you will have problems. Edit. Read the posts, and check the mods for examples.

Don't get me started on the AI. It's illogical, cheating, and dumb moves has been an irritant for months. Just check the threads.

Bottom line: once the values have been edited properly the difficulty you refered to is minimized. There are dozens of more serious problems to consider. Ciao.
 
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