Originally posted by Flavor Dave
My complaint is one I havent seen made here before, so it may be a new way of looking at Civ 3s weaknesses. And please forgive me for plowing over this worn-out soil, but I think I have a new crop here. And, with all due modesty, I think this is as devastating a criticism as can be made of Civ 3. Theres a reason chess is a better game than checkers, and checkers a better game than tic-tac-toe.
I can defend this, but first I have to define strategy. If you think strategy is the act of making decisions, then youre not going to agree with me. But if you think strategy is when you have to choose between 2 or more non-obvious choices, when you make decisions that will send your game in one direction or another, then Civ 3 lacks strategy.
First, allow me an analogy. In baseball, the American League uses the designated hitter, and the National League does not. (For you non-baseball fans here, in baseball, pitching is a very specialized skill, and most pitchers are very poor hitters. Its much like how soccer goalkeepers are poor dribblers and passers. The "designated hitter" is a player whose sole job is to hit in the pitcher's place.) One of the complaints baseball purists have about the designated hitter is that it reduces strategy.
And, in fact, there is much more bunting in the National League. (Bunting is when a manager instructs a batter to make an out, but to do it in such a way as to advance a teammate on the bases.) So if you think strategy is defined as a manager calling a play, then the designated hitter does reduce strategy. And the same is true for pinch-hitters
there are more in the National League than the American League.
But for both bunting and pinch-hitting, the spread between teams that do it a lot and those that do it little is MUCH larger in the American League. That tells you that the strategic decisions are less cut and dried in the American League. That tells you that many of the decisions that a National League manager makes to use a pinch-hitter, or to bunt, arent really decisions at all, but obvious choices.
And thats the problem with Civ 3. Lets take the special tiles (wheat, gold, whales, etc.) In Civ 2, they were laid out in a pattern, so that you could plant a city in a sweet spot and have 4 special resources. In Civ 3, its random. On the one hand, I understand the change. Human players could use their understanding of the pattern to their advantege. But the Civ 3 method takes away a decision. In Civ 3, you find a decent spot, and start your first city. And your 2nd. Lather, rinse, repeat. In Civ 2, you had to decide how long you wanted to muck about looking for a good spot. And that decision was tied up in the strategic decision of whether or not to build the Super Science City (Colossus, Copernicus, Newton). It impacted your decision on whether to try to build a small civ, a medium civ, or a large civ. If you were able/decided to put most of your cities in the sweet spot, then youre going to play perfectionist. In Civ 2, if you plopped down in the first decent spot, you were going for the large civ. The improvement in Civ 3 makes the game less strategic.
Or take special resources, like iron. In one recent game, I had a very good game. I was the Greeks, and I found iron early. One thing Ive learned is that you have to take advantage of your UU in Civ 3, and your Golden Age. So I started building swordsmen and hoplites, and took Rome and a few other Roman cities. England, on the other side of Rome, declared war as well and took some Roman cities.
The key in Civ 3, even more than Civ 2, is to survive the early game. Because of my early discovery of iron, I was able to get more than my normal share of land, and my nearest neighbor, the Romans, were no threat. And my next nearest neighbor, the English, were building units for its war with Rome instead of libraries and temples, so I was able to compete with them wrt culture and science. (As a side note, I cant figure out why the designers didnt ratchet up the computer civs advantages as the game wears on
a slight science bonus early, a higher one in the midgame, a big one later. Instead, they chose to make the early game damn near impossible to survive, but once you get through that, its smooth sailing. My ratio of games abandoned to games finished it incredible.)
In my current game, Im the French, on a big island with the English. Well, more a small continent. But the continent has no horses or iron. The nearby mega-island also has neither. So its 700 AD, and my army (and Englands) are ridiculously behind the times. I have to pray that none of the other civs attack me, or Ill have no chance. And without horses, I havent been able to rout the English. (They started the war, I was able to take 3 cities, but thats it. Aggressive war without horses OR iron, in midgame, isnt worth it.) So its not like I can compete with the AI civs by sheer size.
In my Greece game, I thrived, and eventually won a diplo victory. In my French game, Im not in a good spot. Im reduced to hoping the Civs with the special resources dont attack. My problem is that my good position and bad position have NOTHING to do with my strategy. Going to war with swordsmen and hoplites early in the game is a no-brainer, once I was LUCKY enough to find iron. And theres nothing I could do differently in my current game. I couldnt waste shields on the Lighthouse with the English attacking me. (Plus I have a huge problem with Wonders, which Ill get to in a minute.) The resources in Civ 3 are a great idea, but have been counterproductive. The purpose was to introduce strategy into trading, war, and expansion, but the effect is the opposite. I have ideas as to how they could have made this innovation work, but thats for another thread.
Unique units
sort of a good idea, but they do make it pretty obvious when each civ should be aggressive. The combination of the U.U.s and the Golden Age they trigger clearly takes away a strategic decision. If it werent for all of the other factors that take away your options, the benefits would outweigh the problems. But as the game is, its just another factor that takes away strategy.
OK, about Wonders and Wonder rushing. Getting rid of Wonder rushing was a great idea. It was too big of an edge for the human player. But the shield wastage in Civ 3 ruins many games. How often have you tried to build a wonder, been 3 or 5 turns away, and been told that someone else just completed it? OK, thats not so bad, but then the other 2 WoWs you can build, get completed by two other civs. And now you switch to a marketplace, and waste 180 shields. If youre like me, you normally start over at that point. Im sorry, but theres way, WAY too much luck involved. This is supposed to be a strategy game, but the huge, huge punishment for barely losing out on a wonder makes the decision to build one not a calculated, STRATEGIC decision, but a blind guess. Again, there are solutions to this, but thats for another thread. Suffice it to say that, again, the decision to get rid of the various ways to hurry a wonder was meant to add strategy, but, instead, has added luck. And the huge, ruinous effect it has on an 8 city civ, early in the game, to waste 150-200 shields tells me that the game wasnt playtested properly.
And the cost of units
in Civ 2, late in the game, you had spies at 30 shields, alpines and mechs at 50, howitzers at 70, and tanks at 80. If you were like me, you set certain cities to build certain items and reduce shield wastage, but were careful to have a good mix. With the higher shield costs, and lower (relative) variation in the costs of the different units, theres fewer choices to be made. In Civ 2, you had to decide the proper mix of units for your army, and balance that out with the need to reduce shield wastage from unnecessary shields. In Civ 3, you just crank out that proper mix, because shield overage isnt an issue. Again, a change in the game has taken away strategic decisions.
And food caravans
I cant for the life of me figure out why this was taken out. As I got better at Civ 2, I started to realize that these were nice little things to have. In Civ 3, without them, you have fewer options for how to develop your cities. In general, one problem with Civ 3 is that it has taken as many steps backward TOWARD city-states not being cooperative parts of a civ, as it has steps forward. But thats another thread.
And the juiced up corruption
again, another change that makes sense on one level, but has the impact of taking away strategic decisions. Im still running the original version because Ive heard such bad things about the patches, and Ive been waiting for a patch that gets a good review (plus spent most of my time playing Championship Manager.) Anyway, the aggressiveness of the AI civs, and the tremendous corruption overseas, means that theres little strategy as to the ideal civ size. Past a certain point, new cities are just targets for the AI to take. And under a certain point, the other civs see you as a weakling. I really miss that you cant thrive with a 6 city civ. I used to love those quick Civ 2 games. But I also miss that its not a viable option to try to build city after city after city. It was good that the AI civs are more aggressive about expanding. But its not really a good option to attack them and take their cities, past a certain point, as the corruption is debilitating. Again, theres no doubt the game wasnt properly playtested. Actually, with regard to this one item, I doubt it was playtested at all, or the playtesters werent listened to.
Finally, diseases in flood plains. What a dumbass, unplaytested idea. I play monarch, and its soooo damn hard to get on your feet early in the game. If you have a city cranking out an early settler, and you have a nearby neighbor, and youre desperate to get enough space to at least have a halfdozen cities without having to go to war, its crippling when you cant build that 2nd settler on time because disease reduces your city down to size one, and so you have to wait to get up to size three before the city can finish the settler. I understand that this may be realistic, but realism has been made a fetish here. Anyone who has ever had this happen, what do you do? You start a new game. Youve only invested a few minutes at that point, so what the hell. Someone trying to make a game where strategy matters more than luck would have taken out this feature. Theres too much luck when you end up 10 turns late on your 3rd city.
THE SUMMARY:
1. Randomizing the special food and shield and trade resource placement has taken away the decision of whether to concentrate on getting in the sweet spot, and reduced the importance of the decision as to being perfectonist, and the decision whether to build the Super Science City.
2. The way in which special resources are implemented has actually taken away decisions. If you have the resource, you use it If you dont, you acquire it. If you cant acquire it, you re-start. (This is more of an early game problem, but then, the huge problem with Civ 3 is that the early game is too hard and/or the late game is too easy, depending on your level. This was a problem in Civ 2, but in Civ 3, its ridiculous.)
3. Unique Units, combined with Golden Ages, have made decisions about when to go to war and when to try to build wonders about as difficult as the decision about whether or not to have your pitcher bunt when theres a runner on first base and none out.
4. Getting rid of the tricks for rushing WoWs was good, but the inability of a city to make use of wastage when you get beat to a WoW makes the cure worse than the disease. Its not a calculated risk whether or not to embark on building a wonder, its blink luck.
5. The higher cost of units, the less-varying cost of them, and the lack of spies has taken away the difficult decision of balancing your army between all the various kinds of units, and reducing shield waste.
6. The loss of food caravans have taken away a strategic option.
7. The high corruption, along with the high AI aggression toward weak civs (and the juiced-up cheating of the civs early in the game) have combined to take away your decision as to how big of a civ you want. The variation between the smallest viable civ and the most aggressive expansion strategy is MUCH MUCH smaller in Civ 3 than Civ 2.
8. Disease in flood plains is a matter of random luck, and can cripple your early game. Pointless change.
For me, the key reason that Civ 3 isnt as good or as addicting as Civ 2 (despite some excellent, well thought out improvements), is that I dont have as much control over my civ. Its a strategy game lacking strategy. Theres too much luck and simple decisions.
