Poorly Developed Game

Yeah, I remember the days of absolutely trashing a rival civilization's units with bombers...but now the implementation of air power is much different (and still needs some tweaks to it).

Bombers aren't nearly as effective against units anymore, but they are incredibly effective against infrastructure and population now. 10 bombers would decimate everything around a city in 2 turns...don't even bother trying to bombard the city to kill off population, just destroy all the irrigation, roads, and railways and the city is toast without a fight. I think that they reached a balance between the bombers new power and the ability to get them easily to a position where you can use them. You can rebase them well, but if you are in a city you run the real risk of losing them...a sea surrounded by a powerful navy and being mobile there is not nearly as risky. Try using your bombers on the infrastructure and not on the cities themselves...its rather scary to be on the receiving end of an airial bombardment now...you don't lose troops but you can lose the ability to make troops, you don't lose people but you can lose the food to feed them.

I just wish that they'd do something about airpower being able to wipe out some specific units...sea units especially.
 
Originally posted by Captin Spok

I work in software..I know good software when I see it. This one needs some work. Anyways I just want to point out things so they make them better.
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Ha! So do I. I guess you were just asking for it when you attached that title to your thread. It's basically a swipe at the developers, and if you really expect them to improve the game based on any feedback that you provide, I would suggest taking a tone other than "Poorly developed game"; that will get lost among the rest of the "The game sux" type of posts.
 
To me, that is about as real as it can get. You don't send fighters in to take out ground combat units, you send in the fighters to protect the bombers that are attacking the enemy.

Bombers, despite what you may have thought you saw on CNN, are not so accurate...even the stealth, smart type. You use them to reduce the enemy's abillity to defend themselves and to limit their ability for production.
 
Originally posted by Stuie


Ha! So do I. I guess you were just asking for it when you attached that title to your thread. It's basically a swipe at the developers, and if you really expect them to improve the game based on any feedback that you provide, I would suggest taking a tone other than "Poorly developed game"; that will get lost among the rest of the "The game sux" type of posts.
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In your widom I am humbled


Actualy its the tester job to report/find the bugs. Its developments job or choice to fix it.

I tell it like it is.....and it is a Poorly tested, rush it to the store so we can make a buck game, we will fix the bugs later.
 
Originally posted by Captin Spok


In your widom I am humbled


Actualy its the tester job to report/find the bugs. Its developments job or choice to fix it.

I tell it like it is.....and it is a Poorly tested, rush it to the store so we can make a buck game, we will fix the bugs later.
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I dunno, I've seen worse. Anarchy Online anyone? How about Diablo II?
 
:egypt:

voodooace is right there is no way to insult this game even if it has some bugs. It' just that your 1 computers44 Suck
 
Originally posted by CeasarSalad


I dunno, I've seen worse. Anarchy Online anyone? How about Diablo II?
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Hahah that's great! Someone in a different post was praising Blizzard games, D2 in particular, and how stable they were when they first came out. Basically it comes down to perspective.
The complainers: They expect the game to be perfect. After all it came from Sid right?
The Sid-can-do-no-wrongers: There is nothing wrong with this game. After all it came from Sid right?

I am from both sides. I change back and forth depending on whether I am dealing with the A.I. (better than any other game A.I. IMHO) or trying to conduct Spy missions (WTH! Where is the button to send a spy out to bribe another city, it says there should be a way in the game manual).
 
True it is the testers job to report bugs, but if you are in software development, as you claim, then you know that it isn't always QA's fault that bugs go undected.

Civ III has all the feeling of a game that was changed right up until the last minute. Sometimes QA doesn't have the time, number of people, or power to stop production, that it takes to find all the bugs.

Taking a swipe at them, when you don't know the facts is just mean spirited. Take a swipe at Infogames for shipping early, or at the consumer that has held the price of games at $50 for the last 10 to 15 years despite the fact that dev costs have sky rocketd, before you stick it to QA.

Chill on the finger pointing.
 
This is not the AOFanatics forum. Neither it is the Diablo2Fanatics forum. It's the CivFanatics forum.

As such, we discuss things that are relevant to Civ3 and its lineage. Not other games. If other games are more or less polished/playable/buggy it's irrelevant. What's relevant is that many people are raising valid concerns (some in better ways than others) about Civ3's polish/playability/bugs.

I don't give a damn about AO's bugs or DiabloII's bugs unless I'm playing AO or DiabloII. Here, in this forum, they have no relevance at all. So if game (x) has more/less bugs than Civ3, good. It doesn't make Civ3 more or less buggy by default.

What I think :

- Yes, I believe the game was rushed.
- Yes, I believe it's got bugs.
- Yes, I believe some areas (corruption/combat) are flawed.
- No, personally I don't agree with some design choices.
- Yes, I believe that thankfully, all these issue can be patched eventually.
- Yes, I'm still having a blast with the game, even with all its pitfalls and shortcomings. I just want the game to get better and better, that's why I point out what I believe are bad things and listen to the complaints of others. So they can be fixed.

And please, if you're enjoying the game as it is, then great. More power to you. Just don't come and tell me to "Learn to use the editor".

You tell people to "Learn to use the editor" when they want to configure or modify the game to their own particular liking in small, particular details. Not to fix serious concerns of issues just because you learned how to live with them and they can't.

If this was "Sid Meier's Chess", and it took the white player 3 pawns to kill 1 black pawn, would you still tell them to "Learn to use the editor"? Or if rooks only weakened enemy pieces, instead of killing them, that also deserves a "Learn to use the editor"?

Fanboyism is useful and cute up to a certain point. Beyond that you start to border on hypocrisy. No offense. I just call it as I see it.

Peace...
 
Originally posted by Julian I
If this was "Sid Meier's Chess", and it took the white player 3 pawns to kill 1 black pawn, would you still tell them to "Learn to use the editor"? Or if rooks only weakened enemy pieces, instead of killing them, that also deserves a "Learn to use the editor"?
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No, but that's still a pretty stupid analogy. Chess is an established game with concrete, limited rules. Civ 3 is new. It is a game where they made the rules when they made the game. You cannot possibly justify saying "It should have been this way" about some of the things people are complaining about. Unless it's an obvious bug, it should be any way that they darn well please.

Does anyone honestly think that after testing the game for months and years, they didn't see some of these things going on, and have their reasons for leaving them in? People are saying "The corruption is impossible to deal with. They SHOULD change it." Screw that. They playtested the game, and for whatever reason, decided that this level of corruption was good for the game. It is possible to deal with. That's a fact.

So, no, don't "learn to use the editor." Learn to adapt your strategies to the new reality of this game, rather than sobbing to the creators and whoever will listen that it should be different. Guys, just because you were a whiz-bang genius at beating Deity level on Civ 2 does not obligate the Civ3 development team to cater to your skill level when creating the next game.
 
Originally posted by kamosa
True it is the testers job to report bugs, but if you are in software development, as you claim, then you know that it isn't always QA's fault that bugs go undected.

Civ III has all the feeling of a game that was changed right up until the last minute. Sometimes QA doesn't have the time, number of people, or power to stop production, that it takes to find all the bugs.

Taking a swipe at them, when you don't know the facts is just mean spirited. Take a swipe at Infogames for shipping early, or at the consumer that has held the price of games at $50 for the last 10 to 15 years despite the fact that dev costs have sky rocketd, before you stick it to QA.

Chill on the finger pointing.
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I said its the devs who make the call on what gets fixed and even more so the ones putting up the $ engineering for the game. Money drives this industry and they know that people these days are willing to buy it anyway bugs or not. Fact is the game was rushed. QA may have missed bugs cause they did not hire enough $10.00/hour testers.....or devs were not allowed to fix and shiped as is.

We who have played reserve the right to point out the issues cause they are there and they anoy.

USAF is the worst game I have ever played as far as bugs go so no this is not the worst QA nightmare ever released.

Sarcastro feel free to check my grammer!(The Guy is good)
 
This game is like 80% done. It obviously hasnt been playtested enough, nor is the interface done, and there are still some obvious bugs.

Oh for those who disagree, I've got a bridge to sell you, $49.99.
 
"It should have been this way" about some of the things people are complaining about. Unless it's an obvious bug, it should be any way that they darn well please.
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Ok. So suppose the designers, for whatever reason, made Battleships able to fly, armed Sperarmen with fusion cannons and gave them 99 points of movement, made tulips the money unit and based all world trade on tulip haggling, made the settlers cost 10 food/500 tulips, allowed only one system of gov't - Anarcho-Syndicalist Truffle-Hunting Autocracy and made railroads actually slow units down (to simulate the time lost when buying train tickets and getting on and off the train).

So just because those are the rules in the new game, and they wrote it, that makes it correct by default, right? Please, let's not be so damn pragmatic.

You EXPECT things to be in a particular way, saving minor variations, because that's the nature of the game. If you want fantasy, you have Fantastic Worlds. If you want something more sci-fi-ish oriented, you got AC.

This is Civ. Plain Civ. And as such, the rules have been set long ago. You can only change them SO much and still call it Civ. Improve them? Yes, by all means. Perfect them. Include more detail. Everything can be improved... but as long as you don't break anything in the process.

Corruption was fine - now it's broken and out of control.
Combat in Civ2, though it wasn't perfect not even by a long shot, was a great improvement from Civ1 - now it's broken again and we're getting stupid combat results en masse.

Learn to adapt your strategies to the new reality of this game, rather than sobbing to the creators and whoever will listen that it should be different.
Click to expand...

Fine. Let's talk problems and strategies around them.

Problem : Corruption makes an empire of moderate/large size grind to a halt. Border towns are impaired. Offshore colonies are useless. Courthouses don't help. Liberal Gov't types don't help. The Forbidden Palace helps sometimes, but you can't build it in a high-corruption area, because of corruption. Catch-22 if you don't have a hero.

Solution : Don't expand to values near or beyond city cap depending on map size.

Solution affects :
- Building and managing effectively an empire with offshore colonies
- Building and managing effectively a medium size/large empire

Styles of play shot to hell :
- Colonial Empire
- Peaceful Expansionist


Problem : The combat system is unbalanced. Defending units can use from a variety of 10-15 unit specific/terrain/improvement/city size bonuses. Attackers have no such bonuses. Stupid, unrealistic combat results result from that. Bombardment (Aerial, Land or Naval based) is ineffective against enemy military units. Bombardment can't destroy sea units.

Solution : Don't attack.

Solution affects :
- Any skirmish when your unit is the attacker

Styles of play shot to hell :
- Colonial Empire
- Aggresive Militaristic
- Military Conqueror

Civ was all about choices. 4000 BC, here's your settler...do whatever the hell you want. Now some design choices are arbitrarily limiting (and in the worst cases, eliminating) valid, perfectly acceptable styles of play. Maybe those design choices were made because of fear of possible exploits, fear of players abusing the AI...whatever. But when you're rewriting things like these you should really stop and think if the solution is not worse than the problem.

I'd love to debate about the corruption issue, since it's rather complex and everybody that kinda worked around the problem has its own particular method. Every little bit helps.

I will NOT debate, however, on the combat system. Just as a quick heads-up and as an informative thing only, I'm the nut-case who's logging the combat system (see the thread aptly titled "Logging the combat system" ;) ).

I've logged and seen the results in front of me. I haven't analyzed them in depth (lack of time, really...there's more than 11 pages of data SO FAR), but there were A LOT of ridiculous results. More than I can tolerate before calling the combat system 'flawed' anyway.

Take this gem, from my log :

1485AD:
French V-Knight(4.3.2)-Grassland vs. Roman R-Longbowman(4.1.1)-Plains
DEF WON (OAP: ATT WINS 97.773%)

In english, that is :

1485 A.D. :
French Veteran Knight(ADM:4.3.2) on Grassland attacks Roman Regular Longbowman(ADM:4.1.1) on Plains. Not fortified.
Defender Won (Odds A Priori, according to the Combat Calculator : Attacker will win 97.773%)

I know, shades of Agincourt. Don't remind me. The thing is that I've already logged an astoundingly HIGH amount of Agincourts so far... and I'm only in the low 1500's.

But let's talk anyway, if you want to.

Peace...
 
All right, so they rushed it through QA. All right the game has bugs.

Then tell me, what next?

Rush to the store with torches and demand our money back?

Send hate mail to all the developers who worked on the project?

Dress up in women's clothing, light our hair on fire, and claim the world has come to an end?

Give it to me straight. What's all the point in this?

BTW, if you want to play a truly buggy version 1.0 release, find a copy of WWII Online. (Just don't let it slip that its a Multiplayer game only - the single players will have a cow)
 
Originally posted by WankersRevenge
All right, so they rushed it through QA. All right the game has bugs.

Then tell me, what next?

Rush to the store with torches and demand our money back?

Send hate mail to all the developers who worked on the project?

Dress up in women's clothing, light our hair on fire, and claim the world has come to an end?

Give it to me straight. What's all the point in this?

BTW, if you want to play a truly buggy version 1.0 release, find a copy of WWII Online. (Just don't let it slip that its a Multiplayer game only - the single players will have a cow)
Click to expand...



I think that you are extream!

Just pointing out the simple facts about the game; important elements to the game are broken. Thats the point.

Now we can all scream for the patch they have been working on since the release of the game.
 
Hi there,

I got a couple of questions about air power in the game.

I don't have the game but I've been getting confused about some things and I'm wondering if people are finding them a problem or not.

I understand that fighters have an intercept range of 2 (are jets 3? not sure), and that you cannot build airfields in the game.

But you no longer have to just defend cities, you need to defend resources. You can use bombers to pillage and knock out supply lines.

This is what has me a little confused. If a resource lies within borders or on a colony, but is outside the city radii of 2 squares, there is no way to defend it from bombers. Or at least there seems to be no way.

So you are helpless while the enemy pillages and can do nothing about it. This may be a gameplay/balance decision but it really sounds frustrating. Against human players this will surely be exploited.

You cannot build airfields near resources to station fighters. Apparently fighters dont work anyway, but you would have to build a city there, even if its only 3 squares from a major metropolis, just to base a fighter.

With the way air power works now, land units don't damage bombers, which means you cannot use land troops to try and protect resources from air power, they're just sitting ducks.

The other thing that seems like it might be problematic is air vs sea power. You can bomb ships, but ships don't harm planes? Is that true? Not even an AEGIS cruiser? And planes cannot sink ships? This just seems a little wonky; planes suffer loses bombing ships and ships get sunk by planes in war frequently. I guess this is a game balance issue, but it just seems, well, a little odd, or clunky, or just not fully thought out in some ways.

The culture defection of a size one city with 10 units and an army in it without warning also sounds kinda like 'Aaah! 50 years of production gone!' frustrating. I guess it flows both ways tho?

Lots of features in the game sound really great, and I'm looking forward to buying it and trying it out meself. Thnx for any feedback

miro
 
Spok, you have in no way been pointing out broken elements. You've been critiquing their development process and setting up polls about their QA team. I'm sure the folks at Fraxis appreciate your keen insight into their development model.

All these observations produce nothing unless you'd be willing to organize some kind of action towards them (aka, petition - feature request - etc)

Be patient. I'm sure they've been working on a patch before they released the game.
 
Originally posted by WankersRevenge
Spok, you have in no way been pointing out broken elements. You've been critiquing their development process and setting up polls about their QA team. I'm sure the folks at Fraxis appreciate your keen insight into their development model.

All these observations produce nothing unless you'd be willing to organize some kind of action towards them (aka, petition - feature request - etc)

Be patient. I'm sure they've been working on a patch before they released the game.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have been pointing out broken elements in the game.

Yes, I have been "speculating" on their development and I "speculate" that money was tight, leading to a shorter than expected dev cycle, which lead to unresolved "issues" in the release.

I have read a number of posts today and can assure you that some pettion will be made. I can also be sure that we won't even have to ask because they already know about all the issues that have been discused here today.

I am patient and I posted for fun as well as for serious issues. Keeping in mind its only a game, that real people with feelings built the game and hopped we would like it which I think we do. However, we the people know that we did not get the best product they could offer..and they know it too.
 
Originally posted by WankersRevenge

This isn't so much a bug as it is a feature request -

Expand the role of the UN

The Civ developers spent so much time developing diplomacy, they skipped over the UN which is opportune for diplomatic/peacekeeping type events. Wouldn't it be cool to vote on sending a peacekeeping force to England and France to tone it a little. Or Repeal or Allow certain technical advances. Personally, I think they missed out on something which could have been great.

Also -

What happened to planting diseases and nuclear weapons in cities? My favorite part of Civ and SMAC was planting weapons, and blaming it on a neighbor.



Is this a complaint??
 
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