First of all, this is probably the best discussion I've had since Civ3's launch. Kudos, Sarcastro, for keeping it cool !
On to your points :
They did none of those ridiculous things. The things I was referencing that some people are complaining about are things that are nowhere near as silly as your fun list up there (for instance, the "I could beat Deity in Civ 2 by 100 A.D.! Since I can't, this is a badly flawed, very poorly programmed game" argument).
True. And unfortunately your example has been way too abundant lately.
Saying 'Waaaah! I can't take over entire continents with 3 tanks anymore!' is stupid.
Saying 'I need probably 8+ modern units, a mixture of artillery and ground troops, to be sure I can take a city defended by 2 pikemen and have acceptable losses' is not.
And I contend that most of these things people are complaining about, some quite incoherently, are nothing more than those "minor variations" that you have excepted.
But at what point do we keep considering 'minor' if they end up affecting (in any way, good or bad) entire avenues of play? For instance, corruption could be considered a 'minor' concept on paper, but it can become crippling.
Whoops! It's actually the third game in the series. Why, one would expect that we'd have two generations of "minor differences" now. If you want Civ 2, play Civ 2 (to steal your sentence structure).
Believe me, I was vaguely aware that it was the third installment of the series
I suppose I don't want another Civ2. I want a Civ3 that makes sense.
And no, laying waste to entire continents with 2 or 3 tanks didn't make sense. But neither does pikemen beating tanks and galleys beating ironclads.
That's why I mentioned Fantastic Worlds and AC. If you wanna go wild with the rules, those are the games you have to do it in. Civilization is reality-based, and as such, we have a frame of reference to compare it to.
And even though, AFAIK, we have no records of battles between tanks and pikemen, common sense tells us that the tanks will always win. That's where the game fails and sometimes makes no sense at all.
You can't say "This is Civ, and the rules were set long ago," and then say "but it's okay to change those SACRED CIV RULES if I agree with the changes." It's a new game. Either it's okay to change some stuff, maybe even make it (gasp) more challenging, or you might as well keep playing the old one.
I agree with changing the rules, if it's done in a sensible and well-thought out way, and the consequences of those rule changes are thoroughly tested. I don't think that was the case with many of the rule changes between Civ2 and Civ3.
But that's a personal opinion only...
Snot. Corruption wasn't "fine," it wasn't even remotely an issue. Now, it's something that you have to think about and incorporate into your strategy. I call that a marked improvement. Of course, it does make the game harder, so people start complaining about it instead of working on figuring it out.
I don't mind hard at all. I stopped getting pissed off at how hard it was probably by the 4th or 5th game of Civ1. I adapted and beat it.
I don't mind hard. I do mind unfair and nonsensical.
If I'm running an empire and corruption is rampant and gripping on my production, well, I build courthouses to mitigate it. The courthouse effect is negligible. Ok, well, maybe a more liberal type of gov't will boost the courthouse effect. It doesn't. Ok, the Forbidden Palace will surely reduce corruption... too bad I can't build it where it's needed to because the city produces one shield out of 12, the rest is wasted.
Democracy:
Before courthouse : 12 shields produced, 11 wasted.
After courthouse : 12 shields produced, 10 wasted.
How am I supposed to build *anything* in there if I don't have a hero?
I understand the need for new strategies to deal with the problem, but so far the best I've seen is what I mentioned earlier : 'Don't expand'. There's only so much you can do about corruption, and the tools the game gives you to deal with it don't work.
That's a badly implemented rule change.
But combat is not "broken," you simply have to put some thought into planning an attack or a defense, instead of using your Civ 2 tactics (I'd hesitate to call them "strategy," since there was very little of that involved). Before, you could simply crank out a bunch of one kind of unit and pretty much be guaranteed a quick victory. Now, combined arms and watching the terrain are absolutely necessary, and real planning has to go into every campaign. Again, I'd call that a BIG improvement. But it's a BIG challenge, so we've got people very accustomed to winning easily who are now very upset that that's no longer the case. Sorry, but I have zero sympathy for them if they can't change their strategy to deal with new challenges. That means that they didn't use their brains to begin with.
Again, I don't mind having to come up with new strategies if needed... that's one of the beauties of the series.
But it's still things that don't make sense. Not only defensive units, since they enjoy all the bonuses in the world, are effective for thousands of game years, but because of this, you have to commit a large force of modern units just to deal with 2 or 3 middle age units in a city.
Combining arms is great and fun (and I think all strategy gamers will agree), but it's NOT fun and makes NO sense to do that if you have an opposition that still has pikes and swords.
Styles of play shot to hell :
- Colonial Empire
- Peaceful Expansionist
So come up with new ones. You seem to be fairly smart.
That's not the issue. I will come up with new ones and people will come up with new ones. I mind the limitations placed on those. Less and less choices on how to play instead of more and more.
Think back. In Civ 2, did you ever have even the slightest difficulty sweeping the globe once you got Artillery? Of course not. Now, it is no longer possible to automatically win a war merely because you could out-produce the enemy. It still helps, but strategy and brains make a much bigger difference than they used to. THAT'S A BIG IMPROVMENT, unless you're someone who is only concerned with the sense of self-esteem that comes from being able to whip the AI without even trying.
I disagree.
If I lead the science, have efficient, modern and productive cities and also have the infrastructure to deploy my forces effectively, why am I being penalized when the other players can't keep up?
Now my tanks perform only marginally better than cavalries and still have roughly the same chances of losing than them. Why the hell did I build tanks again?
I'm using no exploits. I'm not abusing the AI. I'm playing a fair game with no cheating. And yet the game throws another nonsensical ball at me giving middle age units even a remote chance of beating my modern forces just so I can't roll over them, something I might choose to do or not, btw. Again, common sense down the drain.
These design choices with the combat system are penalizing the player, that is rightfully winning by the rules, because the others can't keep up. If I have modern armor and you still have musketmen, sorry... it's buh-bye for you if you can't come up with something to stop me. You should've stepped up your warfare technology research when you had the chance. It's not my fault that you're more primitive than me.
I think that if you look at every war in the history of the world since "bombardment" became used, you'll find that bombardment alone will not do the job.
You're right but I still think it needs to be more powerful.
I was having terrible difficulties winning battles the day after I got the game. But I thought about my strategies, realized that they needed to change, and figured out how to do it. You, as well as a lot of the whiners (I'm not calling you a whiner, though) need to do the same before resorting to blaming the game for your own shortcomings as a military planner.
There's only so much you can do, anyway. You can put (x) number of units stacked on (x) terrain instead of (y) units in (y) terrain, and so on. When you have to show the money it's still attacker vs. defender with bonuses.
A succesful strategy : Bombard, bombard, bombard and when they can't take it anymore, then waltz in with the other ground forces.
That's fine and a realistic strategy, except that you need to do it even if you're fighting pikemen and musketmen with modern armor. And that's when it makes no sense at all.
But I'm curious, could you share some of the strategies/tactics you've found useful so far?
My advice is just that perhaps the world-spanning empire approach that was very, very easy to achieve in previous games is no longer remotely as easy
Then make it hard, not unfair and lacking common sense. Los Angeles is not an anarchic, wasteful craphole *just* because it's too far from Washington (it might be for other reasons, but not 'distance')
I don't think it's valid to take a unit v. unit example and use an adverse result to posit that the whole combat system is flawed.
I just glanced over the log and posted one of the best ones...there are plenty more, believe me. I'm getting close to finishing the logs (23 pages now
) so I'll share it with everybody when it's finished.
Peace...
Gang up with them in enemy territory and reck some havok on their supply lines already!
).
