doesn't anyone else find the cute, sunday morning cartoon styling of civ 3 a touch repulsive? you're taking on empires, and yet your enemies look like teletubies in disguise.
both civ 2 and civ 1 had an authentic charm a sort of generosity which gave enough to the imagination to create plausible alternative worlds, civilisation 3's attempts to make worlds more "real" betrays a cultural stereotyping which is just a pick and mix of idiosyncracies. in one way the mechanics of the game, in fact of games in general, force this mechanical cultural point system but on the other hand i never had this problem with civ 2 and civ 1.
why just make stereotypes? each civilisation's culture should surely be born out of the history you create whilst playing the game, a landscape of psycho-geography, culture is not accrued in a materialistic sense of "cultural buldings" each unit of which grants a superiority over others, why can't a culture of barracks be created for aggresive civilisations which war often? or a culture of bankers who gain bureaucratic benefits given the unholy levels of taxation?
again the problem of stereotyping in games is ubiquitous, the increasing recognition of games as part of our culture only speaks of our current cultural poverty and not the raising of the gaming bar which stood more of a chance when reality was abstracted to the level of civ 1. although civ 3 is fine, it hasn't improved over civ 2, it makes some token moves to acknowledge the fact that time has passed and new features or graphics must be provided (from a financial point of view to encourage sales if nothing else) but, to be frank, they're ****. to put it another way, the mechanics of the civ series were expanded horizontally rather than vertically.
you could argue that i'm reading too much into the older civ games, that the designers never intended these sorts of attachments and civ 3 is the true image of their intentions, but that is precisely the beauty of the civilisation series, that you really did create a culture and an empire, however sparse, in a loose collection of colours and numbers, labourers and aqueducts, set amongst notional mountain heights and shore lengths. that is the cultural reality that should be investigated and not different "culture" graphics.
civ 2 rocks
i remember a lot of hope, when civ 3 was being developed, on the apolyton forums and the bitter disappointments when it came out (not least because it was so damned slow!) and i have a feeling this little rant is falling on deaf ears. part of the problem as i recall was the shere ambition of the requests, but i forget them now and only remember that they seemed to go in the right direction. i think a revisiting of that apolyton list would be incredibly useful. i've talked at length and i might not have been clear enough...
1. more abstraction, ikaruga for the game cube offers more scope for imagination than civ 3
2. the disneyfication of civ 3 is horrible. please, stop.
3. culture system doesn't need to be "added on" there is plenty of material to work with for creating a culture out of the siting of a civlisation, for creating a religion and government tailored to the resources found and the things built, the consideration of the seasonal/economic/political/religious cycles modified therein. as time progresses technology/politics/morality will determine whether the civilisation cares about the weather, the environment etc.
4. in general make the game more open ended. work back against the idea of "the diplomatic" vicotyr or "the military" victory, and towards the progression of time and subsequent cultivation of a culture/civilisation.
the game works because of the abstraction of reality and the depth of the layers, in civ 3 the series took a step sideways and not in a direction i enjoyed. i imagine the ideas i've put forward are pretty far fetched but i hope they'll provoke thought about how we can add other layers to the game rather than how we can increase micromanagement.
cheers
but I would like to see different types of trees in the palace improvements.
