The single greatest problem with "civilization" games

[newfangle]

This is what it all boils down to: militarism. Every improvment in the game aims at increasing military strength, either directly or indirectly (cathedrals may not produce units, but they make unhappy citizens content, which increases production).

Diplomatic victory is far too faceless and unenjoyable to win.
Cultural is the most non-military victory, but to win you usually have to expand your empire or crush others.
Spacerace makes no sense. Why would the entire world bow down before you if 100 of your citizens flew to some faroff planet never to return.
Domination and Conquest are purely military, unless all of the AI opponents were placed on the smallest island with no ideas on how to construct ships.

I really can't think of any better ideas though

Commernce victory makes sense.
Maybe a production victory?
Who knows, thats why I want as many of you to make as many suggestions as possible.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by newfangle
Why would the entire world bow down before you if 100 of your citizens flew to some faroff planet never to return.

I note that you use the language of conquest to describe the space victory. Rather, the colonization of space represents the culmination of a culture's history, not a method of forcing others to bow to your power. It is a symbol of technological prowess. It also marks the start of a new era, and the end of the old.

 

[philippe]

mayby a happy victorie
everyone must be happy ,you may never had a war
and you must make the i love everything wonder

 

[Frodo Bolson]

For a cultural victory it is not needed to expand too much, just to expand all the available space and your settler production allows. And then, create just a defensive unit against barbarians and all production must be destined to cultural and expansion (aqueducts, hospitals) buildings and wonders. No need to produce more warriors than the ones for defense, it would even be unadvisable.

One of the things I like of the Civilization games is that it is possible to win with millitary ways but you can choose not to do that.

 

[ChrisWade]

Cultural victory is not always easy.
I always spread my cities out so that they all have maximum growth potential. This means not many cities in a fixed area.
The AI will build approx 50% more cities in that area, which means 50% more temples, libraries, etc. This means the AI can produce 50% more culture in the same land area than I do. I think a more even way of working out culture is to divide total culture points by the land area covered.

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by newfangle
This is what it all boils down to: militarism.

Ironically, you could argue that this is the single greatest problem with actual civilizations as well.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by ainwood


Ironically, you could argue that this is the single greatest problem with actual civilizations as well.

How true. How true.

 

[Heffalump]

Originally posted by ChrisWade:
Cultural victory is not always easy.
I always spread my cities out so that they all have maximum growth potential. This means not many cities in a fixed area.
The AI will build approx 50% more cities in that area, which means 50% more temples, libraries, etc. This means the AI can produce 50% more culture in the same land area than I do. I think a more even way of working out culture is to divide total culture points by the land area covered.

Culture is a little too strongly linked to number of cities. More cities = more improvements = more culture. In other words, expand, expand, expand

It would be nice if there were more routes to victory for a relatively small, perfectionist civ.

I've tried to push things that way a little by tweaking in the editor, lopping off 1 or 2 culture pts from cathedrals, libraries, research labs, and doubling or more the culture pts from some Wonders. But it's a fine balance because you have to be careful not to make a cultural victory in one city too easy by building a handful of wonders. Also, culture drives borders so you can't remove too many culture pts from improvements if you want your cities radiuses to expand.

 

[etj4Eagle]

Originally posted by ChrisWade
Cultural victory is not always easy.
I always spread my cities out so that they all have maximum growth potential. This means not many cities in a fixed area.
The AI will build approx 50% more cities in that area, which means 50% more temples, libraries, etc. This means the AI can produce 50% more culture in the same land area than I do. I think a more even way of working out culture is to divide total culture points by the land area covered.

a cultural victory not quite so heavily tied to getting the biggest empire possible would be nice, though how to do that well is hard. Since you still want to encourage the player to expand. Some ideas might be:
1) Require X amount of cities with at least Y culture, while dropping the total number of culture points needed.
2) Or maybe you have to have X more cities than any rival with at least Y culture.
3) Or require also that you have a certain amount of cities in WLTKD or a certain ratio of happy to content and unhappy citizens

Of course any of these make it much harder to figure out how close you are to that victory condition. At least with the current one you have a reasonable idea of how close you are and how close your opponents are.

 

[Chingis Khan]

Being a warmonger, militarism isn't a problem in the game for me, it's more a bonus. Spending days or even weeks on a game only to have a message suddenly pop up telling me I have a culture win is a huge anticlimax and spoils the game for me. That's why I only leave conquest and space race victories on when i play; gives me a more specific goal to strive for.

 

[Regordete]

Well if militarism is the biggest problem, the game's interface has to be the second biggest. It is EXTREMELY evident that the first version of this program was desinged in DOS . It is so proactive, its anoying. The screen jumps all over the world and the user is powerless to stop it for a closer look at a developing situation.

Troop movements in a developed large world or absolutely tedious to the point its not even fun anymore. The interface is poor when it come to figuring out what a user is doing. You'll have two units in one area, move one and instead the interface figuring out the rectangle you are working in ( a sensible thing for an interface to do) it jumps across the world.

That palace view thing is nothing but a quirky distraction. It cute for the first time and only anoying afterwards.

IMHO, the game is fun on small maps but falls flat on its face on large and huge maps. I've even had the buffers overrun on a huge map and had a Russian battleship in my very inland capital.
The designers need to take another course in interface. A menu
with numbered choices and a promp saying pick one was good enough for the DOS days, but its obsolete in these days of REACTIVE programming.

I hope I got those terms right
Proactive - the program gives you a few limited choices and you must do one of them ( like "What do you want to do now? A B or C). It locks at the point until you do.

Reactive - the program uses an event handler to give the user access to just about all its functions at about anytime and never locks the user out.

 

[etj4Eagle]

Originally posted by Regordete
Well if militarism is the biggest problem, the game's interface has to be the second biggest. It is EXTREMELY evident that the first version of this program was desinged in DOS . It is so proactive, its anoying. The screen jumps all over the world and the user is powerless to stop it for a closer look at a developing situation.

Troop movements in a developed large world or absolutely tedious to the point its not even fun anymore. The interface is poor when it come to figuring out what a user is doing. You'll have two units in one area, move one and instead the interface figuring out the rectangle you are working in ( a sensible thing for an interface to do) it jumps across the world.

That palace view thing is nothing but a quirky distraction. It cute for the first time and only anoying afterwards.

IMHO, the game is fun on small maps but falls flat on its face on large and huge maps. I've even had the buffers overrun on a huge map and had a Russian battleship in my very inland capital.
The designers need to take another course in interface. A menu
with numbered choices and a promp saying pick one was good enough for the DOS days, but its obsolete in these days of REACTIVE programming.

I hope I got those terms right
Proactive - the program gives you a few limited choices and you must do one of them ( like "What do you want to do now? A B or C). It locks at the point until you do.

Reactive - the program uses an event handler to give the user access to just about all its functions at about anytime and never locks the user out.

It would be nice if they took the time to redesign the interface from the ground up. This is the real issue, is that they have to throw out everything they have used before and start all over, then we will get a good interface. SMAC had a somewhat better interface, the message all appeared in a list, which you then scroll through and decide which ones you actually wanted to deal with. Clicking on the message zoomed you to that city. And also you nicely had a fully functional right click menu with every possible unit command, no needing to remeber key strokes.

 

[Frodo Bolson]

Don't forget that if you have strong cultural cities, you can "conquer" nearby foreign cities when they riot and want to join you. So, one more city, one more place for temples, cathedrals, wonders, etc.

If you want to win with a small and efective civilization, try the spaceship. However, if you have just a little fraction of the world under your control it is more than likely that aluminium will be outside it.

And last, if you want to produce culture to expand your national limits but are afraid of a not desired cultural victory, just don't allow it when you start the game.

 

[DGuller]

I agree, the Civ's interface is horrible and way out of date. First of all, why all those friggin shortcuts without buttons? It's almost like you have to have the encyclopedia of all shortcuts next to you when playing the game. I also think that the large maps are unplayable to a normal user simply because there are way too many units and way too many cities to take care of, and the interface falls flat on its face when handling it. Playing on the largest map is like a second job. Of course, fixing this might require changing the game itself. However, that's a big problem for me personally. If I expand too much in my game, I simply lose interest, I don't want to hire two bookkeepers to keep track of all my troops. Another good turn based strategy game like Imperialism 2 handles big sizes and big number of troops much more elegantly.

 

[Simon Darkshade]

Originally posted by newfangle
This is what it all boils down to: militarism. Every improvment in the game aims at increasing military strength, either directly or indirectly (cathedrals may not produce units, but they make unhappy citizens content, which increases production).

Diplomatic victory is far too faceless and unenjoyable to win.
Cultural is the most non-military victory, but to win you usually have to expand your empire or crush others.
Spacerace makes no sense. Why would the entire world bow down before you if 100 of your citizens flew to some faroff planet never to return.
Domination and Conquest are purely military, unless all of the AI opponents were placed on the smallest island with no ideas on how to construct ships.

I really can't think of any better ideas though

Commernce victory makes sense.
Maybe a production victory?
Who knows, thats why I want as many of you to make as many suggestions as possible.

I don't know about this new Civ3 thing, but in the first two games in the Civ series, you could win after playing in a manifestly non-militaristic fashion.
If the space race does not seem realistic, then remember that the game itself is not a 100% realistic matter. Consider the space race as the ultimate mark of a technological victory. It is frequent that a good trading empire can beat a war mongering civ, so that covers commerce, as trade is the lifeblood of the game.
Just a few points to consider. Now, I depart for more familiar environs.
And yes, Hippo, I dare show my face round here!

A Civ1 and Civ2 Dinosaur.

 

[Dinorius R.]

I agree that militarism is the critical factor for success, no matter what type of victory you end up with. However, I don't view that as the main problem with Civ3, I rather enjoy the military style and feel that UN victories and cultural wins etc are for pillow-biters.

I think Civ3's biggest problem is the way you know from very early on whether you are destined to win or lose. Very few (in fact none) of the games I've ever played had me clinging to the edge of my seat wondering how it was going to turn out - the outcomes, good or bad, were predictable right from the early eras - and it is boring knowing so far in advance what's going to happen. Winning is definitely better than losing, but even so, the late game is a tedious tank-driving lesson as far as I can tell.

I wish there was more suspense in Civ3.

 

[Caranamrta]

The greatest problem in the civ games? This is the "head system" of the population instead of a normal population, and that the food production is completely separated from the "industrial" (=shield) production, although IRL the same workpower is used. These two great faults in the base of the game are way more problematic than the military-centered victory conditions.

 

[ColonelT]

After 20 or so games, I've yet to win a space race victory. I've tried, and tried, and tried, but the culture victory always kicks in before I can get the ship completed. I tend to build everything to enhance my infrastructure, and I just need to resist the temptation to build all those cathedrals and universities...of course then I find it difficult to get the tech built up fast enough...blah, blah, blah, same old story.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by ColonelT
After 20 or so games, I've yet to win a space race victory. I've tried, and tried, and tried, but the culture victory always kicks in before I can get the ship completed. I tend to build everything to enhance my infrastructure, and I just need to resist the temptation to build all those cathedrals and universities...of course then I find it difficult to get the tech built up fast enough...blah, blah, blah, same old story.

They have a great victory video for space. Turn off culture victory for a change of pace.