The years go by - is any idea for a community Civ3-clone utterly dead? :)

[Kyriakos]

The civ3 AI can win, in high setting (the two last ones, basically), but only due to cheating. If it can get more bonuses out of tiles, it is pretty much a cheat

 

[Civinator]

The civ3 AI can win, in high setting (the two last ones, basically), but only due to cheating. If it can get more bonuses out of tiles, it is pretty much a cheat

Yes it can but this is not the target it was created for.

 

[Balthasar]

It seems you want to give the AI in Civ 3 other targets, not improving the AI with its setting of the original targets.

What I think they really want, Civinator, what we all really want, are options. It's in the title of the forum: "Customization". Sooner or later, there's always gonna be a guitar player who wants to turn it up to eleven.

You should talk: you've been teaching the AI new tricks for a while now.

 

[Civinator]

Balthasar, thank you very much for your kind words. May be the most important to help the AI in Civ 3 is to reduce or change features that are not performed so well by the AI.

 

[Vuldacon]

May be the most important to help the AI in Civ 3 is to reduce or change features that are not performed so well by the AI.

Exactly Civinator... Simply providing the AI with what the Human Player can do in the Game would seriously empower it!

 

[Takhisis]

I´m not completely agreeing with this. Please remember, that in Civ 3 the AI was done to give the human player a demanding game - not to win the game. In Civ 4 -6 the AI was done to win the game - and is failing massively (especially in Civ 5 and Civ 6). Viewing the targets, that were set for the AI, Civ 3 hits these targets more closely than any later version of the Civ series. It seems you want to give the AI in Civ 3 other targets, not improving the AI with its setting of the original targets.

Hence why I said ‘could’ rather than simply ‘should’. You could keep the original Firaxis-made Artificial Idiot™ and also make it modifiable so that it can win without cheating and, say, actively use shooting units, or land transports, or movable Air units.

 

[Vuldacon]

You could keep the original Firaxis-made Artificial Idiot™ and also make it modifiable so that it can win without cheating and, say, actively use shooting units, or land transports, or movable Air units.

I agree... What you are saying is what made the AI an "Artificial Idiot" and simply setting it where it can have the same or at least towards the same abilities as the Human Player would make the AI a stronger and empowered Enemy. Essentially what we have all commented about through out the years.

 

[Quintillus]

Some interesting posts in the month+ since I last caught up. I also agree with the "options" for the AI, and that having it be capable of using all options would be great. But I mainly wanted to touch base on @Balthasar 's idea. I think it's worth considering, but I'm not sure it would be much easier than a new game with multiplayer first (which may well be simpler than AI first). For two main reasons:

- If the approach were to try to replace the matchmaking servers for Civ3, you'd have to have a way for Civ3 to interact with it. Which goes back to all the problems of trying to patch a 15-year-old game. A successful implementation could best be reacted to in the same way WildWeazel reacted to the Civ2 Lua code in post #105 - it would be extremely challenging, and the only realistic way would be if you were Firaxis and had the source code.
- Alternately, try to build from the ground up, relying on Civ3 assets, but implementing your own multiplayer. This would allow you to bypass any built-in restrictions (e.g. 8 players), but you'd be writing an awful lot of code to load everything up, implement all the rules in the game, etc. In other words, pretty much what you'd have to do if you were writing a compatible-ish game. Which is why I'd propose it as possibly a good target (before AI) if going that route.

I am familiar with the fickleness of Civ3 multiplayer, though I haven't played it extensively. Maybe half a dozen times, but never finishing a game? Enough to know it isn't up to the same level as what Civ4 offers in that regard. If there were a way to focus on it that would require noticeably less effort than a new game, I might suggest going for it, but as it is with the Steam multiplayer version and the original still working via IP, I doubt it will be worth the effort required.

I like the ideas though. Having the server figure sync up scenarios would be quite convenient; an FPS game I played a lot a few years ago had that feature, and it significantly decreased the barrier to entry for playing mods by making it so convenient - a feature which likely contributed to its thriving modding community.

 

[Balthasar]

Quintillus: "I like the ideas though. Having the server figure sync up scenarios would be quite convenient; an FPS game I played a lot a few years ago had that feature, and it significantly decreased the barrier to entry for playing mods by making it so convenient - a feature which likely contributed to its thriving modding community."

Which is exactly the point I was making. I agree with everything in your post.

 

[Kyriakos]

Re the Ai, i was playing Yoda's Twilight of Byzantium scenario, and despite the usual AI problems at least the AI did try to lure you by offering some units. Particularly trebuchets, which it would send without defenders, just so as to make you consider using up one unit's attack to capture them. Most times it did make sense, cause that extra unit move/attack might mean you would end up losing to take a city you were besieging, or losing many more units if you did.

That said, the Ai routinely was sending SOD with not particularly strong attackers, to attack cities with many strong defenders.
Also it would never build artillery; it would use any it captured, but never build its own, despite that being needed if it was to storm your positions.

 

[Serutan]

A little late, but I just noticed this thread...

Some more thoughts in regards to rebuilding civ:

Gameplay:
Part I, Combat/Movement

1. Hexes vs Squares vs Others

I prefer to keep squares, but hexes are fine with me.

2. 1 Unit Per tile
NO.

Exactly. I rather like the Civ 2 mechanic where if 1 unit in a stack is
destroyed, the entire stack is unless in a fortress or city. Someone mentioned
it was a bad design but I say it adds an element of risk to play that has
to be accounted for. The Civ2 AI was coded to be somewhat mindful of that BTW.

3. Unit movement
With the possibility of adding larger map sizes than previously, redesigning combat movement would be very important. I imagine this type of set up: two game settings, classical grid (1 movement for edges and verticies) and new grid (2 for edges, 3 for vertices). In the latter mode, later era units would have slowly increasing numbers of movement points, giving them advantages over predecessors. Lower damage skirmisher units would have high movement rates early on.

If this gets that far, there will be much caterwauling over railroads.

4. Combat itself

Not knowledgeable enough to comment on the details, but AI combat cheats need to
be done away with.

Part 2, Terrain and resources, Workers, Improvements, Settlers
1. Terrain should be diverse and pretty but not cartoonish.
2. Resources should be numerous in type, connect by roading them. Consider not increasing # of improvements as heavily as civ 4 did after 3

Re 1 : Agree - the default graphics were perfectly acceptable to me
Agree on 2) as well.

3. More customizable settlers? Settler differences as tech tree progresses?

To me either the combined settle/worker from Civ2 or the Civ3 separate settlers
and workers/engineers are OK.

Part 3, Economics
1. Limiting factor (what prevents empire bloat) - city maintenance in gold + stack cost + outlying unit cost. Only some few buildings should cost maintenance

Disagree. There should be no such thing as an optimal # of cities, only the max the game can support.
I would limit cities by having a hard coded rule that any city can only have 1 overlapped tile.
Ex : Cities A and B have an overlapped tile. So any attempt to build City C such that it has an
overlapped tile with either A or B would result in an error message.

4. Things from later versions:

My answer is : None. Paritally because trying to put in too much stuff will create a development monster
that will discourage (unpaid) people working on it; also I would want to maintain the simplicity of the earlier
Civ games.

Part 4, Diplomacy
1. Religion should be a factor in the game, but not a simple +/-. Instead, having different religions should make contact with different civilizations more difficult to simulate cultural divide. (Number of turns would be a function of the number of cities with shared religions).

Sorry, I don't see the value of this.

On the wishlist front I would add:
1. Trespassing would constitute an automatic DOW unless there was a prior ROP in place. This would be
hard coded.
2. Bring back the Civ 2 option of disabling pollution completely. Whack-a-mole is a good deal
less than fun.
3. Leave corruption in as a penalty for not building improvements. All improvements would
reduce corruption so a fully developed city would have little.
4. Barbs need to be completely optional.

On how to proceed:

As WildWeasel mentioned, this is going to have to be done incrementally.
I would see it working more or less like:

Phase zero: Do an initial game design. Shouldn't be too detailed, but should be a scheme
on how the various game elements will fit together. A minute's planning is
an hour earned as Ben Franklin said.

Phase one : Getting the startup screen up and being able to start a game.

Phase two : Getting to the point where one can found cities, build a unit and move it / use
it to explore the map.

Phase three : Getting to the point where one can build improvements.

Phase four : Getting to the point where there is a simple tech tree to research.

Phase five : Put tech dependencies on units and improvements, and start fleshing out the
unit, improvement, and tech trees.

Phase six : Get to the point where you can "play" a game to endgame conditions.

Phase seven : Do the computer player design. If there are freeware templates available so
much the better. On that note, the source code for Call to Power 2 was made
publicly available, so it might be useful as a template or model.

Phase eight - fourteen : Repeat phases one - seven for the computer player.

Phase nine - Human vs. computer

Later : Scenarios, events, multiplayer.

 

[Kyriakos]

any news?

On my part, the first two eras of new sets are mostly done

 

[Civinator]

In the Civ3 - General Discussions forum there is a post from the Startrek Armada 1 and 2 modder Rifraf, saying Startrek Armada 1 and 2 and Civ 3 are using nearly the same game engines. He gives detailed informations about an AIP file that creats AI decisions in a game.

I have never heard about an AIP file in Civ 3, but may be Quintillus, WildWeazel or other modders and programmers here can get some useful informations about understanding the ai code in Civ 3.

Edit: Had to write WildWeazel correctly.

You can find that post here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/help-understanding-ai-code.633166/#post-15166787

 

[Node60]

That was the main inspiration for one of the components of my editor that I fear is in a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. Namely, the "Download Units" option I have on my editor tab (description in help file here). Admittedly, it needs a bit of polish for ease of use, which I've procrastinated on due to a lack of people expressing interest in it. But the idea is if you are editing a scenario, wouldn't it be nice to say you want to add a unit, go to CFC and download the one you want, have the files automatically put in the right place within your scenario's files, and have it also be added to your BIQ with the name of your choosing, including automatic renaming of the downloaded files? That's what it currently does (in general; there are a few edge cases that cause it to fail), and it could be extended to, for example, letting you automatically add a Civilopedia entry (either adding the content there, or just a placeholder), or downloading other things such as buildings or leaderheads. The main reasons I haven't extended it are lack of interest from the editor's users, and that I don't actually create scenarios a whole lot myself. Although I still think that if I'd made that available a few years earlier and had extended it, it might have seen decent uptake due to making the adding-new-units-and-so-forth process significantly easier.

It would be very good idea!

 

[Node60]

What it isn't pleasant to me in Civ3 and what, in my opinion, needs to be changed?

1. The archaic architecture of the program, is a consequence of what big time of a turn of AI on big maps even on modern systems.

2. Silly and roguish AI. It would be still possible to reconcile to fraud, but AI does a lot of things frankly badly or strange, and isn't able to use many opportunities of a game.

3. Limited opportunities of editing rules and their insufficient flexibility. For example, through construction of miracles it is possible to receive additional bonuses from the territory at the sea, but not on the land. I already shouted of insufficient opportunities of control of forms of the government. Also it would be interesting to make a necessary condition for a certain government possession of a certain wonder. Etc.

4. Closely to it is lack of levels of some things. It would be interesting to receive several levels of an irrigation, depending on the studied agricultural technologies and also several levels of roads (the dirt road, paved a stone, an asphalt covering, the autobahn) with various speeds of movement. It would be interesting to have the different volume of units and sea transports (for example, the diversionary group can be transferred on the submarine, but the "correct" infantry - no, she too big).

5. Inconvenience in editing scenarios. The high probability of a mistake is a lot of manual changes in different places. Quintillus already spoke about it.

6. The mechanism of movement by the railroads. Instead of reduction of cost of movement of units (or introductions somehow of capacity), they do nullify movement cost. Result – completely killed military logistics.

7. A problem of huge stacks on one tile. It is unpleasant and isn't realistic. I see two versions of the decision. Or the exhaustion which was already offered earlier (a-la Europa Universalis), removal of hit points to some limit of hit points which this tile can support (if to dream up – with it it is possible to fight by means of specially prepared transports whit equipment). The second option – on one cage, depending on landscape type, can be no more certain number of units. Physically, the bigger number isn't located. Such compromise to a half-wargame. It, in my opinion, will be more realistic and it is interesting. At once I expect problems of automatic movement of units.

 

[Rifraf]

I had found a great resource on another Civ site and thought I'd post it here for reference if anyone could find it useful. It's regarding the AI and has a myriad of settings. https://apolyton.net/articles/civil...tion-ab/9312887-ctp-modification-aip-comments

 

[Civinator]

Hi Rifraf, great that you are posting here.

Unfortunately CTP (Call to Power), created by EA, is not Civ 3.

 

[Takhisis]

Yes, but it still could be a useful guide or example.

 

[Vuldacon]

Takhisis... What a Guide to what you would like but cannot have
I appreciate any input from others on this Forum, but I believe Civinator was trying to convey the direct connection of the games and not merely discounting any input from a member.

 

[Takhisis]

Takhisis... What a Guide to what you would like but cannot have

Cannot have in Civ. In an updated Civ… oh yes, we can. After all, the new project would mean that somebody would be making something that is

not Civ 3.

I still maintain my position, that we could have a game that is compatible with existing Civ3 stuff but which can also incorporate new features, e.g. (off the top of my head) air units that can be used by an AI.