What are Civ's biggest weaknesses?

[warpstorm]

I want a new game that has been adventurous in introducing a vast multitude of changes.

Be prepared to be disappointed, then. You don't do 'adventurous' in a franchise.

Adventurous is for new series, not sequels to successful games.

ad·ven·tur·ous ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-vnchr-s)
adj.
Inclined to undertake new and daring enterprises.
Hazardous; risky.

Have these risks paid off in the end. Sometimes. Sometimes very well. Would you want to risk millions of your stock holders money (and incidentally your career) on a risky design instead of a conservative one that is guaranteed to sell well?

 

[brianshapiro]

warpstorm i read that the civ4 team wants to get rid of unfun elements like corruption/waste , civil disorder, and pollution . does this mean they will be out of the game or handled in a different way? i think it would take away from the game to do away with them entirely , i dont know how they will make the changes though

 

[warpstorm]

I agree that there should be some balance. These elements provided some negative feedback to keep growth in some sort of check (obviously you could keep growing, but you got less benfits from it because of these). Hopefully, this is still in there in a more streamlined, less micromanagement fashion. I would miss this aspect a little (but not having to clean up polluted tiles).

 

[rcoutme]

The threads here have one of my 'Wish list' ideas for making the game challenging up to the end.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showt...36&page=2&pp=20

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=87765

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=84798

 

[microbe]

The introduction of the cultural influence was a first attempt to limit this, but it has proven to be too less. More limiting factors - or better, factors which counter the pure expansion strategy - are needed.

Aha, how about go to my SG discussion thread ans sign up for the cultural expansion game? See my sig for link.

 

[dh_epic]

I think "be consistent for business" is a piss poor argument when you have more than half of diehard civ players arguing that a change is needed. I think that Firaxis can get a similar piece of a much larger pie if they turn the game from an 18 hour race / simulator to a 2-3 hour chess match.

I do have problems articulating myself, so I think people like Commander Bello have been valuable in giving my arguments some parity. It's obvious that you CAN win the game without expanding, but you'd be handicapping yourself in doing so.

I'd also like to qualify my comment about trade in that I was talking about resources, and not maps / technologies.

I also think arguments like "well there is no solution and the game won't change so don't bother" are defeating the purpose. Once people have examined the problems, I think we're a creative bunch who are full of ideas for solutions... and we'll have that for a later thread.

I do think there's a magic bullet, though, and most people know what it is. One that solves the problem of very boring, few tedious domestic problems, and the problem of a very easy expansion-oriented game at the same time. ... and that could even make the international game more interesting.

 

[Dr. Broom]

Well put epic but I still want an 18 hour game myself as long as it doesn't turn into a boring game ultimately decided by the settler rush in the first hour. It is true that all warpstorms arguements are truly pathetic and repetitive. All he says is, "they don't want to take risks," "changing things will ruin the franchise." Come on warpstorm at least think of something new, if the majority agree there needs to be change then it would be taking a foolish risk not to change the game. You know changing the game wouldn't be bad business you just want to have it your way.

 

[Commander Bello]

Aha, how about go to my SG discussion thread ans sign up for the cultural expansion game? See my sig for link.

Sorry, but my limited time (I'm only available for playing on weekends) only allows me to stay with the 2 SGs I'm currently in and the 1 PBEM I'm running as well.
But, thanks a lot for the kind invitation. As one of the games seems to be dying, i might come back to you.

 

[warpstorm]

Dr. Broom, FWIW, I work in the PC game industry and those arguments are the ones my publishers give us when we suggest things that are too far out from the existing games in a series. It is their money on the line, not ours.

The other thing to realize is that the majority here is a very small minority of the Civ buying populous. In some ways, it is not at all representative. It is the hardcore vocal minority. Most of the people who buy Civ are in the more casual market. (An interesting fact is that most have never heard of this website nor have they downloaded a patch for Civ3. Most did not buy either expansion. It seems that most players of Civ3 play around Warlord level and their biggest complaints were that the AI cheats and corruption sucks.)

I am just pointing out that in a franchise (that Firaxis does not own, BTW) that is owned by a publicly traded company, lots of risk is not what you will see. Change is good. It allows you to add good ideas and remove bad ones. Some changes have to be added in each sequel or people will feel they are getting ripped off. Too much change though, and you risk losing the fan base however. This is the hard balancing act. Soren realizes this and its one of his greatest concerns. He doesn't want to blow it. He has one shot at Civ4.

In addition, of course I want to have my way. Who here can honestly say that they don't? When I see things in Civ4 that I don't like you can be sure that I will tell Firaxis what I think about them and what I think they should do instead. Will they listen? Sometimes. They did for Civ3, PTW, and C3C. They are all more like what I wanted than if I had been less vocal. There are still things I wanted that they didn't implement (yet). Ultimately, if they make the game I want, I will be very happy. Will this be the game you want? Most likely not, unless your tastes are very similar to mine (and it doesn't seem that they are).

BTW, I like games of expansion. I hope they never change that. I see no signs that they will.

 

[warpstorm]

Okay, I'll throw out an idea or two for changes I'd like to see (some of these are steps back to previous entries in the series or ones I gave them for PTW and C3C that weren't implemented).

Get rid of eras in the tech tree (but have paths available to culture/civs).
Limit the choices when you can choose a new tech to no more than 4 randomly picked from what you could research.
Add great leaders that correspond to each trait that Civs have with appropriate abilities.
Remove razing from the option of actions for any reasonably representative government,
Make starving a city down have negative repercussions.
Bring back the SMAC-like social choices.
Add a few more diplomatic choices like puppet states and vassals.
Add a religious victory condition.
Add a scripting system.
Add operational ranges to land and sea units (with techs to increase them).
Get rid of pre-builds.
Make the editor so that you can build any situation that occurs naturally in the game.

 

[strollen]

I basically agree with most of DH_Epics lists of CIV weakness.
Although CIV 3 did provide multiple victory paths with the exception of a single city cultural victory they pretty much all depend on being bigger.

There are economies to scale in real life which CIV basically models. If you think of "winning" civilizations e.g. Rome, Ottoman, China, Britain, China... not to menition the "golden age" of countries like France, Germany, Japan, Aztec etc. the common characteristic is all of these countries is they controlled a lot of territory and were expanding very rapidly. I don't see anyway of avoiding encouraging players to expand without destroying the essence of CIV.


I like the things CIV 3 did that made expansion some what of a mixed blessing, increased corruption, more unhappy citizens with more and larger cities, more expensive luxuries (i.e. trading for a luxury is much more expensive for a civ with 20 cities than 10). In addition other CIVs become more hostile to you as become the leader. All of these factors make expanding somewhat less compelling. Still at the end of the day, bigger is better.

My biggest complaint about CIV from an historical perspective is that while it does a good job of modeling the rise of Rome, there is no way a player can have Rome fall short of constant war against every country. (And that strategy is probably victorious more often than not.)


Once their productive capacity [is] enhanced, countries...normally find it easier to sustain the burdens of paying for large-scale armaments in peacetime and of maintaining and supplying large armies and fleets in wartime. It sounds crudely mercantilistic to express it this way, but wealth is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth. If, however, too large a portion of the state's resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes, then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the longer term. In the same way, if a state overextends itself strategically--by, say, the conquest of extensive territories or the waging of costly wars--it runs the risk that the potential benefits from external expansion may be outweighed by the
great expense of it all--a dilemma which becomes acute if the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline.
-Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers


In CIV the only way this occurs is if you fight a prolonged and bloody war against a neighbor, which allows a different neighbor to attack you while you are weaken.

From a gameplay perspective what this really means is that once your Civ is at the top, it is almost certain to stay that way through centuries. I would love to see some mechanism in Civ which made the game easier at the beginning and much harder at the end.

One idea would be to make offensive operation cost something, right now it cost the same for army unit in a Republic/Demo to sit around in a city, as does for them to invade and fight in war. One thing that is clear from the Iraq war, even wars against small countries are expensive.

 

[warpstorm]

It is a fact that empires fall eventually. Why, though? (Other than the one Civ does now, being gobbled by a bigger neighbor).

Some things come to mind immediately.

Corruption. War. Affluence. Disaster. Bureaucracy. Conservatism. Internal strife (this could be politics where leaders are jockeying for power and also religious differences, racial/cultural differences). Barbarians at tehegates. Religion.

Combinations of these have brought down mighty empires in the past.

What of these could me adapted to a Civ3-like framework (face it, the closer an idea is to the current Civ the easier the argument will be to get it adopted)?

Corruption is in there now, but it has issues. Good in concept, mediocre in implementation. One loophole that many players do is to use extensive razing of unproductive cities to keep corruption down. This is why I am against allowing razing in all but the most totalitarian regimes (which should have their own consequences for being repressive).

 

[Winston]

Warpstorm, I understand the business sense behind not taking risks and when it comes to a conflict between profit and creativity; profit is always going to win.

I am sure that Civ 4 will be a good game but I would like to see significant improvements in the strategy. Areas of improvement I would like to see in Civ 4 include:

1) I have no problem with expansionism being a path to victory; but I would like to see many different approaches being available to winning the game whereas at present if you want to win AND get a high score you have to expand constantly regardless of the fact that most cities become useless because they have lost half of their city improvements and are ridden with corruption. I want to be given more strategic options.

2) I also want the game to remain consistently challenging throughout the game - at present Civ is really hard in the first two eras and then it suddenly becomes routine.

3) I would like the AI to be more challenging on the harder settings because it becomes more intelligent and employs more advanced tactics - not because the player becomes handicapped and the AI gets loads of bonuses.

4) It would also be nice if there were 'side-quests' within the game to add extra challenges besides the overall aim of winning the game.

5) I would like Civ 4 to require far more maritime strategy (I really think that implementing trade routes would be the best way to do this).

6) Bigger nations are not necessarily better - there are many, many other factors that determine a nation's prosperity - it would be nice if these were thrown into the mix.

7) I would like to see a game where it is easier (and more important) to trade with other nations and I want to see many more diplomatic options. The game would become alot more strategic if the player needed to co-operate with some rivals in order to further his/her own aims.

8) I would like to see a workable, useful espionage system (not an espionage system that costs ludicrous amounts of money and doesn't really provide any benefits).

I really like the Civ series and it is for these reasons that I want to see a really great Civ 4 that has built and expanded upon the remarkable achievements of the first 3 games. Any points that I make are solely intended as constructive criticism . It is the gameplay, the strategic options, and the realism of the game that interest me; I will leave the developers to worry about such things as 'profit and loss' and 'market size' and 'brand image'. Inevitably it is a matter of compromise between the developers, the established fanbase, and the wider market.

 

[Dr. Broom]

Okay, I'll throw out an idea or two for changes I'd like to see (some of these are steps back to previous entries in the series or ones I gave them for PTW and C3C that weren't implemented).

Get rid of eras in the tech tree (but have paths available to culture/civs).
Limit the choices when you can choose a new tech to no more than 4 randomly picked from what you could research.
Add great leaders that correspond to each trait that Civs have with appropriate abilities.
Remove razing from the option of actions for any reasonably representative government,
Make starving a city down have negative repercussions.
Bring back the SMAC-like social choices.
Add a few more diplomatic choices like puppet states and vassals.
Add a religious victory condition.
Add a scripting system.
Add operational ranges to land and sea units (with techs to increase them).
Get rid of pre-builds.
Make the editor so that you can build any situation that occurs naturally in the game.

Thank you for finally advocating change instead of always saying it should stay the same. By the way they say nothing in the game will be hardcoded so that people can modify just about everything.

 

[Berrern]

- after 0 AD, if you're a weak nation, there's nothing to play for

I agree with a lot of your points, but the sentence above is just stupid. Of course you can come back after 0 AD! Hell, you can even come back after 500 AD! Of course, this depends on your definition of a weak civ..

Build a huge military - and if you're behind in tech make sure you build A LOT of bombard units, as this is your best trumph card. Declare war, play defensive and bombard their offensive units to hell before killing them off - and once you've taken out most of their offensive force, it's not difficult to start conquering their cities..

It's never too late to come back (well, to a certain extent).

 

[dh_epic]

I agree with a lot of your points, but the sentence above is just stupid. Of course you can come back after 0 AD! Hell, you can even come back after 500 AD! Of course, this depends on your definition of a weak civ..

Even I'll concede I was wrong, or at the best case, incomplete. I've mounted huge comebacks after floundering for the first bit. But still, an AI opponent is unlikely to come back, that's for sure. The whole AI thing complicates things.

Which is why I appreciate some of warpstorm's comments about casual players. As much as I've played Civ, a lot of friends have seen me play it and wanted to get into it. As I upped the difficulty higher and higher, I would eventually ask my friends what difficulty they were playing at. They always say something like "warlord" or "regent". I'm like "why?" and they're like "because the AI cheats" or "it's just not fun anymore".

Which is why to some extent the game needs to be a challenge without the AI cheating. If you just make the AI produce and profit faster than you at the higher levels, it doesn't resolve the boredom of micromanaging military to take out deadbeat opponents -- it makes it more tedious.

There are two solutions. One people have talked about is limiting expansion. Corruption IS a poor model for this. There are other models, I think, without making the game unfun.

Another solution is playing to what Civ IS and has always been but nobody has had the audacity to say:

You're not fighting against a single opponent, but running a gauntlet. Which is why people get upset in Civ 2 when all the opponents gang up on you, and at the same time are bored in Civ 3 when the opponents seem oblivious to the fact that you're the only one who COULD win the game, but you haven't clinched it yet. I think you could play up this aspect much like a platform game -- you're running against multiple enemies who never quite coordinate, and reaching the goal is the hardest thing. Crises occur the closer you get to the end, with one last big test as you verge on 47%-50% of the world (or thereabouts).

What this game would look like, I have no idea. But it certainly plays to how Civ is played now, particularly by casual gamers.

 

[strollen]

You're not fighting against a single opponent, but running a gauntlet. Which is why people get upset in Civ 2 when all the opponents gang up on you, and at the same time are bored in Civ 3 when the opponents seem oblivious to the fact that you're the only one who COULD win the game, but you haven't clinched it yet.

As much as I disliked the CIV2 situation where everybody ganged up on you, I think CIV3 might have swung to far in the other direction. In CIV4, I like to see countries act more like France, Russia, and China currently have been behaving not outright war but becoming increasingly uncooperative toward the dominate power.

I'd also like to see the gauntlet include internal opposition. In Civ3, citizens resist when there city is captured, and than become unhappy if you are at war with there home country. Still it is relatively easy to make conquoured cities productive. I am quite sure that Northern Ireland was drain on British resources for most of 20th century, and Chencya has been a drain on Russia for many years.

One of the cool things in CIV2 was partisan, which were spawned when you captured an enemy city. I hope CIV4 brings back partisan and even makes partisan pop up randomly from very unhappy cities. The partisans would be adept at pillaging, and perhaps sabotaging city production/improvements.

 

[polypheus]

I think that Civ 3's is that the counter-balancing features of overly expansionistic and large militaristic Civ empires is not sufficiently developed.

1. Over-expansion of early game
In all the Civ games, it is a race of trying to settle and claim every square of land. There really should be some trade-offs and risks to doing so. It should NOT be a race that determines the entire future of the game.

2. Large Militaristic Empires
There should be some kind of instablity aspect (revolt, rebellion, etc) and also some cost if players try to play "Hitler"-style or USSR style empire building. It really should be balanced so that it should not be possible to do everything at the same time. If you over-miltarize, it should be very costly and you should suffer deficits in other areas like economic development and such.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

OK, I'm not calling for a truly RADICAL overhaul of the general trend of the game. But I do see how the 'Expand to be the Best' thing could be modified to be far less linear.

1) Introduce 'culture linked' Minor nations, as a replacement to barbarians and goody huts. These minor nations can be incorporated into your empire through conquest and/or diplomacy as an adjunct to the settler method! In addition, minor nations should bring you some kind of 'in-game' bonus if you can incorporate them peacefully.

2) Resource Depletion should be tied to how much of it you have, how much of it you trade and the number of units and cities you have making use of it!

3) As I side-issue to (2), is that resources should come in variable SIZES, with size being a determinant in the chance of depletion.

4) It should be possible to become wealthy and/or culturally superior no matter HOW small your nation is-just how well you play the resource/diplomacy and tech game. I know there is a MUCH greater element of this in Civ3 than its predecessor, but it could be taken even further!

5) Empires should have a 'critical mass' element to them. Aside from corruption and revolts, larger empires should also be more susceptible to civil wars and religious schisms. Of course, by the same token, the corruption model should be redone so that # of cities and distance from capital are not as big a factor as they currently are.

6) In addition, era advancement should be based on a combination of technological, socialogical and infrastructural factors, rather than techs alone. If, for some reason, you lose one of these underpinnings, then you fall back to the previous age-losing any benefits you might have gained along the way!

7) International and domestic reputation could be much more involved and based on a lot more factors than it currently is, and these factors should not only effect how other civs treat you, but how your own civ reacts to your dealings with other nations!

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Dr. Broom]

I like these ideas but there is a problem with #1. Unless they change the wealth, production and food production system (which I truly hope they do) this will be a problem because you cannot choose where your cities will be leading to possible player frustration when a city is too close causing another city to never function at maximum capacity because it doesn't have its full 21 tiles available. If food was nationally pooled, wealth was generated through trade, taxation and tarrifs and production was produced inside the city based on factors such as infrastructure and population then this idea of yours would work very well Aussie.