What's wrong with this game

screwtype

Warlord
Joined
Jul 23, 2004
Messages
291
Okay, after a long absence from Civ3 I went back to it a week or so ago to try it again. After half a dozen aborted games, I got a game with a great start position, on a continent all my own, which turned out to have plenty of luxuries and almost all resources. The other civs were all lacking some vital resource or another, chiefly coal which was almost all on my continent, and I figured I had it made.

Managed to settle most of my own continent and the bits I didn't I later got hold of in minor wars. Pretty soon I had so much gold I could afford to buy most techs, and by halfway through the modern era I had hit the front in the tech game.

But it was pretty much at this point in the game that I remembered all the things I hate about Civ3 that drove me away from it in the first place. I think they can mostly be summed up in one phrase: the user interface.

Basically, the action just gets buried beneath mountains of fiddly actions you have to take to complete your turn. Here's a few that come to mind:

(1) City production. When you get to the end game, you can churn out units in just one or two turns. This means you get the "shall we build this next?" query maybe 20 times per turn. The trouble is, the AI always asks you to build the wrong thing, meaning you have to manually select the thing you want to build.

Now you have to go into the city to do that, because the build queue is so long it's the only effective way to go about it. And even when you've done that, it's often hard to find the unit you want because there are so darned many to choose from by the end of the game. And it's not made any easier by the fact that the AI chooses to list the units you're least likely to want to build at the top (ie ships), and those you're most likely to want to build (buildings not yet done) at the bottom. In the middle somewhere are the land units which you most want to build in completed cities. So just selecting the next unit you want to build in each city becomes a big time consuming chore.

Of course, you can make a build queue, but because each time you complete a new tech you usually get a new building along with it, it means you have to keep going around changing your build queue every few turns. So the whole shebang is just a pain in the bum. And it could mostly have been avoided just by the game asking if you wanted to build the same unit you built last time!

(2) Big stacks. I'm trying to organize an amphibious invasion. There are so many units in the stack, they scroll right off the bottom of the screen. So you have to select the "more options" button at the bottom to get to stuff further down. But because this "more options" thing doesn't autorepeat, you have to click on it, again and again, to move the menu up one at a time.

Now this might be merely annoying except for one obvious problem, which is that the collective commands "wake all" and "fortify all" are right at the bottom of the menu!!! Which means that either you have to laboriously click through one item at a time to get to the bottom each time you want to wake or fortify the stack, or else you have to put up with doing it with individual units.

Again, most of this problem could have been easily rectified just by putting the collective commands at the TOP of the menu, where they are always available!

(3) Workers. Now I don't know if I've missed something, but I've yet to find a way to collectively give workers a command. That means I have to click on each individual worker, every turn, to command it. With maybe 40 or 50 workers, it becomes another huge chore.

Of course, you can automate workers, but then I find they always go and do something I don't want them to. For example, I have two spare coal tiles I don't want connected up to my economy, because I know as soon as I do that one of the big civs that doesn't have coal is going to demand it from me, and declare war if I refuse to hand it over. If I automate workers, the first thing they try to do is connect up all my unconnected resources. This means that I end up having to give individual commands to all my workers, every turn. Unless of course I just fortify them, but then there is always something else for them to do isn't there?

(4) Moving units as a stack. I've got a big stack of ships I want to move, so I hit the "move stack" command. I have to do this a couple of times at least because you don't want to move further than you can see. Okay, that's acceptable.

But some of the ships have a longer movement factor than others. So I have to be sure not to move the stack further than the slowest ship can go, or the stack will break up. But even if I do this I'm not out of the woods, because at the end of the move, there are still the ships with a longer movement factor asking to be moved further. Now I can fortify these, but then I am back at problem (2). Or I can leave them, but then the game will keep taking me back to the unmoved units in the stack, tempting me to forget that I've already moved this stack as far as I want to this turn.

Again, this problem - and the problem with workers - could have been easily fixed just by allowing you to create stacks that take commands as a single unit. The lack of such a feature ends up creating another nightmare of micromanagement for you to deal with.

(5) Autoselection of units. Now, I don't know if there's a way to turn this off, but the way the game yanks you from one unit/choice to another drives me nuts. You fortify a combat unit in a stack. Now you are yanked back to your homeland to a worker unit. Give it a command, now you are looking at a stack of boats to move. Then you are back at the next unit in the original combat stack. Repeat ad nauseam.

It would be nice if the game would stick with one stack at a time, or at least if you could stick with one type of unit at a time. I haven't been able to find a way to do this.

Now maybe there are solutions to some of these problems that I don't know about. But what I do know is that all these little problems add up to becoming a micromanagement nightmare. It took me several hours last night to make just half a dozen turns!

Civ3 is lots of fun early, but the deeper you get into the game, the more unplayable the whole thing becomes, until it just ends up being a mountain of micromanagement to wade through every turn. And all because of some appallingly bad UI features that could have been so easily fixed!

BTW, In reviewing the manuals for both Civ3 and Conquests I see that there are ways to partially avoid at least some of these problems - for example, I'd forgotten you can use city governors to build certain types of units. But overall, I don't think there really are fixes for many of the control problems the game presents you with. It's just a horribly badly designed UI, that's all there is to it. But if anyone knows of any fixes, or has any suggestions on how to cut down on all this mm, I'm interested to hear them.
 
Okay, after a long absence from Civ3 I went back to it a week or so ago to try it again. After half a dozen aborted games, I got a game with a great start position, on a continent all my own, which turned out to have plenty of luxuries and almost all resources. The other civs were all lacking some vital resource or another, chiefly coal which was almost all on my continent, and I figured I had it made.

Managed to settle most of my own continent and the bits I didn't I later got hold of in minor wars. Pretty soon I had so much gold I could afford to buy most techs, and by halfway through the modern era I had hit the front in the tech game.

But it was pretty much at this point in the game that I remembered all the things I hate about Civ3 that drove me away from it in the first place. I think they can mostly be summed up in one phrase: the user interface.

Basically, the action just gets buried beneath mountains of fiddly actions you have to take to complete your turn. Here's a few that come to mind:
Here I come to save the daaaaaaaaay!
(1) City production. When you get to the end game, you can churn out units in just one or two turns. This means you get the "shall we build this next?" query maybe 20 times per turn. The trouble is, the AI always ask you to build the wrong thing, meaning you have to manually select the thing you want to build.

Now you have to go into the city to do that, because the build queue is so long it's the only effective way to go about it. And even when you've done that, it's often hard to find the unit you want because there are so darned many to choose from by the end of the game. And it's not made any easier by the fact that the AI chooses to list the units you're least likely to want to build at the top (ie ships), and those you're most likely to want to build (buildings not yet done) at the bottom. In the middle somewhere are the land units which you most want to build in completed cities. So just selecting the next unit you want to build in each city becomes a big time consuming chore.

Of course, you can make a build queue, but because each time you complete a new tech you usually get a new building along with it, it means you have to keep going around changing your build queue every few turns. So the whole shebang is just a pain in the bum. And it could mostly have been avoided just by the game asking if you wanted to build the same unit you built last time!
Your build queue is not your only option. You can, of course, let the AI decide what you build. :shudder: But that's not a really good idea. However, there is an option in the preferences to Build Last Unit, so that if you have a city pumping out Tanks, it will continue to pump out tanks until you tell it to build an improvement. There's another option that escapes me at the moment which has to do with asking production build.

And the list the AI displays has to do with the way the units/buildings are put into the editor. You could possibly play around with this, but I don't know for sure.
(2) Big stacks. I'm trying to organize an amphibious invasion. There are so many units in the stack, they scroll right off the bottom of the screen. So you have to select the "more options" button at the bottom to get to stuff further down. But because this "more options" thing doesn't autorepeat, you have to click on it, again and again, to move the menu up one at a time.

Now this might be merely annoying except for one obvious problem, which is that the collective commands "wake all" and "fortify all" are right at the bottom of the menu!!! Which means that either you have to laboriously click through one item at a time to get to the bottom each time you want to wake or fortify the stack, or else you have to put up with doing it with individual units.

Again, most of this problem could have been easily rectified just by putting the collective commands at the TOP of the menu, where they are always available!
Yes, the collective commands at the top would be nice. However, you don't need to keep clicking on 'More Options'. Simply use your scroll wheel on your mouse. When the arrow is pointing down, scrolling down on the wheel causes the list to scroll down. But you have to hit shift to allow it to scroll up when the mouse is scrolling up. Don't have to hold it, just hit it really quick. It's kind of a pain, but it works. I really think they could have done this aspect better. Not sure how, but there must be a better way.
(3) Workers. Now I don't know if I've missed something, but I've yet to find a way to collectively give workers a command. That means I have to click on each individual worker, every turn, to command it. With maybe 40 or 50 workers, it becomes another huge chore.

Of course, you can automate workers, but then I find they always go and do something I don't want them to. For example, I have two spare coal tiles I don't want connected up to my economy, because I know as soon as I do that one of the big civs that doesn't have coal is going to demand it from me, and declare war if I refuse to hand it over. If I automate workers, the first thing they try to do is connect up all my unconnected resources. This means that I end up having to give individual commands to all my workers, every turn. Unless of course I just fortify them, but then there is always something else for them to do isn't there?
Unfortunately there is no stack command, other than move-to. There are, however, several levels of AI Automation, should you find it necessary to use it. There's Automate, where the AI decides what tile will be worked and what's done to it. There's Automate-This City Only, which is the same thing but confined to the city the worker is near. There's Automate-No Change, where the AI will work un(der)-developed tiles. And there's Automate-No Change-This City Only, which confines the former to the city the worker is in. There's also Clear Jungle, Clear Damage, and Clear Forest. But these aren't developed to their full potential either. And of course, the Colony-To, Road-To, and RailRoad-To. I use the last two quite a bit, as well as the Clear Damage. But again, the automation leaves something to be desired.
(4) Moving units as a stack. I've got a big stack of ships I want to move, so I hit the "move stack" command. I have to do this a couple of times at least because you don't want to move further than you can see. Okay, that's acceptable.

But some of the ships have a longer movement factor than others. So I have to be sure not to move the stack further than the slowest ship can go, or the stack will break up. But even if I do this I'm not out of the woods, because at the end of the move, there are still the ships with a longer movement factor asking to be moved further. Now I can fortify these, but then I am back at problem (2). Or I can leave them, but then the game will keep taking me back to the unmoved units in the stack, tempting me to forget that I've already moved this stack as far as I want to this turn.

Again, this problem - and the problem with workers - could have been easily fixed just by allowing you to create stacks that take commands as a single unit. The lack of such a feature ends up creating another nightmare of micromanagement for you to deal with.
This actually isn't as bad as you make out. The stack will not split out. It will only go as far as the slowest unit can go. However, if you select a faster unit, the faster unit will use up any remaining movement points when the slower unit runs out of them. By selecting the smaller unit, the faster units will pause at the end and you can move them more if you need to. However, if you do nothing the faster stack will not ask for an order, it will assume you don't want it to do anything and move with the rest of the stack on the next turn.
(5) Autoselection of units. Now, I don't know if there's a way to turn this off, but the way the game yanks you from one unit/choice to another drives me nuts. You fortify a combat unit in a stack. Now you are yanked back to your homeland to a worker unit. Give it a command, now you are looking at a stack of boats to move. Then you are back at the next unit in the original combat stack. Repeat ad nauseam.

It would be nice if the game would stick with one stack at a time, or at least if you could stick with one type of unit at a time. I haven't been able to find a way to do this.

Now maybe there are solutions to some of these problems that I don't know about. But what I do know is that all these little problems add up to becoming a micromanagement nightmare.
What you can do is get the units on a tile that you want to lump together for whatever reason, fortify them, and then wake them. Then the computer - usually - keeps those units together after one unit is moved. So if you fortify a stack of five workers, wake it, and send one off to road somewhere, the next four will be waiting for their orders. If you keep doing this, usually your stacks movements happen one after the other, instead of jumping around.

Now this is really annoying, I hate how the game jumps the units around. There's no way to keep focus on an area, you're at the whim of the computer even with the above method. And don't get me started on automoves. I wish there was a way to interupt them, or postpone them. That's probably my biggest gripe about the game.
It took me several hours last night to make just half a dozen turns!
Unfortunately this is common later in the game. It does get tedious. Even worse when you're battling the AI.
Civ3 is lots of fun early, but the deeper you get into the game, the more unplayable the whole thing becomes, until it just ends up being a mountain of micromanagement to wade through every turn. And all because of some appallingly bad UI features that could have been so easily fixed!

BTW, In reviewing the manuals for both Civ3 and Conquests I see that there are ways to partially avoid at least some of these problems - for example, I'd forgotten you can use city governors to build certain types of units. But overall, I don't think there really are fixes for many of the control problems the game presents you with. It's just a horribly badly designed UI, that's all there is to it. But if anyone knows of any fixes, or has any suggestions on how to cut down on all this mm, I'd be interested to hear them.


I wouldn't call it unplayable later in the game. Some here will argue that's just more incentive for you to win earlier in the game. I actually like the end game, with the units and wonders, so I deal with it. But if you think this is bad, play a game of Rise and Rule. It's a lot worse.
And keep in mind that Civ3 is basically an update of Civ2. There's a lot of legacy code from Civ2 in Civ3. I think that's part of the problem. Civ4 was a new project with new code from the first line. Hopefully Civ4 doesn't have a lot of these issues. I don't know for sure, because I don't have Civ4.
 
I tend to take a while to regenerate the map as well. Seems most starting places aren't very ideal. How many times has anyone every regenerated a map. I think i tried like 60 X a few days ago, heh.
 
I would only restart if i ended up in a huge patch of tundra or desert. IMHO if you keep restarting, the game gets boring.

(edit) I think you are talking about the map editer?
 
I tend to take a while to regenerate the map as well. Seems most starting places aren't very ideal. How many times has anyone every regenerated a map. I think i tried like 60 X a few days ago, heh.

It sounds like you need HoF MapFinder in the Utility Forum. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=75992 After setting the parameters for what type of start you want, what civ, weather, opponents, map size and type, it will generate maps approx every 5 seconds and save the ones that meet your criteria. You can go off and leave it running all day or overnight, then come back and choose which one you like best to play. :D
 
Here I come to save the daaaaaaaaay!

Thanks Turner :lol:

The "build last unit" option I didn't know about, and that will save me at least some mucking around. It's useful to know about the mouse wheel trick on the menus too, trouble is my mouse doesn't have a wheel :) I guess I could buy one but there's such a huge choice of mouses, I never know which one (or even brand) to go for. Anyone got a recommendation?

Other than that, I figured after some thought, instead of manually ordering my workers to do stuff every turn to stop them linking up resources I don't want them to link, I could just automate them all and leave a combat unit on those resources. Then at the end of each turn I could just pillage any roads or railroads the workers had built to that tile.

A bit of a nuisance, but better than having to give orders to 50 workers every turn!

Hmmm, maybe I can make the endgame playable after all...
 
I would only restart if i ended up in a huge patch of tundra or desert. IMHO if you keep restarting, the game gets boring.

When I said I restarted the game several times I didn't mean because I got a bad start position - although I've certainly done that before. In fact, I got a series of pretty good start positions this time around, so much so that I wanted to start some of them over again, but I'd forgotten how to do that.

The reason I restarted several times is simply because it's been quite a while since I last played and I found I needed to run through a few tentative starts to familiarize myself with the gameplay again.

But as to the general question, yes I will restart a Civ3 game if I find myself in a bad position. For example if I start in the middle of jungle, I will immediately restart. I don't have to get an ideal position by any means, just one that I think is reasonably competitive.

Other than restarting though, I randomize a lot of things, including my civ, the other civs, barbarian hostility and so on. Makes for a more unpredictable game. However, I do have a preferred type of world which I always play. That is, standard size, large archipelago, normal climate, temperate weather, 5 billion year weathering. I also play with one less civ than standard, to make things a bit less cluttered.
 
It took me several hours last night to make just half a dozen turns!
If you hold down Shift + Ctrl, it speeds up the unit moves (yours + AI) quite a bit. Shift by itself works, but you might get the "sticky keys" message.
 
When I said I restarted the game several times I didn't mean because I got a bad start position - although I've certainly done that before. In fact, I got a series of pretty good start positions this time around, so much so that I wanted to start some of them over again, but I'd forgotten how to do that.

The reason I restarted several times is simply because it's been quite a while since I last played and I found I needed to run through a few tentative starts to familiarize myself with the gameplay again.

But as to the general question, yes I will restart a Civ3 game if I find myself in a bad position. For example if I start in the middle of jungle, I will immediately restart. I don't have to get an ideal position by any means, just one that I think is reasonably competitive.

Other than restarting though, I randomize a lot of things, including my civ, the other civs, barbarian hostility and so on. Makes for a more unpredictable game. However, I do have a preferred type of world which I always play. That is, standard size, large archipelago, normal climate, temperate weather, 5 billion year weathering. I also play with one less civ than standard, to make things a bit less cluttered.

I edited it because I was suspecting you were taking about the map :). And yes I will restart the game too if I am in a bad start location.

Anyway better get on topic again...
 
Alot of these problems come from playing on larger maps. More maps means more cities and more units to manage.

On a smaller map with judicious use of the city managers, alot of the problems you mention disappear. When your total empire is 10 cities, turns go much faster.

Downside is that your number of rivals is limited.
 
I'm a newbie, but I've a question on a portion of this. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Why would you restart based on your start location? Civilizations start where they start, if you are lucky enough to have resources, great, if not, is it not a challange? WOuldn't playing the harder maps start locations just improve your skills?

One of my first Cheiftain Games, I was on a small continent/Large Island off of the two main continents with America and the Aztecs on some small Islands off of the coast.

I thought it was great.

I knocked out the Americans and the Aztecs, and built a solid Civ. After some exploring and map trading I did what I could to put my feet on foreign soil. I even held onto some :).

What really struck me, and this was the first time I realized I needed to be aware, was that I was not in possession of ANY Oil.

WOW.

It was a very difficult game. I would up ramping up Culture in order to get the win. This made me a much better player as it made me much more resource aware.

A similar situation happened in my most current game except with Rubber, not oil.

My choice was to invade a powerful and Fortified Persia, or a literal and figuratively peripheral Zulu.

I sent a boat to My allies, the Zulu and invaded, dumped gold into a harbor to rush connection to my cities, and did not have trouble fending off the Zulu or Egyptian (MPP w/the Zulu, but no shared border with me) efforts to take back the city.

Anyway, my point being, isn't the challenge part of it?
 
Challenge, yes. Impossibility, no. Part of the question on restarting is how much of a challenge do you want? For example, if you're moving up a level, say from Monarch to Emperor, and it's your first emperor game, you probably don't want to start on a 1-tile tundra island. Similarly, if it's your first try at an All-War variant, well, same thing. On the other hand, if you're playing at a level you're comfortable with, there's probably no need to restart. Besides, if the game is so much of a challenge that it's really not fun anymore, why play? At some point, it becomes work.
 
Very good points, and that is why I asked. Thank you.

Does the randomizer ever screw you so bad as to really put you on a one tile Island?
 
I did not know if you were kidding.

I'm playing with creating maps in the editor (That's what it's called, I think, but you know what I mean). That may be interesting. It would not take to long since until I had boats, time would be just hitting enter/space bar.

Maybe a few main chunks of land, but with ALL Civ's starting on a 1x1 for "fun". Hmmm.

But we digress from the original post.
 
There's another option that escapes me at the moment which has to do with asking production build.
There's also an option called "ask for build orders after unit build". This will notify when a unit's been build and immediately allow you to change production (like when an improvement is built).
It's useful to know about the mouse wheel trick on the menus too, trouble is my mouse doesn't have a wheel
You could also select a unit (just highlight it, don't click, then hold the down arrow key. It'll cycle to the bottom of the list faster than clicking on the scroll button will.
Why would you restart based on your start location? Civilizations start where they start, if you are lucky enough to have resources, great, if not, is it not a challange? WOuldn't playing the harder maps start locations just improve your skills?
For the most part, I think you're right, and it would take a very bad start to get me to ask for a new map. On the other hand Aabraxan is right - if the map is too difficult, that's no fun. No one likes to be in a twenty foot hole with a fifteen-foot ladder. On higher levels especially, where the AI receives incredible production bonuses, it's enough of a challenge on average terrain; in the tundra, or the desert, or on a ridiculously tiny island, you're in deep trouble.
 
I'm a newbie, but I've a question on a portion of this. Perhaps I'm missing something.

Why would you restart based on your start location? Civilizations start where they start, if you are lucky enough to have resources, great, if not, is it not a challange? WOuldn't playing the harder maps start locations just improve your skills?

One of my first Cheiftain Games, I was on a small continent/Large Island off of the two main continents with America and the Aztecs on some small Islands off of the coast.

I thought it was great.

I knocked out the Americans and the Aztecs, and built a solid Civ. After some exploring and map trading I did what I could to put my feet on foreign soil. I even held onto some :).

What really struck me, and this was the first time I realized I needed to be aware, was that I was not in possession of ANY Oil.

WOW.

It was a very difficult game. I would up ramping up Culture in order to get the win. This made me a much better player as it made me much more resource aware.

A similar situation happened in my most current game except with Rubber, not oil.

My choice was to invade a powerful and Fortified Persia, or a literal and figuratively peripheral Zulu.

I sent a boat to My allies, the Zulu and invaded, dumped gold into a harbor to rush connection to my cities, and did not have trouble fending off the Zulu or Egyptian (MPP w/the Zulu, but no shared border with me) efforts to take back the city.

Anyway, my point being, isn't the challenge part of it?

I don't play for the challenge. I play because it's a fun game that I enjoy playing.
 
Why would you restart based on your start location? Civilizations start where they start, if you are lucky enough to have resources, great, if not, is it not a challange? WOuldn't playing the harder maps start locations just improve your skills?

Because the game is already enough of a challenge without it!

I have played - or tried to play - more than enough games where I got a bad start position, and I have enough experience to know that my odds of winning from some positions are remote at best (at least, at my current skill level). I want to play a game where I have at least a fighting chance of winning the game, and I find it tough enough to win even with a good start position. (I play on Monarch, BTW).

But if you think you should be able to win from any start position, I invite you to reload the game until you find yourself on a continent covered with jungle, and then see how well you do!
 
But if you think you should be able to win from any start position, I invite you to reload the game until you find yourself on a continent covered with jungle, and then see how well you do!

I had a game like that (on Monarch with the Chinese) lots of Jungle & no Iron. Well there was some but it was so far away and deep in foreign lands (Iroquois as I recall). I did get horses but they were very limited in use. Add to this desert North and South of the Jungle and it made for a pretty tough game. I lost in the end after fighting off waves of Gallic Swords/Medieval Infantry with Archers!

The Hittites got me in the end with a SoD that crossed the Northern desert to take my capital. At that point I called it a day.

Trouble was my military was always considered weak and everytime I researched a new tech someone else got there a few turns before me. So poor tech, bad terrain and fighting lots of desperate battles against all comers . It was fun while it lasted though :lol:
 
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