why i think C3C sucks

[tR1cKy]

I'm very disappointed by C3C. PTW had room for improvement, but with C3C they messed up things so badly that even the good things of it aren't enough to reverse a trend of global suckiness.

Therefore, here's a 'bash C3C' thread where anyone can either share my opinion about C3C (that, let's not forget it, sucks big times) or be stoned to death. Just kiddin, feel free to disagree at will.

Here are the reasons why i think C3C sucks.

- Agricultural trait: way too unbalancing. Have three mined grassland and voilà your four-turns settler factory.

- Statue of Zeus: a cheap wonder producing overpowered mounted units for free. After dumbing down the expansion phase we dumb down the military buildup as well.

- that thing producing crusaders: same as above

- scientific golden age: nice idea. Broken since day one. Never fixed.

- armies: ridiculously overpowered in the hands of a human player. Now really, it's already too easy to win, and what they do? Power up armies even more, and keep the AS utterly unable to use them properly.

- AS: not AI, but AS. Artificial Stupid. They were stupid in PTW, they're still stupid in C3C.

- ironclads: as if it wasn't useless enough, we add an optional tech to build them. Brilliant.

- Fascism: please...

- Feudalism: a government type where unit support drops as a city grows... please...

- bugs never fixed

- whatever. it sucks.

- did i mention that C3C sucks?

End of the list. Let the flame begin

 

[Verarde]

Seems like a lot of your issues are with useless or OP techs/wonders/govs.

 

[AIL]

Everything you mentioned can be treated via modding!

I can't stand the game unmodded either but since the editor is really easy to use I just changed what I did not like and voila: Game is fun now.

 

[RickFGS]

Feudalism is good for warmongers that like to have a gazzilion cities of size 6 and a core of bigger ones, what´s wrong with that? adapt your gameplay style and you´ll see it´s a pretty good government.

Fascism is a all or nothing tactic for a player that is ruling a small country surrounded by bigger empires, very usefull.

Ironclads can UPGRADE to Destroyers and only cost 90s instead of 120s, there´s a use for everything...

As for the other things you mention, i rather play C3C against a somewhat stupid AI, then Civ4 or Civ5 against a 5 year old inteligent AI, with graphics, tactics and gameplay that look like its a kindergarden.

Play C3C online on simultaneous moves against human players and you won´t think it´s all that stupid...

 

[vmxa]

"tR1cKy"
I disagree with essentially everything you said, except the armies.

"- Agricultural trait: way too unbalancing. Have three mined grassland and voilà your four-turns settler factory."

I do not even like to use this trait and do not need 4 settler factories. I like to war and cannnot protect making towns that fast. You have to give up another good trait to use AG and you can have 4 settlers without AG.

"Statue of Zeus: a cheap wonder producing overpowered mounted units for free. After dumbing down the expansion phase we dumb down the military buildup as well."

Not sure I even understand the dumbing down, but play tougher games and the AI will have the SoZ and it will not bother you at all. Yes AC are nice, but how often will you have them?

"that thing producing crusaders: same as above"
KT not a factor at all. I seldom have it and again it does not hinder me.

"scientific golden age: nice idea. Broken since day one. Never fixed."

Yeah, trivial at best. Would not use it in any event. Play more Sid and turn off SGL and it goes out the window as an issue.

"- armies: ridiculously overpowered in the hands of a human player."

Your one point

"- AS: not AI, but AS. Artificial Stupid. They were stupid in PTW, they're still stupid in C3C."

Never saw a game with a smart AI, so why bring it up?

"- ironclads: as if it wasn't useless enough, we add an optional tech to build them. Brilliant."

No reason to research or build these in most games. Lots of useless units in the game, can you say Choppers, Paratroopers? Again trivial at best.

"- Fascism: please..."

Just one of many gov choices, not an issue.

"- Feudalism: a government type where unit support drops as a city grows... please.."

Read above.

"- bugs never fixed

None that are worth mentioning that come to my mind right now.

 

[scratchthepitch]

I'm in agreement with what AIL and RickFGS wrote. Change what you don't like. With Conquests, there is more things than in the earlier versions that can be changed. Creativity beats passivity every time.

 

[Theov]

I don't know PTW, but I enjoy C3C a great deal.
But ehm... how exactly is PTW better?

- The SoZ is a trade off. Do you spend a lot of shield on something that will pay off in the future over time? It's often came to bite me in the butt when I didn't have the enemies to use the horsies.
Same with the Chivalry wonder.
- Armies are great, it's too bad the AI can't use them. Weren't there armies in PTW? I like it, because now I use 200 units to get 3 cities. Without armies I should have to build 400. It just saves time.
- GOVS... yeah I don't use them. It's too bad, but I see the AI using them a lot, so maybe it's making the AI better?

Why C3C is better:
- Seafaring
- Better editor.
- Airfields and outposts.
- Stacked units
- difficulty levels
- locked alliances

 

[Theov]

Everything you mentioned can be treated via modding!

I can't stand the game unmodded either but since the editor is really easy to use I just changed what I did not like and voila: Game is fun now.

What are the changes you made and recommend?

 

[templar_x]

i see everything like vmxa, only want to stress that even in warmongering games i hardly ever would imagine to build those allegedly so overpowered wonders of Zeus and, despite its name , Templars. (and like vmxa puts it, just go and even try to build them in high level games, or i may add: try to use those troops against rifles by the time you have a few).

armies are a very serious bug, but simply choose to play without them, or only use them as city guards where the AI will attack them. you do not even need to mod anything for that.

tricky, you were not really serious about this post were you?

actually, the maybe worst feature of c3c you do not even mention (maybe because it is the same in PTW): that the AIs do not use arty offensively. that is even worse than armies in my eyes, as you probably won´t want to forgo those in your own game while armies can simply stay unused.

t_x

 

[AIL]

What are the changes you made and recommend?

I have a thread in the mod forum but right now, I'm a little pissed because one of my recent changes isn't working due to an ancient-bug:

The submarine-bug where if a computer-civ drives a ship on an invisible unit it will declare war and attack it.

I gave invisible and detect invisible to all ships because it changed how the AI would use their ships. But unfortunately the "detect invisible" flag does not prevent them to drive over eachother and declare war.

So my finding that invisible ships would not protect transports but attack other ships and bombard coastal cities is useless cause it causes the sub-bug to happen all the time.

 

[Spoonwood]

I believe that almost all HoF players would say they prefer C3C over PTW for almost all HoF games (though some exceptions may exist).

One thing not mentioned here comes as that C3C enables you to change the aggression level, which I believe PTW does not.

Feudalism makes an excellent government for plenty of "100k" games, and fortunately in C3C the amount of culture needed for a mass cultural victory varies with map size instead of staying at 100k no matter the map size as PTW does.

I don't see the point about certain things coming as too powerful. If you don't like the power of the Statue of Zeus in human hands, then don't build it. It can make things harder on the human player also.

On armies: though there does exist something to their power, but if you play without them, I think that in most games you can still pretty much own the AIs with artillery proper and combat settlers. So, now artillery becomes overpowered also.

 

[creamcheese]

I mainly prefer C3C because you don't have to build in ring city placement for the best corruption. None of the things listed really bother me except the overpowered armies, but they were overpowered in PTW too, since the AI can't deal with them.

 

[tR1cKy]

Hello, folks A lot of things here. I'm not quoting you all because, honestly, it would be too much of a mess for me. Instead i'm replying to the generic points made here.

Just a thing that probably isn't even necessary: please, don't take anything i say personally. I would like it to be a frank and open discussion about why C3C sucks or rocks, and nothing more. If someone may feel offended by something, then i apologize in advance. I respect your opinions even when i disagree with them.

CORRECTION: due to a mental mishap, i reported incorrect things about agricultural trait: of course, three mined grasslands aren't enough to build a 4-turner.


- if you don't like X or Y, just mod them out

I see two problems with it. First, if i have to edit out X and Y, they shouldn't be there in first place, because their mere presence gives me a reason to be dissatisfied with the game. Second, this is not valid for HoF attempts or competitions like CotM. You either stick with the standard game or refrain from trying C3C HoFs and CotMs.

- if you don't like X or Y, just ignore/don't build/don't use them

Same as above. They're still there, and they're still a reason for dissatisfaction.

- issue X, Y or Z are trivial

A personal opinion that i respect. I wish i would find them trivial as well, so perhaps i could enjoy C3C more. Alas, it's not the case

- SoZ and crusaders are hardly an issue...

I can concede the point here, because i've not played C3C extensively and it may well happen that after a thorough test i could find that, indeed, they're something that can happily be ignored. But this doesn't put them into a brighter light. If something is unbalancing, then there's a reason to dislike it. But if something is irrelevant, why is it there at all?

- feudalism is very useful etc...

Sorry, i should have been clearer here. I don't think it's useless. Actually, i do think it's too much useful, to the point of being unbalancing expecially in the hands of a religious civ. It makes building up unit support too easy. It makes infinite city sprawl even more powerful than it is in PTW. In short, it's akin to a cheat.

- fascism rocks with small empires surrounded by biggest ones

For when it comes, you shouldn't have a small empire, unless you're playing with some serious self-imposed limitations. For when it comes, your empire should be big and well developed. If it's not, then the solution is to improve your game, not to rely on Fascism.

- ironclads can upgrade...

And this is a good thing. Too bad they screw it up by forcing you to research an optional tech just to be able to build them. If things were left as they were in PTW, plus the upgrade path, they would at least be of some usefulness.

- ...but seafaring is a good thing!

Agreed, to some extent. I'm neutral about this trait.

- i rather play C3C rather than Civ4 or 5...

Me too. I hate Civ4 even more than C3C

- play it online against humans and you won't think it's all that stupid

Agreed, of course. But if my enemies are human, the whole point becomes moot. There could be no AI at all then.

- i don't use agricultural trait and i don't care about 4-turners

Fine. It's your personal play style and i have nothing against it.

- 4-turners are possible even in PTW

Of course they are. But agricultural trait makes 4-turners and 2-turner worker factories easier to obtain. It makes rapid early expansion too powerful in respect of non-agricultural civs. Like feudalism w/ religious, it's akin to a cheat.

To quote someone from the old elite (Cuivenen):

It may not seem like it, but the food bonus, especially for the cities on Rivers and lakes in Despotism, is HUGE. It allows much faster growth and expansion, making Agricultural civs almost exclusively more powerful than non-Agricultural civs by the end of the land-grab phase of the game.

- there are already a lot of useless stuff

Agreed, but this shouldn't be a reason to add even more useless stuff - or should it? Wouldn't that time better spent into fixing bugs, improving things and turn existing useless stuff into something useful?

- armies are overpowered also in PTW, because the AS can't use them

Agreed, but let's consider it this way: feature X is overpowered in the hands of a human, what do you do in the next expansion?
A) try to balance it out
B) make it even worse
i'd bet any sane person would answer A. They choose B instead, and the reason why is completely beyond me.

- no game in the whole world has an intelligent AI

Right, to some extent. And i wouldn't expect it to be intelligent either. What i expected is that they put at least some effort in making it a little less stupid. It seems to me instead that they completely skipped that part and focused into adding new stuff, a large part of it being useless, annoying or counterproductive.

- i can't believe you're serious

believe it.

A special mention here:

"scientific golden age: nice idea. Broken since day one. Never fixed."

Yeah, trivial at best. Would not use it in any event. Play more Sid and turn off SGL and it goes out the window as an issue.

No, sir. As a professional programmer, i have to strongly disagree with you. In programming world, the worst thing you could do is to add a feature that is broken since day one and never bother to fix it.

By doing so, for all purposes, you've wasted your work. You have wasted time and resources that could have been used to do something useful that would have made your software a better software. You have given the end user nothing except for a reason to be annoyed with you. And as long as you've been working on it, you've basically stolen your salary.

---

Finally, some reasons why i would love C3C if it wasn't for all the junk i don't like:

- new civilizations
- sid level
- tourist attractions
- enslavement
- specialists are somewhat useful
- better corruption model
- slightly better editor
- slightly better interface

 

[templar_x]

ok, so you are mad as a programmer that they were so careless, which i totally can understand. but not being a professional programmer, but a mere player, the one thing that really bugs me is the inability of the AS to use arty offensively - with that "on", even the inability to use armies would become much less important; however you still do not even mention this most important bug . however, with everything else i think AS A PLAYER one can live very well in c3c, and to my taste even better than with PtW.

t_x

 

[Spoonwood]

if you don't like X or Y, just mod them out

I see two problems with it. First, if i have to edit out X and Y, they shouldn't be there in first place, because their mere presence gives me a reason to be dissatisfied with the game. Second, this is not valid for HoF attempts or competitions like CotM. You either stick with the standard game or refrain from trying C3C HoFs and CotMs.

Except for very rare instances, at least for the best spots on a given table, the HoF isn't about playing competitive games with the AIs. This applies even to some Sid level games even, as, for example, if you study some of Moonsinger's excellent Sid games you can tell the AI didn't pose too much of a problem for her... at least in some of them. Maximizing the map in terms of finish date or score, however, came as another story. One can make a case that for a given map size and victory condition that Chieftain actually makes for the most difficult level for an HoF game, since most of the Chieftain have 10 entries, and to get a number one on Chieftain generally requires a powerful start and knowledge of how to use a powerful start to (near) its fullest potential, as well as execution of such knowledge of course.

So, since most of your criticisms seem of the sort "well, this makes the game too easy!", I do NOT regard them as valid with respect to HoF play. In HoF play on a full table at least it makes no difference how easy the game against the AI goes... it only matters how well you do compared to other players. I see no reason why other ways of playing should translate into playing well for the HoF also.

The same might get said for COTM, but maybe not so... at least not quite as much.

There also exist the issue of variants... which C3C allows for/makes easier... like an OCC spaceship run, because of tourist attractions.

That all said, even though I am not a programmer, I completely agree that the scientific GA bug comes as extremely annoying. Either they should have fixed it, or eliminated the option to start a scientific GA with a great scientist. I can't see how the second would come as difficult, but then again, I don't know the code.

I can at least see many of your points for a game where you just want to compete with the AIs. But, what don't you like about the new civilizations?

 

[MantaRevan]

I actually agree about SoZ and the Ironclads one. The rest was mostly useless optional stuff or problems from PTW that it didn't fix.

 

[scratchthepitch]

- if you don't like X or Y, just mod them out

I see two problems with it. First, if i have to edit out X and Y, they shouldn't be there in first place, because their mere presence gives me a reason to be dissatisfied with the game. Second, this is not valid for HoF attempts or competitions like CotM. You either stick with the standard game or refrain from trying C3C HoFs and CotMs.

The competition games don't appeal at all and I've no time to devote to multiplayer with a game as long playing as Civ. If I did play multiplayer, it would be with mods. There is no reason why I should limit myself to the stock game. And I don't play the stock game any more. Compared to mods developed by others, the stock game is lame. Even my mods are better. If something could be changed in the game, I changed it. Since there is more I can change in Conquests, I used that version. The appeal of the game for me is that it can be so extensively edited. Without the editor, I would have tried a few games, got disgusted and bored, and not bothered with it after.

My complaints about Conquests apply to the rest of Civ3, and for the most part the whole series itself. Such as the bugs and lack of an AI. The former shouldn't have been allowed to remain. The latter should have seen substantial improvement with each new version of the game. Both are examples of poor business practices. The programming is of a very low quality, armies and artillery being good examples of their tack it on with rubber bands and chewing gum approach.

Edit:

I had forgotten that I read that AI deal with corruption a little better in Conquests and are a little more competitive as a result, due to a change in the way corruption is computed.

 

[Toxicman007]

I believe a traditional "l2p noob stop complain fgt" is in order here. But I see your case, and although I agree with you on several fronts, I myself have always preferred C3C to PTW. Although, sometimes I do still play Vanilla, just because I can.

 

[Lanzelot]

I have a thread in the mod forum but right now, I'm a little pissed because one of my recent changes isn't working due to an ancient-bug:

The submarine-bug where if a computer-civ drives a ship on an invisible unit it will declare war and attack it.

I gave invisible and detect invisible to all ships because it changed how the AI would use their ships. But unfortunately the "detect invisible" flag does not prevent them to drive over eachother and declare war.

Well, use PTW then... The sub-bug was fixed in a patch for PTW -- and then "reintroduced" when C3C came out...

 

[Raliuven]

Uploading v3.27 . . .

I'd rather blend the two (PTW & C3C) to get a good game. I'm a PTW player at heart, probably because I've played it for much longer than C3C. For some reason C3C just feels cheaper.

I like my RCP and my 2 cores - both of which are out the window for C3C. Granted that 2nd core is a powerful exploit as the AI almost puts the FP on the first ring of its core, but the AI uses RCP for the most part.

I like that armies have more attacks/movement but really they are too powerful. At least in PTW the AI will make armies and use them, even if they are usually lame. I do remember losing a cav army to a MDI army in a deity GOTM at one point. Surprised the heck out of me.

I dislike the MGL & SGL split even if I understand why it was done.

I like the increase in scientist & taxman input, but that on top of a 2nd core would be a bit too much.

I also tend to like the scarcity of resources in C3C. It makes a game of resource denial feasible - it is much more difficult to pull off in PTW.

SoZ & KT? I think they are more of a speed bump than anything else. I like the idea of auto-producing buildings, though, so I'll give the programmers some credit there.

Ironclads. Given the need for an optional tech is it possible that they beat coastal fortresses as the most worthless unit? Talk about another bug that was never fixed. How hard would it be to make a coastal fortress fire a defensive shot for up to 3 hits on a bombarding naval vessel when a city is attacked? That would make those annoying stacks of AI frigates disappear. Oh, and they are made of concrete, so about it taking more than a single bombardment to destroy them as if they were made of matchsticks.

Upload complete.