Archived from groups: alt.games.civ3 (More info?)
I have been playing Civ since it came out, and I took some time to get
used to Civ3, but after
extensive playing - even getting a personal best - this does not hide
the fact that there are some extremely annoying things about the game.
Here are a few items on my wishlist.
Speed. Turn on aninmation and everything is so sloooooow. This happens
especially towards the end of
the game when other civs have built vast numbers of ships which insist
on sailing around your
coastline. (I call the this the problem of the flocking fleets where
"flocking" can be replaced by another similar sounding word). The screen
darts around showing these lumbering sailing ships/ironclads/etc and it
seems like forever. I
know you can press shift, or even turn off animations - then it is too
fast and you miss the fact
that one ship has landed troops on your coast.
Speed. If you can press shift to speed up movement, why doesn't it speed
up conflicts? Why do I have to sit there for minutes watching the poor
stupid AI throwing warriors against riflemen and witnessing the
slaughter? Turn off animations, and it is too fast and you can miss
important detail.
Order. Civ 3 is much better than Civ2 in playing the pieces in some
logical order, but it doesn't always work. To anyone with half a brain
cell you would want your bombarding units to go first every time,
pounding the target, before then the ground units attack, but this
doesn't always happen, especially towards the end of a game when there
are a lot of units.
Diplomacy. In one recent game the French and Japanese decided to use my
country as one big
battleground. This caused serious difficulties as my workers then
couldn't develop tiles as there
were enemies on them. When I asked them to leave, the only option was
"leave my territory or declare
war!", a risk I couldn't take. Hoewver, my worker only had to set foot
on French soil for all sorts of
threats to be made against me - when half the French army was already
encamped in my country.
Idiocy. Say you are country A sandwiched between B and C. B and C
suddenly go to war. You find vast
numbers of troops from B flooding across your country towards C. No
right of passage agreement exists. This doesn't happen in real life -
why does the AI ignore human players' territory, when the converse is
not true?
Jungle is a real enemy and I haven't learnt to deal with it - it takes
far too long to clear. If you start with a lot of jungle it's best just
to retire rather than spend hours clearing the jungle only to find that
someone else has raced ahead of you in the technology and growing stakes
(this just happened to me)
Workers. One worker takes an age to do anything. Two or more are much
faster and I generally use them in gangs. Why can I not turn them in to
gangs, instead of having to move them in groups of two or three every
time? Even pressing "X" to move them in stacks is wearisome.
Workers. I always end up at the end of a game with a lot of workers
building railways and clearing pollution. Shift + A is useful. Except
when someone declares war on you and my workers always insist of
building a railway in a tile next to an enemy unit. Result, slaughter of
workers. Why can I not issue an instruction to all workers to return to
base somewhere.
Interface. I wish G were the Go to instruction. When the list of city
comes up, why can't I cycle through my cities by using the initial
letter of the city - so pressing "r" would take me to Ravenna, then Rome
etc (as with civ 2)?
I really miss animated Wonders.
If you can produce cavalry (which use rifles) why can't you build
riflemen? It seems silly to have cavalry on the same battlefield as
muskets.
Muskets. I can't prove anything, but they seem weaker than pikemen.
Pikemen seem to survive longer than muskets under attack. If this is
correct, it shouldn't be so.
Longbowmen. One of their strengths was their defence against knights
(e.g. Agincourt). This is not reflected in the game when knights will
routinely destroy longbowmen.
cavalry. They are supposed to retreat when losing, but they don't always
do this. why?
Deposing cities. I regularly find that captured cities go over to the
other side - with good reason. When captured, they have nothing left in
them very often, not even a temple, so disorder is the order of the day.
By the time you have built great cultural things to keep the masses
entertained, they have gone over to the other side. Why does this result
in the death of all occupying forces? If you garrison them with a huge
force, this should keep order, but in fact they all get killed by even
some small city that revolts. It actually pays you to destroy the city,
and commit genocide against the inhabitants. Surprisingly, this doesn't
seem to disturb the population of a democracy, who watch as you go
through an enemy country razing everything to the ground killing
everyone in sight. But this is safer than trying to garrison captured
cities which might then revolt and destroy the occupying forces. Very
unrealistic.
Well, that's my wishlist for the moment. Glad I got it off my chest.
Boris
I have been playing Civ since it came out, and I took some time to get
used to Civ3, but after
extensive playing - even getting a personal best - this does not hide
the fact that there are some extremely annoying things about the game.
Here are a few items on my wishlist.
Speed. Turn on aninmation and everything is so sloooooow. This happens
especially towards the end of
the game when other civs have built vast numbers of ships which insist
on sailing around your
coastline. (I call the this the problem of the flocking fleets where
"flocking" can be replaced by another similar sounding word). The screen
darts around showing these lumbering sailing ships/ironclads/etc and it
seems like forever. I
know you can press shift, or even turn off animations - then it is too
fast and you miss the fact
that one ship has landed troops on your coast.
Speed. If you can press shift to speed up movement, why doesn't it speed
up conflicts? Why do I have to sit there for minutes watching the poor
stupid AI throwing warriors against riflemen and witnessing the
slaughter? Turn off animations, and it is too fast and you can miss
important detail.
Order. Civ 3 is much better than Civ2 in playing the pieces in some
logical order, but it doesn't always work. To anyone with half a brain
cell you would want your bombarding units to go first every time,
pounding the target, before then the ground units attack, but this
doesn't always happen, especially towards the end of a game when there
are a lot of units.
Diplomacy. In one recent game the French and Japanese decided to use my
country as one big
battleground. This caused serious difficulties as my workers then
couldn't develop tiles as there
were enemies on them. When I asked them to leave, the only option was
"leave my territory or declare
war!", a risk I couldn't take. Hoewver, my worker only had to set foot
on French soil for all sorts of
threats to be made against me - when half the French army was already
encamped in my country.
Idiocy. Say you are country A sandwiched between B and C. B and C
suddenly go to war. You find vast
numbers of troops from B flooding across your country towards C. No
right of passage agreement exists. This doesn't happen in real life -
why does the AI ignore human players' territory, when the converse is
not true?
Jungle is a real enemy and I haven't learnt to deal with it - it takes
far too long to clear. If you start with a lot of jungle it's best just
to retire rather than spend hours clearing the jungle only to find that
someone else has raced ahead of you in the technology and growing stakes
(this just happened to me)
Workers. One worker takes an age to do anything. Two or more are much
faster and I generally use them in gangs. Why can I not turn them in to
gangs, instead of having to move them in groups of two or three every
time? Even pressing "X" to move them in stacks is wearisome.
Workers. I always end up at the end of a game with a lot of workers
building railways and clearing pollution. Shift + A is useful. Except
when someone declares war on you and my workers always insist of
building a railway in a tile next to an enemy unit. Result, slaughter of
workers. Why can I not issue an instruction to all workers to return to
base somewhere.
Interface. I wish G were the Go to instruction. When the list of city
comes up, why can't I cycle through my cities by using the initial
letter of the city - so pressing "r" would take me to Ravenna, then Rome
etc (as with civ 2)?
I really miss animated Wonders.
If you can produce cavalry (which use rifles) why can't you build
riflemen? It seems silly to have cavalry on the same battlefield as
muskets.
Muskets. I can't prove anything, but they seem weaker than pikemen.
Pikemen seem to survive longer than muskets under attack. If this is
correct, it shouldn't be so.
Longbowmen. One of their strengths was their defence against knights
(e.g. Agincourt). This is not reflected in the game when knights will
routinely destroy longbowmen.
cavalry. They are supposed to retreat when losing, but they don't always
do this. why?
Deposing cities. I regularly find that captured cities go over to the
other side - with good reason. When captured, they have nothing left in
them very often, not even a temple, so disorder is the order of the day.
By the time you have built great cultural things to keep the masses
entertained, they have gone over to the other side. Why does this result
in the death of all occupying forces? If you garrison them with a huge
force, this should keep order, but in fact they all get killed by even
some small city that revolts. It actually pays you to destroy the city,
and commit genocide against the inhabitants. Surprisingly, this doesn't
seem to disturb the population of a democracy, who watch as you go
through an enemy country razing everything to the ground killing
everyone in sight. But this is safer than trying to garrison captured
cities which might then revolt and destroy the occupying forces. Very
unrealistic.
Well, that's my wishlist for the moment. Glad I got it off my chest.
Boris
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