Sid Meier on Civ III

Irishman writes "ZDNet News has an interview with Sid Meier and Jeff Briggs about the upcoming Civ III. For any Civ fans, this is a must read. I am now having flashbacks of days without sleep, trying to capture that last city or win the game in a different way. "

Comments

Classic games

[hattig]

It is good to see that these timeless games are being updated to use the latest technology and computer power to make them even more realistic, both graphically, audiowise and AI-wise.

I am hoping for larger maps (in the sense that they are more detailed than previous versions, not actually a larger area of land). Real terrain, where you can use the terrain for battle advantage, etc. That would be cool.

I don't need real 3D environments for a game like this, it doesn't need it.

Re:Classic games

[Stonehand]

How about, er, logic?

The terrain granularity never bothered me too much in Civ/SMAC games. The fact that, say, you could *block* incoming missiles with, oh, Locusts of Chiron in SMAC did; as did the horrible pathfinding (esp. the GOTO command); the complete lack of stacks; and other nonsense such as being able to launch cruise missiles into a submarine while it's at sea. Plus, of course, the blatant cheating w/ the AI having at least some FOW removed, like knowing how much money and technology you had at all times, and its remarkable knack for finding cloaked units...

Why can't Civ use a hex grid?

[JoeShmoe]

Is there anyone else that gets as irritated with square grids as I do?

A hex grid more closely resembles a "circle" of influence. With a square grid you have to cut corners off a square. This results in a whole bunch of funky problems:

1) It's impossible to put your cities adjacent to each other without wasting space. The best you can do is waste two spaces per group of four cities. This ain't bad but odds are that some important resource is going to be stuck on one of those wasted squares. A hex grid would make it possible to pack cities close together in several different designs while still not wasting any space.

2) Units get jammed up on enemy units because they are diagonally adjacent. It's absurd because while the computer won't let you move sideways when there is a unit at the diagonal, you can move down and diagonally to end up in the same place. With a hex grid, movement from each space basically forks into two opposite directions. So it's very easy to go around units without getting caught in these kinds of bogus traps.

3) People argue that square grids are easier to navigate with a standard keypad. This is entirely untrue. Other strat games that have hex grids still use the keypad, they simply use either the top and bottom row or left and right column (depending on how the hex grid is oriented). The bonus is that you have three extra buttons now to control movement.

The continued use of the square grid is the one thing about Civ/CivII/AlphaC that I absolutely detest. I really wish someone at Firaxis could have thought to change that with this upcoming CivIII game...but perhaps the next one will finally be this way.

- JoeShmoe

Here goes my karma...

[wrinkledshirt]

Sorry to interrupt the mutual-masturbation fest that's going on here, but isn't it high time we started seeing something new out of Sid Meier? I had a lot of respect for the guy when the first Civilization came out, because between that, Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, he'd really created a variety of strategy games that were engrossing and fun to play, and also replayable in different ways. I'd skipped Civ2 because there were other new games coming out that I wanted to try out instead, and when I bought Colonization and Alpha Centauri, I was a little bit underwhelmed, to be blunt. (Didn't try Antietam so I can't comment on that...)

I know that Sid Meier has what it takes to make a really fun and creative and new game, so why is he limiting himself to sequels and knock-offs of his previous stuff? I mean, here was a guy who practically created his own genre of games -- and it's this sort of experimentation and risk that pushes the industry forward. Right now, though, he's just resting on his laurels.

I've seen the descriptions of Civ3 and I'll probably be all over it when it gets to the bargain bin, and I'll probably play it so much that I'll lose sleep or miss a deadline or something. But still, I'd be a lot more excited about an impending product from Firaxis if I knew it was going to do what it did in the late 80s/early 90s and take some chances and try to push the entire industry to a new level, instead of just improving the game logic on his own tried-and-true formulas.

total war

[magarity]

The most annoying thing about Civ, Civ2, and SMAC (and probably Civ3) is that the game devolves to total war. Despite being titled and nominally about "civilization", it's really war. While you supposedly can win by the flight to Alpha Centauri (or the Ascent to Transendence), these are usually victories by side effect. You've had to militarity conquer or at least beat down, all opponents by the time you win by these other methods. What if it were more of a civilization simulator; think SimCity on a larger scale. It would be nice if there were a setting for the AI to be less fanatical war machines and more into peaceful competition.

Re:Will Civ III be a better game?

[chazzf]

I've been following the development of Civ III rather closely and I would like to offer some counterpoint here:

Special gimmick units that are only available to a specific civilisation? Yuck, no thanks. Relatively heavily-classed players may have worked quite well in Alpha Centauri (which I haven't played much), but I'd rather Civ kept giving players the ability to choose their strengths and weaknesses "in-band" and to change those trade-offs over time as circumstances dictate, rather than locking them into one optimal style of play at the start of the game.


What they're trying to do here, I think, is improve the historical realism in the game. Players can then take the civ that fits their playing style. When fighting the AI, the AI will act according to its historical advantages/disadvantages. They did this in Civ2, just not as greatly.

I don't see why the tech tree needs to be bodged with "ages", either. Yes, in Civs past you can, for example, specialise relentlessly to get a particular technology. If you keep it up too long, however, the dependencies bite hard and you have a huge amount of "filling in" to do before you can progress. (RPM fans will recognise this as the Gnucash effect. :) ) The way old Civ calculates the cost of new technologies mades the effect even stronger, perhaps in fact too strong. The ability to skew your technological progress quite strongly is fun, and probably relatively realistic by Civ standards - look at all the pretty advanced preliterate civilisations that existed. "Ages" don't seem the solution to me.

Again, I think the issue is historial realism. How could a civ surge towards a goal when realistically they wouldn't even know that they existed. Science is relatively incremental.

I'm also not sold on the changes to Wonders. Doesn't a reproducible Small Wonder defeat the idea of a Wonder somewhat? More fundamentally, in Civ I-II, Wonders were too good to be ignored, but not so powerful that they dominated the game: a nice balance. I wouldn't like to see them become more central to the game. They're mostly candy-floss. Too much bonus-grabbing candyfloss and not enough civilisation-building meat and potatoes is very un-nourishing and will make you feel sick before long.

The key here is again realism. The Manhattan Project must now be built by ANY civ before that civ can have nukes. Much more realisitic. Far better. In reference to the previous point, this can allow, at times, for a scientific leap.

I may be wrong too, but that's just my take on the issues.

Re:research required

[Moofie]

Why help them with their research? Much better to just broadly censor everybody who wants to play with theories about disaster scenarios. Such dangerous ideas should be restricted to people who are trained for such things. Right?

Censorship is never, ever the answer.

Is it just me?

[Doctor Faustus]

Or are more than half of the new changes mentioned taken from Age of Empires, and Warcraft/Starcraft style games?