Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic (
More info?)
On Thu, 21 Apr 2005 07:13:00 GMT, Pete <pete@nowhere.com> wrote:
>
>>>
>>>I believe the consensus is that game out of the box is set up with the
>>>corruption threshold set too low for most players tastes. It is
>>>certainly set up to discourage rapid land expansion and taking over
>>>the world through shear weight.
>>
>> The Conquests expansion does change things somewhat. Whether the
>> corruption is excessive or not is a matter of taste, but a lot of
>> players seem content to play the game without changing that aspect of
>> it.
>>
>> The ones most put out are those who exploited the Civ2 corruption
>> system by creating large numbers of small cities (hit least by
>> corruption and rioting). Civ3 changes that strategy, requiring more
>> efficient early development (along the lines of what the AI can do).
>>
>> The other side is the shear weight issue. If you can expand without
>> significant penalty, then at some point you get big enough that the
>> outcome is no longer in doubt. The corruption rules might not be the
>> politest way to slow that down, but they do give a smaller competitor
>> a decent chance to win the game, via space race, diplomatic, or
>> cultural victories (or even points, if they got enough score early
>> on).
>>
>> It cuts both ways, too, because a player with a smaller empire can
>> be competitive without needing to control lots of cities. That makes
>> the game more appealing to non-micro-managing players.
>>
>>
>
>Been a long while but doesn't any AI country get a 'cheat' with no or
>little corruption? From what I remember the AI doesn't have nearly the
>amount of corruption that you do so being a small country VS a large AI one
>doesn't help at all in corruption.
Not as far as I know. The human player gets higher comparative
corruption at higher levels, though this isn't a major factor until
you're above Monarch difficulty.
>Seem to remember the problems with outlying cities you take to just to make
>a buffer are impossible to hold as they can't build anything (def
>improvements etc.) and just increase corruption anyway, taking cities of a
>large enemy to slow them down also cause similar problems. Building a city
>near that resource you need etc. Leads to weird gameplay like giving
>cities away to allies just to lower corruption, depopulating cities to
>destory them etc. I never really got into Civ 3 for that reason, that and
>the combat changes so you were back to armies with muskets being able to
>kill tanks and marines etc. when you go the tech route. Just too many AI
>cheats all around.
Outlying high corruption cities hold territory, generate culture
(which helps cultural victory), and count for score. There is no
reason to give them away or destroy them. The only way that new
cities cause harm is if they are closer to your capital than older,
more valuable places. High corruption is a matter of distance, so
making sure that any new low value cities are farther away is good.
Also, if you are in Communism, new high corruption cities will
increase the average corruption in the empire, causing some losses in
older, high value cities. But since you get more overall production
in more cities, the net result tends to be worthwhile.
For the combat thing, the combat results are roughly similar to
Civ1. The change is straightforward -- higher tech units aren't rated
as high vs. lower ones as they were in Civ2. This is easy enough to
change, if you want to make sure that higher tech units win more
often. Roughly doubling modern era units, and applying some increases
to others as the tech level goes down, will get you Civ2-like results.
There isn't anything wrong with the combat system itself.
Conquests does help some, by providing some more intermediate
units, making upgrades a bit easier. There is little historical logic
in having musket-users (or worse, spear and bow & arrow users) going
up against tanks and automatic-weapon armed marines. Neither the AI
nor human players can always upgrade past these, but having fairly
decent intermediate units in Conquests eliminates some of the odd
matchups.
As for AI cheats, there aren't many, and most of them are fairly
well documented (AI map omniscience is one, however, the human player
gets some of the "I know where things are I can't see" effect by
plotting long range automatic moves). I think that the AI in Civ3
plays much closer to even with humans than Civ2 or Civ1 did.
--
*-__Jeffery Jones__________| *Starfire* |____________________-*
** Muskego WI Access Channel 14/25 <http://www.execpc.com/~jeffsj/mach7/>
*Starfire Design Studio* <http://www.starfiredesign.com/>
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