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Civ2Civ3 Feedback/Discussion?

Posted: Sat May 20, 2023 4:41 pm
by NotAnyoneSpecial
So I played a full game of Civ2Civ3 and my opinions are mixed on 3.1.0-beta1-msys2. There seems to be a possible bug with the ruleset where my units will never receive field promotions, so they can only become veteran through buildings/wonders. Not sure why, maybe it has to do with "combat difficulty scaling" for promtions but I don't know.
General thoughts:
  • Wonders are far less useful now, almost all of them got nerfs and many more expire. This makes the wonder race less important but really "ruins" the fun and importance of Wonders. Adam Smith's Co, requiring Stock markets to be of benefit. Michael Angelo's chapel, only improving Cathedrals not free catherdals. Hoover Dam, not providing free power plants. And So on. Can't say I love or hate these new Wonders but they were very much blunted in value
  • No more Rapture, no more (internal) Trade Routes, this is somewhat welcome. Personally, I would like trade to be more automatic like in civ4 and Caravans to be far more useful as a general "shield transfer" unit. So I can disband Caravans to contribute 100% to whatever is being built, or set up Food trade or Shield trade routes. Learning2Rapture was always a weird little skill in freeciv metagaming, so I'm happy to see it go.
  • Units still die too quickly. Having my Musketeer unit lose 12 HP on attacking a Phalanx in the open means it's unable to really fight further. Same with Warrior hordes which the AI seems to be doing more. Cav units still don't have the punch needed to make them worthwhile. Maybe combat numbers should be reworked more aggressively. 9 Attack for Musketeers and 36 for Tanks, like later versions of civ.
  • New Governments are welcomed, but Corruption/Waste seems more annoying. Democracies always enjoyed being a particularly hard to master powerful government with zero corruption but mandatory unhappiness management for wars. I still think Democracy needs more help, Police stations are still under used. Police stations should also reduce corruption for all governments. Federation is a nice mix but without "+1 trade". Wars are not much harder under democracy.
  • A lot more cities are allowed under "Advanced" Governments now than before. This is welcome as a reward for Democracies but felt very different!
  • Pollution rework is not well understood. While certain buildings causing the population pollution factor to increase seems better than just technology advances, I think it misses the point somewhat of Society and Population doing it not just industrial buildings.
  • Plague is okay along with random disasters. Should be able to prevent more of them like in classic civ.
  • Power plants being reworked seems odd. If they are to be reworked making Nuclear power plants cost double but be cheaper at 2 gold per turn instead of 4 like the rest seems odd and not true to life. Nuclear power should be a cheaper alternative to Solar in places where Hydro cannot be built. I would imagine it should be like Power plant is the cheapest to build and run but offer no pollution reduction, Hydro being 2nd most expensive to build but fairly cheap to run (but only appearing in places with rivers), Nuclear being around as expensive to build as power plant and cost the same but no pollution (has risk of meltdown) and Solar costing a lot to build and to run (worst option but squeaky clean with no accidents).
  • Cheaper aqueducts for fresh water is good. Ecclesiastical capital seems like odd name, I always thought Versailles or Forbidden City was a good name. Never used the small wonder though, would be nice to see them expanded upon. With "National university", doubles research. "National Bank", doubles coins and "Iron Works", doubles shields and so on.
  • "Big Land", forcing us to build roads for artillery is good but their inability to attack into Swamps always seemed like a broken feature. Maybe permit attacking into "nonnative" terrain for Big Land? or scrap "Big Land" entirely and call units by a proper class. "Artillery", "Cavalry", "Infantry", "Armored" and so on.
  • No aggressive naval combat UNTIL Frigate, honestly seems broken. There should be some naval warfare before we get Gunpowder.
  • Legion, Muskeeter, Rifleman and Marine getting "Marine" trait is good. But honestly it should be a feature of a class of units called "Infantry". Alpine Troopers/Paratroopers not being able to land into cities despite being highly mobile seems odd.
  • Riflemen SHOULD NOT obsolete. Riflemen should always be available as cheap defense.
  • The air war rebalancing seems honestly really janky. Fighters being weaker and not doing bombard, while Bombers doing bombard but only against land? Everything seems very unpolished. Fighters despite the extra "fuel" are much much weaker, losing their 2 Firepower! This little ability made OG fighters really powerful "glass cannons" for their 4 Attack rating. Helicopters losing their firepower too nerfs them, doing bombard sometimes but not other times? Bombard needs to be more polished as a concept.
  • RIP the Ironclad Rush, You will not be missed. The previous meta of rushing Ironclads to dominate has been weakened, if not outright destroyed but Ironclads seem much less special now. Ironclads should get a rework. The Frigate v. Ironclad trade off should exist somehow. Frigates faster, more versatile, longer range but less armored? Ironclads being better but costilier and risks being lost in Deep Ocean and slower? Don't know but Ironclads should be a viable option like an anti-ship ship.
  • Migrants, Settlers, Engineers and so on. Migrants conceptually are odd. They are an alternative to Workers in the sense that they don't require "normal upkeep" just food. While workers don't need food but do require shield upkeep. Not sure why Workers still exist then.
  • Fixed Foodboxes and the new Granary, simplify and streamline the "Settler game" which is welcomed. In the past new players didn't intuitively understand the meta that comes with Settler production. It was simply that "small city = small foodbox, faster grow." and "settler cost 1 pop" so logically building your settlers is optimal in a sort of "Settler factory" city that never grew past 4 or something next to a food rich tile. This is still somewhat the case but now it isn't as "costily" to build settlers in massive cities where filling the foodbox takes ages. Optimal play isn't as necessary!
  • Mag-lev sucks, and railroads suck more. Maglev being locked behind Superconductors is frankly too late. It suffers the same exact issue that the SETI wonder or research labs do, when they appear their utility is basically over. Railroads no longer are the game changer they used to be for infinite movement, in fact they're incredibly lackluster. Only doubling Roads for 6x speed over 3x speed. Civ4 handled Rails a bit better, by giving them 10x speed but honestly maybe 12x or 20x seem a lot better. I might agree with infinite speed being too overpowered for rail, but 6x seems really weak.
  • The Farmland/Superhighways trade off seems unnecessary. Losing the extra +1 trade from tiles with farmland seems odd and isn't welcomed. The superhighway makes up for it with 200% bonus to coin/luxury still makes highways worthwhile but seems to complicate city management instead of streamlining it.
  • Terrain Transformation is nerfed but also slightly improved, prefer the old way. Workers could always transform swamps to Grasslands and so on. Now such transformations are locked behind the last technology of the whole tech tree, Fusion Power. This is the same problem as Maglev and Research Labs/SETI, it comes too late to be of any use. Locking such transforms behind Explosives/Engineers would be a good compromise. Although the direct transformation of forest to grassland is welcomed.
  • +1 shield for cities anywhere is good! Previously you'd lose out if you placed your city on Plains instead of grassland, due to the minimum 1 shield production. This streamlines and makes the game less micro intensive.
  • Terrain rebalancing is okay. Rivers+Desert getting a "floodplains" effect is good, the rest is alright. Mountains reducing movement for units on next turn is good. Pollution on Ocean is super frustrating extra micro, but does well at effectively penalizing dirty players.
  • Improvement rebalancing could be better. Appreciate the Colosseum (now called Amphitheater) being made cheaper but it weakens the trade off choice, you get for Cathedrals vs Colosseum. Colosseums were discouraged with their high costs but neccessary if they had to be built, making Cathedrals useful as a cheaper alternative to aim for. Research building nerf is good. Shield production nerf for factories is unnecessary and makes them now much more costily. +150% shield output for power+factory+mfg plant is well earned and very expensive to achieve in classic! Courthouses getting +1 content face is good for all governments not just demo, but disappointed to see police station is still somewhat lackluster.
  • Culture still seems borderline useless and a non game play element. Yes it helps with diplobattles, but that's it?
  • Specialist nerf is unnecessary but not that bad.
  • Technology upkeep is a good mechanic for nerfing the most tech advanced player. The Tech gameplay is MUCH better (also with fixing "tech holes"), with the rebalancing. Not only helping players who fall behind by reducing tech costs the more widespread the technology becomes but also nerfing the "lead" of players who produce a lot of bulbs. Helps with making sure they don't run away with the game.
Overall, it does help at simplifying the micro but many of their changes seem minor or simply could be better. Some things like Wonders being severely nerfed, Railroads much much worse, Naval gameplay heavily nerfed and superior units feeling much too weak makes the ruleset a bit jarring for classic players. Unit rebalancing should be more ambitious overall. I would like to see Police stations being more useful to fight corruption, Artillery being improved with attack into non-native, Artillery in general maybe getting "city buster" from Catapult onwards and some naval aggression before Navigation. Along with strategic resources appearing to lock off/enable units. I'll look into how Lua could implement things myself, I think "free" aqueducts from nearby River/Fresh water is possible at the moment. Thank you

Re: Civ2Civ3 Feedback/Discussion?

Posted: Tue May 30, 2023 9:41 pm
by cazfi
NotAnyoneSpecial wrote: Sat May 20, 2023 4:41 pm Overall, it does help at simplifying the micro but many of their changes seem minor or simply could be better.
Could you clarify what you are comparing 3.1 & civ2civ3 against? I guess 2.6 & classic, but am not sure.

Re: Civ2Civ3 Feedback/Discussion?

Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2023 9:47 pm
by Gavroche
I do appreciate that the technology tree now follows a logic that is more historically credible. It may thus seem even stranger that we can have crusaders without chivalry, isn't it ?

Re: Civ2Civ3 Feedback/Discussion?

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2023 5:40 pm
by bard
Thank you for the comments.

I created this civ2civ3 ruleset (the first versions more than 10 years ago), but I must say that I have not made patches to this official version for some time, and I had no plans to change it in the future. Now that the ruleset is the defaut one, I do not feel entitled to introduce further changes. Mainly because I do not play freeciv online, and because for my single player games I use my own version of the ruleset, that have evolved in these 5 years or so (since I made the version that is currently the default one).

In my signature there is a link to github where I keep public my updated version named civ2civ3_earth (available for freeciv 2.6 and 3.0).

I still find your comments very useful while I keep working on my new version for 3.1. I'll reply them one by one in my next post.
Gavroche wrote: Thu Jun 29, 2023 9:47 pm I do appreciate that the technology tree now follows a logic that is more historically credible. It may thus seem even stranger that we can have crusaders without chivalry, isn't it ?
I agree it is strange, but fixing it would have required massive changes to the tech tree, same as trying to make Frigates/Galleons to require Metallurgy. While fixing the other incoherences required just minor adjustments.

In my personal ruleset, my partial solution was to reduce the veteran level of Crusaders without Iron working tech. Something similar for Frigates/Galleons without Metallurgy tech.