posted 02-25-99 11:04 PM ET        

2. Wars
100 year wars are not unusual in SMAC. Yet,
in human history there was only one. WW2
lasted 5! years!! Not 50!!
One way to reduce wars would be that if you lose a military unit - you lose 1 population
in its home city. Kind of makes sense, right?

3. Other leaders
Other factions
always gang on you militarily. Why?
It would be cool to play a peaceful game,
but you just can't unless you wipe out
everybody but leave one base.

4. Vague techs
The techs are very vague and sometimes just
plain stupid.

5. Interface
You should be able to move units with the
mouse - with 1!!! click. And the menus are
more complicated than in SAP or MS Excel or
any other application I have seen.

6. View
The isometric view sucked in Civ 2, it
sucks here two. Have you heard of hexes?
Brian? Sid?

7. Defender always loses
Whenever there is an attack, 95 percent of
the time the attacker wins. The battleship
killing phalanx was better.

8.
All in all this is just Civ in space, no
better no worse. What was bad in Civ,
it is bad here. What was good in Civ,
it is good here. I wonder why did it take years?

posted 02-25-99 11:50 PM ET            

My god, how many (few) times have you played the game to come out with such a bunch of incorrect statements? Once? For ten minutes? (Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. )

1. If the governor is stupid, you can customise it. I tend to think that it is probably more a case of you not understanding, or not using it properly (and it is pretty hard to tell unless you give some examples). I mean if Gamespot can actually reccomend to use the governor as a learning tool (watch it, and see what it does), that leads me to believe the governor is not the one with the problem...

How are Formers stupid?

You can save build queues. Just right-click on it (and follow the options).

If you don't want too many units, don't build them. I went through last game with about 15 offensive units for the whole game, on top of 1 or 2 defensive units.

2. Oh, for god's sake, not this time reality bull**** again. Unless you want a turn to be a month, and to have to play 5000 turns to complete the game, just sit down and ignore the timeframe, and enjoy the game for what it is.

3. Funny, the last game I played, only Miriam and Yang were overtly aggressive, and Santiago to a lesser extent. But all of them calmed down when I started kicking their butts. So try playing a few different ways, and you'll see that peace can work.

4. Well, how can I argue with such an informed and well thought out criticism?

5. Well, I'll spell this out slowly. Move the mouse cursor out to where you want the unit to go. Click and hold the mouse button down. After a few seconds, a line will appear, showing the unit's path. Release, and the unit moves to there. WOW!

6. Well, how the hell can I argue again with another such well thought out criticism? Frankly, isometric gives you eight movement directions, and perfect mapping to the numeric keypad. Hex gives you reduced movement, and no logical mapping to anything. So, Isometric is allright with me.

7. Funny, I never lost a single battle (well, maybe one or two) last game, as defender or attacker. Gee, probably because I had the best tech in the game, and the enemy couldn't touch me. I certainly wouldn't come out with such a ridiculous statement that the defender loses 95% of the time. Try attacking one of yang's bases, and see how far you get...

8. The sheer brillirnce of this post makes my brain spin in dizziness. How could I ever reply.

Hmm, off the top of my head: build queues, marine bases, social engineering, unit forwarding, unit customization, unit upgrading, blind tech, enemies that actually act differently, improved diplomacy, a planetary council, an enemy/friend (Planet) that actually thinks, terraforming, the list goes on.

Please play the game at least twice before making such ill informed statements.

[/sarcasm]

posted 02-25-99 11:50 PM ET         

1) Micromanagement does bog the game down in the end but I prefer it in the long run as it gives you better control of the game.

2) The time scale has always been weird in Civ type games due mainly to the fact that they involve both massive research and wars. In Civ 1 & 2 planes take years to fly from base to base while not realistic the flip side would be to make each turn a day in which your researchers would be quite brilliant. Also there has been more than one war in history and there was a war that was known as the hundred year war that lasted quite a while. Also some of the civil wars that plague countries around the world today have been raging for years.

3) Other leaders attack me if I have different ideals that them but when I play freemarket/democratic/wealth with the Uop I can count on Morgan to be my ally. Leaders with different ideals attack though if they see weakness, much like real life.

4) This is a science fiction game. Given that the creation of almost any tech. would be justified. The techs. though DO make sense to me though that may be because I am a fan of science fiction.

5) You can move units with a click, you just have to hold down the mouse button for awhile. The interface is not that hard to learn and most frequently used commands have hotkeys.

6) The view is fine and gets the job done but then again I prefer depth in a game rather than a pretty view.

7) Defenders do not always lose. I rarely ever attack people and am here to say that my defenders almost always win. Try building peremeter defense and some moral upgrades like Children's Cretche also use Hypno. Trance to defend mindworms.

posted 02-26-99 12:43 AM ET            

2. Yes the timeframe is limiting - you cannot make a turn a week I have to agree. But 100 year wars is still abit harsh. One more thing: you can build (and lose) a very large number of troops without consequences. This is pretty unrealistic.

3. Peace can work but not in a realistic way - a nation on the brink of annihilation should beg for peace even if you planet-busted them. What did the Japanese do after the atomic bomb? Fight on? There is a long thread on this topic already, please read it.

4. Techs should have a longer text associated with them.

5. So Greg. Click and WAIT a few seconds?! Is that simple to you? To me it is not. What if in your web browser after a click, you always had to wait for a few seconds. You would go crazy.

6. OK. I agree that this was a subjective remark. But hexes are more realistic because if you are moving diagonally on squares you actually move not one but square(2).

7. At the current tech level I have a 12 attack and 8 defense level. If you have a few trained choppers they are invincible as long as they are on the attack. If the enemy attacks you however, they kill you with the same unit. If you are at approx. the same level as the AI and you use the best units, the defender almost always loses. Period. Except planes against AAA units and maybe a few other exceptions, but my best elite infantry units where unable to defend the base when the enemy attacked with a similar unit, even when I had perimeter defense.

8. I never said I didn't like the game. I just listed a few thing that I did not like about it. And yes it improves on Civ2, but I have this strange deja-vu feeling.