Caltrops - Article Submissions

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by FABIO 04/25/2003, 4:02pm PDT

laudablepuss wrote:

I loved AC as well, although two things annoyed me: I couldn't mass troops -- fights involved one unit attacking at a time like in Civ 3 -- and the defenders were way too tough. That's really one thing since the defenders being too powerful was probably a game balance thing that resulted directly from having to fight one unit at a time.

huh? I remember the exact opposite being true. At the same tech level, armor was equal to firepower up until about halfway through the game, when firepower started being double the defense value of the armor of the same tech level. That is one of the thing that annoyed the hell out of me and eventually made me stop playing; at that point combat boiled down to simply whoever was the attacker won. You'd have to be in a base with max defense bonus structures just in order to have a 50/50 chance. I much preferred the early game where firepower equalled armor and in order to take well defended cities you had to wear them down with artillery or pillage the surrounding improvements until the base couldn't produce enough industry to support its units anymore.

The other things that, although they didn't totally ruin the game, annoyed me enough so that I eventually stopped playing and kept this game from becoming a timeless classic I could never get tired of:

Mindworms- Holy FUCK did those things get out of control annoying mid to late game. Even if your bases produced no pollution whatsoever you'd still have half a dozen daemon swarms popping up in your land every few turns because the fucking gay backstory demanded it. I'd have to assign two dedicated psych combat coptors to every base to keep them under control, and even that sometime's wasn't enough. What really makes it gay is that they're suppose to be Gaia's reaction to human intrusion, but rather than limiting pollution and trying to co-exist with "planet", the best way to combat worms was to colonize every square inch of land since worms couldn't start off in base control zones, which totally went against the whole environmentally friendly thing. And even THEN you'd still get floating colonies dropping off worms or locusts or whateverthefuck. Mind worms also ensured me I'd never fucking touch any unity pod I came across, as it seemed I'd unearth a mindworm swarm rather than a juicy powerup about 75% of the time.

Retarded AI- Can we please get an AI in a Civ/MOO game for once that relies on strategy instead of cheating to win? Does the technology not exist? Devote your time to writing 100 pages of fanfiction for your encyclopedia manual ONLY AFTER you make an AI that doesn't suck.

Diplomacy that works- I guess this could fall under retarded AI, but can we have computer opponents that don't arbitrarily change their minds about you every few turns? I mean after all, only a small percentage of the faction leaders were women.

Some wonky unit improvements- Ok, I love how you can customize each unit, it was one of the features that assured I could never, ever go back to Civ2. And how the default name for each unit is "unit weapon + unit armor + special ability" which allowed you to easily keep track of what each unit was good for. But like MOO and other games that have this feature, a lot of them were useless. Some of them seemed unbalanced. An infantry chassis costs the same as a deathsphere chassis? Well ok if you say so. Plus discovering the level 2 reactor before anyone else gave you a ridiculously huge advantage over everyone; you HAD to get it before the computer or you were fucked. Higher level reactors make the unit cheaper? Howzzat?

Ugly ass color pallete- Less reds and browns plz!

Missing bells and whistles- Where the hell is my throne room? Why can't I get a cool zoomed out view of my cities like I could in every Civ game since the original?