Sunday 11 January 2004

Pic of the day: One of the few places where Feudalism is viable is where cities are forced to remain small. Then it is no worse than plain Monarchy. (Screenshot from Civ3 Conquests.)

Civ3: Feudalism is dead

Shame on Firaxis for dramatically changing the Feudalism government in Civ3 after printing the manual. The two new governments were a main attraction of the Conquests expansion pack. According to the manual, "corruption is lessened due to a decentralized administrative system". No, it ain't. Corruption is basically the same as in Monarchy, which is available much earlier in the game. "Maintenance costs for units is increased, but city improvements have no maintenance costs." Wrong again. City improvements have the usual maintenance cost. In fact, Feudalism is simply a crippled form of Monarchy. You pay more upkeep for your units, you have some war weariness, and cities give less free units the larger they grow, opposite of Monarchy. Oh, and you cannot pay for rush jobs to finish a project, you have to kill off citizens for it. Great, just great.

This could have been so good. Historically, feudalism went together with a conservative society. In the game, Feudalism as described in the manual would be a natural choice for a civilization slowing down: The free buildings and expensive units would discourage expansion and encourage building up the existing cities. Now it has no function whatsoever. It may be argued that it was a bad idea in real life too; but in Europe at least it remained popular for hundreds of years. It took the Black Death to finally put an end to it. And if not for the geniuses of Machiavelli (division of power) and Adam Smith (capitalism) we might still have slid back into the Middle Ages again, at least politically.

Well, that's it. Just thought I would warn y'all, since I had told that I was playing this game. It is generally an OK game, stable and well balanced. But if you don't play multiplayer or (like I do) run several of the civilizations yourself, it is hardly worth the money. The original Civ3 is probably good enough for most. And if not, there is Double Your Pleasure, a free expansion which adds an immense heap of new units, buildings and technologies as well as changing some basic properties of the game.