This question is intended primarily for players who play in the GOTM games.

From the perspective of a GOTM player: If you could permanently remove a feature from Civ3 what would it be and why?

Poofing troops. Flippin is lippin but poofing is an air ball. I can see this if its Shaka, cause they eat people but Joanie wouldn't cause she ain't a real witch. So, where do they go. The recycle bin?

For each action there has to be an equal reaction so I theorize that in another dimension they show up at frat parties and union meetings. I mean what did Soren think, that we would not notice the loss of 34 horsemen?

I just leave them to stew and grit their teeth. In one of my present games I have conquered six civs and have moved to the seventh but I still have resisters in the cities of the third civ I overran. I am not sending troops in there. I would like to send Soren in there and see if he poofed. Maybe he would like some of his own medicine.

We can only pick one? :)

My first choice would be great leaders - they're silly. (They could be improved, but changing isn't an option here!)

But there are several other things I'd love to have removed or somewhat modified: upgrading, resources disappearing, potential RoP abuse, etc.

-Sirp.

Governors. Improve them or remove them.

Pollution and global warming. It's too tedious in the late game, and the AI never has enough workers to clean up their own pollution anyways.

Leaders, probably. Because the random factor of when they appear is so large, and also because milking weak enemies for leaders is pretty artificial.

(Perhaps there should be some other way to build the Forbidden Palace, if there's no leader, though. Or perhaps it would just force more compact kingdoms, instead of the dumbbell shape.)

I'd also like surplus food and shields to carry over, instead of being lost, to reduce micromanagement, but I think that's more like adding a feature than removing one.

I'd also like changes to how culture flips work, although they don't need to be eliminated. Distance from the capital should add or subtract, not just divide the probability, so that if a city is very close to my capital and far from my opponent, it will never flip away from me, or has a good chance to flip to me.

I'll get ridiculed for saying this, but I'd remove ALL the great wonders. I particularly think that Pyramids, TOE and the internet are exploitative out of all proportion to their cost. Furthermore they are one of the reasons the AI play so badly on all but deity level.

Wonders are also the main reason that leaders are a joke. A civ can put huge effort into building a wonder, compromising all kinds of aspects of the game only to be beaten to it by a lucky leader. Without wonders leaders could only build armies, which have limited advantages.

I think I can safely say I'm on my own with this opinion...:)

I'd do away with the possibilities of a very early AI rush, which on higher levels can decimate your chances of playing a succesful game. Thankfully, I haven't encountered this in the GotM yet, but I lost tournament game 4-2 in 2850 BC due to an early AI rush.

Also, I'm totally with removing pollution from the game, it doesn't do anything but irritate late in the game, especially with a non-industrious civ.

Corruption!

I hate the way corruption is at the moment. I just find it too extreme. I can deal with it but it's such a bore.


Ted

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
Leaders, probably. Because the random factor of when they appear is so large.

Leaders are good , the really annoying fact is the random factor:cry: .

Ressources moving is weird. I could understand that the ressource could disappear because of extensive exploitation and that you would need to find more however this random effect is irrating.

If we go that way we could have sizeable ressource allowing a production of limited units and then you could have workers digging / searching to find more ressource
This solution could become quite tricky as to produce a spear / battleship you need different amounts of iron :confused:

Corruption is a way to reduce the effect of having a large empire giving you a definitive edge over the others. With corruption, you need a sizeable empire to win and not the biggest.

Leader production rushing -- I think they ought to lead!

Of course the way armies are done in this game is still missing a few bits, but that's another matter.

My first choice would be Diplomatic Wins !!!! It is so frustrating building your empire, leading in score and just becasue you do not build the UN, the AI does , calls a vote and then everything is over in an instant :mad:

God do I hate that - unless they voted for me, that is.


2nd choice - Corruption - also very annoying. Los Angeles seems to be doing just fine, way over there away from DC.

Well, since I started the thread I guess I should post ;)

My pet peve is the 'teleport' when you demand trespassers to get out. They should go back to the capital, not zap across the continent to my personal reserve.


Corruption and diplo wins can be reduced/changed by options/editors.

Don't take away the leaders - not that I've gotten one in a GOTM recently. :cry:

Leaders are ok in my book. Could probably be handeled better.
More annoying to me is the randomness of strategic resources dissapearing. I like CDB's idea..or something along those lines.

Since I'm a former dairy farmer, I have to say "Pollution". Either give us better tool to manage them or to remove them.

I'd change leaders to add 200 shields to any project they helped. I think individuals get somewhat less important and influential as time goes on. Would be a great deal in the early ages, but tail off as time goes on... possibly enhance armies to gain more benefits, 2 square viewing distance for example.

The randomness point is also an issue... but not sure how that could be fixed. Fished for 5340 years (not that I was counting!), with several wars in a certain recent game to get my very first leader :( Then got another one two turns later :rolleyes:

I never seem to get them, thus in the higher levels I almost never get any wonders. I don't mind them for armies, but they are too random to make any sense. I think thats the point, in that they can give you a great jump when least expected, but....

I also dislike how the corruption, maybe adding more than one FP, but having the price go up each time would work out in some way.

True, one can turn off Dip wins, but not in the GOTM. Cracker would be mad at me:mad:

So, a function that I cannot change, that I wished was different, is the ability to upgrade the units in my armies.

First : I like leaders, to me they are a fun element. The only thing against them is that they are random. In a 1 player that isn't a problem, but in a GOTM it can be.

What I want to change: Ships. It appalls me that in the real world Magellen could circumnavigate the world in a couple years, where in Civ it takes 300+.

I'd remove the limitation of workable land per city, its far too artificial and might become a much more engaging game if the culture boundaries actually meant something more than nothing.

Other things high on the list is leaders but not completely remove the rushing, maybe reduce it to 100 or 200 shields only. I agree with jeff about the ships, but there are far more problems than just movement needed to fix the naval elements.

Agree totally with you Smirk on the land issue. It's kind of silly to limit each city to a 2 hex radius from 4000BC to current date.

I think Firaxis did a streamlining job on Civ3, making it as simple as possible. Only thing I would remove is limitations on map size.

All features which bring too much luck into the game:

1) Great leaders (I liked the caravans in civ2 much more to rush wonders because they at least needed some planning)

2) Galleys surviving on ocean squares

3) free palace jump (probably a never intended exploit)

4) donating cities to the AI

I would like to see the AI programmed to understand how to use artillery. At that phase of the game, the AI is pitifully disadvantaged. So, I guess I don't really want to see anything removed, just something improved...

I guess I agree with valjean in the fact that the AI, while improving could be much better. I'd like wars to not be as predictable as far as 3 dumb archers coming after my fortified musketmen with 2 knights ready to clean them up. Besides that, I think all games will have exploits that as long as they are agreed upon to be ok, are ok with me.

I would change the wasted shield/food on production/growth feature. It should cascade to the next production or pop rather than going to waste. This is what makes city micromanagement a necessity in order to do well. Excess food/shield should cascade to next production/pop! If they worry about using this cascade to get an immediate great wonder, they just need to add in an additional logic which says cascade excess cannot be in excess of current production shield requirement.

Also, the fix on size 6/7 growth bug wasn't good. It goes from being a bug that can be exploit to an absolute losing deal if you go from size 7 to size 6, which I am avoiding as much as possible.

Originally posted by scubagtr
2nd choice - Corruption - also very annoying. Los Angeles seems to be doing just fine, way over there away from DC.

I think the corruption in DC is a little higher than in LA.

Originally posted by Ronald
2) Galleys surviving on ocean squares


Oh, I agree with Ronald. I forgot about this when I posted earlier. My #1 change would be galleys always sink in sea or ocean: no more suicide galleys. Just because it's silly that the human can do this and the computer players can't. Also creates quite an incentive to cheat (although most of us can resist that).

I don't know about removing, but perhaps having some extra things that are possible to change in the editor if so desired.

1. You can only get leaders after you acquire a certain tech. In the default game, there would be no tech requirement, but if for a competition game or something, you could set it so you can't get any leaders until you learn Fuedalism (just as an example), or some other tech in the middle ages.
Imagine an always war game where you already know you can't get a leader for the Great Libary :eek:
2. On/off switch for whether or not suicide galleys are possible.
3. Set goody hut results to always produce the same thing, no matter when you pop them (exactly which tech you get if awarded one, would of course vary depending on what techs you have, though).

Originally posted by Ronald
1) Great leaders (I liked the caravans in civ2 much more to rush wonders because they at least needed some planning)

3) free palace jump (probably a never intended exploit)

I agree, but only if BOTH are removed. Free palace jump is a planning-based alternative to the lucky early leader.

I would like to see infantry removed. Industrial age combat often results in large stack of cavalry, huge stack of artillery,pounding cities down to below size seven and redlining the infantry guarding them -cavalry then waltzes in. Then again and again and again.
Failing that I would like to see more industrial age UUs. From reading what people have said in other threads about their favourite age of the game-they seem to like the ancient and then the middle ages the best. I think that they like these because of the UUs that come into play and the military mismatches they can achieve without having to resort to the artillery stack. Warfare is also more interesting as you have to plan for meeting particular AI UUs in combat.

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
Just because it's silly that the human can do this and the computer players can't.

I am not sure about that I am quite sure I have seen an AI American Galley crossing the ocean and surviving.

I agree with jeff and Smirk on ships. This issue is even more appaling when arise Steam Power. you can travel accross continents in seconds but still ships are sailing ...sailing for ages. It just rebuff me of using them.

Originally posted by CdB


I am not sure about that I am quite sure I have seen an AI American Galley crossing the ocean and surviving.

After the AI gets Navigation or Magnetism all ships, including galleys, can safely traverse ocean tiles. But they will never use suicide galleys.

These ideas will probably sound a little weird, but here goes. They could be seen as either additions or subtractions depending on your point of view.

Barbs should capture workers and settlers and send them back to a camp before killing them, instead of killing them immediately. This would allow a player (or an AI) to recapture them.

It should be possible to capture a GL. This would add some interesting counterattack scenarios, especially when playing a non-militaristic civ against militaristic AI. It would make losing a GL even more painful, adding to the importance of protecting them.

Ships which are in port when a city is captured should be captured, not destroyed. Same goes for airplanes.

Auto razing a city should result in a worker being generated. The 1 pop needs to go somewhere.

It should be possible to join two workers into a settler. Alternatively have the 1st one build a colony and the 2nd one turn the colony into a town. Another alternative would be to "upgrade" a worker to a settler in a city by using up the worker, gold to equal the settler's shields, and one pop.

Originally posted by d8575

It should be possible to join two workers into a settler. Alternatively have the 1st one build a colony and the 2nd one turn the colony into a town. Another alternative would be to "upgrade" a worker to a settler in a city by using up the worker, gold to equal the settler's shields, and one pop.

Then why would anyone build a 30 shield settler, when they can effectively get a 20 shield settler by building 2 workers?

I kind of like the other ideas, though. (Ships and planes would probably have to be destroyed though, if you didn't have the tech requirements to know how to use them-similar to how scouts can either be destroyed or captured depending if you are expansionists (can build your own scouts) or not.

Originally posted by CruddyLeper
Agree totally with you Smirk on the land issue. It's kind of silly to limit each city to a 2 hex radius from 4000BC to current date.


If you're looking for some sort of historical versimilitude, it's kind of silly to expect cities in the industrial (or modern) era to generate enough food to feed themselves.

But that's not really what Civ is about.

I think you ought to be able to build a forbidden palace for EVERY 8 citys. My complete distaste for corruption and waste keeps me from expanding when I need to.

And war weariness should be calculated on how you are doing in the war. If you are winning big the population should be cheering you on, and if you are in a stalemate or losing they should turn on you.

The one thing I'd get rid of is the annoying way the Foreign Advisor works during trade negotiations. You're not negotiating with the AI, you're playing 20 questions with the FA.

Hmm.. offer 120 gold.. "Oh, I doubt they'd accept...". Okay, 140 gold "We're getting close..." 150? "getting close" 160? "getting close" A HUNDRED AND FLIPPIN' SEVENTY?? "getting close..." :cringe: Ackk! 180?, oh that's acceptable. Now we gotta do a binary search between 180 and 170 to get the best deal :sad:

This isn't negotiating! We haven't even made an offer to the AI yet! We're "negotiating" with the FA, but not really. The FA KNOWS the threshold, but he plays hard-to-guess. I get the feeling that he's really in the service of the AI. I despise him :vampire:

The true negotiation is between you and Civ3 - how much real time are you willing to waste with a boring and repetitive task in order to maximize your profit? There is no skill involved at all, just a mindless zeroing in on a value that the FA knows all along. And how does he know??.

And, how ridiculous is it that the FA knows things like whether the AI has a positive cash flow? Joan, how about you give me 1 gold per turn for Iron? FA: "Oh, they'd NEVER do that"!! [punch]

where to begin??

Get rid of waste/corruption!

Allow more than 1 leader at a time.

Let all units use airports.



I could go on and on....

Get rid of the stupid penalty you get when someone else pillage a traderoute. Why should everyone hate you for something you didn't do in the first place. Or at least set a turnlimit of the "hate"!

They need to make Naval, Naval Aviation, and Aviation warfare more realisitic.

First of all a carrier is much faster than a battleship. So much more faster that it is classified. Battleships are loaded with armor which make them heavy and slow. Second, a carrier battle group can go from San Diego to the Persian Gulf in one month. I can see, galleys and Galleons being slow due to their reliance on the wind. But carriers should get somewhere around 12-15 tiles per turn.

Second, Aircraft should be able to kill any kind of unit. If you don't believe me, ask all the Germans that were killed in the Eighth Air Force's saturation bombing in WWI. Or ask the Japanese at the Battle of Midway.

Get rid of micromanagement, short-rushing, wastage of the carry-over of food/shields/gold and other tactics that don't require any skill, just the tedium of counting and doing simple math.

Waste in the form of corruption is a good thing, as it keeps the game balanced, and big civs just don't keep getting bigger. But there is no reason that food/shields can't carry over to the next population/building/unit. With no waste in this form, the AI would actually be better off, and the AI wouldn't need such large discounts.

Aircraft rebasing should be limited in range. You don't need aircraft carriers when you can teleport your bomber right around the world in 1 turn. Fuel in Civ2 was annoying but there should be some other limitation to stop this. I would love to land at the enemies doorstep with 10 carriers loaded to the teeth with bombers (I did in the latest GOTM for the fun of it!) but really, it isn't necessary at all.

Sailorstick,
If you think of a turn as a year. Any aircraft can get from one part of the world to another in a year. What would probably make it more realistic is if you gave aircraft a limited range say 20 tiles, but 10 moves. That way if you have strategically placed cities, you can fly around the world, but you have to occasionally land to refuel. Example: B-52's and B-1's can bomb Iraq from Diego Garcia, but not from Sydney.

This would also make the carriers more important, because you could strategically place your carriers off an ememy's coast to use it as a very limited airport. Sort of like we do today.

Just two cents from a fly boy.

Yep, agreed Sir Bugsy, it definitely needs doing.
12 tiles and 3 relocations sounds pretty good. (Keeping in mind that a naval unit should be able to cross the world in 1 turn aswell using the same logic, but it would be a game killer.)

Well, since I'm so late to the party, I'll throw out more than one idea...

Naval movement should be heavily modified. Keep the movement points for each ship, but move on any controlled water like it is a railroad, and unexplored water uses movement points--as you move INTO a square not out of like current. You would use movement points in other civs waters--say at triple the normal cost. Unclaimed water would get better movement bonuses as you got the techs. So with Navigation and modern ships, for example, unclaimed water would be treated like railroads.

You could instantly get an invasion to the enemy waters, but if his boundary extended far enough you may not be able to get to land on the same turn. (Or you'd have to land away from his major coastal cities, like in real life.) This is important since the downside is, ships SINK. Artillery, coastal forts and aircraft should be able to completely kill a ship. (Ships could not kill each other in a bombarment situation unless you wanted to get into the ranges of the guns on the ship types and allow the longer range one to kill one that is out of range of retaliation.) Damage would spread around all ships as normal but you'd sink the escorts first to leave transports to land an invasion.

I'd also like some sort of BENEFIT for building ships--or at least a reason to. Maybe ships don't have an upkeep cost, or you gain 1gpt for each ship per each civ with a harbor as extra trade income. Why did England build her navy and why don't you need it in civ? It's abstracted away into building harbors to make the trade routes, but maybe there should be a factor like you need X number of ships per city per good or resource to be able to get the benefit of what you're importing which would at least force you to build some ships.


I would not like to see air or artillery changed away from red-lining ground units--WWII and Vietnam proved that you could carpet bomb something and still not completely destroy ground units. Reduce buildings to rubble, yes, but dug-in troops crawl out of their holes to defend that rubble.


I do NOT understand why they have that 40 turn no-research tech advance in the game. Especially when you consider that the advancements have an infrastructure component. Edison can 'invent' Electricity, but you need to wire up your country before it does you any good! Engineering lets you build a bridge over a river, but presumably what you were 'researching' was actually getting all the rivers bridged!

So I want you to have to spend as many beakers as it takes to get that advancement and not just be able to put one scientist on the job. If you want to build a forbidden palace you need 200 shields, not just 40 turns! (Maybe GLs should be able to rush a tech, then?)


Finally, I would like to change the build queue so that shields are NOT transferable. You start a temple and switch to a galley, the galley has 0 shields in it, but the game remembers how many shields you had in the temple so you can come back and finish it later! The building will still be standing there half-finished, after all. If they wanted to get really tricky, you COULD allow switching from some buidings to others with little or no shield loss--a Temple or Library or Courthouse, for example, is just a shell of a buidling that you just put to a different use.

Originally posted by pterrok
I do NOT understand why they have that 40 turn no-research tech advance in the game.

You can easily change this in the editor. It would be fine with me to have some GOTM games where min research is effectively disallowed (by setting it to 500 turns). In most GOTMs it wouldn't make very much difference, because you can do about as well by doing full research, but it wouldn't do any harm to the game (imho) by adding variety by allowing min research in some games but not others. The AI never does min research, so it's only an advantage (or, I suppose, perhaps a trap) for the human player.

Finally, I would like to change the build queue so that shields are NOT transferable. You start a temple and switch to a galley, the galley has 0 shields in it, but the game remembers how many shields you had in the temple so you can come back and finish it later! The building will still be standing there half-finished, after all.

IIRC in CivII you lost half your production as a penatly for switching. Here there is no penalty. If you want to play a game like that (to make a self impossed penalty) you could switch to wealth to wipe the slate clean then make your new building with an empty box the next turn. I thinik that was the premise of Epic 12.

There should be no switching (or a penalty for switching), and carryover of excess shields (so that if you generate more shields than necessary to fill the box, the remainder appear in the box next turn and can be used on a new project). The two really go naturally together. See discussion of this in the Conquests requests forum (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=107).

Originally posted by DaviddesJ
There should be no switching (or a penalty for switching), and carryover of excess shields (so that if you generate more shields than necessary to fill the box, the remainder appear in the box next turn and can be used on a new project). The two really go naturally together. See discussion of this in the Conquests requests forum (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=107).
Agreed - While I make use of the ability to switch all the time, it doesn't really make sense to build 98% of a temple and suddenly decide that you are really building a cavalry.

Oh well.

One of these days I'm gonna have to look into that editor!

So if Cracker wanted to, not only could he mold a game where the minimum tech rate was 81 turns (to keep it out of the QSC timeframe) but he could also set the Conquest, Open and Predator to have slightly different minimum tech times? Cool!

It's a big deal for players who always just go for Writing in 40 to build gold up and then trade it to get other techs they missed--if they had to wait 80 turns for Writing or if the AI got it first...I may have to set something up and try it myself.


hortrod0823, yeah, you also lost a bunch of productivity in SMAC when you changed in the middle, but I want the game to keep track of the progress of the individual things you've started so you never really lose shields, you just can's slam them right into something else.


A great feature from Master of Orion 3 is that when you've sorted your planets, when you step through them they come up in that sorted order. It would be nice to add that to Civ, so that when you've sorted the cities on shields, for example, the arrow keys would step through them in that order.

And add a way to sort the cities on the F5 culture screen!

Originally posted by pterrok
It's a big deal for players who always just go for Writing in 40 to build gold up and then trade it to get other techs they missed--if they had to wait 80 turns for Writing or if the AI got it first...I may have to set something up and try it myself.


As cracker often says, I think that if you try it both ways (do full research instead of min research), you'll find that the benefits of min research aren't that great. Not that it doesn't work, but full research works too, and the net gain from one to the other isn't so much.

Agreed - While I make use of the ability to switch all the time, it doesn't really make sense to build 98% of a temple and suddenly decide that you are really building a cavalry.

DaviddesJ is saying that if you have 59 shields towards a temple, and your city produces, say 13 shields/turn, the 12 shields (that is essentially wasted) should go to the next thing you decide to build.
Having excess materials left over could be salvaged for other things in real life.

Getting rid of waste in this form would help the AI.

Originally posted by Bamspeedy


DaviddesJ is saying that if you have 59 shields towards a temple, and your city produces, say 13 shields/turn, the 12 shields (that is essentially wasted) should go to the next thing you decide to build.
Having excess materials left over could be salvaged for other things in real life.

Getting rid of waste in this form would help the AI.

Agreed as well. DaviddesJ was addressing two issues. I was only talking about the switching issue.
I do agree that the overflow would also do a lot to help the AI.