I am toying with an idea to speed up the game a bit, while saving the opportunity for some exploration and settling of new cities for much later in the game. I am looking to see if anyone else is thinking in a similar direction, or has any suggestions on this idea.

My idea is to greatly increase the cost of settlers, i.e. maybe to a cost of between 100 and 150 and at least two population points. I also want to increase the cost of all military units (double or triple original values) and charge a population point for each unit.

I am hoping that this will greatly reduce the speed with which civs expand, and increase the strategic placement of new settlers to take control of resources as they become available. It also will reduce the number of military units that the computer has to operate each time.

Because each civ will have fewer cities, I am planning to make a few changes to accommodate this difference. First, I will increase the break between levels from 6 and 12 to 8 and 16 or even 9 and 18. Second, I will facilitate better food production by making a Fishing Pier improvement available from the beginning of the game to increase food in the ocean tiles.

Third, I will put in an early improvement such as an Academy that will increase research output; a university will also increase research output when it comes along. Also, I would significantly increase the effect of the scientist citizen. Together these changes should offset the decrease in number of cities to facilitate continued scientific advancement. (It may be necessary to lower the cost of some of the advancements slightly.)

Fourth. I would put in an early improvement such as a tax collector's office to increase the money available early on. This office would, of course, have an adverse effect on the city's happiness, while increasing income.

Fifth, I would generally increase the value of the various resources, making it very important to site cities at locations that can take advantages of these resources.

Sixth, I am looking to increase the number and variety of improvements that a city can build.

Finally, with fewer cities that are spread out a little more, it makes sense to increase movement values significantly. Roads may go to a movement value of 5 or even 6; and all naval units will have movement values doubled.

Hopefully, these changes will return the value to the colony concept in Civ3. Now it might make sense to send a worker out to start a colony to take advantage of that iron, because it will be a while before you can produce a settler to start a city there.

There are other things I am thinking about that take the game in different directions, but let me stop here and get some feedback. The bottom line is, do you think these changes will successfully speed up the computer when it makes its moves, and does it have the prospect of speeding up the game in general because there are fewer cities and units to manage?

a few suggestions if you want to go ahead with your plans:

1. If you want to make settlers SO expensive, allow each civ to start out with 2 settlers to allow for decent growth at the beginning of the game.

2. Find a way to make corruption less of a problem because cities will be spread out more; A few ways of doing this include:
a. Have Great Wall (or other city improvements/wonders) combat corruption
b. upgrade the "Corruption and Waste" value for each government (except Anarchy and Communism); or instead of that, you could make some new governments yourself

3. Decrease the number of turns required for a worker to complete Roads and Railroads to further facilitate movement. Maybe do this INSTEAD of increasing movement points for ground units. This will allow ground units to move faster, but will not give them an added bonus when attacking within enemy borders. You won't get the advantage of enemy roads, and if you increased all units' movement points, you could theoretically move from one enemy city to the next too quickly for them to defend themselves. Even worse, enemies could attack your cities too quickly for YOU to defend yourself :cry:
But you will still want to increase the movement points for settlers (to spread out cities more quickly) and workers (to move, then start project like build roads, all in the same turn). And do whatever you want with boat movements, as they obviously don't worry about roads.

Nice idea about the Fishing Pier improvement. I had also been thinking about an improvement that would increase the productivity of coastal squares within the city radius.

But don't we already have the right improvement, that just needs tweaking?

Building a Harbor implies that a fishing fleet could become more viable. We could just tweak the Harbor so that it improves the productivity of coastal and sea squares, especially Fish and Whales?

Whim:)

The reason I propose a fishing pier as an alternative to the harbor is that the harbor is an essential element in the development of trade, and this is rightly dependent on certain civilization advances. I was thinking that the fishing pier would have no prerequisites.

Also, I like the idea of starting the game with two settlers and then restricting the availability of settlers through higher price or perhaps putting in a civilization advance prerequisite. But I am thinking that if one starts the game with two Settlers, it may need to have a defensive value of say 2 to keep it from getting knocked off by barbarians before it can settle a town.

Finally, I would not change movement points on mosts units from 1 to 2, but merely increase the movement value of roads from 3 to perhaps 5.

Not sure if you were already aware of this, but the Harbor already does increase food in water squares around the city it's built in.

Adding another might stack together (not sure), and I guess it would be possible to add an Offshore Platform effect also to another improvement alot earlier in the game.

Do a *.mp3 search in your civ3 directory. I'm pretty sure those are the ambient music files.

Originally posted by Plutarck
Not sure if you were already aware of this, but the Harbor already does increase food in water squares around the city it's built in.

Adding another might stack together (not sure), and I guess it would be possible to add an Offshore Platform effect also to another improvement alot earlier in the game.

Having another improvement to give extra food in the ocean will not cause any problem. What I have done (borrowed the idea from a friend) is to let Offshore Platform to also give a +1 food in the sea. This is to reflect that the new platform represent a new breeding ground for fishes and increase the fish stock significantly (as it is the true in real life ).

However, I notice a bug on how Civ3 update the food count in a city (hmmm...no one mentioned this bug before). If a city reaches its max size, a polluted square does not decrease its total food count/neither does building a new improvement such as Offshore Platform increase it. However, when you cleared the polluted square, the city will start to grow (even if there are no new food produced) and then start starvation when it hit the max size again

Originally posted by bst1
Do a *.mp3 search in your civ3 directory. I'm pretty sure those are the ambient music files.

If you're responding to my post on a separate thread -- I'm looking for the ambient sound effects, not the ambient music. (I usually turn off the music and play CDs instead.)

The ambient sound effects are .WAV files in the Civ3\Sounds\Ambient subdirectory. I know where they are. What I want to do is set up the program to play some other .WAV files I've added to that directory as additional ambient sound effects. Merely adding additional .WAV files to that subdirectory doesn't do the trick. There's problably some coding involved, but I don't know where to start.

Thanks anyway.

Whim:)

Not sure if you were already aware of this, but:

Civilization III has SIX difficulty levels, same as in Civ2.

Level Content Citizens AI Build Rate Barbarian combat bonus
--------------------------------------------------------
Chieftain 4 200% 400%
Warlord 3 120% 200%
Prince 2 100% 100%
King 2 90% 50%
Emperor 1 80% 25%
Deity 1 60% 0%


* AI build rate is how quickly the AI builds stuff (on chieftan he takes twice as long to build or advance). Barbarian bonus is the advantage your troops have over barbarians.

*There are also some other changes as level increases, like the AI is less like likely to deal and more likely to break a deal once made.

Also:

*Chieftain is easier than it was in Civ II and Deity is now harder. Below Prince level it cheats for the player, and above Prince level it cheats against the player. At Prince level there is no cheating.

"Ei oppi ojaan kaada" :o

Originally posted by PepsiFizz
...

Also, I like the idea of starting the game with two settlers and then restricting the availability of settlers through higher price or perhaps putting in a civilization advance prerequisite. But I am thinking that if one starts the game with two Settlers, it may need to have a defensive value of say 2 to keep it from getting knocked off by barbarians before it can settle a town.

...

Note that starting with 2 settleres means starting with NO workers. I'd say requiring a civ advance to make settlers might be a little extreme since humans have been nomadic settlers since the beginning of time. Higher price would be feasable though.

Originally posted by Zippo


Note that starting with 2 settleres means starting with NO workers.

I think this is a fair exchange; if you increase the cost of settlers, the relative cost of workers goes down in comparison to settlers. Therefore, I'd prefer to start with 2 settlers and build 1 worker quickly rather than start with one of each and have to build an expensive settler right away.

very good idea, PepsiFizz!
is there a MOD already with those customizations?
sry, i know this is very old post, but i'm new member...

Wow, that's quite a bump! But it's all right because he's asking a valid question.

Rhye's of Civilization modpack adopts this basic idea, and it works pretty well. Go to the Completed Modpacks forum for a closer look.