New Wonder & City Improvement in PTW

[Thunderfall]

According to the PTW preview at Frictionless Insight, Firaxis plans to add some new structures such as wonder & city improvement to the game:

In an effort to add some depth to the tail-end of the single player game, the developers are considering a number of changes. There may be a new Great Wonder (possibly The Internet, which one could theorize would act as a Research Lab in every city). City improvements are also under consideration. A "Civil Defense" type structure might be added to improve the defense of large, modern cities. A "commercial dock" of some sort might be added. Also, while research institutions have three levels (Library, University and Research Lab), economic improvements only have two (Marketplace and Bank). A "Mega-Bank" type improvement would add a third level of economic activity to modern cities.

http://www.frictionlessinsight.com/PC_Previews/Civ3Expansion/Civ3Expansion.htm

 

[cracker]

It is good to hear that Firaxis is continuing to pay attention to the end game. Currently there is no value to playing out into that range of time once you have already seen the units work.

It would be nice if Future techs were not esssentially worthless on the point scale.

Also, in terms of wonders and improvements, I have repeatedly come up against the case were I need improvements to make "happiness" but need to try and avoid culture. Currently, the happiness improvements also generate culture and when 1000 years old can really shut down the game just when it is getting good. Perhaps we can have a few city improvements that just create happiness without creating culture. I keep trying to think of examples and my short list includes things that could be described as elements of culture in a socially weak sort of way:

bars and restaurants
indoor swimming pools
health clubs and/or spas
parks, playgrounds, and/or horticulture centers
video stores

the key is to build some smaller things like Shakespeare's theatre that can substitute in games when you wish to avoid culture bamboozle and when you do not want to have to go and kill the other civs just to get them to trade luxuries at a reasonable rate.

 

[Pangur Bán]

Ah, they're going to add the Internet, I'm glad to hear they are (or might be) taking some ideas from ctp2. The Internet was CTP2's version of the Seti Project.
I hadn't actually noticed that they left the Stock Exchange out of Civ3. All fireaxis seem to be doing is giving us what they should have given us in the first place and making more money because of it.

 

[God]

They should make a small wonder, national park to fight pollution.

If they put in the Internet, is there any point in having the Seti Project?

 

[Exsanguination]

i think the internet should act as a Modern-Age Great Library. I think the game needs one.

 

[Loopy]

Originally posted by God
If they put in the Internet, is there any point in having the Seti Project?

Yes. I don't remember if the game makes the distinction but SETI is the "Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence". It's pretty much done by using an array of radio telescopes to scan the sky across the microwave frequency band. In theory, this could be done by hand, with a person sitting at a terminal staring at a display. It's a lot faster to split the work up and send it to individual computers who volunteer for the Seti at Home project. The internet makes the search faster, but the search would go on without it.

 

[JBearIt]

The article writer was just "theorizing" what the internet wonder could do. In otherwords, that may not be Firaxis' intent. Perhaps the wonder would provide some other benefit.

 

[GoalieCivPi]

Yes, perhaps it increases trade(flow of infomation), possibly it is a small wonder that the more civs that have it the more effective it is, of course this would be at the expensise of, say 5% of the labourers who refuse to work while they are posting messages on the internet about what the internet should do to a game that will soon be played on the internet, after which those 5% will just be playing that game on the internet

 

[Graeme the mad]

Whats with this mega bank idea?????

A mega bank doesn't even exist - whats wrong with stock exchange??

(though of course if they do that Im going to have to thing of another name than central exchange for what is called the 'wall street' wonder.

 

[yelahneb]

my thought: as has been suggested, make the Internet a wonder, as the modern equivalent of the Great Library, and allows for the construction/existence of something like "e-commerce", which would serve as the next step after marketplace and bank.

having Wall Street as a small wonder eleviates any need for building stock exchanges in every city in a way; however, bringing them into Civ3 would be fine as well (though if they did this, i think you shouldn't be able to build them until after constructing Wall Street). After all, there are many different stock exchanges all over the US and the world other than the NYSE.

if that was the case, then building The Internet would allow you to build research centers (just like the SETI Program wonder) in each city.

and i agree - i would love to see modern improvements expanded in such a way that they're useful. adding things like Cloning and Nanotechnology as advances and The Internet and The Human Genome Project as wonders would be cool - though i'll just add them and others myself if not (yay for the June patch!).

it's such a small thing, but i'm really excited about the addition of radar towers and outposts - though i hope they can be built on mountains. another mod to make if they don't officially!

 

[Kilroy]

Let's see a specialist that generates production!

 

[kring]

That would come in handy since we already have the Science and Gold Specialists to boost those parts of the spending.