Suggestions for Firaxis developers from people who respect you

[Libertarian]

Rest assured that most of us hold you fine people in the highest regard. Much respect and admiration for you and your team on A SPLENDID JOB WELL DONE!

[...applause for Firaxis developers...]

We know that you have a lot of work cut out for you. There's only so much a person can do in a day. If you wouldn't mind, please log the suggestions made in this thread, and review them when you have the time. Thanks.

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• You alread know about the major bugs, like air defence, so there's really no reason to go into those here.
• Ditto on the major oversights, like initial civilization placement and zooming in the editor and game.
• This one might be a bit difficult to implement, but is there any way that you could stop the program from jerking us away in the middle of a battle only to focus us on an irrelevant worker on the other side of the continent? A battle is a train of thought, and it's easily lost if you're pulled away from it.
• Could you have the program save the name changes we enter at the start of the game? Once we've entered our own name and what we want to call ourselves, it should be trivial to store and recall the information.
• Can you make critical information more readily available in certain areas where it's needed during modal operations (i.e., operations that must be completed before doing something else). For example, the Civilopedia ought to be accessible from everywhere. And during the negotions, it would be nice to be able to locate cities that you might want to trade. While on that screen, if you can't remember what the city was that you wanted, you have to back out of the deal, find it, and try again.
• Could you possibly, at least for the time being, update your site regularly with your progress on the major bug fixes. Even if only to tell us what you're working on. It would be a big help to know whether we should launch a whole new game, having entered the modern era without air defence, or whether a patch is imminent in the next day or two.
• Finally, here's a bug you might not have been told about. If you open the Science Advisor screen too early (before you've started an advance), the advisor forces you to select an advance and yet won't let you. So, you end up stuck there and have to CTRL-ALT-DELETE to get out.

Thanks for putting in so much work, giving us so many hours of joy. And please don't patch the corruption thing. It's well designed. I realize that y'all spend a lot more time at Apolyton than here, but maybe one of you will see this.

All the best from your fans!

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Anyone is welcome to post respectful suggestions in this thread. I would ask moderators in advance please to purge any and all rants and baseless complaints about not being handed victory on a silver platter.

 

[DaEezT]

Could you have the program save the name changes we enter at the start of the game? Once we've entered our own name and what we want to call ourselves, it should be trivial to store and recall the information

Edit the rules and change the default name for the civ you want to take.

Finally, here's a bug you might not have been told about. If you open the Science Advisor screen too early (before you've started an advance), the advisor forces you to select an advance and yet won't let you. So, you end up stuck there and have to CTRL-ALT-DELETE to get out.

yeah, had that once too!

Some other things:


- Make AIs upgrade units. In one game the Aztecs had Knights / Musketmen & Swordmen and still 64 Jaguar Warriors!!! I think thats also the reason why I never, ever encountered a AI with more than 300 gold!

- automated workers: make them smarter. 10 workers that are automated start thorwarts the same pollution square, as soon as the first one starts cleaning the other 9 start to the next. and so on. Every square has a unique combination of X & Y coordinates so it can't be that hard to store a workers destination so that other workers know that one of them is already heading for that square and chose a different one!

- more workers: atomatic anti pollution workers should stay automated after the last pollution was cleared. Simply make them fortify themselves till new pollution appears and then they start cleaning again. and include the new "smart feature" mentioned above

 

[whoozat]

In the rules modification arena:

- Allow <b>bombardment</b> (from airplanes, ships, fortresses) to <b>sink ships</b>. It makes a lot of sense that you can't destroy ground units with airpower or indirect fire but airplanes should be able to sink ships.

- Along the same lines, if a naval unit <b>bombards</b> another unit capable of bombardment, the attacked unit should be able to <b>fire back</b>. (Ironclads and frigates keep taking cheap shots on battleships).

- Implement a <b>multi-tier corruption and waste system</b>, i.e. normal for 1-16 cities, significant for 17-24 cities, rampant for over 25 cities (on a normal map) instead of just going straight to rampant.

- Allow governmental systems to <b>cap corruption</b>, i.e. a huge republic would suffer (at worst) crippling instead of rampant corruption and a democracy would be one step less affected. There would still be a lot of pain and micromanagement associated with large empires but players wouldn't have to see 95% levels of corruption and waste.

 

[Libertarian]

One place where it would be really handy to call the Civilopedia is from the items in the build list. If I'm trying to decide between A or B, I'd like to check the Civilopedia before making up my mind.

Edit the rules and change the default name for the civ you want to take.

Great suggestion, thanks!