Biggest problem I faced in CIVIII - No National Boundaries

[shawngao]

I felt very nervous when I met the problem of:

The other Civilization build up a city within my country. Some of my city's resource will be occupied by that new city. If I want to erase it, I have to make war with the civilization which is usually my friendly nation. If I don't, my city's benifit will lose and may even bring big trouble to me to decrease my city scale.

I think this problem is due to there is no national boundary setting in CIVIII, which I think it is not aligned with the real world. Without national boundaries, we can only defense the cities but not my whole nation, and there is only the concept of city but no nation concept in the game.

So, I do recommend the designer of CIVIV to consider on this and put it in the new version.

All my CIV friends, if you agreed with me, pls give me support! Thanks!

 

[Vael]

National borders already exist in Civ 3.

If you have gaps in your culture that other civs are settling in then you should build more buildings that produce culture or build your cities closer together. Though it is rather annoying when AI civs march through your lands despite your protests...

 

[Bast]

I agree. But I think the only solution is what Vael provided. I usually just start wars with them.

 

[Dreadnought]

I just fortify units where they were going to make a city. It is really annoying though

 

[Killa]

This is not a big problem,you can just build a new city or fortify your troops in free territory,where your opponent goes to make a city.But i think that culture take too much part in conception of civ3,for example,borders,i think,should not depend on culture.

 

[Commander Bello]

I agree with Shawngao and Killa about the fact that constituting national borders just by the concept of "culture" was a first (and good) step, but misses quite some realism.

National borders should as well being dependant on the military power of a given nation, and should at least to some extent be build by the presence of military forces.
In other words, you could create little areas of you country by building some kind of "fort". Let's say, a "fort" would constitute the same radius of "national border" as a newly founded city would do.

This way, it would be needed to make the AI aware of the necessity to grab land to get access of certain resources, which in principle it understands already now. But, in future it would not send out a spear with a settler on a route of 37 tiles, but it would send out some workers and the future garrison of mentioned "fort". In turn, this would mean that respecting national borders (on land) would get a much higher priority for both sides, the human and the AI players.
Another needed algorithm would be to make the AI aware of the fact that certain locations cannot realistically being hold, so even the attempt to grab them just doesn't make sense.

As the engine has to be improved regarding the "land-grabbing" anyway, I would think that the concept of "forts" could be implemented then with just a low additional effort as well.

 

[Rwedgie]

Making boarders based on military strength would do the exact opposite of what I think they are trying to do.

Believe it or not the games not entirely military based.. a lot of people are peaceful builder players or whatever too. If you made borders based on military strength you'd effectively make the game pretty much entirely combat oriented.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well I'd go with borders determined by military (or more technically by diplomacy) but give culture an ability to influence military. (sure area X may be 'in your borders' because you have tanks there but because of rebel activity you can't use the railroads at full speed.