Bring back farms!

[-proletarian-]

Is anyone else here sick of irrigation? It looks so ugly on the screen, and still having primitive irrigation ditches as your primary source of food in the year 2050 is laughable..........PLEASE Firaxis, bring back farms! They would look so cool, I can just imagine rolling hills filled with corn and wheat and cows and pigs and, and, and............


Anyways, yeah........if you guys are bringing out an expansion pack for Civ3, please include farms in it.


That is all. Over and out.

 

[joycem10]

someone out there had a modpack which changes irrigation to look like civ 2 farms.

i would love to see them bring back refrigeration, farms, and supermarkets from civ 2. beside the fact that it was more aesthetically pleasing to see all the farms and only mountians with rails) i thought i was a more interesting concept. as it is in civ 3, we have no basic increases in farm technology other than rails.

 

[-proletarian-]

Yeah, I saw the graphics modpack, I believe a chap named Snoopy made it......I don't like the look of it though.


It would be great if Friraxis would make farms though, they could make them look really good......

 

[Carver]

Originally posted by -proletarian-
and still having primitive irrigation ditches as your primary source of food in the year 2050 is laughable...

Darn straight. There should be two or three different types of farmland that can be built with new technology. I loved the hydroponic farms from CTP. Between the hydroponic farms, robotic fisheries and mega mines, the way the landscape changed over the course of a game provided a true sense of progress. And more food means the cities can grow larger, which means more commerce and more production and faster research. With the corruption penalties in this game I think larger cities are crucial.

And as I mentioned in another thread, 2050 without satellites capable of global surveillance is laughable also.

 

[-proletarian-]

Yeah, although, really, would you WANT to see the whole map? Turns take long enough already in the late game, can you imagine having to sit through the AI moves if you could see the whole map?


Yeesh.......

 

[Anglophile]

Agree absolutely about farms; double irrigation after the right advances gives farms and extra food. RRs for extra shields, including forests (although that is easy to do with the editor, while farms can't be with the current version). Much nicer maps and arguably more realistic, although in N. America it was the RR that spurred the explosive growth of agriculture in the west - but I am not sure that is true for anywhere else.

As for satellite surveillance, it would have to be a small wonder (any technologically advanced nation can do it now if they were prepared to spend the bucks), but late game turns are already painfully slow on big maps so I would like to see that solved first.

And as for CTP, a better game than most Civ fans seem to believe; I liked the tile improvement system, much simpler and faster than 100 workers, but I never had enough points and the game needed a 'combat engineer' unit that could build stuff outside of your borders - a ridiculous limitation in CTP.

 

[Ironikinit]

While "looks cool" and "sounds realistic" are fair reasons for a feature, I think that it's more important to keep the game somewhat streamlined. As long as I'm not having trouble feeding my cities (and once RRs are in place even deserts are productive although not tundra), I don't see a real need for a farm improvement.

 

[Combat Ingrid]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
While "looks cool" and "sounds realistic" are fair reasons for a feature, I think that it's more important to keep the game somewhat streamlined. As long as I'm not having trouble feeding my cities (and once RRs are in place even deserts are productive although not tundra), I don't see a real need for a farm improvement.

Agreed.
What could be done to improve the realism might be to change the graphics for irrigation once you enter the industrial or modern age or something like that.

 

[Razorwing]

I completely agree with Combat Ingrid. Changing the graphics used for irrigation to reflect the times would be the best choice, because using workers is annoying enough as it is

 

[royfurr]

Well, again, something that I am of two minds about ...

I liked the boost of double farming and the improved look, as well, plus having to research refrigation etc. BUT, I agree with Ironinkinit, the game is not as good if it loses streamlining! And, RR boost food productivity. BUt they are so darn ungly!

So, improve graphics gets my vote in the end, but not just that of irrigation, but of RR as well. HAVE TWO RR graphics! One, if irrigation exists in the tile, a second if not. The RR with irrigation present improves not only the RR graphics, but the farmland/irrigation part as well. Without irrigation, lets imporve the graphic for the second type, and make them (RR) less ugyfiing of the map. (For you English as second language speakers, that is NOT a real word!! hehe)

I forget and am too lazy to look up- in CIv 2 we had Farmland for double irrigation- did RR NOT boost food just shields, right? IF that is so, then RR to double food is a good trade off simplfing things- and focuses the tech tree a bit- but the need to build them basically in every tile just is so ugly on the map.

 

[-proletarian-]

Guys you seem to have mis-understood me........yes I would like farms back, however I didn't say that you should have to manually send a worker to a tile of irrigation to upgrade it into a farm, al la Civ2. I would be very happy, instead, with either of the following 2 scenarios.......

1)There is no irrigation. From the beginning, you can build farms, however their graphic changes as the ages progress.

2)Your irrigation turns automatically into farms once you reach a certain advance (it should be in the middle ages, perhaps with feudalism?)

Thanks for your input, guys.

Any more would be welcome.

 

[brody]

Here's what I'd like: in the editor, you can add types of tiles (assuming you want to make the graphics). Firaxis includes what they have now, plus some newer, nicer graphics. You choose what a tile's actions can be, and what that tile turns into when a particular action is used. You also choose tech required, # of turns, etc.

In addition, you could choose the pictures on a per-era basis. So if you don't want new worker actions, you just use the farm graphic for middle ages and on...

This way, grassland could be irrigated to "grassland-irr" or something. If you want, you put in refrigeration and make "grassland-irr" able to be irrigated to "grassland-farm" or something.

And that would make other mods, with things like terraforming, doable: say you don't want tundra. Well, you research terraforming in the modern age, and you add "terraform" to the tundra's worker actions. The action takes 40 turns and produces a plains tile.

I would LOVE to see something like that added. Anybody else think that would be the best solution?

EDIT: Also, the AI would evaluate the actions not based on "irrigation = good for cities needing food, mining = good for cities needing production", but based on something more dynamic. IE, the AI evaluates workers actions based on the end result. So if you put in an action called "irrimine" that can be used only on hills and turns hills into "mined, farmed hills" (+1 food and +1 shield), the AI evaluates the usefulness of these "mined, farmed hills". The AI takes into consideration all potential actions, time necessary for actions, what the city currently needs (or perhaps what it feels would be best in the long run), and bases its decision on that.

And in a perfect world, the AI would also look at what these "mined, farmed hills" could turn into. So if you had another action called "automate farming" available only on "mined, farmed hills" (+1 food again), the AI would take that into consideration before "irrimining" its hills.

Okay, so this is very complex and never likely to be added, but still, it would be nice...

 

[Thunderfall]

I also would like to see farms return...so my lazy workers would have more things to do in modern times.

Also it would be nice to have terraforming back. Firaxis can limit terraforming to deserts, plains, forests, jungles, and grasslands if hills and mountains are untouchable.

 

[Andu Indorin]

Ah, the "It's a game" vs. "It's a Simulation" debate.

Clearly, Civ3 was designed to be a game -- the lower denominator. Pity.

 

[graeme]

Man, it would be great to have satellites. I used to use satellites when playing the old "Empire" game. It was a regular unit which was "launched" from a city. It lasted about 80 turns and during that time "orbited" the map. It showed everything "beneath" the satellite.

It was great for discovery of remote parts of the map, and for tracking enemy buildups or troop movements!

I thought that would be the ability when I saw satellite tech in Civ3 and was sorely disapointed when I realized nothing came with the advance.

 

[Anglophile]

Royfurr, yes in Civ2 double irrigation = farms and RRs only added shields. The net result in Civ3 is the same except that graphically it is much uglier. I agree with brody's sentiments on this; in another thread where Firaxis was looking for suggestions on changes to the editor, I suggested that the ability to double improve tiles would be great - double mine, double farm or one of each and just leave RRs for transport.

On a semi-different topic, in my current game I notice that the AI is 'foresting' cattle and wheat squares, which I had not seen before (first time in 1.17(?)). As the mod I use allows mining of forest squares - and the AI does this - this provides high food/high shield tiles. I always use these bonus resources for my settler/worker farms but wonder if the AI is not being smarter than me (no flames about stupid AIs please) on the use of these tiles. Opinions?

 

[Gil Galad]

Originally posted by -proletarian-
Guys you seem to have mis-understood me........yes I would like farms back, however I didn't say that you should have to manually send a worker to a tile of irrigation to upgrade it into a farm, al la Civ2. I would be very happy, instead, with either of the following 2 scenarios.......

1)There is no irrigation. From the beginning, you can build farms, however their graphic changes as the ages progress.

2)Your irrigation turns automatically into farms once you reach a certain advance (it should be in the middle ages, perhaps with feudalism?)

Thanks for your input, guys.

Any more would be welcome.

I agree with this. However, if we're doing it to the irregation, why not take it to the next level and update the farms, the roads (i think paved roads should exist in the modern age until replaced by railways) and lastly the railways. I liked the idea of two railways, meantioned by somebody in a responce ahead of mine, when they are built on irregation land. How this is done I think should not be by age (imagine, your entire screen changing at once when you progress to the next era, scary) but by technology advance. This of course is a lot of big changes, and probobly wouldn't be altogether feasable unless released as an expansion, rather than a patch.

-Gil Galad

 

[Gil Galad]

I meant to say mines. Mines, roads, railways. My bad.