CIV series - whats not "fun"

[rychan]

one of my biggest pet peeves is the computers aggressive settling of land- land that is completely contained by my culture, or near my cities. Whatever.

I think think the concept of "tile ownership" should be expanded- culture is a fantastic system and I love it, but I would like to see the notion of "claiming" land put in to the game. Along with it, you should be able to buy and sell claimed land. Explorers can have a claim function added. This 3x3 piece of unimproved land is now yours (as if it were part of you cultural border, perhaps). If someone builds a city there it is an ACT OF WAR. Think someone is claiming an unreasonable amount of land? Fine, it's worth going to war over.

This would allow historical equivalents of the louisiana purchase to take place.

My other huge pet peeve- The trading system is great, but the AI is so stupid it's not fun. It seems absolutely impossible to pry a resource or luxury out of their hands if they have nothing extra. Sure they should ask a LOT more, but it should be possible. Likewise, sometimes I can ask for one of their cities, and offer in exchange MY ENTIRE EMPIRE and they would "never accept such a deal". Or when I've completely obliterated a civilization, and they're down to their last city with no units left and it's bombed to hell, and I offer them peace condition on them giving me several techs and they won't do it? Or conditional on giving me a luxury they have only one of and they won't do it?

On the topic of trading system- add arms dealing, add more things to be negotiated for (I'll pay you to attack/ stop attacking them, etc) Add alliance. add technological alliance (research things together, advanced communication techs required)

add civil war.

rework corruption system. Find some other way to penalize expansive empires or give bonuses to small empires.

pollution I don't mind so much. It would be nice if workers would automatically rework a once polluted square after you clean it.

make a better way to handle stacks of artillery / bombers. b click wait.. b click wait.. b click wait.. x 30 gets kind of annoying.

somehow mitigate the importance of having strategic resources. Whether or not you have Iron, saltpeter, oil, etc seem to make or break a game because the computer will ask outrageous prices for them. Realistic, but frustrating.

 

[The Templar]

Originally posted by rychan
add civil war.

Agreed.

somehow mitigate the importance of having strategic resources. Whether or not you have Iron, saltpeter, oil, etc seem to make or break a game because the computer will ask outrageous prices for them. Realistic, but frustrating.

Kind of like real life (frustrating that is).

I thought this was a vast improvement over earlier versions of the game. I always remember those games where I had to struggle without iron for awhile.

 

[Pook]

Having lived in the Third World for a couple of years, I would say that corruption in the game is about right, both in how pervasive it is and in how annoying it is to leaders. I might change the distribution, since the capital is certainly subject to lots of corruption (lots of money + lots of power often brings lots of corruption).
I as a Westerner have been very spoiled by the idea that government is actually supposed to serve the people. That's not how it has worked through much of history.

How to improve the game? Allow barbarians to take cities and have barbarians that actually attack, rather than sit put or travel in an endless loop between two mountain ranges.

I definitely agree with joycem10's point about the AI learning to use artillery and being able to execute a semi-competent amphibious invasion. However, I don't know how hard it is to code the software to make the decision logic which would enable that.

Getting off the soapbox now.....

 

[maddman75]

Originally posted by Cuivienen
Corruption affecting production. Sure, production should affect income (gold), but the loss of shields is far less rational and less "fun."

Of course, I also support the "certain advances reduce corruption" idea. Alphabet, Writing, The Wheel, Printing Press, Free Artistry, Nationalism, Radio, Flight and Computers should all reduce corruption. In fact, Computers should eliminate corruption altogether.

Considering that I'm supposed to be working while I'm posting this, I'm afraid I can't agree .

 

[The Last Conformist]

Yeah, the C3C barbarians are no fun at all. Could we at least have back their aggressiveness as in Vanilla?

 

[Blasphemous]

I think one very annoying "feature" of Civ3 is the way you negotiate trade:
Your advisor obviously knows exactly how much gold you can get or how little you can give to get a deal through... But you still have to manually try everything to see exactly what's the best deal... I understand the idea is to reward players for being picky about this, but this is pretty ricidulous as it is... Couldn't there be a button for "optimize gold" on each side of the table, and depending on where the offer stands when you initiate it, it would take a certain while for it to find the best deal (and you could stop it and it would bounce to the last viable deal it "tried")? Or even a minigame... Just something that isn't this anal, boring, and plain stupid!

 

[Adalid]

from rychan: add civil war
Agreed.
Civil wars that harken back to the original. I remember the great feeling of tearing an empire in two by sacking their capital especially if they were significantly more powerful tha my own.

 

[Tweedledum]

Apart from pollution and corruption, the one thing I hate most is the settler flood - the way the AI wanders its settlers all over your territory, and the dance which follows: throw them out and they come back in, so you evict them again and they come back in and... (ad infinitum).

Perhaps there could be some Wonder (maybe the Great Wall) which prevents enemy units entering your territory without either an RoP or DoW, or allows you (after a warning, maybe) to kill any such incursions without starting a war...

 

[Bud2998]

The thing I can't stand at all is how disrespectful the AI is to your territory. If you're in their territory for about 3 turns or so, they'll demand that you leave or declare war, but they'll wander around in your territory with a ship, some unit passing through, or whatever for countless turns.

I just wish that the AI could prioritize about whether it's worth it to go through your territory or not to reach some other location.

 

[CenturionV]

The thing I can't stand at all is how disrespectful the AI is to your territory. If you're in their territory for about 3 turns or so, they'll demand that you leave or declare war, but they'll wander around in your territory with a ship, some unit passing through, or whatever for countless turns.

AAAAAAAA-MEN brother

 

[Dr. Broom]

Originally posted by Blasphemous
I think the reason corruption is so powerful currently is to balance the game, since otherwise the mroe territory you have, the stronger you are period. That doesn't mean it's a perfect mechanism of course... I'm sure the clever guys over at Firaxis can come up with a funner way to have this balance.

I think this is true but wouldn't it be great if the game could allow influential, powerful and wealthy civilizations that don't have massive amounts of land? For a real life example look at the wealth of Britain, France, Monaco, Germany, Japan, etc. compared to the wealth of India, China or Russia.

 

[Thunderfall]

Civ3's espionage system could use some work.

It's frustrating to spend so much gold only to get the message "oops, our spy got caught and they declared war on us".

 

[Mad Bomber]

THings to change for Civ IV:

1. Corruption model needs to be reduced its just not fun to have territory that is hopelessly corrupt
2. The AI needs to learn how to use artillery
3. The AI needs to learn how to launch a credible amphibious invasion (it was actually better at this in 1.29 than in C3C or PTW)
4. Having a spy caught should not be a Cause for War.
5. AI's need to fight wars for goals instead of just attacking the most defensless targets it can find.

 

[binyo66]

Maybe he set the AI to lest aggresiveness. Polution is the most unfun thing, and chopping up the tree just dont make sense. I spend much more time with pollution rather than any others.

 

[Buckets]

There are two key things that make the late game tedious:
1- oodles of units. Even on small maps it gets ridiculous. Stack movement is alright but bombardment is not properly manageable.
2- Diplomacy screen. It's very important, yet to get the most out of it you end up playing a hi-low guessing game. With every civ. Every turn.

I would also mention worker jobs and city micro, but i find the automation there sufficient.

 

[Berrern]

Originally posted by Bud2998
The thing I can't stand at all is how disrespectful the AI is to your territory. If you're in their territory for about 3 turns or so, they'll demand that you leave or declare war, but they'll wander around in your territory with a ship, some unit passing through, or whatever for countless turns.

I just wish that the AI could prioritize about whether it's worth it to go through your territory or not to reach some other location.

Good point, I totally agree with you!
The AI should be very careful about venturing into your territory - the way we (human players) are about entering theirs.
IMO the civilizations should be FORCED to sign a ROP (hopefully we'll get more alternatives than just MMP and ROP in Civ3) before entering your territory. If entering enemy territory without having such agreement should lead to 2 things: After 1 turn in enemy territory they (or you, if you're the intruder) should get a warning. If 2 more turns passes, and they are still in your territory, you should be allowed to destroy them without going to war. This way they'll think twice about entering your territory!
Also, the units with 0 in attack/defense values (like Settlers, Workers) should have a higher value; i.e. they should be allowed to stay in enemy territory for 4-5 turns before 'legally' being destroyed by the other civ.

For this to work, they'd have to improve the AI a lot, but it's definitely worth it. After all, Civ4 is being coded 100% from scratch, so hopefully the AI will be much, much more clever than at present.

One more thing; enemy units should not be allowed to fortify themselves in your territory even with a ROP (unless you are allied) - and if they do so, you should immediately be allowed to destroy them.

I also think Alliances/MPP shoud be improved a lot. An alliance/MPP should give you distinct advantages, like staying in the same tiles as your ally - and also being able to defend their cities, and repair units in their territory.
If you're allied with someone richer than you, and are helping them defend in a war (but you suffer heavy losses), they should somehow help you out, either by giving you units or gold.

One more thing that needs to be improved is the money system, I think it's very stupid that the AI tries to empty his treasury every single turn for the entire game. A civilization should have a lot of gold in it's vaults - but this is another AI optimization issue I guess..

Other stuff I don't find fun; cleaning pollution, the static battle system (always a 1vs1 battle), high levels of corruption/waste (size 12 cities faaar away from your capital should produce more than 1 shield each turn).

 

[Dogmeat]

Originally posted by Berrern
One more thing that needs to be improved is the money system, I think it's very stupid that the AI tries to empty his treasury every single turn for the entire game. A civilization should have a lot of gold in it's vaults - but this is another AI optimization issue I guess..

Yes, backward civs usually spend all their money on buying techs from other AI's. They always run around with empty coffers and that is both unrealistic and "unfun".
All civs should have some gold available at all times IMHO.

 

[stachnie]

Civil wars: I agree. It should be the way to prevent anyone from getting too strong.

There should be possibility of a revolt even *after* conquering a civ.

Destroy/bombard AI's units in your territory without declaring war - I think it is a very good idea. Of course, it should annoy them. Perhaps such units could be kept as something like 'prisoners of war' instead of simply being destroyed.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

 

[necrosmith]

What's not fun is the lack of certain "stack" commands.

I wish there were stack commands for workers..like stack build railroad to a certain point.

I wish there was a stack bombard command.

I wish you could stack load units onto individual transports instead of one at a time.

 

[kb2tvl]

I wanted to state my opinion on what is not fun with regards to the current civ 3.

First is micromanagement or the requirement to do so. Also, information tools that identify problem places are not available to allow for better micromanagement. This might include unhappy people or pollution or a tile being loss to one city that had 10 spt to another city that produced 12 spt.

Government progression, corruption, ethnicity of a city, corruption reduction through tech should all be revisited and revamped.

Culture flipping should be revisited and revamped. Losing 50 units to a city flipping does not make sense. disallowing 50 units to heal until the city is brought in-line does. Culture flipping to a civ that is currently at war with you does not make sense. Also losing your units within the city does not make sense.

PS I wanted to add. A feature that should be available that locks auto movement until released. Sometimes order of operation matters such as the AI lands units that could take a city. Locking the automovement would allow for the player to pick units near to deal with the threat and not have the units automoved.