Feature Requests

I'd never learned of that until today and I've been playing the game for nearly twenty years!

 

By the way, you should allow for walled other sizes. We already can use the existent graphics - place the regular size 2-3 as they are, in the walled file - and I can create walls around my sets for that.

 

One thing that's come up on Civ3 Discord is the possibility of trading food between your own cities and other factions.

btw we should be able to export shields. The Hoover Dam does that in effect by giving all cities on the same continent a boost to their factories, but it should work other ways.

 

Support for multiplayer mode.

 

One thing that needs fixing is wasted resources. In almost every continents game I play there is an island that consists of mountain tiles only and occasionally even holds a resource.

Also Civ3's colonies being handled like a terrain improvement (cannot be captured, are disbanded automatically by enemy culture, cannot connect through water or air) needs improving since we're at it.

 

Along those lines, Civ 2 had that clumsy – yet good – ability to Caravan food between Cities. I think an automatic “Food Balancing” mechanism (algorithmically sending food along Trade Routes) would be awesome, as it would allow for the creation of dedicated, Food intensive Cities, and, concomitantly, dedicated Resource Cities.

 

Basically what I wanted to do was replicate the supply of grain to Rome and Constantinople in the Roman Empire. If gold can be allocated among treasury-tech-happiness then definitely something like that could be done, but it's not what I specifically wanted for that, because this would be unidirectional and focussed on one recipient city.
In effect Civ3's cities work like a confederacy of city-states with a common treasury but that's it. Global culture only counts towards cultural victory, for example.

How would you determine trade routes? Because basically once you've built an airport in Civ3 you're connected and unblockadeable even if the city's on a one-tile island and surrounded by a dozen AEGIS cruisers with 3 anti-air defense on each of the next twelve tiles.

 

From Egypt?

The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949. Admittedly, I'm uncertain as to how that would in the Aegis example.

 

To Constantinople from Egypt and to Rome mostly from Sicily and Africa at first and then, later, yes, from Egypt as well.

I know about the Berlin Airlift but the Soviets could have blown every single aircraft off the sky if they'd wanted to. In the AI's total-war mindset they would do so.

Edit: it'd be interesting if a civ with a trade embargo against you could cut off trade routes by squatting on them as if they were at war with you.

 

I confess to having very little experience with Trade Embargoes (over the course of 20+ years …)

 

Basically they mean that you cannot trade resources with a civ that has signed an embargo against you or against which you have signed an embargo; like all treaties, embargoes last 20 years and can be broken by declaring war. When used properly you can deprive an AI of oil which it uses for tanks and bombers or of luxury resources which will stave off its population's war weariness. Gold per turn and techs can still be traded (also, I cannot remember whether workers are tradeable during an embargo).

What is a pity is that embargoes don't work as a casus belli. You cannot start a war even though an AI suddenly deciding that it will not give you much-needed resources is effectively an act of taking sides in a war.

 

I wonder if this could be parametrised by ROF. Nukes with ROF:0 hit only the tile on which they fall, ROF:1--all neighbouring tiles and so on.

 

Maybe you could just have a separate characteristic for that?

 

I think we should just parameterize everything by default. Like everywhere that a number is involved, expose it to the mod. No need to assume values in code.

 

I honestly think, sometimes, that every unit, building or terrain should have an actual file that you could edit with a text editor. A bit like the civilopedia.txt and pediaicons file entries but with more built into it than just text and directions for graphics files. You could just add parameters and abilities as in BfW.

 

We're tentatively planning JSON for mod content, which could be broken down by thing instead of a monolithic scenario file. I'd like for mods to be modular so you can just mix & match what you want, but I'm not sure how well that works out when you have various prerequisites and dependencies between different kinds of things.

 

That can get complicated. I'm learning how modding Wesnoth is on the go while trying to make my own campaign so not all the knowledge is there, but since they haev an integrated database there are shared resourcesthat allow you both to mix and match and to not have to download the same files once each time you download a scenario.

 

I wasn't sure where to mention this, but here seems good enough. It seems that we Civ3 holdouts are not the only ones who tend to think the franchise has gotten away from its roots and added too much fluff. Here's some interesting forum discussion in response to former and current Firaxis designers chatting about the past and future of the series, including Soren Johnson of Civ3: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-future-as-told-by-its-lead-designers.675118/

 

Heh, that sounds suspiciously like my "Civ as a Visual Novel" crazy idea. I may steal the "3 orders" idea if I ever actually try to make it.

 

Feel free yeah, in the end it would be like one of those "chose your own story"-books.