So I've looked through the entire thread to date, and grabbed multiple slivers which inspired me to add my own tuppence worth of spitballs:
Add Size to units. Heavier units should consume more space inside the transport;
I agree.
Presumably the intention would be to use a unit's shield-cost as the in-game proxy for its weight, and then set a boat's transport-capacity to be measured in shields rather than absolute number of units? So taking the existing epic-game units as an example, a Galley might be set to load 40 shields, allowing it to transport 4 Warriors, or a Warrior + Settler, or a Spearman + Archer, or a single MedInf — but not a Knight.
(Yes, the default epic-game .biq also lacks an intermediate, larger-sized transport-ship between the Galley and Caraval for the early Feudal period, but modding one in would be trivial)
A shield-based transport-capacity would probably need to be adjusted by cost-factor to keep things "fair" though. i.e. to continue the example above, a Regent-level AI would get the same weight-limits as a human player, but an Emperor-level Galley would only be able to carry (40 * 0.8 =) 32 shields. Otherwise Monarch+ AI-Civs would (theoretically, eventually) be able to carry more units in any given boat-design than the human player would.
But
maybe that transport-capacity needn't be a hard cap? i.e. a player might be allowed to overload their transport-boats, but with some penalty, e.g. the boat's probability of sinking over the interturn — regardless of current water-tile navigational safety/ tech-level — could increase proportionally with the percentage over max. capacity (+10% overload = +10% sinking-probability?). Or an overloaded boat could incur a movement-penalty (–1 MP per +20% overload?). And vice versa of course: unladen boats could be given a lower risk of sinking, and/or move faster.
Alternatively, transport-capacity could be limited by total HP, with less-advanced units having HP-penalties, and more advanced units having HP-bonuses (which is easily moddable already).
On more general subject of naval-movement, I would also love to see a Civ3-clone with a random-map-generator which could generate oceanic circulation patterns and alongshore currents, with the intended impact on gameplay that e.g. sailing
with the prevailing current might reduce sinking-probability, but sailing across or against them might increase it (this sinking-risk would have to be implemented during the movement-phase rather than over the interturn, when the unit is 'stationary' as far as the game-engine is concerned). These effects would be (mostly) invisible to the player during the early game, but a later tech (e.g. mid-late Medieval 'Navigation') could reveal the patterns, allowing a player to see the safest/most efficient shipping lanes.
Whether the AI-Civs would (be allowed to) see the currents (and adjust their navigations accordingly) prior to acquiring the needed tech or not until afterwards, would be up to the programmers to decide...
How do you see this working for the player? Would there be a radius from the nearest city/border beyond which the terrain is impassable?
Units healing on selective types of terrain would be interesting for specific scenarios. Or some types of terrain allowing for healing and some not.
the unit takes X amount of HP damage per turn until it dies. Otherwise, you might get units camped out a certain distance from the cultural border that would just sit there forever.
How about giving every (maintenance-requiring) unit a (50%?) probability of losing 1 HP (and/or unable to heal) for every interturn it spends
— off-road in friendly/neutral territory (= no supply-line), and/or
— >1 tile inside hostile borders (all terrains), and/or
— on any terrain-tile that does not produce enough food to feed one citizen (so units advancing over Mountains would still enjoy a boosted D-value, but potentially lose HP)
... down to a minimum of 1 HP remaining, and then it would be forced to retreat back to its own borders (as the AI does already).
Tying that back into the above idea of HP-penalties and bonuses, that would make it much less worth sending low-HP (early) units into enemy territory in the first place.
- Barbarians and Pirates can hold cities and are working like in Civ 2
It might be good if a flag could be set — maybe related to the unit and/or to a tech — to allow (HN) naval-units to heal when fortified ("anchored"?) anywhere along a Coast, not only in friendly towns — just like land-units.
Diplomacy talks need certain tech (important for SciFi scenarios; translator)
Wouldn't this be the equivalent of "[Tech] Allows Embassies", though?
I would also prefer if
both Civs were required to know a tech before they could do the "[Diplo-thing] allowed by [Tech]". e.g. in the epic-game, Navigation allows map-trading, and Nationalism allows MPPs, but only one trade-partner needs to know the relevant tech to make such a deal, which allows more advanced civs to sucker their neighbours even further into disadvantageous positions.
Ooh, would also be an improvement if the AI-Civs could
properly value an MPP (i.e. shouldn't the
weaker Civ be the one needing to pay for protection?), and/or an MPP should necessarily involve a mutual exchange of Strategic resources(?) — and even better if they could be made less eager to sign MPPs with
both sides of an ongoing war...
If they could get active and at least upgrade their units (or just build newer ones, because a barrackless upgrade might be too much for the engine), or occupy colonies and cities and capture workers and settlers instead of destroying them, it would already work better.
Back when I was still playing CivDOS (which I played almost exclusively on the supplied Earth-Map), one of the things I really liked (with hindsight!) was that the Barbarians would keep up in tech.
Due to the larger landmasses on the Earthmap, combined with the hardcoded limit of 128 towns, there would likely still be large tracts of unsettled land (e.g. in the hinterlands of northern Russia) in the late game, where I'd get Barbarian Rifles and possibly even MechInfs spawning.
So I would love it if Civ3 Barbs could
also evolve, with the units sent out from camps being e.g. the most recent "resourceless" unit (Warriors, then Archer —> TOW line in the epic-game) common to the 2 Civs with the nearest capitals to that camp.
(since we're at it, the fact that a battleship costs as much gold to maintain as a warrior is strange)
Yes, it's always struck me as kinda dumb that the maintenance-cost per (excess) unit is fixed, identical from the beginning of the game to the end, and related to the chosen government, rather than the unit's complexity (i.e. shield-cost)!
The best that can be currently done to get round that limitation is a combination of switching the maintenance-requirement on/off for the unit itself, and/or treating unit-HP as a proxy for total manpower, so that the 'same' unit-maintenance supports proportionately more/less HP (e.g. if a company of Cavalry should cost more to run per soldier than a company of Riflemen, the only way to simulate this is to give the Cavalry lower HP relative to the Riflemen).
But it would be far preferable if a unit's maintenance-cost could be set on a per-unit basis and/or proportional to its shield-cost — provided that the AI could also be taught to recognise that building a 1-dimensional stack of its "best" (highest shield-cost) units might then become cripplingly expensive.
-Continued city unrest could lead to cities ‘flipping’ to nearby enemy civs, but also to their drawing in nomads to take them over, or to simply split apart and reject your rule to start their own government!.
I
really wish that Firaxis had implemented an instant-defection-dependent-on-Cultural-flip-probability mechanic for both the "Elimination" and "Regicide" options!
I myself would give the barbarians longships or other fighting craft. In my (in-house) mod the dromon is a separate war galley; already I've experienced the displeasure and chagrin of downgrading from Dromon to caravel, losing sea supremacy as the Byzantines.
Psst... I did something similar, but I have Dromons upgrading to Frigates instead.
Is this a default option in the epic game?
Randomly generated maps never include LM terrain, so I guess that's a "no"?
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.
Certain Techs should also allow certain types of ships and Land Units - Conquistadors - to move beyond whatever bounds are in place, and to be able to found "true" Colonies - Towns limited to Size=1, until whatever other, requisite conditions are in play.
I agree, it would be cool if e.g. long-established (10 turns?) resource-colonies could turn into towns (e.g. where the terrain allowed "Build city"), and/or act as a trade-net node (if coastal).
I suppose roads & railroads are a similar form of multi-levelled improvement, and perhaps there'd be a reason why some modder would want to do the same with mines
How about "Surface mines" (lower productivity) vs. "Deep mines" (higher output, but not available until the late-game).
I also think it would have been more interesting if Civ3 had allowed at least 3 levels of "roads": unpaved roads (spontaneously generated by working a given tile for a set number of years/turns, or Worker-built; connects resources/increases commerce, but not movement), paved roads (must be Worker-built over existing unpaved road; increases commerce + movement; requires Stone?) and Rails (Worker-built over unpaved/paved road; infinite movement, boosts output; requires Iron + Stone), and/or later Freeways (Worker-built on paved road; infinite movement, requires Stone + Oil)
Failing the above, I would still really like to detach the "[Terrain] allows roads" flag from the "[Terrain] allows rails" flag.
I would also like the option to force (paved) roads/rails to require gold to maintain them, and/or degrade if that maintenance is not paid/ those tiles are not worked (á la SimCity).
It would be really cool if Forests and Jungle could spread naturally, too.
Other rivers in rougher terrain require the same maintenance as well as sluices and locks; what about a river's navigability being interrupted by building a dam for irrigation and/or hydroelectricity?
In the epic-game, there's no downside (apart from the shield-cost!) to building a Hydro Plant.
But what if you could only build one in a town with Hills nearby, and/or building one would flood a (semi-)random BFC-tile (adjacent to the river? Flatland or Hill?), forming a 1-tile lake...?
The aqueduct is defined as not needed for cities adjacent to fresh water - not as adjacent to tiles that hold fresh water. Another question is, if it would really be bad, if the options for cities that can grow without an aqueduct is reduced.
Since the Palace's shield-cost
already scales with civilization-size, I don't see why it wouldn't also be reasonable to use a similar mechanism to make the Aqueduct's build-cost (and ideally also maintenance-cost) similarly dependent on the minimum path-length — also taking into account the movement-costs of the intervening terrain-tiles — from the town-to-be-ducted to its nearest freshwater-source (whether a river/lake, or the nearest already-Ducted friendly town).
That would have been a far more "realistic" way of representing a towns' need for freshwater, and limiting growth in the towns progressively further away from a source (or towns on islands which lack any freshwater; in that situation, a "Desalination Plant" coastal-improvement could perform the Duct's function later), and would also have taken some of the sting out of capturing an AI-town which had been built one tile away from a river instead of next to it...
obsessing 
