Just curious, What things did everyone want with CIVIII and didn't get it

[sabo]

I've heard people discuss on this board about some of the things They wished CivIII had but didn't. I know people have been asking for certain things for CivIII to have since CivII came out but didn't get. I'm just curious what those things are..

 

[DaEezT]

The thing that you'll hear from most ppl is "A good AI"....

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

I wanted the AI to build battleships in one-tile ponds.

I wanted the AI to sneak attack me with dribbles of units.

I wanted everything on my wishlist and nothing that wasn't on it.

I wanted something that I could beat right from the start at Deity.

 

[sappling]

My citizens want beer and still can't get it.

 

[Flavor Dave]

It's good that they got rid of rush building of wonders.

It's bad that the shields are all wasted.

It's good that they made the late-game AI stronger.

It's bad that they didn't make the early game more survivable. I don't like having to start so many games to get one going. I finally solved this by going with no barbs. But that sucks in its own way.

It's good that they introduced the notion of culture.

It's bad that they made conquest too hard because cities flip too easily. And it's bad that, while they've made the concept of a single civ more a part of the game (as opposed to a collection of city-states), they could have done aLOT more with this, by allowing cities to share shields.

It's good that the made the AI civs more likely to expand, making it harder for the human.

It's bad that they've made a number of changes that make it harder to win with a small perfectionist civ. Each change, by itself, isn't decisive, but taken altogether, there's too much emphasis on the landgrab.

It's good that they've made blitzkrieg harder, with workers only moving one square, better AI, etc. It's good that they've made pillaging more important. It's good that they've made longterm military planning important.

It's bad that they've made it harder to defend you borders (lack of ZOCs, fortresses seem weaker.)

And so it goes.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Diplomacy editing ...

Better naval combat. Higher movement allowances and having ships stop moving after attacking/bombarding would be a good start, and much as I dislike sounding like Zouave I'd like to be able to attack merchant shiping, tho' I can't offhand think of a decent way implementing that (Civ2 Caravans/Freight were a disaster, IMHO). Oh, I'd like an Age of Sail worth the name too.

More governmet options - something similar to SMAC social engineering, perhaps.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
Diplomacy editing ...

Better naval combat. Higher movement allowances and having ships stop moving after attacking/bombarding would be a good start, and much as I dislike sounding like Zouave I'd like to be able to attack merchant shiping, tho' I can't offhand think of a decent way implementing that (Civ2 Caravans/Freight were a disaster, IMHO). Oh, I'd like an Age of Sail worth the name too.

More governmet options - something similar to SMAC social engineering, perhaps.

You'd be wise to sound like me. It is people such as me that have helped get you those patches.

Yes, subs and privateers are useless as their true purpose in reality is to attack enemy trade at sea. Firaxis doesn't know that.

And Culture Flipping. When a town of '1' flips with NINE military units, and all those units magically vanish, you know you are dealing with braindead BULLBLEEP.

 

[Masquerouge]

Originally posted by Zouave
You'd be wise to sound like me. It is people such as me that have helped get you those patches.

Then stop complaining about Firaxis never listening to customers because they are evil moneymakers blah blah, please...


Yes, subs and privateers are useless as their true purpose in reality is to attack enemy trade at sea. Firaxis doesn't know that.

They know it. But they don't implement it because they LOVE to see you rambling around in the forums.

And Culture Flipping. When a town of '1' flips with NINE military units, and all those units magically vanish, you know you are dealing with braindead BULLBLEEP.

I'll quote and adapt Neo in Matrix : "Mmmmh... Déjà lu... "

 

[zeeter]

I'll hit both ends of the spectrum here: What they didn't add was a method of using the city citizens in various buildings. IOW, a barracks requires one extra citizen in order to work. A library requires two citizens to work. Therefore, the player must balance those citizens that work the fields and mine with those that work in the city proper. Actually, I had an idea where food and various supplies like iron or bronze would be aquired outside of the city and transported there by another citizen. Therefore, it would take one citizen to mine the iron, one citizen to transport it, and, say, four citizens to use it in the factory. Or, it would take one citizen working a cattle resource, one to transport the meat the the city, and one to work in the marketplace to process/sell it.

Most of this could have been automated where the citizens would automatically move to a building where there was a "job opening".

This eliminates the possibility that a size five city can have every single possible city improvement by rush-building them. If they are not manned, they provide no benefit- but they still cost upkeep taxes.



On the good part, I like the fact that citizens keep their nationalities. My idea was that instead of nationalities we would get types of citizens; religious, economic, security, cultural, and political. Each of these types would be apeased in different ways: Cultural = libraries and such, Religious = Temples, Security = barracks and Walls, Economic = Marketplaces, Political = well, that more or less depended on your government.

The trick would have been to balance the types of citizens within cities. They would be born as random types, but if a religious citizen were born and there were no religious structures, the citizen would eventually leave. This could lead to emmigration to another country that provides these needs. Civs could keep these unhappy citizens by building walls and police stations - creating something like a Communist empire.

Anyway, my rampling is done.

 

[Plume]

To zeeter: or, in other words, you'd like Colonization 4! Seriously, have you ever played that game (it game out in 89-90 or something like that, very old)? Any way, it's pretty much what you describe, every citizen had a "profession" (there must have been at least 20-25 of them) and each specialty gave a big bonus when that guy was working in the building corresponding to its area (e.g. a master tobaconist making cigars was twice as productive as a master weaver making cigars).

Basically, it was fun at first, but after a while, when you had about 10 cities of size 10, it became almost impossible to efficiently manage everybody. Plus you had to manage the distribution of resources throughout the "empire" (to send the ore there and the wood over there and so on). Don't get me wrong, I love complexity. But that was just too much for my human brain.

I think the nationalities in civ3 are great. They're simple. One thing I'd like to see though is something like this: The Babylonians are scientific so every babylonian citizen should give a little bonus to science. But, if you conquer a city, then foreign nationals should be less productive than your own.

Sorry for being so off topic but I got sentimental about colonization...

 

[zeeter]

The biggest problem with Colonization was that the Native Americans kept getting in the way of the wagons, forcing them to take the long way around instead of using the roads. It had a lot of good concepts - and when I have nothing better to do I'll load it up. It gets tedious around midgame when you're all set, but have to wait forever until the people are ready to have a revolution.

I don't think that my idea would be as complicated as Colonization. First, there would be no specific factory workers or farmers or whatnot. They would all just be people. Need someone to work in the Research Lab? Just get that guy who works in the Colloseum.

I don't think it would get that complex because the players would have to wait until they had enough people before building places to work. Then any leftover people would automatically go to work.

 

[Gastric ReFlux]

I was also disappointed that they still haven't come out with a Sid Meir action figure with a kungfu grip.

 

[JustListenen]

Originally posted by Gastric ReFlux
I was also disappointed that they still haven't come out with a Sid Meir action figure with a kungfu grip.

I'm suprised that Z... you-know-who hasn't thought of that! RIP OFF CITY!!

ROTFLMAO

How about a Sid Meier Bobble Head ???? - especially one that says "Culture Flipping is COOL!"

 

[The Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Zouave


You'd be wise to sound like me. It is people such as me that have helped get you those patches.

What are you talking about - I haven't got those patches! And since Social Engineering and ships stopping after attacking/bombarding was in SMAC, Firaxis must've actively decided that they didn't want them in Civ III, which means they in all likelihood won't come in any new patches either.

If diplomacy editing does come in a later patch, that'll be due to people who politely gives constructive criticism, not incessant whining and insults.

Yes, subs and privateers are useless as their true purpose in reality is to attack enemy trade at sea. Firaxis doesn't know that.

I dare wager that Firaxis does know that attacking merchant shipping was the prime purpose of privateers, and one of the major uses of submarines (others, such as attacking transports and firing nuclear missiles are indeed implemented in Civ III, wherefore I find subs far from useless in-game). Presumeably, they decided that implementing attacks on merchant shipping would mean including too much micromanagement to be worthwhile. References to their supposed ignorance is surely the thing least likely to change that decision.

 

[Castle]

I think Firaxas should modify the "blockade" rule which currently requires vessels on every single coastal square around a harbor.

I suggest giving vessels a "blockade zone of control" -- a radius of something like half their movement points. Establishing a blockade would be much more realistic and would make subs and privateers much more useful. Currently, blockades (with a modest number of vessels) have to be very close to the harbor and are found and broken too easily by the AI.

 

[GI Josh]

Originally posted by Castle
I think Firaxas should modify the "blockade" rule which currently requires vessels on every single coastal square around a harbor.

I suggest giving vessels a "blockade zone of control" -- a radius of something like half their movement points. Establishing a blockade would be much more realistic and would make subs and privateers much more useful. Currently, blockades (with a modest number of vessels) have to be very close to the harbor and are found and broken too easily by the AI.

I definitely agree - it's practically impossible to blockade a single city, much less an entire civ. My idea would be somewhat similar to yours - a naval unit with attack capabilities blockades a city if it is within x+1 tiles of the city, where x is the movement value of the ship.

What will happen? Blockading will become much easier and much more effective. To blockade a civ, another civ will place 1-2 blockading units outside each city, along with one or two flotillas farther back to provide support if the blockading units are attacked. A civ trying to avoid being blockaded will attack the blockaders - bcs of the enemy flotillas, the blockaded civ will need its own capable navy. Because blockading ships will often be able to lie outside the national borders while still blockading the city (and thus not be seen), any civ which depends on the sea will have to have a patrolling navy to sweep its sea lanes. Voila! - naval warfare is important. Subs will suddenly become very important - they can blockade without being seen and thus to counter them another civ will need substantial and sophisticated fleets (imho destroyers should be modded to see subs). Thus subs will be playing their traditional role of attacking enemy shipping. No, there will not be merchant ships to actually attack - that would result in too many units and too much tedious micromanagement. But by being able to blockade from far out, and do so stealthily thus necessitating a response by the other side, subs will in an abstract way function in their traditional role in isolating a civ from commercial or other trading.

Bottom line - easier blockading will enable a relatively small civ with a capable navy (think England) to really inflict damage on another civ. Any civ that depends on the sea for communications (i.e. trade) with another civ with need to have a capable navy. Naval warfare will become very meaningful and necessary. The drawback to this idea is that there will not necessarily be as many "bluewater" naval engagements as might be "realistic" - but from a game mechanics viewpoint, it adds a lot of strategic depth without adding any additional annoyance (unlike Civ2 style caravans).

 

[hr_oskar]

Truly excellent thinking!

I agree with you that this does actually make for a fine abstraction of blockading and piracy. Neat and simple.

I think ships should have to issue a special 'blockade' order which would end their move and render them inactive until disturbed (similar to, or just the same as, the old 'sentry' order, which I am missing very much in Civ3). Thus they could only maintain a blockade while in that state, and not just by passing through the area.

Maybe blockading range shouldn't be too big... how about simply saying that all the coast tiles next to the city should be visible to your blockading ship(s)? Simple enough. Thus you would sometimes need more than one blockading fleet, especially if you want to keep your blockaders away from the enemy's land artillery.

Come to think of it there is another form of blockading in Civ3: enemy occupied sea tiles cannot be worked. But that's really not enough to make it worth the while, of course.

People are very right to criticize the current state of naval warfare in Civ. Although I appreciate the many improvements in the game, I regret that Firaxis did not after all put any substantial effort into this aspect of the game. Currently I'd rather just play Pangaea so I can forget about the whole mess!

In the games I've played so far I usually end up building no ships at all until I get Destroyers, or better yet, Battleships. Colonizing islands is less worth it than ever given Civ3's corruption levels (which I generally am not that opposed to, btw).

Age of sail is almost non-existent, as the Civ-tradition goes, and Battleships are unrealistically powerful (perhaps mostly because the AI doesn't know how to counter them).

Okay, I should stop repeating other people's criticisms

I really think we have a good idea here, GI Josh Maybe Firaxis thought of it already but decided not to include it because the AI would never learn to exploit it the way the humans would... Damn it, why do we have to be so smart!?

 

[hr_oskar]

Originally posted by hr_oskar
Age of sail is almost non-existent, as the Civ-tradition goes, and Battleships are unrealistically powerful (perhaps mostly because the AI doesn't know how to counter them).

Before someone counters my point with the Battleships...

I don't mean to say that the Battleship stats are somehow unrealistic. Not at all.

What's ultimately unrealistic is that in the single-player game, Battleships are the best buy even throughout the modern age.

In real history battleships were at their peak during the late age of imperialism and around WWI, huge dreadnoughts becoming the proudly presented symbols of industrial prowess. It was a bit of a fashion, I guess. A must-have for every great power.

By WWII they were becoming obviously inefficient because they were simply too easily sunk by air bombardment, so a lot of $$$ would go down for almost nothing

Anyway, in Civ3 the AI isn't smart enough to bombard them like that and then sink them with little effort. I think they're too cheap as well; how about 300 shields? Even that is peanuts with those industrial super-megalopolises you end up with in the modern age

Or maybe there should be lethal bombard against ships only? There is some realism in that, IMHO.

 

[Polaris]

I wish Civ III would take a cue from Call to Power II with regard to interdiction of trade. In CTP2, there were visable lines of trade running between civs. To interrupt the flow of those goods, naval vessels sat atop the trade lines and when flagged to commit an act of piracy, diverted the trade goods to the vessel's owner. Neat and simple. The only drawback to the system was the lack of response by the AI when one protested about an act of piracy. They only way to ween the AI civs off of piracy was to go to war and utterly destroy them.

 

[Zouave]

Among other things, I wanted removed this idiotic manifestation of Settller Diarrhea.

When I destroy a town or raze it, the stupid AI Civ instantly sends a settler/foot soldier combo there. They likely get the settler as a freebie, another cheat.

Unfortunately, they send them EVEN WHEN WE ARE AT WAR and do so right past my military. So they get destroyed, and I get a few free workers.

Attached is a screenshot of this. As the persians I am invading much weaker Greece. They actually have the stupidity to send a settler combo right past stacks of Immortals.

Stupid AI. FIX IT, Firaxis, as I asked two months ago.