Modern versus Ancient Garbage

[Zouave]

There's another thing to remember about "cheating". . .

Sid Meier had nothing to do with Civ 3 other than pimp his now sullied name for cash.

Civ 3 was thrown together mostly by one person - the now culpable Soren Johnson. He was apparently the one responsible for nonsense such as Settler Diarrhea, Culture Flipping, and massive corruption (in the original game - a cheap fix for too fast tech development), among other irritations such as pitiful naval warfare and awful Espionage. Along with so many typos in the original txt and readme he would have flunked Seventh Grade English.

He has already admitted on these forums that, starting with the development of gunpowder, military units were kept ARTIFICIALLY low due to the incredible (and unrealistic) scarcity of resources. Iron and coal are ludicrously rare unless Edited. Why? "To give those civs without a certain resource a chance"!

In otherwords, Soren concocted idiotic appearance rates for resources (artificial and unreal); he then concocted equally dopey values for the military units to compensate for the goofy resource appearance rates! And THAT is "cheating".

If anyone wants to take a look at more rational rates and values, see the mod I posted above, or Plutarck's LWC mod on the other forum.

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by Zouave


In otherwords, Soren concocted idiotic appearance rates for resources (artificial and unreal); he then concocted equally dopey values for the military units to compensate for the goofy resource appearance rates! And THAT is "cheating".

I have also upped the attack and defense values of modern units, and I think it's quite reasonable to do so. If the AI is too dumb to take advantage of the .bic changes there should be options so we can adjust the AI to "desire" the good techs and tend to build them more.

One thing that I think would give the AI civs (and humans too) a better fighting chance is to make railroads buildable if you have iron and either coal OR [oil and refining]. The historian J. M. Roberts wrote that England got a lead in smelting in the 19th century when it started using mineral oils instead of coal. CIV3 lets us build battleships without coal, so why can't we build railroads? In my games, railroads are a much more important weapon than battleships. (Yes, I know they would have to change the dependency structure a little because there is no provision for alternate resources.)

Come to think of it, maybe your suggestion of making coal more plentiful would be easier to do and it would balance the game even more. Unfortunately, in 1.21f they took away the option of changing the .bic options in the middle of a game and making the changes take effect. Maybe a performance enhancement? To prevent the game from crashing? Who knows?

I am interested in your comments about history, Zoave. What do you think?

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Another solution to the iron + coal thing mentioned by sumthinelse:

allow on-trading of res and lux. That is: I don`t have coal, buy two from another civ, and trade one on to another. That way, the chances of a civ to get at coal are significantly greater, since a neutral civ can suuply it with a res from an enemy. Like real world, where warring or not-trading countries still get each others goods via the open market.

This would btw work a lot better if the world was say 20 times larger than huge and the game then played with 80 civs. Then, a lot of the trade stuff would work better and the ridiculous ganging up might stop..... But then, we`ll never get coputers fast enough...

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by Killer
Another solution to the iron + coal thing mentioned by sumthinelse:

I don`t have coal, buy two from another civ, and trade one on to another. That way, the chances of a civ to get at coal are significantly greater, since a neutral civ can suuply it with a res from an enemy. Like real world, where warring or not-trading countries still get each others goods via the open market.

Interesting idea. And then could the civ who doesn't want you to get his coal via the middle man put pressure on the middle man to stop it? We don't have an option of "stop trading with that guy or we will declare war on you" or "stop trading with that guy or we will cut off your spices" do we? So if the guy whose coal you are getting breaks his agreement with the middle man he will get bad diplomatic press, I guess? Actually I don't think the AI would be smart enough to think like that.....

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by sumthinelse
Actually I don't think the AI would be smart enough to think like that.....

I guess so

 

[JohnnyReb]

No clue why they dropped this concept from CIV2, but the firepower/hitpoints concept in CIV2 totally eliminated this 'ancient vs. modern' quirk for me ( and I've played CIV2 for years). Never once did a spearman take out a tank, etc...

I know it would be too much rewriting to bring that back, but maybe if they (as someone whom I forget early on suggested) added some sort of modifier for when different era units attack one another.

As far as changing the rules, the only things I have changed are to make swordsmen, immortals, and legioneers upgradable to musketmen. I rarely use those three units anyway, so I figure it actually helps the AIs ( oddly, anyone ever notice legioneers are by default set to upgrade to immortals? ). This change just seemed to make sense to me, that is why I did it.

One quick comment for Zeeter. Honestly no offense meant, but don't fall into the popular myth that all the Aboriginal Americans(see below) were holding hands singing to mother earth before the Europeans arrived. Many tribes warred with each other just as savagely as did the Europeans...so I don't give them any special insight into enlightenment. (as for the term Aboriginal Americans, THAT is the proper term. I am as native as anyone else to America..having been born here. Check the dictionary for aboriginal...).

 

[newfangle]

I modded my game to do the following as well:
Swordsmen, Immortals, Legionaries upgrade to knights and unique knights which upgrade to calvary, which upgrade to tanks.

 

[Exile_Ian]

Hmmm regarding the 'trading on' of resources. Aren't you already able to do that?

I know you can trade something to someone else, even when the trading screen shows you have zero available to trade (i.e. you trade away your own use). Doesn't the program allow you to trade for that resource then (on the basis that you no longer have any available)? I thought it did.

Similarly, I've traded a surplus Iron away, and then had my remaining Iron supply 'dry up'. I thought I'd previously been able to trade for Iron from someone else (i.e. until my current agreement expired).

I have traded away horses (for instance) when I really didn't need the resource in the short term and wanted desperately to trade them for an advance.