Suggestions to make civ 3 more realistic

[Veteranewbie]

1. Civil engineer (the specialist that come with conquest) should only require engineering (middle age tech)
2. Scientist require improvement university in the city, but provides 2 science output.
3. Nation should earn culture points for each technology. So a more technological advance nation should have higher culture.
4. Guerilla should have 'stealth' attack.
5. The Chinese shouldn't be militaristic. Instead be agricultural. They may as well replace industrious with scientific. Also, change rider to something else
6. Flak should be able to upgrade to mobile SAM
7. Tanks should require iron but not rubber
8. Infantry shouldn't require rubber shouldnt it, or do they use rubber bullets?
9. All modern ships should require iron
10. Carrier should have a larger capacity, as well as cost much much more shields. (Go figure, a nation can have hundreds of tanks, but only a few carriers.)
11. A.I. shouldn't keep trading techs so frequently (i mean in regent level, it should slow down a bit).
12. You shouldn't be able to build roads on snow capped mountain (anyone build a road/railroad across Mt everest from china to nepel?)
13. Expansionist should have an advantage in expanding (i.e. build settlers) instead of their better relation with barbarians.
14. Tanks shouldn't lost to spearman.......
15. Some resources should require workers action to make usable i.e. to use iron, the tile should first be connected by road, then MINED, before the iron is usable. So should aluminium.
16. If there is rubber/fur in the forest (I think it only comes out in forest) and you chop the trees down, the rubber will move (you chop down all the rubber trees)
17. Oasis should have fresh water provided. Also, please explain, why can i 'irrigate' inside an oasis or build a mine in it?
That's so far I can think of, I wish someone can add more to all my suggestions

 

[AngryGerbil]

I was all set and ready to reply to this and say "But Civ is a game! Not a "Life Simulator!", but, you do have some good points.

Mountains have to be able to be "roaded" or else how do I get my cannon's of death across the himalayas? (Or, maybe you don't think I even should be able to, in which case I say, hmmmm.)

I agree that tanks shouldn't lose to spearmen, but as far as I can see, the only viable alternative at this point is actually worse.

I disagree with #16 simply on a game-play basis. Remember, realism doesn't always make a game better.

 

[Goober]

Shouldn't this be in the Civ4 ideas thread, located here:http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=69291

 

[Theoden]

#2: Agree. It should be increased further when you build reseach lab

#3: In which city should that culture be generated?

#7 and 9: Saltpeter is in abundance when you build rifleman, so you could think of it the same way with iron

#13, 15 and 17: Agree. Both realistic and improving gameplay

#12 and 16: AngryGerbil is right. It would spoil some of the game.

As another suggestion you could have some units have strengths against others. (i. e. Pikeman would easily slay mounted units)

 

[Arrogant]

Good points. #13 though, if expansionists had a settler advantage they would get a tremendous push. I mean, most strategies are about building settlers more quickly.

 

[Archer 007]

Wouldnt that make expansionist sort of a broken trait then?

 

[badeend]

There are tunnels under snowcapped mountains (not in the Himalaya, but they are in the Alps), so they can be crossed in real life. Because the are no tunnels in Civ, there must be a way to cross these mountains. Hannibal also took a route trough the Alps with a massif army to attack Rome, although he lost some of his men due to ambushes and avalanches.
But in the game it might be frustrating to loose some units, because of avalanches on mountain crossing. Especcially if you move your *best* units to the front.

 

[The Last Conformist]

3: Sounds tricky to implement sensibly ...

7 & 8: Just read the civilopedia entry on rubber. It explains adequately why Rubber is a sensible prereq for those two units.

10: I think of one Carrier unit as representing one actual carrier with attendant smaller ships, while a Tank unit as representing an entire armoured division.

12: There are roads across the Himalayas - the Chinese managed to get several armoured divisions across them during the Sino-Indian War back in the 60s. The trick is not to go over the highest peaks, but around them.

17: Irrigation inside oases is common in the real world, so I see no trouble with that. Mines is odder, but there's no reason you couldn't have some mineral resources worth exploiting in or immediately adjacent to an oasis.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

Maybe make modern units independent on oil and/or iron. Say with the advent of composite materials and fuel cells.

 

[Scop]

1. Civil engineer (the specialist that come with conquest) should only require engineering (middle age tech)

A Middle Ages Civil Engineer would increase production? That sounds a bit unreasonable, from a realism and gameplay perspective. This is why it comes later, because by then, it makes sense that a Civil Engineer would boost production.

2. Scientist require improvement university in the city, but provides 2 science output.

Now they give you 3 science in C3C, and a tax collector gives 2 coins, without any improvements. Better than what you asked for.

3. Nation should earn culture points for each technology. So a more technological advance nation should have higher culture.

I don't follow this. Why does technology contribute to culture? Art and social inventions do that. I suppose some techs might quality for that, but those usually have improvements/wonders that you can build to bolster this. And besides, higher tech nations don't usually need more of an advantage.

And to answer theodon, it could just be "generic culture" that adds to your total, but not to the influence of any particular city. Thus, it would be good for a cultural victory, but nothing else. This wouldn't be too hard to implement; just need one more variable for each civ and a small bit of code (testing to see that it's fully implemented could be a little difficult though). But apparently people don't have a problem making cultural victories anyway; I have never won that way but I also play on normal sized maps and conquest a lot.

4. Guerilla should have 'stealth' attack.

I believe in the PTW beta testing, they make Guerillas "Hidden Nationality" like Privateers. I guess they were too powerful though. This would entail essentially the same thing.

14. Tanks shouldn't lost to spearman.......

Ever seen "The Power of One"? A tank lost to some "spearmen" there . It can happen. You just have to consider that war is not always about 2 forces facing off in a organized manner on the battlefield like medieval European troops. Sometimes, a badly equipped unit can win if they can take advantage of their situation. I think the real question is "Do Tanks lose too often to spearmen?" Possibly. The odds of a fortified spearman in open terrain (grasslands, plains, desert, tundra) winning a "round" is 27 out of 187 (14.4%) That does seem a bit high, although outright defeating a fully healed tank (even a regular) is much lower; the combat calculator says that the odds of a regular tank defeating a regular spear under these conditions is 97.5%. That's not really that bad. Upping both to veteran slants it even more in favor of the tank. Just don't get cocky with damaged units or else the RNG will bite you eventually.

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Personally, I have a suggestion that would make the game better that's somewhat in line with realism. This is borrowed from Civ 1/2: Why can't there be a popup that says when a rival has learned a new technology, by trade or by research, if you have contact with them? I mean, you CAN get this information from them if they're not at war with you, if you open up a diplomatic talk with them. So why make us on high difficulty levels succumb to RSI by forcing us to do this a lot early on (when trading around is REALLY important)? This would almost certainly require a trivial amount of code to do, and it would help us all out a lot. You make it not work if you're at war with the enemy, and you could even have it require establishing an embassy like in Civ 1/2... but why not allow it somehow? I mean, you can turn on "Show Wonder Popups" and get info you couldn't get any other way besides spying on every city every turn...

EDIT: Flak DOES upgrade to Mobile Sam, at least on the beta 1.12 patch. However, I didn't see anything about the Hwach'a upgrading to Artillery. Anyone know if this is an oversight, or if they really don't upgrade?

 

[derekroth]

Scop brings up a good point about attacking less advanced units with more advanced units that are damaged. The whole spearman tank thing has been talked about so much. But to be honest, I don't recall it happening to me that much if ever. I seldom if ever attack with damaged units. Maybe this explains why I can't remember ever losing a tank to a spearman. And one of my favorite things is attacking that poor country that started on some isolated continent and never makes it past the ancient age. Losing more advanced units to ancient ones is kinda silly, but as so many people have pointed out, if this randomeness is taken away, the game becomes just a number cruncher.

 

[ybbor]

1. not really, they don't really have specialists back then that did that,i think it's supposed to simulate bulldozers, and increased knowledge of construction, and at that point, the most advanced cities have libraries
2. adreesed to some extent in conquests
3. a nation can know how to create the best ice sclupture this side of pluto, but unless someone puts it where someone can see it (i.e. on display outside the library) it ain't worth jack
4. there becomes an issue with capturing cities
5. matter of opinion
6. not sure, it might, haven't gotton that far
7. name a tank that uses iron and not some more abundent metal, again this is like the rifleman argument, and do yo propse the tanks treads are made of iron?
8. combat boots, also see civpedia
9. rifleman argument, also see #7
10. carriers can't become too powerful wth leathal plane bombard, and building 2 carriers (4plane cappacity) for say 100 shields is just like 1 carrier(8trans) for 200
11. all major adavces usually are from an international community of some sort
12. this would give an advantage to warm maps,also, all high enough mountins have snow
13. to powerful, plus they know how to deal with barbs and have experience w/ them
14. don't think of them as spearmen, think of them as a bunch of poorly trained rifleman w/ the weather on tier side( darn hail, puts a dent in tose cannons, also your not fighting so much against the spearman as the people in the city
15. when you get the advance, you asume you know how to mine and use it (see civoped on oil)
16. they preserved the rubber trees, then they planted a small amount of new ones
17. to farm the lands around the oasis or acsess minerals from the sand (i.e. make it into glass)

 

[The Last Conformist]

ybbor wrote
7. name a tank that uses iron and not some more abundent metal, again this is like the rifleman argument, and do yo propse the tanks treads are made of iron?

Two points: Iron is the most abundant metal on the planet, and forms most of the mass of every thank ever built.

 

[NewbieHere]

#5, how about a gattling unit? replaces musketman, attack 2, defense 3, movement 2, and can attack 2 targets in a row.

My own: How about the issue of a mortal unit? It's just funny how your Worker can live for more than 400 years at the start...

 

[The Last Conformist]

A gatling unit that replaces Musketman? Why not some unit vaguely contemporary with gatling guns?

 

[AceChilla]

I really agree with the carrier part.

They should be able to carry something like 8 or 10 planes, and cost a lott more.

In real live a carrier is one of the most expensive and valuable ships at sea. And not many countries have the money to build them or pay their upkeep. In the game they should be more expensive and be able to carry a lot more planes.