To Firaxis - next Version of Civ III - suggesting!

[Bjorn Bjornson]

jimcat, i think that it is made so railways only increase the effects of terrain improvements, and since forest cant have any improvements, railroads wont add anything.

although yeah i agree with what you are talking about - which brings up my gripe: the terrain improvements are severly lacking in civ3.

im sure that you irrigate a tile back in the days of mesopotamia and food production will never increase from then on. what about the agriculural revolutions brought on by the plow, horse harness, and then to self powered machinery? i mean really now a days in a modern country what, like 5% of the population actually is involved with food production?

at least civ2 had their farmland improvement - WHY THE HELL WAS THAT TAKEN OUT?

i think there should be levels of terrain improvement development, or just an improvement flag to give +1 food on land tiles, that would allow you to have certain improvements like "supermarket" increase land food production - its just like with how water is done now! it cant be that radical an idea!

and mining. yeah, explosives, electricity, and automated machinery would not in the least bit improve the efficiency of mines.

and where are the airbases? yeah limiting fighter bases to cities or carriers is really effective. sepcially if yer borders flare out atleast 3 spaces from the nearest city! im surprised they remembered to put in fortresses!

and speaking of cities, i think the AI in this game is too land-grabby. i mean i always play on a huge map (the only size worth playing IMO), and yet even with only 8 total civs, by 1000 ad the entire map is pretty much cultured! i'd spy on newly created rival cities, and the first thing an enemy city builds is a ****ing settler!
"well yeah bob, this is a pretty site for a town.... well, we've been here a week - we better go settle some place new."
i just wish there would be a limiting factor so you cannot build settlers until a city reaches a certain size (or maybe after so many turns since founding)

or another neat idea would be to spontaneously create settlers if the city keeps revolting/ or cannot support the growth. that would simulate people leaving an undesireable city. of course with that you should make it so a settler.worker can only join a city if it has room and isnt revolting

roads. why, after the advent of the automobile and beyond, are roads still all dirt? and then the damn railroads. argh i get so sick of having railroads in EVERY tile on the freaking map - maybe if possible itd be nice to have ti so railroads can only be built BETWEEN cities and colonies, not every damn tile there is!

also, maybe railroads, instead of unlimited movement, have very fast movement - like roads x3, or maybe just 10 moves for 1 movement point? given the size of civ3 maps, this would be more than effective for military movement

another thing id like to see is a "open space" or "wildlife preserve" or "nat'l park" tile improvement, with ecology advance - this tile in a city radius would take out any other improvement and cannot be developed - although putting a citizen to "work" this tile would give luxuries to make ppl happy - simulating tourism and recreation, which are massive chunks of a modern economy (atleast where im from )


then id like to see some more diplomatic states, like in right of passage, have it so you can specify naval, land, or both, and have a no tresspassing state as well - entering the other's territory during this state will incite war (and as such advisor should warn if yer doing so)

i like the ideas about unit transfer too - that way you can more directly help that little backward or resource-less ally of yers; but how should advanced units effect the recieving civ? like in civ2 you give a musketeer to a civ which doesnt know gunpowder, it learns gunpowder - should it be the same in this case? but then should you be able to give units that the reciever cant even research the techs required yet?

anyway, i think this game could really use an overhaul in the development or tiles outside cities - specially with how important local tiles are in this game structure

ok well im done, sorry for posting a freakin' essay!

oh yeah - support for CANALS - a tile improvement allowing naval units access to

{/ENDLESSRANT]

 

[stonecypher]

I would like for a flag on a technology to obscure a technology from the browser. Though it's a big diversion from the way the tech browser is probably currently handled, it would really help in a game where you're not supposed to have reference to what the other guy's got.

The easiest way I can see to handle this is to have a flag which states that "unless the prerequisites for this advance are met, this advance does not show in the tech browser", allowing you to display core technologies, but not the fringe variations.

Also, I would like a flag that states that a technology may not be granted by a village.

I want to work with a *large* technology set. There are a number of things which need to be addressed in that regards: number of science icons, flow chart handling, et cetera. As I'm new to mod writing, I'll not make any suggestions here - doubtless there are better people to put better suggestions into play.

Just my $0.02

 

[Bjorn Bjornson]

I would like for a flag on a technology to obscure a technology from the browser. Though it's a big diversion from the way the tech browser is probably currently handled, it would really help in a game where you're not supposed to have reference to what the other guy's got

what browser do you mean? as far as i know you cannot see techs another civ has unless you have the abilty to atleast research them (atleast i think it goes that way - ive never been that behind on research, so i dont know)

if yer talking about the advisor screen, i think that may be an idea - not being able to see advanced techs you cant even think about researching yet

 

[Maxi 75]

i´ll like a new strategic battle sistem. That way ,every time have a battle a question says automatic or manual. If we chose manual
another scenario appears ,sims like cleopatra or ceasar 3 that we can move in realistic real time movements
Another way a tech that make possible make armys and then the posiblity of convine diferent kinds of wepons.
Example
Ancient times convines frontal units ,archery and chavaldry.
In Modern Age appears the cannon how the firs artillery pice.
In the contemporany times convines all tipe off units ,naval air and terrain.
That way we can play realistic strategy battles and make the game more intresting in war time than simple move units in a map

 

[FirstNoel]

One thing I wish they would have brought from SMAC is the "battle odds". the system would compute your odds of winning the battle for you. This made the decision to start a battle a lot easier to make.

Trying to figure out what your odds are in some battles is a night mare.

hmmm, a pikeman on a mountian by a river, being attacked by a rifle man in a jungle on the otherside of the river....

I know I don't sit there and figure out what my chances are, it would take me forever.


Sean D.

 

[vlad the victor]

first thing id like to say is how the h&ll can some idiot archer kill off my freaking calvary for gods sake its guns against a bow id really like it if they would change the combat system to allow for realism in battles like these they really should give a more modern unit a advantage over a antient unit this would be more realistic second thing id really like to see the strajetic resources before the tech that you can use them comes out even if its only one tech or so difference because its so frustrating when you research coal or oil ect... and it poops up right next to you in you enemeys new little freaking town also the barbarians god almighty they are way to freaking weak yea they can kill settles and workers and little scouts and once and a while ruin your pod or steal your gold but thats it
many barbarians where the start of new nations theyed go at some town and if they could get in theyed usually burn it or keep it and start some new nation or other plus they stay at the same level all the freaking time just making stupid warriors and horsemen and galleys at least they should grow even if its just a little it would be at least a little hassle to ride up to barb camp and at least meet calvary or infatry or such other then that id really like to see multiplayer and some great scens that came one fw for civ2 well thats all i got to say thanks for listening

 

[danielkulla]

REAL Germans start in REAL Berlin. Can I quote that for commercial purposes?

 

[Marzipan]

. . . and another thing!

I believe the randomization of things like when resources appear and disappear in the current game occurs turn by turn. In other words if I save a game, play 10 more turns and see iron pop up and oil disappear (for example) in turns 6 and 9, and a source of saltpeter is exhausted in turn 7, odds are these resource changes will not happen if I replay the turns again from the saved game. If this is true, I think I would prefer to have all the randomization done when the game is launched, and have the appearance/disappearance schedule of the resources established once, so that you can replay turns and try different things without having the resource situation change from scenario to scenario. Maybe I didn't explain this well, but I think y'all get the gist of it. :crazyeyes

I'd like to see the Right of Passage agreement (or rather the LACK of a Right of Passage agreement) taken far more seriously than it is by foreign military forces. It is simply not in keeping with reality to have foreign military forces wandering around in someone elses country. In the real world, it would be considered a very serious diplomatic breach if foreign military forces trespassed into another country without so much as a "by your leave." The game should make the diplomatic ramifications of this much more severe.

 

[Quokka]

Production
I would like to see the excess shields from production to rollover to the next production item if it is the same general type of production. So extras from Swordsman can count towards Horseman but not Library. Same for City Improvements. I think of the shields as Boot Camp, but its pretty hard to turn a foundation into a horse and vice versa.
Reintroduce the 50% penalty for changing production types.

Research
Same for research. If the next tech you research is the next in the research path the excess research should rollover. If its an unrelated tech then the excess is lost. Which leads to me wanting to know the exact amount of research I am generating per turn and the amount left to get to the next tech or amount accumulated, without having to add up the column on the domestic advisor. I would be able to adjust research much more efficiently that way.

Improvements
Cold Storage city improvement to increase irrigated terrain production by 1. Or Supermarket or something to reflect increased storage or distribution capacity.
Smelting Plant city improvement to increase mined terrain production by 1.
Tree Farm city improvement to increase Forest shield production by 1. Forests should also decrease Global Warming wherever they are on the map. The Amazon is the lungs of the Earth. That would keep your workers busy planting new forests outside city radii to help controll pollution.

Resources
Have the resources graded by size of the deposit and type of deposit. Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge for sizes and Alluvial and Subterranean for type.
Sizes last for certain amounts of time.
Tiny 0-20 turns
Small 25-50 turns
Medium 60-100 turns
Large 120-150 turns
Huge 180-250 turns
Then you would have a rough idea of how long they are going to last. It would also make the trading more real. If you only have 2 tiny sources of Iron are you going to hook them both up and trade one or hold it in reserve? Iron, Coal, Oil, Aluminium, Saltpeter and Uranium should be covered this way. Horses are self replenishing and so is Rubber if it remains forested. If you cut down the forest the resource should disappear, until the discovery of Synthetic Fibers, which should give Rubber and Oil as untradeable resources, only usable by your Civ. You could however trade the natural resource after this if there is any left.
Alluvial deposits are those on the surface and would be those that you can see when the requiste tech is discovered. They would be limited to Medium and below size.
After discovering Electronics assaying techniques are improved and Subterranean deposits become visible and can be of any size.
Iron, Coal, Oil, Aluminium and Uranium would have both types of deposits.
Luxury Resources that are contaminated by Nuclear Pollution should be destroyed. Even after the workers clean it up would you buy wine from there?

 

[Captain Ludd]

Wouldn't it be cool if you could negotiate with other nations an arms limitation treaty?

It looks like it would be pretty easy to do...
Open up the negotiations and say "I'll keep to X number of Y units if you keep to Q number of Z units". He might agree or balk or ask that he be allowed more units.

So maybe you agree to keep an equel number of battleships.

Or maybe after you kick some butt in a war you agree to peace only if they agree not to build any subs or tanks.

Or maybe you agree that neither of you will build nuclear weapons.

Or maybe you can build 30 infantry units but he can only build 20.

(I haven't thought of how it would be monitered yet. I know I don't want it done automatically. If I agree not to build subs...I still want to be able to do it because I am a dirty liar! Should a breach be reported right away by the computer? Or maybe you have a chance at being caught every turn?)


This gets more intresting if you could negotiate treaties with multiple nations at the same time...

You invite a group of them to the table and request that each of them agree to never build nuclear weapons. India agrees. Japan agrees but wants 200 gold in return. India, France, and Greece and you agree to put 50 gold each into the pot towards this. France also wants the secret of Ecology so you agree to give it up. Everyone is happy so the treaty is signed.

Or you call a meeting and invite France and England. You ask if they both would like to enter an alliance against Germany. France scoff unless they are provided with ten tanks. You offer six and they agree. England says they will fight but want the city of Bremen (if it is captured by you or France then you must turn it over to England. If you don't then you face a serious hit to your reputation). Both you and France agree. So war is declared.


Other things that could be part of diplomacy.

How about de-militerized/neutral zones being agreed to?

How come when I beat Germany up I can't demand all of their coal in the peace negotiations and then trade the surplus for some cash? (I likes the cash :crazyeyes )


Oh and how come things aren't named? I remember back in colnozation that trade routes used to be called "the boston express" or the "Montreal cannonball". How come we don't name Rivers, Oceans, mountain ranges, continants, alliances or wars? I like to name things.

That's it for now.




One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.

 

[vlad the victor]

thats a good ideal about the diplomatic agreements they could really delve into those kind of things and i would like to nname stuff to heheh on my huge mapes i never remeber where the H&LL i am so i have to search all over the freaking map for the place im looking for

 

[Marzipan]

I dunno what the chances are that any of these ideas have of being implented, but if we are going to indulge in blue-skying, here's an idea I think is neat. Allow an option for a civ to "retire" obsolete, elite military units in a city and use them to create a "war memorial" that adds culture to the city. Everyone notices how silly it seems to have old units, like a frigate for example, sailing around in modern times, but here in the US we do still have the USS Constitution, a revolutionary war era ship that is still officially a commissioned warship in the US Navy. Of course nobody intends to use it in combat again; it is just a war memorial that has cultural value in the same sense that temples, etc do in Civ III. Wouldn't you like to take that elite frigate that has served you well for centuries, park it in a city, and create a war memorial out of it instead of coldly disbanding it? Think of all the old, obsolete, military hardware you see propped up in war memorials or displays.

So to sum it up, have a new option that appears when a unit achieves elite status called something like "Create Memorial", and then the memorial adds culture points through the years.

 

[Pangur Bán]

I would like to see more internal politics in the game. For instance, if your empire becomes unhappy with your rule, a large part of your empire could revolt under the leadership of your most successful army leader. It would also be nice if there were minor civs who found only two or three cities. Also, large empires spread across many continents should have to deal with the prospect of breakaway civs that could take their name from the largest city on the new continent, from a list designed for this purpose or simply by placing New in front of the Motherciv name.

Unless the Austrian civ is there, I think that Vienna should be placed on the German city list. Thebes should be given its Egyptian name so that the extremely important Greek Thebes (in Boeotia) can be placed on the Greek city list. Alexandria should be Greek instead of Egyptian and Constantinople should be the capital of the Greek civ, since this was the political and cultural centre of the Greek world for 1000 years. Athens was only a major political centre for little over a hundred years.
Babylon should be renamed Mesopotamia, thereby allowing Assyrian and Sumerian city names to be included. I think that they’re enough continuous elements in the region to justify this

Also, I know that civ3 is partly about how history could have been, but surely it's absurd to have irrelevant civs like the Iroquois and Zululand and not have important ones like the Arabs, the Celts, the Spanish and the Phoenicians.

 

[phreaky]

I'm surprised more people haven't mentioned this. The level of corruption is totally excessive. We really ought to ask Firaxis to make the level of corruption experienced under Democracy correspond to the level suggested in the manual. I have a weakness for large civilisations. However, it is clear that corruption is not "minimal" if any city you build, beyond a certain number, has only one shield and one commerce, and stays that way even if you build a courthouse and a police station. Or if Firaxis really wants to maintain the current high level of corruption, we should say that, beyond a certain level of technology, modern communications make the size of a civ irrelevant to the level of corruption.

Also, it should be made easier to break trade agreements after 20 turns. It took me ages to work out how to do this.

 

[Jimcat]

Re corruption: many people have argued about this, pro and con. I think that leaving the corruption levels as they are makes for an interesting game (if not entirely realistic -- someone brought up the example of Hong Kong). You can always tweak the settings in the editor if corruption bothers you.

Re breaking trade deals after 20 turns: RTFM. (-: (Although, to be fair, TFM isn't very good. But the ability is there, and if it takes you a while to figure out how to do it, it's not the game's fault.)

Now, my big suggestion for Civ4 (or a civ3 update): BETTER DIPLOMACY.

This shouldn't be too hard for Firaxis to do -- they already worked out a great system in Alpha Centauri! Why couldn't they have recycled more of it for Civ3?

Some SMAC diplomacy features that I'd like to see in Civ:

A reasonable valuation of cities by the AI for trading purposes. (I've got a small city on an island off my neighbor's coast. He's got a city surrounded completely by my territory. If we swap, we'll both benefit. Maybe throw in some additional incentives based on the relative size of the cities. It shouldn't be hard to do.)

The ability to sell or grant military units to another civilization.

The ability for allied units to stack together and use each other's cities.

Mutual withdrawals. (In SMAC, if another leader demanded that you withdraw from their territory, you had the option of replying "Only if you likewise withdraw YOUR units from MY territory!" It's reasonable, useful, and shouldn't be hard to implement.)

The ability to put a request to "Please cease hostilities against my friend" as an item on the bargaining table.

The ability to offer threats/incentives to other civilizations to vote for you at the UN.

I like Captain Ludd's suggestions for diplomacy as well, and that reminds me: how about a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact? The UN could vote on it, and if it passes, building nuclear weapons would become illegal. Nations could try to build nuclear weapons in secret (it would be an espionage option), but if another nation discovered them, they could demand that you "Cease your buildup of nuclear arms or declare WAR!" If a nation defies the treaty, all of the signatories of the pact go to war against them. Okay, that's pretty complex, but it'd be fun.

 

[Marzipan]

I like the war aspect of Civ III as much as the next guy, but it occured to me this weekend that maybe the game doesn't allow players to reap enough benefits from maintaining peace with the world. These increased diplomatic capabilities mentioned in this thread would be a step in the right direction, and here's another agreement that would be nice - a scientific cooperation agreement. The way it would work is like this: when you make a scientific cooperation agreement with another civ, each side gets all the technologies that the other side has, then research is coordinated between the two civs (so they are not both researching the same thing at the same time), and each gets any new technology that either researches. This continues for the standard 20 turn span of agreements then comes up for renewal. Maybe a requirement for this should be that each civ has X number of universities.

 

[El gran capitán]

What a relief, the forums needed a tread like this. You are right, Marzipan, the diplomatic bonuses must be better. Engaging your suggestion with the need of a lower corruption, I have another idea: why not add “economical cooperation” as a diplomatic option?. This is how it will work: the two agreement nations that sign an economical cooperation treaty must determinate how much involved they will get, in a scale from 1% to 50%. Depending of which level you have choose, at the beginning, both civilizations lost this percenteage of taxes in their cities. But each new turn, this negative tax bonus erases progressively, and erase also a corruption point in all the cities of the two civilizations, and gives a tax bonus in the cities that are near to the another civilization border. This treaties are a long but extremely effective tactic, you can loose a lot of money in the beginning, but at last the bad effects of the treaty are erased and the corruption is washed. This treaty can also unite the countries even more than the alliances (look at the benefits). I suggest that for to apply the tech treaty that you mentioned, or this treaty, the civilizations must discover a new tech advance “international cooperation”.
BTW, another form to fight the corruption could be a technological improvement that it have been ignored in this game: “state concept”. It gives the country an effective burocratic administration instead of the old sporadic tax collecting of the ancient times. Its effect can be: since a government is proclaimed, or since this tech is discovered, each 4 turns there is a “administrative point” added in all your cities. This points lows 1 of corruption. This make the governments quite more realistic, the most old ones (like the US or the China ones) or the first ones that discovered this advance (the Roman empire) has got a more efficient anti corruption system than the more new and unstable, for example, in the reality, US and Albania are both democracies, US are larger, but it has a better administrative system and less corruption because of its stability and experience.

What do you think about this suggestions?.

 

[conquerant]

In diplomacy, I'd also like to see pacts and alliances modified. Nothing peeves me more than when I'm figting two people with a protection pact, bring one to surrender, then concentrate on the second, so then the second invokes its protection pact and the first redelcares war, and then I get the second to surrender, go back to the first on, the second redeclares war, and so on.

And sort of along the diplomacy thread, I'd like to see Nationalism have more affect, much more representative of the huge effect it had on real history. Historically, Nationalism didn't only have the effect of people seeing themselves as part of a nation, but it also had the correlating effect of people seeing other people as part of a nation. I think after Nationalism, you should suffer happiness penalties for conquering an enemy city (unless, of course, some of their citizens are your culture.) and diplomatic penalties from other countries who also have Nationalism. Adding to that, I'd like to see "Occupy" as an option when you take over an enemy city. During occupation, you get a part of its production, but not all, and if the enemy attacks, your units are weakened to represent resistance movements. Then in peace, you can bargain for more, and then the enemy gets its cities back. Part of this would be resorces and luxuries would have to be added for peace negotiations.

In my opinion, this would be so much easier, and more historically accurate. So you don't have oil and noone will trade with you? Instead of trying to conquer a city with oil, and then spending tons of resources to rebuild it, crush oppostition, and defend it, you just occupy a bunch of enemy cities until they agree to give you oil.

 

[Marzipan]

As far as cutting out corruption, I'm puzzled as to why we can't build "provincial capitals" as our civ grows. I know you can build the "hidden palace" but you can only build one of those, and whoever heard of a hidden palace anyway ("honey, I'm going down to the hidden palace, be back soon . . ."). We should be able to build a provincial capital for every 4 or 5 cities that cuts down on corruption for the cities around it.

I like the sound of an economic cooperation agreement but I think I would make it something a little simpler like two civs that have an economic cooperation agreement receive the same benefit as if they each had the Smith's Trading Company wonder, and it has the same prerequisites as Smith's Trading Company. humm perhaps we could go down the list of wonders and figure out appropriately named cooperation agreements that give civs the same benefit as the wonder for as long as they are cooperating with each other. With a few of these agreements it would be a pretty good incentive to maintain peace!

 

[Quokka]

It's the Forbidden Palace. It was the palace of the Chinese Emperors. I'm pretty sure it was forbidden for the common people to enter uninvited, hence the name. Maybe forbidden to look at the Emperor too, not too sure on that but they did make everyone put their faces to the floor as they passed. Generally not alot was allowed in the Palace unless you were Royalty. It's good to be the King!
More importantly you are entirely correct, there should be more of them called Governors Palace or something similar, slightly smaller effective radius but one becomes available after every x cities, I'd say something like 16 would be a good number. It's possible to do in the editor right now, just add extra FP's. I am sure I already saw a mod like this in the Creation Forums either here or at Apolyton. Dreifels if memory serves was working on it.