What Would You Change And Why

[Pyrrhos]

King Bela, yes?

 

[Alcoron]

Might be It could be also St King Stephen who established the Kingdom of Hungary in 1000.

For Bulgaria the choice would be more difficult - St Boris I, Simeon I the Great, Samuil or Ivan Asen II... every single one was a worthy ruler

 

[TheOverseer714]

Fix the sub bug and the privateer bug! If you have either of those units, expect unwanted wars. Very annoying!

 

[asder2]

manufactured goods definitely need to be added.

 

[Zefyrinus]

An idea I had was to make it possible to build channels. Then ships could pass through continents instead of having to go around. Then the Imperial Channel of China could be a wonder which lets you build a lot of channels around for free and instanteneously.

Then it would be cool if volcanos could transform the terrain instead of adding pollution. If a volcano were near a coast it might create new land when the lava flows out to the sea. And lots of other natural disasters might be fun, they had some in Civ 1.

 

[Alcoron]

Yes but there must be some obstacles to build canals otherwise the whole Empire would be full of canals which is ridiculous.

 

[Jokeslayer]

I thought of something I would change about the Republic (and Democracy, I suppose) to make it less of an uber go-to government. If the military support limit was an actual limit, possibly with workers exempt, i.e. if your limit is 22 units, you can't have more than 22 units (not you can only have 22 free, but 22 total). I think that would make Monarchy more of a viable choice.

 

[rysmiel]

Hills, mountains and volcanos could be made off limits for canals. Forests and jungles could first have to be converted to plains or grassland. Additionally, building canals could be made very time consuming by having their basic build factor high. And further, there could be a per turn maintenence cost per canal per tile transversed. Say 1 gpt. These ideas would probably mean the AI programming would have to be smartened up some.

I'm inclined to think canals should be relatively cheap and early. They are kind of complementary to roads, really; the only place on a Civ map I think they will still be worth having once you have railroads is through an isthmus, the same way you can use a city as a canal now.

Making rivers traversable by water units. I would have water units need to have a flag checked to allow them to use rivers so only specific ones could and large ships, like battleships could be made not to be able to. This means that the river sections of canal paths would have to be built as canals and be canals in the game, or certain ships wouldn't be able to use the canals. Perhaps a way to solve this would be to make building canals along existing river terrain less time consuming to build initially when the workers build the canal.

I do think that the ideal solution for this might actually be Civ 2 type rivers that are a feature of a square rather than a border between squares.

 

[rysmiel]

I thought of something I would change about the Republic (and Democracy, I suppose) to make it less of an uber go-to government. If the military support limit was an actual limit, possibly with workers exempt, i.e. if your limit is 22 units, you can't have more than 22 units (not you can only have 22 free, but 22 total). I think that would make Monarchy more of a viable choice.

If the object of the game is to keep Monarchy competitive all the way through, yes.

I'd like the game to encourage more government changes and more government variety, and one way of doing that is to have significantly better governments come in later on, as some of the larger and more popular mods do.

 

[Jokeslayer]

If the object of the game is to keep Monarchy competitive all the way through, yes.

I'd like the game to encourage more government changes and more government variety, and one way of doing that is to have significantly better governments come in later on, as some of the larger and more popular mods do.

I think that change to republic would do more than make monarchy competitive throughout. I just used Monarchy there because most people seem to operate under the principles of changing once and changing early, thus making the choice between republic and monarchy.

 

[timerover51]

I thought of something I would change about the Republic (and Democracy, I suppose) to make it less of an uber go-to government. If the military support limit was an actual limit, possibly with workers exempt, i.e. if your limit is 22 units, you can't have more than 22 units (not you can only have 22 free, but 22 total). I think that would make Monarchy more of a viable choice.

What I have done with monarchy in the editor is change the corruption setting to minimal, as based on my personal experience in growing up in the Chicago area of Illinois, Monarchy it probably on par with Democracy and Republic when it comes to corruption. Then I boosted worker productivity from 2 to 4 for the same reason, basing my change on the efforts of Frederick the Great of Prussia and Peter the Great of Russia to improve both countries. Then I doubled the number of free units that you get from each size of city. Voila, a very competitive Monarchy. I do like the limits on units in a Democracy or Republic, as neither form of government in the real world likes to spend money on the military.

 

[CommandoBob]

This has probably already been said, but I would change the I'm the AI and I Can Trespass and You Can't feature. I just want the AI to walk around my borders like I have to walk around his. If my settler pairs cannot take a shortcut through AI Land, then the same restriction should apply to the AI. The Civ4 fix, Open/Closed Borders, is a nice idea, but the not the proper solution for this irritating AI behavior.

Is it a game-breaker? No. Just a nuisance.

I would be open to this fix: Any AI units (non ROP) that are more than two tiles inside my territory can be attacked and killed/captured with no damage to any reputation rating. No DoW would be needed or required; it would be a 'free' attack. It would be 'assumed' evil that they became defectors to my civ.

 

[rysmiel]

I would be open to this fix: Any AI units (non ROP) that are more than two tiles inside my territory can be attacked and killed/captured with no damage to any reputation rating. No DoW would be needed or required; it would be a 'free' attack. It would be 'assumed' evil that they became defectors to my civ.

How about a chance that AI units wandering your turf do actually defect, cumulatively increasing every turn, and increasing or decreasing depending on how strong your culture is compared to their civilisation's culture (and maybe on other things too like government type) ? Something that would be a difficulty for invasions but not a major one, but that would make endlessly wandering settler/defender pairs a doomed strategy ?

 

[TheOverseer714]

How about a chance that AI units wandering your turf do actually defect, cumulatively increasing every turn, and increasing or decreasing depending on how strong your culture is compared to their civilisation's culture (and maybe on other things too like government type) ? Something that would be a difficulty for invasions but not a major one, but that would make endlessly wandering settler/defender pairs a doomed strategy ?

I like that idea, but I would make it independent of culture, as settler pairs show up before culture becomes prevalent. Another way might be like jungle, only it be a pretty decent chance of dying or assimilating every turn for units in foreign territory, maybe based on the size of the group. Like a group of 2 be 25% each turn, 2-5 20%, 6-10 15%, and 11 or more be 10%.

 

[TheOverseer714]

Maybe the early ships could be exempt from defections or dying, or have a much lower chance, like 5%, thus they would be in little danger just passing by, but lingering for long periods would be danerous. "Your curragh has hit an uncharted reef and sank."

 

[Pyrrhos]

I think that change to republic would do more than make monarchy competitive throughout. I just used Monarchy there because most people seem to operate under the principles of changing once and changing early, thus making the choice between republic and monarchy.

In any case, the game inventor got the concept of republic wrong. The Mediterranian "democratic" "republics" of Antiquity were only open to a select elite. Furthermore, they were very corrupt and achieved little. A couple of examples:

The pinnacle of Hellenistic expansion was under Alexander and his government was certainly not a "republic".

Rome, home of "The Republic", did not achieve true greatness until first Caesar and then Augustus transformed it into an imperial monarchy. In fact, the periods preceeding and separating them were characterised by civil war and strife. The production was the same under "republic" as it was under "monarchy", but the resources of the republic were squandered whereas the Imperator, though he had to grease palms too, made certain the interests of state came before those of certain factions of the "nobility" with political ambitions.

 

[Pyrrhos]

Good points! Let us know!

 

[Marsden]

This has probably already been said, but I would change the I'm the AI and I Can Trespass and You Can't feature. I just want the AI to walk around my borders like I have to walk around his. If my settler pairs cannot take a shortcut through AI Land, then the same restriction should apply to the AI. The Civ4 fix, Open/Closed Borders, is a nice idea, but the not the proper solution for this irritating AI behavior.

Is it a game-breaker? No. Just a nuisance.

I would be open to this fix: Any AI units (non ROP) that are more than two tiles inside my territory can be attacked and killed/captured with no damage to any reputation rating. No DoW would be needed or required; it would be a 'free' attack. It would be 'assumed' evil that they became defectors to my civ.

That's on a similar theme I've been saying for years, that you shouldn't need to have total war to knock off a unit here or there. Especially if you just hit them with a catapult to get them moving. I hate it when the AI park a stack somewhere obviously in your sphere of influence but not in your borders yet and keeps them there after your borders to contain them but doesn't take them away. This would also render the sub bug much less of a problem as an "incident" involving a sub would not cause total declaration of war.

 

[Aabraxan]

I like the idea of "defections." I don't know if I'd make it independent of culture, though. What I probably would do is limit it to land units. I think of it this way: Land units can reasonably be thought of as coming into contact with local villagers and they might decide to settle down, get married & have kids. Ships, on the other hand, won't have the same kind of contact. Their crews will only meet locals if they enter a port & in Civ 3, ships can't enter foreign towns. I guess you could argue that if they end their turn on a sea tile, they're effectively docked, but you could just as easily argue that they're not.

I also wonder if the settler should change to workers, or simply defect. The threat of having the AI or the human player suddenly come up with an extra settler might make for some interesting dynamics. OTOH, I don't know if there's any way, in terms of programming, to tie the units in the settler pair together. Obviously, if the settler converts but not the spearman, there's a problem, as they're on the same tile.

 

[TheOverseer714]

The defector could appear in the nearest city. However I think a defector should cost unit support, since it has assimilated and is now a new nationality. Ships should not defect, but they shouldn't have a free pass either. A low but reasonable percentage of sinking while in foreign waters would be nice. Think of it as a case of uncharted waters. In the real world, exploring by ship was very dangerous, many ships sank or ran aground due to unfamiliarity with local reefs, sandbars, etc. So when in foreign waters, a ship has a 1 in 20 or 1 in 40 chance of sinking.