What You'd Like In Civ3

[Quintillus]

Come to think of it, that's another option that would be nice: to completely disable pollution effects for scenarios (à la Civ2).

You can effectively do that by setting all buildings to zero pollution and setting the maximum "city" size to something absurd that will never reached. Then you have no building or "metropolis" pollution. With a custom map, volcanoes can not be a problem, or you can set the eruption period extraordinarily high for random maps to make them far less of an issue. Then nukes are the only problem, and not every scenario needs nukes. If you want nukes without pollution, though, the best you can do is uber-long-range, uber-high-damage Cruise Missiles.

I kind of like having an occasional event, though. Happens in Civ4, too - sometimes even with Warriors beating Tanks.

 

[da3dalus]

um, what is this thread for?

Is there a chance to re-write the code of civ3 some day?

hehehe Yeah, would be nice, I'll eat my hat if they ever release the source code...

Then I will mod the hell out of CivIII!

 

[CivRulesAll]

um, what is this thread for?

Is there a chance to re-write the code of civ3 some day?

This thread is just for discussing things that you'd like to happen in civilization 3 but probably never will unless Firaxis decides to release another patch that may or may not have some of these ideas, but that is highly unlikely as they are busy at work patching civilization 4 and working on civilization 5(Probably.)

 

[Argetnyx]

Look under the civ4 forums area and go to 'Civ - Ideas & Suggestions', we need Civ3 supporters there

 

[MGS]

To an extent you can control when a Golden Age will occur in a couple of ways. If you normally have them triggered by your Unique Unit during Ancient Times, then you can uncheck that ability for the Unique Unit in the editor, or work very hard to make sure that your Unique Units do not kill anyone during the early period. If you choose the editor fix, then create a later version of the Unique Unit in the appropriate time period and set that for the Golden Age.

If you have the Golden Age triggered by building Wonders, I do no think that there is a way to work around that short of keeping track of what Wonder or Wonders combination triggers the Golden Age, and not build them.


It would be nice to have the option of postponing the Golden Age until later in the game.

Thats what I mean, postponing the golden age. I couldn't think of the word.

 

[undertoad]

A bettercorruption model would definitely be No.1 on my list. I now always play a basic mod I made in the editor, with lower corruption and a higher optimum number of cities. Sure, distance and rank corruption do help tone down the runaway civ effect; but these seems like a crude sticking-plaster solution to a complicated game mechanic that really needed a more well-thought-out solution.

As an aggressive builder, I hate putting effort into conquering enemy cities, looking forward to reshaping them to my own needs, preserving as much as I can during invasion (e.g. refraining from using too much aerial bombardment), and then, in the moment of victory, finding that that size-10 city I've finally conquered is a pile of crap.

I really like the idea posted further up, that it should be possible to reduce corruption by simply paying attention to your cities and managing them properly. Trouble is how a computer game can detect "attention". Simply opening the City Screen isn't a good measure. How about getting "anti-corruption" points by:

- Avoiding Civil Disorder. Corruption in a particular city would spike upwards following a civil disorder event, and take a while to subside.
- Building culture buildings in the city. Something like the "tourism" effect of established, old culture buildings.
- Making sure your empire is connected by roads/railways/harbors.
- Avoiding the "Growth in 9999 turns" scenario, either by building the required Aqueduct/Hospital, or by delaying it and managing production in the mean time so that excess food isn't being thrown away?
- In a similar way, avoiding throwing away shields by switching production?

These factors would have to be well-balanced and factored for this to work. I think corruption is a good idea, it's just way out of whack in Civ3, and impossible to minimise by clever, attentive playing. Courthouses are just pathetic in their effect. How about a sliding-scale Courthouse, whose price depends on how effective you want it to be (a bit like the choices of "style" of espionage mission)? Or a late-industrial/early-modern era tech that reduces corruption? (I don't know, the Select Committee or something! That's UK-terminology, maybe the US equivalent would be the Grand Jury investigation or something? Not that I'm saying our UK Select Committees are actually much good at reducing corruption - but that's off-topic!).

I also like the water-movement ideas - especially peninsular movement. Canals would be a great addition; sure, they'd be expensive in terms of worker-turns, but to have this option would be great.

One other thing is something I really liked about CivII: terraforming, turning desert to plains, hills or mountains for example. I don't mind if you have to be pretty advanced (e.g. Replaceable Parts?) to do this, or if it takes many turns. Just something I miss.

 

[timerover51]

A bettercorruption model would definitely be No.1 on my list. I now always play a basic mod I made in the editor, with lower corruption and a higher optimum number of cities. Sure, distance and rank corruption do help tone down the runaway civ effect; but these seems like a crude sticking-plaster solution to a complicated game mechanic that really needed a more well-thought-out solution.

As an aggressive builder, I hate putting effort into conquering enemy cities, looking forward to reshaping them to my own needs, preserving as much as I can during invasion (e.g. refraining from using too much aerial bombardment), and then, in the moment of victory, finding that that size-10 city I've finally conquered is a pile of crap.

I really like the idea posted further up, that it should be possible to reduce corruption by simply paying attention to your cities and managing them properly. Trouble is how a computer game can detect "attention". Simply opening the City Screen isn't a good measure. How about getting "anti-corruption" points by:

- Avoiding Civil Disorder. Corruption in a particular city would spike upwards following a civil disorder event, and take a while to subside.
- Building culture buildings in the city. Something like the "tourism" effect of established, old culture buildings.
- Making sure your empire is connected by roads/railways/harbors.
- Avoiding the "Growth in 9999 turns" scenario, either by building the required Aqueduct/Hospital, or by delaying it and managing production in the mean time so that excess food isn't being thrown away?
- In a similar way, avoiding throwing away shields by switching production?

These factors would have to be well-balanced and factored for this to work. I think corruption is a good idea, it's just way out of whack in Civ3, and impossible to minimise by clever, attentive playing. Courthouses are just pathetic in their effect. How about a sliding-scale Courthouse, whose price depends on how effective you want it to be (a bit like the choices of "style" of espionage mission)? Or a late-industrial/early-modern era tech that reduces corruption? (I don't know, the Select Committee or something! That's UK-terminology, maybe the US equivalent would be the Grand Jury investigation or something? Not that I'm saying our UK Select Committees are actually much good at reducing corruption - but that's off-topic!).

I was the one that posted the idea of reducing corruption by paying attention to your cities, so I appreciate your comments. Following up on some of your ideas, I have worked at reducing corruption by giving a larger number of buildings, besides just the court house, the ability to reduce corruption, so that the more buildings you put into the city, the more effect you have on reducing corruption. There is also in the editor, under Difficulty Levels, a slider for corruption, so that if you wish to reduce the effects, you can. However, I would rather have corruption remain a problem for the AI, so I have not touched that at all. As for keeping track of your city management, I envision it a being how closely are you monitoring a city's production. For my play, EVERY UNIT produced by EVERY CITY is approved by me, and I am constantly checking and changing the production queue, along with monitoring worker usage. Someone who does that should benefit by having less corruption.

I also like the water-movement ideas - especially peninsular movement. Canals would be a great addition; sure, they'd be expensive in terms of worker-turns, but to have this option would be great.

One other thing is something I really liked about CivII: terraforming, turning desert to plains, hills or mountains for example. I don't mind if you have to be pretty advanced (e.g. Replaceable Parts?) to do this, or if it takes many turns. Just something I miss.

Canals had a major effect on the development of the American Mid West in terms of agriculture and industry, which is why I would also like to see them. If you could build them once you reach Steam Power, like railroads, but taking more time, it would be a major improvement. As for terraforming, it looks like I need to take a long look at Civ2 now that I have the Civilization Chronicles, and see what it does.

 

[da3dalus]

Canals had a major effect on the development of the American Mid West in terms of agriculture and industry, which is why I would also like to see them. If you could build them once you reach Steam Power, like railroads, but taking more time, it would be a major improvement. As for terraforming, it looks like I need to take a long look at Civ2 now that I have the Civilization Chronicles, and see what it does.

I agree that canals should be in the game, but I think that they should be available long before Steam Power, as the Chinese had built the preliminary sections of their Grand Canal around 600BC...

They should of course take a very long time and require a HUGE number of workers.

 

[timerover51]

I agree that canals should be in the game, but I think that they should be available long before Steam Power, as the Chinese had built the preliminary sections of their Grand Canal around 600BC...

They should of course take a very long time and require a HUGE number of workers.

I forgot about the Chinese Grand Canal, and also the early canal linking the Nile River and the Red Sea. I was thinking more of the canal-building movement in England and the US in the early 1800s. You could put them in with either Construction or Engineering then. I would lean more to Engineering, and require a LOT of workers or a long time per tile.

 

[da3dalus]

Perhaps this could be modded in-game by creating a new landmark terrain with canal-like graphics where both land and naval units can traverse it?

I'm out of my depth on speculating this because I don't know how the system handles terrain like this...

 

[EvilConqueror]

Naval armies. Those would be awesome.

 

[Argetnyx]

Those would be called 'Armadas', and later 'Task Forces', or 'Naval Groups'. Good idea too...

 

[Graceheart the Leopard]

I would put in any version of Civ3 a "rebellion" option. Here's how it works: here's a screenshot from the Civ3 Editor. As you can see, this is TeTurkhan Test of Time:

Imagine this is an in-game shot. I'm playing Germany, and Amsterdam has went into Civil Disorder. Now, I am too busy doing other stuff, say for example attacking the Celts, to pay attention to Amsterdam. Now after x number of turns (say the default is 10), Amsterdam will split off and become its own civ:

This new civ works completely independent of me: it would build improvements, build workers to improve the land, send out settlers (with the 'owner' indication in Color-Blind Mode being that of the original town) and will behave exactly the same as a normal civ, complete with its own Leaderheads and PCXs, though every "Independent" will share one. The only way I can retake Amsterdam is to invade it with my army.

Also, I would also like to trade cities without having to go to war.

 

[CivRulesAll]

That sounds like a good idea, kind of like the barbarian cities in civilization 4
Woohoo, my first thread to reach over 2 pages

 

[da3dalus]

I would put in any version of Civ3 a "rebellion" option. Here's how it works: here's a screenshot from the Civ3 Editor. As you can see, this is TeTurkhan Test of Time:

Imagine this is an in-game shot. I'm playing Germany, and Amsterdam has went into Civil Disorder. Now, I am too busy doing other stuff, say for example attacking the Celts, to pay attention to Amsterdam. Now after x number of turns (say the default is 10), Amsterdam will split off and become its own civ:

This new civ works completely independent of me: it would build improvements, build workers to improve the land, send out settlers (with the 'owner' indication in Color-Blind Mode being that of the original town) and will behave exactly the same as a normal civ, complete with its own Leaderheads and PCXs, though every "Independent" will share one. The only way I can retake Amsterdam is to invade it with my army.

Also, I would also like to trade cities without having to go to war.

I have often thought of this too. I think that we should not only have new splinter civs created after rebellions, but we should also be able to create new civs and cede them some of our own useless (because of corruption) cities. Of course we would expect to receive tribute from them...

 

[Argetnyx]

Take examples such as: America, Australia, Canada, Poland (after WWI), Slovakia (during WWII), and Yugoslavia; and you will be well on your way to understanding how to do this.

 

[Graceheart the Leopard]

In retrospect, I would also love to have Civilization-Specific diplomacy themes in Civ3, a la CIV. I, for one, would love to listen to Flamenco music while conducting negotiations with Spain, for example.

 

[Gamemaster77]

I would like to have different music played when in war and when in peace

 

[da3dalus]

I would like to have different music played when in war and when in peace

Hmmmm, yes this would add a lot of mood to the game...Ominous music when you're getting the living crap beaten out of you and triumphant music when you're beating the crap out of someone else.

Good call Farsight on the Civ-Specific music, that would add a bit of depth...

 

[Rodrig0]

Better pathfinding for the AI. I don't think it is that complicated, and I hate to see how my workers will just go the closest route when Ctrl+Shift+R to a city, even if it means railroading two mountains, when it would be easier to go around those mountains and railroad 3 plains or grasslands.

Also, being able to occupy the same tile. When two civs have a ROP, their units can stand on the same tile, and when they have MPP, units from other civs can stand over foreign cities too. Sort of your units protecting your weaker ally. And that would prevent ROP raping and resource denial.