also to be able to have your own form of govt names, and city names pre ready to use at the click of a switch instead of renaming them each time.

Map and Scenario GUI Editor:

1. A stand-alone application for everything. Not just the maps, but all of them.
2. A good amount of paint-like features, including but not limited to fill, lines, shapes (boxes, ellipses...)
3. Full drag and drop of cities and units, form a conveniently located floating window or sidebar.
4. Copy and Paste, including drag and select, CTRL select, drag selection to move, CTRL-drag selection to copy, etc.
5. Export and import of bitmaps for terrain.

Victory condition and scenario rules editors:

1. Greater integration with Macro Language, Rules and objectives changeable on the fly and during a game.
2. A clear, unified, easy-to-follow way of setting victory conditions, in which you pick them off a list and/or define them as Macro Language parameters.
3. More varied victory conditions than just conquer xxx, bring xxx to xxx, don't let xxx die and all the normal ones.
4. More definable personalities and attributes of the civs in the game. Make them love or hate, distrust or trust each other.
5. Allow the user to experiment with setting up rules in a strange way, wilth thousands of turns if they want to.

Rules and graphics editors:

1. Editing of all in-game objects, including Wonders and Improvements, Special Abilities or limitations, etc.
2. Limitless city names, technologies, units, terrains, etc.
3. Allow more than a set palette for units and terrain.
4. Dealignment of special abilities from techs and units, allowing you to set which units become barbarians and which techs let engineers use the change terrain command, etc.
5. Visual and text-based representation of the tech tree, the unit charts, etc.

Macro editor:

Should be on a massive map of at least 10000x7500 tiles, but the more the better. I should be able to have unlimited cities, as I would model every city possible. Unlimited Civs, as I would need to recreate the whole world. (This would equate to at least 100, but more likely about 250). Unlimited units, as I would like to create all units as they were at a certain date/time. This should be in total number, but also in differnt units, I want to be able to fight a Messersmidt, against a Zero, as historically accurate as possible. The scale for strength, etc should be unlimited, as I should be able to build units which are extremely similar, yet slightly stronger or weaker than one another (1-2%). Adjustable citizens per city (eg 1 citizen=10000pop, or 1 citizen=100pop). I should be able to deny cities to build certain things, even if possible in normal civ. I should be able to have adjustable durations of turns, as if I would want to make a historically accurate scenario, I want to be able to make the turns last 1 minute, or 1 millenium, however I wish. I should also be able to give differnt civs different tech trees. There should be an ability to build a differnt tech tree for each civ. I should be able to make a tech tree with at least 1,000 techs in it, all of which can hold at least 10 items. I should be able to give individual units names, eg USS ENTERPRISE, and name places on the map. I should be able to trigger any situation, eg: 'If Zero {name: Hashimoto} gets shot down by Cruiser {name: Philadelphia} then Civ {name: Japan} will send Zero {name: Takahashi} out to do function {name: Kamikaze, function: sacrifice unit, deals 156 damage} on the Cruiser {name: Washington}'. In this way I should be able to control exactly what the AI does, and not the Civ engine. I should be able to pre-program diplomacy, eg: 'If Civ {name: Britain} is at war with Civ {name: America} then Civ {name: Japan} will offer a treaty {name: Peace} to Civ {name Australia} in exchange for units {name: Holden Tanks, quantity: 650}'. In this way I would like to be able to trigger the slightest events. I want to be able to recreate everything in historical accuracy. I also want to build my own city improvements, eg '{name: Lancaster Bomber Factory, cost: 9600 Production, image: Lancast.bmp, Lancast.jpg, requires: Advanced Bombing, special: Can only be built by Civ {name: Britain, Canada}}'. I want to make this scenario in reality, to be the best WWII scenario in history, and it should not take more than 65 million characters / clicks to produce(about 1 year, of solid 24 hour work). I want to be able to save the entire scenario on a 2 gig Jaz disk, and should be able to play directly off the Jaz, rather than needing the CD(or whatever you are releasing Civ III on) and the Jaz. I don't believe in typing and mousing. The main programing should use one, or the other, but NOT both!I want to be able to print of every tech tree, and give people popups of historical information at certain trigger points, eg the invention of the Nuclear Bomb. I want to be able to set ANY winning perameters that I can think of, including things such as 'Expunge Hitler's Military Might', 'Generate World Peace'. I should be able to make certain missions eg 'Take Control of London'. All such things should be possible. I should also be able to play on ONE computer, as all the civilizations, to test if the scenario works as it should. Just so you know, I actually prefer the text method of controls in a scenario, as I exampled above. Keep all scenario stuff in Windows, to make it easier to work with.
MAKE ALL FILES NORMAL WINDOWS FILES(.BMP, .JPG, .TXT, .HTML, .ZIP, .ICO, .DOC, .MP3, .WAV, .MID, .ANI, .MPG, etc)!!!

The actual scenario program should give the player access to all files, and should save all changes in a ZIP file with the Scenario's name. One of these should be included, for the original game. This is a bit like Andrew livings concept of the game being just one scenario of which many can be added.

I would like to see myself making the above, outlined scenario in the near future. However this will only occur if the programming would be as easy as I demonstrated in my own example of how I would like to see the editor.

I think two editors should be available. The first would be a Civ II style one, in which minor changes can be made, for the average user, this may even be in-game, I don't care. The second would be a full program, in which the entire game is copied, and can be fully edited, until no trace of the original game can be found again.

Thankyou Firaxis (If you read this essay),

1. two words: Complete Customization.

2. unlimited units (or at least a minimum of 150).

3. unlimited map design, be able to choose ANY size of map.

4. a much easier editor for all the editors, it takes me about 5 minutes just to edit one unit.

5. be able to choose from a HUGE list of sounds for units.

well, thats all I can think of at the moment.

"Must Have" section.

Concerning Civ3 map editing, these are some things that I think would be particularly useful in a Civ3 map editor:

1) Allowing the Special Resource squares and "goody hut" squares to be completely editable with regard to the location of the squares and the number of the squares on the map. The Civ2 map editor limits us to 64 predetermined "resource seed number" locations and does not allow us to put the special resources or goody huts anywhere else. This is very frustrating at times, especially if we want to create a special scenario map with our own special resource locations.

Every time I talked to Microprose about this, they were always dead set aginst allowing us to do this, and never had any good reason as to why they were stonewalling us on this issue. It can't be all that difficult to allow it. I've never talked to a Civ2 player who said that this was a terrible idea, and in fact, everyone I talked to about it ALWAYS thought it was a good idea. I just don't understand why microprose was so opposed to the idea.

To sum this up, I am saying "Let us put special resources and goody huts on the map anywhere WE want to and don't put any of your own limitations on OUR ability to do so, and allow us to put as many of them on the map as WE want to". Don't limit us here anymore.

2) Change the random map generator in the map editor to save us a lot of TIME in map customization.

Let me explain. In Civ2, when we generate a random map with the map editor, it usually requires a lot of changes in order to be the type of map we want to play a game on, and it can take a long time to tweak it one square at a time enough to satisfy our needs for a particular game we want to play (changing more than one square at a time is cumbersome because it usually clumps too much similar terrain together). This can be simplified by allowing us to "program" the way a random map is generated in a more specific way than is currently allowed in Civ2.

Allow us to select not just the paramaters currently available in the Civ2 map editor random map generator, but also how many continents/islands should be on the map, and what size, in total number of land squares each continent/island should be. Also included in the continents/islands section should be the option to specify how many special resources should be randomly distributed on each continent/island, how many river squares should be on each continent/island and how many of each type of terrain square would be randomly distributed on each continent/island. I don't care what method you use to allow us to do this, I just want to be able to do it QUICKLY and EASILY. I'm quite sure that it can't be that difficult for you to allow us to have these options - this map editor would not be nearly as complicated as the code of the actual game program.

Allowing us to do these things would save us a huge amount of TIME in generating many specific styles of random maps to play on. I would pay extra $money$ to be able to do these things.

3) Make the editing of maps much easier by making it easy to edit them much more quickly than we currently can. It is very tedious in Civ2.

"Would Be Nice" section.

1) Allow us to specify with the map editor whether a goody hut would have a random event come out of it, or whether some specific event, like an advanced tribe, random technology, barbarians, wandering nomads, money, or military units would be the result of entering it. This would allow us to create maps that would have some predetermined rewards/surprises/disasters in them.

2) Provide for an additional twist on special resource squares by causing some special resources to not show up (remain hidden) in a terrain in which they are present until the terrain is terraformed in some way, whether it is by mining hills/mountains/desert, having a settler mine grassland/jungle/plains/swamp to turn them into forest, or by having an engineer transform the terrain with the "O" command. There was an element of this in "Sid Meier's Colonization", and it made things more interesting/unpredictable.

Snapcases ideas are pretty good. I would like to see a menu in the editor which brings up all the units/techs/civs/cities/pics etc. for easy GUI editing, so that we don't need to mess about in the text files. Personally, I like text files but this would make it alot easier. Also, with this GUI editor you could edit several connected things together, so you don't need to be hopping back and forth in the text files...

Map Editor:

-Resizing Map (like taking a pic and enlarging it. so taking a earth map and enlarge it 10 times bigger)
-Copy and Paste
-Place cities without needing to put a Settler/Colony Pod first and play a turn to make city.
-Can't civs co-owned a city? Take berlin for example, been controlled western democrats and eastern soviets for decades.
- like the SMAC map editor, just with more improvements... will there be terrain levels like SMAC?

Unit Editor:

-be able to create all new units, adding more units to the standard without being limited to amount of units you can have by the amount of squares in a GIF pic. thing dislike in CIV2.
-edit the standard and change the graphics
-able to more so edit on how the AI should use the unit

AI/Civ/Faction Editor

-Be able to create/edit a civ and the AI. Would like to make the AI harder to beat without needing to give them stronger and me weaker. i don't like that, they should be able to be challenging. if they are not, I should be able to make it harder for me.
-The faction editor interface with SMAX is okay, but improve it. I should be able to give the civ character, and each character traits should be more noticeble in the game.
-for the AI, rather i didn't have to learn a complete whole script language to simply edit or create my own AI for the game if possible.

Improvement/Wonders Editor:

-Should be able to create new imporvements and say what the building improves instead of being limited to only edit the existing buildings/wonders. Would be nice to be able to create new wonders to do new things and buildings that gives whatever bonuses we wish to have it give.

Script Editor:

-as with the AI, don't feel like needing to learn a complete whole language just to have a script/triggers and so on. Ala Starcraft Triggers is good ideas, just make more better and make it bit like Visual Basic.
easy to use. Would like to be able to make a story out of a scenerio.

I am 17 and shouldn't worry so much about programming this and that and good so deep in techy stuff. I do have a life and don't always want to be stuck on the computer trying to make the AI/create Faction/create scenerio that would be challenging and so on. I like making maps/scenerios, just don't to be a pain in the arse to do all the time. if wasn't, i'd be making bunch of scenerios/maps with the plenty of ideas i have in my head and make available on the net. I many unfinished scenerios/maps i started for various of games, just to annoying to finish them.. with the limitations and annoyances and long time consuming task.

I say we have editors and have the text files editing thing available. oh, don't make leaders 3d dolls like, want to be able to put my face in the game like SMAC as leader

Simply;
-feel like having fun only > Comic-strip units.
-want to immerse in time > Epoch related only.
-Scientific buffs > High tech, fictioned.

Editors that ADAPTS to the needs with a modifiable environment.

Put differently;
If a player is in a "MOOD"
to conquer, give it a war...
to loose, give it the sense of challenge...
to fool a little, give it some jokes.

"Blue cloudy skies or silicium sand beaches, Bronze metal plating... in addition to the -standard- grey ciment textures."

Allow the user to control things like: the effect(s) of City Improvements and Wonders of the World, special abilities of Units, passability of Terrain and whether you can build a City on it, that sort of thing. Include special abilities and Wonder effects not present in the game. If a special ability from one of the early stages of the program is eventually removed, keep it in as part of the editor. That way, we won't have to worry about those stupid Televangelists during a Civ game, but for creating a modpack, we'll be able to use units with Televangelist-like powers. Establish corporate branches, infect cities, capture slaves, build underwater cities, create three different types of Ocean tile, create a Wonder that builds a Bank in every city, build Blimps that can carry Tanks, or Marines that can carry Nukes, or Hover-Tanks that can cross Sea and Land. The key here is variety. Split up Spy Abilities, so that a Mod designer can switch off the ability to Plant a Nuclear Device and Perform Sabotage, but still be able to Poison the Water Supply and Incite a Riot, for example.

Non-proprietary formats on everything. And I mean everything. The fanfares that play when you meet a rival civ. The leader portraits. The graphics in the City View. The pictures in the message boxes. The borders of the main screen. The throne room. The text in the menu bars. All the game sounds, combat and otherwise, including the music (allow the user to play his own MP3 list, maybe). The shape of the health bar.

Unlimited slots for technologies and units. Or if there is a limit, 256 is a nice, round number. City improvements can be limited to 30 or so, and the same with Wonders, but technologies and units need to be expandable to whatever ridiculous scale the Mod designer has in mind.

An intuitive, easy-to-manipulate system for establishing when a unit becomes obsolete and what it can be replaced by. If the Mod designer wants obsolete Horsemen to be replaced with Musketeers instead of Knights, this should be allowed.

WOULD LIKE TO HAVE

More flexibility on how big a role pollution and ecological disaster play in the game, besides merely the ability to turn off the effects of pollution. Allow the Mod designer to decide how the Terrain decays during an ecological disaster, for example, if at all.

One goofy idea might be the ability to establish a new, different "Default Shape" of a city. Some players might enjoy a game with a smaller city radius, or a shape that lends itself towards "honeycombing" the landscape.

The ability to create customized governments from scratch.

Leeway for Fantasy and Sci-Fi Mod designers, i.e., the ability within the editor to create the effects of things like Vampires, Force Fields, Planet Busters, Nazgul, Transporters, and things like that. Sci-Fi designers like to have Terrain squares comprised of individual planets, and Fantasy designers might appreciate the ability for Wizard units to cast ranged spells.

COMMENT

One thing I would also like to see is the ability to add personnel to a submarine unit. (I have done this myself by manipulating the civ.txt file). It only needs to be 1 or 2 units, and they can be limited to "Marines" but it is a great way to pull a sneak attack on someone.

Okay, hope this helps.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"My dear girl don't flatter
yourself. What I did this evening
was for king and country. You don't
think it gave me any pleasure do you?

CIV3 MUST be a windows based game. Just like Civ2. That way it can be minimized or switched to the background so I can access another app on my PC without a major hassle. The fact that games such as SMAC run in a "full screen" mode is the one thing that really bugs me.

More generally, the more open the engine is, the better. There are lots of bright players out there who can make cool mods.

------------------
Chaos, panic and disorder - My work here is done.

quote: Originally posted by Jeffrey Morris FIRAXIS on 11-29-2000 01:51 PM Hey guys. What would be useful for me is for you to list your top 5 additions to the way the each Civ II FW editor worked. Don't bother mentioning features that were already included in those. If you want to email them, you can reach me at jmorris@firaxis.com. Thanks! Jeff

I'm with Shadowstrike all the way, with one exception:

Units - 1. the option to attach unique graphics to units based on the player, i.e. country specific infantry uniforms for the same unit.

quote: Originally posted by niteowl on 01-08-2001 02:10 AM CIV3 MUST be a windows based game. Just like Civ2. That way it can be minimized or switched to the background so I can access another app on my PC without a major hassle. The fact that games such as SMAC run in a "full screen" mode is the one thing that really bugs me.

To get past this problem you can force your task bar to be on top at all times. I have done this in some games as I was supposed to be doing some work.

quote: Originally posted by tniem on 01-10-2001 01:52 PM To get past this problem you can force your task bar to be on top at all times. I have done this in some games as I was supposed to be doing some work.

How? How? How? How?

quote: Originally posted by tniem on 01-10-2001 01:52 PM To get past this problem you can force your task bar to be on top at all times. I have done this in some games as I was supposed to be doing some work.

How? How? How? How?

quote: Originally posted by Grrr on 01-10-2001 03:43 PM How? How? How? How? I need this for some of my games!

Hold down your [Ctrl] button and push [Esc]. That will minimize your full screen application.

To get your task bar to always be on top, right click on the task bar, click on properties and check mark the option, "Always on top".

Reform vs. tradition.

Of course, we, as the Civ gaming community, want to see as much customisation as possible. But, having seen the new Civ III site, it looks as if we won't be able to change units in our scenario as per Civ II.

I would suggest this would be a crying shame. If you are going to include a fully animated graffics set in Civ III, at least allow users to create a 'static' set in the Civ II vein for use in their own scenarios.

It is impicit: Maximum customisation=Max gameplay. This is the single reason Civ II lasted so long, as I'm sure it will continue to do.

I would forget ALTOGETHER any suggestion of any in-game customisation. External utilities were much better at handling Civ scenario creation than the in-game routines. I would recommend the programmers concentrate in the in-game issues, and leave final version files in formats easily customised by established, serious scenario creators. (File types to include .GIF .WAV .BMP etc. as per CIV II protocols...)

Apologies for any readers having to read this blurb. Any grammatical, or other errors, are attributal to the fact that, at the time of writting this email, I was...in fact..very...very, drunk

Yours, with humble respect,

The MOST IMPORTANT THING to me is sophisticated AI modification.

WRT map editor, the random map generator for CIV 2 really sucked. The huge, meandering contintents that covered 60 to 90% of the globe, but were connected by an isthmus in 10 or 20 locations were/are annoying.

Perhaps a highly complex editor would be too costly for inclusion with the game.

As an aside, I would like to see each civilization be able to build as they were able to do in reality - canals, bridges, tunnels through real mountains, etc.

While SMAC had excellent customizability, it failed at scenario-making by not allowing for customized graphics. There are a good many scenarios which have totally original graphics sets, and many of those are considered the very best.

Secondly, drawing unit graphics must be relatively easy (as easy as it is to draw Civ2 units), or else it will not be used. If it takes a professional graphics artist to draw new units, then why bother at all?