How much effect have we (the players) had on Civ3's creation?

[Zevico]

What I am asking here is, in essence, what ideas did Firaxis use which were thought up by Apolytonians, or people from Civ3fanatics and others? Are there any major such ideas?
More importantly, do I get a +1 for posting in the Miscellaneous section?

[Kuciwalker]

Probably more on patching and bug fixing than on actual design.

And yes, this is a +1

[Rasputin]

i tihnk they had the idea of what they wanted in game, but used our forums to see what we wanted and if it agreed with what they wanted it just enforced it self into the game, we had a lot of things from list civ 3 that were put in, gladly not all were as some were rediculus ideas

One that i rember posting a thread for was trade using real resouces that u had to have not jsut abstract like civ 2.

and the reequirment for resources to build units.

[Jaguar]

They didn't use all of our ideas, but I think they used the better ones.

[Roman]

I would say that Firaxis is seriously looking at what fans want and are pretty responsive. I remember when the development of Civ 3 was already substantially advanced and they revealed that there will be 8 simultaneously playable civilizations. I was very disappointed and posted my disappointment on the boards and lots of others joined in... the thread ran for 10s of pages and eventually Firaxis decided to look into allowing more civilizations to be simultaneously - they said they were not aware it was such an issue for many. In the end, when the game was released 16 civilizations were playable simultaneously, so they obviously listened.

The above is one example of the fact that we fans do have significant input. I am sure the list gave them many ideas as well as inspiration for some of their own.

[Shogun Gunner]

Don't discount the strength of customer outreach and stakeholder relations for *any* business venture. In every corner of business, management wants to know that their idea/product/system will be accepted before they spend signficant money developing the product. It's such a standard part of product development that most companies follow strict guidelines along these lines.