SIMPLE and EASY Ideas for the Patches

[QuantumPion]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
quantumpion: you can: click on the little icons in the bottom left part of the game screen while holding CTRL (or maybe SHIFT... i'm not sure anymore)

ahh that did it. It was shift. thanks. I'm much happier now.

[apostatedogfish]

Originally posted by spodbox11
Some gameplay ones:

[166] - Move Cannon back a couple of techs and reduce its power a couple of points. Currently, there is too much space between catapult and cannon and too little space between cannon and artillery.

Or bring back trebuchets! Move catapults back to Mathematics, and put Trebuchets in with engineering or machinery. Catapults accompanying everything from horse archers to grenadiers doesn't sit quite right with me.

[181] - Increase unit maintenence costs. It's currently way too low.

The cost does seem low, but I can't figure out exactly what's costing what. The financial advisor window is pretty unclear as to how the cost is calculated currently. Total cost = 0 for 37 units while there's only free support for 20-something? And the difference between unit cost and military unit cost?

About the seige units and their withdraw rates: currently they are used primarily as suicide units, which is clearly not how they were meant to be used. Either add a unit-strike option (like the air strike), or increase the withdraw rate to simulate the bombard from a distance aspect of these units. In exchange, lower the impact of collateral damage.

Agree on the unit-strike option. Why not grant that ability but limit the damage to 1/2 of total strength, as is the case with air strikes? I refuse to believe that a catapult could completely destroy a unit when a bomber could not, and historically that's never been the intended purpose of such artillery. I prefer not to suicide my catapults, but once city defenses have been nulled...
(I also miss the defensive bombard capabilities.)

[Bill3000]

More cowbell.

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I agree on everything spodbox said. currently the way catapults are used in the game is totally absurd. what I would like to see is an ability for any ranged unit to attack any adjacent enemy unit while standing still on its own tile. It makes sense, while melee troops should still have to move towards enemies to fight them.

missile troops and siege engines should NEVER be used as suicide units, they should always stay behind and be vulnerable to melee attacks if undefended. EXSPECIALLY siege engines. the whole idea of catapults winning vs axemen 1on1 is sick. after all a catapult is very easy to destroy, as long as you can get to it.

[Veritass]

While we are on the subject of catapults, they should probably move even slower than foot troops. I could see the possibility that on a road, they only move one square per turn instead of 2-3. Through hills and forests without roads, they only have a 50% chance of "making it up the hill" or "making it through the forest" on any turn, effectively halving their movement.

[Lord Avalon]

Originally posted by [to_xp]Gekko
what I would like to see is an ability for any ranged unit to attack any adjacent enemy unit while standing still on its own tile. It makes sense, while melee troops should still have to move towards enemies to fight them.

I disagree. A square is likely many miles across, enough to exceed the range of any unit.

Originally posted by Veritass
While we are on the subject of catapults, they should probably move even slower than foot troops. I could see the possibility that on a road, they only move one square per turn instead of 2-3. Through hills and forests without roads, they only have a 50% chance of "making it up the hill" or "making it through the forest" on any turn, effectively halving their movement.

I disagree here as well - with a turn spanning years, movement shouldn't be hindered. In fact catapults traveled disassembled and were put together when they reached their destination. I don't recall what their movement is (I'm at work now), but it should be 1.

[spodbox11]

[185] - Currently, resources are "all-or-nothing." A single oil well will provide for all the oil needs of a large nation. This is somewhat unrealistic. For some resources, make it a limiting factor in how many units that require that resource you can have. For example, if you have access to only one oil well, you are allowed to build only so many oil-requiring units. This is actually not a simple idea, and would probably be better for a mod or the expansion, but it's something worth thinking about.

[186] - Some sort of external indicator as to which cities have national wonders (and how many). Something as minor as one or two symbols on the city labels would suffice.

(Side question: some cities have a dark gray/black hourglass like symbol. What the heck is that?)

[187] - Sometimes, when I issue a goto order with right click/drag, the path shown by the arrow is not the actual path taken. This bugs the living heck out of me. Fix it.

[188] - Permanent alliances, despite being activated by communism, never, ever show up in the trade screen. What gives?

[189] - Add a popup for when your treasury runs out.

[QuantumPion]

catapults-mathematics
trebuchets-engineering
cannon-gunpowder
artillery-same
rocket artillery-rocketry

[Fosse]

[190] Make the score and civilization invisible for Multiplayer for other humans you haven't met yet.

Just have their name up there, at the bottom of the list, with the little ! next to it.

(for setups with non-random civs - which is probably most - the second part won't matter as much. But not seeing their score until you meet them would be great.

[sabrewolf]

it is really hard to keep track of which is the correct file if you play multiple games with the same people. so:

[191] for PBEM games, please name the filenames with the game name. for instance: "The Terra Epos - 3900bc to Emperor_V" or similar

[Fosse]

[192] When you go into anarchy, you lose specialists you've set up. When coming out of anarchy, the computer takes control of the cities and puts your citizens wherever it pleases.

This is AWFUL. Having to respecialize a dozen cities after switching civics is a pain. In Multiplayer it takes FOREVER. The only time the computer should remove forced specialists is when you lose the capacity to maintain such specialist (ie, a swith out of Caste System). If you go into anarchy, when you reemerge all forced specialists should be restored when you come out.

[193] Could we get the "turns to grow" number removed on a city that is stagnate? I know that the color of the circle changes, but it's confusing to see that a city has 1 turn to grow when it is, in fact, not growing.

[194] Some sort of graphic indication that a city is not growing (or starving) on the city list would be nice, so it's easier to see at a glance which cities are or are not in danger of growing to unhappiness.

As it is now, you must find cities that are close to unhappy, then check food produced vs. food eaten. If you have many cities, or if you're in MP, this can take longer than needed. Just making the Food Produced number green for growing, black for stable, red for starving would do the trick.

[hardjoy]

[11] Show the total cost of upgrading all units. Currently, only the individual cost is shown when you hover over the upgrade button. (can anyone confirm that this is possible currently, and if so how it is done)

The total cost is shown with holding CTRL + hovering over the upgrade button IIRC.

[Jaybe]

ALT key, hardjoy, not ctrl.
Shows cost to upgrade ALL available types of units to that unit, not just the unit type that is selected.

[Huck the Dog]

I support [162], the "undo movement" option. It's very rare, but occasionally I make an inadvertent key press or mouse click (usually when I use the numpad after shifting my hand position) that can have devastating effects. It seems to be worse with Civ4, possibly because of occasional delays in displaying movement or cycling among active units.

Yeah it can be exploited, but you could limit it to exclude moves involving (1) attacks, (2) goodie huts, (3) scouting into black, (4) etc. You could also make it ask you "are you sure you want to undo" "are you really sure" etc. so that it's a real pain in the butt to undo more than once or twice a game. You could also make it an option (default off) that could be disallowed for hardcore games.

[Thalassicus]

[195] With the textual city production popup, allow alt-clicking to produce a unit indefinitly, like on the city screen.

[196] When talking to a leader, display the research points next to technologies, and display the total research points for a trade at the bottom of the trade window.