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**Pyrodrew** · November 14, 2001, 00:21

Suggestions

Great work, I *strongly* agree with many things you did!

My constructive critism:

Babylonian Bowman upgraded to 2-1-2 rather then 2-2-1

Some people maded some good arguments for the 2-2-1Bowman in the "Useless Units" Poll in Civilizations Forum. By changing it to 2-1-2 it effectively makes it a cheaper (20shlds instead of 30) & without horses chariot unit. Not very fair to the Egyptians. The Egyptians Chariot being improved to a 2-2-2 would seem more justified since not only does it cost more than the Bowman but requires horses as well.

Great Lighthouse upgraded to having 5 culture each turn

Given the Great Lighthouse now allows any ships to sail deep oceans safely this is no longer the useless thing it was in Civ2. Being able to settle unclaimed islands before your enemies & contact other civs 1st is definitely something I love. Columbus & Ponce de Leon are in that Great Lighthouse waiting to set sail.

Shakespeare's theatre upgraded greatly by now giving 12 culture each turn, rather than 6

Someone gave a suggestion to increase the culture significantly instead. In essence make it the Culture Wonder.

Increased the number of initial content citizens for each difficulty level

This may actually make it easier since humans might actually build up 1 or a few cities early on, unlike the AI. I like to lean towards making the AI tougher.

Changed harvested-forest bonus shields from 10 up to 20. This is a good way to boost production in ancient times, and also in the later 'post replaceable parts' era via deforestation. Very advantagious to Industrial civs.

If Industrial is one of the best bonuses, do Industrial Civs need more advantages?

Oil should now sometimes appear on coastal tiles. They will not be able to be used as a strategic resource because you need to road to it, but it will still give its bonus resources.

What if when oil resources are deplinshed & disappear they start showing up on the coastlines unable to access? Minor tho & that would be part of the fun... making oil truely a limited resource.

All civs now get the corresponding regular units to their unique units.

Why? Why would the Aztecs want to build a 1-1-1 Warrior for 10 shields when they can build their own unit 1-1-2 for 10 shields?

Thanks.

**monkspider** · November 14, 2001, 00:34

Re: Suggestions

Thanks for the suggestions Pyro!!
Here's what I think

[
-Some people maded some good arguments for the 2-2-1Bowman in the "Useless Units" Poll in Civilizations Forum. By changing it to 2-1-2 it effectively makes it a cheaper (20shlds instead of 30) & without horses chariot unit. Not very fair to the Egyptians. The Egyptians Chariot being improved to a 2-2-2 would seem more justified since not only does it cost more than the Bowman but requires horses as well.

That sounds good to me, I'll definitely look into the possibility of that being changed in the next update. Thanks for bringing that to my attention

-Given the Great Lighthouse now allows any ships to sail deep oceans safely this is no longer the useless thing it was in Civ2. Being able to settle unclaimed islands before your enemies & contact other civs 1st is definitely something I love.

You're right! As do I! I felt just a tiny "tweak" was all the lighthouse really needed.

-Someone gave a suggestion to increase the culture significantly instead. In essence make it the Culture Wonder.

Yep, I agree. I think 12 culture a turn should definitely make it worth building, especially if you are following a cultural strategy.

-This may actually make it easier since humans might actually build up 1 or a few cities early on, unlike the AI. I like to lean towards making the AI tougher.

Perhaps, I have left the diety level AI alone. But I think this actually helps things run just a tad bit smoother from my experience. I'll do a little more testing to see if this is unnesscarry. Thanks for the sugestion.

-If Industrial is one of the best bonuses, do Industrial Civs need more advantages?

true, more than anything, I just felt that only getting ten shields for harvesting an entire forest seemed like a pretty raw deal.

-Why? Why would the Aztecs want to build a 1-1-1 Warrior for 10 shields when they can build their own unit 1-1-2 for 10 shields?

Good question! I added the corresponding units for possibility of upgrading the units in the future. I thought you might as well at least have the option open to you.

Thanks.

**monkspider** · November 14, 2001, 04:22

By the way, if you are having trouble downloading, try right-clicking and going to "save target as". That should work for ya.
Hopefully Apolyton will host this file soon, which will resolve any discrepancies with Geocities

**MarkG** · November 14, 2001, 05:59

here it is

v1.0 downloaded 221 times

Attached Files

civ3mod11.zip (20.5 KB, 868 views)

**Jeremy** · November 14, 2001, 08:11

The ability to build the standard version of your civ's unique units would be of great help to me in my current game. Playing as the Romans I am unable to build the standard Swordsman unit because my unique unit is the Legionary. Fine, but that also means I can't upgrade my many Warrior units at all. I can understand not being able to upgrade Warriors to Legionary. But not even to Swordsmen?

**cort** · November 14, 2001, 08:14

most of them are nice changes but I strongly object to a number of them since they tend to make the game easier just for the human player.

1. changing the # of content citizens; why at all? you can always play at a lower level.
2. increase forest harvest bonus? I am sure AI does not use it as a cheap tactic to boost production as we humans do
3. giving build abilities to infantry, mech. This is asked to Soren Johnson and he clearly stated that AI WILL NOT be able to make use of it. another human only change.
4. make man-o-war 4-3-4?! not a single UU has +2 on any single of its attributes and you give +2/+1 on its attributes?! you must be a "spice girls" fan I guess

5. changing the culture values of several wonders; again I seriously doubt those changes will be evenly evaluated by the AI, just making "win through culture victory" easier for the human player.

**Ozymandous** · November 14, 2001, 09:57

Heh, well with all the complaining from folks around here essentially complaining the game is too hard, it's not surprising that someone would make a "mod" that makes the game easier for the human player.

For all the lip service about wanting a tougher game I guess people seem to only want to play the same crappy AI as was in Civ2 & the CtP series.

**Frodo_05** · November 14, 2001, 10:27

Re: Re: Suggestions

Originally posted by monkspider
Thanks for the suggestions Pyro!!
Here's what I think

-Why? Why would the Aztecs want to build a 1-1-1 Warrior for 10 shields when they can build their own unit 1-1-2 for 10 shields?

Good question! I added the corresponding units for possibility of upgrading the units in the future. I thought you might as well at least have the option open to you.

Thanks.

Maybe because they don't want to get a GA too early, because their SU scores a victory?

**monkspider** · November 14, 2001, 13:15

Hey Cort, I hope this clears things up for you a bit.
1. changing the # of content citizens; why at all? you can always play at a lower level.
I find this to create a smoother running game personally, but if there are very many more complaints about it I will reverse course in the next update of the mod.
2. increase forest harvest bonus? I am sure AI does not use it as a cheap tactic to boost production as we humans do
Actually the AI recieves the same bonus
3. giving build abilities to infantry, mech. This is asked to Soren Johnson and he clearly stated that AI WILL NOT be able to make use of it. another human only change.
This is unfortunate, and hopefully the AI will be updated to take advantage of this in patch. But for now, I think the ability is trivial, and available more since fortresses take so long for workers to build.
4. make man-o-war 4-3-4?! not a single UU has +2 on any single of its attributes and you give +2/+1 on its attributes?! you must be a "spice girls" fan I guess
LOL, well a Naval UU, especially one that is before the advent of the iron-clad seemed to be limited in use. I think this makes things a bit more fair.
5. changing the culture values of several wonders; again I seriously doubt those changes will be evenly evaluated by the AI.
Actually the AI WILL be able to take advantage of these changes. If the AI builds these wonders they will get the same cultural bonus. Moreover, Soren spoke of the AI being very dynamic, so theoretically, they should also make building them of higher priority as well, which does seem to be the case from my playtesting. I shall look into this a bit more just to be sure, however.

**Iron Chef** · November 14, 2001, 13:22

LOL as well

Originally posted by Ozymandous
Heh, well with all the complaining from folks around here essentially complaining the game is too hard, it's not surprising that someone would make a "mod" that makes the game easier for the human player.

For all the lip service about wanting a tougher game I guess people seem to only want to play the same crappy AI as was in Civ2 & the CtP series.

In defense of the mod-creators, though, I don't necessarily agree that these mods make the game easier for the human player, because both the AI and the human players get the advantages (or disadvantages) of any changes. I think it's perfectly legitimate to make mods to incorporate whatever changes one feels appropriate, which is one of the beauties of this game (like Quake3 and its predecessors, to some extent).

What does get me LOL, and what I do get a kick out of reading, are the changes to make the game more "balanced" or more "realistic." I mean, the game is "balanced" as long as all civs play by the same rules. I suppose one could address the issue of balancing vis-a-vis one wonder/military unit/city improvement/resource being much more beneficial than another with the same cost, but isn't that the beauty of the game?

One thing that bugs me is that you can't upgrade horsemen to unique units such as the Rider/Samurai/War Elephant, while all the other civs can upgrade to Knights (and similar scenarios with other unique units). On its face, that seems to be a balancing problem. But maybe that's a design feature that actually keeps the balance that would otherwise be lost if such upgrading was allowed. I don't know how I feel about that as of yet, although I wonder what the designers had in mind and why they did it. For me, the real curiosity is what will be in the official patch, to see how much the desginers take into account what they hear on various forums. Anyway...

**Ozymandous** · November 14, 2001, 13:59

Re: LOL as well

Originally posted by Iron Chef

In defense of the mod-creators, though, I don't necessarily agree that these mods make the game easier for the human player, because both the AI and the human players get the advantages (or disadvantages) of any changes. I think it's perfectly legitimate to make mods to incorporate whatever changes one feels appropriate, which is one of the beauties of this game (like Quake3 and its predecessors, to some extent).

Hmm, I disagree. Sure the abilities may be available for both, but (for example) if the AI isn't programmed to understand that infantry can now do additional things then the AI will not use these features! This means that all bonuses in the game will be to the SOLE benefit of the Human player.

What does get me LOL, and what I do get a kick out of reading, are the changes to make the game more "balanced" or more "realistic." I mean, the game is "balanced" as long as all civs play by the same rules. I suppose one could address the issue of balancing vis-a-vis one wonder/military unit/city improvement/resource being much more beneficial than another with the same cost, but isn't that the beauty of the game?

I agree and stand by what I said earlier. People "mod" the game to make it easier for human players, at least in this case, because the AI will not understand the additional things added because they were never told to do so.

One thing that bugs me is that you can't upgrade horsemen to unique units such as the Rider/Samurai/War Elephant, while all the other civs can upgrade to Knights (and similar scenarios with other unique units). On its face, that seems to be a balancing problem. But maybe that's a design feature that actually keeps the balance that would otherwise be lost if such upgrading was allowed. I don't know how I feel about that as of yet, although I wonder what the designers had in mind and why they did it. For me, the real curiosity is what will be in the official patch, to see how much the desginers take into account what they hear on various forums. Anyway...

[

I do agree that all UU's should either be the end of a "line" of units, similar to Cavalry, or be able to be upgraded, this would only be fair.

I'm with you, I am waiting to hear what Firaxis does with the patch. I just hope they don't "balance" the game to make it easier because people 1) can't use old strategies to beat a new game and 2) can't adjust their playing style to play within the limits of the game (with corruption for example) instead they want the game to change.

Time will tell, but I am hoping the patch will do nothing but fix the air superiority bug, add new features to the editor and maybe fix a few minor issues as well (No corruption is NOT a bug).

**SnowFire** · November 14, 2001, 14:17

-Adds a new government, Facisim. A great war-time government

I do not understand the obsession with various mod-makers of adding Fascism in as a government. It's a TERRIBLE government. It should not be great at much of anything. The only reason to stick it in might be to make a generally suboptimal government a human player can change to for giving themselves a challenge.

If you want to run a Fascist government, switch to Despotism, and randomly raze your own towns or otherwise attempt to execute your own citizens. Every turn roll a 10% chance of randomly declaring war on some nation. Sound good?

**Dar** · November 14, 2001, 14:18

I do have a question

I have installed the Facism mod that someone else made. It used a new Civ3mod.bic file as well.

I would have to remove their mod to use your mod, right? Since your Civ3mod.bic is much bigger than the one the Facist mod uses. (yours is 234kb his is 107kb)

A silly thought, but couldn't you two incorporate the facist mods into one?

**Iron Chef** · November 14, 2001, 14:28

Re: Re: LOL as well

Originally posted by Ozymandous

Hmm, I disagree. Sure the abilities may be available for both, but (for example) if the AI isn't programmed to understand that infantry can now do additional things then the AI will not use these features! This means that all bonuses in the game will be to the SOLE benefit of the Human player.

I agree and stand by what I said earlier. People "mod" the game to make it easier for human players, at least in this case, because the AI will not understand the additional things added because they were never told to do so.

Good observation, which is something that I thought about after posting. Can the AI learn how to incorporate new values into its strategies for the AI civs? I can see how this would be incredibly difficult, but is it possible if the AI is programmed to build the "best" unit/wonder/improvement based on the values given rather than selecting from a separate list created by the programmers? Because if that's the case, I think the AI does figure it out. I dunno. If the AI can't adapt, then yes, the mods are definitely just for the benefit of human players. If it can, there is some validity (but I can't see myself ever using the patch).

However, as far as battleships go, for example, it's going to be 20 attack (is that what this mod changed it to?) for all players, AI or not, so they will receive the benefit for units they would otherwise produce. But I agree wholeheartedly that (a) air superiority needs to be fixed; (b) corruption is not a bug; and (c) I think the coastal fortress "free shot" feature is also broken.

I also pretty much agree w/ SnowFire. Facism? I just think it's a pretty lame idea for warmongers. But hey, you can modify the game as much as you want. You could probably also modify Quake3 so that the human player takes 1/2 damage from a rocket than a computer opponent if you want to make it easier on yourself.

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