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I've a lot of ideas for improving Civ3. Unfortunately it's midterm madness right now and though I've the time to tweak files a bit, no way can I playtest them as thoroughly as they need to be.
I've played a few games of a mod which is largely what you see here. However, I've wanted to make something that changes the game a bit more drastically and I have, though again I don't have the time to thoroughly test it.
So you've all beta-tested Civ3 for Firaxis, and now I humbly ask that you play around with this a bit. REMEMBER TO BACK UP YOUR FILES. I've included a new civilopedia to reflect the changes I've made, though there are probably a few holes so please let me know if you find any. And, of course a BIC file.
Anyway, here are the most relevant changes, though there are many more:
You'll notice right off the bat that you no longer start with a worker, and instead, start with a leader. Now, most of you will probably be inclined to immediately rush a wonder out (especially if you're an industrial civ, pyramids right from the start is nice). However, my HYPOTHESIS is that the AI WILL NOT rush any wonders (and my limited testing confirms this), choosing instead to use the leader to build an army (the AI seems to have a huge hard-on for armies). So if you start close to another civ they may overrun you with a huge stack of 3 warriors. Try both strategies.
You may also notice (if you've been perusing the civilopedia like a nice beta-tester should), that cruise missiles are GONE. Bye-bye. In my opinion they were a useless, broken unit. Instead, Aegis Cruisers now have a bombard range of FIVE, with a bombard strength of 10 (did I mention a did some work on navies? I did). I hope this balances things out a bit. In the place of cruise missiles I put a "Founding Father." I had originally planned to make this the leader you start with, only it can't rush improvements. However they crash the game for some reason, so for now they aren't present in the game.
Forbidden Palace, Wall Street, and Intelligence Agency all reduce corruption, in addition to their other effects. They correspond to the cultural, economic, and military hearts of your nation.
Some unit requirements have been changed.
Air units are now significant more powerful. Also, I have a theory that increasing a unit's rate of fire to five may allow the unit to destroy through bombardment, though I won't be able to test this until the weekend. Anyway I haven't done that yet so don't worry about it.
Taxmen and scientists are twice as useful as before, however now they require currency and education, respectively, to utilize.
A few more building reduce corruption.
The effects of Heroic Epic and Military Academy have changed. Both now allow the host city to produce an army with a leader. Only heroic epic requires a victorious army (so if you rushed with your first leader or lost it in battle - and never aquired another leader, it is GUARANTEED that you'll have armies by the end of the medieval period).
Armies are cheap, cheap, cheap.
So there it is.
It is my hope that this mod will at least fix the corruption problem without eliminating corruption entirely. Also armies should now play a much bigger role in the game.
One thing I want to do is decrease a leader's ability to lend productivity to a city. Basically, leaders should only contribute a certain amount of productivity to a city, rather than simply building the whole thing. Leaders as they are now are rather broken IMO. Unfortunately when I try to create a unit that can only build an army, the game crashes. (My idea was to make leaders only able to build armies, but give them a high production value - meaningless since you never build them, but enabling you to DISBAND them to yield a large amount of shields. Other than crashing the game, even if I could implement this it's unlikely the AI would think to utilize the feature.)
So stop reading this and try it out. Then post your comments and criticisms in this thread and I'll try to fix them. This is (I hope) a good start, but I've changed a lot and their will be problems I'll need to know about to improve the mod.
And lastly, be gentle in your criticisms. Report problems and be specific, but realize that "OMFG KILROY YOU SUK AND YUOR MOD SUKS AND I THOGUHT CIV3 COULDN'T GET ANY WORSE BUT IT JUST DID EAT A BAG OF HELL AND DIE," won't help a whole lot.
Enjoy.
The Mod.
I've played a few games of a mod which is largely what you see here. However, I've wanted to make something that changes the game a bit more drastically and I have, though again I don't have the time to thoroughly test it.
So you've all beta-tested Civ3 for Firaxis, and now I humbly ask that you play around with this a bit. REMEMBER TO BACK UP YOUR FILES. I've included a new civilopedia to reflect the changes I've made, though there are probably a few holes so please let me know if you find any. And, of course a BIC file.
Anyway, here are the most relevant changes, though there are many more:
You'll notice right off the bat that you no longer start with a worker, and instead, start with a leader. Now, most of you will probably be inclined to immediately rush a wonder out (especially if you're an industrial civ, pyramids right from the start is nice). However, my HYPOTHESIS is that the AI WILL NOT rush any wonders (and my limited testing confirms this), choosing instead to use the leader to build an army (the AI seems to have a huge hard-on for armies). So if you start close to another civ they may overrun you with a huge stack of 3 warriors. Try both strategies.
You may also notice (if you've been perusing the civilopedia like a nice beta-tester should), that cruise missiles are GONE. Bye-bye. In my opinion they were a useless, broken unit. Instead, Aegis Cruisers now have a bombard range of FIVE, with a bombard strength of 10 (did I mention a did some work on navies? I did). I hope this balances things out a bit. In the place of cruise missiles I put a "Founding Father." I had originally planned to make this the leader you start with, only it can't rush improvements. However they crash the game for some reason, so for now they aren't present in the game.
Forbidden Palace, Wall Street, and Intelligence Agency all reduce corruption, in addition to their other effects. They correspond to the cultural, economic, and military hearts of your nation.
Some unit requirements have been changed.
Air units are now significant more powerful. Also, I have a theory that increasing a unit's rate of fire to five may allow the unit to destroy through bombardment, though I won't be able to test this until the weekend. Anyway I haven't done that yet so don't worry about it.
Taxmen and scientists are twice as useful as before, however now they require currency and education, respectively, to utilize.
A few more building reduce corruption.
The effects of Heroic Epic and Military Academy have changed. Both now allow the host city to produce an army with a leader. Only heroic epic requires a victorious army (so if you rushed with your first leader or lost it in battle - and never aquired another leader, it is GUARANTEED that you'll have armies by the end of the medieval period).
Armies are cheap, cheap, cheap.
So there it is.
It is my hope that this mod will at least fix the corruption problem without eliminating corruption entirely. Also armies should now play a much bigger role in the game.
One thing I want to do is decrease a leader's ability to lend productivity to a city. Basically, leaders should only contribute a certain amount of productivity to a city, rather than simply building the whole thing. Leaders as they are now are rather broken IMO. Unfortunately when I try to create a unit that can only build an army, the game crashes. (My idea was to make leaders only able to build armies, but give them a high production value - meaningless since you never build them, but enabling you to DISBAND them to yield a large amount of shields. Other than crashing the game, even if I could implement this it's unlikely the AI would think to utilize the feature.)
So stop reading this and try it out. Then post your comments and criticisms in this thread and I'll try to fix them. This is (I hope) a good start, but I've changed a lot and their will be problems I'll need to know about to improve the mod.
And lastly, be gentle in your criticisms. Report problems and be specific, but realize that "OMFG KILROY YOU SUK AND YUOR MOD SUKS AND I THOGUHT CIV3 COULDN'T GET ANY WORSE BUT IT JUST DID EAT A BAG OF HELL AND DIE," won't help a whole lot.
Enjoy.
The Mod.
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