Civ3 settings to increase realism

[Explorer579]

On Impassible Mountains

Originally posted by Willem


If you give most of your units the "Wheeled" flag in the editor, except for just a few, then they can't pass through the mountains unless there's a road. Virtually all of my Ancient and Middle Ages units are now wheeled, which makes the terrain an important strategic element early in the game, as it should be.

Making mountains impassible created lot of problems for me. First, you can't make roads on impassible mountains to get strategic Resources! Second, you can't go out and destroy barbarian camps on impassible mountains.

I solved the first issue by making sure the mountain resources are also available on hills. Still some civs are doomed if their strategic resources are on impassible mountains.

As for barbarians, I like having them around! The only way to get rid of them on impassible mountains is to extend your border through culture or by building a city nearby!

I thought about the wheeled units. Not a bad ide. However, I like to make building roads on mountains very very time consuming. I have yet to experiment with that . You can change the worker's road building time but I am not sure about changing specifically road building on mountains.

I am coming to the conclusion that a new terrain tile is needed in civ4! Very high impassible mountains. Then we can keep the current mountains and hills as they are now. Has anybody experimented with creating new tiles? I don't think this is doable in civ3.

[Explorer579]

Originally posted by Willem


One thing I've done is create another Worker unit, called the Engineer available with (guess when). It's not a wheeled unit like my Worker, so I can't build roads through mountains until then. I'd say that's a decent compromise.

Great idea! It seems we have now only one type of worker that works faster as eras advance... It is logical to have two types of workers with a need for an upgrade. What happened to the engineer of civ2?!

I will try to create an engineer unit. I have never created new units, as the game would always crash. It seems that PTW has fixed the editor pretty well. I am making lot of changes with no crashes so far!

[Ozymandias]

Re: On Impassible Mountains

Originally posted by Explorer579
I am coming to the conclusion that a new terrain tile is needed in civ4! Very high impassible mountains. Then we can keep the current mountains and hills as they are now. Has anybody experimented with creating new tiles? I don't think this is doable in civ3.

*SIGH* this is starting to drive me

I've posted this question just about everywhere I can think of --

WHY CAN'T WE EDIT 3 OF THE TERRAIN TILES!?!? --

... You know, as I mentioned above: Pine Forest, Bonus Grasslands, and Snow-Covered Mountains.

Snow Covered Mountain tile/graphics would do nicely for Himalayans etc.; likewise Pine Forest shouldn't be able to feed as many people as deciduous, etc.

So sorry for the e-shouting & all, but nobody seems able to answer this one ...

Abraxas,

Oz

[Explorer579]

Inhabitable Terrains & Immigrants!

Originally posted by Willem

...all you have to do is flag Forests as being unsuitable for city building. Same with Tundra and Desert, which is what I've done. ....

I make Tundra and Desert un-inhabitable (can't build cities) but not forests! I have seen lot of cities surrounded by forests.

Come to think about my previous post, it would be interesting to create a second type of settler that can do things the primitive settler can't do. I would call the advanced settler "Immigrant"

Immagine the immigrant is not wheeled and the settler is! This is way only an immigrant would be able to travel mountains and jungles. This will put more emphasis on naval strategy, which would increase realism.

[Explorer579]

Slavery and Engineer

Originally posted by Explorer579


Great idea! It seems we have now only one type of worker that works faster as eras advance... It is logical to have two types of workers with a need for an upgrade. What happened to the engineer of civ2?!

I will try to create an engineer unit.

I am so excited I am responding to myself

I like the concept of slavery (capturing workers to work for you). But this does not make sense in modern eras. Have you seen America bring Afghan slaves to the USA after the Taliban war? No.

Solution: The engineer unit will have a defense value of 1. This way, when he/she hides in a city being captured, he is killed but not enslaved.

I am becoming good! I can immagine what would happen even without trying the mod/scenario...

[Willem]

Re: On Impassible Mountains

Originally posted by Explorer579

Making mountains impassible created lot of problems for me. First, you can't make roads on impassible mountains to get strategic Resources! Second, you can't go out and destroy barbarian camps on impassible mountains.

Yes, that's why I've gone with the wheeled route. At least with my non-wheeled Engineer/Worker, I'll be able to get to those resources eventually. I've also created another Settler, called the Pioneer and available with Magnetism, that's not wheeled so the AI won't suffer a major setback.

After all, I can be smarter about building a road to where I want a city than it can. Essentialy all I've done is delay the ultimate colonization of the world until Magnetism, which I felt was more appropriate, considering history.

I thought about the wheeled units. Not a bad ide. However, I like to make building roads on mountains very very time consuming. I have yet to experiment with that . You can change the worker's road building time but I am not sure about changing specifically road building on mountains.

Good point about the terrain differences for building time. I suspect that it has something to do with the movement cost. Mountains already require more time for road building, and that's the only real difference that I can see. Perhaps if you increase the movement cost to 4 or 5?

As for wheeled, it works great! I've also added it to my Galleys and Ironclads so they can't cross the ocean. Stops them cold. I'm toying with the idea of adding it to all my units, except for a few select ones, like maybe have a Sherpa unit or so. I already have it for my Ancient Era and horse units. Certainly changes the strategy of the early game.

Has anybody experimented with creating new tiles? I don't think this is doable in civ3.

No it's not, someone from Firaxis mentioned that awhile back.

PS Although most of my civs start out with a wheeled Settler, I have 4 that I've created a non-wheeled one for. The Aztec, Zulu, Iroquios and Mongol. I've haven't seen yet what kind of a result that will bring though.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Explorer579

I will try to create an engineer unit. I have never created new units, as the game would always crash. It seems that PTW has fixed the editor pretty well. I am making lot of changes with no crashes so far!

All you have to do is use the two sets of graphics the game now uses. The modern day worker that appears in the industrial era can be used as the Engineer. Same thing with the Settler/Pioneer, or Settler/Immigrant in your case.

[Ozymandias]

Re: Inhabitable Terrains & Immigrants!

Originally posted by Explorer579


I make Tundra and Desert un-inhabitable (can't build cities) but not forests! I have seen lot of cities surrounded by forests.

One reason to include Forests in the list is that the AI evidently views a Forest-overlaid-Tundra tile as a Forest tile and so will build a city there.

-Oz

[Tattila the Hun]

On the general subject, how about making every military unit take up some of the population from the building city? Infantry isn't just built in factories, they're conscripts, or professionals trained in camps.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
On the general subject, how about making every military unit take up some of the population from the building city? Infantry isn't just built in factories, they're conscripts, or professionals trained in camps.

I tried that once and I was left behind in the dust during the early expansion. The civs I was encountering were easily twice the size of me. I'm guessing that if the AI encounters a population cost, it will tend to default to a Settler, not a military unit.

[Explorer579]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
On the general subject, how about making every military unit take up some of the population from the building city? Infantry isn't just built in factories, they're conscripts, or professionals trained in camps.

Read previous posts in this forum (abou 2 weeks ago). I have tried it and it works great. I have made all soldier units lose 1 population. Airplanes, tanks, catapult, do not.

The game was very balanced. It puts more challenge on you early in the game. But once your cities are size 6, there is not much difference in playing (the cities don't grow anyway before you build an aqueduct).

The AI was actually at a disadvantage. I play Monarch level. It affected him as much as much as it affected me.

I believe some intelligence is hard-wired in the civ program. So any editor changes you make are potentially a disadvantage to the AI, unless civ3 cheats and applies an edit to you but not to other civs. I have not seen evidence of that yet.

I like playing anicent eras. Decreasing the pop as you build units was fun and in my opinion more realistic.

[Explorer579]

Building an army at anytime

I want it to give a chance for every civilization to build an army anytime it wants and not only when a leader is created or the Military Academy is built.

I assigned the Hopolite to all civilizations and allowed it to make an army. I made it very expensive to make (as much as an army costs to build later in the game after you have Military Academy).

Technically it works. The problem is that the AI always try to build the best unit at the time, so it was trying to make a Hopolite even when it was too expensive and inappriate to make (they should have made Spearman). The other civs were at a disadvantage and so was my domestic adviser (which I rarely use).

I think this is a case where AI is not smart enough due to hardwired solutions. It was trying to build the strongest unit at the time regarless of its relative cost.

I still like to find a way to allow a civilization to make an army at anytime. Has anybody tried that?

[Merc]

Social engineering is way more realistic than the set governments that we have now.

And cities should be able to produce more than 1 thing at a time. And infantry units should be produced very quickly. I was thinking maybe the infantry is made right away, and that turns afterwards you train the infantry a little each turn.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Explorer579, and all the others contributing to this thread. I think adding a bit more realism to civ can indeed make it more fun too. But, as some have cautioned, it needs to be done carefully lest it smother the player in needless details or even worse, micromanagement. A lot of the features you are asking for in this thread are already implemented, or are in the plans, for my civ-genre game Clash of Civilizations. I thought I should mention it here in this thread, because many of you are interested in a more realistic civ-type game. Since I don't want to thread jack, I'll just speak if spoken to.

I'll give a few examples of things requested in this thread that are already in the Clash design:

The history of our REAL world was governed by that of nomadic tribes (what we call barbarians in civ3).

In Clash we not only have more-realistic barbarians, but you'll be able to Play a civilization without settled land for a good chunk of the game. Obviously you want to quit being nomadic at some point during the game or you'll lose for sure.

A civilization does not start as a religious or scientific one. The Arabs may not have become religious if it were not for their prophet Mohamad; they were not "born" religious. Things that people build, what they invent, wars, events, and history create civilization specific abilities.

Civilizations and cultures in Clash are much more like the real thing. Cultures have many attributes that evolve over the game. This evolution is guided by what the people experience, not some cookie-cutter settings that are locked in at the beginning of the game. We have a real governing model that adds another dimension to the player challenges, specifically dealing with internal power politics of your civilization.

There should be some way to accurately simulate supply lines necessary for the support of troops (and if cut off, they will die)

We've got this planned, although not yet implemented. Armies will have quartermasters, which use the merchant code to obtain supplies for their troops using real on-the-ground routes. Provided this doesn't chew up too many clock cycles, it's the way we will go.

The real problem in civ, as far as accuracy and playability, has always been that the units move either too slow or too fast relative to the development speed. This, coupled with city-discrete construction sends realism out the window and makes playabilty real tough.

We've got what we think are good fixes for these issues. However the time-scales issue is Very difficult to handle in a completely satisfactory manner for a whole-history game. In a nutshell if movement rates are to be reasonable for the real world, and yet you don't want units shooting across the whole map in a turn, you'd need a game with about 10,000 (monthly) turns! The Clash Team has what we think is a reasonable solution for this, but I don't want to get into details here.

If I've piqued your interest, there is an overview of Clash in an article I wrote about it recently. It's at: http://apolyton.net/alt/clash/ At the bottom of the article are links to our website, which has extensive documentation of the game design, and also our forums here on Apolyton for discussing the project. We would love to hear your opinions on our game design, and have you play test our most recent demo!

Good luck with the modding!

Mark

[Ozymandias]

Re: On Impassible Mountains

Originally posted by Explorer579

I am coming to the conclusion that a new terrain tile is needed in civ4! Very high impassible mountains. Then we can keep the current mountains and hills as they are now. Has anybody experimented with creating new tiles? I don't think this is doable in civ3.

Woops! -- Sorry, I was about to inadvertently repeat an earlier post, and for some reason the "delete" function isn't working ... apologies ...