If you could add one new improvement to Civ3...

[gnome]

1. Wonder Movies!!

Come on, this is one of the things that got me so darn addicted to Civ2 and SMAC... sometimes I"d build a wonder I didn't need so much just cause I thought the movie was so cool...

I'm a firm believer that video games should have rewards built in for time-consuming or difficult tasks... just like cutscenes between rounds in other video games... something that makes you sit back and enjoy that you paid for the game.

2. Barbarians changing type for each age

Like--barbarians/pirates/terrorists or something like that. Plus improving what they have available to them appropriate to age...whatever you can get without any resources except horses-- horsemen, warriors, and galleys in ancient age; eventually giving way to knights, med. inf, and frigates, and so forth. Civ1 and 2 used to do this, didn't it?

3. Original style ZOC-- IMHO the change in the way zones of control work has rendered marines/paratroopers nearly useless... of course I haven't tried CiC yet...

[Panag]

hi ,

barbs who take over cities and run them , ......

have a nice day

[Plotinus]

[gnome] I don't so much like the idea of Wonder movies - of course, I never saw CivII. But I'd rather they used the time, money, and memory space to improve the game itself rather than put in add-ons like that. Or if we do have more movies, I'd rather have more movies rewarding the different ways of winning, rather than appearing in the middle of the game.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Plotinus
[gnome] I don't so much like the idea of Wonder movies - of course, I never saw CivII. But I'd rather they used the time, money, and memory space to improve the game itself rather than put in add-ons like that. Or if we do have more movies, I'd rather have more movies rewarding the different ways of winning, rather than appearing in the middle of the game.

hi ,

well you should be able to pick it up for somewhere between 10 to 15 usd / euro

have a nice day

[Plotinus]

I think the scoring system needs to be rejigged. At the moment, I believe, you get points for all your content citizens, and extra points for all your happy ones - and that's it. That means that the bigger your civilisation, the more points you get. That in turn encourages militaristic playing styles, because a huge bad civ will beat a small good one in the scoring stakes. I think that size should be just one factor in the scoring. Others could include number of Wonders built (not controlled), cultural strength, *proportion* of happy citizens to unhappy ones, diplomatic prowess, technological dominance - in other words, all the things that it is good to maximise during the game itself. Points could be removed for having polluted squares and starving cities, and perhaps for "moral" failings such as initiating wars or razing cities. It would be good to see small, enlightened civilisations rewarded as much as great big violent ones.

Come to that, I would like it if it were possible to win without going to war all the time. The problem is that a big civilisation will do better than a small one at everything - culture, science, etc - which means that whichever victory condition you're aiming for, the strategy is always the same - grab all the land, whup anyone who gets in your way, and sit on it. There is nothing wrong with that in itself - after all, other things being equal, a big civilisation is "greater" than a small one, and they have tended to dominate - from the Persians to the Chinese to the Americans. But really, it should be only one positive trait among many, rather than the be-all and end-all. Sometimes the whole thing feels just like a wargame. The only exception is the diplomatic victory, which I have to say I've never managed yet. The effects of corruption go some way to helping with this. One possible change might be to make international trade far more important to success, or conversely to make the AI jack their prices up far more when they're annoyed with you. That would force the player to do more to cultivate good relations and be less belligerent. Incidentally, do the AI annoy each other and suffer trade penalties as the player does?

Also, the scoring should be harsher. I remember on Civ1 it took an extremely long time before I managed to go all the way up to the highest rank on the list (I don't remember who it was though!). On Civ3, it seems that playing aggressively until the Industrial Age, becoming top nation, and then just retiring will easily land you a score high enough to get the top rank. Maybe I'm just better at this than I was a decade ago...

[Brundlefly]

I would like the to see added a 'moral victory' option so that I could achieve a moral victory over my opponents (if no other type of victory is possible)....

[Shogun Gunner]

i would agree with wonder movies - i miss that

[bvoncranium]

Research Memory / Archiving

Another enhancement that would improve the game:
It would be good if when you switch your efforts from research-in-progress on one advance to another, that when you return to researching the original advance you start from where you left off, not from zero.
For example, if you are 3 turns from getting Fission but an AI incursion convinces you that there's a compelling need to get Computers (Mech Infantry), it would be better to be able to switch the focus to Computers, then when completed go back to gaining Fission in 3 turns (i.e. where you left off), instead of starting from scratch.
In real life scientific advances are codified (documented and archived) for future use; it is peculiar that there's no such concept in this game.
For those who would posit the argument that interrupted research loses effectiveness and/or relevance over the duration of the interruption, I'd agree. This could be modeled simply with some devaluing factor (e.g. -10%/turn). This would still be much better than losing 100% of invested research in the first turn after a switch!
Just my 2 beakers... bvc

[Panag]

Originally posted by Feephi
I would like the to see added a 'moral victory' option so that I could achieve a moral victory over my opponents (if no other type of victory is possible)....

hi ,

, imagine this " on moral grounds the UN has decided that you must accept this peace deal " , ......

now that would be nice to be seen in the game , .......

kinda like CIV II

have a nice day

[SSBLoveU]

I agree with a post a few weeks ago. Many times the other civilizations seem to have one personality. They sell at the same point and they bargain at the same point. However, I am far more likely to make friends with Cleopatra than Bismark. And some people just are not good neighbors. I rather have the Mayans than the Zulus. I always try to build a civilization.

[Elias]

I would rather have firaxis do somthing else then do wonder moves the time wasted on seven seconds of film that you could only watch hundreds of times and get sick of or they could but somthing much better in the game like new units or pirteing. All though it would be cool to see vidos for conquering the world, I can see the vido in my head cathrines palace surrounded my enemy troops a few last rusian soldiers trying desperatly to defend her but are slaughterd easlily then you see cahtrine the door to her chamber opens in roll 2 gernades her face looks suprised Bam!! then you see the whole palace colapase then an english flag raised.

[Plotinus]

Crikey, Elias, it's lucky *you're* not making the movies for this game. It'd get an 18 cert.

[Brundlefly]

I would like to see a 'cow-tipping' worker option added to the game as a way of increasing happiness. Required: cattle resource within city radius. Move worker over the cattle and select 'cow tipping' option. +1 happy face for the city.

[Maquiladora]

Hey stop stealing ideas from my threads bfg9000

[Colonel E]

What about the ability to annotate the map? THAT would be a seriously useful and cool addition. And not that hard to program, either.

Ooh! And the ability to have a "Oh My God"-sized map. We're talking 1024x1024 squares here. That map would, of course, include all the civs in the game... SIMULATANIOUSLY. A real resource eater, to be sure, but cool nonetheless.