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

[Fosse]

The option to not honor a MPP. I think a window should come up saying, "Our Allies the French have been attacked by Cleopatra's armies. Shall we honor our Mutual Protection Pact, or back out to the dismay of the international community?"

Nine times out of ten I would honor the pact, but if I just signed the MPP with a little guy to make him like me, and he goes and causes a war with the big kid on the block for no good reason...

[WarpStorm]

Fosse, I disagree. This would weaken MPPs too much. Instead only sign MPPs if you are really willing to fight the war.

[Brundlefly]

If I could add one improvement...

Instead of 'Capture the Princess' game option, there would be a 'Capture Pedro Martinez' mode of play. Each civ would get a special 'Don Zimmer' unit to aid in the effort to capture the Pedro Martinez of opposing civs...

[Shogun Gunner]

But all you would have to do is grab his head and push him to the ground!!!

Anyway see Halle Berry do that to "Don Zimmer" on Saturday Night Live? Hilarous.

[alva]

Fosse, I disagree. This would weaken MPPs too much. Instead only sign MPPs if you are really willing to fight the war.

Yeah, must agree with Warp on this one, it has exploit written all over it I'm affraid..

[kermit_the_frog]

i would make the airplanes simalur to the ones on the old civ 2

[Fosse]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Fosse, I disagree. This would weaken MPPs too much. Instead only sign MPPs if you are really willing to fight the war.

Well, Firaxis says... You win!

Though my reasoning is to combat the current ridiculous situation in which the player can control who goes to war with whom by exploiting the current MPP rules, and also to give the feeling of control to diplomacy. When two of my allies go to war with each other, I should decide my involvement based on more than which territory the fighting units are in.



Another change I'd like to see in Civ... population growth divorced from food levels. It would be more interesting if factors such as a city's economy, the Civ's health tech levels, and the age of the city influenced city size, and then the player had to provide the food to meet the demand.

-Fosse

[WarpStorm]

Well, I do admit that I have used MPPs to direct the flow of wars myself.

If you didn't know if the AI would honor your MPP when push comes to shove would you still sign them? (Now that I think about it I probably would).

[Slohanz9]

I'd like to simplify the battles so that a unit with double the attack strength of the defender's defense would almost always win the battle. Assuming the defender didn't have bonuses totaling over maybe 50% i'd say let the attacker just barely win most of the time, lose a few and easily win almost none if u challenged, say, 10 spearmen with your 10 immortals.
As it is now it can be difficult to predict how many units u need to handle a pocket of enemies because the luck fluctuates so wildly at times.

[Solomwi]

As it is now it can be difficult to predict how many units u need to handle a pocket of enemies because the luck fluctuates so wildly at times.

To me, that's one of the things that makes Civ3 a better game. Unexpected setbacks are part of the game, as well as the real world. Deciding whether to plan for them (and delay your objectives) or charge ahead and press your luck is just one more of the choices that makes the game so rich.

On MPP's, my main gripe is signing an MPP with a small civ to wipe out a few of those annoying island cities my enemy founded, almost always lightly defended, then seeing no progress on said island, having to go wipe them out myself AND being stuck for however many more turns in this MPP with a civ that now can offer me no strategic benefit whatsoever, but can drag me into a war I don't want. But then again, that's why I'm trying to break that habit, too.

[bvoncranium]

Battle Advisor

What I want most:
Regarding battle in Civ3, my #1 request would be the battle event log/vcr/whatever that tells you what happened in conflicts that your troops are involved in (even the ones you initiate, for the record). However, since that is well covered ground here...

I'd certainly like my otherwise lame Military Advisor to be able to tell me the probability of success in a battle before I launch into it. Other games have this feature and it's pretty useful, especially early on when one is learning the game.

As this feature is missing from Civ3, I rely on a spreadsheet that does all of the math according to the combat formulae (I also have trialed some of the other utilities and spreadsheets posted on the 'net). Having it gives me an advantage over the people I play MP with... still I'd be happy to give this advantage up for the convenience of having it built into the game.

What I need most:
A GetALife Advisor that pops up and says: "You've been playing this game for 3 hours now, shouldn't you be living real life instead?"
-bvc

[bvoncranium]

Software and Game Mechanics Improvements

From the software and game mechanics aspects, some improvements that I expect the Civ community would welcome include:

* clean program exit: your computer's available resources should be identical before and after running Civ3PTW.

* holding the screen view for at least a few seconds when one of your units reveals new tiles, foreign units, resources, etc. The immediate shift to next unit is annoying when you want/need to see what you've just discovered or encountered with the unit you just moved.

* Save before end of turn in PBEM. With the 1.27f patch you can only Save at the end of your turn - neither Save nor Autosave are permitted. This means that if for any reason your game is interrupted (power outage, others need the computer, life, etc.) your only option is to reload and redo the turn. There has to be a better way...

* fixing the PBEM Save-Continue bug whereby certain Civs get extra movement in a Continued game.

* adding a counter that tells you how many times a turn was loaded, to make it obvious when players are reloading turns (in PBEM games a player can reload and process their turn as many times as they like until they are happiest with the outcome).

* this would probably cause all kinds of exploits but... having an 'Undo' option for units who move without going into combat or revealing new terrain (i.e. whose movement offers no revealing advantage), or joins a city. It is disappointing when after spending a long time on a turn an errant mouse-click (or the cat jumping on the keyboard) causes a unit to move into the wrong tile, unrecoverably. I am very careful with this, after being burned several times; still once you get to 100s of units for many turns these kinds of mistakes do happen - it would be nice to undo them. Right now the only way seems to be to redo the entire turn, which is a needless waste.

There are many, many more enhancements that would be nice... their description will have to wait for another post.
-bvc

[Stuie]

Re: Software and Game Mechanics Improvements

Originally posted by bvoncranium
* holding the screen view for at least a few seconds when one of your units reveals new tiles, foreign units, resources, etc.

I'm sorry, but that would bug the crap out of me. They would have to make it optional.

* this would probably cause all kinds of exploits but... having an 'Undo' option for units who move without going into combat or revealing new terrain....

Well, you said it yourself: Exploit. I just chalk up errant moves to the misfortunes of war.

[Brundlefly]

I would like to simply have a popup at the end of each turn that tells me what cities are in disorder, do I wish to end the turn anyway. Some might suggest that you can already do that by letting governor control happiness, but I dont like the way governor uses city tiles when you give it control. Governor is also bad because often times a taxman or scientist can be used instead of entertainer to control happiness. So this popup window whould be quite useful especially later in games when you have 20, 30, or more cities and you are checking them every turn to see who grew and who became more unhappy.

[Fosse]

Another wish for me... Political borders that can be moved in diplomacy. Especially for MP.