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

[FrostyBoy]

What would it be and why?

I am not talking just about city improvements, I am talking about any aspect of the game.

Just one!

[Elias]

I would make it so some units would much better vs. other certin units (similar to rise of nations) Example cavlary would get a bounus when fighting any non mounted non ranged unit.
in games i have seen cavalary loose in battles to spearmen when they could just ride in circles aroun the spearmen and shoot them all

[marcuspeddle]

Elias' idea is a good one and I would add unit trading. I'd like to supply arms to my allies in PBEM but it's impossible.

[Elias]

Yeah there is a thread on it somewhere named somthing they should really add in diplomacy. there is a lot of controversy on the subject.(pleas excues my teribble spelling)I would love that being able to give tons of military units to little underpowerd civs when they were at war with massive superpowers.Similar to the afganastan incident.

[G'Kar]

Yeah, unit trading/gifting would be a biggie for me.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Damn, just ONE !!!

Hi Guys,

Just so you know, I don't want you to think that the title of my post suggests that I don't like Civ3! I really, REALLY do !!! I do have a list of things which I think would improve the game, without adding too much complexity to it!
If I HAD to pick a single one, though, I'd have to say Variable Unit Mainainance costs (i.e. Battleship costs more than a tank, which costs more than a swordsman-etc, etc!) As I think it will make people think a lot more about the long term cost of supporting a large and technologically advanced military!
This improvement, however, would have to come with the concept of unit 'trading', as it would give smaller, less wealthy nations a chance to have high-tech military equipment, courtesy of their wealthy and powerful allies, without the huge costs ('traded' units should have a fixed 1gp/turn cost)

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[FrostyBoy]

Yeah, these are good ideas!

[Egbert]

I like these ideas, unit trading and variable maintenance costs for different units. I would also like double irrigation (Civ2 style farmland) because I like BIG cities.

[alva]

Dynamic tiles.

IE tiles going from grassland to mountains and back ( think Iceages and such.)
My guess is this would improve on the notion of 'rise and fall' of empires.

[Tiberius]

Uhh, only one?!

I'd rather post my No. 5 list (some of them were mentioned already anyway, so I just post them to show my support, while some are just small, but important improvements)

1. News reports
1a. Extended News Reports for PBEM games, including a summary of what has happened in the last turn with my own units/cities (or better a Replay capability, but at least a log file)

2. Civil wars !

3. Unit trading (or at least gifting)

4. a useful UN (more diplomacy options)

5. Tourism (more than just obsolate wonders becoming tourist attractions; make tourism an important gold source in the modern era, as it is in reality!)

tourism ideas

Nothing groundbreaking as you can see

[FrustratedPoet]

For PBEM:
I'd like to see a text-only log file created in the same directory as the savegame that list all the combat results for any given turn. An in-game way of viewing this would be better, but I'd settle for the .txt file thanks.

For single-player:
Civil Wars would be extremely cool.

[Harovan]

Unit trading/gifting

True alliances
(let allies enter each other's cities and remove the possibilities to declare war at each other during the alliance)

Limit the possible number of units per tile

Limited railroad movement

Zone of control.
I mean the true one. I know, the AI is poor at handling it, but... Who needs the AI for chrissake? Disable it in singleplayer, but make it an option for multiplayer games

Fleets
Naval armies. May be naval leaders (a small, fast vessel, which can travel to the next port)

Limited carrier based aircraft
I'd like to see a B52 landing on the USS Nimitz.

A useful UN
Wait... that wouldn't be realistic, would it?

... etc ...

Wait! He said only one...

[vulture]

I'd have unit trading in there as my first choice, as long as it could be done without leaving the AI vulnerable to exploits (and as long as the AI can handle it compotently, rather than being something the humans can make use of but the AI not).

My second choice would be something like Elias's suggestion - units having advantages and disadvantages vs other units. Even something relatively simple like the panzer general system works pretty well, and could be expandable in an editor - create a new unit 'class', and give other units an attack value vs. that class of unit; you could for example make helicopters a new class of unit, and give all existing units a new attack value vs helicopters (some of them would be useless vs helicopters, some would be very powerful).

[Asmodeus]

It would be cool if a city that produces masses of food but cant expand any more (eg population 12 but Sanitation not yet invented) could distribute the spare food to other cities via the normal road network. Especially useful for those long term investment cities in the jungle or tundra. The same could apply for very productive cities that cant build any more improvements as an alternative to building Wealth.

[alva]

I mean the true one. I know, the AI is poor at handling it, but... Who needs the AI for chrissake? Disable it in singleplayer, but make it an option for multiplayer games

This in itself would be a great improvement and should be fairly easely to implement and could be for many other features.

A useful UN
Wait... that wouldn't be realistic, would it?

-
What do you people mean by civil war btw? Is it that a civ splits in two seperate civs? Wouldn't that just weaken the AI by quite a lot???