Although I had no major beefs with the production system in Civ II. I feel that there are a couple of ways in which the system can be tweaked to make it much less clunky for Civ III.
1) Build Queus: An obvious one, 'nuff said!
2) Multiple Improvements: The thing that always bothered me at both the beginning and the end of a Civ II game was running out of things to build!! To overcome this I feel that Firaxis should take a leaf out of the book of "Birth of The Federation" and allow a city to build multiples of a certain improvement (eg 4 factories or 6 libraries etc). Obviously the number of a certain improvement that you can build would be dependant on City Size and available resources, and the number of each improvement you have should also limit the number of specialists you can have in that city! Obvious classes of improvements that you should be able to build multiples of are: Financial (Banks/Market Places etc), Production (Factories, Mfg. plants etc), Research (Libraries, Universities etc) and Power (Nuclear, solar, coal power etc). Obviously some improvements (like aqueducts and city walls) could only be built once per city
3) Improvement Upgrades: Again, one straight from the pages of "BOTF". Improvements should not be static, but should be upgradable, with each upgrade giving the improvement a slightly better effectiveness. An upgrade could be done in lieu of building a new improvement, and failing to upgrade an improvement could result in it becoming LESS effective (eg. failing to upgrade a factory could make it more polluting and less efficient!)
4) Multiple Build Queues: Something else I always disliked was being forced to choose between building military and civilian production, which I thought was very unrealistic. Instead I think that there should be different build queues for different types of production-these could be civilian, army, naval and aerial queues. In order to get any of the latter 3 build queues, you would probably need to build an appropriate improvement (barracks, port and airfield), and building in multiple queues at a time would reduce the build speed of all of them (as they would partially draw off the some production base!). However, some improvements and tech advances would overcoming this slowing to some extent.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on the issue. What do you all think, do you also believe that the production model can be improved and, if so, how?
Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.
1) Build Queus: An obvious one, 'nuff said!
2) Multiple Improvements: The thing that always bothered me at both the beginning and the end of a Civ II game was running out of things to build!! To overcome this I feel that Firaxis should take a leaf out of the book of "Birth of The Federation" and allow a city to build multiples of a certain improvement (eg 4 factories or 6 libraries etc). Obviously the number of a certain improvement that you can build would be dependant on City Size and available resources, and the number of each improvement you have should also limit the number of specialists you can have in that city! Obvious classes of improvements that you should be able to build multiples of are: Financial (Banks/Market Places etc), Production (Factories, Mfg. plants etc), Research (Libraries, Universities etc) and Power (Nuclear, solar, coal power etc). Obviously some improvements (like aqueducts and city walls) could only be built once per city
3) Improvement Upgrades: Again, one straight from the pages of "BOTF". Improvements should not be static, but should be upgradable, with each upgrade giving the improvement a slightly better effectiveness. An upgrade could be done in lieu of building a new improvement, and failing to upgrade an improvement could result in it becoming LESS effective (eg. failing to upgrade a factory could make it more polluting and less efficient!)
4) Multiple Build Queues: Something else I always disliked was being forced to choose between building military and civilian production, which I thought was very unrealistic. Instead I think that there should be different build queues for different types of production-these could be civilian, army, naval and aerial queues. In order to get any of the latter 3 build queues, you would probably need to build an appropriate improvement (barracks, port and airfield), and building in multiple queues at a time would reduce the build speed of all of them (as they would partially draw off the some production base!). However, some improvements and tech advances would overcoming this slowing to some extent.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on the issue. What do you all think, do you also believe that the production model can be improved and, if so, how?
Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.
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