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Joe Camel was a friend of mine
I wanted to solicit comments on the lack of TRADE units in Civ3.
From the press releases and previews of Civ3 one of the new concepts of the game is a more centralized resource management model. Units are no longer supported by a city but the total economic wealth of the player's civ. Luxuries are distributed to every city across an entire continent with the blink of a road. The game places penalties for taking over another civ's city if that was accomplished through military conquest in the form of resistance in the populace. It seems to me so far that the unified race concept is very similar to the factions concept found in SMAC, save for one big hole... Trade units.
Let me use a real world example to show exactly what I mean. In the 1960's, America and Russia entered in to a space race to reach the moon first. Both countries brought many people and resources to bear on this goal and did so by utilizing production across their entire respective countries and economies. The Apollo program wasn't built entirely in Coco Beach, Fla by any means. America collectively brought resources and personnel from across the country to focus on a national goal - very much like the trade and freight units in Civ2.
That ability seems to have been left out in Civ3. Trade and freight units are gone and massive wonder building has been reduced and restricted to a single city for the entire production cycle. There are a couple of work-arounds to this. You can build the unit of your choice and move it to the city building the wonder and disband it for a small shield gain. You can preserve forests around the city building the wonder and clear them during the construction for a 10 shield bonus and I even read of one player continually replanting and replacing forests to get the bonus (Long live worker micro management!). You can select a society that has the commercial trait (I haven't gotten far enough in a game with a commercial civ to see the extra shield production bonus) for extra shields later in the game. But you can't treat your empire as a collective entity working on a common national goal (wonder).
I am really disappointed by the lack of ability to speed up the building of a wonder, especially since wonders now offer the city building it a culture bonus when completed. I played Civ2 most with the style of none to mild expansion and concentrated on making my cities chock full of universities, markets, temples, and all the other goodies that NOW with Civ3 should make a far bigger impact because of culture. And I LOVED to build the wonders. In fact, that was often the best way in my style of play to gauge my empire's strength - being able to outpace my opponents in building wonders. Some brought great benefits, other's were useless to my style of play but for me, the fun was in creating large cities with all the improvements and one uber-city that contained most or all of the wonders. It was cool to look at on the view city screen and wonders added much to a Civ2 game score at the end.
Now I realize that trade units will NOT be making an appearance in Civ3 with or without an expansion pack but what I would love to hear from the rest of you and the Firaxis folks who post around here is what was the reason for eliminating trade units. Since Civ3 empires seem to require a LOT of culture to grow and remain healthy (isn't there a victory condition where if one city accumulates 20,000 culture points you win) it seems you should very much be able to pool production resources for a common goal(wonder) just as you can pool financial resources.
How about adding a similar option like wealth where instead of pooling gold, you pool shields that can be "spent" in whatever city you choose for whatever project. It would probably require a balancing formula where only part of a city's useable shield production would convert to the pooled resource just as wealth (at least early on) isn't a one for one proposition.
Why won't Civ3 let the player rush a wonder by spending population points even though there is plenty of actual historic precedence that many great structures in the world were built by driving slave labor to death to complete building faster. And you can "spend" a leader to rush build a wonder if you have to. Great, expect should a player be able to play and win a game of Civ3 without flexing much military might. If one takes the peaceful great cities approach he probably won't ever have a leader that can help him in a pinch.
It seems like Firaxis has created a game that encourages the player to spend more time concentrating on making fewer cities more desirable with building that enhance the culture and then strip away one of the best ways to help accomplish that (trade units) without providing an any alternative means. I realize this was a conscious design decision on Firaxis' part but I don't entirely get it. Am I going to be able to play a game of Civ3 where I have been able to build the majority of world wonders? It doesn't look promising so far and I am going to miss those damn little camels shuttling across the map...
From the press releases and previews of Civ3 one of the new concepts of the game is a more centralized resource management model. Units are no longer supported by a city but the total economic wealth of the player's civ. Luxuries are distributed to every city across an entire continent with the blink of a road. The game places penalties for taking over another civ's city if that was accomplished through military conquest in the form of resistance in the populace. It seems to me so far that the unified race concept is very similar to the factions concept found in SMAC, save for one big hole... Trade units.
Let me use a real world example to show exactly what I mean. In the 1960's, America and Russia entered in to a space race to reach the moon first. Both countries brought many people and resources to bear on this goal and did so by utilizing production across their entire respective countries and economies. The Apollo program wasn't built entirely in Coco Beach, Fla by any means. America collectively brought resources and personnel from across the country to focus on a national goal - very much like the trade and freight units in Civ2.
That ability seems to have been left out in Civ3. Trade and freight units are gone and massive wonder building has been reduced and restricted to a single city for the entire production cycle. There are a couple of work-arounds to this. You can build the unit of your choice and move it to the city building the wonder and disband it for a small shield gain. You can preserve forests around the city building the wonder and clear them during the construction for a 10 shield bonus and I even read of one player continually replanting and replacing forests to get the bonus (Long live worker micro management!). You can select a society that has the commercial trait (I haven't gotten far enough in a game with a commercial civ to see the extra shield production bonus) for extra shields later in the game. But you can't treat your empire as a collective entity working on a common national goal (wonder).
I am really disappointed by the lack of ability to speed up the building of a wonder, especially since wonders now offer the city building it a culture bonus when completed. I played Civ2 most with the style of none to mild expansion and concentrated on making my cities chock full of universities, markets, temples, and all the other goodies that NOW with Civ3 should make a far bigger impact because of culture. And I LOVED to build the wonders. In fact, that was often the best way in my style of play to gauge my empire's strength - being able to outpace my opponents in building wonders. Some brought great benefits, other's were useless to my style of play but for me, the fun was in creating large cities with all the improvements and one uber-city that contained most or all of the wonders. It was cool to look at on the view city screen and wonders added much to a Civ2 game score at the end.
Now I realize that trade units will NOT be making an appearance in Civ3 with or without an expansion pack but what I would love to hear from the rest of you and the Firaxis folks who post around here is what was the reason for eliminating trade units. Since Civ3 empires seem to require a LOT of culture to grow and remain healthy (isn't there a victory condition where if one city accumulates 20,000 culture points you win) it seems you should very much be able to pool production resources for a common goal(wonder) just as you can pool financial resources.
How about adding a similar option like wealth where instead of pooling gold, you pool shields that can be "spent" in whatever city you choose for whatever project. It would probably require a balancing formula where only part of a city's useable shield production would convert to the pooled resource just as wealth (at least early on) isn't a one for one proposition.
Why won't Civ3 let the player rush a wonder by spending population points even though there is plenty of actual historic precedence that many great structures in the world were built by driving slave labor to death to complete building faster. And you can "spend" a leader to rush build a wonder if you have to. Great, expect should a player be able to play and win a game of Civ3 without flexing much military might. If one takes the peaceful great cities approach he probably won't ever have a leader that can help him in a pinch.
It seems like Firaxis has created a game that encourages the player to spend more time concentrating on making fewer cities more desirable with building that enhance the culture and then strip away one of the best ways to help accomplish that (trade units) without providing an any alternative means. I realize this was a conscious design decision on Firaxis' part but I don't entirely get it. Am I going to be able to play a game of Civ3 where I have been able to build the majority of world wonders? It doesn't look promising so far and I am going to miss those damn little camels shuttling across the map...
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