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Many people are complaing about excessive corruption preventing expansion and the combat rules skewed in favor of the technologically inferior. This is leading to alot of frustration for many players. The rules (as yin mentioned in another thread "... the artificial limits ... simply punish a good player and reward mediocrity." Some people, like Grim Legacy, see this as part of the "challenge": "Expansion not possible? War is too hard? Tech is too difficult? I'm sorry if this is going to hurt your pride, but these things are probably just your weak gameplay speaking."
The problem, infact, isnt in keeping up. The problem is getting ahead. Once you have beaten down your neighbor and secured a solid area to build on, colonized your entire continent, built your infrastructure, and jacked up science to 4 techs a turn, there is pretty much nothing left to do. All this i usually accomplish by the late medieval/early industrial age. You cant totally run away in tech since your capped at 4 turns. Conquering over seas is counter-productive since you only get 1 production and 1 commerce. Alliances and Mutual protection pacts get you in more trouble than theyre worth. Sitting on your butt doesnt do much either because even at 4production/gold wealth sucks and specialists are even worse. At this point i sit back and wait for the AI to catch-up to make things interesting again or i run around with my armour obliterating cities to improve my relative power. Even if you want to be peaceful and win by culture there isnt much left to do past the mid-game but wait around for culture to keep coming in.
Civ3 needs to give us something to do once we are on top.
1) I think you should at least be able increase your culture output by jacking up your luxury rate (say 1 extra culture point for every 100 gold spent). This is historically realistic. For example the renaissance in europe was the result of private expenditure on luxury goods (portraits, clothing, etc.). And take, for example the dominant spread of US culture throughout the world in the last 50 years. Largly the result on a large private expenditure on luxury (mickey mouse is more recognized than mao by china's youth) and not because of 700 year old cathedrals
. This would give reasons for people running a pacifist strategy to scrape for more gold by whatever means neccesary.
2) Reduce the corruption rate, but add the possibility of large scale civil war. Keep dominant countries on their toes. Allows for continued expansion without a dominant effect of more cities. Adds to challenge because you will have to fight an opponent that is as well developed as yourself
3) Ability to vassalize other countries. Allow for permanently binding peace treaties so that you can for example demand coal from a misbehaving neighbor in exchange for returning him his territory. Makes wars of conquest useful and makes it worthwhile to not raze everything in sight.
4) More terraforming/building options. Workers quickly run out of things to do shortly after discovering railroads. There are no critical buildings after hospital and factory (both show up about half way into the game). Give us the option of building small additions, like a second market place that is more expensive and ups commerce by another 25%.
5) Allow for tech "specialization". Dead end techs that cant be traded. Something like this was originally proposed as an alternative to Unique Units. Perhaps they could give some minor wonders that are nice (like heroic) instead of neccessary (intelligence agency or battlefield medicine). Perhaps some units that have some kind of advantage but arent civ-specific.
6) Bring in the idea of non-military great leaders. Maybe "extra" (over-the-cap) spending on science or luxuries could do it.
7) Chances for more than one Golden Age. Either through the wonder thing or by having some difficult but doable percentage(90%?) of cities in WLTKD for a certain number of turns(20?).
Any other ideas on how to make it so there is something to do once you are on top besides wait (many many hours) till the game ends?
The problem, infact, isnt in keeping up. The problem is getting ahead. Once you have beaten down your neighbor and secured a solid area to build on, colonized your entire continent, built your infrastructure, and jacked up science to 4 techs a turn, there is pretty much nothing left to do. All this i usually accomplish by the late medieval/early industrial age. You cant totally run away in tech since your capped at 4 turns. Conquering over seas is counter-productive since you only get 1 production and 1 commerce. Alliances and Mutual protection pacts get you in more trouble than theyre worth. Sitting on your butt doesnt do much either because even at 4production/gold wealth sucks and specialists are even worse. At this point i sit back and wait for the AI to catch-up to make things interesting again or i run around with my armour obliterating cities to improve my relative power. Even if you want to be peaceful and win by culture there isnt much left to do past the mid-game but wait around for culture to keep coming in.
Civ3 needs to give us something to do once we are on top.
1) I think you should at least be able increase your culture output by jacking up your luxury rate (say 1 extra culture point for every 100 gold spent). This is historically realistic. For example the renaissance in europe was the result of private expenditure on luxury goods (portraits, clothing, etc.). And take, for example the dominant spread of US culture throughout the world in the last 50 years. Largly the result on a large private expenditure on luxury (mickey mouse is more recognized than mao by china's youth) and not because of 700 year old cathedrals
. This would give reasons for people running a pacifist strategy to scrape for more gold by whatever means neccesary.2) Reduce the corruption rate, but add the possibility of large scale civil war. Keep dominant countries on their toes. Allows for continued expansion without a dominant effect of more cities. Adds to challenge because you will have to fight an opponent that is as well developed as yourself
3) Ability to vassalize other countries. Allow for permanently binding peace treaties so that you can for example demand coal from a misbehaving neighbor in exchange for returning him his territory. Makes wars of conquest useful and makes it worthwhile to not raze everything in sight.
4) More terraforming/building options. Workers quickly run out of things to do shortly after discovering railroads. There are no critical buildings after hospital and factory (both show up about half way into the game). Give us the option of building small additions, like a second market place that is more expensive and ups commerce by another 25%.
5) Allow for tech "specialization". Dead end techs that cant be traded. Something like this was originally proposed as an alternative to Unique Units. Perhaps they could give some minor wonders that are nice (like heroic) instead of neccessary (intelligence agency or battlefield medicine). Perhaps some units that have some kind of advantage but arent civ-specific.
6) Bring in the idea of non-military great leaders. Maybe "extra" (over-the-cap) spending on science or luxuries could do it.
7) Chances for more than one Golden Age. Either through the wonder thing or by having some difficult but doable percentage(90%?) of cities in WLTKD for a certain number of turns(20?).
Any other ideas on how to make it so there is something to do once you are on top besides wait (many many hours) till the game ends?
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