Desires For Future Civ3 Patches (A thread saving thread)

[Master2000]

About the sentry command: A sentry unit should become active at once when an enemy unit (nation in war or babarian) are in sight.

[Raleigh]

If I missed any of these in the patch update, I apologize, I did read it and the posts above.

Bug:

Fix coastal fortresses. As far as I can tell they don't protect the city very well (aren't they supposed to protect it against bombardment?)

?Bug with trading luxuries where once you have a great deal, either one the computer is close to accepting or one the computer will accept and you throw in a luxury and it kills the deal! No kidding!


General:

Tell you when your 20 year trade treaties expire.

Agree with Pressure Allies to Cease Fire With Enemies Option.

Tell you what your reputation is and when you threaten to ruin it.

Agree with Sentry.

Allow terraforming.

Better global warming indicators, also explaining how much pollution you need to trigger it, and whether that needs to be domestic pollution like civ2 or worldwide pollution.

Reform voting of UN MOO2/SMAC style where everyone gets votes based on population and/or culture, etc. and you need 2/3 vote of ALL votes to win.

[Kaak]

I can't but help to laugh at the humour in this situation. Right there on page 1 is a thread about ideas for future patches, yet you still found the need to post your thread about ideas for future patches.

Really, the only humor I see in the situation is that you jumped to conclusions about the situation. I did not see the post ON THE FIRST PAGE because I did not look at any of the posts on the first page. As this is finals week, and my time on the boards is somewhere inbetween non-existant and exponentially small, I came to the forums, immediately read some of the patch comments and then clicked on post new topic.

btw, do you know what they say about assuming?

That said, i'll repost my ideas:

1. My largest concern is that you must complete all (or MOST is probably better) of the techs in a given age before progressing. I really feel this is a great limitor of strategy ina a strategy game.

2. Another important point is Capitols. This needs to be changed, without question. The civ2 capital system is perfect in my opinion. When your capital is taken, a couple of things should happen! First, corruption should run rampant through your empire. Secondly, You should have a chance of civil war, just like civ2. Finally, capitals should have to be rebuilt, not instantly relocated for free. Here, it would be important to be able to rush build though.

3. Finally, Tech should be aquired from taking an enemy city. NOT ONLY TECH, but one should have the option to take either tech, or maps. REALISTICALLY, if an enemy city was assimilated, there would be a good chance you would learn SOMETHING from it. Tech, or maybe atleast REGIONAL maps, similar to those gotten from huts.

All in all, great job! much more encompassing than expected! I do hope you consider what I say though, as I feel it would greatly add to the STRATEGY which should be required for such a STRATEGY game...

Thanks!

[Moraelin]

OK, off the top of my head:

1) Colonies should really be treated as OUTPOSTS. (If you remember those from Colonization and stuff.) They should get a border around that one square they occupy, but not a full 3x3 zone like cities. Taking someone else's colony could be either a slow cultural take-over, or just sending an army to storm it, but either way it shouldn't happen instantly when someone builds a city nearby.

2) Said Colonies/Outposts should be able to grow into full size cities, given enough time. (A lot of the modern day cities evolved from small resource colonies.) Once grown into a city, of course, they could start getting buildings, culture and everything else.

3) Give me an automate button for explorers and scouts. I've tried that in the editor (yep, it IS possible), and it takes so much of the tedium out of early exploring, that it actually gives expansionist civilizations a good advantage. Just make a few scouts, set them on automatic, and voila, you can concentrate on your cities while they discover the map for you. (And since they don't have the brains to run from barbarians when on automatic, that automate button doesn't even really unbalance the game or anything. You could do far better if you moved them by hand, but it's not as convenient.)

4) Whole city defections should be far more rare, and they should happen only with a fight. I.e., those civilians would have to actually fight my armies stationed there, resulting in loss of population and damage to the city improvements. It should also happen over several turns, giving me a chance to react.

5) _However_ it should be possible that, instead of a full city defection, 1 point of population defects and moves to another city. (Which could be across the border, to a richer neighbour, or to a more evolved city of my own.) Think immigrants in the US and other western nations, fleeing from more backwards nations. Think war refugees. THAT kind of thing.

6) Oppressive governments, like Despotism or Communism could then optionally use their army to suppress population defections, at the risk of causing even more unhappiness. Basically that unit of population instead of defecting, would become unhappy for 15 turns. Or they could even try to suppress movement within their own empire. (China actually did that, in the 20'th century.)

7) On the flip side of the coin, if you're the one receiving those imigrants, you could decide to try to prevent (or more realistically slow down) immigration into your own country. E.g., if you don't want your American towns to become full of Chinese ethnics that fled their own country. You could order your army to try to send them back and/or build customs offices and stuff as city improvements.

8) You should be able to decide if you want to allow your population to bear arms and form militias or not. The advantage is that those resistance people would have an easier time to overthrow an occupying army, if you're attacked. But on the flip side of the coin, a revolt in your own cities would be far harder to quell if your people are well armed. (And might escalate into full time war against your units, and/or cause loss of population and/or increased chance of destroying city improvements.)

9) I should also be able to do stuff like lowering the taxes to make cities more happy, if my empire is facing open revolt. Or on the opposite, raise them, if I'm confident that my people are happy enough to swallow that. Basically lowering taxes would lower the amount of gold I get from my cities, while raising them would raise it.

10) Basically all this boils down to: I want an internal policy screen, where I'd set such details as allowing/preventing emigration, imigration, militias, etc. And setting taxes, work times, etc.

11) Yes, it's been said before, but just to add my own vote to it: give us stacked movement. And that goes for the AI too: I prefer having 5 enemy armies moving around, rather than waiting for 50 individual units to be moved one by one.

12) I want tactical combat, a la Master of Magic.

[Teemur]

General idea

I don't know if it has currently any effect on AI's opinion about you how good the trade deals that you make with him are for him, but it would be great if when trading the diplomatic advisor would instead of just telling you that the deal is acceptable also tell for example that they would be happy to accept the offer or they would be grateful for the deal. Or if you were really ripping the AI off with the deal but it really needs it he could say that they would be angrily willing to accept the deal. As it is now you usually just end up searching for the most amount that the AI is willing to pay you for the deal.

[Nexus VI]

Originally posted by Moraelin
3) Give me an automate button for explorers and scouts. I've tried that in the editor (yep, it IS possible), and it takes so much of the tedium out of early exploring, that it actually gives expansionist civilizations a good advantage. Just make a few scouts, set them on automatic, and voila, you can concentrate on your cities while they discover the map for you. (And since they don't have the brains to run from barbarians when on automatic, that automate button doesn't even really unbalance the game or anything. You could do far better if you moved them by hand, but it's not as convenient.)

Have you ever tried pressing the "E" key with any of your units?

12) I want tactical combat, a la Master of Magic.

Nothing to add, but MOM was a great game indeed... maybe one of the best TBS. Many races, many units (every race had its own), many spell (of many circles) and much much more... I love it, I'd like to see a MOM2 with all the wonderful things the first chapter had.

[Akka]

Re: Desires For Future Civ3 Patches (A thread saving thread)

General Ideas

1) Submarines more efficients.

2) Nuclear plant costing less in both construction and support than hydro plant ????????

3) Any military unit with a big number of people in it -basically any ground unit but not air, missile or sea units- should require one population to be built, just like drafting. It would means something when you'll lose twenty units more than just the build time and shield costs. People DIED.

4) Ships should be sinkable by bombing.

5) UN should give option just like the Counsil in AC.

6) UN vote should be proportionnal to population.

7) When I've finished the spaceship, I want to be allowed NOT to launch it. I may want to wait some more turns to do it.

8) Option to allow the spaceship to take some times to reach AC, just like in previous Civ.

9) Option to sabotage the spaceship production.

10) Better endings.

11) Experience should change the A/D ratings, not the HP.

12) Farmland back !

13) New mines improvement : railroad should only boost the commerce, farmland the food and modern mines the production.

14) UU should be upgraded from and to. They're supposed to be an ADVANTAGE, right ???

15) Ancient infantry units (swordsmen, longbowmen, etc...) should upgrade to riflemen.

16) Make the AI upgrade its units.

Editor Ideas and Changes

1) FIREPOWER AND HITPOINTS RELATIVE TO EACH UNIT !

2) Mini-map, zoom, etc...

3) Possibility to make a building disappear when you are under a certain government or you are NOT under a government.

4) Possibility to change the nuke effects.

5) Possibility to set if a unit can be destroy by bombing.

6) Possibility to create new tile improvements.

[Moraelin]

Nexus, thanks for the tip, but I would have liked a VISUAL interface to it all. If I have to remember keys, I'm not that happy a camper.

Either way, a couple more points:

13) I'd like barbarians to evolve, because after a few turns they're just obsolete and no more threat. Now I do NOT want them to instantly upgrade to the highest tech available, like in CTP2. But I'd like them to stay at least at the tech level available to everyone at the moment. (I.e., if everyone has longbows, then it should be possible to see a a barbarian longbowman. If everyone has AK-47's, then at least some "barbarians" should have AK-47's.)

14) I'd like the option to have more barbarian presence. Currently the definition of spawning far from civilization is a bit too far for my taste, which leads to barbarians being extinct very very soon. IMHO any square that's not within someone's borders should be fair game. Yep, even one square coast tips.

And finally, I realize that all this is a bit too much for a patch. But I wouldn't say no to buying an expansion pack that gives me a detailed internal policy screen, and stuff like that.

[Pingu:]

Does anyone else think this needs changing?

When you eliminate a Civ in the early game it is repaced, often by a new form of the same Civ.

e.g., I was the greeks and took out the Romans, who were my close neighbours (just before they got iron working and got Legions phew!).

Lo and behold, a new Roman city appears to the north, beyond a contenental bottleneck that I had occupied with a warrior I got from a hut, right at the start, and later settled. I'm absolutely sure that the romans could NOT have settled there legitimately. PLus they got loads of good free tech when they restarted.

Anyway, what I think is going on is that, for some reason, the SMAC code to restart Civs is soemtimes still used, as in SMAC there were only 7 'civs', so they had to be restarted. This isn't the case in CivIII, so an alternate Civ could emerge from barbarity somewhere and fill up the game. This would be much more realistic, once you've conquered a Civ, it shouldn't come back unless it revolts.. anmd certainly nopt come back when you've

As such this isn't a bug, I think it's just something they really needed to change, but didn't have time because of deadlines.

Anyone else agree with me?


Pingu:

[Comrade Tribune]

1) Fix the Draft Bug

If you go from city to city drafting, often the Draft button appears when it shouldn´t, sometimes it doesn´t appear when it should. If you press the Draft button, sometimes something happens, sometimes not. In short: The whole Draft mechanism is totally unreliable.

2) Put the Improvement list back in

Where is the list of civ-wide improvements? I want to see at a glance I have 23 Barracks, costing me so-and-so much, 17 Marketplaces, 5 Cathedrals,...

[kmj]

re: trading workers...

"Worker trading doesn't work...usually. It is rare that captured workers are mentioned in negotiations (or availible).."


They have to be in your capital city, I believe, in order to trade them to a civ...

[TechWins]

The Reference Post is updated up to this point.

[Bill3000]

I think this is a long shot, but:

- allow city improvement to count as a resource in the city it was built (For instance, a Steel Mill could count as a Steel resource)

[star mouse]

14) Update the Foreign Advisor, so that all Civs will be noted, shows the updates of technology

Foreign advisor:
"The Romans have recently discovered Currency." (when they discover the tech)
"The Romans have recently been taught Currency." (when they get the tech in a trade or from a goody hut)

To solve the settling of those unused 1x1 and 1x2 squares on your coast, do what I do - plant an obsolete military unit on the square. The AI loses interest when this happens. I think this is addressed in the patch, with a reduced desire by the AI to settle in locations that are likely to lead to cultural assimilation.

[jbrians]

Originally posted by Pingu:
Does anyone else think this needs changing?

When you eliminate a Civ in the early game it is repaced, often by a new form of the same Civ.

e.g., I was the greeks and took out the Romans, who were my close neighbours (just before they got iron working and got Legions phew!).

Lo and behold, a new Roman city appears to the north, beyond a contenental bottleneck that I had occupied with a warrior I got from a hut, right at the start, and later settled. I'm absolutely sure that the romans could NOT have settled there legitimately. PLus they got loads of good free tech when they restarted.

Anyway, what I think is going on is that, for some reason, the SMAC code to restart Civs is soemtimes still used, as in SMAC there were only 7 'civs', so they had to be restarted. This isn't the case in CivIII, so an alternate Civ could emerge from barbarity somewhere and fill up the game. This would be much more realistic, once you've conquered a Civ, it shouldn't come back unless it revolts.. anmd certainly nopt come back when you've

As such this isn't a bug, I think it's just something they really needed to change, but didn't have time because of deadlines.

Anyone else agree with me?


Pingu:

I think you may have missed something in that game. When you wipe out a civ you get a message to that affect, and I have never seen them come back. If you never got that message they must have had a settler escape very early on.