Desires For Future Civ3 Patches

[GodSpawn]

Wow, that's a big list! Very good. Some observations:

(A) Some of the items in the list look to require a lot of implementation work - not likely to appear in a patch. For example, providing additional zoom levels may requre an inordiante amount of work, depending on how it's implemented.

(B) The ramifications of some of the items need to be taken into account. For example, the idea that colonies should have a cultural border: Does this mean that a colony could be taken culturally by an enemy civ? If not, you could use colonies to form a culturally impregnable firebreak on your outer borders, which might break the game. But if you DO allow colonies to be taken culturally, you need a way to compute the colony's cultural value.

(C) Some items need to be further expanded. For example: "Reduce late game tedium; incorporating some of the ideas/changes mentioned could possibly do just that." Some concrete examples here would help significantly.

Also: "Continue to solve the overabundance of corruption problem." Should this be done by reducing the effect of corruption due to distance or number of cities, giving bigger reductions for certain government types, increasing the effect of certain city improvements, making forbidden palace cheaper, or some combination of all those? What would benefit the game most?

(D) The list needs to be priortised. Even if Firaxis used this list as a basis for what to put into a patch, they'd need to know what subset to work on - there's no way they'd be implementing more than a small proportion of the items.

Personally, I'd put stacked movement at the top of the list.

[GMO]

Editor Ideas for a new patch to CIV3:

1) There should be an option where you can change the number of years per turn. I might want the time in CIV3 to go slower so I might want only 1 year per turn right from the start of the game, or I might want for time to go faster so I might want 10 years per turn in the early part of the game, then go to 2 years per turn later. If there was an option I could modify the turns per year.

2) There's no option to say you don't want a particular unit in the game, whatsoever. For example, let's say I don't want tactical nukes and ICBMs. There's no option to say 'don't include this unit in the game'. In the editor now, I can make the units expensive and say that you need 3 resources to get the unit but there's no option to say not to include the units.

These could also be options in the game itself, so these could also be General ideas.

[Optimizer]

General Idea: Railroads granting shared food storages

If Farmlands are brought back from Civ 2 to take over the food bonus of Railroads, the Railroads could benefit a civ's food supply in a more logical way:

Cities connected by Railroads should have a shared, regional food storage. When the storage is filled, the happiest city would grow (if it is allowed).

This adds
*realism, (Railroads transport food to where it is needed; they do not produce it.)
*strategy (You can now specialize your cities on food, industry or something else.)
*and beauty. (The landscape wouldn't be filled by rail.)

This would also decrease micromanagement in the late game.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by GMO
2) There's no option to say you don't want a particular unit in the game, whatsoever. For example, let's say I don't want tactical nukes and ICBMs. There's no option to say 'don't include this unit in the game'. In the editor now, I can make the units expensive and say that you need 3 resources to get the unit but there's no option to say not to include the units.

What about making them unavailable to all?

[hoevenpe]

I am still missing two options:

- upgrade individual units inside an army / remove a unit from an army. This pervents armies of knights during the modern age...

- customize the auto-worker option. Now they build mines on grassland for instance, I want them to irrigate grassland all the time. Just being able to customize this whould speed up the game dramatically (no more individual workers to command)

[TechWins]

The Reference Post, as of now, represents all the ideas from the original/old thread. I will try to update the list to its fullest by Wednesday, because I will be gone (visiting my friend in Michigan) for a week come Wednesday.

BtW, I usually update my post following the list instead of having to make a new post stating that I updated the Reference Post.

[iof3bears]

I would like to see the following two points added but they may be in the too hard basket.

1) If you have a railway build on a square which is within your cultural boundary but not within your 21 square's of a city, once all 21 squares are used, citizens should be able to use shield producing squares, outside of the 21 squares but within your cultural boundary.

2) Similar concept to the above, but add say a technology called refrigeration, which allows the same as above but for food.

These squares would only produce shields or food if a railway was built, and not food until refrigeration was discovered.

For food production maybe even the requirement to build a supermarket.

[Qilue]

I'd like some form of scrollbar for the "Investigate City" list.

Once the number goes over 40 (or something like that), the list extends off the sides of the screen making it near impossible (without a lot of reloading and guessing) to find the particular city you want to investigate.

[star mouse]

More ideas:

* Fix whatever it is that makes the game so slow! It is ridiculous when it takes 15 seconds between clicking on the "Do you accept this deal?" message when negotiating with the AI and the AI's response. Not to mention the 5 minute delay between turns.

* If the lengthy delays are caused by recalculating trade connectivity and culture borders, optimise the algorithms used to compute these. The majority of players would prefer a slightly inferior algorithm that was lightning fast to a completely correct one that takes 10 seconds of CPU time to compute.

Calculating a trade network should be very quick if a flood fill algorithm is used. Calculating the culture borders is slightly more involved, but should also be possible to compute quickly.

* Make the end of game replay more comprehensive. Include war declarations, peace treaties, trade embargoes and the like.

* In-game city events that pop up over a city that may require attention, such as pollution, WLT*D etc. should be accessible in an "executive summary". This summary would have a city name and the event, and the city name is clickable so you can see the city if desired.

* The military advisor should alert you to undefened cities.

* Barbarians should be more prominent. Land-based barbarians should have more advanced units in the later game. Barbarians that spawn at sea should spawn as an appropriate naval unit, perhaps carrying troops. Barbarian privateers at the appropriate time would be a particularly interesting enhancement.

* Barbarian encampments should spawn a greater variety of numbers of barbarians. Usually they spawn one at a time and occasionally spawn "huge uprisings". There should also be smaller uprisings containing perhaps half a dozen units.

* Expanding cultural borders should not disperse barbarian encampments. This includes building a city right next to an encampment.

[star mouse]

More ideas:

* Provide an option, "Find resource". This would work for strategic resources and luxuries. This can be implemented as an extra button on the World map alongside the "geography" and "borders" buttons. When this option is pressed, the player chooses the desired resource from the list. The map then highlights the desired resource in bright yellow with the rest of the map being muted dark colours (black = unexplored, dark blue = ocean, dark grey/green = land).

Right now, hunting for strategic resources is a pain, especially if there's an enemy city built right on top of the resource. Even ctrl-shift-M is tedious on a huge map.

* Provide an option to animate the resources icons, particularly the strategic and luxury resources. Movement draws the eye, and this can help someone to spot difficult-to-see resources, such as coal hidden in a jungle.

[Aqualung]

General:

AI: The AI should recognize non-productive areas. It should not settle in any location where the (unimproved) 9-square basic city size cannot support a size 3 city. Leave major efforts to terraform the planet to the human player.

Barbarians: 1) Barbarians should still be a hassle late into the game (since the AI is no longer settling every single square, as per above suggestion). The Barbarians should have the most powerful units of the previous age, up to Cavalry and Infantry.

2) Barbarian ships should actually do something besides attack other ships, such as drop of "settlers" (warrior units which build encampments).

Diplomacy: Clicking on a certain Civ, the advisor should tell you about THAT civ. If I select Zulu, and then click "more" on the advisor, he MIGHT tell me "The Zulus are in AWE of our culture", but then say "The Germans outnumber us..." Keep the advisor's advice limited to the civ that's selected.

Wonders: Probably beyond Firaxis' ability (willingness), but each Civ should have a unique wonder:

Americans: Statue of Liberty.
French: Eiffel Tower.
Romans: Great Colloseum.

Expand the possible effects of wonders, so that the Roman Great Colloseum can "double the effects of all Colloseums in your empire", or maybe "All Roman Legionaries are +1 level" (Barracks produce Elite), or maybe "Resources not necessary for upgrades" (you can upgrade Spearmen to Pikemen without Iron, and Pikemen to Musketmen without Saltpeter).


The Editor:

A world-view map!

[Jezz]

I haven't read the first page of the thread so i apologize if someone already mentioned it.

1.)When pollution strikes, the citizen is taken off that square. And after i've cleaned the pollution, it doesn't put the citizen back to work on the original polluted square. Very annoying. I have to manually go in and put him back to work. Why can't the citizen just stay working on the polluted square?

2.)Also, why can't cruise missles go over water? The whole point of a submarine is to launch missiles.

3.)This one might be hard to implement, but what about allowing strategic resources to be connected when they are in the sea? Adding oil to sea seems logical to me, but i realized i can't because it would be useless. Can't build road on sea square..... So if a strategic resource is in the city radius and on sea/coast, you would need harbor and offshore platform to use it? Something along those lines maybe?

Oh, and i keep reading messages about long waits during the game when you click on something. One possible problem might be your anti-virus. I forgot to turn off Norton once and launched the game, and it stuttered like a crazy man.

[Trifna]

Spying was used all along through History. It is something common. Or why would CIA and KGB (well it's not the same letters now but whattever) exist? They are certainly commonly searching some info or else. In Civ III, would be great if spying was an important part of the game, as it is in real world, where no important country is puting nothing in counter-spying or spying.

[Aqualung]

Military Advisor:

More accurate comparisons. Compared to them, we have an AVERAGE (?!?!) military? He's got 26 Pikemen, I've got 40 Armor...

Wake unit without closing Advisor screen. Sometimes I'm stuck with units I can't upgrade (no Barracks). I want to activate them to move them to another city. It sucks. Wake one, move it, upgrade, click on advisor. Wake one, move it, upgrade, click on advisor. Wake one, move it, upgrade, click on advisor...

Map Editor:

Allow us to load Save games, just like CivII. I just played a cool random map that I'd like to play again.

[Willem]

Better Irrigation Control

It may have already been said, I know I've mentioned it in other posts, but I'd like a better control with irrigation. First, an Irrigate To: command, just like building a road. It's a pain having to make my way square by square across vast tracts of land to reach a city. The current Ctrl-I command doesn't work very well. Secondly, an automated worker command that will only irrigate my land, not chop/plant forests or build mines, just irrigate.

As well, I'd like to be able to see the maximum city radius displayed on the map when I'm trying to locate a new city, maybe as part of the grid. It's a bit annoying having to count out the squares.

Also a preference to allow me to shut off the Wonder splash screens that pop up when one is finished.