What needs to be done to make this game great.

[Master2000]

Has someone mentioned Group movement? Yeah, that would be nice!

[CharlesUFarley]

Re: What needs to be done to make this game great.

Originally posted by Dissident
we'll include realistic and unrealistic changes. Just label them as such.


all my ideas are unrealistic for Firaxis to implement except the pollution and corruption options.

wonder movies. I don't care if I turn them off. I want the respect I deserve for building them

real advisors. gives life to the game. cartoon figures don't do this

fp/hp: just kidding...kind of

options to adjust pollution and corruption to our liking. We shouldn't be forced to endure pain in the ass features because the designers felt we needed the challenge.

get rid of the french

I think instead of everyone ranting off suggestions and ideas (which is good, don't get me wrong) Firaxis should just make a 'super editor' with the ability to customize everything you guys mentioned and more, that way we don't have to fight or debate over what should or shouldn't be in the game. Makes perfect sense to me, not too many people argued over Civ2 -- but then again we had a complete game with excellent customization tools.

Charles.

[macaskil]

GAME PLAY

End game can be slow and dull. Play some nice movies as you discover new techs, sign peace treaties, declare war, conquer or lose cities. Option to turn them off, of course! More rewards for modern era techs. Population and production should be going through the roof by 1950.

NEW CONCEPTS

Introduce trading in food; naval units to disrupt this trade. Could simply be made a strategic resource like coal. Game can be traded in this way now but only affects happiness, not population. I wonder whether this can be achieved by using the editor?

Internal market in food. Surplus food from one city diverted to city with shortage

Epidemics -

Domestic Advisor

"The Black Death has wiped out half your population!"

would arise after you start trading with other civs. Effects reduced with Hospitals; eliminated with Antibiotics/Vaccination. You can prevent this by being isolationist.

New civs can arise during game either

- your remote cities (those pesky 1 shield ones) can decide to declare independence and start their own civ. This can happen when the cities go into revolt. When one city does this the nearest cities can join them. To prevent this you have to make sure to keep them happy.

Ethnic loyalty made stronger. In reality conquered cities continue to have citizens whose loyalty is to the "old country" for centuries.

NEW IMPROVEMENTS

TV Station - increases happy faces

NEW TECHS

Artificial Fertilsers/Pesticides - increases all food by 1; causes pollution

Antiobiotics or Vaccination - stops epidemics

(perhaps a wonder so it's available to all - but then in real life vaccines cost money, ask South Africa)

These are required to model the enormous real world pop. increase

WONDERS

Bretton Woods Agreement - increases gold - for all civs though!

UNITED NATIONS

Presence of the UN should make war more difficult. Civs should be forced to negotiate.

I suppose a UN peacekeeping force would be going too far! You invade Babylon and a lot of blue-helmeted infantry arrive on the scene to separate the warring forces.

RESOURCES

Make depletion dependent on use

Have units such as tanks use resources when fighting/moving - many a WW2 battle was lost due to shortage of fuel. Same with railroads, coal plants - should use up coal per turn; only solar and hydro plants should have 0 resource cost per turn.

EXISTING UNITS

Some units/improvements should have alternative resource requirements

eg railroads - modern railroads don't need coal, they need oil or electricity - ie with (say) 5 power stations all your rails become electrified!

EXISTING IMPROVEMENTS

coal plants shouldn't be buildable without electricity

COMBAT

Bombers sink ships (though modern naval units should be able to shoot down planes)

Cities under siege for more than a number of turns, or subject to intense bombing, can surrender - not the same as a culture flip. Your units escape.

Combine stacks into single unit so we don't have to move 16 tanks one at a time.

NEW UNITS

Have a library of animations etc to allow players to create own units. Talented forum members could contribute; library could be on internet, charity donation (Red Cross?) required to download.

Make it easier to edit/create civilopedia entries for own units, techs

In short, CUSTOMISABILITY is the thing. If we don't like the game out of the box we should be able to tweak it. civedit is a good start but we need to be able to add new things more easily.

BTW it's a great game anyway. My wife is threatening divorce if I play it any more!

[Azrikam]

Have units such as tanks use resources when fighting/moving - many a WW2 battle was lost due to shortage of fuel. Same with railroads, coal plants - should use up coal per turn; only solar and hydro plants should have 0 resource cost per turn.

I like the idea of having resources as more tangible values. Imagine a huge war between Civ's, where 1 Civ hangs back, stockpiling oil, just waiting for the time to strike out at whoever loses.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Master2000
Has someone mentioned Group movement? Yeah, that would be nice!

Originally posted by yin26
Change the title to Civ 2.5 and release the True Civ3 sometime late this year?

How true I already came to the same conclusion, somewhere in the CTP1 forum. But the difference to is that I already came to the conclusion as Activion got the Civ licience the had the right to make Civ3 and thefore they made the Civ3_Project. Finally they called it Civilisation: Call To Power. And for me it was the real Civ3. And Activion made also an successor: Call To Power 2. So if the CivCTP the real Civ3 than CTP2 is the real Civ4.

Once you worked out all the bugs of CTP2 than you can maintain truely that CTP2 is the Real Civ4.

So Friraxis can make a lot of more Civ clones but I am shure they will never reach Civ3. So why should I downgrate if I already have this stuff:

Originally posted by Azrikam
-Speed the game up
-Fix crippling corruption
-No more Culture Flipping
-Bring back Wonder Movies
-Bring back Spies!
-Bring back Terraforming
-More Winnable Strategic Options
-Scenarios
-Scenario Editing Tools

Yeah the Real Civ4 is much faster than Civ2 in the late game, I remember that I had in the late game more than 200 settlers improving the world. That was a waste of time. And also the city management was timewasting. I bet this stuff won't be fixed in Civ2.5.

And they won't fix also the other stuff: -Hard drive space wasting savegames
-Hard drive space wasting outdated 8bit 255colors graphics
-No sclic like language
-To high system requirements for current computer systems

These problems are caused by using the obsolete Civ2 and can't be fixed if you don't rebuild the game from scratch.

-Martin

[Dry]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
Completely new look at the combat model. Combined arms and combat resolution similar to MOO2. Allow option for either tactical resolution of combat or strategic ala the current combat resoution method.

[bombastic]
I had a dream.
I had a dream, that one day, PG2 and Civ2 could be started together;... could be played together... could be united as one great simulation game...
[/bombastic]
ehem..., sorry, I was ...errr, well dreaming.

Imagine.
Imagine there's no hundreds of units, no unit micromanagement, in front of us only armies. , well, not only, but let's say some armies.
Imagine, you can build these armies the same way as they are build now: produce units and just 'load' them in those armies, but with a higher limit. Let's say 16, 32 or 64 units to take round numbers.
Imagine combat between those armies are solved in separate window, poping up and then a PG2 style battlefield is shown, units are placed and combat is fought.
Imagine you could replay Thermopile, Hastings, Austerlitz, Waterloo.
Ordinary combats (against small garrisons f.i.) would still be solved the way they are now.
Of course, I don't ask a full PG2 implementation, but some simplified version of it.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I am the only one?

[Worthingtons]

Dont Get rid of the French!!!

I love doing that myself

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Dry,

Exactly my same dream. I wrote essentially the same thing over in the SMAC forum wherein we were dreaming of SMAC2 (even less of a chance of that happening then the above mentioned ideas).

Creation of Divisional units, Corp units, and Armies. Each of these units are then customizable by a unique interface called .... get ready for it..... THE UNIT WORKSHOP tada!! This was the single most energizing feature of SMAC. I'ld dream of being able to customize my divisional units with Brigades of Cavalry, battalions of Arty, Regiments of grunts etc. Give the ability to upgrade the armies with best weapon practices and armor etc. (advent of gunpowder all your grunts can be outfitted as needed with muskets why are we stuck in that same old tired upgrade path that swordsmen can't own a rifle.


Ahhh well to dream a little dream.

Og

[Ironikinit]

That is a pretty cool idea, but I see two problems that need to be addressed, well, maybe three.

First, the PG2 maps were finite, there were only so many of them. Also (well, I only played PG but I'm guessing PG2 was the same way), the way enemy units were set up was done by the design team. The way Civ is, the set up would have to be either random or done by some sort of flow of questions and answers. I'm not saying it's impossible, that would probably be pretty easy really. It just seems unlikely that computer generated maps and deployment will match how good the battles were in the Panzer General series.

Tactical combat maps would add a lot of time onto an already notoriously long game. Typically in games where you have a choice of doing tactical combat or not, you were punished with heavier losses if you let the computer resolve the battle.

I'll skip the third possible problem because it was pretty much a matter of personal preference.

[paulmagusnet]

better ideas

What is PG?

Anyway, I thinke the best and only way to make CIVIII a truely great game is to return your current copy for a refund.

While some worthwhile changes occured, such as the resources and air combat and some of the diplomatic options, the major effort appears to have been to make the game appeal to pre-teens.

Civ III should not be thought of as Civ 2.5, it in fact has devolved significantly to what should be thought of as Civ 1.8.

That being said:

- new unit: the pacifist, becomes completly inert during war and attempts to convince all other units and population to do likewise citing this as noble behavior.

[Ironikinit]

Panzer General.

And your idea for a unit, no offense, is the stupidest thing I ever heard.

[CharlesUFarley]

Re: better ideas

Originally posted by paulmagusnet
What is PG?

Anyway, I thinke the best and only way to make CIVIII a truely great game is to return your current copy for a refund.

Already done. And yes I agree with you, I think the only way to improve this game is to cause problems with sales -- hence refunding it if possible. That appears to be the only viable left option that will force them to make the changes. Otherwise they'll probably just cancel the civ-product line altogether -- and won't we just love them even more for that one.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
Panzer General.

And your idea for a unit, no offense, is the stupidest thing I ever heard.

Maybe it's stupid to you, but that's his opinion. Why don't you let people have thier opinions? Do you feel threatened by them?

Charles.

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by paulmagusnet
Civ III should not be thought of as Civ 2.5, it in fact has devolved significantly to what should be thought of as Civ1.8.

Your hard jugding Civ"3" (and I thought to qualify it as Civ2.5 would be hard), but from the quote in my earlier post your opinion can be justified (year and you played this game therefore you should now it better).

Originally posted by paulmagusnet
Anyway, I thinke the best and only way to make CIVIII a truely great game is to return your current copy for a refund.

I couldn't agree more, fortunatly I have still the option to not buy the game. I will stay at CTP2 although the support of Activion does not exist, it has much potential, you can turn the AI into a huge problem for the human. But I am afraid that Firaxis has to pay for that lesson for that Activion already had to pay, when they try to clone again Civ and call it Civilization4.

-Martin

[ACooper]

Re: Re: better ideas

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


Already done. And yes I agree with you, I think the only way to improve this game is to cause problems with sales -- hence refunding it if possible. That appears to be the only viable left option that will force them to make the changes. Otherwise they'll probably just cancel the civ-product line altogether -- and won't we just love them even more for that one.

Charles.

If they lose money why would they fix it? As a customer who has returned the game your voice gets reduced to nothingness. You've already made your statement by returning it. Why would they bother trying to get you back?