Ideas for v1.18f?

[Willem]

In the editor there's an area that lets me choose the number of Happy/Unhappy citizens an improvement will create. I'd like to see that expanded so that I could choose the number of content citizens as well.

[Rust]

Double research time in the ancient and middle ages than speed it up in the modern era. It seems like the window for using ancient and middle age units is very small.

Mabye you could restrict trading somehow, like so many techs traded per 20 turns or limit the civs you can trade with to the two nearest until youv'e researched electricity. I think this would be better than having the ai civs agressively trading the way they do now.

[TheRascalKing]

Originally posted by Willem
In the editor there's an area that lets me choose the number of Happy/Unhappy citizens an improvement will create. I'd like to see that expanded so that I could choose the number of content citizens as well.

Can't you? I know you can modify the number of citizens born content...I guess the theory is that if it can make an unhappy person content, it can make a content person happy.


And on the nuclear explosion sound thing, I think you should be able to hear the nuke sound even if you don't have map vision in the area it goes off. Not so much because you're hearing a nuke acroess the globe but because you'd definitely have reports about a huge explosion in an unconfirmed area.

[godinex]

Keep colonies ever! they are part of our territory!

[IthacaMike]

(1) Put minimum city sizes on unit construction and upgrades. For example you can build a Spearman can in size-1 city but you might need a size-6 city to build a Rifleman or upgrade a unit to a Rifleman. 10 size-1 cities are not as useful as 1 size-10 city.

(2) A tribe cannot trade away a tech for some number of turns after it acquires that tech through trade. Or perhaps after that tribe acquires by any means. Three turns? Five turns? Slow down the AI tech swap.

[eclarkso]

I posted a similar idea on the Feb. 15th Chat thread, here is the same with a few edits:

Proposal: Just as ships have a certain chance of sinking when they end their turn on different types of water, units loaded on a ship should have a chance of perishing, independent of their 'mother ship' or other units on board. The probability of perishing could/should depend on the type of ship, the length of time that unit has been on the ship, the location of the ship (coast/sea/ocean), and perhaps tech advances (e.g., Astronomy/Navigation or perhaps even Sanitation or something).

Justification: I believe this proposal, if feasible, would create a number of positive effects:

1) Slows down colonization, WITHOUT affecting the rate of sea exploration.
-a) Lengthens the expansion phase of the game - it's harder to get settlers to empty land, but just as easy to find that land.
-b) Makes the 'Explorer' unit more useful.

2) Barbarians are more of a factor later into the game.
-a) Barbarians' access to additional units (added in 1.17) becomes more significant, since barbarian camps will last longer on more isolated land masses.

3) Realism/historical accuracy
-a) Long trips across oceans did NOT do the body good.
-b) Expected slower rate of expansion is better.

===========

There are a number of side-effects which could affect gameplay:

- Slower expansion means fewer cities, perhaps leading to a slower rate of tech advance? I'm not sure how significant this would be given the extreme rate of AI tech exchange.

- Would this hamstring the AI, given that a good part of its advantage is its ability to expand so fast? Even though this rule would apply to human and machine player, does it play to the AI's strengths (expansion rate/production bonuses) or the human player's (city selection sites, warmongering?)?

Random other thoughts:

- There is some precedence for this behavior already in the game--I believe Scout units can randomly die if they wade around in the jungle.

- I don't think this will be -too- unsettling for the player, as this is mainly an ancient/medieval era thing. For example, a galley on a sea square without any tech advance would have a relatively high chance of losing its units (independent of its chance of sinking), while a galleon on a coastal square would have a much lower chance of losing units, and a transport on any square would have a near-nil chance of loss.

- If a ship loses one or more units, it should wake from any Goto orders.

Please discuss.

[philler]

50% penalty when switching production from a wonder to something else.

the thread on this particular subject is here .

At first I was thinking of a 100% penalty, but come to think of it 50% would be a good compromise.

[Willem]

I want a stack bombard command, maybe Shift-B, so that I can issue 1 order and all the bombard units will all fire together. Because of their inaccuracy, you need a lot of them to do any significant damage, and it can be a real pain giving orders one at a time.

[Rust]

A computer AI that uses bombard effectively

[Willem]

I finally had a chance to try out the new Shift-Ctrl-I command, and although I really like how it works, I would really, really like it if they would go to sleep in the nearest town as well, the same way Shift-A works, instead of waiting for new orders. It would be so much better if I could just assign a Worker or two in a particular city, rather than having these Shift-A workers running up and down my empire trying to take care of pollution etc.

[BillChin]

I haven't read through all the posts on this thread. Many of posts I have read do include some excellent ideas.

I believe that the folks at Firaxis need to shift the focus back on the fun factor. Patch 1.17f gets a C- from me in the fun department. I understand that there is not that much time or resources for tweaking the game this late in the development cycle. However, ideas that make the game more fun should be given priority over the long list of rants by vocal complainers. My opinion is that the ranters will never be happy, so quit trying to please them and focus on the big picture. Civ III is a game. Games are supposed to be fun.

For every suggestion, I hope the folks at Firaxis ask the following questions: Does this make the game more fun or more frustrating? Does it give the player more options, or funnel the player into a narrower choice of strategies? If it gives the player more options, does it make the game too easy (and less fun)?

[Spiffor]

About the idea of a "newspaper" or "summing-up popup", I thought about how it could look like in the game. This screen could be called during the turn with a specific icon in the upper left of the screen. I imagined we can have a flag next to the events to show if you already dealt with them or not.
Since there will be plenty of info in the late game, I also thought we could have tabs (domestic / military etc.), where the advisors tell you news in their specific field, instead of having all the info following in one screen.
But such a newspaper would need some new art (I can't draw, that's why it looks horrible), and I doubt they will do this for a patch.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Spiffor

But such a newspaper would need some new art (I can't draw, that's why it looks horrible), and I doubt they will do this for a patch.

You never know, this and the aggressive AI trading seem to be the topics generating the most discussion these days. At least it seems that quite a number of people would like to see this sort of feature in the game. And they did listen to us in the last patch, so they might just listen again.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Slow down the tech advances !!!

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?threadid=43814

How appopriate changes could be made to slow down the 'space race' during the ancient/medieval eras, hasn't been discussed yet, but if you agree with the criticizm on the Formula One tech advances, please, please, please, put a vote.

Firaxis is concerned about the feelings of a civ-adepted/adapted majority.

AJ

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Originally posted by BillChin
I haven't read through all the posts on this thread. Many of posts I have read do include some excellent ideas.

I believe that the folks at Firaxis need to shift the focus back on the fun factor. Patch 1.17f gets a C- from me in the fun department. I understand that there is not that much time or resources for tweaking the game this late in the development cycle. However, ideas that make the game more fun should be given priority over the long list of rants by vocal complainers. My opinion is that the ranters will never be happy, so quit trying to please them and focus on the big picture. Civ III is a game. Games are supposed to be fun.

For every suggestion, I hope the folks at Firaxis ask the following questions: Does this make the game more fun or more frustrating? Does it give the player more options, or funnel the player into a narrower choice of strategies? If it gives the player more options, does it make the game too easy (and less fun)?

I'm sure they try, Billchin, but you' re right.

In the different threads there already have been enough ideas mentioned for a civ 4 and civ 5 (maybe just a little exagerated). I hope they select every good idea when they read it, re-reading otherwise becomes a hell of a task.

AJ