Ideas for v1.18f?

[davidttm]

Science slider

Originally posted by notyoueither
Try the + and - icons.

They move the slider 10% at a time.

Salve

Thanks. The more I learn about the interface, the more I like it.

[Highlander_two]

I've posted this in another thread, but I'll repeat it here in case this becomes the "official" thread for suggestions for the next patch.

OK -- here's my two cents worth:

I've read quite a number of of threads, and one thing comes to my mind. I've seen it before, but I'll say it again: bring back the CIV2 engineer unit and allow limited terraforming. Make this unit available in the early/mid-industral age, make it twice (or more) as expensive as a settler and allow mountains to hills, tundra to plains, jungle to forest and flood plains to grassland conversion. Allow the engineer (as in CIV2) to perform at 1.5 to 2 times the rate of an ordinary worker.

IMHO this would accomplish two things. First, it would allow the player some hope of improving those crappy starting locations, and cities that are built in terrible terrain just to get resources, into something reasonably productive. Sure, it wouldn't be a fix early in the game, but it wouldn't condemn that city to a totally unproductive role for the whole game. Second, it would provide some relief from the late game tedium and crippling pollution that so many posters complain about.

Again imho, this element would model world history since this type of limited terraforming has been available to mankind since the late 19th to early 20th century and would not seriously unbalance game-play if the AI were set up to take advantage of this as well as the player.

Again, just my 2 cents worth.

[beyowulf]

What I'd like to see is an end to the 'Loser' End screen where your leader is all beat up. I mean if someone else grabs the Space Race or Diplomatic Victory before I do, I didn't actually lose. My Civ is still thriving civilization.

This screen should be reserved for when you are actually wiped out by another civ.

[Arathorn]

Bunch of ideas

I have a bunch of ideas at:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42762

Arathorn

[pauldst]

1)Bring back the ability to send food to other cities, allowing cities in resource rich moutains to grow larger. [Does Denver or Pittsburg grow all of their own food?]

2)What's up with my Frigate attacking a Galleon or a Caravel and losing hand's down? Or even worse, losing to a Galley! Give better units, particularly ships, an advantage over inferior units.

3)Units in enemy territory should be able to get some advantage from roads. Maybe 1/2 instead of 1/3.

4)Give the ability to negotiate borders. You know, I'll give you that grassland square for this hill. The idea would be to more solidify borders. [I admit that this probabbly couldn't be changed by a patch....]

5)RoP agreements that are unit specific, not open to any and all units that want to move through your territory.

6)Borders don't shift so that suddenly your fortress & troops are in someone else's territory. Fortresses should secure your border both against other units and against shifting.

In agreement with others (in Firaxis actually does pay attention to this thread):

7)The ability to make peace between other civs.

8)Make Forests more useful later in the game (mining them sounds good).

9)Pollution doesn't drive workers away.

10)More culture buildings for later in the game.

11)Colonies that are like Supply Crawlers.

12)AI respects boundaries more.

13)"Civil disorder popup before a city goes into disorder, instead of after." (ChrisShaffer)

14)Basing in an ally's cities.

15)Martial Law to suppress rioting and reversion.

Back to me:

16)The possibility of an entire civ surrendering. Take the capital and there is x chance of whole civ surrendering. Factors influencing are size, power, & culture differential between the civs, how many other cities are lost that turn or in last few turns, ability to continue effectively resisting, etc.

Willem, the wandering minstrel is a cool idea....

[star mouse]

Saving game as a Quit option

When you quit the game, you currently get a confirmation dialogue with two options, "Yes" and "No". I would like a third option on this screen, "Save then quit". Saving the game before quitting is a very common task, and it's a bit tedious to save the game first in one place then go to another to quit.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by pauldst
5)RoP agreements that are unit specific, not open to any and all units that want to move through your territory.

How about a ROP for land and another for the sea?

8)Make Forests more useful later in the game (mining them sounds good).

How about a Sawmill terrain improvement that becomes available with Industrialization and provides one additional shield? Railways would boost production of sawmills by an additional shield. Perhaps this is best done by allowing mining in forests at this time.

11)Colonies that are like Supply Crawlers.

Anything to make every square in my empire productive. I hate those occasional squares that I can't work because they're not in a city radius.

[Willem]

Originally posted by star mouse

How about a Sawmill terrain improvement that becomes available with Industrialization and provides one additional shield? Railways would boost production of sawmills by an additional shield. Perhaps this is best done by allowing mining in forests at this time.

All that needs to be done is have the AI workers do their thing in Shift-A mode, instead of A, then add a mining bonus to Forests. I tried it in my mod, and although my workers were mining the forests, the AI's weren't. They were just cutting them down.

[Willem]

I'd like to be able to build Wagons and set up trade routes like I could in Colonization. Why is that the last we've ever seen of that feature? I thought it fit in really well in a Civ game. Same with the ships sailing back the Old world, though in this case it would be another Civ's harbour instead. It would certainly put a greater demand for a naval force into the game. There'd be an actual trade route to defend.

PS, Maybe create a new type of resource, a Trade resource, and ones that have some industrial improvements to go with them. Again like in Colonization.

[shuttleswo]

Reading some of the suggestions for changes and additions in here I notice that a lot of them were seen in CTP2 and SMAC. I also remember that the biggest complaint (or at least the most common) for those two games was a weak AI.
I think Firaxis probably made a conscious decision to keep a lot of these improvements and game mechanics out of this game because it would be virtually impossible to have an AI effectively use them.
I think clearly if the game had MP or was a MP focused game a lot of these changes make sense, but I wouldn't want a lot of these things (although many of them would be cool) if ultimately all they accomplish is making the AI even easier to beat.

Just for instance, if you added an artist as a cultural specialist a human player probably could effectively use that, along with a long-term strategy to assure a cultural victory in every game. The AI, which can't think that far ahead, probably would not use them as effectively till later in the game.

As for fortresses having ZOC, would the AI workers know enough to build them? Worker AI is better than in smac, but the workers still seem focused on developing resources that an individual city may need, getting them to do that effectively while still doing more strategic things (like strategic roads, or in this case fortresses) might be difficult.
And when asking for something like a supply crawler back, remember this, did you EVER see the AI effectively use those things in SMAC? It was a tool that you as a human user could use with a specific strategy to defeat the AI that the AI could never use against you.
So if you want to add these things I think you have to ask first and foremost if it’s not realistic to expect AI to use them (meaning it adds a significant amount of complexity to the game), does it really make the game any better?
And if you think that it’s not an excuse because they should just make a better AI … Well if they could make an AI that could beat a human on his own terms, (on a PC) they wouldn’t be making games, they would be winning Nobel prizes.

[Willem]

Originally posted by shuttleswo

As for fortresses having ZOC, would the AI workers know enough to build them? Worker AI is better than in smac, but the workers still seem focused on developing resources that an individual city may need, getting them to do that effectively while still doing more strategic things (like strategic roads, or in this case fortresses) might be difficult.

Building Fortresses was never a problem with earlier AIs, especially in SMAC. They built them everywhere, though not necessarily strategically. But if they were given the old ZoC rules, which even in previous games they didn't have, that wouldn't matter. It wouldn't even matter if they were manned or not. Even a poorly placed fortress would act as a defensive barrier, and hinder a frontal attack by the human. You'd have to position yourself in such a way that you can destroy it before you can advance.

And when asking for something like a supply crawler back, remember this, did you EVER see the AI effectively use those things in SMAC? It was a tool that you as a human user could use with a specific strategy to defeat the AI that the AI could never use against you.

But we have seen the AI building colonies, so what's the difference? And if it didn't, being able to use bonus resources that you ordinarily can't is not going to be a game breaker. It will only mean that a city gets an extra square or two of production.

[TheRascalKing]

I just REALLY want my zone of control back...zone of control was the ONLY realistic method of "NEVER LEAVE YOUR FLANKS UNSECURED!" that civ had. Realistically, if you marched your soldiers right past enemy troops, you WOULD be destroyed. You would have your flank open to the enemy, and open flanks=you die. The only reason Shaka did so well against the British was because the British didn't have enough troops in the area to keep their flanks secured, and Shaka was the absolute mastermind of outflanking his opponents. Thus, whole battalions of British musketmen were slaughtered by Zulu spearmen. It is IMPERATIVE that all flanks are secured. Zone of control forced player and AI to do so.

Another thing...I HATED Civ2 MGE because the computers always ganged up on the player. I don't think that, just because the human player is doing better than the computers, that the computers should gang up on them. Why should your ally of 1000 years suddenly turn on you just because your histograph line is bigger than his? He shouldn't, he should hide in your shadow and hope that you will carry him to victory. Some of us actually like playing a game of diplomacy, where you honor your allies and make long-standing relationships with other nations. I don't turn on my long-standing computer ally just because he's going to launch his ship to Centauri before I do if I don't kill him, and if the computer started doing that, the game wouldn't be fun for me anymore.

Edit: Oh, and another thing! I wanna be able to set railroads like roads can be set! I don't like infinite movement railroads and would like to set it differently in the editor if I so choose.

[pauldst]

Yeah, that's something else that it would be nice to see again: the team victory.

[Willem]

Originally posted by TheRascalKing

Edit: Oh, and another thing! I wanna be able to set railroads like roads can be set! I don't like infinite movement railroads and would like to set it differently in the editor if I so choose.

Yes, I think infinite movement is rather far fetched as well. Maybe 10 or 20 at the most. I'd also like to see a return of the Supermarket to boost irrigation bonuses, not railroads. What the AI does to it's lovely farmland is it's business, but I only want to have railroads going from city to city, and to my mines. Anything else is just plain ugly. At least I was able to get rid of those hideous mines in the middle of prime farmland. The map looks so much better now.

[Encomium]

We can start with MORE UNITS, especially naval and civ-speciifc units.

Bombers CAN sink warships.

More realistic values for strategic resources and Espionage-related stuff.

A better map: iron and coal is too hard to find, and all resources are too hard to see on the map.

Less corruption; less culture flipping. No culture flipping on improvements.

A less stubborn Diplomatic AI which does NOT hold grudges for millennia.

More improvements, techs, and Small Wonders (such as a Hollywood-type wonder).

And about thirty other things. But that's enough for now.