Ideas for v1.18f?

[ACooper]

But that's enough for now

Yes, that's enough. Let it sink in for a while.

[DaveV]

Something I really miss from Civ 2 is the citizen happiness display. You could learn a lot about what was making your citizens happy or unhappy by seeing the step-by-step application of luxuries, martial law, happy improvements, and global happiness wonders. Right now, citizen happiness is something of a black box. I'd love to get a glimpse inside that box.

[Solver]

I think that the whole Planes sinking Ships issue could be brought to an end, if we had an option, in the Editor, for air units to sink ships, as an ability. Why not?

Otherwise, I'd like the AI to upgrade its units. Maybe it already does in 1.17, but I've not yet played much using 1.17. However, it's a great patch, because of the stack movement. And also balances mounted units well.

[Method]

all i really want to see right now and its more realistic for a patch than most of the things people have been saying, is when playing more civs than the f4 diplomacy screen can hold and one civ gets eliminated, other civs should be "loaded" in. i just recently accidently started WWIII because i was playing 16 civs, and a lot were eliminated. as a result only 2 others were in the f4 screen, so i couldn't see the web of MPPs that the AI had made.

[Willem]

Originally posted by TKG
all i really want to see right now and its more realistic for a patch than most of the things people have been saying, is when playing more civs than the f4 diplomacy screen can hold and one civ gets eliminated, other civs should be "loaded" in. i just recently accidently started WWIII because i was playing 16 civs, and a lot were eliminated. as a result only 2 others were in the f4 screen, so i couldn't see the web of MPPs that the AI had made.

There is a way around that, Shift- right click on one of the empty spots I believe. I only play with the standard 8 so I can't be certain about what the shortcut is.

[Method]

oh really? thanks

[belchingjester]

My wish list...

I know many of these can be modded, but...
1. Have jungle be harvestable too (maybe just 5 shields);

2. Have founding a city on forest or jungle start the city off with resources (maybe 1/2 of clearing value rounded up, i.e. 5/3?);

3. Be able to move a galley into sea squares more easily prior to Astronomy. I know it's meant to protect me, but moving 1 square at a time is agonizing! Option? (same thing for Caravels & ocean before navigation);

4. AI trading - rebalance the per turn vs. lump sum. Especially when paying, it should be glad to pay per turn instead of up front, and it shouldn't be as insulted by per turn payment options.

5. When the AI puts pieces into a "thin" piece of your territory (trying to move through your territory and settle some open land beyond it), it shouldn't be able to "bounce" the pieces through (the automatic move after the second challenge seems to help them on their way much more often than it sends them back).

6. Limited terraforming! Don't make this part of the normal automation, make it really expensive, but make it possible. I just started on an island with only _2_ good growth spots. I ended up using a lot of pop rushing because the other cities weren't growing beyond size 2 anyway, so I may as well have them _slowly_ grow to size 2, then whip for another unit.

7. [Make it easier to unload units from a ship when the ship is next to land. For some reason the "L" command doesn't work for me - have to click and wake.] Willem answered this I think.

8. Have option to suppress the "domestic nag" for growth.

9. Give back the summary of happiness like DaveV said.

[Edit:10. Allow hills to be irrigated (no food bonus, just allows irrigation to be continued through hills)]
- belchingjester

[belchingjester]

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

Have you played with the resource icons from This thread? I agree, Firaxis might want to get these in the game.
-belchingjester

[Willem]

Re: My wish list...

Originally posted by belchingjester

7. Make it easier to unload units from a ship when the ship is next to land. For some reason the "L" command doesn't work for me - have to click and wake.

Just move the ship like you were trying to move on to the land. The unload option will pop up.

[belchingjester]

Re: Re: My wish list...

Originally posted by Willem


Just move the ship like you were trying to move on to the land. The unload option will pop up.

Thanks. Haven't got a chance to try that yet - left my civ disk somewhere else last night.
-belchingjester

[Willem]

I'd like to see the corruption options changed in the editor so that we have more control over the communal model. For example, there are 2 basic models right now, centralized and communal. So we would select either of one these, then choose varying degrees of each. i.e Communal Problematic, Centralized Minimal etc. This would give us a lot more options if we want to create new government forms.

[belchingjester]

Originally posted by JFB
OK, now for cultural ideas. How about the tech FILM, allowing movie theatres to be built, after five are built you can build a great wonder called Hollywood, that takes some amount of culture to your civ from any movie theatre in any civ that is built?

I personally think that the late game needs more culture buildings and options. What about museums or something? This could give people another direction for a win if they want to spend the resources to research and build culturally. More variety of gameplay.

I think it would make sense to hook theaters to Free Artistry (culture/happiness improvement - too much like colosseum?). Have their happiness impact increase after discovery of Electronics (like colosseum in Civ2).

You could hook museums to Scientific method - maybe they could also magnify effect of scientist specialists.
-belchingjester

[Kevin Ar18]

Context Menu (what pops up when you right click on a unit)

"Wake All" - essentially this would wake all units in that square
Reason - This would improve the time it takes to work with many units later in the game.
"Group" and "Ungroup" (or "link" and "unlink") - this would allow you to group all units within a square into a "single unit" so to speak. You can then move this group to your destination and select the ungroup command to use the units individually.
Has no advanages. The units are still individual units when attacked.

Cannot attack as a group.
The AI does not use this feature. It's sole purpose is to help the human player get things done faster (with less tedium). Since the AI does not care about tedium it does not need the feature. And whenever an AI encounters a group, they are seen as individual units cause they are.
If you move a group of units into a tile with some other units, you can just hit the group command to group everything in that tile into one.

Reason - It would improve the time it takes to move many units later in the game. Since this method doesn't require any complicated setup process for each "grouping" it could be quickly and repeatedly done in a turn to get things done.
"Group" (workers) - this is not a different command, but for workers, the "group" command needs to work a little differently to be more effective. Whenever there are workers in a group and you tell the group to perform some terrain improvement, one by one, each worker in the group should contribe to the improvement till it is done. Each worker that works on the improvement is effectively removed from the group. Thus, you can move on with what's left in the group to another location and work on more improvements with the remaining workers.
Reason - This would prevent the added tedium of having to ungroup workers or the annoyances of not being able to use all the workers in one turn.



Corruption
Corruption has always been a part of the Civilization series. However, Civ3 introduced such a level of corruption that it is almost crippling. For example, when playing on larger maps, the enormous level of corruption causes some cities to almost not even be able to produce anything at all. Because the corruption is so high in these cases, a person is unable to build any corruption lowering improvements (including a palace) without rush building.
True Colonies (of your civ) - Currently it's near impossible to build a palace in a city far away from your Civ's center. In this you could declare a certain group of cities that are not connected to your palace cities by territory to be a colony. It would then be under your military control. You could chose to impose taxes from them or not. You could requests goods from them or not, etc... etc.... However, they would not have very high corruption (unless you begin to make them mad such as demanding high taxes, taking all 3 of their silks instead of two if they only have 3, etc....), and as time goes, by not integrating them into your Civ (so they have more representation).



Readily available information
One of the shortcomings of Civ3 compared to Civ2 is the lack of readily available information on the game, trade agreements, and other civs. This section is to address the issue of information which is vitally important to any good strategy game based on solid numbers (which Civ 3 is BTW).

Trade Agrements
Currently in Civ3 there is no way to keep track of a trade agreement and know when it will end. A simple, "this trade will end in x turns" pop-up message is not enough to keep track of it like a person needs to. So I suggest adding the following things to make things easier:

In the Trade Advisor screen, beside each imported item include a number indicating the number of turns left till the agreement will end. This will satisfy the need for adequate information to a strategy gamer.
I suggest putting the number of turns in black. However, as the turns get closer to 0 turns left, the text to could change color (possibly yellow and then red so it stands out?). This will allow a person to scan over the information faster and only look for what is nearing an end.
A pop-up that the agreement will end next turn. This will help the person too busy with their empire to keep track of everything.
Foreign Minister for unlimited Civs.
Well, lets admit it, people are going to be playing Civilization III with more than 8 civilizations. And when it comes time to make scenarios this is gonna be especially true. In addition, someone has found a way to add more than 16 civs. This can become a big problem for people trying the game.
Update the Foreign minister screen to show the relationship of 16 civs or if you can't do that, allow the user to change and rearange what civs show up in Foreign Minister screen at any time.

It would also be useful for you to have a link in the foreign minister screen that shows a list of all the Civs in a scroll down list and you can pick a Civ and see information on them. This is needed not only for the regular game but for the future of scenario making
Reason: Basically the whole problem is this. If you have more than 8, you currently can't get information on all Civilizations such as agreements and how they feel about you (unless you write it down on a piece of paper which is very tedious).





Miscellaneous Quirks
These are just a few suggestions that I think could add just a little flavor to the game.

Allow a sound to be played whenever a certain structure is built. This includes allowing unique sound for each of the wonders.
Reason: you can only listen to the same music/sound for so long, as a result I noticed this missing feature that was in Civ2. It gives you just a little bit of change of pace to hear something different and can add to the enjoyment of the game. If nothing else add this feature to the editor to allow us to add it in. However, I would really like to see Firaxis take the initiative and put these sounds in the game.

[Sinapus]

my $.02

Airbases, or letting aircraft base themselves in either fortresses or outposts. (Or both.)

Unless, of course, aircraft already can do this and I missed something in the manual or civilopedia.

Otherwise, I'll put in a vote to let bombardment destroy sea units, but not land units. The idea in the other thread about AAA ability for various ship types to give ships a chance is also a good idea.

I also think terraforming/transformation should be brought back, since the level of changes pollution brings and the time cost of transforming just one square makes repairing ecological damage very challenging. In my Civ2 games, I was always pretty good at eliminating pollution and tended to use the engineers to do things like making deserts habitable (which took several transformations) or mountain ranges. If you make it take, say 100 (or more) turns to do one transformation, it will take several workers to get the job done in reasonable time, even with industrious/democracy/other bonus I don't have the game handy to look at. In other words, if you want to repair the damage from global warming, transformation makes it possible, but it'll require more workers who might be needed to reduce pollution.

[star mouse]

Government modifiers

I would like to see more government modifiers. At present, we have the Despotic reduction in tile bonuses, and the Republic/Democracy trade bonuses. I would like to see a few more:

• -2 Happiness penalty - The citizens are not very happy with this form of government, perhaps because they repress the people too much. Works well with military police because undefended cities would be less happy. (Fascism)
  
• Communal corruption - Instead of this being a corruption setting, it should be a separate selection, so we can control the settings of corruption levels better with custom governments.
  
• +1 happiness on religious buildings (temple, cathedral). (Fundamentalism)

I'm sure people could come up with a few more ideas ...