Suggestions for next game patch

[Arathorn]

Well, it seems that the Firaxis people are definitely listening to the users, at least when we manage to contain ourselves and present things in a rational manner.

I would like to start a new "sticky" thread on suggestions for the next set of revisions for Civ3.

Suggested rule:

- Suggestions only. Rants belong elsewhere (are admins willing to take the time to monitor and delete off-topic posts?). (I mean, rants have a place and all, but not this thread, which I hope will be read by Jeff, Dan, Soren....)

- No discussions of the editor. Yes, this is a worthy issue, but I get the impression the editor has different people working on it than the game in certain instances. I also want to keep the two issues separated.

I'll post a few suggestions first, to try to get the ball rollling (and so my ideas are heard).

Arathorn

[Arathorn]

Better trade advisor

The trade advisor (F2) doesn't provide enough information. To get the real information, you have to open up a dialog with each and every civilization to see what they need, what techs they have, how long deals still have, what payment is, etc.

These are all things that would ideally be localized into one (or two) screen of information.

As a specific partial solution, make each civ in the lower right-hand "yellow box" have three columns. The first column is excess, like it is now (things they have to trade to you). The second would be for active trades, possibly with a subscript/overlay number indicating turns remaining. The third would be for needs (luxuries you have they don't, strategic resources similarly). This provides a lot of information at a glance.

Adding to this would be a new special icon for technology. If you have some tech they don't, this icon can appear in the third column (as a need). If they have one you don't, it should be in the first column. In some respect, it would be ideal to identify which tech (perhaps by picture) is needed/in excess, but that might be a bit more problematic to program.

An alternate method would be to at least provide turns remaining information on the import/export lines already existing on the trade advisor screen. This is less useful than the above ideas, IMO, but it does provide some very useful information.

Arathorn

[DrFell]

Make units much more effective stopping culture revolts. I STILL get size one cities with 10 units in revolting, it's ridiculous. How could the population possibly overthrow 10 vet/elite immortals? At the least the units should be moved out of the city with a couple killed or injured.

At least it's good to see Firaxis making some improvements with this latest patch.

[Arathorn]

Tech trading

(Much of this was presented by me in another thread, but this is much less ranty.) I think a lot of people feel the "more aggressive" tech trading is less than optimal (or fair).

1. Provide a screen that lets you know the tech of your opponents. This info is already available, it's just a pain to get. Provide it in a nice form. (This goes hand-in-glove with my first idea above).

2. Have the AI who is tech brokering broker it to the human, too. I think this is fundamental. Since it's on "their" turn, we can't turn around and sell it anymore than they can. But having the AI players sell only to other AI players seems to break the spirit of the game, IMO.

3. Only allow teaching a tech to one civ per turn. Thus, I could sell the Japs Navigation and the Egyptians Physics in the same turn, but I couldn't sell 'em both Navigation the same turn. This can even be justified by "only a few scientists understand it well enough to teach it. They can only go one place per turn." This allows for a heckuva lot of strategy, too. "Do I sell to the leading civ first, so I can get the most gold? But then they'll get to sell it, too, and research ahead. If I sell it to some podunk civ, they'll not pay as much, but it won't hurt as bad as they sell it and benefit...." I imagine there might be some details about selling something the turn you learn it or whatever, but the idea is sound, I think.

4. Have the AI sometimes hold onto its tech before brokering immediately. At times, it is advantageous to sell immediately. Other times it's not. Heck, I don't think I would mind if the AI used its omniscience to predict when someone else will research something and broker it the immediately preceding turn or whatever.

5. Convince the AI to only sell tech during someone else's turn for about double its calculated "market price". Add a routine so that asking about a tech will make the AI more likely to broker to you (first) its next turn. (Thus, imitating some better human policy, too.)

6. Give each civ a "willingness to sell" factor that influences how quickly they broker. This could be a subset of 4.

Personally, I think a combination of 1 & 3 would be best. I like the strategy inherent in 3 (but I think it might be a bit difficult to program...or not). I think it should go without saying that 2 is not mutually exclusive and should be included as well (i.e. whatever method the AI uses to decide to whom it should sell should include all players, not just the other AIs).

Of course, there are other ideas, but I think these provide some "middle ground" between 1.16 and 1.17. The AI rules could be pretty easy (e.g. if 3 is done, then a "if more than one civ has this tech, sell it immediately to the highest bidder" rule alone would cover most cases pretty well).

Arathorn

[Arathorn]

The AI at war

The AI is MUCH better at waging war than most. Stacks of units coming are a pleasant change from picking off a few here and there. And mixing offensive/defensive units (while occasionally inappropriate) usually works quite well.

That said, I think it could be better. Specifically, the AI rarely seems to build barracks. This leads to regular (not veteran) units and lots of outdated units. By far the toughest wars I've fought against the AI has been with that AI has Sun Tzu's (thus barracks).

I would give the AI (or at least some of them) a higher priority for building barracks. If upgrading units is a reasonable priority (hard to tell), I think that change alone will make the AI about 40% more difficult to beat in a war. I realize this will come at the expense of other things.

A possible way to do it is if the AI "decides" to build an offensive unit (which seems to happen frequently), it should check for a barracks first. If none exists, it should have some chance (50/50, maybe?) of "changing its mind" and building barracks instead.

In this same vein, the AI's habit of wasting units to nab an undefended worker probably needs some reworking.

Arathorn

[Willem]

There's another thread running about this as well, over here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42232

[Spec]

Here is another idea that would be cool to have implemented.
It is concerning the Trade screen. Everytime I start trading with another civ, I always fine tune and slowly adjust my offer up and up just until my advisor tells me the deal will be acceptable. And so far he has been 100% accurate.
How about this ...
Have the advisor somewhat accurate, but give or take 10%.
And everytime you make an offer to the other civ that is not acceptable to them, there default 'acceptable' deal increases in their favor by just a bit.
SO you could play safe and offer a bit better of a deal than what your advisor suggests, or if time are tough you could take a chance that your advisor is being a bit too conservative and try to offer a deal under what he thinks is acceptable. And seeing how he is not 100% accurate anymore, you just may get away with it ...
Or, they do not accept your offer, and their idea of acceptable just went up a bit, and you still do not know how far off you are.

Thanks Venge

Spec.

[Arathorn]

Diplomacy

I would like an option of specifying the length of a deal. I want an ally for exactly 13 turns. How much does that cost? What if it's for 23 turns? The one-size-fits-all approach of 20 turns is awfully restrictive and I don't see any "real world" justification.

If this were implemented, the penalty for breaking a treaty could/should be much stronger (I negotiate for 30 turns of peace, which is nicer so I can get more and then I break it is BAD. If I negotiate for a "breather" peace of 3 turns, they shouldn't pay so much).

The details on this one are hard, though. It seems to me that the AI converts everything to gold cost (which makes sense). I think that can still be done.

Examples:
Any blah per turn for blech per turn deal should have a low-medium turn length in the AI's mind, as the value might change (e.g. ivory for 13 gpt for 20 turns or spices and furs for gems). I would imagine longer deals of this sort should be harder to make.

Fixed value for per turn. Take whatever algorithm the computer uses for determining value no and apply a multiplicative constant by (# of turns requested)/20. This misses out on inflation (gold now is worth more than gold later), but I don't see a way around it. I'd limit deals to a max of 40 or 50 turns or so. (e.g. I can buy Steam Power for 200 gpt for 20 turns or 102 gpt for 40 turns or 143 gpt for 28 turns).

Peace for value. Again, it seems the AI already has a value it attaches to peace. Attach that to 20 turns and vary with multiplication to get something acceptable. Again, a cap might be necessary. (e.g. 10 turn peace treaty for metallurgy, but the AI will only give 47 gold for 4 turns of peace.)

War alliance for value. Similar to peace. Maybe require a certain portion "up front" as initial cost. (That is, 20 turns of alliance shouldn't be twice as expensive as 10 turns, as part of the cost is just getting into the war). Maybe a 10-turn minimum for this?

Anyway, it's some ideas I think have some merit.

Arathorn

P.S. I will happily discuss any of my ideas in more depth in any developers want to email/pm me.

[planetfall]

How about some game play enhancement patches? Here are a dozen ideas that come to mind right away:

1. Show turn number on bottom right window. Reason: years are not sequential with same number of years between turns.

2. Command, or icon click to turn on view of city borders without opening each city one at a time.

3. Fix problem where
a. bombard improvement
b. improvement disappears
c. AI re-improves
d. only after bombard same tile or adjacent tile does AI re-improvement show.

This is important when trying to deny AI access to strategic resource.


4. On histograph show not just graph of power but source numbers.

5. After embassy have screen where can see current government type of all contactable governments.

6. In negotiation screen, always allow a "hangup". Neither agreeing or rejecting offer/treat but the third option of not responding. When conforted with tribute choices, I should have 3 choices: agree,
disagree {risk war}, not respond now {much lower risk of war}, i.e. consult with others.

7. Fix problem with ICBM not showing as option in 1.16f {unless fixed in 1.17} even though have all techs {on future tech} and Al and Uranium in strategic resources.

8. Option similar to S-A-'m' to show simple view with strategic resources where we could see the pollution tiles. It is a pain to keep scrolling and scrolling trying to find the tiles generating pollution. Sometimes have clusters of cities that are not directly connected and a pain to find pollution.

9. Remove, or allow to change in editor, the limit of '50' on income interest earnings. A civ should be rewarded for not spending all its cash each turn.

10. Allow preference of always see other civs naval and land forces.

11. Add to city label:
a. small black dot for fortress, or walls
b. small magenta dot for each SAM
c. small cyan dot for each fighter running air superority missions

12. Additional page in encyclopedia showing on one view the tile background images for waters: coastal, sea, ocean. After playing many games still not clear which is sea and which is ocean. Alternative option whould be to relabel as: tide zone, coast shelf zone, and ocean. And fix AI bug that allows galleys to safely sail the oceans before I can.


Hopefully someone will organize all our ideas into a simple list.