TO FIRAXIS: Specific Suggestions for Improving Civ III

[Jaybe]

Re: TO FIRAXIS: Specific Suggestions for Improving Civ III

Originally posted by Selkirk
Specific Suggestions for Improving Civ III
USER INTERFACE
K. Eliminate science rate micromanagement
Extra beakers (science) should automatically convert to money. (Or anything to avoid setting science every turn, for example a setting to automatically adjust the tax rate to make a discovery every X turns.)

Other options also exist, such as have science research accumulate to the next objective (and document it as accumulating).

Personally, I really do not mind the micromanagement in this regard.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by ALPHA WOLF 64
its been a long time since i played civ2, but didnt it have farms as upgraded irragation? And cant we have a way to do terraced farms.

Fix polution!!!!!! I had to raise city sizes to 8 and 16. population pollution is idiotic in a non industrial city. pollution yes, but not global warming type of pollution from 1st centurty rome or even 18th century london.

AW, railroaded irrigation serves as farmland.
Population pollution in a non-industrial city is NOT idiotic, it is realistic!

Imagine all those chimneys, cooking fires (and their smoke), and all the horses (and cattle and/or elephants) and their excrement. A side affect of overpopulation (and its associated unhappiness).

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Originally posted by Jaybe

Population pollution in a non-industrial city is NOT idiotic, it is realistic!

Imagine all those chimneys, cooking fires (and their smoke), and all the horses (and cattle and/or elephants) and their excrement. A side affect of overpopulation (and its associated unhappiness).

My quote had nothing to do with unhappiness, thats already covered in game rules. the only purpose of pollution in the game is for global warming, and everything i've heard about global warming is that its caused by industrial byproducts, therefore, all the animal excrement, and chimneys in a non industrial city is NOT going to cause global warming so I stand by my statement that it is idiotic unless FACTS prove me wrong.

[Nostromo]

Great suggestions! Here are some other suggestions:

(1) How to improve the city production queue. As it stands, there are two options: either you add items at the end of the list or you delete the whole list. It would be great if we could insert or delete items in the list. (BTW, this feature was already in Alpha Centauri.)

(2) Toggle on or off city radius grid. It would be useful to actualy see the radius of my cities on the main screen. Press control-c, for example, and the city radius appears; press control-c again, and it disappears. (Again, this feature can already be found in Alpha Centauri: the "toggle base grid" option.)

(3) Give me more worker orders. Here are some examples: (a) build road to, then build Mine; (b) build road to, then irrigate; (c) goto, then build mine; (d) goto, then build mine, then build road. The most elegant solution, of course, would be to implement a unit order queue. But if that is too difficult to implement, I would gladly accept a new set of shortcut keys!

[Pius Popprasch]

-Basic tech cost could be adjusted to game level or there could be fewer turns for Deity(as in previous versions).

-A.I. should never sign more than ONE MPP. A.I. should do some calcs before agreeing to an alliance.

-A.I. should focus less on Communism. The typical A.I. empire is pretty centralized and hardly ever benefits from Communism.

I agree with most other suggestions. No Caravans, please.

[Nostromo]

Another thing. I think it would be convenient if the worked tiles were marked, on the main map, with the ressources derived from it. Not always, of course. Suppose you want to give an order to one of your workers. Well, instead of consulting the city screen's ressource map in order to know what needs to be done, you press a shortcut key and the worked tiles appear on the main map (marked, just like in the ressource map, with the ressources derived from them); press that shortcut key again, and it disappears.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by nostromo
Another thing. I think it would be convenient if the worked tiles were marked, on the main map, with the ressources derived from it. Not always, of course. Suppose you want to give an order to one of your workers. Well, instead of consulting the city screen's ressource map in order to know what needs to be done, you press a shortcut key and the worked tiles appear on the main map (marked, just like in the ressource map, with the ressources derived from them); press that shortcut key again, and it disappears.

isnt that an option in the game?

[Nostromo]

Originally posted by UberKruX


isnt that an option in the game?

You mean the "show food and shields on map" preference? It's not exactly what I have in mind. I may be wrong, but it doesn't tell you what tile is being worked on (you still have to consult the city screen's ressource map to figure that out). Also, it doesn't tell you the amount of food, shield and gold that are derived from those tiles. I want to access the information in the city screen's ressource map without opening the city screen.

[Rusty Nail]

Surrender option:

It is generally agreed that the latter part of the game can often be boring because you know you have won, but still have to use hours of mopping up before it is an official dominance or conquest victory. I seldom complete the rout. Why bother? How about a surrender option when an AI is so outgunned that he has no realistic chance of victory. If he surrenders all his cities are absorbed into your civ. You can choose to reject his surrender offer. This is done in Spave Empires IV and works very well. It would make for faster, more enjotable games.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Catastophic Events:

The one thing the game is missing is the catastrophic natural disaster. Since we already have pollution effects, make it so the weather changes over the centuries as it does in real life.

Consider the effects that Volacanoes have on the environment. Their erruptions have destroyed many civilizations in the past, either by a local effect (Atlantis? and Minoa) or have changed the weather patterns to produce prolonged cooling. So crop failures and starvation become serious problems, especially when it's a neighbour starving and he's eyeing your granaries. You can do this by changing the terrain types according to the climate settings selelcted at the start of the game.

Another good addition would be plagues. The bubonic plague came out of Africa and it's spread followed the trade routes in the late Roman Empire. If it hadn't of devistated Constantinople in the 1200's, the Ottoman Turks would never have conquered it in 1490. That killed half the population in the city because of poor sanitation. Disease already strikes cities surrounded by Jungle, so why can't it strike at other cities on the trade network ?

And next, I would like to see all existing trades for our civ on the F2 Trade Advisor screen. It is ridiculous to have to bother another civ using the Diplomacy screen just to check what we are trading and when the agreement runs out. It would also be nice if the interface could show the existing trades between AI Civ's once a spy is in place or you have an embassy investigate their trade.

By that same token, our Science Advisor should be able to show which Civ's are researching which advancements, once a spy is in place of course, and the already known advancements should show who discovered them first and when. The AI could benefit from this last change since they would know who to trade with to pursue their strategic goals.

These ideas may seem like mountain of details, but they would be very useful in calculating your strategy for each AI Civ. I know many times I wanted to know who was supplying what resources or luxuries to someone I was trying to crush and it would have been nice to buy the resources off them or simply pay for a trade embargo. This would be especially nice at the harder levels when you find yourself greatly out numbered and outgunned.

D.

[player1]

Hmm....

5 months later

[Jaybe]

Gen. D., I think Firaxis passed on the natural disasters because of the perceived lack of "fun factor." Not to mention extra time and resources spent in design and implementation.

[kimmygibler]

Very good suggestions. They are easily patched for the most part as well.

". Improved trade advisor
Eliminate the need to contact civs to see what they desire in trade.
Change display to
Has.................Desires
*&$@##.............#*(#$*#&
Where #*($#*& are resources and luxuries (AND TECHS.)"

[Traelin]

Re: Re: Another plug for Patch MOD

Originally posted by simwiz2


IMO that would be unbalancing because you could take an unlimited # of radar artillery, use your RR, use 1 move point to get into range of an enemy city, and then bombard it to pieces that same turn, then take it with MA's and no casualties.

Yeah I agree. Really any modern artillery should have a MR of 1. For instance, the Crusader (cancelled this year by Rumsfeld) is a HEAVY piece of eq. There's no way in hell that thing would have a comparable MR of 2+ in Civ.

[vmxa1]

Re: Another plug for Patch MOD

Originally posted by alexman
-> Pop-rushing and drafting unhappiness should not remain after a city is "liberated"

It seems to me that if you capture a city that was full of unhappy people for whatever reason, they are not going to become happy very soon, unless you cured the problem that made them unhappy (say hunger). Pop rush and draft would stop, but that would not stop the unhappiness immediately.