Making Civ3 more like Advanced Civilization

[Tarquelne]

As in the Adv. Civ. board game.

What I have in mind is the paucity of warfare in Adv. Civ. Sure, it happens, but - at least in the games I've played - it's quite unimportant compared to everything else.

I believe a Civ3 mod. that made the game play out more like Adv. Civ. would be fun.

In Adv. Civ what really matters in a conflict is numbers, not military tech, not even tactics. (Strategy, yeah, put within each map area it's all numbers.) For the Civ3 varient I think it should be numbers when someone uses the military option, but otherwise it's Culture.

Military:
Fewer units types, and an even "flatter" climb in unit effectiveness with technology. Remember - this is _not_ a wargame. The units would all cost about the same, too. Military tech would help, but the real issue would be # of units.

Less mobility: I think this would help encourage the "ponderous" feel of Adv. Civ. conflict. Bliting your opponent isn't what gives you territories - having a well developed "civilization" is.

Espionage: If the military isn't as usefull, I'd like to increase the usefullness of espionage. Should be easy enough - make it cheaper.

Culture:
I'd like to see most cities/territory trade hands not because of military action, but because of Culture. OK - who knows how to increase the frequency of cities "flipping" due to Culture? (I've done a little experimentation with this, but not much, and haven't thought about it much. I'm hopeing someone else - probably someone who dislikes it - has.)

[steelehc]

This is about the opposite of most people's "requests". I kinda think that fewer units and techs would make the game less interesting, not more.

Steele

[Tuberski]

You want to make the game "more" ponderous?
I'm already overburdened with boredom.

[Thrawn05]

I agree with espionage, I don't find that usfull at all. I only send embassies over and might investigate a city, but that's it.

[Ethelred]

The board game is a trading game. Its not about combat because its about trade. Most of the game time is spent in negotiation for trade cards.

Then there is the key of evading the nastier disaster trade cards.

[Grumbold]

The boardgame works because the same pool of tokens are used to expand outward, cluster to found cities and be used offboard as currency. Managing the circulation of tokens from map to bank is vital. In Civ the diceless numerical combat would not work because whoever started with the largest easily occupiable area would then be able to use their additional production to win all future fights. The current Civ 3 mechanic that limits your productive expansion to a finite area is probably the most disliked thing in the game.

I suggest if you like the original Civ you get the Advanced Civ computer game. Its a very close translation of the boardgame (only trading had to be tweaked a bit to allow the computer to bargain as effectively as the human players) and the AI is pretty effective.

[Tarquelne]

So.... no one else is interested in experimenting with a Civ3 mod that'd de-emphasize warfare and instead concentrate on trading and civ-perfection (city building/culture)?

Who said anything about less techs?

"Pondorus" combat, border changes would be slower/less dramatic. Pondorus gameplay is not the goal. The goal would be to make the trading, culture, and espionage elements much more interesting and important. To do that combat almost certainly needs to take a backseat. Making the unit progression "flatter" should go a long way toward that.
I'm not so sure about encouraging large numbers of troops - though the maintiance costs could also discourage military adventurism.

So: Any suggestions? Should I, perhaps, start an OT thread on Adv. Civ. for Adv. Civ. comments? ;P

[Ethelred]

An awfull lot of the people here think Civ is a wargame. A very large percentage of the complaints are really complaint about it not being a wargame.

Well Civilization in all its forms is NOT a wargame.

But you aren't going to find a lot of support for that little bit of reality around here. Some not a lot. So what you are proposing is going to float like a Led Zeppelin except with a few.

Civ the computer game has always been much more combat oriented than the board game. In the boardgame combat is mostly about trying to slow down an oppenents tech advance. Because of the double use population/money counters and the strictly limited quantity of them you simply cannot grow past a certain point and even trying to get close to it destroys your economy.

Maybe someone at Firaxis was trying to emulate that effect with corruption. It is a method of limiting growth anyway. However you CAN still grow its the rate of growth that is limited by it not the capacity to continue to do so.

It certainly doesn't slow down pop-rushing despots though. That is something that may wreck multiplay. Could turn it nothing but another unit rush game.

[Inverse Icarus]

nothing wercks a game as bas as the AI's tendency to draft and rush their cities down to a 3 before i take it over, and i get 3 insatiable people.