The Essentials

[MrFun]

I have played Civ games since the first title on the Super Nintendo - yes, that far back.

I bought Civilization I when I got my first PC, then Civilization II, Call to Power, Alpha Centauri, and finally, Call to Power II.

I must say I have liked Call to Power the best so far while Call to Power II has been disappointing. Now getting to suggestions for Civilization III:

1) Call to Power allowed players to maintain a mass army by allocating military costs to the total empire's production, not for each city. This is what I thought was a great improvement. PLEASE implement this in Civilization III - it was the one feature that made Call to Power so much better. Of course, create an interface and concept so that it does not violate any copyright laws.

Not only could you maintain a mass army much easier in CTP I, but each time you built an additional unit in a city, it did not take longer with each successive unit. This I feel is important.

2) One flaw with CTP II was that they took away the ability for the player to manually allocate workers as he/she saw fit in the city radius. Firaxis, you would do well to retain this feature from Civilization II.

3) Do not allow cities to grow beyond three square radius like Activision did. Four square radius I feel might be too much. If you want to increase it, increase from the present two square radius in Civilization II to three square radius.

4) The AI has worked better in Civilization II than it does in Call to Power II (AI is also a little better in CTP I). When trying to make improvements, please be careful of as many possible flaws as you can think of.

5) And the last thing I can think of at the time but certainly still important, is to eliminate the need for Settlers and Engineers to place Farms, Mines and other tile improvements. Call to Power and CTP II use the Public Works concept. Firaxis, what can you implement without violating any copyright laws? I think many of us do not wish to have an army of Settlers just for tile improvement.

These I believe are essentials, and I am willing to admit that some of these are from my experiences of playing CTP I and CTP II. However, those two games introduced these great features. I hope Firaxis can find their own ways to implement similar concepts and features.

[MrFun]

Don't be in such a rush to express your opinion, everyone.

[Sarxis]

I had something to say, but I changed my mind.

:P

[EnochF]

You can't control the workers in the city radius in CTP2?

I'm glad I never bought it, then.

That's an Essential I bet nobody ever thought of, until it was gone.
[This message has been edited by EnochF (edited January 19, 2001).]

[wittlich]

The essential element I believe that Activision left out of CTP2 was the ability to actually have AND finish a multiplayer game!

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by MrFun on 01-17-2001 10:27 PM 2) One flaw with CTP II was that they took away the ability for the player to manually allocate workers as he/she saw fit in the city radius.

no ability was taken from you. it's just that instead of workers you handle specialists!

[MrFun]

Markos - big deal! The point is that many of us want to manage W-O-R-K-E-R-S as well as the Specialists.

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by MrFun on 01-23-2001 09:21 AM Markos - big deal! The point is that many of us want to manage W-O-R-K-E-R-S as well as the Specialists.

P-O-I-N-T-L-E-S-S!
the effect(specialize your city) can be the same and with less work

if you issue is the atmosphere of the game, how about a screen where you get to "dress" your citizens into specialists?

[Grumbold]

I side with Mr Fun on this one, somehow allocating workers to tiles was more satisfying. You upgraded a tile and then put someone to work on it. Having aggregate production from all the tiles within the city radius just does not make sense to me. A city surrounded with ocean and acres of desert will concentrate all its population on farming the small fertile strips, fishing the best waters and (perhaps) extracting oil or minerals from a good source in the desert. Only manipulating specialists that have no connection to the land just doesn't feel "right" to me.

On the other hand, I also quite like the engineer units because I remember to use them efficiently, unlike PW. Having the engineers around the map draws the cursor to locations needing attention more easily than having to search round your cities manually looking for the best spots to improve. If the mayors were able to use PW efficiently that wouldn't be so much of a problem.

[Ralf]

MrFUN quote:
2) One flaw with CTP II was that they took away the ability for the player to manually allocate workers as he/she saw fit in the city radius. Firaxis, you would do well to retain this feature from Civilization II.

GRUMBOLD quote:
Having the engineers around the map draws the cursor to locations needing attention more easily than having to search round your cities manually looking for the best spots to improve.

I certainly agree with above quotes!
I had a discussion with MarkG over the exact same issue, in thread called What about changing the landscape??.

He was just as wrong then, as he is now! Anyway, if your interested; click on above link in order to read my viewpoints on why your quoted observations is so spot-on and important.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 23, 2001).]

[MarkG]

i have to say it again: you are totally crazy! moving a unit on the map is faster and easier than moving your eyes around the screen, huh? yeah!

btw Ralf, a quote of yours from the other thread

quote: Of course, one can argue that, with the Public-works solution, the player can wait until enough build-points have been gathered, so he can build tile-improvements on several squares in one go. But, this means losses in use-efficiency. To loan arguments from real-life business: It would be like replacing "just-in-time" (= settler-model), with inefficient "stock & store" (= public-works model).

come on now. first of all, after a couple of hours you know what each tile improvement costs and you figure out very easily what you can build. beyond that, such small delays(if you wait to have more pw in order to be correct about being able to build something) have small effect in your total efficiency, unless you are trying to win the game by 1AD or something!
[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited January 23, 2001).]

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-23-2001 04:07 PM i have to say it again: you are totally crazy! moving a unit on the map is faster and easier than moving your eyes around the screen, huh? yeah!

Well, if i only had 5-10 settlers to share all the tile-improving work in my 20-30+ city empires, i would agree with you. But, the thing is; i have at least one tile-improving settler dedicated to each and every indevidual city. My main argument is however, that my map re-centers automatically, and the tile-improving settler flashes automatically then hes out of work. And thanks to the "one city + one settler" policy, nobody is more then 1-3 squares away from their next job-assignments.

Compare to the laborious public-works solution, there the player is forced to drag around that map back-and-forth manually. As for thor015:s argument:
"I see this point load and clear, and this (manually scrolling the map) I actually find this less annoying than having the settler get destroyed by the AI."

If this was/is the only problem, he can fix/tweak the defence-values for hes settlers in the text-files. Of course, he then had to put up with those hard-to-kill AI-settlers as well.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 23, 2001).]

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 01-23-2001 05:11 PM Well, if i only had 5-10 settlers to share all the tile-improving work in my 20-30+ city empires, i would agree with you. But, the thing is; i have at least one tile-improving settler dedicated to each and every indevidual city.

well, it seems that you have created a style of playing to make this less painfull...

tell me, what do you with a settler when it has nothing to do? dont tell me you kill it!!!

quote: Compare to the laborious public-works solution, there the player is forced to drag around that map back-and-forth manually.

when i play in ctp2 at 1024x768 with the control panel/radar map minimized, i'm doing very low "dragging around the map"...

[MarkG]

btw, how much support do these settlers need in order for you to have less micromanagment? are you sure this loss is not the same with the possible gains of giving time improvement orders faster??

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 01-23-2001 09:56 AM Having the engineers around the map draws the cursor to locations needing attention more easily than having to search round your cities manually looking for the best spots to improve.

dear god, please no!
you mean to tell me that in order to find where you need tile improvements, you consider easier to have to move a unit around on the map instead of just looking at the map??????