List of Easily Implemented Improvements

[Harlan]

Regarding bribing cities, what LOTM said. There are examples from most every time in history, though you have to abstract it a bit. For instance the annexation of Hawaii by the US. There was a coup by the plantation companies who then turned it over to the US, but it wasn't really resisted because of all the money pouring in by those companies, the economy depended on them and the royal family got quite wealthy. In the khatate politics of Asia and sultanates of the Middle East, bribing was key. Most cities were de-facto independent typically, but if a strong ruler came along, he could buy supoort of some of these cities, develop a power base and build an empire.

It is true though that oftentimes the bribed city breaks off becomes independent instead of joining your empire. Maybe, when you bribe, there could be a certain chance that would happen, or they join you.

Also, what happened extremely frequently was the bribing of a faction or key person inside a walled city, who would see that a certain section of the city's defense was undefended. The attacking army could breach the walls in the middle of the night and be in the heart of the city before anyone knew what had happened, making the rest a mop up operation. One might count this as a bribe, or one might want to make it a bribe to destroy the City Walls only.

Regarding rush buying, the problem with it is how you can finish something off in one turn. No team of workers, no matter how many, could say, complete the Pyramids in a year! A compromise would be if you click "Rush Buy", the pace of work is doubled, but at triple the regular cost, or some such formula.

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-19-2001 01:49 AM One might count this as a bribe, or one might want to make it a bribe to destroy the City Walls only.

Sabotaging would be enough. And sabotage-actions or foreign intelligence-info should be dealt through a spy/intelligence-screen. Not by moving around indevidual spy-units.

quote: Regarding rush buying, the problem with it is how you can finish something off in one turn. No team of workers, no matter how many, could say, complete the Pyramids in a year! A compromise would be if you click "Rush Buy", the pace of work is doubled, but at triple the regular cost, or some such formula.

Good point and good suggestion. However doubled production per turn should be the maxed-out alternative - not faster then that. And, as you suggest, it must be deterrantly expensive (and have a gradually more and more negative impact on the happiness-levels, as well) - still, only give you a limited, put sometimes pivotal advantage.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Bereta_Eder]

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-19-2001 01:49 AM Regarding rush buying, the problem with it is how you can finish something off in one turn. No team of workers, no matter how many, could say, complete the Pyramids in a year! A compromise would be if you click "Rush Buy", the pace of work is doubled, but at triple the regular cost, or some such formula.

I agree with you Harlan that is not very realistic. But it makes strategic sense. How can you possibly plan everything that's going to happen? You will HAVE to rush build at some point in order to safeguard a strategy plan that you have in your head. If you think in terms of time periods and civ events you'll find a lot of abnormalities in civ. And this is normal! Years are just in to create atmosphaire IMHO. They can't possibly fine tune the years with events.

As far as I am concerned, I wouldn't want the rush built rule touched...

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by paiktis22 on 05-19-2001 07:19 AM You will HAVE to rush build at some point in order to safeguard a strategy plan that you have in your head.

Sometimes strategy-plans must be altered - this happens in real life. Besides, the HP is much more likely to take advantage of Civ-2 style rush-buyings then the AI-civs is. Isnt this unfair to the AI-civs? Isnt it more fun to play a game without built-in HP-favourable advantages?

Im all in for modified rush-buyings rules although; the way Harlan portrays it. And with negative happiness consequences attached to them, as well.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Slax]

Even more unrealistic than Rush Buy is the idea that you can change what you are producing, using half of your accumulated production from one thing, and put it into buiding another. Your 90% of the Pyramids becomes 50% of the Hanging Gardens.

But this is another game rule which could not be changed without great changes to the whole production method.

[Urban Ranger]

I disagree with #1. As I pointed out in another thread, land units that move along railroads still can't launch many attacks like air and sea units. Infinite movement is fine. Leave it.

[Bereta_Eder]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 05-19-2001 07:34 AM Sometimes strategy-plans must be altered - this happens in real life.

Ralf,
I think that's exactly what rush build is all about. If you cannot change your production how can you alter your strategy?

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 05-19-2001 09:14 AM I disagree with #1. As I pointed out in another thread, land units that move along railroads still can't launch many attacks like air and sea units. Infinite movement is fine. Leave it.

You seems to imply that infinite RR-moves works as a compensation to the supposed limited combat-use of land-units, compared with sea- and air-units. I would say that it is pretty much the other way around.

Firstly:

Land-units can easily redraw from coastal areas, so sea-units cannot attack them. Fighting land-units with expensive bombers & fighters simply isnt cost-effective, comparing with how ridiculously easy you can fight them with RR infinite-moving & always full-combat-strength land-units. On top of that both sea- and air-units are completely impotent then it comes to pillaging and (more importantly) take and hold enemy-cities. (by the way; air-units should be able to bomb/pillage terrain-improvements as well, in Civ-3). So the military-branch with the overly pre-eminant attack-value, IS in fact the land-units.

Secondly:

Thanks to the infinite RR-rule, each-and-every game that I have won, the sea- and air-units have played minor & insignificant roles in order to achieve this-or-that military overal victory. The infinite-rule in itself wrong-balance the military aspect of the game totally.
Thanks to the infinite-RR:s you can unleash huge invasions swallowing half (or more) of Soviet in one single turn. Everything after the first initial AI-turn response simply becomes a tedious mop-up operation - tedious because you already know that the invasion is bound to succeed, anyway.
Also; even if the AI could launch a huge D-day style disembarkment-operation on your modern RR-equipped big island, the HP can always be sure (thanks to infinite moves) to fight down even the slightest hope for the AI to establish any workable breachhead. This infinite-RR rule works heavily in favour of the human player, at the expense of the AI-players.

Anyway, regardless if Firaxis implements infinite RR-moves, or not, they should either way add a Rules.txt Infinite RR-move on/off cosmic rule, together with an alternative fixed RR move-radius input-number. Also an RR combat-decrease on/off rule perhaps.

-------------------- Paiktis22:

quote: ]Originally posted by Paiktis22 on 05-19-2001 09:37 AM I think that's exactly what rush build is all about. If you cannot change your production how can you alter your strategy?

Rush-building and changing production halfway through is two different things. Even if one cant rush-build anymore, one can still change the production halfway through. With the latter alternative you lose half the already invested resources though.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Bereta_Eder]

Yes of course. I tried to say two things at once.

_rush building: nice to push your empire to the edge in order to get the money to buy something in 2 turns

_changing production: critical to alter your strategy and adapt.

[colossus]

More easily implemented suggestions:

1.Always some penalty for production change of the same class. Changing production from Pyramid to Colossus, or from trieme to settler, should suffer some penalty also.

2.Always starting with 2 units. 2 settlers, settler+horseman, settler+warrior, etc. This leads to more variation and more balnaced game.

3.No more autoheal. Armies and navies should not heal themselves outside city or nearby fortress.

[ajbera]

quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui on 05-18-2001 10:20 PM Problem with removing SDI is that nukes then become extremely fearful things. To counter this perhaps make nukes an atrocity after the first year of the first one having been dropped. However the nuke... there is no defense.

For the sake of gameplay, allow SDI as a defense against nukes, but give it no more than a 50% chance of destroying incoming missiles, but no less than 33%. Although I am a proponent of realism, this is a modification I'm willing to make for an enjoyable game. However, SDI should be damn expensive, and only available near the end of the game. Furthermore, settings should definitely be tweakable so players can adjust them to their personal preferences.

Harlan: great idea about rush-buying. Hopefully Firaxis will have the good sense to implement something similar (if not identical.)