Expansion Pack For Civilization III?

[Mr. Nice Guy]

I have to admit, I've been playing Civ3 for several weeks now and all I have to say is, it is absolutely "the greatest game ever!" An instant classic! A formidable conqueror! Utterly and completely addictive!

I've been reading these the posts on these boards for some weeks now without ever actually posting anything. I'm a new member to these boards and this my first post.

I've noticed that a lot of people on these boards have hinted that, even though Civ3 is "the greatest game ever," their are ways that it can be improved. I without a doubt agree with this, and after I had been playing the game for awhile, I began to think about what was wrong with the game. What was missing? Then after a few days of contemplating I finally came to a conclusion: Civ3 needs an expansion pack that will increase the historical and cultural impact on the game, making the game even more entertaining and addictive. After all I feel, and many others will probably agree, that it is the history and cultural aspect of Civilization that draws players into the game, so it should be expanded.

I came up with some ideas on what should be done to the game and decided to share them with people on this board. Here they are:

1) The game needs more ancient turns, spanning as far back into history as the age of the Neanderthals. Even though many might say the Neanderthals weren't necessarily civilized, they we're in a sense human and they did have, though they were quite small, organized groups of people called tribes.

2) The game's time span needs to be more evenly divided in order to accurately highlight different eras in time. For example, Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, Atomic Age, Information Age, Nanotech Age. This includes further dividing the tech tree into separate eras.

3) Their needs to be more technologies to discover, mostly to cover the expansion of the game into the prehistoric age and into the future.

4) Their needs to be more Wonders in the game that have had a huge impact on the history and culture of the world, and some futuristic wonders should be added, too. I would say the game could use at least 50 more great wonders and 50 more small wonders.

5) Their needs to be more high-impact historical and cutural city improvements in the game.

6) The game needs more units, mostly to cover the expansion of the game into the prehistoric ages and into the future as well. The type of units that the player builds during the game should have an impact on your civ's culture, i.e. some units have a higher cultural impact than others. And if you lose a unit somehow, you also lose the cultural impact it has on your civ.

7) The game definitely needs more goverment types. Especially variations of the existing goverments in the game and subtypes.

8) Their should be more civs to choose from in the game to help to accurately depict the history and culture in the game.

9) I like the idea of having a special unit for each civilization, but I think that sometimes there should be more than one special unit for each civ. There should be as many special units for each civ as is needed to accurately depict that civs history and culture.

10) Religion should have more noticeable impact on the game. For example, wars may be started over religion. Their should be other types of religions besides the typical, such as ancient Greek religion and Native American religions.

[Freeze]

If they make an xpack I'll probably get it. If it's good I might even buy it.

Craig Freeze

[Dida]

My reply to Cloud9 is your interests will be best served if you go play CTP2.
I meant, extrending this game back to the time of Neanderthals is just ridiculous. And what is so interesting about Stone Age and Bronze age? There is nothing to play about in 'prehistoric' setting. In fact, we don't even know too much about those times (that's why they are prehistoric).
Even though I agree there should be more civs in an xp, this should not be a big issue. YOu can add one easily.
Religion is represented by culture, so that is already in the game.

[Master2000]

About the expansion... In the last chat they said that they have 3.5 programmers currently working with civ3. One of them are constantly working with the editor. How fast do you think 2.5 programmers can add features like multiplay and stuff? A year? Don't forget that they are still working on patches. My guess is that an expansion pack will take a huge amount of time to develope.

2003???

[Dis]

a few weeks?

come back to us in a few more and we'll see if you still like it.


P.S. before anyone asks why I am here. I realize the programmers may not be the best in the world, but they aren't the worst. I have reasonable faith they can salvage this game.

[The JIG is up]

I thought in modern theories the Neanderthals got killed by the "real" human ancestors (or a plague or whatever)...so we arent really related to them...therefor it would be useless starting a game of civ3 with the neanderthals.

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

In modern theories there is no consensus yet about what made the neanderthaler disappear completely. They thrived - if i'm correct - between 100.000 - 30.000 BC and had evolved from other humanlikes (homo habilis?) to reflect the changed environment in northern Europe (Ice-Period). Then, a new group of humanlikes expanded from Africa and also settled in northern Europe (and elsewhere worldwide). In a relative short period of time the neanderthals dissappeared. What happened? We don't exactly know. Fact is that their brain was about the same size than ours, but that their creative cultural abilities were a lot lower.
Sure there must have been some fighting between neanderthals and homo sapiens, but most scientists believe that neanderthals were outconcurred by homo sapiens: homo sapiens' culture and achievements flourished, whilst the neanderthals barely coped in smaller and lesser tribes. Maybe there existed forms of sexual interaction and assimilation between the species, where our DNA proved superior and better adapted to a changing environment ?

Bring back the Neanderthal!
Perhaps he isn't gone yet: ever noticed those too hairy men on the beach?

AJ

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

PS Cloud9, you're wright about the could-be qualities of an expansion pack. Give us four different units for each civ and era!
But if you wonna play neanderthals, get to Empire Earth or AOE1, and even then you'll have to continue dealing with homo sapiens ... earth's plague ...

Cheers,
AJ

[DarkCloud]

Neanderthals were a bit before Civilized sociteys as we know them as Ur, and Kush, evolved

[Grim Legacy]

LOL I'd be happy with MP and true scenario tools in an expansion pack. The gameplay changes that were proposed do not strike me as particularly desirable.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Cloud9
1) The game needs more ancient turns, spanning as far back into history as the age of the Neanderthals. Even though many might say the Neanderthals weren't necessarily civilized, they we're in a sense human and they did have, though they were quite small, organized groups of people called tribes.

Yes, the game needs more ancient turns, but not to far back in time, let's say back to 10000-5000 BC.

Originally posted by Cloud9
2) The game's time span needs to be more evenly divided in order to accurately highlight different eras in time. For example, Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Industrial Age, Atomic Age, Information Age, Nanotech Age. This includes further dividing the tech tree into separate eras.

I wouldn't mind!

Originally posted by Cloud9
3) Their needs to be more technologies to discover, mostly to cover the expansion of the game into the prehistoric age and into the future.

What techs can there be in the prehistoric age? But the future part is interesting, though there were to future in Civ1, the were no future in Civ2, so I guess they wont make future in Civ3 expansion!

Originally posted by Cloud9
4) Their needs to be more Wonders in the game that have had a huge impact on the history and culture of the world, and some futuristic wonders should be added, too. I would say the game could use at least 50 more great wonders and 50 more small wonders.

There should be more wonders yes, BUT 50!!! That number seems to be a little toooooo high

Originally posted by Cloud9
5) Their needs to be more high-impact historical and cutural city improvements in the game.

That would be nice!

Originally posted by Cloud9
6) The game needs more units, mostly to cover the expansion of the game into the prehistoric ages and into the future as well. The type of units that the player builds during the game should have an impact on your civ's culture, i.e. some units have a higher cultural impact than others. And if you lose a unit somehow, you also lose the cultural impact it has on your civ.

It needs more units if they expand to the future yes, but if not, then it doesn't seem like there's much more "room" for units.

Units shouldn't have culture, but wars should have culture, this means if I win a great war then my civ gets more culture. A culture that shouldn't be counted as city culture but as nation culture, which also gains culture points depending on the number og cities larger than e.g. 12.

Originally posted by Cloud9
7) The game definitely needs more goverment types. Especially variations of the existing goverments in the game and subtypes.

Defently

Originally posted by Cloud9
8) Their should be more civs to choose from in the game to help to accurately depict the history and culture in the game.

There should be more nations, but not necesarily for those reasons

Originally posted by Cloud9
9) I like the idea of having a special unit for each civilization, but I think that sometimes there should be more than one special unit for each civ. There should be as many special units for each civ as is needed to accurately depict that civs history and culture.

Yeah!!! This means one civ has 1 UU while another civ have three. But there should be a maximum of lets say three UU per civ.

Originally posted by Cloud9
10) Religion should have more noticeable impact on the game. For example, wars may be started over religion. Their should be other types of religions besides the typical, such as ancient Greek religion and Native American religions.

This was one of the things I took a note of when reading the "wish-list" for Civ3. Let's hope they can include that

[Carver]

The name of the game is Civilization, not stone throwing. The game spends enough time in the ancient era as it is. I don't want more turns spent with primative units and few, if any, city improvements. I think the game should go into the future farther. I liked the advanced units in CTP. Civ3 needs something on par with the leviathon and war walker. As it is, Civ3 has us fighting wars in 2050 with 20th century weapons. I would suggest that there is a considerable overlap between Civ fans and science-fiction fans. Hence, most Civ players would like playing with yet to be invented weapons.

[Immortal Wombat]

Any X-pack will likely be a MP and scenario editor add-on, rather than a game balance mod-patch.

Which is good.

[Dida]

I totally agree with the above post. This game is about Civilizations, not about half-ape-half-human shits. Going back as early as 10000 to 5000 BC? There is no friggin Civilization back them.

[Mars]

I'm sorry if i'm wrong but it sounds as though you're new to the TBS genre. If you want far future stuff you'll have to go to CTP or CTP (both of which IMO are good games, better in some most aspects than Civ3 other thna that its AI sucks, the impossible level is like cheiftain almost on Civ3) . Anyways most fans would have a revolt if it went to far into the future or included hordes of new units and wonders as they did when CTP was released. Going past 4000 BC and you're strenching what histroy calls civilization. After all back during the nethdral times were not "civiliztions" as the definations entails, considering the definiation of civilzation is having full time speacialize people in non food producing roles (or something to that effect). And if you want to go back to nethdral times just alter the editor around.

What the expansion pack really needs is a scenario creator and MP, much more than it needs a nice mod which can be built be the fans.

[Dida]

I won't mind if the game is extended into the future age.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Ok, ok. I see a lot of you are objecting to the idea of expanding Civilization III back to the age of the Neantherdals. Fine with me. After doing a little research myself I found that Neantherdals were really far beyond the scope of what we know of as Civilization, anyway.

I also understand that some of you seem to think that no historical and cultural changes whatsoever should be made to the game, that history and culture are already well represented in Civilization III. But the whole point of this thread is to make the game seem more real in the player's mindset, so that it further draws the player into the game, making it more fun and addictive.

For example, to make religion in the game seem more real to the player it needs to have a more noticeable impact on the game. This is exactly the reason why I suggested that wars could be started over religion in Civ3. When you have two ancient empires in the game whose borders are right next to each other and they both have two different religions, the populations of both nations can have a religious influence on each other, causing each others' cities fall into corruption and consequently causing them to go to war over religious intolerance. I think this sets a perfectly good example of what I mean by making the game seem more real to the player.

Ok, here's another great idea I just came up with over the last few days!:

As I understand it, many people might not want to play Civ3 simply because the game's concept and rules might go against one's religious beliefs. Wouldn't it be great if players' could play the game from different religious points of view?

For example, if you wanted the play the game from a Christian/Judeo worldview the game's rules would be altered to begin and end in a year that fits with this viewpoint; the way that the game would end in this viewpoint is by the method laid out in the Book of Revelations. The tech tree would be rearranged to fit history as Christians and Jews know it, as well as the units used in the game and the wonders and city improvements available in the game. There would need to be other minor tweaks that would make the game seem just right to Christian and Jewish players.

You could also play the game from an Evolutionary point-of-view. In this case, the game could begin around 8,000 B.C., when human beings first began to domesticate and Civilization was born (at least, from an Evolutionary point-of-view it did). The game would end the same way it does in a normal game of Civ3, but other rules would need to be tweaked to fit the time-frame for this viewpoint.

You could also play from an Atheist point-of-view. Since atheist's don't have a specific belief system (their beliefs vary from atheist to atheist) this viewpoint allows you to set up the game and tweak the rules however you want them. It is the least restrictive viewpoint to play with.

Playing from other points-of-view such as Islamic, Buddist, and Hindu points-of-view could also be available.

And of course we wouldn't want to go without the standard Civ3 rules that allows us the play game as is with no edited rules.

That's my two cents.

[Dida]

This is a VIDEO GAME, not something you will do while you are in church. I'm fairly religious myself, but I suggest you study Book of Revelations by yourself, and not pollute this wonderful game with religious tastes.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Originally posted by Dida
This is a VIDEO GAME, not something you will do while you are in church. I'm fairly religious myself, but I suggest you study Book of Revelations by yourself, and not pollute this wonderful game with religious tastes.

Oh, come on Dida. Don't think about only yourself. Think about others that would want the choice of playing the game from their religious point-of-view. Besides, if you don't want to play it from a certain point-of-view you could always play it with the standard rules just like I said. Let others have the option of playing the game with edited rules if they just so want to!

[Dida]

If what I said have been somewhat insulting to you, I would first apologize for that.
Anyway, I think there are more important things to do with the game other than adding Christianity or Buddhism to this game. Let it be a game that is fun to play, and not a simulation of religious development.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

No, it doesn't have to be a game of religious development, but it can include religious history.

[Dida]

religion is kind of included with the idea of culture. anymore will make this game look disgusting to a lot of people.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Disgusting? I doubt it. This takes us back to the philosophy of making things seem real in the player's mind. Take this example:

When a writer writes a novel, in order for the book to be interesting to the reader, he/she has to make the story seem real in the readers mind, especially the characters in the story. If characters are not made to be realistic in the story--if they don't talk real, walk real, eat real, dance real, love real, have sex for real (lots of sex for real), and the story's plot, setting and characters don't come together realistically then. . . Basically, if the reader doesn't feel that what happens in the story could really happen, even if it couldn't happen in real life (take science fiction, for example), then the book just plain sucks and the reader closes it after reading the first page.

The same concept applies to video games. Make what happens in the game seem MORE REALISTIC, not in the sense of virtual reality real, but real in the player's mind.

Enough said for one night.

[Coracle]

Originally posted by Cloud9
Disgusting? I doubt it. This takes us back to the philosophy of making things seem real in the player's mind. Take this example:

When a writer writes a novel, in order for the book to be interesting to the reader, he/she has to make the story seem real in the readers mind, especially the characters in the story. If characters are not made to be realistic in the story--if they don't talk real, walk real, eat real, dance real, love real, have sex for real (lots of sex for real), and the story's plot, setting and characters don't come together realistically then. . . Basically, if the reader doesn't feel that what happens in the story could really happen, even if it couldn't happen in real life (take science fiction, for example), then the book just plain sucks and the reader closes it after reading the first page.

The same concept applies to video games. Make what happens in the game seem MORE REALISTIC, not in the sense of virtual reality real, but real in the player's mind.

Enough said for one night.

That's interesting. Never thought of this in game terms.

With Civ 2 I knew it was a game - but it SEEMED realistic, and like a true simulation.

But I have NEVER gotten that feeling with Civ 3. That's why this game is a flop.

[Carver]

Originally posted by Cloud9
As I understand it, many people might not want to play Civ3 simply because the game's concept and rules might go against one's religious beliefs. Wouldn't it be great if players' could play the game from different religious points of view?


For example, if you wanted the play the game from a Christian/Judeo worldview the game's rules would be altered to begin and end in a year that fits with this viewpoint; the way that the game would end in this viewpoint is by the method laid out in the Book of Revelations.


Playing from other points-of-view such as Islamic, Buddist, and Hindu points-of-view could also be available.

And of course we wouldn't want to go without the standard Civ3 rules that allows us the play game as is with no edited rules.

Dude, you aren't talking about an expansion pack, you're talking about a whole new game. If kicking arse is against your "worldview" Civ is going to be a troubling game for you.

[mbealer]

Originally posted by Cloud9

For example, if you wanted the play the game from a Christian/Judeo worldview the game's rules would be altered to begin and end in a year that fits with this viewpoint; the way that the game would end in this viewpoint is by the method laid out in the Book of Revelations. The tech tree would be rearranged to fit history as Christians and Jews know it, as well as the units used in the game and the wonders and city improvements available in the game. There would need to be other minor tweaks that would make the game seem just right to Christian and Jewish players.

huh??? So what you are saying is that christians believe in a different history than the rest of the world? So when do christian's believe that tanks, gunpowder, farming, etc came into existence? Why would the tech tree need to change?

Making less and less sense the more you try to explain it.

[Mars]

Cloud9, you should know this culture drives religion not the other way around. Therefore civ3 does accurately project religion because its culture. What you are asking for would not only require a lot of work but would be dismissed by the great majority of the fans. This IS not a game of history itself. We are not replaying histroy, we are recreating it. To be stuck within some religiously defined bounds would be dejectable. Its more fun to create the exact specifics of your culture than to have the game do it for you. I like to make up what my people like to do, not have the game do that for me. When it represents culture as a numerical value the player takes that and turns it into something meaningful like making a religion for his peoples and what the like to do and how they feel towards so and so.

Culture drives religion, Religion does not drive culture.