If you could add one new improvement to Civ3...

[Traelin]

Not when you have 15 other Civs in the game. Sometimes (like in my last game), it took so long to narrow down where the Spanish were getting Aluminum from that I just signed trade embargos with everyone who were willing to do so, then had everyone else declare war.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by justjake73
A feature from Alpha Centauri that I like: You can enter and repair your units in Allied cities.

And you can agree to coordinate attacks with your allies.

And why not have the ability to transport food from one city to another, like in AC?? Have that city with three wheat tiles become a breadbasket!!

These are all great ideas. My favorite "treaty" would be to "call off your attack on X", with the "coordinate your attack on city X" being pretty important, too. Some really good ideas have been mentioned in this thread. Hopefully someday we'll have a combination of SMAC and Civ3. That would be the most ridiculously addictive game of all time. Right now I love Civ3 and play it sporadically (I'm sure C3C will increase my playtime), but I just don't feel it offers the same level of addiction that I felt with previous titles. I know for a fact that if it had the diplomatic/PC functionality of SMAC, I'd lose 20 lbs. in 2 weeks.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Traelin
Not when you have 15 other Civs in the game. Sometimes (like in my last game), it took so long to narrow down where the Spanish were getting Aluminum from that I just signed trade embargos with everyone who were willing to do so, then had everyone else declare war.

hi ,

sounds like a job for the intel agency , they could ( should ) blow up that supply ( covert action ) for lets say 3500 - to 6500 gold , .....

that would be a great addition

have a nice day

[SSBLoveU]

Nobody has suggested assassination, puppet government and organized crime options.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, excuse the long-windedness of this post, but SSB got me thinking !
Here are some MAJOR concepts which I would LOVE to see introduced into Civ3-preferably in a future XP!!

1) New Great Leaders-

(a) Cultural Leaders, are your Civs leading minds in the areas of Religion, Philosophy, Arts and Politics. They can be 'Sacrificed' to increase the Cultural Radius of your City you're currently in OR they can be moved to a city and used to convert foreigners to your culture! This could allow you to lower the risk of a 'Culture Flip' in a recently captured city, or increase the chance of a 'culture flip' in an enemy city (by making their citizens 'see the light ). Optionally, they could be used to rush a Religious Great Wonder, or one which produces happiness!

(b) Great Industrialists: Can be 'Sacrificed' for a 20 turn bonus to production in the city he is in, or can be used to 'Rush' an Industrial Great/Small Wonder.

(c) Commercial Leaders: Can be used to rush a Commercial Great Wonder (or one which lowers corruption) OR can grant you a 20 turn bonus to Commerce in the city it was 'Sacrificed' in.

(d) Naval Leaders: Can be used to rush Coastal/Seafaring Wonders, or can be used to build a Naval Academy-which can be used to generate a 'naval army'

(e) Great Explorer: Can be used to rush expansionist Wonders OR can be used to create a 'Claim' on unclaimed land-doing this creates a 3x3 culture border centred around where your great explorer stood! This zone remains until someone else comes along to claim it, or if a rival city's own border envelops it!

With all of these new leaders in the game, a new spy option could be included 'Assassinate'. This would randonly kill any GL in the Civ you've directed it against-but might cause an international incident !!
Anyway, I'll habe more ideas later !!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, the next idea I have is for Banned Resources.

Once you have 'Code of Laws', you should be able to go into your trade screen, and select luxury/Strategic resources that you want to BAN! Doing this will grey out the resource (if you have it), and prevent you from trading it to other nations, and vice versa!! Why would you do this? Well, 'cause you'd be able to build a Small Wonder called 'Black Market', which will alow you to both recieve and give your banned resources as trade-the difference being that they are now worth more if you're selling (based on how much of the resource you have; whether or not the other civ has banned the resource too; and the distance over which you're 'trading it'), and gives you a bonus happy face if you're recieving! The downside is that, for every banned resource you're trading, you're civ-wide corruption goes up a little bit, and your culture drops slightly! Obviously, you couldn't 'trade' it through the regular screen, but would simply select which resource you want to trade, and what civ you want to 'trade' it to (assuming you can trace a direct link between your civs!) In addition, though, if you have a resource which another Civ has banned, then you can trade it with them if you have 'Black Market', and this can be a way of undermining another civ-by flooding them with 'illegal goods'. Of course, another option is to go to other Civs and, in the diplomacy screen, get them ALL to ban a particular resource-preferably one which will be of great use to one of your enemies-or which your enemy desperately wishes to sell ! This would be of particular relevence in the modern age, and should be an option available via the UN-in this case, a global ban on a resource!!
In addition to what I have mentioned above, the 'Black Market' should also produce a 'contraband' treasure unit, which you can send to other civs city's for gold. They should, however, potentially cause an increase in corruption in the city you send it to!!
Anyway, thats just a few thoughts-sorry for the extra long post!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Operational Range: All units should have an Operational Range (OR). That is, a distance which it can travel, in enemy territory, before it starts to suffer damage each turn. Spec-ops and Settlers/Workers would have the highest OR, followed by infantry units, followed by mounted units and, finally, followed by mechanized units! Factors which would effect the total OR would be:

a) Terrain: If a units path includes any Deserts, Jungles, Tundra or Mountains-then the OR is halved. If it passes through all grassland and Hills, then it stays the same wheras, if it passes through any flood plains or forests, then it is doubled (Obviously, a path which included BOTH a desert and a forest would leave the OR unchanged!) Like movement costs, a unit should have the ability to ignore a movement penalty/bonus for one or even all of the terrains mentioned above!!

b) Techs: Certain techs, such as refrigeration, replaceable parts, motorized transport, and the like, could all potentially increase OR's-and battlefield medicine would also increase OR of all foot and mounted units!!!

c) Forts: A fort, connected by road to friendly territory, can be used to extend OR, by acting as a supply depot! Basically, the OR would be counted from the fort, rather than from your border!!

Any unit caught, for whatever reason, outside its OR, at the end of a turn, will suffer a hp in damage for each new turn that its outside the OR!!!
This idea would, in my opinion, increase the strategic nature of the game!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Panag]

Originally posted by SSBLoveU
Nobody has suggested assassination, puppet government and organized crime options.

hi ,

it has been talked about many times , ...... but no-one came up with something serious enough , .....


canals would also be a nice extra to the game

have a great day

[SSBLoveU]

I was just hoping for more things to do with corruption than lose money.

[Kuciwalker]

events

[jkelly]

My wish list is full of things one could do in Civ2 or SMAC and can't in Civ3.

--Unit Trades
--Scenario scripting, and other editor functions
--SMAC-style UN
--Unit workshop, esp. ability to make units obsolete
--SMAC-style Government
--More Espionage functionality
--Civil Wars

But, really, my number one pick would be, um, "better, more diverse, AI"; I want to feel like I'm playing against a number of different computer oponents, not just one; not lose my rep. when my trading partner loses their harbour; and not sit through the process of calculating the city connections every time I build an airport.

[Elias]

enhancing the AI is an important one the big problem with the AI is that they dont use carriers or transports to plan invasions on a large scale.I would also like to see irrigation,mining and roads adcance like in ctp The UN is deffinatly a big one to i hate it when 2 civs are fighting over one stupid city for a thousand years and just keep telling you to join their side. You also have to keep watching their units move continusly taking the same usless city untill you get so sick of France and Russia fighting that you cease all the rubber in the world then invade first russia then realise that France was the agressor take them over then surround paris with battleships modern armor mech infintary and a lot of radar artillary then just bombard untill there is almost no paris left As you can tell this has hapend to me sorry for such the long story.

[Plotinus]

I like all of GRM7584's suggestions. As a fellow lurker, I add my own. I have others than this one, of course, but I'll chuck this in first and see who bites...

It's clear to me that there is one massive flaw with this game: there is no provision for the appearance of new civilisations. It seems very peculiar to have everyone starting at 4000BC and getting gradually winnowed throughout the centuries. One of the most interesting things about real history is the way that civilisations rise and fall, to be replaced by others. In fact, the only civilisations that feature in this game that have really existed for that many millennia are, I think, India and China.

The situation is also rather dull as it stands, because it means that at the start of the game you have quite a few small civs, but by the end of it you have only a couple of massive empires. They have been growing for centuries, swallowing up their neighbours. That in turn makes it feel like the aim of the game is to do exactly that, and "winning" consists of being the biggest kid on the block at the end of the game. Letting new civilisations appear throughout history ought to act as a check on this, and encourage game styles that keep a good and ever-changing global diversity going throughout history. Or, for those for whom total planetary domination is the only thing to go for, it adds an extra challenge.

What can be done? Three possibilities.

(1) In the original game, when one civilisation was annihilated, another (of the same colour) appeared somewhere else - rather like the Respawn option in Civ3, but less irritating. It was a bit of a squib though, because the new nation would appear as if it were 4000BC for them - a single settler and no tech. They therefore got wiped out in a matter of minutes. But we could bring this idea back, if we make the spawning happen randomly (and rarely), and give the new civ the same tech level as most other people, and also a few defensive units. Basically, if one civilisation is wiped out, that creates an empty "slot" which may be filled at some later date - not instantly, as that is too predictable and dull.

(2) Several people have talked about the idea of civil war, and a civ splitting into two. This did happen in the original game, very occasionally, when a capital fell (I saw it happen just once and was amazed). I suggest using the notion of "far-flung outposts" to revitalise this. We all know games where you have a few cities far from your core cities, plagued by corruption and essentially useless. Suppose that, occasionally, such a city (or group of cities) asked for self-rule. If you grant it to them, the cities become a brand new civilisation, taking over that portion of your empire, including any units in its territory, and sharing your tech level. If you refuse, the colonials may retire annoyed, but they may declare independence anyway, and go to war with you. Why would anyone give in to the original request? Perhaps you the new civilisation would automatically start with excellent diplomatic relations to the mother nation, and you might also get a massive boost in your diplomatic standings with everyone else. To someone interested in playing a peaceful game, the trade and diplomatic possibilities opened up by this would probably greatly outweigh the value of a bunch of hopelessly corrupt cities on the other side of the world. Obviously, this idea simulates something like the American Declaration of Independence and subsequent war (the colonists requested independence, were denied, but went for it anyway) as well as something like the granting of self-government to much of the British Empire (countries like India requested self-government and - eventually - were granted it).

(3) Again in the original Civilization, the barbarians were a LOT more interesting. For one thing, they kept pace with technology, so later barbarians were called Guerilla Uprisings and had muskets. But some of them could actually capture cities, just like another civilisation. They would then use these cities to crank out millions of new units and send them to the next target. If you weren't careful, you could end up with a sort of mini-civ run by barbarians on your borders. I suggest that we give this ability back to the barbarians, and add that a city or cities that remain under barbarian control for more than a few turns may turn into a new, fully-fledged civilisation, again sharing the basic tech level of everyone else. This would be a great way of simulating situations like the end of the western Roman Empire: the Romans pulled their troops out of Britain in 407 to fight barbarians in Gaul, thereby allowing hordes of other barbarians to flood over the North Sea and capture all the cities in Britain. After a while, these barbarians turned into the English. Similarly, the Spanish, French, and German civs arose as barbarians took control of parts of the Roman Empire closer to home.

Not only would these ideas make the game far closer to real history, they would make it a lot more interesting, too. It gets dull dealing with the same old faces for six thousand years, even if they change their hairstyles every so often - especially as they all seem to bear grudges for centuries. It would add a new challenge, since one of the greatest tests of a civilisation is how it copes with a vigorous new nation suddenly appearing - look at what happened to Persia and the Byzantines when the Arabs came on the scene. It would also add a new sense of achievement if you manage to steer your civilisation through the whole of history while seeing others fall and new ones arrive - if you make it to be the Grand Old Man of geopolitics, surrounded by a bunch of whippersnappers. Finally, I *liked* the barbarians in the original game, and was greatly disappointed by the pale imitations we find in Civ3. The third suggestion above gives a way for barbarians to be agents of genuine change and development in history, rather than a bunch of mindless axe-wielders whose only function is to annoy the "proper" civilisations.

[Solomwi]

As I posted elsewhere, I'd like a barb village that isn't wiped out after x number of turns to at least have a chance at morphing into a city, giving birth to a new civ.

[SSBLoveU]

Prettier Princesses . . .

[gnome]

1. Wonder Movies!!

Come on, this is one of the things that got me so darn addicted to Civ2 and SMAC... sometimes I"d build a wonder I didn't need so much just cause I thought the movie was so cool...

I'm a firm believer that video games should have rewards built in for time-consuming or difficult tasks... just like cutscenes between rounds in other video games... something that makes you sit back and enjoy that you paid for the game.

2. Barbarians changing type for each age

Like--barbarians/pirates/terrorists or something like that. Plus improving what they have available to them appropriate to age...whatever you can get without any resources except horses-- horsemen, warriors, and galleys in ancient age; eventually giving way to knights, med. inf, and frigates, and so forth. Civ1 and 2 used to do this, didn't it?

3. Original style ZOC-- IMHO the change in the way zones of control work has rendered marines/paratroopers nearly useless... of course I haven't tried CiC yet...

[Panag]

hi ,

barbs who take over cities and run them , ......

have a nice day

[Plotinus]

[gnome] I don't so much like the idea of Wonder movies - of course, I never saw CivII. But I'd rather they used the time, money, and memory space to improve the game itself rather than put in add-ons like that. Or if we do have more movies, I'd rather have more movies rewarding the different ways of winning, rather than appearing in the middle of the game.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Plotinus
[gnome] I don't so much like the idea of Wonder movies - of course, I never saw CivII. But I'd rather they used the time, money, and memory space to improve the game itself rather than put in add-ons like that. Or if we do have more movies, I'd rather have more movies rewarding the different ways of winning, rather than appearing in the middle of the game.

hi ,

well you should be able to pick it up for somewhere between 10 to 15 usd / euro

have a nice day

[Plotinus]

I think the scoring system needs to be rejigged. At the moment, I believe, you get points for all your content citizens, and extra points for all your happy ones - and that's it. That means that the bigger your civilisation, the more points you get. That in turn encourages militaristic playing styles, because a huge bad civ will beat a small good one in the scoring stakes. I think that size should be just one factor in the scoring. Others could include number of Wonders built (not controlled), cultural strength, *proportion* of happy citizens to unhappy ones, diplomatic prowess, technological dominance - in other words, all the things that it is good to maximise during the game itself. Points could be removed for having polluted squares and starving cities, and perhaps for "moral" failings such as initiating wars or razing cities. It would be good to see small, enlightened civilisations rewarded as much as great big violent ones.

Come to that, I would like it if it were possible to win without going to war all the time. The problem is that a big civilisation will do better than a small one at everything - culture, science, etc - which means that whichever victory condition you're aiming for, the strategy is always the same - grab all the land, whup anyone who gets in your way, and sit on it. There is nothing wrong with that in itself - after all, other things being equal, a big civilisation is "greater" than a small one, and they have tended to dominate - from the Persians to the Chinese to the Americans. But really, it should be only one positive trait among many, rather than the be-all and end-all. Sometimes the whole thing feels just like a wargame. The only exception is the diplomatic victory, which I have to say I've never managed yet. The effects of corruption go some way to helping with this. One possible change might be to make international trade far more important to success, or conversely to make the AI jack their prices up far more when they're annoyed with you. That would force the player to do more to cultivate good relations and be less belligerent. Incidentally, do the AI annoy each other and suffer trade penalties as the player does?

Also, the scoring should be harsher. I remember on Civ1 it took an extremely long time before I managed to go all the way up to the highest rank on the list (I don't remember who it was though!). On Civ3, it seems that playing aggressively until the Industrial Age, becoming top nation, and then just retiring will easily land you a score high enough to get the top rank. Maybe I'm just better at this than I was a decade ago...

[Brundlefly]

I would like the to see added a 'moral victory' option so that I could achieve a moral victory over my opponents (if no other type of victory is possible)....

[Shogun Gunner]

i would agree with wonder movies - i miss that

[bvoncranium]

Another enhancement that would improve the game:
It would be good if when you switch your efforts from research-in-progress on one advance to another, that when you return to researching the original advance you start from where you left off, not from zero.
For example, if you are 3 turns from getting Fission but an AI incursion convinces you that there's a compelling need to get Computers (Mech Infantry), it would be better to be able to switch the focus to Computers, then when completed go back to gaining Fission in 3 turns (i.e. where you left off), instead of starting from scratch.
In real life scientific advances are codified (documented and archived) for future use; it is peculiar that there's no such concept in this game.
For those who would posit the argument that interrupted research loses effectiveness and/or relevance over the duration of the interruption, I'd agree. This could be modeled simply with some devaluing factor (e.g. -10%/turn). This would still be much better than losing 100% of invested research in the first turn after a switch!
Just my 2 beakers... bvc

[Panag]

Originally posted by Feephi
I would like the to see added a 'moral victory' option so that I could achieve a moral victory over my opponents (if no other type of victory is possible)....

hi ,

, imagine this " on moral grounds the UN has decided that you must accept this peace deal " , ......

now that would be nice to be seen in the game , .......

kinda like CIV II

have a nice day

[SSBLoveU]

I agree with a post a few weeks ago. Many times the other civilizations seem to have one personality. They sell at the same point and they bargain at the same point. However, I am far more likely to make friends with Cleopatra than Bismark. And some people just are not good neighbors. I rather have the Mayans than the Zulus. I always try to build a civilization.

[Elias]

I would rather have firaxis do somthing else then do wonder moves the time wasted on seven seconds of film that you could only watch hundreds of times and get sick of or they could but somthing much better in the game like new units or pirteing. All though it would be cool to see vidos for conquering the world, I can see the vido in my head cathrines palace surrounded my enemy troops a few last rusian soldiers trying desperatly to defend her but are slaughterd easlily then you see cahtrine the door to her chamber opens in roll 2 gernades her face looks suprised Bam!! then you see the whole palace colapase then an english flag raised.

[Plotinus]

Crikey, Elias, it's lucky *you're* not making the movies for this game. It'd get an 18 cert.

[Brundlefly]

I would like to see a 'cow-tipping' worker option added to the game as a way of increasing happiness. Required: cattle resource within city radius. Move worker over the cattle and select 'cow tipping' option. +1 happy face for the city.

[Maquiladora]

Hey stop stealing ideas from my threads bfg9000

[Colonel E]

What about the ability to annotate the map? THAT would be a seriously useful and cool addition. And not that hard to program, either.

Ooh! And the ability to have a "Oh My God"-sized map. We're talking 1024x1024 squares here. That map would, of course, include all the civs in the game... SIMULATANIOUSLY. A real resource eater, to be sure, but cool nonetheless.