Ancient Times (early stages) of civ3

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

Before I get to the subject, I will say that I asked MarkG to close my other thread, because it was getting way out of hand, and that if he did, I would restart it, so now I am.

Now for the subject...

To continue from my last thread...I said that I wanted the early stages of the game to be longer. Well, here are my suggestions for doing so:

1. Shorten the 'years per turn' from 20, to either 15 or 10. This will, if not anything else, lengthen the early stages of the game by at least a little bit.

2. Add in more techs and more units. This will expand the early part by some, and make it more interesting.

3. In stead of starting with a SETTLERS unit, start with a city, AND one SETTLERS unit, the city will not have anything in it. Important Note!!! - Depending upon what civilization you play, depends upon where you start on the map. For example, if you started with the Americans or British, your starting city would be on the river, and if you started with a civilization like the Romans or Japanese, then you would start on a coast, etc.

4. Increase the cost and turns of the 'wonders'. If the 'years per turn' were shortened, then this would work perfectly, for you would no longer be building the Pyramids at 1 A.D. (just an example), when in reality they were built in the 3000's B.C.

These ideas may be very minor, and may not help much, but there has got to be a way to increase the enjoyment of ancient times, and also the length!

Any thoughts?

[Biddles]

Personally I believe the game would be better if present times were taken back a bit. Not so much in turns and techs, but I think that there should be at least 16 ancient civs so that you can play with just the ancient civs. I agree that there should be more early techs. But for any of this to work I think that the trade and diplomacy of the game needs to be really good, otherwise were in for some really boring first halves of the game. Looks like we'll just have to wait and see what civ3 is like when it's released.

Diablo: I agree that you should start with a settler and a city, makes for a more interesting opening. Besides, your not really a civ if you only have one city, are you.

[Sean]

2. Add in more techs and more units. This will expand the early part by some, and make it more interesting

This is the essential point to expanding the early part (and indeed the whole game if one wished). Make the tech tree deeper, with the new techs allowing specfic units. The new techs may even be 'blind-alleyways' so you only get the new unit. Maybe even more city improvments.

The other points about relative time and start-up become important here.