Atn: Firaxis - Request For Some Features In Next Patch

[Timeline]

*bump*

[Sevorak]

First off - hi Apolyton. Finally decided to pick up this place after lurking around CivFanatics for a couple months.

Just one note.

LET ME BUILD EXPIRED WONDERS! In my first game, Chieftan level, my SCC (super culture city ) was denied the Great Library and its 5 culture/turn. This terrible thing occurred because I discovered EDUCATION first! Look, I realize this is not a common situation, but in an MP game (should MP actually happen) early expiry of wonders will happen, and probably will happen before some of the wonders can be built. Don't deny cultural victory players of hundreds of points of potential culture.

-Sev

[Timeline]

UPDATED LIST 11/06/01
Hello,

This thread is intended to be as helpful as possible to the game developers of Civ 3, and it is my hope that the information here will be useful in making Civ 3 just a little easier to use, and more fun to play.

Here is the list that Apolyton gamers have compiled as of 11/06/01:

Expanded Gameplay Features:

1) Stack Move: Many have felt that the ability to move units in stacks would be VERY helpful, almost necessary for late game play.

Problem: Given that there are usually considerably more units in this game than in previous Civ games, the one by one movement of each unit can rapidly become a mind numbing proposition.

Suggested Solution: Please allow for stack grabbing and moving. No combat advantage is needed or requested, but we need ability to move more than one unit at a time.

2) Ability to see active agreements from foreign advisor screen.

Problem: Currently, there is no way to see all your all active agreements in one place, and it becomes quite tedious to get a list of all the agreements you have at one time by visiting each ruler one at a time. Another fact that culminates this problem is that your active agreements are always changing.

Suggested Solution: Create a link/button on the foreign advisor screen that will bring up a list of *all* current diplomatic agreements and the turns left before they can be canceled. Also, the ability to cancel from this screen would be helpful.

3) Ability to see what resources ALL other empires have. The ability to see ones they are using or trading to others or even receiving from others.

Problem: The only way to know what resources another empire has (but cannot trade) is to search the whole map looking for specs of rubber and oil. And there is no way to know if/what they are trading to other empires, or if/what they are receiving from others.

Suggested Solution: Make it possible to see other empire's active trade agreements. This can be done easily on the Trade screen. Make it so when you click on an empires name in the "can trade with" box, all their resources (local, Imported, exported) pop up under the "trade agreements" box, rather than yours.

If anyone has a hard time understanding what I mean just ask, and I will Explain better and post a pic.

4) Link to the Civilopedia from city build queue.

Problem: You need to exit city screen and then goto Library and find the unit/improvement you are looking for, just to see what is does.

Suggested Solution: A link that will take you right to the specific entry in the Civilopedia for the item you select.

5) Ability to not show friendly movements at all.

Problem: Near the end of the game, there are a ton of AI units running around, and it can take several minutes to proccess a turn.

"As it is right now, I go and make lunch or watch TV while the AI units zip around interact with each other for upwards of 3 minutes." - Knight

Suggested Solution: Allow ability to not show friendly and/or enemy movements if you don't want to see them. Always show AI movements INSIDE your borders ARE even if option is on.

6) Give option for a pop-up when city fall into civil disorder.

NOTICE: PLEASE don't force anyone who doesn't want a pop-up to always have to view one. Allow the option to turn it off, for those who don't need it.

7) Allow player to chose -Resource Density- in the world setup screen. - Highly Desired Option

Problem: Only other way to do this is to go to the editor - Just make it an option on the world setup screen!!


Gameplay/Balance Tweaks and Features

1) An escort mission for bombing runs.

Problem: It will (hopefully) be somewhat possible to protect your airspace once fighters work how they're supposed to. However, it has remained almost impossible to use bombers with any effect against the AI once they have fighters set up, that is, unless fighters can be used to protect bombers. This is something that should be looked into as many gamers have expressed frustration.

2) Allow Bombers and Fighters to have a random chance of scrambling if they are sitting on an aircraft carrier that is attacked.

Problem: Iron clads taking out a carrier-full of fighters and bombers - need I say more? IRL Carriers are currently the most powerful and effective naval combat vessel on the seas today - but that aside - what fun is it to have a weak, slow, unit, that is almost worthless?

3) Privateer too weak for balance against other ships.

Problem: Simply put, players don't seem to be using them because they are too weak.

3) Nukes must be slightly increased in effectiveness.

Problem: It's driving people crazy, and no, they aren't going to get used to it. As mentioned Cruise Missles do more damage than nukes more times than not, and a group of artillery is actually capable of doing more damage than the nuke itself. Also, nukes are increadibly expensive for their use - the result? People won't build them after long.

Suggested Solution: Increase the chance of military units in blast area of being killed. I would recommend 75% chance for each unit, and 20% for Missles. The Pop damage and pollution currently caused by a nuke is just fine, I think most agree, they just need to have a better chance to kill some units.

4) Allow an army to attack more than once in it's turn.

Problem: With separate units you get to attack 3-4 times, but with an army you can only get one attack which sometimes slows down what would otherwise be a succesful conquest of a city. - Peterk

Suggested Solution: An army should attack as many times as there are units in the army. If you have 3, it attacks three times. - Jason Beaudoin


Bug List


Game Breakers:


Human controlled fighters can't shoot down AI planes. (Covered here)


Possible Breaker:


100 million dollar bug, here - Warning: contents may prove disturbing to some viewers

Corruption, see here and here for details.


Minor


Computers do not respect borders. They leave when you ask, but they come right back in.

Fresh Water is sometimes trapped behind a mountain. Playing on an island and it's not a pretty situation.

Air units can Re-Base outside their area of operation.

Shift-I for worker automation doesn't seem to work.

Civilopedia bug, here

The well known bug of the city advisor screen that refreshes on you after you select a list priority.

Other Bug Threads

There have been many. I am trying to bring all the important stuff under one thread, but these others must be looked at:

Good points, a bit of ranting:
Ten Gameplay Fixes

Another patch thread that got burried: The 1.1 patch list

Keep the ideas comming - and - BUMP this thread often to show your support!

[donarumo]

Some ideas:

Add right mouse context menus for all orders a unit can have - i.e build road to here or build railroad to here

Remember last used Palace type. Mine kept switching back to American. Not big deal but...

Add Unit Stats to right click on city and change production option. Right now you have to zoom to the city and change production to see a quick list of stats. Also, wonders I am building in other cities should show in this menu so we can see if another city will build them significantly faster - maybe show greyed out.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by GreyCloak
First, I like the idea of being able to see all the resources other empires have but I would like to take it a step further. It seems to me that FIRAXIS has already made a tie between resources and the map, i.e. being able to tell you what city resources that you're using are closest too. I hope they can leverage that to give us a resource locator, much like the city locator. They give you a list of resources, organized as strategic, luxory, etc... and you select a specific resource and the map will move to the tile that contains that resource.

Another idea would be for the world map to be rendered in muted dark colours and the resources of that type to be overlayed on the world map in a bright flourescent green. You would then get an immediate understanding of where all the resources of that type are.

[IBNobody]

You already hit on the "hide automated units"/workers suggestion, but here were my others.

1. Problem: Micromanagement of terrain improvements slows down the game (especially the beginning phase).

Solution: Let us tag specific squares for autoworker improvement...kinda like an improvement queue. ("I want these three squares mined and this square irrigated. Go to it!")

2. Problem: It's hard to guess whether or not cities will overlap.

Solution: Replace the 3x3 square used as an index by the settler with the "fat X". Show the "fat X"for all pre-built cities (even if they are only capable of using the 3x3 square grid).

3. Problem: It's hard to guess how productive a city would be if it was located in a given map section.

Solution: Create a "terrain analyzer" that gives the maximum city population as well as the raw food/shields/commerce available for a theoretical city located in that square. (MOM players should know what I mean.)

4. Problem: Selecting "random" opponents causes the computer to select enemies belonging to your global culture.

Solution: Allow an option to turn off this particular Civ3 feature.

- Nobody

[teknokrat]

I want more information to show up on the advisor screens. Especially domestic and foreign ones.

Actual pop sizes, percentages of corruption and waste, number of happy content and sad (get rid of the dumb pictures) etc and be able to sort the list on each column.

Also the foreign advisor should be ablt to tell me everything about a civ, gold, gov type, techs, what they think of other civs. Make getting an embassy actually provide alot of info. also how about if you have a spy it can warn you if a civ is preparing for war with you (or even another civ which you can then warn or trade the information). I really think you should be able to get a lot more infomation on other civs especially if you have embassies and/or spies.

The diplomacy is great but it would be even better if you could trade units. You should also have some way of knowing when your agreements are going to expire on the main civ screen. In fact let the number of turns that an agreement is for be subject to negotiations too. the 20 turns for evrything seems silly.

As others have mentions - make nukes do a lot more damage. Like really huge and make the other civs react credibly to it.

More gov types. Change Communism to Fascism and introduce Socialism - less commerce but citizens more content.

It would be good to be able to right click on a worker and change what it is doing without incurring a penalty.

AND IMPORTANTLY instead of popups each turn use a single window with a list of everything thats happend in that turn with proper hyperlimks to actions. Let me call up this window at anytime to refer to it. Include important events like cities being taken over or razed by other civs (if i have an emabssy with one of the civs). the pop ups are not only irritating but jumping from city to city is also a pain in the neck. it really spoils the fun for me later in the game.

later

[donarumo]

Hope they at least listen to these ideas, some are really good. I wonder how long it'll be before they announce a patch.

Oh, and I did just think of one idea that I would like to see added. There should be some way of viewing only the resources or to somehow highlight them. Maybe it's just a question of enhancing the graphics but sometimes resources will go unseen because they blend into the background.

[Draconus]

I really like all of the suggestions so far I think there great.

I would also like to suggest a few more, and would like to hear what other people think about them.

1) Garrisoned workers reduce pollution in cities: this would allow the player another option to fight pollution. In effect each worker garrisoned in a city would reduce the pollution icons by 2, 3 under democracy since their workers work faster. I think this would be great and allow us a chance to fight the pollution before it gets really out of hand like it does now.

2) Police stations reduce corruption in cities: as every one knows already corruption is way to high so why not allow another way to reduce corruption? I can understand corruption getting higher the farther a city is from its capitol under Despotism, Monarchy and Republic but in a Democracy and Communism this doesn't seem right. Under Communism why not allow garrisoned units also to reduce corruption.

3) Colonies : I really like this idea but I would like to see it expand to Farming and Mining colonies also, or allow me to ship food through out my empire from other cities. I would settle on shipping food I think it would add a new dimension to the game with having a couple cities who produce food for the whole empire.

4) Sea : The way it is now cities based on islands can not compete with a land based city. Give us more options like fishing vessels or deep sea mining ships to increase the sea based Civs chance to fight on a equal level.

Thanks

[Andreiguy]

This was already said in another thread, but it needs to be added here: THE ABILITY TO TRADE/GIVE UNITS IN DIPLOMACY!!! Read that thread for more info.

[Regault]

The ability to play with a Tech Tree like in Civ 1 and 2 instead of this "You must research Horseback Riding before you can research Navigation." monstrosity would be nice.

[Pyrodrew]

The ability to play with a Tech Tree like in Civ 1 and 2 instead of this "You must research Horseback Riding before you can research Navigation." monstrosity

I strongly agree with this, the more restrictions like this that are implemented the less options the player has & more similar each game gets. I loved Civ2's Tech Tree because even of how unrestricted it was. Civ3 is simply 4 small tech trees & very predictable & constrained.

[Yaga]

...which I think are very important:

1. Mutual Protection Pacts:

First, an example: Just had a game where I had Mutual Protection pacts with both Japan and France. Then, France attacked Japan. Since France was the aggressor, I was informed that I had to honor my pact with Japan, and discarded my pact with France. In short, I had no choice. Japan was strategically more important, suppling me with Saltpeter and Iron; economically more important, giving me over 45 gold per turn net for ivory and silk; more important to the happiness of my empire, for I received gems and spice from them; they were Gracious to me; and perhaps most importantly, they were on my home continet and shared an expansive border with me. France, on the other hand, recieved horses from me, for which I got about 12 gold per turn. Since I had mutual protection pacts with both, I should choose which I honor, not the AI choosing simply because Japan was the aggressor.

A second example is seemingly not being able to get rid of a mutual protection pact. I can understand that not honoring a mutual protection pact should piss off the offended Civ greatly, and lower my reputation around the world, but this is much better than, as happened later in the game, having to go to war with the whole of the world because France, having been traunced by the Japanese, was then set upon by every single nation under the sun, all trying to get a piece of the action.

So, in short, there should be an option, when a mutual protection pact is to be enforced, of the Player choosing to honor it or not. If pacts conflict, one's Civ should be given the option of honoring one of the pacts, or activly choosing to remain neutral. (pissing off both Civs, but not necessarily getting dragged into an ever escalaing war) I believe this would solve both these issues. A caveat to this requested feature is to be able to see the Foreign Advisor screen during such a time, so that one has the intelligence to make the decision - to see who has mutual protection pacts with whom, where one is trading, etc.

2. Trade Embargos

There similarly seems to be no way to cancel a trade embargo against you, or cancel one you are participating in until the 20 year turn limit is reached. A number of instances have arisen where my Civ, with copious wealth, would gladly meet just about any price for a Civ with a strategic resource to break its embargo against me and sell me horses, coal, iron, what have you. Similarly Luxuries, as one of the few ways to combat unhappiness and subsequentally corruption, would be an impetus for me to sell my soul (or at least a small city) for such a favor. The AI would have to decide if it was worth it.

I've other, greater feature requests that have been spoken of in other threads, so I'll just mention these as I've not yet seen them spoken of.

Also, if I am mistaken, and there is some way to break these agreements, please let me know; so far neither the manual nor the civ'pedia has been able to show me how to break them.

Thanks,
Yaga

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew
1.More Options for the World Generation

Resources are part of the world just like temperature, water & climate are.

Strategic Resources = Rare Normal Excessive
Luxury Resources = Rare Normal Excessive
Bonus Resources = Rare Normal Excessive

Normal would be leaving them at the levels they are at now.

IMHO anything but 'normal' concentration would spoil a game. too much and there would be no competiton for resources, too little and it would be too arbitrary...

[Dimension]

Some of these features being requested are HUGE gameplay changes that are never going to happen... But let me add my requests for EXTREMELY OBNOXIOUS things that could be easily fixed.

1) Shift-C is the hotkey for Clear Forest and Clear Pollution! Not only that, but it's random what your workers do when you hit Shift-C. If you movie a bunch of workers to a polluted forest and hit Shift-C for all of them, some will clean, and some will chop. It's not even THAT big a deal having the hotkey shared, but at the very least, Clean Pollution should be the default. I don't think you'll hear many people arguing that they often wish to chop down a polluted forest instead of cleaning it.

2) Air units sleep at the end of every turn. If you've got a fleet of carriers in action, it gets really old having to right-click the carrier and wake every unit individually. Land units don't sleep unless you hit (F)ortify. Why aren't air units the same? If Firaxis really thinks it's a good idea to make air units auto-fortify every turn, they need to at least make a right-click option "Wake all units here." (note: I have noticed that sometimes air units only sleep every other turn on carriers)

3) Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't find any gauge of "war weariness." They probably don't intend to make it as easy as saying, "massive disorder in 3 turns if we don't sign a peace treaty," but your Domestic or Military Advisor screen should say something about the effects of current military action on the people. It's pretty dumb having no idea how much war is affecting your people or how much a police station will help.

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by LaRusso
IMHO anything but 'normal' concentration would spoil a game. too much and there would be no competiton for resources, too little and it would be too arbitrary...

I'm content with resources the way they are too. Unfortunately you & I are not all the people. Many have complained about there not being enough resources. And 2nd, if it's just an option it isn't going to hurt anyone & who knows someday you may feel like a game with few luxuries or something. The solution I gave also stops future newbies coming in here to post how there are not enough resources.

[Badtz Maru]

I don't see a reason why you should limit air unit's ability to rebase to cities within their operational range. Because of the more abstract yet realistic way they handle air combat, this makes perfect sense - I just assumed that when I rebased an air unit from one side of my empire to the other, it got there through a multi-legged trip stopping at my cities along the way and/or using in-air refueling. Better than 'In 1951 my bomber flew from Washington to Dallas, in 1952 it flew from Dallas to Seattle, and in 1953 it flew from Seattle to Anchorage, next year it can start flying missions out of Anchorage'.

I've also been having little problem with corruption, but the only cities I bother keeping that are far away from my original empire are ones that exist solely to provide resources or a military base - much like real-life colonies. Britain wouldn't have made much money off of India if it wasn't for the luxury items it was producing.

One tweak I would like to see is to improve the AI of the computer opponent so it doesn't build cities that are certain to be taken by culture. I always end up with way more cities than I wanted, because the computer opponent will put a colony everywhere there is at least two squares of space outside of my borders, even if it's in the heart of my empire. If I wanted a city there I would built it myself. As it is I keep the city and have higher corruption and a city that will never get big enough to be useful to take care of because the other option is worse.

I like that I usually am missing a vital resource or two. Otherwise, I would never initiate wars, which is unrealistic in the broad scope this game encompasses.

[wervdon]

Minor things-
Its near impossible to see culture borders in jungles.

Re: Resources-
You can already change those in the editor if you want to make a new rule set and don't mind the science advisor being messed up.

Bombardment - non-lethal, its been mentioned but its not good. It at least needs a check box in the editor to make a units bombardment lethal.

Cities reverting to their old owners due to nationality - Happens way too much. Your units shouldn't convert. Possibly just go back to the civ2 style partisans springing up due to it. Also a related bug, the manual says making workers uses up foreign nationals first, that doesnt seem to be the case when I tried it.

And I guess Ill throw in my enhancement that I know wont happen but it'd be nice:

Border Patrol Like war mobilization sort of, just make it a global toggle on the military advisor screen that costs more gold the larger your border is. When your using it, other civ's can't enter your borders without declaring war on you. It should be fairly expensive for large empires though, so much so its not worth it in most cases. Shouldn't be too hard to do since total land area is already calculated. Also if the ai really, really wants to cross your border (bad enough that'd he'd of declared war anyways if you told him to leave), he should just declare war over the border patrolling :P

[wervdon]

A few more that occured to me over breakfast

colonies - Should automatically be considered to have a harbor if they are on water. At least then you could setup overseas colonies in that way.

Oil - Should appear in coastal areas, and be allowed as a strategic resource source without a road to it if you have the oil platform improvement in a city whose radius overlaps it.

Global/Empire specific max city/unit limits - Just to make the game playable on huge maps with 16 civs on slower computers. I know if it makes my 1 gig athlon crawl after the world is filled it does it to other machines too. It should of off by default. It'd also be an interesting varient on play to limit each civ to say 7 cities or something (it'd disallow building cities only not conquering). I wouldn't put this in the game itself but in the editor as a general rule setting that can be changed for scenarios.

[teknokrat]

Can we have specific figures for how much a courthouse reduces corruption. What is the point of not providing figures for this. Same thing for war weariness. It is a pain in the neck building improvements only to find that they have had no effect. This should not happen in a strategy game.

[hoevenpe]

I would like to see the following additional things:


Being able to change wonders from small to large, especially the Manhattan project! I hate this large wonder!! There is no point in building it myself, because everybody can nuke me then.


More use for Aircraft Carrier battle groups, being able to add subs and fighter patrols to create formidable floating armies.


More CIVS...

I want to play 32 civs at the same time

Spanish, Mongols, Dutch, Portugese, Australians, Brazilians...
Cubans, Iraqi's, Serbs and Afghans ??

Pleeaaazzzeee....

[MKSheppard]

------------------STUFF FIRAXIS CAN DO------------------------------------

Firaxis Idea 1). Rework the Firaxis-supplied editor to allow you to ADD new
types of units, etc instead of simply RENAMING them, because that
was a bad design decision of Civ 2, limiting it to just X number
of units, and this will make it easier for you to focus on quashing
genuine bugs instead of catering to the demands of technopiles like
me as shown in the next part.

Firaxis Idea 2). If it's not already in the game, add a new unit tag for nuclear
powered units, indicating that they have a 50/50 chance of irraddating
the square when destroyed. Also this tag, allows a new diplomacy option
to be created......for example: New Zealand in real life, does not like
US Navy Nuclear-powered ships/boats to be in her territorial waters....
make a "non-right of passage for Nuclear-powered craft" diplomacy option...


Firaxis Idea 3). Start fixing some of the niggling bugs in the game,
concerning Culture, Combat (how a spearman defeats the USS Iowa),
and Corruption.

Firaxis Idea 4). Completely rework the entire Naval game, adding
a new field for naval units, determining how many turns they can
go before having to stop at a coastal city for refuelling......of couse, sailing ships and Nuclear powered vessels wouldn't
have to refuel in harbors.....this would simulate the need by
the British empire for very long range light cruisers as well as
a multitude of small coaling stations all over the world.

[Trachmyr]

Okay, I'll throw my hat in the ring:

1. AIRBASES! I don't know why this terrain improvement was dropped.

2. Nuke Subs/ Carriers should be able to carry cruise missiles. So a "Can carry Cruise Missiles" is a needed tag in the editor.

3. Air range should be editable above "8" with the editor

4. Corruption fix: Add "Reduces Corruption" to police stations, AND if the city is "connected" (road/harbor/airport) it has a max. cap for corruption based on goverment (90% Anarchy, 80% despotism, 70% Monarchy/Communism, 60% Repunlic, 50% Democracy)... it would be nice if this cap was a seperate entry for the editor.

5. Border Fix: If you just kicked units out of your territory (The option "Leave or we'll declare war should be available on the second turn a unit is witin your borders after you've asked them to leave) they are sent back to THEIR territory (if they have any), and if they try to enter within the next 20 (# can be changed) turns they MUST declare war first. New Cities can NOT be built if it would alter another civ's borders unless you are at war. This will fix a lot of issues with the AI use of settlers.

6. Make sure that theroy of evolution gives 2 techs even if that means they must come from the modern era.

7. Nukes should kill all units at ground zero unless they are in a city... 80% chance for death in a town, 65% in a city, 50% in a metropolis.

8. I STRONGLY DISAGREE with CHANGING the RE-BASE command as mentioned above, unless it is to require an airport if outside the plane's zone of operation.

9. An ability in the editor to allow a city improvement/wonder/tech to remove the need for a particular strategic resource. (i.e., Synthetic Fossil Fuels = No more need for oil)

10. Specialists (Tax collectors and Scientists) desperately need to have improved effect, say +3 Tax or +3 Science.

11. Fix the annoying bug of naval vessels using the goto command to auto attack (and declare war on) subs... give us a pop-up!

12. When you set a worker to CLEAN POLLUTION ONLY, allow it to retain those orders even if there is no pollution at the momment... or perhaps make that a seperate command.


Well, those are my main points.

[Trachmyr]

*bump*

[adaMada]

I'm way to tired to reply right now (it's 1 AM here :-D), but I'll put my comments in tomorrow. Until then, I've started a poll on the stack-move thing, it's at:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...963#post593066

As of now, only one person has said that they don't want to see it in the game in some form. Outside of this poll, I have not heard anyone say they feel this way.

Again, will try to help with keeping this bumped and will put what I think in tomorrow (or at a more reasonable time today, i guess ).

-- adaMada

[Timeline]

Okay, I am going to remove the bug list section of this thread, since there is already a detailed list here.

I do hope Firaxis will look at the other requests here though . . .

[adaMada]

*bump*

Will try to actually read this entire thread and post my comments sometime soon .

-- adaMada

[adaMada]

*bump*