You know what's missing from diplomacy?

[Ludwig]

I am really very pleased with CivIII.

I prefer the new combat system.

I think the resource system is just peachy and even think its occasional rampant unfairness is good.

I like the AI aggressive and expansionist.

You know what's missing? What I can't understand?

Simple: Why did they dummy up my military allies all over again?

After playing SMAC I was psyched to play a Civ game where you could tell your AI ally, "Focus your attack on New Ngome".

Where are they hiding the ability to use the diplomacy screen to coordinate attacks? If they could have it in SMAC, why can't they have it here? Did they forget those lines of code?

And don't tell me that "the entire AI is more complex now, so they had to sacrafice this bit of behavior blah blah blah". If they can make the AI understand how to be my ally, they can make him understand how to find a city and attack it if I ask him to - and if it's in his interest to do so.

[Auslander]

Agreed. Why would they leave this out?

[Kc7mxo]

While I only played smac half way up the difficulty levels, i never had an ai who was any good at "focusing" his attack. I'd say attack that city, and they'd bumble around in my territory.