Rule Changes and Bugs

mmike87 · November 12, 2001, 12:40

Overall, I like Civ3 so far, but there are some serious gameplay issues. I used the editor to make a few changes, and was wondering what people think. I'm sure others have done the same.

1) Reduced war weariness a little bit. Since I seems to be attacked so much it seemed unfair to penalize me when I was invaded. It's still there, just a bit easier to manager.
2) Made Iron and Horses visible at the start of the game. You still need Horseback Riding and Ironworking to do anything with them, however. Why? It seems that there is a bug were if you discover a tech via a Village grant (enter the little native village and they give you a tech) that the resource display event does not trigger. I was granted IW and HBR from a village, and no horses or iron were visible on the map. I traded maps with all known civs and scoured the map for iron and horses and could fine none, anywhere.
3) Made Iron and Horses a bit more common. Come on - neither Iron nor Horses are this rare. Not having one is a MAJOR issue. Another solution to this would be this: Having a strategic resource in your control lets you build these unit cheaper and faster. Not having the resource makes building these units slower and more expensive. Perhaps simulating the costs of buying on the open market. This way, if you did not have horses, etc. you would not be 100% out of the game.

In one game, I had no horses, and no one would give me any, regardless of what I offered. When I was attacked at the far end of my nation, my infantry were too slow to respond in re-inforcing my troops, and 1/3 of my continent was overrun quickly. Had I cavalry, I would have been able to reinforce these areas quickly and I am confident that I could have repelled the invasion.

Items like Uranium should be rare, just as in real life. But Iron and Horses simply are not in any way rare.

Another solution to the "No Horses" problem is to make roads better able to move infantry a bit faster. It's not that I need horses, but I do need an efficient way to move people if I do not have them.

Thoughts?

Gaius Marius · November 12, 2001, 12:46

About horses, the entire western hemisphere was w/o them for most of the civilized era, as was, at least initially, most of Africa and Asia. However, horses can be bred, and once you have them, you should never lose them.

mmike87 · November 12, 2001, 12:57

True, and the net effect of this was that Europe relatively easily conquered the new world. Although this may have been accurate, it does not make for a very fun game.

This being said, the fact that horse can be bred should almost make them NOT a strategic resource. Native Americans easily captured horses and bred them on their own, essentially creating their own strategic resource. One horses are introduced onto a continent they should become a natural occurance.

I vote for Horses NOT being a strategic resouce at all, then.