Desires For Future Civ3 Patches (A thread saving thread)

[TechWins]

Please post all ideas or changes you would like to see in future Civ3 patches, but please remember to follow these four rules.
1) Everybody lists there idea as either an 'editor idea', a 'general idea', or a 'bug fix idea' for me to see clearly. Editor idea would pertain to all ideas that relate to the editor. General idea would be pretty much any other idea, most likely game issues.
2) Try not to list an idea that has already been mentioned or implemented into the game.
3) When posting ideas make sure they are numbered, so I can see when a new idea begins and when an idea ends easily.
4) Report if the ideas I list on the Reference Post (my first post) should be included/changed or not and be sure to list reasons why.

General Ideas and Changes

Advisor Screens
1-1-1) Being able to see the resources you can trade for (NOT ‘with’). For example, I am the French and I am able to trade with the Romans, who have an extra iron resource and one spice resource. Even if I did have an iron resource, the iron resource for the Romans should show up under resources they can trade. The spice should also fall under the category of resources the Romans can trade. These two categories would be included in the trade advisor in an appropriate spot. This would prevent me from having to go to diplomatic relations with another Civ to see if they have a resource I am looking for. However, the ability to see what resources the other Civ has available should only become available once you have an embassy established with them. Also, regardless of whether or not you have a trade route established with the Civ you should be able to see what resources they have available, of course you have to have an embassy established with them first. The bonus for this is that you don’t have to enter diplomatic negotiations with other Civs to see if they have a certain resource or not.
1-2-2) Show what the diplomatic reputation is of your Civ, and also if it is in jeopardy of being tarnished. Such as this was done with Civ2.
1-3-3) When proposing a deal with the AI the advisor screen should give more info than “this deal is probably acceptable”. Such info as, “this Civ would be very grateful for this deal” or “this mainly favors your Civ, but it is still acceptable” would be helpful.
1-4-4) Include a city improvement list for the whole nation; this should probably be included in the Trade Advisor screen. An example, 17 Marketplaces cost 17 gold, 9 Barracks cost 9 gold, etc… (again, ala Civ2).
1-5-5) More accurate description of your technology stance. Even though a Civ may have researched deep into the Modern Age, but is missing a few ‘useless’ technologies in the Industrial Era that Civ will be considered “backwards”.
1-6-6) Make it possible to see all 16 Civs in the Foreign Advisor screen.
1-7-7) The ability to see all trade/diplomatic agreements with another Civ.
1-8-8) A reminder for when your 20 year trade deal ends.
1-9-9) Make access to Demographics available from the Domestic Advisor Screen. In Demographics include links on the categories to what that category’s description is. Meaning give the definition to “Military Service” and how it relates to the game.
1-10-10) In Domestic Advisor show how many cities you have total.
1-11-11) In Military Advisor show what units have been killed, when each unit was killed, and how many of each unit have been killed (ala Civ2).

AI
2-1-12) AI Civs aren’t keen to keep peace treaties, nor are they punished for breaking a peace treaty.
2-2-13) The AI should be more inclined to accept trades that benefit themselves primarily. The AI should almost always accept a trade of: AI receives 1 gems and 1 spices and only gives 1 incense away.
2-3-14) When the AI is begging for peace with you, the AI should not propose you a deal for your acceptance, yet the AI should ask “What terms would be acceptable for you for the two of us to come to peace” or something to that effect.
2-4-15) The AI needs to respect other Civ’s borders more; not to mention the AI needs not to plop a city in the middle of your empire.
2-5-16) The AI needs a better understanding of what it is “beaten”. If the AI is completely outmatched it needs to back down.
2-6-17) If the AI is presented with a fantastic offer in a trade, but is required to give up a city, the AI shouldn’t be so utterly repulsed by the idea.
2-7-18) Even though a lot of expansion provides the AI well in the long run, investing more time into building improvements and wonders would also provide very useful.

Barbarians
3-1-19) If Barbarians loot a city completely, then the city should turn into an encampment.
3-2-20) Barbarians should stay somewhat on pace with the advancement of units instead of only having warrior, horsemen, and galley available to them throughout the whole game. Basically include more units for the Barbarians, such as also having long bowmen, cavalry (ala Civ2). Also, Barbarians need to stay competitive longer, hopefully this idea will help that out.

City Screen and City Screen Options
4-1-21) If it is determined that a unit is obsolete (not even relatively close in terms of value) it should be completely removed from the build queue. Of course this should be made as an option in ‘preferences’.
4-2-22) An alternative unit for drafting in the modern age than Swordsmen. Swordsmen may be cheap to build, but they are way too weak for the modern age.
4-3-23) Include the atrocity of ‘killing citizens’ when a city is already under your control or becomes under your control.
4-4-24) Don’t allow for building production swapping. A 50% shield cost should take place when a unit in production is swapped to a wonder or improvement, an improvement is swapped to a unit or wonder, or a wonder is swapped to a unit or improvement. Basically the same way Civ2 handled this; in that only do this at the higher levels, Regent and above.
4-5-25) The Civilopedia should be accessible from the City Screen, particularly when choosing units/improvements to build.

Combat
5-1-26) Increase the difficulty to perform blitzkrieg attacks on the AI. Making it take two turns for newly captured cities’ roads/railroads to give their bonus. Meaning that if England were to capture Rome in year 2000ad, then all of the roads/railroads in the city radius wouldn’t give off their movement (and possibly trade, as well) bonus until two turns later (2002ad).
5-2-27) Decrease the chance for an obsolete unit to defeat a modern unit (i.e. a warrior should NOT be able to beat an armor, maybe even ever). If it must done revamp the whole combat system, so it is more like Civ 2’s. For example, unit rank should increase attack and/or defense instead of hit points. Add a new category called firepower. Hit points and firepower should act like they did in Civ 2; have them pertain to the unit’s age (i.e. warrior 1hp & 1fp, battleship 4hp & 4fp.
5-3-28) Increase the stats for naval units considerably, especially movement rates.
5-4-29) Increase the stats for air units, and give air units a special advantage over naval units, just like this was present in Civ 2.
5-5-30) When a unit is bombarding another unit give the bombarding unit a chance to defeat the opposing unit completely. Increase the chance of bombarding killing a unit for the more advanced the unit. Also, air units should have the best chance to kill an opposing unit completely when bombarding.

Culture
6-1-31) When building a colony it should automatically give off a 1-tile culture border, basically meaning the square that the colony is built in. However, colony borders should not be able to ever expand.
6-2-32) When a city defects culturally all military units should automatically defect to your nearest city, and you should be made aware of what city the units went to.

Diplomacy
7-1-33) Increase the value for embassies, adding the latter part of suggestion # 1-1-1 could do this.
7-2-34) Allow Civs to pay other Civs to build the other Civs unique unit for certain amount of money. For example, the Germans could pay the Americans 100 gold, so they could build four F-15s. However, this should only be allowed between Civs if they are alliances. Maybe a set number of gold should be set for each unique unit; F-15 would be worth 25 gold, Jaguar Warrior would be worth 5 gold, etc…
7-3-35) If a Civ is allied with another Civ they should automatically have a right of passage deal, as well.
7-4-36) Before an opposing nation signs a military alliance against you (except if a nation is being offered a military alliance), they should first give you an ultimatum.
7-5-37) Another stretch here but having negotiations with more than one party would be great. This would allow for an outsider of a war to bring two Civs and the outsider ALL to peace. To elaborate on this, it would be called an External Peace Pact.
7-6-38) Allow for ‘concrete’ alliances; currently alliances only apply to war. Concrete alliances would include a Mutual Protection Pact and a Right of Passage Pact. Concrete alliances could be cancelled peacefully after 40 turns.
7-7-39) Give the ability to fluctuate the amount of turns a deal will stay in tact. However, only include this ability if the AI will also be able to use this feature.
7-8-40) Make it possible to trade food between your own cities.
7-9-41) Allow for trading of military units with other Civs.
7-10-42) Include an option that lets you ask the AI to offer a peace agreement. Now this is already an option, but it is only an option in an aggressive way; a peaceful option for this needs to be included, as well.

Interface and Unit Commands
8-1-43) Include a popup or a special signal when a city is “about” to revolt. Note that “about” is in quotation marks because this is different from “when”. This will help the player determine if he/she needs to pay closer attention to that city (i.e. increase happiness in the city somehow).
8-2-44) Create a sentry command – allowing the user to skip a unit’s turn, but if the user later on in that same turn decides he/she wants to use that particular unit he/she is allowed to. It should be noted that the unit would not become ‘active’ (not just for that initial turn) until the user deactivates the sentry command on the unit or when that unit sights an enemy unit.
8-3-45) Give Workers the ability to build canals. Canals will allow for ships to pass through them and give off a +1 trade bonus. A canal shouldn’t be able to connect with another canal. Meaning that a canal can only be built one tile in a row; this will prevent unrealistically, large canals being built. Also, canals should take a hefty amount of time to build, in fact canals should take the longest time to complete out of all the terrain improvements, and shouldn’t come available for building until sometime in the Industrial Era.
8-4-46) Under ‘Contact Governor’ there should be an option that automatically changes all selections of “This City” or “This Continent” to “All Cities”. This will prevent from having to individually click every ‘drop down’ to “All Cities”.
8-5-47) Implement a “Wake All” command; that way it is easy to wake up a large stack of units simultaneously.
8-6-48) When pointing your mouse cursor to “Upgrade Unit” information on how much it will cost to upgrade that unit should appear in a balloon even before you decide to upgrade the unit. This will allow it so you don’t have to click on “Upgrade Unit” first to see how much the unit will cost to upgrade.

Improvements and Wonders
9-1-47) Ocean should also be considered the required water needed to build Nuclear Power Plants and Hydro Plants.
9-2-48) Include a modern coastal fortress, along with the regular coastal fortress, that way it would be possible to attack modern naval units with the fortress. If a modern coastal fortress isn’t to be added, then increase the power for coastal fortress, that way they will be more effective.
9-3-49) A certain wonder (Apollo?) should reveal the whole map, such as this occurred in Civ2.

Other
10-1-50) Add more zoom levels, for both the editor and regular game.
10-2-51) Quite a stretch with this one, but including PBEM and Hotseat multiplayer would be very nice.
10-3-52) Reduce late game tedium; incorporating some of the ideas/changes mentioned could possibly do just that.
10-4-53) In the Palace View make it possible to replace an already placed structure. If I want to change the Far East statue for a Native American statue I should be allowed to. Include more Palace placements, because many times Palace placements will run out. Give an option to turn off the Palace completely; such as how this was available in Civ 2.
10-5-54) Provide the capabilities for one to save an end game replay, so that they may view it again.
10-6-55) Improve the model for Diplomatic Victory. Each Civ is allocated a certain number of vote points, which is determined by population and culture. In order to win you should need 2/3 votes. Basically make the model something similar to how SMAC ran the model.
10-7-56) When your capitol is overtaken civil war should have a chance of occurrence, corruption should run rampant, and the Palace of a capitol should have to be rebuilt and not automatically relocated for free.
10-8-57) When a city is overtaken it should be possible to loot more from the city than just money, also include technologies, maps, communications with other Civs, etc… with looting.
10-9-58) Include a very small random chance of a colony turning into a city. This would increase the importance of colonies, while also making colonies more realistic. Many times colonies turned into cities; United States are an example of that.
10-10-59) Even after when the spaceship is built it should not automatically launch, yet allow for the user to do it himself/herself, because some may want to wait a few turns to launch the spaceship after its completion.
10-11-60) Include a spy missions of sabotaging spaceship production, planting nuclear device, and planting a disease, and also make spy missions less expensive.
10-12-61) Instead of having to delete the whole High Scores file to delete game high scores allow for each game high score to be deleted manually and also have an option of deleting the whole High Scores file.
10-13-62) Decrease the occurrences of pollution, as well as, include an option to completely turn off pollution in the game.
10-14-63) Make Civ3 playable on more computers; such as monitors with only the ability of a 800x600 screen resolution, but don’t make the game any less enjoyable for those who can already play the game with their computer.
10-15-64) Include more city names, because it is very silly seeing the city name of Berlin written four different ways.
10-17-65) When a city is razed show some animation.
10-18-66) Continue to solve the overabundance of corruption.

Technology Tree
11-1-67) Having to complete most of the technologies in era really decreases a lot of strategy within the tech tree. Not to mention it doesn’t provide much separation between Civs. The proposal for this is to include less era-advancing requirement techs.
11-2-68) The discovery of Satellite should make the whole map completely revealed, not to mention it should continuously update your map.

Units
12-1-69) Include the ability to move stacks of units; this addition is the most vital! This would prevent tedious clicking by not having to move each unit individually.
12-2-70) Settlers should not be able to be created from foreign nationals, because there are many ‘cheap’ strategies that go along with it. If foreign nationals are taken away from the city population when a settler is built, then the settler should be a foreign national. If nationals are taken away from the city population when a settler is built, then the settler should be a national.
12-3-71) Scouts should have a movement rate of 1 and should see all terrain as road. Explorers should have a movement rate of 2 and should see all terrain as road. Explorers, also, should become available with Map Making, because Explorers become far too worthless by the time Navigation is researched.
12-4-72) Allow for bombing from airplanes to sink ships.
12-5-73) Unique units should be allowed to upgrade to more advanced units, but it should not be possible to upgrade to a unique unit.
12-6-74) All Civs should be able to build all regular units, even if a Civ has the unique unit for a regular unit. For instance, the Chinese may have the Rider available for building, so the Knight should also be available for constructing.
12-7-75) Older infantry, such as Swordsmen, should be upgradeable to Riflemen.

Editor Ideas and Changes

13-1-76) Making it possible to add items, such as units/Civs/terrain/technologies.
13-2-77) Make all flags available for city improvements also available to wonders, and small wonders. That way it is possible to create a small wonder that gives +1 trade to all city squares and other matches.
13-3-78) An option to where a certain form of government CAN’T build a specific building, wonder, small wonder, or unit.
13-4-79) An option where certain buildings, wonders, or small wonders can be set as a requirement for building a unit.
13-5-80) Make it possible for Civ-specific starting locations when creating a map.
13-6-81) Allow for advanced era technologies to have a prerequisite of an older era technology, and so the older era doesn’t have to be a required tech to advance in order to move on to the next era of technologies or moved to the advanced era. An example of this would be as follows: Feudalism should have a prerequisite of Monarchy, but in order to do that Monarchy would either have to be put in the Middle Ages era or make it become a required tech to advance to the Middle Ages, which isn’t the same thing as a perquisite for one single technology. Overall, just make technology tree editing more flexible.
13-7-82) Give opportunities for changing the effects of Nuclear Bombs.
13-8-83) Decide what units can be destroyed from bombing. An example of this would be to have submarines not destroyable by bombing, but to have battleships destroyable by bombing.
13-9-84) Include more options for units available to the Barbarians instead of just 2 land options and 1 sea option.

Bug Fixing Ideas

14-1-85) Fix the unlimited artillery range bug.
14-2-86) When already in the middle of researching a technology and you decide to change it you should be prompted with a message of “Are you sure want to change research; you will lose all of your research on your current research project” or something to that effect.
14-3-87) Fix the bug when trading luxuries. Sometimes a deal may be “acceptable” for the AI, but as soon as you add a luxury resource to that deal it then no longer becomes “acceptable” for the AI. Again, this isn’t a regular occurrence, yet a once in a while occasion.
14-4-88) The bug for drafting units need to be fixed. The draft button in the city screen appears sporadically, and sometimes when it does appear it won’t function properly.

[dexters]

I'd like to see an improved editor that allows us to place units/cities.

[Skanky Burns]

Good idea TechWins

* Id like the ability to move stacks of units around (try moving 50 tanks to the front, and you will understand what i mean )
* Id like obsolete units (longbowmen, etc) to be removed from the build list when other units have a higher attack value)
* Nuclear power plants and Hydro plants need water to build. The ocean doesnt count. It should.

Thats all i can think of for now.
Just a humble suggestion, TechWins. If you could go through all the suggestions and put them in your post at the top, it would help everyone involved, at the measly cost of you having to do a lot of work

[Malleus]

hotseat HOTSEAT

This is what I bought the game for. Then I find out no MP. Yes, it's my bad for not reading the box more carefully, but I was told there would be MP a while back and didn't bother to check in the month prior to release.
I don't care about any MP but hotseat.

K

[korn469]

three things (for now)

1) make all options in the city improvements tab open to buildings wonders, and small wonders, so if i want to create a small that gives +1 trade to all city squares, or a wonder that require two resources in its city radius that would be possible

2) an option where a certain form of government Can't build a specific building, wonder, or small wonder

3) an option where a certain building, wonder, or small wonder can be set as a requirement for building a unit

[Smash]

an embassy that actually shows something so I don't have to contact just to see who has what and so forth.

[simwiz2]

1) A solution/option to stop civilians from carving up armies.

2)Give coastal forts a range of 2, or maybe upgrade to a modern coastal artillery emplacement. that way they can fight battleships

3)Make borders fit the coast, so the AI cant settle those 1x1 coastal openings (like how close borders join together, so should borders join with coast 1 tile away)

4)Fix the unlimited artilley range bug, sure if you dont like it dont use it, but i hate to think what people are going to do with that when mp comes out

5)Taking out obsolete units, more zoom levels, and stack movement would also be nice

6)Make it take 1 turn for roads/RR's in newly captured cities to become usable. Right now its too easy to blitz the AI

7)And of course for the editor: civ-specific starting locations

[daFrog]

Here is one that I never saw.

Have a popup when the city is about to revolt.

I am sure it is deliberate, and I know that if I was really careful about it, I can spot them. I just want to enjoy my game instead of spending hours looking for stuff like that.

It is supposed to be fun and I get my fun from the aspects of the game that are a mental challenge, not just mindless repitition of mundane tasks!

So whats wrong with the idea the city governor might actually have an idea what is going on in his city and tell me when they get annoyed?

One other thing I did see mentioned that I support strongly is governor scripting. Or at the very least, an interface that lets you prioritze production with a numeric value and have several different versions that you can switch between.
Lets face it, you would have to be crazy to let them handle things right now...

[Herder]

Nice thread Techwins! You sure you closed all your parentheses by the way?

Item #4 is doable already, hit F2 (trade screen). There is a table that lists who and what you can trade with.


Here are some improvements that I think are needed in a patch. Noticed, I said needed because without them, the game becomes unplayable for me.

-Sentry Command
-Either a repeat last order command or moving in stacks. Late game tedium is a killer and physically a drag.

Other than that, I am still waiting for the patch. Hopefully they addressed late game tedium without mentioning it in the text somehow.

[Jrad]

The Foreign Ministry:

1. Doesn't give note of all Civs
2. Doesn't tell you updates of technology...
3. Doesn't tell you current gold trades

These present major problems

If you had an embassy in Civ II, you could fall behind in technology and know you fell behind, but in Civ 3, there is a demand that you are vigilant, as it is tougher to acquire other civilizations technology-and it is also tougher to know what the civs are researching-something should be put in the Esponage Missions or something, as this presents a major problem, for me anyway...

Excuse me? Warrior vs. F-15? OVERKILL...Automatically kill the warrior...not just injury...

I don't think such units should be able to survive attacks, let alone sometimes suffer only partial damage...

On the foreign minister screen, it is impossible to tell what nations your allied with outside of that screen without contacting them. Often I'd sign an alliance, forget it, look to the screen if I'm allied, only to break this alliance...

If this can't be addressed, how about replacing destroyed nations with excess nations? What's the sense in the wasted space?

Worker trading doesn't work...usually. It is rare that captured workers are mentioned in negotiations (or availible)...

You shouldn't be able to make settlers with foreign nationals-they come out as barbarian settlers. I haven't build a city with these, but an easy way to get rid of a foreign population is building settlers and then rebuilding the city with these...Workers made should be FOREIGN workers, not barbarian/glitch workers, but I think it should be possible...

Enemy civs don't like to keep peace treaties, and don't seem to punish themselves for breaking them, even at low levels. (AKA, if a civ burns down one of your cities, you should be able to do the same to them without consequence...)

"Mercenaries"-Throughout history, civs have fought other civs battles-more than alliances. For a price and an agreement, a civ can give another civ an ability to build unique weapons, but limiting the amount build and where-Like the Americans pay the Persians 100 gold for the ability to build two "Immortal Mercenaries". Germany pays America x gold per unit to get to build F-15s to use against the Russians.

F-16s are being used in Israel right now...

Units should be required to have some sort of access to the resource required to build them. Lets say your town is blocked on all sides, and you have a Musketman in it. How does that Musketman still repair if in theory it should have only limited saltpeter? Or you just do battle with a horseman-it is weakened in strength-lets presume that this horseman is actually many individual horsemen into a substancial army unit-in battle, some horses die. By fortifying it away from supplies of horses, how can the dead horses be replaced?

I think Wines + Gems for an Incense is more than equitable for the AI-2 happy for the price of one, and the AI has extras of that one-but the AI often disagrees...

Do Expansionist civilizations have any benifits whatsoever after the Ancient Age? This makes certain civs at a disadvantage in other ages...Americans get too powerful in the Ancient times, which isn't historical, only to lag for the rest of the game...It should be the empires like Rome, Babylon, Persia, etc. that are expansionist as they would get an early advantage, as they probably should, rather than America and England getting early advantages. I know, this could be addressed without a patch...

How about when tribes want to renegotiate peace and it is unacceptable to you, you go immediately to the bargaining table rather than cancelling all deals? I found out my reputation got tarnished breaking a few deals accidentally...

What's the point of Swordsmen in the Modern Age again? There is a lack of cheap infantry in the modern age-these are cheap, but way way way too weak. And frankly, there should be an alternative to drafting. Swordsmen isn't a good alternative...

How can you be allied with a country without a right of passage? IE: How can either fight through the territory?

I don't think it is right that nations who are friendly though untrustworthy simply attack you as an alliance-I think there should be negotiation before this happens, so nations can sell out to the highest bidder (IE: We're thinking of allying with your nation against you because they are offering us X and Y. If you offer Z and A, we will remain neutral, or if you void the B or C agreement, then we will remain neutral).

If both sides mutually want to bury an agreement before 20 turns is up, they should be allowed to do so, with both parties consent.

Depopulation of cities should be possible-not burning the cities, but killing the citizens once you take the city (Who needs 18 Persians if you are Babylonian? If its secure, there should be an option of depopulating aside from annoying starvation to a certain number to make control easier...)

Negotiations with more than one party, IE:

We want A to make peace with B so we can have a secure and undivided front against C...Almost like both sides are bribed by the outsider to stop fighting...

REVEAL MAP? Impossible at present.

Neutrality pacts-If A has a Mut. Def. Pact with B, and C attacks B, A wishes to remain neutral, the Mutual Defense pact should read simply which nations it applies to and which it doesn't. Too easy? Let AI be demanding with this too, like "You don't want to attack C? Give us X or Y then for this treaty."

External Alliance Security Pact: Signed to prevent nations from attacking other nations/cities.

If I were the Japanese, and I just gave my maps to the Chinese, I'd be pretty annoyed if they sold my maps to the Zulu without my permission...some sort of treaty, anyone?

Same with technology. Who says I want my research sold to another nation? How about somehow securing it without selling it to everyone else first?

How can you continue to build, lets say Pikemen, if your iron resources were taken away? Game should force this shut.

A cheap way to save up for a wonder is to build a palace in preparation...this should definately be addressed as to preventing Palace-to-wonder switching, as I often do this.

Palace Edit: Lets say you build a part of the Palace you want changed? Rather than upgrade on a turn, how about rebuilding a section? I might have overlooked this, it might be there...

Individual improvement pillage: Lets say I want to capture a city and starve it out, but when I get it, I want the roads intact...how about an option just to destroy individual improvements?

Each city stores X amount of gold, replenished after every turn. If X gold is gone, barbarians hold city until they can do something-That way, a 1 city on the other side of the world doesn't lose 4000 gold when there is a massive barbarian uprising that I'm not prepared for...Turn the city into another camp for X turns or something...

[Skanky Burns]

Heres just a short one:

* Colonies should have a size 1 cultural border. This is to prevent another civ from stealing your colony, and actually make them worth building.

[Jon Miller]

see the bug I listed

basically when I was in the science advisor screen my tech accidently got changed and I lost the 27 turns I had spent on it and had 32 turns to go again

even just something like

"would you like to change the tech you are learning?"

would be helpful

Jon Miller

[TechWins]

*The post I make here will be done throughout the thread and will primarliy be for my purposes. When I mention the Reference Post I'm referring to my first post on the thread*

The Reference Post has been updated past this point.

[Skanky Burns]

Good work TechWins

General Ideas
Edit to 31) A colony should have a size 1 cultural border ie: just the square it is in.

32) Allow us to save our end-of-game replays, and play them again

[siredgar]

From a previous post I made in the "Stop the America-bashing!" thread:

Time-triggers

It would be great if Civilization III could have time-triggers that allow Civs like the Americans to "emerge" after a certain point in history or an event (like a certain civilization advance).

For example, the English civilization falls into disarray after its capital is conquered by the Russians. So, a few cities declare independence and change their city names to American ones.

This would be kind of like in Civilization II. Has anyone seen this happen in Civilization III yet? I don't think it does any more.

Also, in Civilization II new Civs would emerge when a Civ was destroyed. These would catch up very quickly, too. This could be a way to introduce Civs like the Americans in the latter part of the game. This doesn't happen either does it?

[Master2000]

About the sentry command: A sentry unit should become active at once when an enemy unit (nation in war or babarian) are in sight.

[Raleigh]

If I missed any of these in the patch update, I apologize, I did read it and the posts above.

Bug:

Fix coastal fortresses. As far as I can tell they don't protect the city very well (aren't they supposed to protect it against bombardment?)

?Bug with trading luxuries where once you have a great deal, either one the computer is close to accepting or one the computer will accept and you throw in a luxury and it kills the deal! No kidding!


General:

Tell you when your 20 year trade treaties expire.

Agree with Pressure Allies to Cease Fire With Enemies Option.

Tell you what your reputation is and when you threaten to ruin it.

Agree with Sentry.

Allow terraforming.

Better global warming indicators, also explaining how much pollution you need to trigger it, and whether that needs to be domestic pollution like civ2 or worldwide pollution.

Reform voting of UN MOO2/SMAC style where everyone gets votes based on population and/or culture, etc. and you need 2/3 vote of ALL votes to win.

[Kaak]

I can't but help to laugh at the humour in this situation. Right there on page 1 is a thread about ideas for future patches, yet you still found the need to post your thread about ideas for future patches.

Really, the only humor I see in the situation is that you jumped to conclusions about the situation. I did not see the post ON THE FIRST PAGE because I did not look at any of the posts on the first page. As this is finals week, and my time on the boards is somewhere inbetween non-existant and exponentially small, I came to the forums, immediately read some of the patch comments and then clicked on post new topic.

btw, do you know what they say about assuming?

That said, i'll repost my ideas:

1. My largest concern is that you must complete all (or MOST is probably better) of the techs in a given age before progressing. I really feel this is a great limitor of strategy ina a strategy game.

2. Another important point is Capitols. This needs to be changed, without question. The civ2 capital system is perfect in my opinion. When your capital is taken, a couple of things should happen! First, corruption should run rampant through your empire. Secondly, You should have a chance of civil war, just like civ2. Finally, capitals should have to be rebuilt, not instantly relocated for free. Here, it would be important to be able to rush build though.

3. Finally, Tech should be aquired from taking an enemy city. NOT ONLY TECH, but one should have the option to take either tech, or maps. REALISTICALLY, if an enemy city was assimilated, there would be a good chance you would learn SOMETHING from it. Tech, or maybe atleast REGIONAL maps, similar to those gotten from huts.

All in all, great job! much more encompassing than expected! I do hope you consider what I say though, as I feel it would greatly add to the STRATEGY which should be required for such a STRATEGY game...

Thanks!

[Moraelin]

OK, off the top of my head:

1) Colonies should really be treated as OUTPOSTS. (If you remember those from Colonization and stuff.) They should get a border around that one square they occupy, but not a full 3x3 zone like cities. Taking someone else's colony could be either a slow cultural take-over, or just sending an army to storm it, but either way it shouldn't happen instantly when someone builds a city nearby.

2) Said Colonies/Outposts should be able to grow into full size cities, given enough time. (A lot of the modern day cities evolved from small resource colonies.) Once grown into a city, of course, they could start getting buildings, culture and everything else.

3) Give me an automate button for explorers and scouts. I've tried that in the editor (yep, it IS possible), and it takes so much of the tedium out of early exploring, that it actually gives expansionist civilizations a good advantage. Just make a few scouts, set them on automatic, and voila, you can concentrate on your cities while they discover the map for you. (And since they don't have the brains to run from barbarians when on automatic, that automate button doesn't even really unbalance the game or anything. You could do far better if you moved them by hand, but it's not as convenient.)

4) Whole city defections should be far more rare, and they should happen only with a fight. I.e., those civilians would have to actually fight my armies stationed there, resulting in loss of population and damage to the city improvements. It should also happen over several turns, giving me a chance to react.

5) _However_ it should be possible that, instead of a full city defection, 1 point of population defects and moves to another city. (Which could be across the border, to a richer neighbour, or to a more evolved city of my own.) Think immigrants in the US and other western nations, fleeing from more backwards nations. Think war refugees. THAT kind of thing.

6) Oppressive governments, like Despotism or Communism could then optionally use their army to suppress population defections, at the risk of causing even more unhappiness. Basically that unit of population instead of defecting, would become unhappy for 15 turns. Or they could even try to suppress movement within their own empire. (China actually did that, in the 20'th century.)

7) On the flip side of the coin, if you're the one receiving those imigrants, you could decide to try to prevent (or more realistically slow down) immigration into your own country. E.g., if you don't want your American towns to become full of Chinese ethnics that fled their own country. You could order your army to try to send them back and/or build customs offices and stuff as city improvements.

8) You should be able to decide if you want to allow your population to bear arms and form militias or not. The advantage is that those resistance people would have an easier time to overthrow an occupying army, if you're attacked. But on the flip side of the coin, a revolt in your own cities would be far harder to quell if your people are well armed. (And might escalate into full time war against your units, and/or cause loss of population and/or increased chance of destroying city improvements.)

9) I should also be able to do stuff like lowering the taxes to make cities more happy, if my empire is facing open revolt. Or on the opposite, raise them, if I'm confident that my people are happy enough to swallow that. Basically lowering taxes would lower the amount of gold I get from my cities, while raising them would raise it.

10) Basically all this boils down to: I want an internal policy screen, where I'd set such details as allowing/preventing emigration, imigration, militias, etc. And setting taxes, work times, etc.

11) Yes, it's been said before, but just to add my own vote to it: give us stacked movement. And that goes for the AI too: I prefer having 5 enemy armies moving around, rather than waiting for 50 individual units to be moved one by one.

12) I want tactical combat, a la Master of Magic.

[Teemur]

I don't know if it has currently any effect on AI's opinion about you how good the trade deals that you make with him are for him, but it would be great if when trading the diplomatic advisor would instead of just telling you that the deal is acceptable also tell for example that they would be happy to accept the offer or they would be grateful for the deal. Or if you were really ripping the AI off with the deal but it really needs it he could say that they would be angrily willing to accept the deal. As it is now you usually just end up searching for the most amount that the AI is willing to pay you for the deal.

[Nexus VI]

Originally posted by Moraelin
3) Give me an automate button for explorers and scouts. I've tried that in the editor (yep, it IS possible), and it takes so much of the tedium out of early exploring, that it actually gives expansionist civilizations a good advantage. Just make a few scouts, set them on automatic, and voila, you can concentrate on your cities while they discover the map for you. (And since they don't have the brains to run from barbarians when on automatic, that automate button doesn't even really unbalance the game or anything. You could do far better if you moved them by hand, but it's not as convenient.)

Have you ever tried pressing the "E" key with any of your units?

12) I want tactical combat, a la Master of Magic.

Nothing to add, but MOM was a great game indeed... maybe one of the best TBS. Many races, many units (every race had its own), many spell (of many circles) and much much more... I love it, I'd like to see a MOM2 with all the wonderful things the first chapter had.

[Akka]

General Ideas

1) Submarines more efficients.

2) Nuclear plant costing less in both construction and support than hydro plant ????????

3) Any military unit with a big number of people in it -basically any ground unit but not air, missile or sea units- should require one population to be built, just like drafting. It would means something when you'll lose twenty units more than just the build time and shield costs. People DIED.

4) Ships should be sinkable by bombing.

5) UN should give option just like the Counsil in AC.

6) UN vote should be proportionnal to population.

7) When I've finished the spaceship, I want to be allowed NOT to launch it. I may want to wait some more turns to do it.

8) Option to allow the spaceship to take some times to reach AC, just like in previous Civ.

9) Option to sabotage the spaceship production.

10) Better endings.

11) Experience should change the A/D ratings, not the HP.

12) Farmland back !

13) New mines improvement : railroad should only boost the commerce, farmland the food and modern mines the production.

14) UU should be upgraded from and to. They're supposed to be an ADVANTAGE, right ???

15) Ancient infantry units (swordsmen, longbowmen, etc...) should upgrade to riflemen.

16) Make the AI upgrade its units.

Editor Ideas and Changes

1) FIREPOWER AND HITPOINTS RELATIVE TO EACH UNIT !

2) Mini-map, zoom, etc...

3) Possibility to make a building disappear when you are under a certain government or you are NOT under a government.

4) Possibility to change the nuke effects.

5) Possibility to set if a unit can be destroy by bombing.

6) Possibility to create new tile improvements.

[Moraelin]

Nexus, thanks for the tip, but I would have liked a VISUAL interface to it all. If I have to remember keys, I'm not that happy a camper.

Either way, a couple more points:

13) I'd like barbarians to evolve, because after a few turns they're just obsolete and no more threat. Now I do NOT want them to instantly upgrade to the highest tech available, like in CTP2. But I'd like them to stay at least at the tech level available to everyone at the moment. (I.e., if everyone has longbows, then it should be possible to see a a barbarian longbowman. If everyone has AK-47's, then at least some "barbarians" should have AK-47's.)

14) I'd like the option to have more barbarian presence. Currently the definition of spawning far from civilization is a bit too far for my taste, which leads to barbarians being extinct very very soon. IMHO any square that's not within someone's borders should be fair game. Yep, even one square coast tips.

And finally, I realize that all this is a bit too much for a patch. But I wouldn't say no to buying an expansion pack that gives me a detailed internal policy screen, and stuff like that.

[Pingu:]

Does anyone else think this needs changing?

When you eliminate a Civ in the early game it is repaced, often by a new form of the same Civ.

e.g., I was the greeks and took out the Romans, who were my close neighbours (just before they got iron working and got Legions phew!).

Lo and behold, a new Roman city appears to the north, beyond a contenental bottleneck that I had occupied with a warrior I got from a hut, right at the start, and later settled. I'm absolutely sure that the romans could NOT have settled there legitimately. PLus they got loads of good free tech when they restarted.

Anyway, what I think is going on is that, for some reason, the SMAC code to restart Civs is soemtimes still used, as in SMAC there were only 7 'civs', so they had to be restarted. This isn't the case in CivIII, so an alternate Civ could emerge from barbarity somewhere and fill up the game. This would be much more realistic, once you've conquered a Civ, it shouldn't come back unless it revolts.. anmd certainly nopt come back when you've

As such this isn't a bug, I think it's just something they really needed to change, but didn't have time because of deadlines.

Anyone else agree with me?


Pingu:

[Comrade Tribune]

1) Fix the Draft Bug

If you go from city to city drafting, often the Draft button appears when it shouldn´t, sometimes it doesn´t appear when it should. If you press the Draft button, sometimes something happens, sometimes not. In short: The whole Draft mechanism is totally unreliable.

2) Put the Improvement list back in

Where is the list of civ-wide improvements? I want to see at a glance I have 23 Barracks, costing me so-and-so much, 17 Marketplaces, 5 Cathedrals,...

[kmj]

"Worker trading doesn't work...usually. It is rare that captured workers are mentioned in negotiations (or availible).."


They have to be in your capital city, I believe, in order to trade them to a civ...

[TechWins]

The Reference Post is updated up to this point.

[Bill3000]

I think this is a long shot, but:

- allow city improvement to count as a resource in the city it was built (For instance, a Steel Mill could count as a Steel resource)

[star mouse]

14) Update the Foreign Advisor, so that all Civs will be noted, shows the updates of technology

Foreign advisor:
"The Romans have recently discovered Currency." (when they discover the tech)
"The Romans have recently been taught Currency." (when they get the tech in a trade or from a goody hut)

To solve the settling of those unused 1x1 and 1x2 squares on your coast, do what I do - plant an obsolete military unit on the square. The AI loses interest when this happens. I think this is addressed in the patch, with a reduced desire by the AI to settle in locations that are likely to lead to cultural assimilation.

[jbrians]

Originally posted by Pingu:
Does anyone else think this needs changing?

When you eliminate a Civ in the early game it is repaced, often by a new form of the same Civ.

e.g., I was the greeks and took out the Romans, who were my close neighbours (just before they got iron working and got Legions phew!).

Lo and behold, a new Roman city appears to the north, beyond a contenental bottleneck that I had occupied with a warrior I got from a hut, right at the start, and later settled. I'm absolutely sure that the romans could NOT have settled there legitimately. PLus they got loads of good free tech when they restarted.

Anyway, what I think is going on is that, for some reason, the SMAC code to restart Civs is soemtimes still used, as in SMAC there were only 7 'civs', so they had to be restarted. This isn't the case in CivIII, so an alternate Civ could emerge from barbarity somewhere and fill up the game. This would be much more realistic, once you've conquered a Civ, it shouldn't come back unless it revolts.. anmd certainly nopt come back when you've

As such this isn't a bug, I think it's just something they really needed to change, but didn't have time because of deadlines.

Anyone else agree with me?


Pingu:

I think you may have missed something in that game. When you wipe out a civ you get a message to that affect, and I have never seen them come back. If you never got that message they must have had a settler escape very early on.