Civ3 Game Design Discussion Thread

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem
Alright guys, Vel kindly asked that this not turn into a flame thread, and I agree heartily. This constant bickering that's been happening lately isn't going to do one bit of good. If anyone hopes to get the ear of Firaxis, and end up with a better game, then they'll have to learn how to discuss their views like the civilized adults I'm presuming we all are. If I'm getting sick of reading it all the time, I can just imagine how they feel about it.

I agree, I was just merely stating that to come up with all these excellent ideas is one thing, but for them to be of any use that's a whole other thing. I know Dan reads through the threads, and I admire him for doing so, but he doesn't have enough "pull" or "authority" to make our ideas become reality, perhaps Dan would make a good voice for the community - if he would agree to carry our suggestions back to the key members of the Civ3 development team. Otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by star mouse


* In addition to polluting a tile, a polluted square should have a chance of destroying irrigation and other tile improvements.

* Make pollution affect the output of a city in general. Each pollution icon in the city window could reduce the production and commerce of a city by 1.

* Have one or two more buildings that reduce pollution created by improvements. These would cost 5-10 gold a turn to maintain, thus you would be spending gold each turn to clean up pollution.

Excellent idea! I agree. Pollution should be controlled in a more administrative fasion - like inside the city window, I think you have a great idea Star Mouse - a "fee" would not only cut down on MM but it would be much much more simple. Anyone else agree that we should use this concept "pollution clean-up 5-10 gold/turn" ?

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by OneInTen
For all the features and faults of the civ 3 design, at least it's proven to work as a game, be playable, and at least to some enjoyable. What I think would be really interesting is if some of the suggestions made by fans were expanded to really explain in detail how it would work within the game, what difference it would make to other features, and so on.

For example, it's all very well to say, for example, we need stacked movement. OK, I accept, the people want stacked movement. But what should the interfece be? How should units be added and removed from stacks? What sort of units can go in stacks? What actions can a stack take? What if units in the stack have different movement speeds? And so on - often the feature opens more problems than it solves in it's raw state.

That I think is what game design is really about - not just putting together a whole host of features, but describing in detail how they work as individual features and most importantly how they go together.

I agree OiT, but this is the discussion phase of things. I'm sure that if and when Firaxis decides to take our suggestions seriously we will be more than prepared to give them a complete detail on how our feature(s) will interface and react to other areas of the game. Until then, it's just a drawing board concept we have here. But I openly agree, some of the ideas might be too far fetched to impliment at this point in time, seeming as some of this material would involve uprooting code, and I don't think we want to take that route. However, we need to know what is possible and what isn't - and only a developer of Firaxis can tell us such things. Sadly.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem
But there already is stack movement, it's called an Army unit. But so many restrictions have been placed on their use that it's become pointless to use them. 400 shields so I can move 3 units around, big deal! Not worth it! Make them available right from the first of the game, let them hold more units as time goes by. I've done it with my game, I've converted my Palace to a small wonder that can build them, and there's no problem with it. As I mentioned before, in my least game the French had an Army of 10 Swordsman poised to strike the Indians. If the AI knows how to use them, why so many restrictions?

In this thread I mentioned a concept regarding stacked movement and army building what do you think? IMO I think my idea would work and become a more valuble asset in war. The only problem is my army concept might involve some uprooting of code, and therefor the chances of it actually happening would be null.

Charles.

[Willem]

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


In this thread I mentioned a concept regarding stacked movement and army building what do you think? IMO I think my idea would work and become a more valuble asset in war. The only problem is my army concept might involve some uprooting of code, and therefor the chances of it actually happening would be null.

Charles.

Well yes, you made the point yourself. Most of those ideas would require more coding, and therefore it will be longer before we ever get a new patch. I think it would be more productive to point out areas that already exist in the game, which only require some minor changes to make them usable. In the things I mentioned about the Army, this is already do-able, in fact I've implemented it into my own game. And it's working out just fine. So I see no reason why some minor changes can't be made to what already exists.

Besides, you're just adding more work to building an Army, and I can assure you that trying to fill up an Army of 10 Riflemen is already enough work. It takes awhile before it's ready to go out onto the field, full strength.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem


Well yes, you made the point yourself. Most of those ideas would require more coding, and therefore it will be longer before we ever get a new patch. I think it would be more productive to point out areas that already exist in the game, which only require some minor changes to make them usable. In the things I mentioned about the Army, this is already do-able, in fact I've implemented it into my own game. And it's working out just fine. So I see no reason why some minor changes can't be made to what already exists.

Besides, you're just adding more work to building an Army, and I can assure you that trying to fill up an Army of 10 Riflemen is already enough work. It takes awhile before it's ready to go out onto the field, full strength.

I see you're point. My idea supports a wider scope of things to do as some people have made a point of the game not being much fun anymore, and lack of things to do in late game. So that was my suggestion in response to 'lack of features'. But you're point is valid perhaps it will make things more complicated and make the late game even longer. I guess it all depends on how it's coded too. However, you're idea is good.

Charles.

[Willem]

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley
I guess it all depends on how it's coded too. However, you're idea is good.

Charles.

Well that's the thing. My approach is do-able now, I've proven that in my own mod. And there's a French army of 10 Swordsman running around that shows me the AI knows how to use them as well. It's just a question of making some minor changes to the existing code, everything is already in place. By the looks of it, there's no limit as to how many units I can fit into an Army, I've had up to 12 units so far. Now wouldn't some small changes of that sort go a long way to solving the stack movement problem? Wouldn't you rather move around 1 Army as opposed to 10 Riflemen?

[OneInTen]

On thought on corruption - if the distance factor were relative rather than absolute, then it would make more sense (in fact I'm not totally convinced it's not relative, more on this later).

What I mean by this is that it should be distance from the capital, but distance relative to other cities. Not number of tiles away from the capital, but number of cities that are closest (with ties split at random perhaps, I don't know).

If it were a relative distance thing, then it wouldn't matter if you got a costal start - because your 8th furthest away would be as corrupt if it was on your second layer inland as the 8th city which was on the first layer for a player with an inland start.

Now, I say I'm not entirely sure it doesn't already work like this (at least partially) because I recall reading in a thread on civfanatics that one way to get better corruption levels was to ensure that you build each ring of cities an equal distance from the capital. Now that suggests to me that it's evaluating each city in the first ring to be "closest" to the capital and therefore getting minimal corruption. Perhaps they didn't implement a tie splitting mechanism.

Anyway, it's something I should test when I get home to get a handle on it - it seems pointless to discuss a design decision which at the moment it seems nobody fully understands the exact mechanics of.

[Willem]

One idea I've had bouncing around is tying the corruption to the Governor. More specifically making the Gov an anti-corruption device, sort of. Here's how it goes:

When I capture an enemy city, I usually get a message asking me if I want to install a new governor, or raze it. Now what if this idea of installing a governor were extended so that at any time, I can go to a city and "fire" someone who's incompetent/corrupt, and replace him with someone I hope will do a better job of running the city. He may be to a better job, he may be even worse than the one I'm firing. The exception to this would be if I had a Democracy, in which case the people of the city elect their own Governor from time to time.

At least this way there's a chance for some outlying cities to produce more than 1 shield at a time. If I assign a gov that's competent/honest, then the city will produce fairly well. If not we get the 1 shield production we currently have. This appproach could be overlayed on to the current model so that the Governor becomes something like an anti-corruption improvement. At least there'd be some variation, and there'd be a mechanism that gives the player some sort of control.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem
Well that's the thing. My approach is do-able now, I've proven that in my own mod. And there's a French army of 10 Swordsman running around that shows me the AI knows how to use them as well. It's just a question of making some minor changes to the existing code, everything is already in place. By the looks of it, there's no limit as to how many units I can fit into an Army, I've had up to 12 units so far. Now wouldn't some small changes of that sort go a long way to solving the stack movement problem? Wouldn't you rather move around 1 Army as opposed to 10 Riflemen?

Well I would think so, but instead of having unit tedium, you'll have army tedium, unless you're idea includes making armies more costly but also more effective.

Charles.

[Willem]

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


Well I would think so, but instead of having unit tedium, you'll have army tedium, unless you're idea includes making armies more costly but also more effective.

Charles.

Well no, Armies should be much, much cheaper than they are. Otherwise, why not just use a bunch of individual units? They're not really any more powerful than the sum of the units inside, so what's the point of making their cost so exorbitant? And yes, it might end up being Army tedium instead, but at least it would be some improvement. And it's something that can easily be patched using the existing code, so we wouldn't have to wait for a major rewrite. It's to late now to expect any big changes, the best we can hope for is for what currently exists to be utilized a bit better. Anything more will have to wait for Civ 4 I think.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem


Well no, Armies should be much, much cheaper than they are. Otherwise, why not just use a bunch of individual units? They're not really any more powerful than the sum of the units inside, so what's the point of making their cost so exorbitant? And yes, it might end up being Army tedium instead, but at least it would be some improvement. And it's something that can easily be patched using the existing code, so we wouldn't have to wait for a major rewrite. It's to late now to expect any big changes, the best we can hope for is for what currently exists to be utilized a bit better. Anything more will have to wait for Civ 4 I think.

I think you misunderstood my meaning, there were some people complaining about 'not much to do' in the late game. As the game progresses the player runs out of 'fun things to do' - now I don't know about you, but my interpitation of 'more fun things to do' would be to add features to the already existing game. More windows, more 'build' options etc. However some of you just want simplicity - I don't think we'll see my version of fun as it would involve 'more code'. We're more likely to have small suttle changes rather than larger ones. But keep in mind Willem, if you increase the cost of an army, you can also increase it's strength and perpose as well. In theory.

Charles.

[Willem]

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


I think you misunderstood my meaning, there were some people complaining about 'not much to do' in the late game. As the game progresses the player runs out of 'fun things to do' - now I don't know about you, but my interpitation of 'more fun things to do' would be to add features to the already existing game. More windows, more 'build' options etc. However some of you just want simplicity - I don't think we'll see my version of fun as it would involve 'more code'. We're more likely to have small suttle changes rather than larger ones. But keep in mind Willem, if you increase the cost of an army, you can also increase it's strength and perpose as well. In theory.

Charles.

OK, so we're talking about 2 different things here. And yes, we need more fun things to do, but in other areas, like group movement, we currently have to much to do.

But it needs to be more than just tinkering with an Army, like naming it, though I can see it would add a personal touch. It has to inlvolve some decision making process as well, a choice to be made. That's one of the problems now, there aren't enough areas where you really have to make one.

As for your training idea, who knows. Personally I can't quite visualize what you have in mind, so I can't comment either way.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem
OK, so we're talking about 2 different things here. And yes, we need more fun things to do, but in other areas, like group movement, we currently have to much to do.

But it needs to be more than just tinkering with an Army, like naming it, though I can see it would add a personal touch. It has to inlvolve some decision making process as well, a choice to be made. That's one of the problems now, there aren't enough areas where you really have to make one.

As for your training idea, who knows. Personally I can't quite visualize what you have in mind, so I can't comment either way.

Exactly, more 'options' involving a greater arena of decision making would certainly make things alot more appealing. And as far as my training idea goes, it stems from the current method of unit development but more in depth, rather than a simple "shields/turn=unit produced" we could go a little more in depth, perhaps a new window with 'training' options, rather than a city only being able to train one unit why not allow it to train a variety.

Stockpile wood (50 wood = 1 archer unit)
Stockpile iron (100 iron = 1 swordsmen unit)

In essence being able to build as many units as you like, depending on the amount of "stockpiled resources" in that city.

And so forth, and maybe make it a little more realistic and difficult to handle and maintain resources. This would throw a radical new spin to the whole unit develpoment system. But again, it's a matter of preference - some people want things simple, some of us want it more detailed - which would provide "more things to do". I personally would rather have more detail than a faster late game. But thats just me.

Charles.

[Harovan]

Originally posted by OneInTen
What I mean by this is that it should be distance from the capital, but distance relative to other cities. Not number of tiles away from the capital, but number of cities that are closest (with ties split at random perhaps, I don't know).

I think the distance from the capital, used to calculate corruption, should be not a "square count" over the map, but be calculated by movepoints needed to reach your capital. That would give the opportunity to fight the corruption by building roads and developing your empire. After building a RR, the distance based corruption could disappear and only the #-of-city based remain.

[nato]

Willem - I'm a little puzzled about your 10 unit Armies. What good is having 10 Swordsmen all in one unit?

It would be near unkillable, that is good ...

But the obvious problem is the same one as with normal 3 unit armies: you can only attack once per turn with it. Aren't you sacrificing LOTS of offensive power by making those units only able to attack once? Doesn't it do far more harm than good?

Or do you only use this for defensive units like Riflemen?

Just asking, not criticizing ... how does it work? Since it is already possible, that is a HUGE advantage, but I just don't see why I would want to do such a thing.

On a semi related note, here is a small idea of mine.

I would LOVE to be able to put Bombard units in groups and be able to tell them all to fire, rather than firing my 30 Artillery units individually. Yes, group firing might result in wasted shots (by firing more than is needed) but that is kind of realistic in a pleasing way. Like automated Workers, I think it would be worth the efficiency loss for less tedium in firing and moving.

So it would be really cool if you could put 10 Artillery in an Army and have a "Barrage" command ... it would require new code, but maybe not LOTS of hard code, I hope. Just an idea.

Anyone like this Barrage idea?

[Harovan]

Willem, did you raise the transport capacity of your ships too? Otherwise it would be impossible to cross an ocean with an army with more than 7 loaded units.

Anyway, I see you modded a lot for yourself. Have you considered to pubish your mod? I think I would give it a try.

[Willem]

Originally posted by CharlesUFarley


Exactly, more 'options' involving a greater arena of decision making would certainly make things alot more appealing. And as far as my training idea goes, it stems from the current method of unit development but more in depth, rather than a simple "shields/turn=unit produced" we could go a little more in depth, perhaps a new window with 'training' options, rather than a city only being able to train one unit why not allow it to train a variety.


Charles.

One thing that could be introduced with this idea is having "Specialist" units. Just like in SMAC where we could design our own units with special abilities, you could start with the basic unit and "train" it to have abilities that it normally wouldn't have. Like an Archer that is virtually invisible in certain terrain, or a Marine with SAM abilities. Just like in real life we have soldiers that are trained for specific tasks. I like it.

One of my favourite things about SMAC was the workshop that allowed me to customize my forces. I spent a lot of time there experimenting with combinations of abilities. It was one of those things that takes the mind off the general tedium of moving units around the map. It gives you a break from it.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Willem, did you raise the transport capacity of your ships too? Otherwise it would be impossible to cross an ocean with an army with more than 7 loaded units.

Anyway, I see you modded a lot for yourself. Have you considered to pubish your mod? I think I would give it a try.

No, I haven't and yes I did encounter that problem of not being able to load the Army. And I don't think I will increase the transport limit either. It will make it more of a challenge to bring an Army onto another continent. After all, looking at real life campaigns, like DDay, the Army was essentially divided and didn't really regroup until after they arrived. And it's not really a problem since you can load a unit into an Army anywhere you want. It doesn't have to be in a city.

So thanks for your interest in my mod. I hadn't really considered posting it frankly, I've just been trying to create a game I feel comfortable with. There have been a few things that were really annoying me, i.e. the manic Settler expansion, so I've just been trying to whip those areas into shape. It's coming together fairly nicely now, though it's taken a lot of work, with more yet to come. I'll keep you in mind when I feel that I'm finished though.

[Willem]

Originally posted by nato
Willem - I'm a little puzzled about your 10 unit Armies. What good is having 10 Swordsmen all in one unit?

It would be near unkillable, that is good ...

But the obvious problem is the same one as with normal 3 unit armies: you can only attack once per turn with it. Aren't you sacrificing LOTS of offensive power by making those units only able to attack once? Doesn't it do far more harm than good?

Or do you only use this for defensive units like Riflemen?

Just asking, not criticizing ... how does it work? Since it is already possible, that is a HUGE advantage, but I just don't see why I would want to do such a thing.

On a semi related note, here is a small idea of mine.

I would LOVE to be able to put Bombard units in groups and be able to tell them all to fire, rather than firing my 30 Artillery units individually. Yes, group firing might result in wasted shots (by firing more than is needed) but that is kind of realistic in a pleasing way. Like automated Workers, I think it would be worth the efficiency loss for less tedium in firing and moving.

So it would be really cool if you could put 10 Artillery in an Army and have a "Barrage" command ... it would require new code, but maybe not LOTS of hard code, I hope. Just an idea.

Anyone like this Barrage idea?

Well yes, I've used the Carry Foot Soldiers flag to my Armies so only 1 attack units can be stacked. Therefor there's no loss of ability, since they didn't really have any to begin with. I'm still using my mobile/bombard units for special tactics etc. It makes sence to do it that way really, since the foot soldier has always been the backbone of any army. And Armies aren't as indestructible as you might think. I lost a stack of 5 Swordsman once to a single Samurai. Granted it was somewhat down in hit points, but still it shows me that Firaxis might be a little paranoid about the power of the Army. Especially after seeing the French with their own stack of 10 Swordsman. Clash of the Titans anyone?

And yes, it would be great if I could create an Artillery Army. Give one bombard order, and they all fire in turn. I guess the point I'm trying to make with this discussion is that there's already something in place to alleviate this stack movement problem. It's just a question of making some minor changes in the way Armies are implemented. One of them being to allow the units inside to retain their unique qualities. With a change like that, and the addition of more flags like the "Carry Foot Soldiers Only" one, we wouldn't need to sent unit after unit hither and thither across the map. Just load up your Army and send it off. And extend the use of them to include Naval and Air units.

If we can focus on pointing out ways that minor modifications to the current game would help improve it, then we're a lot more likely to see these ideas implemented in the next patch.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph


I think the distance from the capital, used to calculate corruption, should be not a "square count" over the map, but be calculated by movepoints needed to reach your capital. That would give the opportunity to fight the corruption by building roads and developing your empire. After building a RR, the distance based corruption could disappear and only the #-of-city based remain.

I think that's one of the problems now, all distant cities have the same corruption in them. If there were more mechanisms in place so that we could at least get some of them producing at a more or less decent level, it wouldn't seem like the hopeless situation it is now. There should be some action we can take that has even a slight effect on the problem, rather just sitting back helplessly while most of the resources of the city get siphoned off by corrupt officials. No government who saw that sort of thing happen would just sit back and do nothing, but that's the only option we have now. And I really think that's why so many people are upset with the current model. They're left feeling powerless.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by nato
Anyone like this Barrage idea?

Excellent idea.

Charles.

[CharlesUFarley]

Originally posted by Willem


One thing that could be introduced with this idea is having "Specialist" units. Just like in SMAC where we could design our own units with special abilities, you could start with the basic unit and "train" it to have abilities that it normally wouldn't have. Like an Archer that is virtually invisible in certain terrain, or a Marine with SAM abilities. Just like in real life we have soldiers that are trained for specific tasks. I like it.

One of my favourite things about SMAC was the workshop that allowed me to customize my forces. I spent a lot of time there experimenting with combinations of abilities. It was one of those things that takes the mind off the general tedium of moving units around the map. It gives you a break from it.

The specialist idea is good, but that's not excactly what I meant. Picture a 10 city empire, and each city with an equal amount of shield production, let's say there is enough shields in each city to produce 1 archer/city. Now rather than having a 1 unit/turn production, why not (like in reality) have a city be able to produce multiple units in one turn. Now my idea was using the "stockpiling" resources concept, in which each city has it's own stockpile of resources; iron, wheat, gems, whine, wood etc. Now based on the terrain serounding the city ofcoarse! Lets say a city has "1 iron" resource tile and that is all. Then that city can "stockpile" 50 iron units/turn ... and we'll say that a swordsmen (for example) requires 25 iron to build/train, then you could build 2 swordsmen/turn in that city. Not only is this more realistic, but it also provides a better 'balancing act' within each city. The player will have to handle each city with care, or at least the ones that are bordering enemies. But the better you improve you're city, the more production, culture, stature, profit etc etc you'll have. This concept would also go hand in hand with a new "trade/negotiations" engine too, rather than have the AI rip us off, and not be able to recognize a good trade when we offer it, I say make that more realistic too! Give the resources more value, and more use - because in reality resources is what makes the world go 'round. Think about what an empire/country would be like without a source of "oil" - no cars.

Charles.

[Raion]

I really do not have that much time to fully play the game.

Different soldiers for different civs. In my scenario I made, so far, I seen, the Romans, able to defeat barbarians with only a single hit point left, and still go on to the next barbarian and win again and again before being defeated. My warriors could not last that long, I was Babylonians, another like the Japanese could not last that long either, nor could the Persians's Warrior. The Romans are milistorisic so again their Warrior lasted longer.

Also, the workers from another Civ instead of taking to irrigate from a river far away, irrigated from my square which was closer.
They were not in my territory but knew enough to only do 2 irrigations to their Civ instead of 5 or 6 from a river.

Also, no Civ has, except in the middle made any, towns (started) in someone's others territory yet, and I have made it to the 1800's. Of course a war was started and two games on the same map have been completely different. One game, all Civs were allianced with someone else fighting others, and I was the only Civ not fighting, of course, I was ahead, cultually, so I declined, and no other Civ attacked me, although, I could see where the Romans and Persians always want to fight and start a War over little or nothing.
Except for corruption where the Forbidden Palace will help, I still see no glaring problems with the game.

Resources are spread out on my map, and both games have been different on the same map.

So, I do not think the problems are that big, just that CivIII plays different.

When will a computer, just a piece of circurity be smarter than humans?

When someone programs it who is smarter than humans.

If the human can not think, then that is their problem!

[Willem]

Originally posted by Raion
I really do not have that much time to fully play the game.

Different soldiers for different civs. In my scenario I made, so far, I seen, the Romans, able to defeat barbarians with only a single hit point left, and still go on to the next barbarian and win again and again before being defeated. My warriors could not last that long, I was Babylonians, another like the Japanese could not last that long either, nor could the Persians's Warrior. The Romans are milistorisic so again their Warrior lasted longer.

Also, the workers from another Civ instead of taking to irrigate from a river far away, irrigated from my square which was closer.
They were not in my territory but knew enough to only do 2 irrigations to their Civ instead of 5 or 6 from a river.

Also, no Civ has, except in the middle made any, towns (started) in someone's others territory yet, and I have made it to the 1800's. Of course a war was started and two games on the same map have been completely different. One game, all Civs were allianced with someone else fighting others, and I was the only Civ not fighting, of course, I was ahead, cultually, so I declined, and no other Civ attacked me, although, I could see where the Romans and Persians always want to fight and start a War over little or nothing.
Except for corruption where the Forbidden Palace will help, I still see no glaring problems with the game.

Resources are spread out on my map, and both games have been different on the same map.

So, I do not think the problems are that big, just that CivIII plays different.

When will a computer, just a piece of circurity be smarter than humans?

When someone programs it who is smarter than humans.

If the human can not think, then that is their problem!

I think you're missing the point here. No one's expecting the AI to be smart, I think we all realize that current technology is a long way off from that being possible. But there's a number of areas where the game just starts getting tedious, and judging from my own experiences and the posts of others, that starts to happen as soon as the game enters the Industrial era.

At that point it just becomes a question of moving units around, and there's not much in the way of decision making involved, aside from who do you attack and who do you suck up to. I want to have more things to consider than just the military aspect. Some diplomatic or economic etc. decisions would be a nice change from just having to pump out units in order to keep up to the AI. But by the time you hit the Industrial era, there's not much else to think about really. So all we're doing is discussing ways that might make things a little less tedious, and much more fun. After awhile it just starts to feel like work to me.

[Myrddin]

Many of the suggestions for changes miss the major point that features are not useful unless the AI can make full use of them.

CTP2 is an example of this, where the concept of armies has been well implemented so that you need to combine different types of units to get an effective army. You need to build a siege train of bombarding units to wear down a city's defences and a separate assult army to finally capture it (although it works well to make a few trial assults to reduce defender numbers). You use a small number of fast units to attack opposing armies and immediately retreat to find out the composition of the army. You find it is more important to save your units until they can concentrate to destroy an opposing armies than to fight a doomed battle to save a city.

All this is wonderful and realistic except the AI cannot use the armies, which makes all the careful design of the combat system pointless.

The design decision of Civ3 was to keep things simple so that players do not have to learn a large number of concepts or stats before they start playing. This works well on its own terms but does not seem to appeal to SMAC vetrans.

IMHO another key feature was to make the environment chaotic ie in some games war between civs is constant, in others war is a rarity, in others there are a mass of mutual protection pacts.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Myrddin

All this is wonderful and realistic except the AI cannot use the armies, which makes all the careful design of the combat system pointless.

Well I'm sorry, but if you would have read this thread carefully you would have noticed on several occasions that I've mentioned the AI does use the Armies, and quite effectively. This is not a hypothetical situation, I've done it in my own game, I've seen it with my own eyes.

[ShuShu]

Grasshopper:

The armies are too weak because the cavalry is too strong. If armies were the only unit that could fight with high survival, they would be more valuable. Two rights made a wrong.

Space race:

Buy placing the space race components so early in the modern age, the game devolves into the first race to reach Laser winning if the game lasts into the modern age. The space race needs to have a massive production requirement: lots of pieces (some big, some small - same type is fine) so that research to augment production is still worthwile in late stages. The game needs to continue past the discovery of last tech so all techs have meaning. (subsequent tech gains should provide marginal benefits like +1 attack/defense for all units, -1 corruption for all cities, small immediate impacts to provide ongoing incentive to research but nothing missed if not achieved.)

Score:

Want a high score? follow ICS through construction and conquest. Number of cites should be one score factor. All other score factors should be on a PER CITY basis. That would stop lots of little cities dead in their tracks! Worried that people will just build one high scoring city? It SHOULD be a real challenge enabling a single city to produce enough military to hold off an entire empire's production. Quantity vs. Qualtity a real dilemma.

ICS:

I have been wondering when the demise of the 'free' square would come. 10 years and 8+ sequels later, I've decided to stop holding my breath...


Comment:

Those who only see one path to victory, clearly haven't much vision. When I first started playing my feeling was 'play down' and all options are open. But now that I am still achieving all types of victory at 'Emperor', I don't understand the complaints. I mean. I love watching the AI try to hem me in, saves me the effort of building settlers. I find much less need to ReX in CIVIII than in CIVII. I think this was a design decision by the designers that works. If you want to ReX, it is much more challenging. If you don't, slow growth is much more viable.

[Easy Rhino]

I think Armies would be more appealing if they would have more longevity. I mean, if a player had an army that was a few thousand years old and still valuable, they would be VERY attached to it!.

One fairly obvious way to do this would be to allow unit upgrades in the army. There are two levels of increasing flexibility and power

Level 1: Allow individual units to be upgraded (with cost) along that units normal upgrade path

Level 2: Allow units to be removed (and others added) to the army.

Also, when it was mentioned earlier, I REALLY liked the idea of "naval armies"! That would be the best way to do "decisive battles" between fleets, like the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, or Jutland. Also, a Fleet would be able to wreak terror all over the ocean when it was created until it was stopped, much like the Japanese Navy at the beginning of WWII. Of course, you'd HAVE to be able to remove/add units to Fleets, since task forces and such are usually much more flexible.

ER

[Tarquelne]

"The one thing that struck me when I first played Civ III was that, even though culture is an important aspect of the game, there were no [extra] cultural buildings to be built. "

I very much hope that Firaxis has its own ideas on expanding the role of Culture in the game - both Culture-dedicated improvements and more functions for Culture (or just more development of the functions Culture already plays.) The only part of Culture that works as well as I'd like is the basic border function. Peacetime city flipping, wartime city flipping, border "wars", diplomatic reputation.... I'd like to see all of those Cultural things developed much more.

I say "Firaxis has its own ideas" because I bet that any idea that Firaxis comes up with itself is at least 10 times as likely to actually be implimented. Either because the groundwork already exists in the code, or because some Firaxis member is already enthusiastic about it. Since these Culture changes would all involve significant changes to the code I think that if Firaxis is already planning to add more to Culture it'll get done... and if they aren't anything said here won't make it happen anytime sooner than Civ4.