Firaxis King for a day (or month)

[BillChin]

If I were King these are some changes I would like to see going forward from 1.17f:

1) Fix pop rushing again, closing the loophole of joining workers to an entertainer city. A simple fix is a one turn delay after joining before pop rushing is allowed. Another simple fix is forbidding the joining of workers to negative happiness cities.

2) Give players more options to deal with corruption. Add a third type of specialist, a shield specialist that generates one shield. Like other specialists these are immune from corruption. Limit shield specialists to three per city. If this turns out to be too powerful, limit it to one or two per city. This gives a builder player a way to actually produce something in distant cities. With the 1.17f pop rushing rules, there is no way to produce anything in a distant city that is not a garbage city. This makes the game tedious and a lot less fun. Four shields is not really enough to produce military units after the Ancient Age, but enough to build some smaller buildings in a reasonable amount of time. Supporting three specialists usually takes several improved tiles and a non-Despotism government. This gives a player a reason to work on these cities.

2a) More corruption options: Add a minimum effectiveness for courthouses and police stations, so that a courthouse almost always gets a second shield in a 5+ shield city. Do this by rounding up, not by setting a floor of 20% corruption with a courthouse. Do similar for a police station, a minimum of three shields in a 10+ shield city. Players absolutely hate it when they take the 80 or 160 turns to build these things and still see one shield output in a big city.

3) Make navies more useful. Add a pirate button for ships, similar to pillage for ground units. This command allows ships to pirate gold when next to an enemy city. Privateers can do this under hidden flag. Coastal fortresses get a free shot at pirates, and a hit by the fortress means no piracy that turn. Successful pirating yields maybe 1 to 10 gold depending on unit type and experience and the size of the city being pirated. Maybe 0 to 1 gold for a regular galley or other transports. Maybe 5 to 10 gold for an elite combat ship. Damaged units with one hit point get zero gold (coastal fortress can not hit them). Subs can pirate gold without fear of the coastal fortresses, but it is an act of war. These changes give a reason to build subs and privateers and a reason to have a standing navy and to build coastal fortresses (now useless).

3a) increase movement for modern navies (destroyers, battleships, nuclear subs, cruisers) by one.

3b) Add a fishery building, maybe with navigation/magnetism tech, or electricity (abilty to freeze fish) that increases food to three for coastal tiles. It is one of many absurdities in the game that fishing has no upgrade from the Ancient age (mapmaking and harbors).

4) Ostracize civs that break treaties or that wage wars of aggression, by severely limiting trading with these civs. A simple way to implement this is by having the AI players treat another AI player like the human if they break a treaty

5) Minor stuff: increase movement of radar artillery to two. Increase the range of stealth bombers by two. Put back the bananas resource

[Dis]

complete the game. It's hard to fix a game that isn't complete yet.

[BillChin]

Some more ideas:

Add some blank techs, some blank resources, and some dummy units for the mod makers. Of course add unit placement for the editor to create scenarios.

In my opinion, Firaxis is better served by focusing more on the fun factor, rather than game balance or historical accuracy. Civ III is a game, fun is the only real reason to play it. In my book, patch 1.17f gets a C- in the fun department. A few changes make the game more fun, a few things make the game more tedious and frustrating. The big picture is to give a player more strategy options, more ways to replicate historical events.

[Skanky Burns]

IMHO the editor is the most important thing to be coming from Firaxis now. That and getting rid of the Domestic Nag

You see, with a decent editor, we can tailor the game to how we want it to play, and then more people will be enjoying it rather than complaining about it.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
You see, with a decent editor, we can tailor the game to how we want it to play, and then more people will be enjoying it rather than complaining about it.

Yeah, but that would put the updating programmers at Firaxis out of work. You know, they have to keep making patches that only "rebalances" the gameplay.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by BillChin
2) Give players more options to deal with corruption. Add a third type of specialist, a shield specialist that generates one shield. Like other specialists these are immune from corruption. Limit shield specialists to three per city. If this turns out to be too powerful, limit it to one or two per city. This gives a builder player a way to actually produce something in distant cities.

3a) increase movement for modern navies (destroyers, battleships, nuclear subs, cruisers) by one.

3b) Add a fishery building, maybe with navigation/magnetism tech, or electricity (ability to freeze fish) that increases food to three for coastal tiles. It is one of many absurdities in the game that fishing has no upgrade from the Ancient age (mapmaking and harbors).

5) ... Minor stuff: Put back the bananas resource

Four really excellent ideas, especially a food source in the jungle. Call the shield-yielding specialist a civil engineer. (Is there a reason why city specialists affect the national economy, rathering than having a direct affect on the city they are in?) Maybe the fishery upgrade could affect sea and ocean tiles as modern fishing boats and trawlers have done.

Thrawn05: A very cheap shot of no real value. Updates and patches don't pay Firaxis's bills. These people are doing this because they care, not because it benefits them or the company directly. (Yes, they get payed -- that's not a crime, you know.

Good ideas, all! I especially like the fishery building!

I am greatly enjoying gameplay (again!) with the 1.17f patch in place--and these would be delightful additions for the near future (he says hopefully).

[randommushroom]

If I were King of Firaxis, I'd launch a sneak attack on Big Huge Games, capture Brian Reynolds et al, and force them into slave labor.

[alexman]

I would like to see an option to automatically apply the city governor suggestions in a city just before the end of your turn, not only after the polulation changes or when you click on the city tile in the city view.

This would help your city take advantage of tiles with newly cleaned up polution by your automated workers, newly irrigated or mined tiles, or tiles that were previously occupied by defeated enemy units.

The governors already go into effect when you click on the city square. So Firaxis would have to change it so that they also go into effect at the end of your turn - unless you have manually adjusted the worked tiles in the meantime, which means that you don't want the govenror to mess with this city. In this case, the city name should show up in a different color or something. Clicking on the center tile again, would put the governor into effect again.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by alexman
I would like to see an option to automatically apply the city governor suggestions in a city just before the end of your turn, not only after the polulation changes or when you click on the city tile in the city view.

This would help your city take advantage of tiles with newly cleaned up polution by your automated workers, newly irrigated or mined tiles, or tiles that were previously occupied by defeated enemy units.

The governors already go into effect when you click on the city square. So Firaxis would have to change it so that they also go into effect at the end of your turn - unless you have manually adjusted the worked tiles in the meantime, which means that you don't want the govenror to mess with this city. In this case, the city name should show up in a different color or something. Clicking on the center tile again, would put the governor into effect again.

Are you saying that the governors will put your people back to working the land after pollution is cleaned up?

I don't know how many times I forgot to do that and lost Pop points because of a food shortage.

[Zylka]

I'd fire everyone in the company.
Burn every meager possesion they have.
Rip their clothes into little bitty squares, and send them out to all of you, the angry mob - with the next "patch".

[alexman]

Originally posted by alexman
I would like to see an option to automatically apply the city governor suggestions in a city just before the end of your turn, not only after the polulation changes or when you click on the city tile in the city view.

This would help your city take advantage of tiles with newly cleaned up polution by your automated workers, newly irrigated or mined tiles, or tiles that were previously occupied by defeated enemy units.

The governors already go into effect when you click on the city square. So Firaxis would have to change it so that they also go into effect at the end of your turn - unless you have manually adjusted the worked tiles in the meantime, which means that you don't want the govenror to mess with this city. In this case, the city name should show up in a different color or something. Clicking on the center tile again, would put the governor into effect again.

After posting this, I started another game and accidentally discovered that governors are actually implemented that way!!! When they are active, there is a white box around the city population number, and when you go change the worker assignments, it asks you if you really want to disable the governor!!! Wow!!

The reason I didn't notice this before, (besides that it's not in the manual) is because in order for it to work, you need to enter "Yes" in the first dropdown box: Manage citizen moods. It's got to be a bug that governors don't work like this when you have them manage other resources but not citizen mood. As I understand it, managing citizen mood means that they assign entertainers if the city is about to riot.

[DarkCloud]

Yesh. From what I see- Firaxis seems to have made it HARDER to modify Civ III it would be greatly appreciated if they include tools for modification in a Modification Expansion Pack.