The Essentials

[MrFun]

I have played Civ games since the first title on the Super Nintendo - yes, that far back.

I bought Civilization I when I got my first PC, then Civilization II, Call to Power, Alpha Centauri, and finally, Call to Power II.

I must say I have liked Call to Power the best so far while Call to Power II has been disappointing. Now getting to suggestions for Civilization III:

1) Call to Power allowed players to maintain a mass army by allocating military costs to the total empire's production, not for each city. This is what I thought was a great improvement. PLEASE implement this in Civilization III - it was the one feature that made Call to Power so much better. Of course, create an interface and concept so that it does not violate any copyright laws.

Not only could you maintain a mass army much easier in CTP I, but each time you built an additional unit in a city, it did not take longer with each successive unit. This I feel is important.

2) One flaw with CTP II was that they took away the ability for the player to manually allocate workers as he/she saw fit in the city radius. Firaxis, you would do well to retain this feature from Civilization II.

3) Do not allow cities to grow beyond three square radius like Activision did. Four square radius I feel might be too much. If you want to increase it, increase from the present two square radius in Civilization II to three square radius.

4) The AI has worked better in Civilization II than it does in Call to Power II (AI is also a little better in CTP I). When trying to make improvements, please be careful of as many possible flaws as you can think of.

5) And the last thing I can think of at the time but certainly still important, is to eliminate the need for Settlers and Engineers to place Farms, Mines and other tile improvements. Call to Power and CTP II use the Public Works concept. Firaxis, what can you implement without violating any copyright laws? I think many of us do not wish to have an army of Settlers just for tile improvement.

These I believe are essentials, and I am willing to admit that some of these are from my experiences of playing CTP I and CTP II. However, those two games introduced these great features. I hope Firaxis can find their own ways to implement similar concepts and features.

[MrFun]

Don't be in such a rush to express your opinion, everyone.

[Sarxis]

I had something to say, but I changed my mind.

:P

[EnochF]

You can't control the workers in the city radius in CTP2?

I'm glad I never bought it, then.

That's an Essential I bet nobody ever thought of, until it was gone.
[This message has been edited by EnochF (edited January 19, 2001).]

The essential element I believe that Activision left out of CTP2 was the ability to actually have AND finish a multiplayer game!

quote: Originally posted by MrFun on 01-17-2001 10:27 PM 2) One flaw with CTP II was that they took away the ability for the player to manually allocate workers as he/she saw fit in the city radius.

no ability was taken from you. it's just that instead of workers you handle specialists!

[MrFun]

Markos - big deal! The point is that many of us want to manage W-O-R-K-E-R-S as well as the Specialists.

quote: Originally posted by MrFun on 01-23-2001 09:21 AM Markos - big deal! The point is that many of us want to manage W-O-R-K-E-R-S as well as the Specialists.

P-O-I-N-T-L-E-S-S!
the effect(specialize your city) can be the same and with less work

if you issue is the atmosphere of the game, how about a screen where you get to "dress" your citizens into specialists?

[Grumbold]

I side with Mr Fun on this one, somehow allocating workers to tiles was more satisfying. You upgraded a tile and then put someone to work on it. Having aggregate production from all the tiles within the city radius just does not make sense to me. A city surrounded with ocean and acres of desert will concentrate all its population on farming the small fertile strips, fishing the best waters and (perhaps) extracting oil or minerals from a good source in the desert. Only manipulating specialists that have no connection to the land just doesn't feel "right" to me.

On the other hand, I also quite like the engineer units because I remember to use them efficiently, unlike PW. Having the engineers around the map draws the cursor to locations needing attention more easily than having to search round your cities manually looking for the best spots to improve. If the mayors were able to use PW efficiently that wouldn't be so much of a problem.

[Ralf]

MrFUN quote:
2) One flaw with CTP II was that they took away the ability for the player to manually allocate workers as he/she saw fit in the city radius. Firaxis, you would do well to retain this feature from Civilization II.

GRUMBOLD quote:
Having the engineers around the map draws the cursor to locations needing attention more easily than having to search round your cities manually looking for the best spots to improve.

I certainly agree with above quotes!
I had a discussion with MarkG over the exact same issue, in thread called What about changing the landscape??.

He was just as wrong then, as he is now! Anyway, if your interested; click on above link in order to read my viewpoints on why your quoted observations is so spot-on and important.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 23, 2001).]

i have to say it again: you are totally crazy! moving a unit on the map is faster and easier than moving your eyes around the screen, huh? yeah!

btw Ralf, a quote of yours from the other thread

quote: Of course, one can argue that, with the Public-works solution, the player can wait until enough build-points have been gathered, so he can build tile-improvements on several squares in one go. But, this means losses in use-efficiency. To loan arguments from real-life business: It would be like replacing "just-in-time" (= settler-model), with inefficient "stock & store" (= public-works model).

come on now. first of all, after a couple of hours you know what each tile improvement costs and you figure out very easily what you can build. beyond that, such small delays(if you wait to have more pw in order to be correct about being able to build something) have small effect in your total efficiency, unless you are trying to win the game by 1AD or something!
[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited January 23, 2001).]

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-23-2001 04:07 PM i have to say it again: you are totally crazy! moving a unit on the map is faster and easier than moving your eyes around the screen, huh? yeah!

Well, if i only had 5-10 settlers to share all the tile-improving work in my 20-30+ city empires, i would agree with you. But, the thing is; i have at least one tile-improving settler dedicated to each and every indevidual city. My main argument is however, that my map re-centers automatically, and the tile-improving settler flashes automatically then hes out of work. And thanks to the "one city + one settler" policy, nobody is more then 1-3 squares away from their next job-assignments.

Compare to the laborious public-works solution, there the player is forced to drag around that map back-and-forth manually. As for thor015:s argument:
"I see this point load and clear, and this (manually scrolling the map) I actually find this less annoying than having the settler get destroyed by the AI."

If this was/is the only problem, he can fix/tweak the defence-values for hes settlers in the text-files. Of course, he then had to put up with those hard-to-kill AI-settlers as well.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 23, 2001).]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 01-23-2001 05:11 PM Well, if i only had 5-10 settlers to share all the tile-improving work in my 20-30+ city empires, i would agree with you. But, the thing is; i have at least one tile-improving settler dedicated to each and every indevidual city.

well, it seems that you have created a style of playing to make this less painfull...

tell me, what do you with a settler when it has nothing to do? dont tell me you kill it!!!

quote: Compare to the laborious public-works solution, there the player is forced to drag around that map back-and-forth manually.

when i play in ctp2 at 1024x768 with the control panel/radar map minimized, i'm doing very low "dragging around the map"...

btw, how much support do these settlers need in order for you to have less micromanagment? are you sure this loss is not the same with the possible gains of giving time improvement orders faster??

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 01-23-2001 09:56 AM Having the engineers around the map draws the cursor to locations needing attention more easily than having to search round your cities manually looking for the best spots to improve.

dear god, please no!
you mean to tell me that in order to find where you need tile improvements, you consider easier to have to move a unit around on the map instead of just looking at the map??????

Yes - units should be supported nationwide. Public Works is definitely the way to go - its close to a buy/not buy issue for me. I can't stand hearding settlers to the point that only a kick-ass AI would get me to buy it if settler hearding is mandatory. (of course, a selection feature for game set up will make everyone happy - but that might overtax the AI which is the single most important feature). Can't stand building irrigation, followed by farms. Yes, Civ3 needs to steal all of the improvements made by activision (activision stole the whole concept - and fair's fair). On the other hand, SMACs SE system (one of of the few things I liked about SMAC) needs to be incorporated. Maybe I want a police state with a free market! CtP2's "classical civ" govenment switching just seems so hackneyed. Oh yeah, the SMAC diplomacy system is the best - more features than CtP2 - and those features actually worked.

[Grumbold]

I can see we will have to agree to disagree, MarkG. I never have a problem supporting one settler/engineer per city specifically for the purpose of improving tiles. If they ever run out of jobs to do building roads, forts irrigation and mines then they can always go and aid the colonisation effort. Usually though engineers pop just in time and railways, farms and terraforming becomes the order of the day. Finally there is the frantic rush to keep pollution down below critical mass before the eco friendly techs kick in. At that point I either disband them or wait for endgame to build cities in places that I would not ordinarily use. It's just a matter of which playing style appeals, I guess.

btw, speaking of playing styles, in ctp2, when you're geting close to discover railroad, it's extremely fun to keep your pw and then upgrade your roads in one turn with a few clicks....

[Grumbold]

I entirely agree. For making sweeping changes or concentrating a lot of effort into a small area PW is the best. Settler units are better at dispersed effort, although you can almost feel the growth of the railroad when you have four engineer units leapfrogging each other building your transimperial main line.

[MrFun]

I do not prefer an army of Settlers for tile improvement purposes. I would hope (don't think it's likely though) that Firaxis will avoid Settler-mania.

By the way Markos, now that a few people have agreed with some of my viewpoints, will you bow to me and and beg for forgiveness? (sorry - had an ego-spasm)

[bagdar]

In most of my Civ sessions, the game soon turns into
"Sid Meier's Engineers" However, I don't like the CTP system either. Let's hope for clues in the next "ask the civ team" installation.

[Bubba]

Mr Fun wrote:

"3) Do not allow cities to grow beyond three square radius like Activision did. Four square radius I feel might be too much. If you want to increase it, increase from the present two square radius in Civilization II to three square radius."

I agree and would actually enjoy the city radius shrinking to what it was in Colonization (8 I believe). I always felt it strange that a standard Earth map could not easily support New York, Boston, Montreal, and Toronto. Or that in CTPII London overlapped with most of Western Europe.

Given most peoples' processor speed and the maps that can be realistically expected, a smaller city radius would make the game more historical and allow for small powerful nations (Netherlands, UK) and densely populated regions. I fail to see how this accuracy would come at the expense of fun.

Any Thoughts?

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-24-2001 12:54 PM the increased city radius was one of the things i liked in ctp2. it's not only a visual thing, but also a measure against ics

Not all civers seemed to be convinced about that anti-ICS prevention. Read the following "can of worms" thread:
Column # 139; By St. Switchin

I e-mailed above link to Chris Pine, Firaxis, with the comment: "Im not sure that city-area related anti-ICS prevention is going to be enough". He responded with...
"I didn't say anything about city-area" and "I think we have a better set of solutions. Want to know what they are? (chuckle)".

Its seems to me that expanding city-areas in Civ-3 - in any form - is extremely unlikely. Good! For any further comments about the subject, check out the The pitfalls of expanding city-areas in Civ-3 thread.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 24, 2001).]

i said "a measure". not "a solution"
i didnt say it was enough, and that is what chris pine seems to wrote to you too

further more, that thread you linked("Column # 139; By St. Switchin") is not about ics and the expanded city area, but about ics and the new model of how the tiles in the city area are worked


so take off these glasses and read again what i wrote
[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited January 24, 2001).]

[Grumbold]

I'd like to build a resource network that did allow your Capital and other key cities expand their size/sphere of influence but unlike CtP2 I do not believe it makes sense for them to be able to do it on their own (which allows all cities to grow this way.) Something like nominating 3 cities with factories to allow a 4th that is connected by rail to build a manufacturing plant. Ditto 3 with schools allowing a 4th to build a university. Really get the feel of all the centres co-operating with each other to make the nation stronger, not just working to make themselves individually better.

the increased city radius was one of the things i liked in ctp2. it's not only a visual thing, but also a measure against ics
with the recent mod which adds the feature where cities actually grow to more than one square, the map justs becomes wonderfull!

as for london having a city area that reaches large parts of france, this is just a matter of the size of the map. there are bigger worlds maps for ctp2 than the official one, as well as other big maps that cover smaller areas(a 210x210 map of the north atlantic for example)

and since today's computers can handle these kinds of maps, the 2002 computer will certainly handle bigger ones