List of Easily Implemented Improvements

[polymths]

At this point, it is clear that the game is fairly far along in development so no major earth shattering concepts are going to be put in that would require a total overhaul of the existing game.

However, there are still a lot of improvements that Civ3 should and must implement that are very easy to implement (i.e. would require a few minutes to maybe a couple of day's worth of work at most) but have a disproportionately large improvement on gameplay. Some of these improvements may already be there but not yet announced.

Some here is my list so far. I have taken many items from the official lists and also ideas provided in this forum but only those which are easy to implement. Please let me know if any of these are either already done or if they are too late to do (because some other contradictory implementation is already planned.) Please add/change this list.

1. Railroad movement: Make it so any unit can move exactly 12 tiles when moving completely on railroads. (Or just 1/5 of MP if that is easier) Get rid of infinite movement.
2. Get Rid of Rush Buying Anything!
3. Missiles (Cruise/Nukes) are point and click attack (like paratroopers) if unit is in range. No recon should be possible with missiles! (Transportation of missiles should also be point and click of course)
4. If Civ2 style spies are included, reduce percentage of successful mission to be smaller than in Civ2 (eliminate infinite spy strategy)
5. Get rid of city bribing! - a stupid concept anyway!
6. In Civ2, bombers were given two turns, one to attack (and then float in air) one to return. Give fighters the same ability (with less range of course) so fighters can stack with bombers to simulate fighter escort!


[This message has been edited by polymths (edited May 18, 2001).]

[Frugal_Gourmet]

Seriously, this is the best set of ideas I've seen here in ages.

No plans to add horribly over-complex new "features" to Civ.
No incredibly detailed changes that would probably just make the game longer and more boring.
No efforts to ensure that the game is *COMPLETELY* realistic.

Just a few, simple changes to address game mechanics and balance problems.

Love it!

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by Frugal_Gourmet on 05-18-2001 06:17 PM Seriously, this is the best set of ideas I've seen here in ages. No plans to add horribly over-complex new "features" to Civ. No incredibly detailed changes that would probably just make the game longer and more boring. No efforts to ensure that the game is *COMPLETELY* realistic. Just a few, simple changes to address game mechanics and balance problems. Love it!

Thanks for your support!

I think that at this late stage, a more narrow list of improvements that are easily implementable is more realistic and more useful of our time. I agree with some other posters that debating hard on really far out concepts for Civ3 is a bit late and possibly a waste of time. I mean, it is simply not going to be the case that they are going to implement some far out concepts now. Either they have already been implemented (such as resource system, culture, stacked combat) or they simply won't be implemented.

I am aware that there are several official Apolyton suggestion lists but it may be a good idea to compile a list that only contains the most straightforward, easy to implement improvements that have wide general support.

For example, the limiting of RR movement is very easy to fix but would go a long ways towards better gameplay and balance. So would making spies far less successful than we have seen in Civ2, etc. etc.

I'm hoping that this thread can get that effort started.

[This message has been edited by polymths (edited May 18, 2001).]

[Darkknight]

Yeah, one or two might cause some problems but the rest could be done in several work hours. I like most of them especially the fighter one which was in CTP2. And the missile one is good. then you could have spy satellites that do see. One or two would take away some of the fun in the sake of realism like the take away rush buying and city bribing. They're just part of the fun

Shane

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" Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few "

[Harlan]

I agree with your points 1 and 3, especially. I disagree about getting rid of city bribing- that's a very legit historical thing. But hopefully the culture concept will improve this. Cities with strong culture ratings will be impossible to bribe, I assume.

Okay, I'm game to give some of my own. I'v seen some other lists like this, including the Realist's list, that contained good ideas, but were too major to really realistically get into the game - I'll try to keep the ideas small!

1. No planes floating between turns.

I have to disagree with you on this one. Much better to have all planes end each turn in a city or airbase. CTP has a good concept of automatic interception by enemy planes if they get within range of where that plane is based. Having planes float for a year or more is silly and creates all kinds of problems, like having a floating plane protect the units underneath.

2. More map sharing.

A serious pet peeve I have with Civ2 is how you can get into the nuclear age even, and still have major chunks of the world unexplored. Sorry, but that is fantastically unrealistic. Imagine if today Americans had no knowledge of the existence of China- things like that happen late into Civ2 games. Apollo is too late - a vast majority of the world was known by all the major powers by 1700. Solution: more needs to be done with the sharing of maps. If you create an embassy with another civ, you should automatically get a map of all their lands, automatically updated every now and then. Of course not a detailed map of where all their units and development are, but the "fog of war" view Civ3 has, showing just terrain and city locations.

3. Permanent embassies.

Speaking of embassies, I dislike how you can lose embassies. Sure, info you get via the embassy should be suspended during the war, but after the war it should be automatically reopened. As it is, to get another unit to some far off place to start an embassy again takes a long time and is an unnecessary hassle. Its standard operating procedure for countries to reopen contact immediately after a war. This, combined with the above paragraph should ensure that as more and more countries come together, the world will gradually be revealed to everyone, without the boring hassle of having to walk over nearly every square yourself.

4. SDI should not be 100% effective.

There has never been a 100% effective weapon and never will be, but all civ type games so far have made SDI 100% effective, who knows why. I think it's more interesting to have MAD type nuclear uncertainty.

5. Cut down on unrealistic terraforming.

With a few exceptions, in real life what you see is what you get with terrain, yet these civ games allow you to convert plains to mountains, desert to grassland and so forth. The terraforming of land has not happened yet on this Earth, except in the wrong direction (desertification as a result of poor environmental policies). In a case like converting Desert to Plains or Plains to Grassland, you're talking about the actual changing of the quality of the soil. No one has been able to do that yet, though some people like the Israelis have gotten good yields out of poor soil. Making a mountain or a hill from a flat plain or vice versa- no way! Think of the amount of energy it would take to build 50 square miles of mountain! Cutting down or building up a forest, however, should be pretty easy. Reducing terraforming improves the game I believe- you can't build a city just anywhere, and terraform all around it to make it a good spot, you have to be smart about where to start cities.

6. Borders should grow along roads and well as concentrically.

I mentioned this elsewhere in the forums. Influence of a city doesn't spread out in a perfect circle. In gameplay terms, the Firaxis guys have talked about how you can be at peace with another civ, but they could take shots at you outside your borders. Does it make sense to be at peace within two of your cities, but if you travel on a road between two cities, they could attack you then? No. As your culture rating grows, more and more of your roads should fall within your borders.

All the above, while suffering from my wordiness, are pretty simple things that would all improve fun and not increase complexity, IMHO.


[This message has been edited by Harlan (edited May 18, 2001).]

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by polymths on 05-18-2001 05:16 PM 1. Railroad movement: Make it so any unit can move exactly 12 tiles when moving completely on railroads. (Or just 1/5 of MP if that is easier) Get rid of infinite movement.

Whether Firaxis changes infinite railroads into above fixed move-radius, or not - they should either way add more "cosmic rules" and "special flags" in the Rules tweak-files. I would prefer a fixed railroad move-radius as default, but an infinite RR-move on/off cosmic rule, together with an alternative fixed RR move-radius input-number would be a needed fine-tweak alternative anyway. Also an RR combat-decrease on/off rule perhaps.

quote: 2. Get Rid of Rush Buying Anything!

I have previously suggested that they should change the AI to avoid dust-collecting AI fortunes, and instead tweak it to plow the excess into practical use, like rush-building for example. However, the human player is bound to exploit this much better then the AI can. So I agree - perhaps its better to get rid of the rush-buying concept altogether.

However one should still have the ability to change production mid-through at the cost of a heavy toll (as in Civ-2; half the shields go up in smoke).

quote: 3. Missiles (Cruise/Nukes) are point and click attack (like paratroopers) if unit is in range. No recon should be possible with missiles! (Transportation of missiles should also be point and click of course)

This was already partly possible in Civ-2:

Cosmic rule: "10 ; Max paradrop range"
Special flag: "; 000000100000000 = Can make paradrops"

When add above to cruise- and nuclear missiles. The problem was that all three units (above + paratroopers) had to share the same max range-input. Not so good. In Civ-3 these rules must be extended; more flexible.

quote: 4. If Civ2 style spies are included, reduce percentage of successful mission to be smaller than in Civ2 (eliminate infinite spy strategy)

Reducing percentage outcomes to below 33% success becomes both meaningless and rather frustrating. Besides, they should replace the spy-unit altogether in favour of an all-in-one spy/intelligence/demographics screen instead. Thats easier on the AI, then moving around visible AI spy-units.

quote: 5. Get rid of city bribing! - a stupid concept anyway!

Agree.

quote: 6. In Civ2, bombers were given two turns, one to attack (and then float in air) one to return. Give fighters the same ability (with less range of course) so fighters can stack with bombers to simulate fighter escort!

I want above tweak to be the default one. Move-radius for bombers and fighters can easily be fine-tuned in the Rules tweak-files if one is not happy with them.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 18, 2001).]

[Bereta_Eder]

polymths,

I really like your ideas

All except #2 and #5.

#2: although it certaintly is more realistic that you don;t rush build, Civ will be unrecognisable if this feature was taken out. Rush building can, to some extend, be explained by saying you increase the number of workers and you pay them extra etc.

#5: bribing cities is accurate. It's like paying some group of people and help them to get over the government. It's realistic and adds to the strategy element.

Some comments on #3: excellent idea The point and click of a missile can also be done to transport them to subs etc.

I absolutely love idea #6 As Harlan poits out the 2 turn period may be unrealistic but I don't see any strategic problems ( protection of another unit under the plane is great strategic element INMHO). No problems EXCEPT not being able to stack fighters and protect the bombers. SO excellent idea indeed.

Harlan,
you don't lose embassies during wars in civ.

[polymths]

Concerning Air Combat:
I do agree that the air combat model may simply need to be overhauled. I thought that a simple fix to make fighter units "float" for a turn like bombers would permit bomber escorts since in Civ2 your bombers were all sitting ducks after they attacked and "floated". However this still doesn't address the ability of bombers to block land units as in Civ2 or what some posters have requested, namely the ability to fly over units. (Not that that's a serious problem for me since blocking an aircraft completely is not possible, just go around them!)

It may not be possible to have an easy to implement fix for air combat although the CTP idea sounds good and may qualify as an easy fix.

Concerning SDI:
I think that removing SDI defense altogether might be best. I mean it is pretty far out future tech IMHO.

Concerning Terraforming:
Agree that it is totally unrealistic. Should be toned down significantly to limit what kinds of terraforming is possible.

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by paiktis22 on 05-18-2001 08:31 PM polymths, I really like your ideas All except #2 and #5. #2: although it certaintly is more realistic that you don;t rush build, Civ will be unrecognisable if this feature was taken out. Rush building can, to some extend, be explained by saying you increase the number of workers and you pay them extra etc. #5: bribing cities is accurate. It's like paying some group of people and help them to get over the government. It's realistic and adds to the strategy element. Some comments on #3: excellent idea The point and click of a missile can also be done to transport them to subs etc. I absolutely love idea #6 As Harlan poits out the 2 turn period may be unrealistic but I don't see any strategic problems ( protection of another unit under the plane is great strategic element INMHO). No problems EXCEPT not being able to stack fighters and protect the bombers. SO excellent idea indeed. Harlan, you don't lose embassies during wars in civ.

Disagree that bribing cities is accurate. In real life history, when has a city been bribed?????

[Imran Siddiqui]

Problem with removing SDI is that nukes then become extremely fearful things. To counter this perhaps make nukes an atrocity after the first year of the first one having been dropped. However the nuke... there is no defense.

[lord of the mark]

quote: Originally posted by polymths on 05-18-2001 09:44 PM Disagree that bribing cities is accurate. In real life history, when has a city been bribed?????

IIRC correctly the ancient Romans heavily bribed some of the Greek states of anatolia, which they eventually absorbed. Herod of Judea was on Romes payroll. France subsidized James 2, until he was overthrown in 1689, narrowly averting Britains absorption as an informal part of France's empire. My own country handed out bribes to african and latin american politicians and states throughout the cold war (Im not ashamed - we were up against an opponent as nasty as a civ AI) and we have even bought parts of our country - notably the Louisiana purchase. The list is endless.

It will be objected that this is not hte same as bribing cities, but in civ it is difficult to represent the informal empire purchased with bribes. In any case the bribing of a city is really supposed to represent the sending of funds to a friendly faction to overthrow the govt.
There are examples from the Pelopenisian (sp?) wars to US aid to the Iraqi opposition. English aid to Dutch rebels against spain, french aid to catalan rebels against spain, spanish aid to catholic rebels in england, french aid to Irish rebels, Soviet aid to the IRA, Israeli aid to Lebanes christians, iranian aid to lebanese shiites, pakistani aid to kashmiri rebels, chinese aid to indonesian rebels, allied aid to white armies in russia, german assistance to Lenin, anglo american and soviet assistance to the resistance in axis europe, japanese assistance to elements in British India - in what historical period has this not been used?

It is certainly implemented in an abstract and to some extent unrealistic way in civ2 (it is only ONE element of the game) - i hope for improvement (with the nationality model) in civ3, but to ask for a fully realstic model of rebellion and foreign assistance is asking for civ 4.5!!!!

LOTM

[lord of the mark]

i like harlans points.

LOTM

[Bereta_Eder]

LOTM's answer covered me
[This message has been edited by paiktis22 (edited May 18, 2001).]

[Gammaray fan]

If bribing cities are a reflection of sending funds to support a friendly faction in another civ, that city should revolt, but form a new civ that is allied to your civ.
CTP did this to some extent, although the new civ was not necessarily allied to your civ, and although sometimes the new civ became a barbarian city!

1. Railroad movement: Make it so any unit can move exactly 12 tiles when moving completely on railroads. (Or just 1/5 of MP if that is easier) Get rid of infinite movement.

I agree

2. Get Rid of Rush Buying Anything!

I do not agree. If you play at the Emperor level or above you might not be able to build a Wonder. The AI could be way ahead and build all Wonder. Remember Firaxis has said it is going to be mush harder to conquer another city.

3. Missiles (Cruise/Nukes) are point and click attack (like paratroopers) if unit is in range. No recon should be possible with missiles! (Transportation of missiles should also be point and click of course)

I agree

4. If Civ2 style spies are included, reduce percentage of successful mission to be smaller than in Civ2 (eliminate infinite spy strategy)

I don't know about this one. During WWII the Germans had a spie in the British Gov.way up near the top. And now look at our own spies that we have just uncover in the last two years. Both of them in place for more than 10 years. Also the Walker case some years ago, he was inplace 20 years or more.


5. Get rid of city bribing! - a stupid concept anyway!

No comment

6. In Civ2, bombers were given two turns, one to attack (and then float in air) one to return. Give fighters the same ability (with less range of course) so fighters can stack with bombers to simulate fighter escort!


CTP has a better system as Harlan said.
On the range part. Before 1948 range was a problem for Fighter, however since that time, with air-to-air refueling, fighter can now go anyplace a bomber can go.
In WWII fighter escort was a must. In Korea we used some fighter escort. In Vietnam we used fighter escort only when they had imformation that the NVAF was going try to shoot down some bombers. In the Gulf War there was'nt any fighter escort, and to day a B-2 or F-117 would not want any fighter anywhere near them because it would blow their cover.


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[Harlan]

Regarding bribing cities, what LOTM said. There are examples from most every time in history, though you have to abstract it a bit. For instance the annexation of Hawaii by the US. There was a coup by the plantation companies who then turned it over to the US, but it wasn't really resisted because of all the money pouring in by those companies, the economy depended on them and the royal family got quite wealthy. In the khatate politics of Asia and sultanates of the Middle East, bribing was key. Most cities were de-facto independent typically, but if a strong ruler came along, he could buy supoort of some of these cities, develop a power base and build an empire.

It is true though that oftentimes the bribed city breaks off becomes independent instead of joining your empire. Maybe, when you bribe, there could be a certain chance that would happen, or they join you.

Also, what happened extremely frequently was the bribing of a faction or key person inside a walled city, who would see that a certain section of the city's defense was undefended. The attacking army could breach the walls in the middle of the night and be in the heart of the city before anyone knew what had happened, making the rest a mop up operation. One might count this as a bribe, or one might want to make it a bribe to destroy the City Walls only.

Regarding rush buying, the problem with it is how you can finish something off in one turn. No team of workers, no matter how many, could say, complete the Pyramids in a year! A compromise would be if you click "Rush Buy", the pace of work is doubled, but at triple the regular cost, or some such formula.

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-19-2001 01:49 AM One might count this as a bribe, or one might want to make it a bribe to destroy the City Walls only.

Sabotaging would be enough. And sabotage-actions or foreign intelligence-info should be dealt through a spy/intelligence-screen. Not by moving around indevidual spy-units.

quote: Regarding rush buying, the problem with it is how you can finish something off in one turn. No team of workers, no matter how many, could say, complete the Pyramids in a year! A compromise would be if you click "Rush Buy", the pace of work is doubled, but at triple the regular cost, or some such formula.

Good point and good suggestion. However doubled production per turn should be the maxed-out alternative - not faster then that. And, as you suggest, it must be deterrantly expensive (and have a gradually more and more negative impact on the happiness-levels, as well) - still, only give you a limited, put sometimes pivotal advantage.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Bereta_Eder]

quote: Originally posted by Harlan on 05-19-2001 01:49 AM Regarding rush buying, the problem with it is how you can finish something off in one turn. No team of workers, no matter how many, could say, complete the Pyramids in a year! A compromise would be if you click "Rush Buy", the pace of work is doubled, but at triple the regular cost, or some such formula.

I agree with you Harlan that is not very realistic. But it makes strategic sense. How can you possibly plan everything that's going to happen? You will HAVE to rush build at some point in order to safeguard a strategy plan that you have in your head. If you think in terms of time periods and civ events you'll find a lot of abnormalities in civ. And this is normal! Years are just in to create atmosphaire IMHO. They can't possibly fine tune the years with events.

As far as I am concerned, I wouldn't want the rush built rule touched...

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by paiktis22 on 05-19-2001 07:19 AM You will HAVE to rush build at some point in order to safeguard a strategy plan that you have in your head.

Sometimes strategy-plans must be altered - this happens in real life. Besides, the HP is much more likely to take advantage of Civ-2 style rush-buyings then the AI-civs is. Isnt this unfair to the AI-civs? Isnt it more fun to play a game without built-in HP-favourable advantages?

Im all in for modified rush-buyings rules although; the way Harlan portrays it. And with negative happiness consequences attached to them, as well.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Slax]

Even more unrealistic than Rush Buy is the idea that you can change what you are producing, using half of your accumulated production from one thing, and put it into buiding another. Your 90% of the Pyramids becomes 50% of the Hanging Gardens.

But this is another game rule which could not be changed without great changes to the whole production method.

[Urban Ranger]

I disagree with #1. As I pointed out in another thread, land units that move along railroads still can't launch many attacks like air and sea units. Infinite movement is fine. Leave it.

[Bereta_Eder]

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 05-19-2001 07:34 AM Sometimes strategy-plans must be altered - this happens in real life.

Ralf,
I think that's exactly what rush build is all about. If you cannot change your production how can you alter your strategy?

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 05-19-2001 09:14 AM I disagree with #1. As I pointed out in another thread, land units that move along railroads still can't launch many attacks like air and sea units. Infinite movement is fine. Leave it.

You seems to imply that infinite RR-moves works as a compensation to the supposed limited combat-use of land-units, compared with sea- and air-units. I would say that it is pretty much the other way around.

Firstly:

Land-units can easily redraw from coastal areas, so sea-units cannot attack them. Fighting land-units with expensive bombers & fighters simply isnt cost-effective, comparing with how ridiculously easy you can fight them with RR infinite-moving & always full-combat-strength land-units. On top of that both sea- and air-units are completely impotent then it comes to pillaging and (more importantly) take and hold enemy-cities. (by the way; air-units should be able to bomb/pillage terrain-improvements as well, in Civ-3). So the military-branch with the overly pre-eminant attack-value, IS in fact the land-units.

Secondly:

Thanks to the infinite RR-rule, each-and-every game that I have won, the sea- and air-units have played minor & insignificant roles in order to achieve this-or-that military overal victory. The infinite-rule in itself wrong-balance the military aspect of the game totally.
Thanks to the infinite-RR:s you can unleash huge invasions swallowing half (or more) of Soviet in one single turn. Everything after the first initial AI-turn response simply becomes a tedious mop-up operation - tedious because you already know that the invasion is bound to succeed, anyway.
Also; even if the AI could launch a huge D-day style disembarkment-operation on your modern RR-equipped big island, the HP can always be sure (thanks to infinite moves) to fight down even the slightest hope for the AI to establish any workable breachhead. This infinite-RR rule works heavily in favour of the human player, at the expense of the AI-players.

Anyway, regardless if Firaxis implements infinite RR-moves, or not, they should either way add a Rules.txt Infinite RR-move on/off cosmic rule, together with an alternative fixed RR move-radius input-number. Also an RR combat-decrease on/off rule perhaps.

-------------------- Paiktis22:

quote: ]Originally posted by Paiktis22 on 05-19-2001 09:37 AM I think that's exactly what rush build is all about. If you cannot change your production how can you alter your strategy?

Rush-building and changing production halfway through is two different things. Even if one cant rush-build anymore, one can still change the production halfway through. With the latter alternative you lose half the already invested resources though.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Bereta_Eder]

Yes of course. I tried to say two things at once.

_rush building: nice to push your empire to the edge in order to get the money to buy something in 2 turns

_changing production: critical to alter your strategy and adapt.

[colossus]

More easily implemented suggestions:

1.Always some penalty for production change of the same class. Changing production from Pyramid to Colossus, or from trieme to settler, should suffer some penalty also.

2.Always starting with 2 units. 2 settlers, settler+horseman, settler+warrior, etc. This leads to more variation and more balnaced game.

3.No more autoheal. Armies and navies should not heal themselves outside city or nearby fortress.

[ajbera]

quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui on 05-18-2001 10:20 PM Problem with removing SDI is that nukes then become extremely fearful things. To counter this perhaps make nukes an atrocity after the first year of the first one having been dropped. However the nuke... there is no defense.

For the sake of gameplay, allow SDI as a defense against nukes, but give it no more than a 50% chance of destroying incoming missiles, but no less than 33%. Although I am a proponent of realism, this is a modification I'm willing to make for an enjoyable game. However, SDI should be damn expensive, and only available near the end of the game. Furthermore, settings should definitely be tweakable so players can adjust them to their personal preferences.

Harlan: great idea about rush-buying. Hopefully Firaxis will have the good sense to implement something similar (if not identical.)