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Master Zen
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of naughty
Jan 2003
time: 23:32
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ok, here's my 2 cents (more like 2 dollars), I'll divide it by parts:
Things that should be brought back from Civ2
1) Elvis!!
2) Events for scenarios. Make it simple like in Civ2 but trust me, they make scenarios far more interesting and complex. I dare to say that events alone have caused Civ2 to have the staying power it has. It is likely that Civ3 will be long forgotten after Civ4, but Civ2 did manage to outlive its successor (and if Civ4 doesn't have events, Civ2 might outlive it also).
Things that should be brought back from SMAC
1) Social Engineering. Then we can have stuff like "social democracy" and "lassez-faire capitalism" or "fundamentalist monarchy" and stuff like that. Get creative. I loved Oncle Boris' suggestion that civs change according to what your style is.
2) Terrain Variety. SMAC was pretty cool that you had climatic diversity: some places were more wet, others more rocky, etc. Perhaps Civ could have wetness and fertility so that certain patches of land were particulary productive (think the great plains or the ukraine).
3) Natural Disasters. Volcanoes are one thing but earthquakes and other stuff would be pretty neat.
New Changes
A whole new combat engine
Let's be serious, Civ3's combat engine is not particularly fancy. I belive it is possible to add considerable depth to it without making it exceedingly complicated, and my basis of comparison is the wonderfully simple wargame Panzer General. I have said in more than one thread that the perfect civ game would be a mix between civ and PG, of course, not withstanding the "look-and-feel" copyright suit that they'd slap on Firaxis's ass, some changes can be incorporated while maintaining the "civness"
- More HP. 5 HP allows for a lot of twisted combat results, this was a step backwards from Civ2. IMO, the average should be 10 with, for example, experience generating up to 15 HPs. Experience should also be constant not based on luck. Every successful combat should increase a unit's experience.
- Retreat, not death . Instead of combats being "to the death", there should be a retreat factor involved, i.e. a unit that starts getting beat up will retreat automatically. Perhaps this might be acompanied by a "stamina" rating. Each attack either takes away HP or stamina, after stamina has run out the unit retreats. If a unit is pinned down, it surrenders. This allows for maneouver being of vital importance so you can surround units or simply advance while denying your opponent the ability to resupply.
- Supply rules . There have never been any supply rules for civ. Terrain and transportation should dictate how much a unit resupplies, units that are cut off should not be able to resuply at all. Resupply should occur when a unit does not move, but if, say, the unit is on a road or something, then some resupply should manage to reach it even if its in combat.
- Transport . The one thing that bugs me about roads/railroads is that they give a huge advantage when in theory they should potentially serve both attacker and defender. For example, roads instead of giving a 3x movement rate universally, should be only about 1.5x for foot units and about 2x for wheeled/tracked units. Finally, railroads should be "hub-based", that is, instead of sliding through the rail system, a unit would have to load/unload at a hub in a city. Bomb a railroad, and ya can't reach the hub. Get caught in a city while still loaded, and suffer terribly. Thus, units would have to unload at the nearest city (or not-so-nearest if the enemy has air superiorty)and deploy normally to the front.
- Stack damage . Units bombed or attacked in a same stack should suffer some damage, whether it be HP or stamina. Perhaps bombardment would cause damage to some units besides the target, while direct attacks would reduce a stack's stamina enough that the inertia of a strong attack would cause the stack as a whole to retreat even if some of the units are still intact.
- Tactical/Strategic air power. Fighters suck at bombing in Civ3. There should be a big separation between tactical bombers and strategic ones, the latter should be able to cause major damage to cities and infrastructure, while doing less damage to units themselves, while the former should be used mostly as airborne artillery.
Finally, units and attack/defense should be separated into classes. For units we could have foot, mounted, tracked (tank). This would affect transport and defensive characteristics. Naval units could be wood, armored or submarine. Air units could be prop or jet.
For attack/defense, you would have attacks against other types of units, say, a pikeman is obviously much more formidable against a mounted unit than a foot soldier. So, a pike would have a higher attack/defense rating against a mounted unit than against any other. Same with infantry having a higher attack against infantry than against tanks, so you would be a fool to attack a city with tanks, you'd soften it up with arty then send in the assault troops (similarly you would not defend a city with tanks)
That's all I can think of ATM, I have more suggestions for the economic and expansion elements but I'll post 'em later.
-MZ
Finally, one biggie: FOR ALL THAT IS SACRED AND HOLY PLEASE MAKE IT A HEX-BASED MAP, REGARDLESS OF IT BEING 2-D or 3-D... HEX HEX HEX!!!!
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CerberusIV
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Nice to see everyone thinking so hard.
My wish list.
Combined units - Combat units should work together. Even if they can't attack/defend as stacks (the CTP system is too strong) it would be nice if units like aircraft and artillery could be ordered to provide combat support to an attacking or defending unit, thus boosting its stats. If you have two infantry units one could attack and the other support rather than both attack. Only one unit could actually attack but it would do so more strongly.
Resources - You should be able to choose how resources are allocated. For example if you have 1 ivory it is now build SoZ and keep citizens happy. You should have to choose unless you have more than 1 ivory. A bigger empire would need more sources of resources to get the effects. Also it should be more difficult, if not impossible, to complete a build if you lose a required resource (perhaps it can't be completed unless you are at least halfway there). As has been suggested, maybe one iron source to support building 2 factories or 6 units and if you want to build more then you need more sources. The possibility of piracy or corruption disrupting supply and having to allocate resources to suppress the problem would add a challenge.
Diplomacy - could do better. Being able to intervene diplomatically in wars between AI's and broker peace deals would be nice. A variable form of government rather than abrupt changes would be good. So if you have a lot of military you get more free military support and less WW but less commerce and more unhappy citizens. Less military and more trading links gives less unit support but more commerce and fewer unhappy citizens. As the profile of your civ changes, the government effect changes.
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Andydog
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London
Jan 2001
time: 05:32
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I would like to see the economy developed into an important strategic game element. I hate the current system of gold being generated by roads and railroads sprawled all over the map. Roads/Railroads should only be used to link cities, resources, other civs, and to transport troops. (Imagine how much better your map would look!)
Gold is now generated via taxes. Taxes come from Tourism, Citizens, and from Resources traded with other Civs.
- Tourism taxes are generated by connecting your civ to other civs. They are calculated for each city and depend on the city's culture, tourism improvements, natural terrain features (eg highest mountains, waterfalls, lakes, wild animals etc), wonders, and the pollution generated by the city.
Cities receive a bonus to tourism if it has a harbour - the bonus increases as sea travel becomes more widely used throughout history. Further bonuses are applied when cities are connected eventually with railroads and later have airports in them.
Tourism taxes are then adjusted in line with other civs attitudes towards you (good tourism from a civ that likes you, zero tourism from a civ that you're at war with). In addition you can set your attitude toward a civ knowing its effects on the tourism they will recieve from your civ (if you decide to hate a civ though they will probably hate you back!).
- Citizen taxes are generated from your citizen population. The tax rate can be adjusted and will have an effect on happiness.
- Taxes from Resources are generated by trading luxuries and strategic resources - a bonus is received if you have a monopoly of resources. (Luxs and Stratetgic resources are still required for happiness and military units).
You must design a trade route between civs (perhaps the player draws a CTP style line on their map running from their city containing the recourse to any connected city of the civ you're trading with). You should protect that route against piracy from other civs. If you declare war against a civ who you're trading with, the trade route is cancelled. (Imagine the diplomacy involved with protecting trade routes! Two trading civs threatening war against anyone who pirates their trade goods!)
How about that then! As you can see this model would promote much more diplomacy between civs.
I would also like to see Pollution become much more damaging. More production and population = more pollution, and pollution affects city happiness, tourism, can damage city tiles, and will cause global warming which will eventually raise sea levels with catastrophic effects. (Imagine the diplomacy required to control world pollution!)
I would also like the CTP style combat model; it is vastly superior to the current Civ3 system imho.
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Tattila the Hun
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Tornio
Oct 2002
time: 07:32
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I've been rolling an idea of population based army. You could build the equipment for the troops, but your population (and the persentage of able 16-45 year olds. This could be varied, based on the quality of life in your nation. Better quality, more kids per couple, more manpower) would determine, how many actual units you could muster in times of conflict to defend your nation. Also, the adjustable amount of spent gold to their training would define the ultimate stats of the units, along with the tech level. Perhaps even the persentage of certain troops trained could be adjusted. For the equipment itself, it could be nice to, instead of "research armoured warfare, get tanks", the generic 16/10/2 unit, you could further use up your gold/research to ad points to the features of the unit.
Now, this force pool of, say, 500000 men, would then decrease as battles would rage on, and increase as further generations would reach that certain age. Units would only "heal", if would have enough reserves of the same type of trained men. If a unit is defeated, some of those troops could still make their way back. An example: A city has three defending units, 1000 men per unit. One is attacked, sustains casualties of 500 men, dead, wounded, routed, but fights the attacker back. Next, the fresh 1000 unit gets into the fray. Results may be roughly the same. And again. Now we have 3x 500 men units. When the next attack, on the same turn, hits the city, the two 500 man units merge, perhaps with some penalties, depending on the command structure. It's reduced to 250 men. Next time, the last 750 men get blown away, and the city is taken.
Other factors could include fatique, the "will" to fight, and availability of supplies.
Clear as a crystal, and so easy to implement, eh?
If this wouldn't work, then something like in the panzer general games.
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08-12-2003 00:23
No I didn't - Elvis is one of the Advisors. 
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