posted June 16, 1999 12:57            

Obvious stuff, that we don't really need to talk about--the AI should be smarter, wonders should be customizable. Let me get the discussion started now:

1. The army is too important. Early in the game, it's realistic. But in the middle period, the navy should be more valuable than it is. And once you get railroads, the imbalance toward the army is huge. With cruise missiles, it gets even larger. And the air force should be more potent. This not only would be more realistic, but better for gameplay, as you'd have to think about how to distribute your shields among the armed forces, as opposed to building a ton of howies. If/when I'm fighting, I want to unleash the full triad, not just transports, howies, tanks, MIs, and spies.

2. Conquest is a little too easy late, too hard in the middle, and much too easy after howies.

3. Trade with other nations is too hard early. There's also alot of discussion of completely junking the "caravan/freight" system, or dramatically supplementing it.

4. Anything that avoids the strategy funnel is good. The strategy funnel is the way that early, you can follow different paths, but late in the game, you end up doing the same thing. A good example of the strategy funnel is that when you go to war, you take cities, one after the other. Outside of WOWs, there are no strategic areas. This not only detracts from gameplay, it is unrealistic. Many war decisions are made based on materials. The Battle of Gettysburg was fought there b/c the South wanted to get a stash of shoes in the town, and happened to meet Union troops there. A more complex model for economics could fix this.

5. While it isn't a concern of mine, alot of folks seem to want a more subtle, deeper tech tree, that would alter the abilities of units they've already built, a la Age of Empires.

6. Late in the game, when you're at war, moving your units takes excruciatingly long.

My hope is that we can "consense" on the 3-5 areas of most concern. This would a) give Firaxis clear direction and b) allow us to focus on how to fix that stuff. If we all agree that trade is too difficult early, for example, then we can come up with the 3-4 best ways to attack this problem.

FD,

Thanks for posting your ideas, but could you help us out by finding the right thread to put your ideas into? It's hard to make a list, so we made specific topics in order to try to manage it. Thanks for helping.

Yin