My fix would be what I suggested in the Graphics thread and the Civilizations thread. CIVILIZATION SPECIFIC FOLDERS
That would be for each civilization to have its own folder. Each folder would have the graphics files (i.e. leaders.gif, units.gif/sprites, cities.gif, people.gif, icons.gif, flags.gif, cityimprov.gif, etc.) and game files (like events.txt and rules.txt for advances, units, city improvements, wonders, city names, leader names, govt names and types, etc.)

that way each civilization would have it own culturally specific graphics and game parameters, and events, etc. Then everyone's riflemen could have special uniforms, planes each look different, samurais instead of knights, cities look different at all stages of advancement and their improvements look different, and you can special tech trees and events.

With a patch you could probably almost do it to Civ2 like how scenario folders are done, just make civ specific subfolders. This would make scenarios more fun and increase the number of units (and etc) 7 times (I do hope civ3 lets you up to more civs than 7, like 30).

This could, btw, be implemented with civ-separate filenames as easily as civ-separate folders.

ChrisShafer: I realize the graphics would be a lot of work but the programers could do the initial group and leave the rest to customer who make their own scenarios (or later on scenario disks could come out). I don't think one file would help because if you want to customize your own civ you wouldn't be able to access all the parts or only certain parts/files (like we can only now access the leader graphics but before you couldn't, that is unless they make a special civilization editor as part of the scenario editor).

Thanks for your comments and support

second, it would heaps more work for designers, and probably blow out minimum requirements, slowing the game down because it's got all these extra units to keep in memory.

thirdly and most importantly, (although i know some people will disagree with me here), i'm inherently opposed to the implementation of any idea that will always give an advantage to a specific civ. and giving individual civs specific units or improvements is a sure way to do this. we're supposed to be shaping our civs throughout the game, not being confined to the parameters of whichever civ we just chose at the start.

if there's going to be any differences between the units of civs, they should be the result of decisions made during the game.

(far be it for me to state what they should be, but memories flood back of 'minor advances' that were brought up in the advances part of the list v2.0. eg. put in a bit of extra research to get slightly better artillery)

anyway E, as for it being included or not... that will depend on how many votes the idea gets when march rolls around, not by how much discussion the topic has had.

Your right about the span of years but that isn't the case in scenarios.

As far as unit priviledges go, my folders idea would only make them look different in the original game (reading from different files much as civ2 now reads from different cells). For example a rifleman in each follder would have same attributes based on the rules text in each folder but the appearance would different. based on the context of the original game. But if a scenario is designed, you're right then civs would have different advantages if the scenario designer set it up that way.

As far as slower I don't think so, the computer reads from different graphics files now for civ2 its not that big of a leap for civ3 and a pentium I could do it.

first can you define what the problem is? is it a significant problem? how does your ideas fix that problem specifically? does your fix effect any other areas of the game? if it does effect another area does it upset game balance in those other areas? is there a simpler way to fix the problem? does your idea hurt gameplay? why out of all of the ideas does your fix belong on this list?

as for the graphics, i'll admit i don't know a lot, but surely if each civ (let's say there'll be 15) has a different graphic for a musketeer (and let's also assume that the graphics are going to be a lot richer than they were in civ 2), then each time the computer draws/moves/whatever a musketeer, it won't be able to grab it from the one place and then add the colour of the civ. it'd have to keep up to 15 different musketeers in memory. if you add all their moving, attacking, dying etc. animations, then it's starting to add up when you have to multiply by 15. and if you're proposing different graphics for each type of unit (rather than just musketeer), wouldn't it have to remember (or retrieve) 15 times the amount of graphics as it used to for every unit? remembering of course than 15 civs could be a conservative estimate. it could easily be 30 or more.