What are RADICAL IDEAS?
What exactly is a radical idea? Well it is one that has a major effect on gameplay. It is an idea that completely alters the rules or adds a completely new element to the game. Suggestions to not include cities in CIV3 would be a radical idea.

What are not RADICAL IDEAS
What is not a radical idea? Minor tweaking of the game is not a radical idea. If your idea is "lets change warriors from 1-1-1 to 2-1-1" that is not a radical idea and could be better addressed in another thread.

Hopefully plenty of both evolutionary and revolutionary ideas will come out of this thread. By just concentrating on ideas that haven't been thought of (or at least implemented) in the previous civ titles, maybe we can develop a new idea that is good for civ.

If even one new concept presented in this thread is added to CIV3 then our efforts put into this thread will have been a success. Reply to other people, bounce ideas off of each other. Vigourous discussion and debate usually breeds new and interesting ideas. So lets start having fun.

korn469

i have only played MoO one time in 1995, so how exactly would the national espionage system work? would you have science, economy, luxieres and, espionage? where exactly would it be paid for?

here's some crazy thoughts about spying, think about them and tell me what you think. in each one of your cities you can build a spy building (lets call it a cia building). you must have a cia building in your city before you make unconventional units (spy's, guerilla warfare units, ect). well you can then use your spy units for special operations, you can use your spy unit to infiltrte the city and once it does you then a have a list of options for your spy to do in that city. like in the game seven kingdom when you infiltrate an enemy city. there would be a chance of your spy being caught if he ever does an action like try to steal tech. the longer the time between actions the less chance of the spy being caught. also if you have a cia building in your city you can do a spy sweep (but maybe it would cost money)

korn469

I'm not sure how this national producton was calculated but I think it was a direct re-direction of resources from a planet (MoO equivilant of cities). For example if 10% of was spent on security and a base produced 100 units per turn, only 90 units would be spent on local projects while 10 units would be diverted to national security.

Hope those two paragraphs made sense.

For funding this type of espionage, I'm borrowing an idea from the Techonology forum, which suggested that the traditional luxury/tax/science rates be changed to just luxury/tax and a science budget created that would be funded with revenue from taxes. I propose that a similar Espionage budget be created.

You know what I'm talking about, and if this isn't radical enough I don't know what is.

sounds like a workable idea, here's an other idea for what spies could do...each point of population should be loyal to one civilization or another...spys should be able to make peope in your civ stay loyal to you or go into enemy civs and make peopele their loyal to your civ. being loyal to a civ wouldn't necesarrily make them happy or unhappy it would count though in times of civil strife

negative:
* Someone said this would make the game look like a RTS.

T_M

looking like a RTS game while not being one doesn't things at all (at least not in my opinion). however there is one negative you left out about trashing the whole grid system (whether it's square or hexes) and that is tile improvements and working the land. without a grid system how would it work? would all farms built be the same size? how much area would each citizen work? those problems would have to be worked out before the system could work. think of some ideas about how to get around those problems and we're well on our way to trashing the grid system and going to a radius system.

i'm going to throw some ideas at you. the problem is making movement more realistic, so while keeping the tile system what are some other radical things we can do to change movement.

1. we can increase movements rates (not very radical but pretty practical) how ever problems arise from this, like helicoptors in SMAC that can attack 16 times.

2. we can give action points to each unit or chassis (which ever system is kept). all units would have the same number of action points (maybe green units would get less and elite units would get more) however different chassis/units would have different costs for moving and attacking. so if a Armored unit and an infantry unit both have 10 action points, it's might cost the infantry 2 action points to move across a plains tile while it would only cost the Armored unit 1/2 a point to move across the plains tile. but when moving acoss a mountain tile it might cost the infantry unit 3 action points to move across it and it might cost the armored unit four action points to move across it.

keep the discussion going

* This idea that for different units the movent points of terrain is different sound cool.
But maybe it isn't that radical and should be discussed in another thread?

i agree with you, civ3 should have a sphereical map and firaxis should figure out how to make it work. i'd post my movement idea in another thread but the units thread isn't up yet and there isn't a movement thread.

i was searching the forums and here are some ideas Jeff put in the miscellaneous thread, they more fit this thread though.

There are a few fundamental changes I'd like to see in Civ III. While these will make it a different game than the other Civ games, I think it's time. Any "rework" of Civ II is just going to be more of the same.
First I'd like it to be more difficult to create a lasting civilization. In the current games you can expand at an exponential rate until you meet your neighbors. There are no internal limits on growth or progress. To put it in a literary sense, there's plenty of Civ vs. Civ, and Civ vs. Nature (limited resources, need to "terraform") but very little of Civ vs. Self. Let's make the game more difficult by making it fundamentally hard to get a civilization to grow and prosper. You're not going to get railroads by 500 AD if your people get "future-shocked" and destroy all your libraries and research centers.

Second, I think war should be de-emphasized. The name of the game after all is Civilization, not Battles Through the Ages. Admittedly war plays a large role in the history of the world, but so does trade, social interaction, religion, discovery, survival, and many others. The question is what to detail and what to abstract. It gets annoying moving each individual unit and resolving every little fire-fight. The original game should have the slogan "Civilization: Where every war is a hundred years war!"

Third, the amount of control the player has should vary over time. Civilizations are not controlled by one all-knowing individual who has a hand in everything. In the beginning of the game the player should control everything, after all a chief can control everything that happens (game scale) in a single village, but how well can you communicate with that second city your settlers founded? How willing are they going to be to follow your dictates? The amount of control the player has should be determined by three things -- communications technology & distance from capitol, governement & social engineering choices, and social effects of meddling. By the last I mean that every time the player interferes or overrides the "wishes of the local lord or populace" the people get more unhappy and more likely to revolt.

Fourth, make the number of civilizations in the game more "free-flow," that is dramatically variable over the course of the game. For starters, the game begins sparsely populated by a hundred or so civilizations, each only one city large. Over time they grow, unite, conquer, and destroy one another. The player does the same thing guiding his civilization. Eventually large empires grow, but because of the difficulty in maintaining a large civilization, they tend to split and fragment spawning new civilizations. At least this presents a realistic way to create an "American" civilization -- a group of colony cities that split off and create their own civilization.

I realize these are quite fundamental changes to the game, but it's where I think the focus should be -- not on quickly getting tanks to stomp on chariots, but trying to build and maintain a civilization.

i really think the third idea was good. sort of like the people chaffing under a big brother type government. and the idea that not all cities (especially far away or conquered cities) want to belong to your empire is an important design element to keep in mind while making civ3

lets keep the discussion flowing

korn469

p.s. jig, i heard that firaxis is supposed to port SMAC to linux, so i'm sure they'd do the same with civ3 also

Instead of strict turn-based play, perhaps each player could set up his/her move and then once everyone has a plan, let them all go. The idea would be that instead of attacking a unit that has to wait for its turn to respond, you would tell your unit where to attack, the other guy would tell its unit what to do, and once everyone is ready then they all go at once.

For example, if I told my tank to attack the Celt infantry, the result would depend on what the Celt told his guy to do. If he said to attack my tank, they would fight based on attack values. If he said to stand, the fight would be on my attack and his defense. If he said to run and he was able to get away (like if he was on a raod and my tank was in the hills) there would be no fight at all.

sorry about that. in the future i'll try to do a better job of shifting discussions that belong in another thread to that thread.

shifting populations is a good idea. here's an idea. i know in the Simcity games people would only travel so far to go to a job. make it where people wanna live in the best city within their travel range. if two cities have a road connecting them then the people will have a bigger travel range. if railroads connect the cities then the people will have an even bigger travel range. then unhappy or poor people will go to rich cities with high standards of living. if their isn't a city like that in the peoples travel range, they will turn into an independent settler unit (this unit would be along the lines of a refugee unit but it could actually found it's own city) and that settler would go off and found an independent city, which would act like a minor civ.

n.c.

i played a battle of the bulge game that used a command system like what you were talking about. the only difference was it was a real time game. so let me get this right. your idea is for both sides to give orders to all their units, then you hit end of turn or whatever and all units move simultaneously carrying out their orders? what would happen if their was an unoccupied city and two identical units from civs that had a truce had orders to occupy it. who would get the city? i mean if they were both armor units with the same level of morale(from SMAC) and they were the same distance from the city, who would take it (the reason i said truce is because if they were at war obviously they would fight) this would probably require each unit to have better A.I. (enemy units run into each other they would have to be smart enough to fight). it'd also require some kind of initive system (morale could work for that), an stacked combat would make it lots easier to implement this idea(like from CTP) it actually probably would not be that hard to code in. the advantages would be
*it would be more fair
*would make strategy and intelligence gathering (gotta know what the enemy is doing) a bigger part of the game
*it would make each turn a little less predictable

disadvantages would be
*it'd take a degree of control out of the players hands

keep up the discussion

korn469

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First you'd be able to build irrigation, it would produce food for the city. But instead of the people in the city working on the irrigation, it would support it's own population (Example: Village). This "village" would ship most of the food it produces to cities (not always just one city). It would not generate any trade/tech since the people are farmers (or miners in mining village), but city would generate trade/tech using the raw-materials shipped from the villages.

As technology advances you'd be able to build farming that would be villages as well, but near cities it would start developing into suburban areas. These suburban areas would work as something between farmland and cities being able to generate less food but support higher population and generate some trade/tech. As the city grows the suburbanization would also develop and with time encourage urban sprawl. Then the urban areas would develop into cities. if the new city is next to another city it would become part of it, but if it wasn't on adjantant to a city it would develop into completely new city (example: Tokyo-Yokohama). Also with lots of time the whole planet could be just a big city (like that one planet in new Star Wars movie...).

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i'd Consider this a radical idea as it would revolutionize the city building.
It works pretty cool with middle ages too as it allows to have a large areas of countryside and only few cities.

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First you'd be able to build irrigation, it would produce food for the city. But instead of the people in the city working on the irrigation, it would support it's own population (Example: Village). This "village" would ship most of the food it produces to cities (not always just one city). It would not generate any trade/tech since the people are farmers (or miners in mining village), but city would generate trade/tech using the raw-materials shipped from the villages.

As technology advances you'd be able to build farming that would be villages as well, but near cities it would start developing into suburban areas. These suburban areas would work as something between farmland and cities being able to generate less food but support higher population and generate some trade/tech. As the city grows the suburbanization would also develop and with time encourage urban sprawl. Then the urban areas would develop into cities. if the new city is next to another city it would become part of it, but if it wasn't on adjantant to a city it would develop into completely new city (example: Tokyo-Yokohama). Also with lots of time the whole planet could be just a big city (like that one planet in new Star Wars movie...).

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i'd Consider this a radical idea as it would revolutionize the city building.
It works pretty cool with middle ages too as it allows to have a large areas of countryside and only few cities.

BTW: they should trash cityradius completely,
who says people in New York can't eat food brought from Montana?
Also help to balance if you made scenario with russia or soviet union in it because there's huge amounts of Natural gas, oil and coal in Siberia but no cities nearby.

n.c. or korn469, to resolve this problem of two opposiong units entering the same sqaure, you could revise the combat model and have two types of attack: Attack and hold position or hit-and-run. I've always found it a little odd that a unit would attack another unit and turn right around to return to it's starting sqaure. The hit-and-run would be the traditional model Civ model of fighting.

For that attack and hold position, if the attacker wins, it enters the defender's square. If the defender wins, the results are the same as in the hit-and-run model. If there are multiple defenders, the attack must defeat all of the defenders. This two units moving into the same sqaure scenario could be resolved by having them fight and the winner gets to keep the square while the loser dies.

humaloidi, you can use post edit to get rid of your second post. Click on the third icon of the message (the one with a pencil).

korn469: You described my suggestion exactly. The problem of truce units going for the same square is a very real one, here's another: what if two bitter enemies send units right past each other? would they fight or just pass each other and do a one fingered wave? These and other problems abound, which is a shame, because I think the turn-based fighting is somewhat unrealistic; the method I described would also be more fun.

Research points are generated as before, but are used differently. Add up all
research points as cities are updated each turn. There should be a list of all
available techs (those whose prerequisites have been researched). This list
should be ordered, either by sophistication (such as the way techs are
numbered in SMAC), or by the order they were made available (I prefer the
second). A random percentage of the total available research points is
assigned to the first tech on the list, a random percentage of what is left is
assigned to the second tech on the list and so on. The percentage would fall
in a range determined by the best science facility a civ had (say 0-50% for
none, 10-60% for a library somewhere, up to 50-100% for SETI or similar late
game facility. After this calculation, the game will check the list top to
bottom for techs with more accumulated points than the current requirement (It
seems to me that previous SMAC games place this requirement as a function of
total known techs. Alternatively, we could follow the MoO model where each
tech has a specific cost.). Any points unassigned (this would tend to be small
most of the time) and surplus for any tech would be held over for the next
turn, possibly depleted somewhat (following my above example, if you only had
libraries, only 60% of the surplus would be held over).

Of course, we all want to be able to direct research, so I thought of a way to
do that. By clicking on a tech on the research list, it would be traded with
the tech listed directly above it. Doing so applies a -1 penalty (listed next
to the tech name) to the tech you clicked on. If the tech originally above had
a higher penalty, then the higher penalty is decreased (made less bad) by -1
when the switch is made (This, I think, is the correction which makes all
choices resulting in a given order equivalent.) Before assigning research
points for a tech with a penalty, a percentage are outright lost (penalty
times 5% for libraries only, times 1% for SETI). These penalties could be
offset by gold at an appropriate ratio (I recall having a lot more bulbs than
gold a turn, so 1-1 may not be helpful enough) up to a set percentage of the
national surplus (which is known because this calculation takes place at the
end of the city upkeep phase).

I think these ideas cover some of our desire to see free research rewarded,
while allowing governmental tinkering when necessary. If one objects to the
randomness, I think it would be just as reasonable to fix the percentage at
the middle of the ranges I've suggested.

Additionally (this could be applied to other models as well), it might be
worth considering some diminishing returns as a method of avoiding the "rich
getting richer" problem. That is to say, if a lot of researchers apply
themselves to the same topic, their results may tend to overlap (a 2nd guy
helping is much more helpful than the 100th guy). After research points are
assigned on a given turn and before they are added to the accumulated total
reduce them as follows: Where x is the number of allocated points, take the
square root of 100+2x, subtract 10 and multiply by 10 to get the number of
points added to the accumulated total for that tech. Alternatively, this
calculation could be done immediately following city upkeep and before points
are assigned, though this would result in substantially fewer points. This is
the conversion if the 100th applied point required 2 generated points, the
200th 3, etc. Obviously game balancing might require a different formual, or
possibly even one that changes with the stage of the game.

i work nights from 10pm to 6am my time, however one of the people at my job has been on vaction and i have to fill in shifts for him. so i have been working from alot more than usual, during both the night and the day. from sunday from 5pm until i past out tuesday morning at 4am i ad one hour of sleep. out of all the different radical ideas threads i have a summary of about half of the ideas. i have to work again tommorrow for most of the day (why the hell am i still up?!) but on thursday i have already set aside the day to finishing the summary, and ALL the ideas in the thread have been heard and i am trying to write a quality summary for them. thanks for understanding

2. Unlike previous Civ games, don't make this an all-encompassing timespan. Maybe call it Civilization III: the Cradle of Mankind, and have the game oriented to ONLY ancient times, like up to 1000 AD. I'd like a strategic version of the theme used in Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires and Rise of Rome.

-Princeps

n.c.

thanks alot! hmmm it should be in the real time part, and say something like...

Movement should happen in real time. A player issues orders and all actions happen simultaneously with morale determining inititive.

i know that when i read it earlier today that i had accidently left out one idea about scientist.

i'll go edit the thread right now.

AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE SHOULD BE OPTIONAL!!!

The population of cities are recorded as x.xxx. This allows fractional population points. The fraction has no gameplay effect until it reaches the next number. It allows groth rates to be experesed as an increase per turn. Attacks that hit population centers can now do fractional pop. points of damage. maybe 0.1 or 0.05 per hit.

The purpose of this proposal is to seperate growth from straight food production.
Growth rates can be expressed as a percentage per turn, (eg 2.5%) to give a familiar sort of look. What this means for gameplay terms is that 0.025 pop points are added every year. This gives a groth of 40 turns.

Pop is recorded as fractional points, but it is easy to convert that to a real pop number.
The formula:
Actual pop = 5000 x (pop points + 0.5)^2 - 1250
Follows the civx model exactly for whole numbers, and can give good values for fractional numbers.

Effects on population growth. All numbers are arbitray and should vary depending on SE choices and tech. This system is desigend to be compatable with the idea of villages.

I have made use of a 'happyness rating', which is (#happy - #unhappy) / # total. This gives 0 for all content, 100 for all happy, and -100 for all unhappy. This can be applied to a city, a region, a civ or the entire world.

Base growth: 10%
Happyness : + city happyness / N. N depends on SE.
villages : + 0.2% per village
medicine : + 2%
etc.

Immigration. To take into account people moving around in your civ and between civs.
The advantages of including this is that large unhappy cites will tend to slow down growth or shrink, while your smaller cities will pick up the extra people.

In civ immigration = (city happyness - civ happyness) / Y. Y depends on SE and the overall level of transportation availabble. In cty immigation tends to have larger volume than between civs.

between civs migration = (city happyness - world happyness) / Z. Z depends on SE and transport of all players. For this calcualtion government types can influence the happyness used. democracy might add 10 points, while communism subtarcts 10 points, to reflect that democracies never have had problems with too many people trying to flee from them.

Wonder: Iron curtain. Prevents all between civ emmigration. (for gameplay all cities count as average happyness level)

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An idea I had was:
1) Ditch the grid system. Everything else here relies on this
2) All moves happen at the same time.
3) Each unit has a size radius (how big it physically is), an intercept radius (it will attack enemy units IT CAN SEE or IT IS TOLD ABOUT inside this area), and a sight radius (how far it can clearly see).
4) If two units physically run into each other, they fight. If an enemy unit moves into intercept range of a spotter unit, a messenger is sent to another unit or city which will respond appropriately. If an enemy unit moves into intercept range of an intercept unit, it will move to attack. If an enemy unit moves into range of any other unit, it will try to evade.
5) When messengers or a unit reach your capital city, then all information known to them will be shown to you.
6) To give orders to a unit, a messenger must be sent from your capital to that unit. This has been a great force in many battles. The Battle of New Orleans was fought after the war was officially over, but neither side in the battle knew it. Also, if a city is taken over or razed without any survivors, the enemy may not know that he is at war or that he has lost the city.
7) You don't know where all of your units are, either. If you tell them to explore, they could be anywhere, and if the messengers aren't getting to you, then the messengers may be captured, or the main unit may be captured.
8) The messengers get faster with technology. They start as a runner, hen a horseback rider, then motor vehicles, then radio (which can be jammed or intercepted.)

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No pixels were harmed during the creation of this post.

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This post composed of 100% recycled electrons

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"We have harnessed the power of lightning and used it to make sand think." -- Unknown

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"Fascinating" -- Mr. Spock

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"XYZZY" -- random adventurers in the Colossal Cave

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For Civ, Civ 2 and CTP, cities have always been the keystones of any civilisation - producing every resource. This means that war usually centres on cities which, while realistic for ancient and renaissance times, begins to look less so for modern civs which should have more chokepoints (eg power plants, arnament factories).

My suggestion is that there should be Improvements that are built outside of cities - this could be out of geographical necessity (a dam would have to be on a river) or to avoid extra unhappiness (keep those nuclear powerplants out of my backyard!). Some facilities could give greater benefits if located out of cities (research sites could be more productive if their scientists didn't have the option of a nite life...).

Throughout much of the game there is quite a bit of time spent moving relatively week units around the map adding to the micro-management. Examples are: rearranging defenses to get better city protection, sending a lone trireme out just to find offshore fish, or exploring the map with militia or whatever cheap unit is available. Initially, this is fun aspect of the game but gets monotonous for long term players. What I am proposing is a system that may eliminate some micro-management and still gives a chance at the big unit battles.

If for certain functions, instead of buying units, a fund was allocated to 'dispersed warfare'. Examples would be funding pirates against your enemies or of supporting guerilla warfare abroad or a home-guard modern militia on all your squares. It is an extension of the idea for a "central intelligence agency" fund instead of having to buy spies and physically move them. It would work by allocating money every turn to an activity that leads to a harassment of the enemy on a worldwide, wear-them-down-bit-by-bit scale.

For example, in addition to buying submarines, a "sea raiding" fund would be established. This means that every turn an enemy moves at sea there is a chance that one of his ships will be randomly attacked. This risk would encourage the use of task forces with a mix of destroyers to protect the other 'expensive' ships. The actual correlation of the chance of a hit with the resources spent would have to be playtested to not make one method an obvious bargain compared to the other. To counter this, there could also be a general 'anti-sub warfare' fund. The increase in the allocation each turn should be limited to a percentage of previous spending to represent the slow buildup of subs/ships.

The land portion of this idea would prevent the enemy from using your rail lines to get through your periphery and march right to your capital city without any harm to his troops. It would give you a minor defense factor in every developed square in your territory. (I usually give up on a computer game as too easy once I am able to get through to an enemy this way.)

A weakened form of the CIA idea can also be used for exploring even early in the game. This would be equivalent to ancient societies encouraging travel and story telling. This will also allow learning about your neighbor's interior without getting the "you must leave at once" messages. (Since the CIV2 AI's hate trading maps.)

If the game's "logistical computation ability" is powerful enough it can also replace the public works late in the game. So that a selection can be made for increasing food, shields, trade, or defensive structures and the computer automatically chooses the best locations. (Currently the automated settlers are almost single minded towards pollution or food, and even public works may get tedious in the end game where you are more concerned of building that battleship and couldn't care much about which square gets irrigated next.)

The areas this idea might apply in are:
Inherent City defense
Territory defense
'Contras' in enemy territory
Map exploration
Enemy secrets (a combination of the current embassy and diplomat/spy)
Naval marauding (pirates, U-boats)
Enemy subversion (making citizens unhappy)
A truly automated public works

(For the purpose of clarity I will call a type of solider or armored weapon a "Unit" and I'll call those icons you move to get into a battle in Civilization a "army" I don't know the right Civ. grammar)

First off I really like the idea of only having control of an army near a base, this boosts the realism and better yet gives a person that feeling of total suspense "will they find someone?" "If they do will they be friendly?" "If we battle will they have superior technology?” that kind of thought is priceless.

Anyway I have an idea; I like to call trained commanders. The idea is you have to choose from a list of people who to lead different armies, some would be better at organizing a garrison, some would be better at attacking, some would be better at tank commanding, some would be better at guerilla warfare, some would good at moving large armies with thousands of troops while some would be better at small hit and run attack forces, some would take risks some would be cautious. You'd assign them to the army that does the stuff they do.

To make them smarter you can construct

Schools: you'd upgrade the schools from a place children would here stories to a place to learn to read to a structured multi-grade learning center that they would learn whatever you want to learn e.g. religion, reading, science, self-defense, physical attack, true history, propaganda history etc. You could pick a principal much the same way you would pick a commander (if you took my advice) and could tell him how much free thought was aloud.

Colleges: for "higher learning" teenagers could pay for it or they could be forced, they could choose what to take or be assessed on their skills and be told what they should take, colleges would evolve into Universities and then specialized schools could replace or follow Universities. Like schools you could pick the classes they took or leave it up to a "Dean" that would work much like a principal.

Special Schools: Special Schools would be a replacement or an addition to colleges or Universities, they’d be schools you could build from architecture to government, but for our purposes the two main schools in military will be a West Point like school for officers (kids who are smart) and school for soldiers (kids who are strong and can shoot). These would splinter into different schools for Navy, Marines, Army, and Airforce and then splinter even more into very specified schools for Tanks, infantry, artillery etc. After that you upgrade all the training programs by using new technologies and new teaching approaches
The commanders would also learn from real-world experience.

Second in Command: This is basically the commander’s first real-world experience, a seasoned and respected commander will mentor him as they go on missions together, the new commander will get a sense of what war really is and learn valuable skills for when he is in command of his own army. This would be beneficial to the mentor also, because he can do things more efficiently with an extra commander present.

Special Training Programs or S.T.P.s: Basically Special Training Programs are for commanders going back to school and for extra school for new commanders. It will be a military version of a PHD or Masters, a Commander may request to be put in one of the classes or be told to attend. Advanced strategies will be part of the teachings but possibly more useful things like sociology will teach him to deal with large amounts of people and predict the enemy's army's reaction to different tactics i.e. psychological warfare. Psychology will be taught too, it will also increase a commander’s people skills especially with small groups of elite troops like the navy seals, he will also be able to predict what a enemy commander’s reaction will be to different tactics. Armys are also welcome to take large scale STPs which will be made up of classes and wargames usually for new weapons training.

I know this all sounds like moral but it goes much further when a commander has to make a judgement call with you miles away. Before they left you could talk to the commander and explain what this mission consists of. Instead of the incredibly simple and clumsy system of moral there should be much more.

Moral: This actually means Moral as in how the troops feel, if you order them to race across the world with a new leader just after getting back from another mission they'll be kind of pissed off, this would ad a huge new dimension to planning. This will also bring in the idea of shore leave for the troops to remember what their fighting for, or you could even create a U.S.O. to entertain the troops.

Commander's training: just what I said above, how long he was in school and how much he learned. If they just went to regular school they'll be quite stupid but you'll get them out on the field faster. But obviously if the commander’s been training all his life to be a tank commander he won't do very well as an infantry commander even if he is "elite" he is.

Commander’s people skills: if he knows how to treat his army they'll go to the ends of the earth for him and fight harder, this will also increase moral and rate of movement (they trust the commander knows what he's doing and just go rather then winning about how their legs hurt.) But keep in mind if he's taught to work with small groups of people he might just curl up in a shell when he's under command of a legion. A commander’s people skills will develop as he matures or he could take a Special Training Program.

Commander’s real world experience: you can take all the classes you want but you need to know what a real battlefield feels like (this could be slowly boosted by large-scale wargames, although they would be expensive and time consuming). Second in Command also helps build real world experience. But keep in mind just because a commander has gone on a million hit and run guerrilla missions doesn’t mean he’ll have any idea of what to do with a legion.

Commander's courage: this is how many chances a commander will take, this may result in incredible victories or huge upsets, you need to find a commander who can accurately predict his troop's abilities (this is gained by a commander staying in army for long periods of time and acting out missions where his troops are challenged.)

Troop's training: basically same thing with commander's training.

Troop’s real world experience: basically same thing with commander’s real world experience.

Troop’s rest: This is determined by how long a army has had to rest, a Army has to stop and set up camp after a certain amount of movement. Infantry is affected the most by this so they will have to rest quite frequently. This also works the same way if the army has been inactive for a large amount of time, this is best solved by staging large wargames.

Weapons Training: If you upgrade an army’s weapons you’d expect to increase its chances of victory but this may not be true, if an army has been using a weapon for long periods in time they will become experts at that weapon, a new weapon that they have training on is quite a bit like giving a secretary in the 1950’s a computer loaded with Microsoft Word, it works better but it will take some time to get used to. The best way to give an Army training in a new weapon is to have the entire Army enroll in Special Training Program.

Another feature I would like incorporated into Civ. 3 is a General who would lead multiple armies lead by commanders in different operations in which they would be spending a large amount of time outside of your zone of control. Generals would be very valuable and would be the best and brightest of the commanders. You can’t just create a General you have to wait for for a commander to get enough experience so he’ll be able to take the title General. Generals are so valuable that some may argue you shouldn’t even risk them in combat and you should keep them as advisers or to make them Deans of Special Schools.