I bought Civilization I when I got my first PC, then Civilization II, Call to Power, Alpha Centauri, and finally, Call to Power II.

I must say I have liked Call to Power the best so far while Call to Power II has been disappointing. Now getting to suggestions for Civilization III:

1) Call to Power allowed players to maintain a mass army by allocating military costs to the total empire's production, not for each city. This is what I thought was a great improvement. PLEASE implement this in Civilization III - it was the one feature that made Call to Power so much better. Of course, create an interface and concept so that it does not violate any copyright laws.

Not only could you maintain a mass army much easier in CTP I, but each time you built an additional unit in a city, it did not take longer with each successive unit. This I feel is important.

2) One flaw with CTP II was that they took away the ability for the player to manually allocate workers as he/she saw fit in the city radius. Firaxis, you would do well to retain this feature from Civilization II.

3) Do not allow cities to grow beyond three square radius like Activision did. Four square radius I feel might be too much. If you want to increase it, increase from the present two square radius in Civilization II to three square radius.

4) The AI has worked better in Civilization II than it does in Call to Power II (AI is also a little better in CTP I). When trying to make improvements, please be careful of as many possible flaws as you can think of.

5) And the last thing I can think of at the time but certainly still important, is to eliminate the need for Settlers and Engineers to place Farms, Mines and other tile improvements. Call to Power and CTP II use the Public Works concept. Firaxis, what can you implement without violating any copyright laws? I think many of us do not wish to have an army of Settlers just for tile improvement.

I'm glad I never bought it, then.

GRUMBOLD quote:
Having the engineers around the map draws the cursor to locations needing attention more easily than having to search round your cities manually looking for the best spots to improve.

I certainly agree with above quotes!
I had a discussion with MarkG over the exact same issue, in thread called What about changing the landscape??.

btw Ralf, a quote of yours from the other thread

quote: Of course, one can argue that, with the Public-works solution, the player can wait until enough build-points have been gathered, so he can build tile-improvements on several squares in one go. But, this means losses in use-efficiency. To loan arguments from real-life business: It would be like replacing "just-in-time" (= settler-model), with inefficient "stock & store" (= public-works model).

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-23-2001 04:07 PM i have to say it again: you are totally crazy! moving a unit on the map is faster and easier than moving your eyes around the screen, huh? yeah!

Well, if i only had 5-10 settlers to share all the tile-improving work in my 20-30+ city empires, i would agree with you. But, the thing is; i have at least one tile-improving settler dedicated to each and every indevidual city. My main argument is however, that my map re-centers automatically, and the tile-improving settler flashes automatically then hes out of work. And thanks to the "one city + one settler" policy, nobody is more then 1-3 squares away from their next job-assignments.

Compare to the laborious public-works solution, there the player is forced to drag around that map back-and-forth manually. As for thor015:s argument:
"I see this point load and clear, and this (manually scrolling the map) I actually find this less annoying than having the settler get destroyed by the AI."

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 01-23-2001 05:11 PM Well, if i only had 5-10 settlers to share all the tile-improving work in my 20-30+ city empires, i would agree with you. But, the thing is; i have at least one tile-improving settler dedicated to each and every indevidual city.

tell me, what do you with a settler when it has nothing to do? dont tell me you kill it!!!

quote: Compare to the laborious public-works solution, there the player is forced to drag around that map back-and-forth manually.

"3) Do not allow cities to grow beyond three square radius like Activision did. Four square radius I feel might be too much. If you want to increase it, increase from the present two square radius in Civilization II to three square radius."

I agree and would actually enjoy the city radius shrinking to what it was in Colonization (8 I believe). I always felt it strange that a standard Earth map could not easily support New York, Boston, Montreal, and Toronto. Or that in CTPII London overlapped with most of Western Europe.

Given most peoples' processor speed and the maps that can be realistically expected, a smaller city radius would make the game more historical and allow for small powerful nations (Netherlands, UK) and densely populated regions. I fail to see how this accuracy would come at the expense of fun.

as for london having a city area that reaches large parts of france, this is just a matter of the size of the map. there are bigger worlds maps for ctp2 than the official one, as well as other big maps that cover smaller areas(a 210x210 map of the north atlantic for example)

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-24-2001 12:54 PM the increased city radius was one of the things i liked in ctp2. it's not only a visual thing, but also a measure against ics

Not all civers seemed to be convinced about that anti-ICS prevention. Read the following "can of worms" thread:
Column # 139; By St. Switchin

I e-mailed above link to Chris Pine, Firaxis, with the comment: "Im not sure that city-area related anti-ICS prevention is going to be enough". He responded with...
"I didn't say anything about city-area" and "I think we have a better set of solutions. Want to know what they are? (chuckle)".

further more, that thread you linked("Column # 139; By St. Switchin") is not about ics and the expanded city area, but about ics and the new model of how the tiles in the city area are worked