in my opinion the possiblilty of a succesful defense of a peaceful (or not so peaceful) nation against an aggressor should be increased in Civ III. One way to do this is by having the possibility of improving fortresses, city walls, coastal guns, air defense and SDI defense. This is a more fun option then simply increasing the defense bonus, because this way you have to balance the economic and military facets of your country. Furthermore you would have to decide which regions need a more intensive defense effort.

In my view fortresses could be improved over the centuries (at a financial cost) not only to give a general defense bonus (of 50 or 100%), but also an improved defense against air, chemical and nuclear attack. It should also be possible to strengthen the walls of fortresses and cities in an earlier stage of the game. The range and calibre of coastal guns could also be improved by financial investments to enlarge their strategic value. I think it is important that these improvements cost money, because this way a peaceful nation can maintain itself against aggressors so long as it has a succesful economic policy (which is usually the case with human played republics and democracies).

Another option is to have the ability to build coastal guns as a terrain improvement, thus enabling the building of Atlantic Wall kind of projects.

I am not sure what the policy of Firaxis is on borders at sea, but I hope they finally introduce the concept of terratorial waters (which I think should have been included in SMAC), and that these terratorial waters are not simply based on city radii, but that when you have completely annexed an island or continent your terratorial waters automatically expand to two or three squares distance to the land.

Finally the blockading of enemy harbors as discussed elsewhere on this forum (and as used in EU) could be prevented by having sufficiently strong coastal guns.

quote: Originally posted by Il principe on 05-01-2001 06:23 AM Finally the blockading of enemy harbors as discussed elsewhere on this forum (and as used in EU) could be prevented by having sufficiently strong coastal guns.

I think that coastal fortresses civ-2 style is enough.

In Civ-2 the AI-civ naval-strategy was often to clog your coastal cities with buckloads of pretty resource-costly ships that (often unsuccessfully) bombarded you, or simply shuffled its vessels back-and-forth within your coastal city-areas. This was most often a rather ineffective strategy for the AI-civs, and not painful enough for my besieged coastal cities. At least I never feelt the need for building any city-defending ships to counteract these blockades.

Ralf I agree with you on that the blockading must be more damaging to a civ then in Civ II. That was actually my basis for suggesting it in the first place. The access to certain resources can be cut off by blockading harbours, since the new resource system is supposed to give individual cities acces to the resources in your country via roads and harbours. It has also been stated that you need access to things like oil and iron to be able to produce all available units. So when you blockade the motherland you could weaken the colonies on different islands/continents. I actually suspect that this is planned to be incorparated in the game.

quote: Originally posted by Roman on 05-01-2001 07:24 AM I agree that blocades would be a desirable addition to the game, but with abstract trade model I don't know how Firaxis could make them work.

Enemy military vessels within coastal city-area = reduced trade-income from established ocean trade-routes from that particular city. Is this difficult to implement?