In the Games of the Month, and in succession games, we are required to keep a turn log of our actions. This is a pain as we have to tab out, type our instructions, then switch back to the game.

What would be wonderful is if Civ4 could keep a journal of your actions--your battles and results, your tech acquisitions, your city builds, your purchases, wonders, golden ages etc. and have it accessible during the game. There is already precedence for this, as almost every good computer role-playing game has a journal system.

My two cents.

I agree with this idea. It will be less trouble to write game reports.

Good idea, and to add on to it, make the HOF store a brief journal record, but only describing major actions, like leader generations, taking/losing of cities, great wonders, golden ages, etc.

have a Secretary of Events!

Disk space is cheap. Just have the game log every single action taken:

Turn = 300, type = movement, action = Cavalry #4124 north.
Turn = 300, type = movement, action = Cavalry #4124 east.
Turn = 301, type = build, action = Berlin begins Frigate.

In Civ4, of course, this would be XML, but this gets the point across more easily.

Then if you want to display less detail, have various filters for events you want to include or exclude. This type of journal would make it easy to replay the game from a specific point. You wouldn't need to save multiple times in the course of a single game; you could just resume from a previous point and start from there.

It would be good to provide histories in the game to. You should be able to add notes as well:

To Do: Begin war plans against the Germans. (This would show up at the begining of either the specified turn or every)
Notes: Things you would like to remember at the end of the game. (This would show up at the end of the game, game summary.

The ancient game, King of Dragon Pass, had a log that read like a short story.

Great idea!!!!!!

Good idea. I also had something like it. When you win or lose, it cuts at the end to a modern day "website" (Ingame, no internet connection required) that has pages on all the leaders in the game. What they did, there acomplishments, when they were killed and etc.

Like "In 1850, Mao Zedong launched a nuculear weapon aimed at Delhi. The city of Delhi was hit hard and over 50 thousand died in the blast. Germany, led by Bismarck, quickly declared war on China" and etc etc.

Would be interesting. Although I would imagine it would take a lot of work to put in. :)

Man your idea is awsome
it would be something like this:
After several struggles over territories, Bismark of Germany was defeated by Saladin of Arabia, the chairman of the Arabian countries soon replaced the german religion of Taoism with his Hindu beliefs. Ever after the people of once-germany decided to fight on their new leader and quickly they gathered arms to defeat the spread of Buddhism that came from the slavery-imposing Incas.

Read my latest preview:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/preview/filling_the_gap.php

These features are in. There is also a screenshot of the log. :)