EDIT: April 12
This thread has evolved into a 'micro vs macro' conversation, with strong arguments on both sides. I think the consensus is that we all want the ability for both. More updates to this post coming, as some strong comments have been made.

So, lots of threads have detailed stuff like "x should lead to y" or "Civ A should be included." That's all fine and good, but a lot of folks have some more generalized concepts to discuss.

Please BOLD any central ideas for quick perusing.

[EDIT: See Footnote]

For Starters:

More Empire-Wide Policy: Civics are nice, and have lots of potential. Similarly groovy was SimCity's Ordinance system. Also, the EU series has some excellent ideas on domestic policy making.

Less Unit Micromanagement: On some threads, the idea of going to an army system (as opposed to a unit system) is being kicked around. I'd rather carefully (and broadly) move eight larger branches per turn- especially late game- than dozens of units a couple of squares. It sucks my will to live.

Shorter, more violent wars: Wars that last 600 years are square, and not in a good way. [Yeah yeah, The Hundred Year's War... :rolleyes:]

Get rid of workers, spies, missionaries, and other "piddly" units: Without naming games, "society-level project programs" could nicely clean up unit clutter and streamline the turn.

Better Demographics, histographs, and replay schemes: See Rewrite History: the Promise Since Civ1 (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=259032)

Fewer Buildings/ Techs/ Unit Types readily Available : PLEASE DON'T MISUNDERSTAND THIS: Choices are great, and I'm all for _more_ stuff, but make it harder to find... One chap suggested unlockables. I don't like deciding between fifteen buildings, eventually building most (or all) of them anyways. I'd like to decide between a handful of mutually exclusive buildings or techs.

National Defense: Ties in with less unit micromanagement, but having a tax slider for national defense could _eliminate_ the need for units occupying each of your cities. When an enemy crosses the border, moves on your turf, or attacks a city, they suffer. And you pay money to keep it up. No money? Start selling or borrowing.

More Stuff "Under the Hood": While knowing all of the statistics and formulas for everything is nice, I miss having to experiment. In fact, lots of us just kind of "know" that if you do X, then Y and Z will follow (as long as you have A, B, and/ or C in place). Leave some stuff to the "mysterious forces of the universe." [Edit: Blind Research, for example]

Hex-based map: No explanation necessary. I just think Civ tactics would be better served.

Grouping Cities: Group cities to assign orders, much like creating states. In fact, you could extend separate government/ policies to each state. Manage your colony in the new world differently, without having to "click n' tiddle" five different cities.


Credit to all of us here in our Ideas forum- no matter how jumbled, chaotic, and redundant. We will make Civ5 better than it is right now. ... ... which is really not existent yet, but you get the idea.:goodjob:

[EDIT: We all know that there's too many threads here, and I'm sorry I opened a new one for this. Problem is, when someone's light bulb goes off, they probably don't really like scouring the topic list to find the relevant niche/ thread. So goes the creative process. Perhaps some sub-forums (as has been suggested) could help form cohesiveness... $.02]

{Reserved for indexing, maybe]

1) If while playtesting any war lasts longer than the Hundred Years War, the game needs to be fixed so that does not happen.

2) Drafting needs to be how armies are raised from the beginning. Building units out of hammers should only be for ships and modern motorized/mechanized/air units. Your military needs to be capped at 1 unit per empire-wide population point and require supplies from your agricultural surplus or foraging.

3) Realistic treatment of agriculture. With the first irrigation technology, it would take 9 population points farming to support 1 population point doing anything else (or 1 pop of farmers to provide the supply train for each unit in lieu of making them forage). Later technologies would improve this to a high of 4 farmers per non-farmer in later pre-industrial times, while at the end of the tech tree only 3% of your population would need to farm to support everyone. Furthermore, your people would never, ever eat grass. The concept of a self-sufficient village on grass is absurd.

4) Get rid of worker units. When a population point works a tile, it should automatically be planted with one of the agricultural resources known to your people (which could of course be chosen manually). Road building and such should just take a click and drag, like the reported Civ Revolutions method.

5) Settlers should go back to costing a population point, but should pop out after 1 turn rather than costing hammers. Use more logical means to prevent Infinite City Sprawl.

6) Two religious phases. At Polytheism, you should gain access to your people's indigenous pantheon, with patron gods of cities and other mechanics. There would also be one world religion founded by an early technology: Hinduism. Others would pop up at technologies that the AI hits between 700 BC and 600 AD on Noble, converting people away from their existing religion, and offer new benefits at the cost of obsoleting pagan temples and wonders (i.e. Statue of Zeus, Temple of Artemis...). Note: each population point in your empire should have a religion, rather than the current vague system of "Well, this city has Hindu, Jewish, and Taoist symbols..." Note that this would encourage the designers to actually think about the nations they're including, as old standards like the Spanish would have be treated as a Celtic offshoot rather than predating their inclusion.

1) If while playtesting any war lasts longer than the Hundred Years War, the game needs to be fixed so that does not happen.
Agreed. Obviously, at 2000BC, we can't expect a war to end by 1900BC, but perhaps an exponential "length of war" disposition modifier to encourage peace settlements... After a bloody mess, of course.


2) Drafting needs to be how armies are raised from the beginning. Building units out of hammers should only be for ships and modern motorized/mechanized/air units. Your military needs to be capped at 1 unit per empire-wide population point and require supplies from your agricultural surplus or foraging.

I like the idea of using the hammers to actually _outfit_ your armies, and drafting to actually _fill_ your armies. I think drafting should be on an empire-level, or state level. Having a nation-wide "pool" of military resources seems to be less cumbersome. As well, this could help the "obsolete unit micromanaging-upgrade" hell.


3) Realistic treatment of agriculture. With the first irrigation technology, it would take 9 population points farming to support 1 population point doing anything else (or 1 pop of farmers to provide the supply train for each unit in lieu of making them forage). Later technologies would improve this to a high of 4 farmers per non-farmer in later pre-industrial times, while at the end of the tech tree only 3% of your population would need to farm to support everyone. Furthermore, your people would never, ever eat grass. The concept of a self-sufficient village on grass is absurd.

I'm not sure about this one, though it's a nice thought. The abstraction of the agricultural sector, I think, is vital to keeping the game simple. But something like this "under the hood" could be worth exploring.


4) Get rid of worker units. When a population point works a tile, it should automatically be planted with one of the agricultural resources known to your people (which could of course be chosen manually). Road building and such should just take a click and drag, like the reported Civ Revolutions method.

I completely agree, but I think developments should take a few turns to be constructed, not just "place 'n use." A three-tile road through grassland may take, say, three turns. Or six, etc.


5) Settlers should go back to costing a population point, but should pop out after 1 turn rather than costing hammers. Use more logical means to prevent Infinite City Sprawl.

I dunno... Civ4 dings ICS pretty hard, and the settler is one of the units that I still enjoy "maneuvering" around the map, to avoid barbarians and what not. But that's because they are valuable- 10-30 turns early in the game is _huge_


6) Two religious phases. At Polytheism, you should gain access to your people's indigenous pantheon, with patron gods of cities and other mechanics. There would also be one world religion founded by an early technology: Hinduism. Others would pop up at technologies that the AI hits between 700 BC and 600 AD on Noble, converting people away from their existing religion, and offer new benefits at the cost of obsoleting pagan temples and wonders (i.e. Statue of Zeus, Temple of Artemis...). Note: each population point in your empire should have a religion, rather than the current vague system of "Well, this city has Hindu, Jewish, and Taoist symbols..." Note that this would encourage the designers to actually think about the nations they're including, as old standards like the Spanish would have be treated as a Celtic offshoot rather than predating their inclusion.
The way religion is modeled in the game is pretty much irrelevant to me- any tasteful system could be used. I like the current system. I'd also like each religion to be individualistically beneficial, but that's lots of worms in dat dere can...

Agreed. Obviously, at 2000BC, we can't expect a war to end by 1900BC, but perhaps an exponential "length of war" disposition modifier to encourage peace settlements... After a bloody mess, of course.


I like the idea of using the hammers to actually _outfit_ your armies, and drafting to actually _fill_ your armies.

Yes... however, there's no reason it should ever take more than one of your decades-long turns to outfit an army of swordsmen. Now hammers being a limitation on how much ARMOR an army can be outfitted with, that would be reasonable and interesting.

I'm not sure about this one, though it's a nice thought. The abstraction of the agricultural sector, I think, is vital to keeping the game simple. But something like this "under the hood" could be worth exploring.

It's not abstraction when only a few percent of the tiles in your empire are actually growing crops while on the rest, people eat grass. I think the tile-working citizens actually planting known resources is critical to verisimilitude.

I completely agree, but I think developments should take a few turns to be constructed, not just "place 'n use." A three-tile road through grassland may take, say, three turns. Or six, etc.

I agree.

I dunno... Civ4 dings ICS pretty hard, and the settler is one of the units that I still enjoy "maneuvering" around the map, to avoid barbarians and what not. But that's because they are valuable- 10-30 turns early in the game is _huge_

It just doesn't make any sense that it would take a thousand years of doing absolutely nothing else for a city to convince a point of population to uproot and become a settler. :p

The way religion is modeled in the game is pretty much irrelevant to me- any tasteful system could be used. I like the current system. I'd also like each religion to be individualistically beneficial, but that's lots of worms in dat dere can...

The big glaring problem as I see it is that Buddhism and Judaism have to be founded 2-3000 years before they actually were (on _Noble_!) in order to have multiple early religions. That just should not be, so let's have national pantheons for the Bronze and Iron Ages that the world religions compete to supersede once they arrive on the scene.

Two more paradigm shifts I'd like to see:

1) Now that we have multiple leaders per nation, you should no longer be starting as the all-powerful leader of a pre-unified civilization. The sense of reshaping history would be greatly enhanced if you started as leader of 1 of 3-4 Sumerian, Egyptian, etc. city states and your first goal was to eliminate those rivals to create a universal state of the <adjective> people. This would be the first of the ERA VICTORIES to achieve. The first would be to become the first ruler to create a universal state, with a conquest and diplomatic victory (using a mini, national wonder version of the AP/UN) option. After that, era victories would become increasingly grandiose, until in the modern era you have to either dominate the world through conquest, getting yourself elected world leader, or cultural domination or winning the last tech race with the spaceship victory.

2) Mortal leaders. It's never made sense than you're taking on the role of a historic king or queen, yet the overriding concern for rulers of marriage and succession never comes up because you're immortal. Really now, let's have the player play a dynasty rather than a single immortal leader, needing to have heirs he can pass the empire on to.

Yes... however, there's no reason it should ever take more than one of your decades-long turns to outfit an army of swordsmen. Now hammers being a limitation on how much ARMOR an army can be outfitted with, that would be reasonable and interesting.
Yeah, in general, instead of cities producing something (in and of themselves) be it a building or unit, their production actually goes straight to a "national pool" that a player can allocate as they wish. Then, a ruler may distribute production into tile improvements, set an "army outfitting" level, and placing certain building in cities. Same goes for food- a ruler could allocate surpluses between building settlers, growing cities, raising troops for armies, etc.

{Side note: to build wonders, a ruler could take a city "off-line," so to speak, and it produces a building within itself. Retains wonder racing.}

The main point is that instead of driving little "city-cars" all over the place, we're putting a player into the driver's seat of the empire they're building. Macro-management!


It's not abstraction when only a few percent of the tiles in your empire are actually growing crops while on the rest, people eat grass. I think the tile-working citizens actually planting known resources is critical to verisimilitude.

I'd _love_ to never see another screen with individually worked tiles again. I think the population density should spread around ALL workable tiles from day one, so cities benefit from ALL workable tiles (within expanding radii, of course). As the cities grow and technology advances, tiles become more beneficial. Techs could even _unlock_ some tile usages. Think of the possibilities!

The end results are almost the same, except city placement has a more dramatic effect on the city, earlier. And I don't have work two river-grasslands before I can work on the mined hills, so to speak. On day one, I get a _small_ benefit from all three, plus all the other legal tiles.


It just doesn't make any sense that it would take a thousand years of doing absolutely nothing else for a city to convince a point of population to uproot and become a settler. :p

If all cities' food surplus went into an empire pool, and allocated as desired, then forming a band of settlers could be as easy as a "Form Settler" button. For gameplay purposes, let's say this costs X food surplus. This food is taken off the top before any cities grow. If you don't surplus enough food, then it will take a few turns. New cities consume more food than they produce, thus your empire's food surplus is temporarily reduced, instantly limiting ICS.


The big glaring problem as I see it is that Buddhism and Judaism have to be founded 2-3000 years before they actually were (on _Noble_!) in order to have multiple early religions. That just should not be, so let's have national pantheons for the Bronze and Iron Ages that the world religions compete to supersede once they arrive on the scene.

You'll have to elaborate on this. I don't understand yet.


Two more paradigm shifts I'd like to see:

1) Now that we have multiple leaders per nation, you should no longer be starting as the all-powerful leader of a pre-unified civilization. The sense of reshaping history would be greatly enhanced if you started as leader of 1 of 3-4 Sumerian, Egyptian, etc. city states and your first goal was to eliminate those rivals to create a universal state of the <adjective> people. This would be the first of the ERA VICTORIES to achieve. The first would be to become the first ruler to create a universal state, with a conquest and diplomatic victory (using a mini, national wonder version of the AP/UN) option. After that, era victories would become increasingly grandiose, until in the modern era you have to either dominate the world through conquest, getting yourself elected world leader, or cultural domination or winning the last tech race with the spaceship victory.

This could be really interesting... If I understand, the game starts with a city- maybe you place n' grow it yourself- and a small handful of closer "colonies," or even other cities. You can conquer them, or ally with them and eventually absorb them. They differ, I guess, from other civs in that they are the same ethnicity and culture- less war weariness, easier negotiations, etc... Sounds very yummy! Of course, the size this entity should be optional...

On a re-read, I really like your idea of era-based victories. You could win the ancient era, lose the next, win the third, etc... we should think about this.


2) Mortal leaders. It's never made sense than you're taking on the role of a historic king or queen, yet the overriding concern for rulers of marriage and succession never comes up because you're immortal. Really now, let's have the player play a dynasty rather than a single immortal leader, needing to have heirs he can pass the empire on to.
This idea has been kicked around for quite a while. My favorite concept has rulers choosing a mate (Diplomatic effects), having kids (Let's keep it rated G), and selecting which child gets the throne. Each kid has perks/ weaknesses. Thus, you can coarsely shape your leadership to the current environment...

Nice...:goodjob:

The main point is that instead of driving little "city-cars" all over the place, we're putting a player into the driver's seat of the empire they're building. Macro-management!


But there are plenty of games that do that, and they aren't Civ. What makes Civ Civ is managing the cities and having the empire emerge from the decisions you make at that level, having to think at both scales at once.

I want workers and spies and missionaries and, indeed, caravans. I want more choices for what building I can make - seriously, at any given point in the game, how often do you have more than two or three options that are equally useful to your short and long-term goals ? I want a game where the big things come from the little things working together, and where you have detailed enough control to make it possible to do really satisfying big things by paying attention to the little things.

People keep saying eliminate this factor, eliminate the other factor, eliminate micromanagement - and the way Civ Revolutions appears to be doing things looks very much to be going in that direction. If Civ 5 does that I won't be buying it; options for less micromanagement if people want them, fine, that's what city governors are for, but a game you can master without putting actual thought and concentration into might as well just be a big red button to push saying "Show Victory Movie Now."

People keep saying eliminate this factor, eliminate the other factor, eliminate micromanagement - and the way Civ Revolutions appears to be doing things looks very much to be going in that direction. If Civ 5 does that I won't be buying it; options for less micromanagement if people want them, fine, that's what city governors are for, but a game you can master without putting actual thought and concentration into might as well just be a big red button to push saying "Show Victory Movie Now."

You're assuming the only way a strategy game can be challenging is through mandating lots of micromanagement. That's crazy. The whole premise of the Civ series is playing the ruler of an empire: show me one ruler who ever ordered laborers to chop down forests for 100 years, stop with no apparent effect on the forest, then go back later and spend 1 more turn chopping to make a city rapidly complete its current project. Nonsense like that really should be eliminated in favor of real imperial concerns like diplomacy, preventing rebellion, and marriage and dynastic succession.

People keep saying eliminate this factor, eliminate the other factor, eliminate micromanagement - and the way Civ Revolutions appears to be doing things looks very much to be going in that direction. If Civ 5 does that I won't be buying it; options for less micromanagement if people want them, fine, that's what city governors are for, but a game you can master without putting actual thought and concentration into might as well just be a big red button to push saying "Show Victory Movie Now."

I completely understand where you're coming from. A lot of folks like tinkering with this toggle, and switching that switch, so to speak. This is all fine and good.

I'm not one of these people. I want to group my cities and assign directions, even if I only have five. I want to direct armies, not units. I don't want to hold the hand of a missionary to spread religions, I want to tell the head of the church to "spread X towards the East, as best you can with 150 gold," and let them handle the details.

I must admit that macro-management does, in fact, require thought and concentration, IMHO. Seriously, does it require MORE thought and concentration to build a granary in the capital or to direct the four cities on the eastern side of the continent to prioritize population growth, then defense, then culture? This is a valid question.

You're assuming the only way a strategy game can be challenging is through mandating lots of micromanagement. That's crazy. The whole premise of the Civ series is playing the ruler of an empire
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[Micromanagement] really should be eliminated in favor of real imperial concerns like diplomacy, preventing rebellion, and marriage and dynastic succession.

While I agree to a point, I'm NOT saying "Get rid of micromanagement altogether."

I'm for systems that put micromanagement "Under the Hood." If you want to get your hands dirty to squeeze out 20 more horsepower, super. Really. But I just want to drive.

The whole premise of the Civ series is playing the ruler of an empire


Not exactly. That's kind of my point.


show me one ruler who ever ordered laborers to chop down forests for 100 years, stop with no apparent effect on the forest, then go back later and spend 1 more turn chopping to make a city rapidly complete its current project. Nonsense like that really should be eliminated in favor of real imperial concerns like diplomacy, preventing rebellion, and marriage and dynastic succession.

If you want a realistic simulation of the life of the ruler of an empire, you'd have a great deal less information about what was actually going on in detail than any Civ game gives you, particularly in the opening eras, and a game that involved waiting to hear reports back from the frontier that are already out of date and seeing nothing but your desk and a stack of paperwork; this does not strike me as immense amounts of fun.

I completely understand where you're coming from. A lot of folks like tinkering with this toggle, and switching that switch, so to speak. This is all fine and good.

I'm not one of these people. I want to group my cities and assign directions, even if I only have five. I want to direct armies, not units. I don't want to hold the hand of a missionary to spread religions, I want to tell the head of the church to "spread X towards the East, as best you can with 150 gold," and let them handle the details.


Sure. And options to do just that, in the same way you have the options to use city governeors now, I'm all in favour of. So long as they are options and I can switch them all off easily for every game I play.


Seriously, does it require MORE thought and concentration to build a granary in the capital or to direct the four cities on the eastern side of the continent to prioritize population growth, then defense, then culture? This is a valid question.


That's not quite an apt comparison, though. The difference is between "you four cities go do population growth first, then defence, and then culture" and choosing whether it's worth say, building granaries in those four cities or transferring your population in from elsewhere, what defensive units make sense and how many, which may vary depending on how near the neighbours are and how friendly, how near the sea they are, and so on; and you may also have a number of options for getting culture, each also with different other benefits [ in Civ III terms, a temple or a library both get you some culture relatively quickly, but one gives happiness and the other science. ] And any or all of those might want rush-buying in a specific city.

It's possible an AI "governor" might be able to make a reasonable guess at how to do "population growth, then defence, then culture", but I very much doubt it can have as much flexibility and capacity to fit its detailed strategy to the conditions as a human who understands how the game works and is putting together the right combination of actions to get that result.


I'm for systems that put micromanagement "Under the Hood." If you want to get your hands dirty to squeeze out 20 more horsepower, super. Really. But I just want to drive.

That seems entirely fair to me; I just want the 20 more horsepower to be meaningful and fun and worth attaining, rather than something as easily got for free by flipping a switch.

Sure. And options to do just that, in the same way you have the options to use city governeors now, I'm all in favour of. So long as they are options and I can switch them all off easily for every game I play.
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That seems entirely fair to me; I just want the 20 more horsepower to be meaningful and fun and worth attaining, rather than something as easily got for free by flipping a switch.

Then we agree on some things. In fact, you have a great point about _how_ to attain priorities; the example you give is culture. Library or temple? Great example.

So allow me to select, say, three cities, group them into a "state" or "territory," and allow me to go to a "Territory Management Screen," with the following sections:


Assign Building Priorities-Set up a standard "Building Queue" for all of the cities.
Allocate :hammers:-Distribute production between each city's building queue and the empire's "production bank".
Allocate :food:-Likewise: distribute a percentage of food to city growth, or to the empire's "food bank."
Allocate :commerce:-Again, use the commerce for territory-specific happiness or to the empire's bank.

(Note: I think culture should stick to it's originating location. It's hard to imagine transferring culture between cities...)

Then, on an empire level, I can allocate all of the surpluses directed to the empire how I see fit: Commerce to science, espionage, coffers; food between army divisions, or to grow territories; production to army equipment or infrastructure development...

Again, the end result is the same, and I've visited 50% fewer screens and performed 50% fewer mouse clicks (at least). And the game turn has been reduced from X minutes to X/2 minutes. Plus, I've arguably made just as much quantitative impact.

EDIT: I love the idea of "territories," or "states" so much because most games I play, I have cities in similar locations that I'll make virtually _identical_ choices for. For example, border cities may all get walls, interrior cities may all get libraries. But to have to open up each freakin city screen, even if it's only three of them, every time I discover a new tech or circumstances change just chaps my hide.

Then we agree on some things. In fact, you have a
So allow me to select, say, three cities, group them into a "state" or "territory," and allow me to go to a "Territory Management Screen," with the following sections:


Thing about this is, the way I play, if I had to do this, I'd be changing the definition of the states/territories so often it would not really gain me anything.

I am talking in a context of games with closing on two hundred cities to manage by the halfway point, fwiw, where splitting into six regions would be useless, and splitting into fifty would make for a lot of complication; I can see how this might be a different argument if your preferred style of play didn't often involve much more than a dozen cities.



Allocate :hammers:-Distribute production between each city's building queue and the empire's "production bank".
Allocate :food:-Likewise: distribute a percentage of food to city growth, or to the empire's "food bank."
Allocate :commerce:-Again, use the commerce for territory-specific happiness or to the empire's bank.



This, otoh, I think I like as a notion. Particularly if the country-wide production bank was limited to specific things, like Wonders. (And with the repeated observation that hammers are a Civ IV barbarity and I want shields back now. Delenda est malleum. )


EDIT: I love the idea of "territories," or "states" so much because most games I play, I have cities in similar locations that I'll make virtually _identical_ choices for. For example, border cities may all get walls, interrior cities may all get libraries.


And how long will a border city stay a border city in an empire doing serious expansion, or a city's surroundings stay of the sort to favour production of one kind of improvement over another while you are doing serious terrain improvement ? One of the emergent properties of Civ IV that I would really like to see go away is how much it forces cities to fixed specialisation.

Thing about this is, the way I play, if I had to do this, I'd be changing the definition of the states/territories so often it would not really gain me anything.

I am talking in a context of games with closing on two hundred cities to manage by the halfway point, fwiw, where splitting into six regions would be useless, and splitting into fifty would make for a lot of complication; I can see how this might be a different argument if your preferred style of play didn't often involve much more than a dozen cities.

??? I would think that splitting a 200-city empire into, say, 10 regions, 20 cities each, and assigning commands to the 10 regions would be _a lot_ simpler... But, to keep going:


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And how long will a border city stay a border city in an empire doing serious expansion, or a city's surroundings stay of the sort to favour production of one kind of improvement over another while you are doing serious terrain improvement ? One of the emergent properties of Civ IV that I would really like to see go away is how much it forces cities to fixed specialisation.
Let's say at point X, you have 9 cities on an eastern front that are your "border" cities. You group them into a region, assign "border city" commands as you see fit. But then you're at war again, and the 9 cities are now interior cities. The beauty of this whole system: you can re-assign commands to these 9 cities without having to visit each of them. Does one of these cities stay as a border city? Then re-assign it into a new "border city region."

At this rate, 5-10 cities per region, you're looking at 20-40 regions. I can't see how assigning commands to 20-40 regions is worse than 200 cities, save for micromanaging, which should still be possible. (Side idea: what about having a toggle to set a city as a "directly managed" city, where you are prompted to visit or can cycle through them, but otherwise the regions take over?)

But to go from a different angle: let me step back then to an earlier notion I had, about setting empire-wide adjustments. What are your thoughts on empire-wide policy, beyond Civics, tax rates, and what not?

For example, building units (armies) at the empire level.

A % of production get allocated to the empire's "hammer pool," (Where MC Hammer hangs w/ the ladies...:crazyeye: ) and then you allocate the hammer pool between, say, armor, weapons, transportation, tile improvements, and wonders.

A % of food similarly goes between raising troops, forming settlers, feeding selected cities or states, or trading.

Another example: National Policies:
(These are just examples, not for specific debate)

Crop Rotation- Tiles with farms produce 10% more :food:, -10% :hammers:
8 Hour Workday- +10% :commerce:, -10% :hammers:
Child Labor- +10% :hammers:, +15% :mad:
Free Health Care- +20% :food:, -20% :commerce:
Mandatory Retirement- -10% :hammers:, Libraries produce 20% more :science:
Mandatory Military Training- :food: allocated to raising troops gets +20% bonus, :commerce: allocated to :science: or :culture: -10%.

(Note this list assumes that Civ5 will deal with decimal values of hammers, food, and gold as produced by terrains... a whole separate topic, but still up for discussion).

Ether way, I still wonder how you're not more for less micromanagement than I am... I have 10 cities and I feel drained by the persistent clicking... my lord, the clicking...
BTW, if I startup a company, you'll be on my list for quality control...:cool:
200 cities... crazy I tell you! (At least at the current tedium)

??? I would think that splitting a 200-city empire into, say, 10 regions, 20 cities each, and assigning commands to the 10 regions would be _a lot_ simpler... But, to keep going:


Having to check every city every turn for whether it really best belongs in that region any more, or whether it might do better with slightly different priorities ?


Let's say at point X, you have 9 cities on an eastern front that are your "border" cities. You group them into a region, assign "border city" commands as you see fit.


I'm not convinced a game where the terrain and other condtions are uniform enough to allow that would be fun.


The beauty of this whole system: you can re-assign commands to these 9 cities without having to visit each of them. Does one of these cities stay as a border city? Then re-assign it into a new "border city region."


Either you have to stay aware of which region every sity is in every turn and compare your regional objectives to that ctiy's best objectives, or you risk losing out compared to how well you could do managing each city individually. I'll take managing each city individually over that additional level of fussing about any time.


(Side idea: what about having a toggle to set a city as a "directly managed" city, where you are prompted to visit or can cycle through them, but otherwise the regions take over?)


If you're going to have regions at all, that seems a very good plan.


For example, building units (armies) at the empire level.
A % of production get allocated to the empire's "hammer pool," (Where MC Hammer hangs w/ the ladies...:crazyeye: ) and then you allocate the hammer pool between, say, armor, weapons, transportation, tile improvements, and wonders.
A % of food similarly goes between raising troops, forming settlers, feeding selected cities or states, or trading.


I have mixed feelings about this, because what it would basically boil down to in practice is some way to take production and food from where you have a surplus and put it in where you don't, and I'm not at all convinced that earlier models for doing that are not entirely adequate. [ Some better balanced take on the Civ II food caravan, for example. ]


Ether way, I still wonder how you're not more for less micromanagement than I am... I have 10 cities and I feel drained by the persistent clicking... my lord, the clicking...


Ten cities ? How long is that game going to last you ? I'm still happily chewing away on a Civ III game on a huge map that's about sixty hours in, and I expect that to go over a hundred hours' playing time easily, which fit around my life is many weeks of real time enjoyment.

Not to make comparisons, but I think Gal Civ II has a good system for production.

Each planet (or city, if we translate) has social, military, and research production quantities. In this system, you can produce military units at the same time as building that aquaduct, and depending on the balance of resources you devote to each, get each done appropriately.

And it makes total sense. A forge could add base production points. A barracks might add a couple of 'military' production points. a library, research points.

I would like to get rid of the grids and the turn-based time-system.

Personally, I hope the crew removes (at least) one complex thing for every new complexity that they add. More, more, more is a horrible design for the long term. It alienates new comers and makes for a shrinking user base (and that's all we need).

Now for the (inevitable) expansions, Pile it on! :)

The expansions are typically bought by the hard core elite (like us) and they can handle the added complexity.

Note: I am not saying make this a simple brainless game (nobody would be served by that), just that they should think about complexity of all new (and all existing, for that matter) features.

I would like to get rid of the grids and the turn-based time-system.You should play Age of Empires then. No offence, i like AoE myself on occasion, but beeing turn based is THE key element of Civ games.

Personally, I hope the crew removes (at least) one complex thing for every new complexity that they add. More, more, more is a horrible design for the long term. It alienates new comers and makes for a shrinking user base (and that's all we need).

Now for the (inevitable) expansions, Pile it on! :)

The expansions are typically bought by the hard core elite (like us) and they can handle the added complexity.

Note: I am not saying make this a simple brainless game (nobody would be served by that), just that they should think about complexity of all new (and all existing, for that matter) features.

I have to agree with this....although for that reason I kind of hope that the next Civ-for-PC iteration is an expansion pack. :mischief:

Personally, I hope the crew removes (at least) one complex thing for every new complexity that they add. More, more, more is a horrible design for the long term. It alienates new comers and makes for a shrinking user base (and that's all we need).


The solution to this that works for the broadest range of players is to make the complexity levels optional. Religion in Civ 4 seems an example of an element that would work very well to have optional, for example, and I can see having several options for combat system of differing complexity, for example

- basic Civ 1-style everything decided on one roll of the RNG
- Civ 2-style, with varying hit points and firepower
- the same with the addition of Civ 3-like artillery

No, options are not the solution (I very strongly disagree with this). Why? Two big reasons.

Because people are vain and think they need to play with all of them on. Some of them will be swamped and give up (and you know the forum trolls will mock them for not playing the "real game"). This is essentially the same as no options for these people.

The developers must then ensure that all options are balanced and fun. You mention one set of combat options that means that the developer needs to implement and test 3 different combat systems (and all of their support systems). All aspects of the game must be balanced and fun with all three. This is ~3 times the work. It gets worse if you add another system with only 3 options. This means that you need to balance it for 9 sets of configurations. Oh, did I mention that the AI would need to be adjusted for each of these rule sets? This gets worse for each additional set of options and each option in the set.

A third one came to mind while typing, fragmentation of the user base for MP games. If there are too many options, it will be hard to find a game where people are willing to play with your set of rules.

If I have any say in the matter that won't happen.

Because people are vain and think they need to play with all of them on.


Do people think they need to play on all the map options now ? On all the difficulty levels ? With mastery of every single feature of their Civ of choice ?


Some of them will be swamped and give up (and you know the forum trolls will mock them for not playing the "real game").


Some people are swamped and give up with the games as currently exist. Some people cheat. Plenty of people just aren't interested in the first place. As and for being mocked by the forum trolls.. I really don't know where to start on how far removed that is from a sensible game design consideration, because I am not convinced that more than a tiny minority of the people who play Civ are active on forum, because the major Civ forums have generally been pretty well-behaved places, and above all because adapting your game design specifically towards the assumed lowest common denominator of your possible audience is grasping after potential newcomers to the explict exclusion of the existing customer base.


The developers must then ensure that all options are balanced and fun. You mention one set of combat options that means that the developer needs to implement and test 3 different combat systems (and all of their support systems).


I am aware of the amount of work involved, which is why I suggested three different combat systems based closely on three different existing games in the series, which have been out for some considerable amount of time, and on which there is a large amount of available data as to balance and fun issues in the appropriate forums.


Oh, did I mention that the AI would need to be adjusted for each of these rule sets? This gets worse for each additional set of options and each option in the set.


If you intend to have every level of complexity varying independently, yes. I'm not at all convinced that more than four or five levels of complexity would be needful, particularly given the assumption that people who want simple fast games they can play in an evening aren't going to be interested in anything remotely recognisable as Civ that involveds two hundred cities and a thousand units, so the simpler game models don't need to be scaled for larger map sizes.


A third one came to mind while typing, fragmentation of the user base for MP games. If there are too many options, it will be hard to find a game where people are willing to play with your set of rules.


I'm not an MP player myself, but it would seem to me that given the existence of Civ 2 and Civ 3 MP communities, there would be defined target markets for levels of complexity within Civ 5 that were Civ2-like and Civ3-like but with the recognised issues in those games, that come up again and again among players of those games, addressed in some fashion.

"Bulk" Goods that can move:
Raw Materials.
Bulk Food.

Each city produces the above. Generally, the city itself uses up the goods first. Then excess are moved into your empire's trade network.

This tradework has less than perfect efficiency, but it moves the goods to where it is needed, as determined by various things. Sometimes it even trades the goods outside of your network.

Cities also process these goods. Food is turned into Health/Citizens. Raw materials are turned into weapons, armor, buildings. Some of these goods are portable, others are not.

The lossyness of shipping changes over time.

Command economies are less efficient. Coin economies are more efficient, and can involve trading easier with nearby empires.

This leaves cities as the places where things are built. You build buildings there. You have to feed your citizens.

Raising an army requires training infrastructure, weapons, armor, food and population. All of these things can be pre-built.

This abstraction basically adds a few more "empire-wide" resources, like coins are currently.

"
This abstraction basically adds a few more "empire-wide" resources, like coins are currently.

I do not find this appealing at all; am jumping off from it into a somewhat broader philosophical point.

One of the things that is essential to Civ for me, that has kept me playing since Civ 1 and that I have not seen any other series of games that does anything like as well, is empire management as emergent property of city and unit management. You handle your cities and your workers well, and your empire does well. You select the priorities for your cities and your workers, and your empire's strengths and weaknesses vary accordingly.

This, and many other suggestions to come up from time to time on the various threads in this forum, seem to come from a general perspective that micromanagement is a bad thing, and from the same sort of direction as, for example, public works in CtP, and that just gives me hives. I think Civ 4 has gone somewhat too far in the direction of generalising some things already.

I'm all for it being possible to play Civ without micromanagement; all for it being possible to enjoy Civ without micromanagement. I don't quite get what it is that people opposed to micromanagement actually want from their games, though. A game you can play relatively quickly ? There are tiny maps for that. A game where you can manage a vast empire over a large span of game time and still finish it in an evening ? I don't see a way of doing that in something I would recognise as Civ. If the game is to abstract stuff away to an empire-wide level, or a region-wide level within an empire, it can't possibly do so with with flexibility and power of a human player who puts the time and effort and understanding into using every little element for maximal effect, for combined effect that are greater than the sum of their parts, greater than any plausible AI governor is liable to figure out, and quite likely for combinations of effects that the game's designers never thought of.

If those levels of abstraction are to be available in something that is recognisably Civ, they will be abstractions of situations where there are still individual workers and individual cities each doing their specific thing, and if that is there under the hood anyway, I want to be able to get my hands on it directly. It seems wrong to me for the levels of achievement and accomplishment one can get by learning to master complex, time-and-energy-consuming gameplay to be reduced to a matter of pushing a few buttons and letting the AI do it; by all means let those who disagree with me have options to automate the bits they don't want to do - automating workers and city governors have been in since Civ 3, and if they don't work particularly well there, I'd say that's an argument for strengthening the AI used for the purpose rather than for adding new layers of abstraction - but don't keep the dedicated players from getting into the fine detail.

Note that the micromanagement still exists. Cities will have to farm and mine raw resources. They will have to support laborers to transform raw resources into goods.

In the early game, the raw resources will be not very portable. You didn't have huge convoys of food moving around the world: so most excess food is consumed locally. Food that is beyond what the city can use gets burnt at a 10:1 ratio to produce global food, which is then consumed by cities that need more food than they can provide.

Cut such an importing city off from your trade network, and it starves.

The same is true of raw materials -- but instead of cities that mine being production power-houses, they are raw material power houses. In the early game, the inefficiencies from transporting goods is high enough that you will want production and mining to take place at the same spot...

But later on, goods flow easier. Sudbury can mine raw nickle, and pittsburg can be the foundry city.

This is less global than coin.

What is the value of food and raw materials? It is the value you can use them locally, plus the value of any surplus food and raw materials that gets used by the rest of your empire.

You still need to build housing (using raw materials) to keep your people healthy. You still need to support specialist citizens (smiths, nobles, priests) to advance your civilization, and turn your raw materials into weapons for your empire.

The same can be made true of units. You build the support structure for units, not units themselves. You build a barracks, support a caste of military specialists, produce the raw weapons needed for your units...

These are all local decisions.

Yes, when trade networks get stronger, what each city contributes to the trade network becomes as important as what they do themselves. But this is a good thing: because civ does start to bog down when you are controlling dozens of cities. By having "trade efficiency" ramp up as your ability to control more cities ramps up, the game engages in a slow phase shift from being about cities, to being about regions, to being about provinces that cover sub continents.

Which brings me to my next thought: the colony mechanism in civ4 should be pushed harder. I want it to be a good idea to set up a "western roman empire" province, and have limited control over it (more than we currently have over vassals!)

I'm thinking something like:
1/3 of their cultural production is yours.

Their units cost +50% to build. 1/2 of the time when they produce a unit, you get a free duplicate of it.

1/3 of their research and surplus gold is funneled to your empire.

Or, even better, the above parameters can be negotiated between your empire and the province.

I would really like to see a move away from the total focus on cities that now exists.

I think the cross system should be removed, farms built anywhere in your empire should provide food which can be evenly distributed amongs your cities, at least in the late game. to build research and production should require specialist cities and building, nothing more. So if your populauiton reaches a certain level, you can assign a scientist, as now, but that scientistc success shouldnt be based on whether there is a gold mine nearby. Each specialist should be required to be paid a certain amount, so employing them removes gold from your treasury. commerece should be obtained form resources, buit they should have to be ina city cross to be worked, it makes no sense. you could still specialist cities, you just wouldnt have to base it on where they were situated but how you manage them.

War should also not just be about cities. I've posted my border proposals a few times, I think so many wars were fough over fertile land, etc, that shoul;d be a feature of a game, not just capturing cities.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=251440&page=13 In that thread I say:

I want to be able to claim land, I don't want to have to have a city nearby and its culture spread for my land to grow. I accept how this makes sense, but what happened to explorers climbing a mountain and sticking a flag in it? Perhaps you can claim whatever land you like but your "right" to it is determined by culture, or population. My other thought is that you shouldn't build a city from scratch, you should settle an area, creating a village, if this village has food and trade it can grow into a town and then a city.

The idea of being able to claim land means that you can have border disputes where two countries are laying claim to the same land. You can have annexes, build little military bases in foreign countries, or rent a tile from an undeveloped civ because it has access to a resource which you can exploit.

I also mentioned having ownership as a technology, before researching it you have no border. If no other techs depended on it you could have civilisations like the native Americans who never bothered to "claim" their land because no one wanted to take it away from them.

A lot of ideas posted here I agree with and I just posted this in another thread;

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6569364&postcount=266

I summarised it as the dichotomy in the game between the fact that it wants to be 6000 years of history for a civilization while at the same time you manage units almost like in an RTS where it's understood that things happen in a small region over a much smaller period of time.

Basically, I agree with the reduction of unit management. In general, I want to feel like I'm ruling an empire, not some units.

Yes... however, there's no reason it should ever take more than one of your decades-long turns


Here is something that has been a pet-peeve of mine for a while:

Abolish the dates in the game.

They mean nothing. All they do is create an unreasonable expectation in the minds of some that "technology X" or "unit Y" needs to be available by date z, otherwise the game just doesn't work.

I liked what Rhye did in Rhye's and Fall of Civilization, which was to get rid of the dates and instead track the game by game turn, and provide text indicating what era the civ was in. (E.g., "Modern era", "Ancient era".)

Some of these ideas, introduced in the name of realism it seems, are actually calls for a completely different game. Might be a good game, but there's no reason IMO to expect Civ to be such a game.

Sometimes they even exist already. For example, the business about drafting bodies and making only the equipment for troops, has been done in Imperialism and Imperialism 2. There was a national screen for troop building and allocation of labor. You pulled people in from the countryside by "spending" certain manufactured goods, and assigned them as factory workers. You could then pull people out of the factories and, by "spending" some cloth (for a uniform) and certain other resources which you had to hook up in the countryside and then process through the labor, turn that worker into a soldier unit. The cloth came by processing raw cotton or wool, which you had to get from a cotton plantation or sheep ranch, and then processed in the factories into cloth. Of course, drafting troops hurt your labor capacity, so there was a trade-off.

Nothing wrong with this, it was a fun game. The combat, which was handled on a tactical screen, was also pretty realistic, for example morale was a big factor. Units could break and flee if their morale collapsed.

All that's fine, but it's not Civ. A game can only have so much complexity in it for the player to appreciate, feel challenged but not overwhelmed, and enjoy. If there's that level of complexity to tactical combat and troop-drafting, the range of possible troops and the development of the countryside had to be simplified accordingly. So did diplomacy. So did victory conditions. Et cetera. In a RTS such as Age of Empires or Warcraft, complexity and challenge come in the form of having to deal with real-time combat, having to respond quickly and in an organized manner without the luxury of endlessly poring over decisions before hitting the end-turn button. But because of this, the buildings and units that can be built, and the diplomatic options, are greatly simplified.

Eliminating a lot of the complexity that now comes in Civ from micromanaging cities, you would have to compensate, not merely simplify. Right now, the empire-wide decisions we make in the game include diplomacy, choosing what to research, deciding what victory conditions to pursue and how to pursue them, and deciding overall military strategy. We then make the individual micromanagement choices on a level of units and cities to implement those larger decisions. What I hear some people calling for is eliminating much of that individual city- and unit-level management, but if you do that, you need to add a lot more to the larger-scale planning, in order to keep the challenge and complexity of the game.

You would end up with a completely different game IMO, much more so than Civ4 differs from Civ1. How would you do this? No one has really suggested a way so far on this thread.

I hear you Hammurbabble, and I do agree, but I also think change and innovation isn't a bad thing, Sid Meier will make sure it is still Civ, and with his team might be able to come up with something along these lines that we provide the vauge direction of.

There's definitely value in brainstorming...but keep in mind that given the ease of moddability in the Civ IV platform, if a concrete, workable example can be provided, it may be possible for us to create it ourselves as opposed to waiting for someone else to do the work for us.

On the subject of "choosing what to research", I must say I liked the default setting in SMAC where you told your researchers what general path to research and they'd come up with more or less random technologies from that particular path. I'm aware a lot of people coming from the Civ backgrounds were like "what the hell no I want to pick my research specifically" and got out of this default setting to pick by themselves, but I liked this element of realism.

I think that in my description of what I would like to see, there was still a high level of micromanagement. Especially in deciding what tiles of your empire to work. Maybe a different and more realistic type of micromanagement can be found, but I just don't find that "units" is a place for it, again, because of the scope of the game.

Hmm I never play SMAC, but it sounds like something i'd like, that idea of researching a particular path, of course I don't think that technologies should be random, but depend on certain aspects of the game, if you are inland (at least mostly) you probably won't discover sailing.

I would really like to see a move away from the total focus on cities that now exists.


I don't get this; there are loads of empire management games, but only one (and a half if you count CtP) Civ series where empire management really arises organically out of city management. That's what makes it Civ, and that's what makes it worth playing for me. The more things are controlled at an empire-wide level, the less it will feel like Civ.


I think so many wars were fough over fertile land, etc, that shoul;d be a feature of a game, not just capturing cities.

Putting troops on fertile land to deny it to your opponent, working it and/or getting it inside your culture boundaries seem to be reasonably well handled in the series so far, to me.

But wouldn't it be better if you could claim it! (The fertile land I am talking about) You might not want the whole city, just one or two squares.

But wouldn't it be better if you could claim it! (The fertile land I am talking about) You might not want the whole city, just one or two squares.

Exactly. It would be great to have a war not just to capture a city, but lets say, in the early game, to capture some flood plains to provide food to help your civ grow. In the later game, you could got to war strictly to capture an oil field. Of course capturing cities would always be an objective, it just shouldnt be the ONLY objective. Capturing cities would still matter, but this would also mean that you would have to defend borders, not just cities, specific valuble squares (say if you control a river delta, you would guard it well, especially in the early game) etc.

Of course, this system works much better if cities cannot oly work the tiles in its cross. I would have it so any tiles can contribute to the entire empire, not just ones near the city. although perhaps this would only happen in the later game, maybe after engineering, when transport of good becomes easier. so early city placement would still be important, like the early Greek city states, but later on, the whole land that you control would contribute. Put it this way, if the US was a Civ nation, the entire midwest would be useless. As it is, its the breadbasket of america. Ditto Siberia for Russia.

Also I think your control of land should spread downriver, there are several nations in the world who are basically a river and the land either side of it (think Gambia, Pakistan, Holland, Iraq, Bangladesh)... you should be able to CLAIM tiles for legitimate reasons (such as claiming rivertiles of a river you have a city on, claiming desert or ice tiles for a long way around a city, as likely no one else will have settled there), at which point they contribute to your empire. However, if you claim tiles which another civ can have a legitimate claim over (say they also have a city on said river), the issue has to be decided either by diplomacy or war. thoughts?

I thought about the legitimate claim principle and I came to the conclusion that it is an opinion if you have a legitimate claim. So you should have the ability to lay claim to any tile it is just the AI that needs to know about legitimate claims. Obviously causing a dispute about land in the heart of a country would lower your reputation more than claiming a right to a tile which has high culture of your civ.

I would like to see people of different nations moving to religious cities thus creating more of their nations culture there, and a more complex method of deciding which city is the holy city when you found a religion.

instead of technology driving wonders why don't wonders drive technology, or do i mean that the other way around? What i propose is that when a civilisation builds a wonder they discover the technologies related to it, building stonehenge discovers masonry and mysticism for example. You can learn technologies off your neighbours through trade and "research" and of course espionage, up until the more complex techs like fusion and computers.

Civs should be able to export products of a particular technology without actually exporting the tech. I'm thinking weapons and hi tech goods, although thats only relative.

i dont think that it would work. because if you build a spy, then you need a way to talk 2 them without speaking. thats why you need alphabet to build them

This is just the start of a concept, I understand the reasoning behind requiring alphabet to talk to your spys, and paper to draw your maps on to trade them. But I am trying to get away from the dash to research aesthetics so you can build the Parthenon, or Masonry to build the Great Wall. I am aware that they tried having technologies spread along trade routes and it didn't work very well, and that it wouldn't be fun. Going back to the alphabet, and numerals, there were many systems invented, in the western world we use Arabic numerals and Latin characters which are themselves from the Greek. However Hebrew is completely different as is Chinese and Oriental [written] languages.

Perhaps if you trade for a technology in the game it causes some crossover of culture, if you completely learn a tech from another civ then you would be more akin than half learned tech.

This is just the start of a concept, I understand the reasoning behind requiring alphabet to talk to your spys, and paper to draw your maps on to trade them. But I am trying to get away from the dash to research aesthetics so you can build the Parthenon, or Masonry to build the Great Wall.


Why ?

The solution to that I prefer is, double the number of techs, double the number of useful wonders, double the number of sensible strategies to get ahead, your game isn't killed when Hammurabi gets the one key wonder one turn ahead of you.

No I know losing out on building a wonder isn't the end of the world. I was just thinking that building a wonder is a learning experience for a civ, when the Chinese built the wall they would have been much better builders by the end of it, but equally they would have needed to be good to attempt such a project. I was just trying to rationalise a bit, maybe I fell flat on my face, maybe they is an idea there, but for now I've lost wherever it is.

I had an idea last night for a new research system. I have no big problems with the present one, but I think this is one aspect of the game which is balanced way to far towards gameplay at the expense of realism.

We all know IRL research is mainly by accident. No one sits down and goes "Tell you what, lets look into developing the concept of replacable parts. We should have it pinned down in 20 years". It gradually comes about, then when it gets to a certian level, a tech can be developed to go in a specific direction. So for example, Television came about initially by accident, then when a certain level of TV technology was attained, people could work on it to develop it in the directyions they wanted.

so my proposal for Civ 5 research is this. you have a tech slider, but it is divided into various categories, Military, Building, Economic, etc, and you can adjust those with sliders too, so you can decide to give high funding to military research in general, but until military research builds up a certain amount of beakers, you dont know exactly what you are going to get out of it. So In the later game, If you are giving a high priority to military research, you may get rocketry, you may get stealth, you may get laser etc... after completing a certain amount of research, lets arbitrarily say 800 beakers worth of military research, your advisor appears and tells you "Sir/Madam, our military research has led us to discover a new technology which could come in very uself, ROCKETRY. do you want to a) increase military funding so we may soon exploit this tech to our advantage b) decrease military research on this. we have other priorities or c) keep military finding at present levels. We can wait.

this would apply to every type of tech except political ones (Monarchy, Democracy, Communism etc). I think like IRL, they should become available to you when social circumstances make them available. So:

Monarchy becomes available when you have 5 or more cities, linked by roads and with courthouses in each.

Communism becomes available when you have at least 5 factories, and there is a revolt in one of the cities with a factory (this could be a random event).

Serfdom becomes available when 15 or more farms are being worked for a perdiod of 5 consecituve turns.

and so on. I'm not saying these circumstances should be set, but social conditions should make government and economic civics availible IMO. thoughts please?

Yeah, I think in the general same way RedRalphWiggum...

They had started to do something like this in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The default option was "blind research", that is, you could not see what you were about to research, but you had the option to focus on things like "pure science" or "military" which would increase the odds of getting certain types of technologies. I thought it was great. I bet a lot of high level Civ players went "boohoo I want my micromanagement" and turned it off though.

But I like your ideas. Prerequesites. Of course, they'd have to be tweaked a bit... If you're stuck in a small peninsula for a part of the game and can't have enough cities for something, that'd suck.

Yeah the examples I used are just rough ideas, obviously various factors would alter them, mapsize etc... and if anyone would like to come up with any other prerequisites for civics I'd love to hear them.

I had an idea last night for a new research system. I have no big problems with the present one, but I think this is one aspect of the game which is balanced way to far towards gameplay at the expense of realism.


I'm not sure I see a way of shifting this balance that makes the game any more fun, though.


We all know IRL research is mainly by accident. No one sits down and goes "Tell you what, lets look into developing the concept of replacable parts. We should have it pinned down in 20 years"


Depends. I mean, as a research scientist myself, most of what I do is aimed at "here is interesting problem X. How can it be solved ?"


so my proposal for Civ 5 research is this. you have a tech slider, but it is divided into various categories, Military, Building, Economic, etc, and you can adjust those with sliders too, so you can decide to give high funding to military research in general, but until military research builds up a certain amount of beakers, you dont know exactly what you are going to get out of it. So In the later game, If you are giving a high priority to military research, you may get rocketry, you may get stealth, you may get laser etc... after completing a certain amount of research, lets arbitrarily say 800 beakers worth of military research, your advisor appears and tells you "Sir/Madam, our military research has led us to discover a new technology which could come in very uself, ROCKETRY. do you want to a) increase military funding so we may soon exploit this tech to our advantage b) decrease military research on this. we have other priorities or c) keep military finding at present levels. We can wait.


It probably won't surprise you that I do not like this at all. There are so many things about the Civ experience in various games that depend on understanding research paths, on knowing one wants tech A to be able to see resource B and build unit C, on planning tech trades and so on; adding the extra uncertainties here just makes it harder to do actual strategic thought, and I do not see it bringing any bonus to the experience of the game itself that compensates for this blurring of the ability to play it at that particular strategic scale.


this would apply to every type of tech except political ones (Monarchy, Democracy, Communism etc). I think like IRL, they should become available to you when social circumstances make them available. So:


That thought smacks of historical determinism on a scale which I am inclined to reject utterly as having any place in Civ.


Communism becomes available when you have at least 5 factories, and there is a revolt in one of the cities with a factory (this could be a random event).


Or we could just bring back the pre-Civ IV unhappiness model and have it happen if you allow your cities to fall into civil disorder.

I haven't checked this thread in a while, but I saw this post and spend some 20-30 minutes reading it and trying to understand where you are coming from, Rysmiel. So here are some thoughts.:)

...I don't quite get what it is that people opposed to micromanagement actually want from their games, though. ... A game where you can manage a vast empire over a large span of game time and still finish it in an evening ?

I would like this option, yes. And I'm willing to pay for it, double or triple. Even if it's called 'Civ5 Lite'


Part 1) If the game is to abstract stuff away to an empire-wide level, or a region-wide level within an empire, it can't possibly do so with with flexibility and power of a human player who puts the time and effort and understanding into using every little element for maximal effect...

Part 2) If those levels of abstraction are to be available in something that is recognisably Civ, they will be abstractions of situations where there are still individual[s] each doing their specific thing, and if that is there under the hood anyway, I want to be able to get my hands on it directly.

Part 1) 'Flexibility and power' definitions aside, this all boils down to what people like in their video game diet. Again, if I owned a company, you'd be my QA guy (or research), because you enjoy details and tactics. (Kudos on the 'all-too-rare-these-days' connection between the micro and the macro.) This is fantastic! Similarly nice is a preference for strategic planning and broad policy manipulation, and distaste for micro-level decision making. Why can't both exist?

Part 2) Then we agree!:p In fact, they don't even really need to be under the hood, if the interface is properly conceived. If I don't click on it to see what I can do with/ to it, I don't want to be penalized*. Likewise, if you click on it and change something, you should be rewarded, at least with some tangible effect worth the effort.

(*Unless an adviser or some information notifies me that something is wrong (Management by Exception) (http://www.12manage.com/description_management_by_exception.html))


It seems wrong to me for the levels of achievement and accomplishment one can get by learning to master complex, time-and-energy-consuming gameplay to be reduced to a matter of pushing a few buttons and letting the AI do it; ... but don't keep the dedicated players from getting into the fine detail.

This one was the hardest for me to defend, because you're totally right. IF that's what you want in a video game. However, I come from the camp that leaders (of empires, companies, or even hippie communes) MUST depend on their followers in some way to be autonomous.

All I'm asking is for is to not force me, every turn, to decide what each city is going to produce, what specific space each unit is going to move, or what the exact research path MUST BE. It's 6 here, half a dozen there for me.

If I don't click on it to see what I can do with/ to it, I don't want to be penalized*. Likewise, if you click on it and change something, you should be rewarded, at least with some tangible effect worth the effort.


It seems that it "not getting the benefit if you don't click" is the same as being penalized.

It's weird how "more empire-wide level" seems to equal the loss of so much micromanagement for micro defenders... For me, choosing the location for a city is the most important strategic decision and I can stay there looking at the map for a while before I pick a place. That's strategy for me, and it can be considered for a long time. Once the city is founded though... "tile micromanagement" ... That just seems like the type of decision that I don't want to have to do with, especially later in the game.

Look, personally I'm a fan of micro management (to a degree, I'm not checking what tiles is being worked in every city every turn) but I recognise a lot of people arent. surely new MM features can be brought in if optional?

I like the way that civ IV has lots of options you can turn on and off or adjust, from simple decisions such as map size and game length to things like tech trading/brokering, always war/peace/either, raging barbarians and others. There are different types of start available, and you can set the number of points you get to build up your civ at the beginning.

Would it be possible to make more game options adjustable in this way so that the micro managers can choose to turn on this little fiddly bit and turn off another aspect of the game, where as someone who wants just just decide what basic tech route their civ should be following can just tick that particular box. So have the whole tech tree scalable, so a macro manager might choose to research from construction, spirituality, growth, military, in the ancient age construction would represent a combination of mining, bronze working and masonry, growth would replace fishing, sailing, pottery, agriculture and the wheel, etc etc. A second level could be as the tree is now and a fine grained level would add even more technologies.

I am not sure how to change movement of units without getting rid of it completely and forcing battle into cities, it seems perfectly logical to me that you can send your unit on a journey that will last 5/10/20 turns and it'll only interrupt you when it gets there or if something happens on its route, it comes across a barbarian do you want to run away, attack or ignore it. You then get the option to fortify, sentry, heal or wait when it has got where it is going. My only addition would be to select which tiles it is watching in sentry mode, you should be able to select any tiles which it can have within its line of sight and return to its current position within the turn, this way ships can patrol quite nicely. Of course it would be good if you could set a patrol route for units which would be a combination of sentry and movement.

Basically what RedRalph said, make features optional.

It seems that it "not getting the benefit if you don't click" is the same as being penalized.

Not necessarily. For example, in previous Civs, you had to manually adjust your science rate to 100% on turn one. In Civ4, it's already done, but the option is there if you want to raise some gold in the early game. You are not penalized for NOT lowering science, but you are not rewarded with the effect of the trade-off.

The problem with on/off options, as stated earlier in this thread, is that it would require extensive programming modifications (notably the AI). I'd rather the efforts be put into a solid core experience.

Look, personally I'm a fan of micro management (to a degree, I'm not checking what tiles is being worked in every city every turn) but I recognise a lot of people arent. surely new MM features can be brought in if optional?

If the AI can place your working citizens sensibly given your priorities, or automate your workers given priorities, and that's what people want, fine, put that option in. I'm not arguing against that.

I just do not want any modifications that prevent me from micromanaging to the extent that I want, which is moderate to high depending on the game circumstances.

I would say a better example would be city micromanagement, if you leave a city to its own devices it will work whichever tiles it thinks it should, but you might decide that you are not worried about growth right now because you need more hammers right now. Knowing that you can zoom to the city and tell it to work the hills instead of floodplain gives that person an advantage but not knowing it isn't that great a loss. As you say about lowering science, it is a trade-off wealth for research, why anyone would choose to hamper their own research I can't imagine but you seem to think it is a good idea. Perhaps to provide some money to pay for fires in forests or cities, repairs after floods/hurricanes, or disasters in mines/resources. It might also be useful for maintenance in early cities if you grow far too fast but you can turn your research rating down at the time, unless it is already at 0%. But I would not say that that is an example of not doing/learning something and not affecting different players.

This whole argument sounds to me that the game should be just as easy the less you have control over, so what? You want someone who just sits there and presses go to have as successful city as someone who micromanages? I keep learning new things that makes my game better, I only just found out the domestic advisor gives you a list of all your civs that you can sort according to hammers, wealth, beakers, culture (should be output and total rather than having output in parenthesis, in fact how does the culture value here work), great person points and what the city is producing, before that I had to scroll through all my cities to find the best production base. It was well into my civ 3 experience that I learnt about changing which tiles a city worked. I never do tutorials, not if I can help it, so sometimes there are these little micromanagement things I miss, but someone who knows them has the upper hand, what some people seem to want is micromanaging to not give an advantage, now frankly this seems absurd, it would make more sense if micromanagement features were optional like me and RedRalph suggest.

Oh and as for extensive programming modifications, I am sure it would not be that complicated to add a few bools here and there, for the most part that is all I can see that would be affected. Take changing a cities deployment manually for example, if it is on then allow it/run that aspect of the AI, if its not then don't, all that seems to be is a few "if"s and a ticky box on the custom game screen. However I don't know how the AI is written but judging by my final year AI lectures on my degree course (Computer Games Software Engineering) it probably should be that simple. To someone who knows the code well and have access to EVERYTHING, ie the people who would made it, it would be a walk in the park.

As you say about lowering science, it is a trade-off wealth for research, why anyone would choose to hamper their own research I can't imagine but you seem to think it is a good idea. Perhaps to provide some money to pay for fires in forests or cities, repairs after floods/hurricanes, or disasters in mines/resources. It might also be useful for maintenance in early cities if you grow far too fast but you can turn your research rating down at the time, unless it is already at 0%.


Well, if you are aiming for a cultural victory where you want to build as many wonders as possible in one city, slowing down the global tech rate as much as possible so that nobody runs away with wonder B while you are still finishing wonder A is no bad strategy, and it's easy to imagine game mechanics where reducng your own research rate makes sense as part of that.


This whole argument sounds to me that the game should be just as easy the less you have control over, so what? You want someone who just sits there and presses go to have as successful city as someone who micromanages?


I have no argument with people who want to be able to play the game without micromanaging; if what they really enjoy is a quick simple win, then let them have it. I don't understand finding that fun, but I do grasp that not everyone in the world is like me.

I do think, though, that mastering the game, being able to win at higher levels or to control it decisively at lower difficulty levels, should require willingness to understand and manage things at a fine-grained level.

I have no argument with people who want to be able to play the game without micromanaging; if what they really enjoy is a quick simple win, then let them have it. I don't understand finding that fun, but I do grasp that not everyone in the world is like me.

I do think, though, that mastering the game, being able to win at higher levels or to control it decisively at lower difficulty levels, should require willingness to understand and manage things at a fine-grained level.

So to sum you up, you agree with me:

Not everyone like the same things
Make civ modular so people can play with or without the features they like
Micromanagment is fun so we'll play with these features turned on


As far as my comment on turning down the research rate was that was my understanding of cassembler's comment was that in the early game he/she... they, like to turn the rate down. I get that there are times when you turn it down, you want money for whatever reason is probably the main reason. I am not sure I understand the concept of slowing the Global tech rate down for a cultural victory, surely you want to get to electricity as fast as possible and get the wonders from around there, Eiffel Tower, Broadway, Rock and Roll, Hollywood. Or is it that if you are getting further ahead your opponents are more likely to rush a wonder to keep up?

I am not sure I understand the concept of slowing the Global tech rate down for a cultural victory, surely you want to get to electricity as fast as possible and get the wonders from around there, Eiffel Tower, Broadway, Rock and Roll, Hollywood. Or is it that if you are getting further ahead your opponents are more likely to rush a wonder to keep up?

In Civ III wonders can't be rushed except with a very rarely occurring Scientific Great Leader, and there's really no way of getting enough culture for a one-city culture win without an almost all-Wonders all-the-time city from the very beginning. Which is an interesting challenge.

The argument that liking less micromanaging means loving quick and easy victories is frustrating to read. I consider that a great strategy game doesn't need micromanaging to be deep. Look at chess (and no, chess doesn't have micromanagement, don't even start).

On these forums, I'm pretty sure the concentration of Civ players who like micromanagement and will defend it in 2 pages dissertation is higher than it is in the real world where there are still, I'm sure, serious Civ fans who simply don't have time to waste on internet forums like I do. I mean, who's the first person to look on the internet to know how to use hammer overflow? Yeah, hammer overflow sure makes me feel the grandeur of direction my civilization.

I don't even know why I'm having this argument though. I think the specific things that annoy me a bit about Civs don't even concern the micromanager that much. For me, it's mainly the concept of units walking around the map that should be a target of future innovations. I don't care about hammer overflow and people who want to optimize and slingshot things and whatnot. It caters to an audience who certainly has the right to expect such things from the game. For me it's just the way war is conducted through units and the way workers are built and used as units on the map just creates this uncomfortable dichotomy in Civ "I'm trying to be a World History remake, a grand civilization leading game, yet I act like Starcraft or Heroes of Might and Magic".

The argument that liking less micromanaging means loving quick and easy victories is frustrating to read. I consider that a great strategy game doesn't need micromanaging to be deep. Look at chess (and no, chess doesn't have micromanagement, don't even start).


No, but you don't master chess without being able to think things through in depth and detail either.

No, but you don't master chess without being able to think things through in depth and detail either.

Precisely.

Chess is a wonderful example, thanks! Chess, at a fundamental level, is micromanagement, in the sense of having complete control over each unit's movement (similar to how unit movement works in Civ).

The main differences are:
-In Civ, you move tens (or even hundreds) of units each turn
-In Civ, you likewise make dozens or hundreds of resource-based decisions each turn
-In both games, each decision you make adds up to your strategy (or lack thereof)

So, what the 'macromanagers' are asking for is methods to execute decisions for these dozens of 'decision groups' more efficiently than going through each one, one by one. None of us are arguing that players shouldn't be able to actually make each decision one by one, we just don't want to be forced to make them one by one.

The science example wasn't me arguing that maxing out science early game is a bad strategy, quite the opposite. But if you want to raise money instead, the option is there. And when you need the money for maintenance, the game automatically adjusts it. But if you want, you can tweak it. All is well here:goodjob:.

Same goes for tile management- the AI will put people on tiles pretty well, but sometimes you want to tweak things for a different strategy. But you don't have to.

So what about production queues? Why can I not say, "These four cities need to focus strictly on military production," and have the AI build barracks, defenders, and offensive units in an intelligent manner, without me having to tell each city "Do X, then do Y, then do Z, Then do X, then do Z, then do Y?"

Thus my argument for grouping cities into states and assigning commands at a broader level. For the micromanagers, this works because A) you don't have to make states, and if you do, you can still adjust individual cities as you see fit. [In fact, throw in governors with character- assign Bob Muluga as Governor of this state (barracks and infantry are 10% cheaper, but each city produces 10% less food).]

Sounds yummy to me...

There is no argument here, this 'micro vs macro." It's the same coin.

Can I just ask, in general, would people like civ5 to be a different game (In the sense that civ4 was so much more than civ3), or just an improved and touched up version of Civ4?

I say push the envelope. Civ IV is great, and the mod community will keep it alove for at least another decade (look at Civ2 & 3, alive and well). But what's that point of making a Civ V that's really just a modded Civ 4?

I say push the envelope. Civ IV is great, and the mod community will keep it alove for at least another decade (look at Civ2 & 3, alive and well). But what's that point of making a Civ V that's really just a modded Civ 4?


I agree, but some people seem to basically want an amended Civ4. I think its a great game, but I'm hoping civ 5 will have a vastly improved diplomacy, resource and stability system. I'm not pushed about the graphics; I hope they arent as cartoony as Rev, but even if the worst happens and they are I'll still give the game a go. I would hope that as Rev is going to be a less complex, more cartoony verison of Civ, firaxis will consider that potential market to be catered for and allow Civ5 to be a more detailed game aimed at serious strategy fans.

I don't know if it's get in the broad hange category, but about rushing wonders, i always thought of a engineer rushing the sistine chappel to be quite strange...

I would prefer that the GP rushing a wonder to be of a certain type: a scientist for the great library, a prophet for stonehenge, an artist for the sistine chapel...
If it's too narrowed, you could imagine that different GP type could rush a wonder: notre-dame could be rushed by either an engineer, an artist or a prophet!!!

That would mean that the great engineer would need another use than rushing. When you look at the rushing equivalent for other GP, they either build a specific building (academy, shrine) or give a given amount of a system point (gold, culture, espionnage point). Since rushing is equal to get a given amout of hammers, engineer would now get the other thing, a special building. +100% hammers is too big, but if someone have an idea ...

The great broad change i would like to see in Civ 5 is about culture.
In civ4, apart from landgrabbing (and defending and number of turn of revolution), it doesn't do anything. Culture should have impact on diplomacy (i like your culture +1/your culture insuport me -1), science (cultural tech being cheaper if you get a certain amount of culture in your empire, but never discover a tech for you), happiness (if the culture of the former owner of a city can give you unhappiness, why isn't there a bonus +1 :-) we love our glorious culture ?). Finally, the culture winning conditions is to be redone, because even if some players find it interresting, most of people don't like it. However, i don't have any idea about how to do it properly

Can I just ask, in general, would people like civ5 to be a different game (In the sense that civ4 was so much more than civ3), or just an improved and touched up version of Civ4?

Neither.

I would ideally want Civ 5 to be the improved and expanded version of Civ 3 that Civ 4 should have been, and to trash the majority of changes made between Civ 3 and the existing Civ 4.

I would hope that as Rev is going to be a less complex, more cartoony verison of Civ, firaxis will consider that potential market to be catered for and allow Civ5 to be a more detailed game aimed at serious strategy fans.

Amen to that, though I'd feel more confident about it if there was any indication of a PC port of Rev due any time soon.

As Cassembler says, civ iv will be kept alive by the modding community and it has a lot of potential on that front. I say Civ IV should have completely different graphics and be a new game.

I was talking about how culture can make civs more alike in Rysmiels thread on civ traits etc. So instead of cultural borders being the borders that define your territory they describe how alike two civs are. So by exporting films and music you can make distant countries more like yours. Also having vassal states, colonies and taking slaves would cause mixing of cultures, I am thinking of the large influence Pakistan and India has had on English culture, and the effect when slavery was abolished of all the Afro-Caribbean workers in many countries, namely US and UK. I mean "going out for an Indian" is now considered a very British thing and I would guess that at least half, if not more of the UK would say that Chinese was one of their favourite meals. I mean what city is complete without China town, even if it is just one street.

CIVICS
-Economic (Directed into wealth and large city account)
-Authorian (Directed into obedience and ruleship)
-Intellectual (Directed into knowledge and technology)
-Artistic (Directed into culture and happiness)
-Aggresive (Directed into war and soldier promotion)
-Calm (Directed into defense and diplomacy)
-Spiritual (Directed into religion and worship)
-Effectivistic (Directed into industries and production)
-Expansive (Directed into growth and world discoveries)
-Imperialistic (Directed into national expansion)
-Clinical (Directed into health and enviromental protection)

CIVILIZATIONS
Before you start, you select the two civics you want for your civ. Then it selects the civ that has one of these 66 (11*12/2) possible mixes.
Here are a few examples:

Capitalistic Empire
Economic and Effectivistic
National Arms: Coin
National colors: Sky blue and green

Peaceful Empire
Calm and Spiritual
National arms: Peace sign
National colors: White and sky blue

Fundamentalistic Empire
Authorian and Spiritual
National arms: Holy book
National colors: Purple and white

Colonistic Empire
Economic and Imperialistic
National arms: Streamer
National colors: Silver and red

Engineeral Empire
Intellectual and Effectivist
National arms: Gear wheel
National colors: Beige and brown

Communist Empire
Authorian and Expansive
National arms: Hammer and sickle
National colors: Red and yellow

Ecotopian Empire
Calm and Clinic
National arms: Tree
National colors: Emerald and white

Sensible Empire
Economic and Intellectual
National arms: Leftwards arrow
National colors: Dark blue and white

Silly Empire
Creative and Aggresive
National arms: Clown face
National colors: Pink and dark grey

Romantic Empire
Economic and Creative
National arms: Heart
National colors: Violet and orange

Astronomic Empire
Intellectual and Expansive
National arms: Constellation
National colors: Turquoise and black

Medical Empire
Intellectual and Clinical
National arms: Red cross
National colors: White and red

Radioactive Empire
Intellectual and Aggresive
National arms: Radioactivity sign
National colors: Lime and yellow

Are there not 110 combinations? I mean I did get and E for A level Maths stats module, but I thought it is a case of 11 ways to choose the first times 10 ways to choose the second, 11x10=110, ah but then order doesn't matter, so it is halfed, 55, I don't know I guess you were probably right with 66, like I said I got an E for stats.

Instead of calling them civics call them traits.

I would much rather [political] leaders having traits than entire civs, no civ is the same from the beginning of time to the end, so either allow the player to choose the leader from a reduced list (3 different possible leaders) every 50 turns or some other mechanism, so long as ultimately the player can influence the result.

I had a mechanism for handling changing civ traits over time developed somewhere...I'll find it...eventually...

If onyl one thing form all these pages is in civ5, I hope its

Silly Empire
Creative and Aggresive
National arms: Clown face
National colors: Pink and dark grey