Time dependent government types e.g, monarchy in the ancient types is not the same thing as the monarchy in Britain after Oliver Cromwell, or the republic of Rome which also isn't the same thing as the rupblic of, say, France. Oh ya. and also it would be nice if they included motorized transportation like jeeps to carry infantry, workers etc. faster to battle.

I'm not sure if it has been suggested or not. I believe the singlemost important change would be to make a hex based mapping system. this silly checkerboard with diagonal moves makes me crazy. It is time for Civ to become a real wargame with a more realistic mapping and movement system.

Originally posted by Howard Mahler
Airlift should have limited range, with perhaps the range increasing with some advance researched in modern times.

Also, what can be airlifted should be rethought. Workers should be able to be airlifted. Tanks and modern amror should not be able to arilifted, until perhaps some advance researched in modern times.

I think that aircraft should have limited range also and movement capabilities just like any other unit. Heavy lift cargo planes could have a movemnet of say 20 and a carrying capacity of 4 infantry or 2 mech. inf./mod armor. Jet fighters would have a lessor range (10) but be allowed air to air refueling so they could escourt the cargo planes. Research into air to air refueling might extend the range of both cargo planes and fighters.

In addition, I would like to see them include the B-52 bomber in the game as an intermediate between B-17 and Stealth bomber.

My suggestions:

- Bridges

- Underwater tunnels

- Space combat a-la Civ2 CTP

- Civ2-style Air Force !!!

- Diferent types of barbarians

More Risk/Reward City Improvements!

Right now the only city improvement with a downside is the Nuclear Power Plant.

Things like: Civil Wars are possible only if you build a forbidden palace, or granaries can lead to a tainted food supply, or universities can bring disruptive protests?

Tying these into culture/happiness/government type would make decisions that are currently straightforward into long range planning issue.

The theme of Civilization is the development of human civilisation. Yet in civ3 it has sadly moved further from acheiving this self stated aim.

History has more than 8 nations, so why are the other peoples of the world not represented in some way?

Drop characters for leaders of nation

Having the same leader all the time is illogical and ruins authenticity.

Civ could keep the concept of leaders but they could be like the special units, arising at certain times in the nations history and giving us a special advantage in a field; militarily, culturaly, economically etc.



Bring back movies and actors !

I loved the high council in civ2! It added a real human touch to the game and was a good laugh. So why have we got those creepy, crappy CGI advisors in civ3?

Originally posted by Troy0628
Civ 4 should seperate economics and politics

Political systems would include:
Despotism (i.e. Saddam's Iraq)
Monarchy (i.e. Saudi Arabia)
Republic (i.e. Current U.S. model)
Democracy (has not existed since ancient Greece)

I like the econ slider idea for economic systems:

To the left would be "Planned economy" or "Communism" with slow growth, lagging technological development, few happy or sad citizens (only content ones), and cheap military

To the right would be "Laissez Faire" or "Capitalism" with rapid growth, rapid technological advancement, demanding citizens that are either happy or sad (rarely content), and expensive military.

The notion that deficit spending hurts GDP is backwards. If anything, deficit spending boosts CURRENT GDP and income at the expense of slower FUTURE growth.

Communism should get bad commerce but good industrial power, to represent how a leader is able to take control of the economy. I really like the whole "only content" idea though. See my post on govs and the economy for details.

Trade & Supplies:

I would like to see trade routes be implemented in the game. For example, if you want to connect your harbor the harbor of an ally or to another one of your harbors, you go to "trade/supply vision" and draw a line from Point A to Point B. Depending on how far away the harbor is, the route could take from 1 to several turns to build. If an enemy sent a ship onto your trade line (the line would be the same color as your civ) they could pillage it, in which case it would act like a road has been pillaged. However, it would be possible to set units to "guard the trade line" in which case they would patrol the line and if an enemy tried to pillage your trade and you had a ship 2 (or 3, not sure) your ship would fight it automatically.

The same would work for supply lines for your troops. If you have more than X units, you must make a supply line for those troops the same way as mentioned above, only the line would take one turn. The same actions could be applied to this line, and the route would have to be connected to a city or road which, in turn, is connected to your National Granary (I'll explain later).

The national granary is basically where you can select (by way of the governor) to allocate X amount of excess food (perhaps in more brutal govs/war-time mobilization you can actually DENY food to the populace) to the National Granary. This is viewable through your domestic advisor, and if a city is starving you can send food to them. Also, for units whom you must supply via a supply line, every x units takes up 1 food.

I would love to see Canada as a playable country!!!

They always take civs like hittites who the hell are they????

The hittites are a famous civilization who lived around the same time of the Egyptians and helped spread technology due to their many wars to various parts of the world.

The canadians have not conquered any lands, made any great cultural or scientific achievements as a nation (I know there are tons of brilliant canadian scientists and whatnot). Those are the primary criteria for qualifying in civ as being a "civilization"

I have come up with yet another way to modify how your gov is (in addition/alteration to my previous posts on government)

Everyone should start off as "tribalist" Depending on how many units they have, the measure of economic control they have, and what kind of "public improvements" (see previous post) they invest in, and if they hold elections or not, size of empire/cities within empire, a civ will ultimately branch off of "tribalism" into various stages of government without a revolution. A revolution will only occur if you must switch trees. For example, a tree could look like this:

N.B. I set the tree up like this:
(Government) -- (Criteria for government change) --> (If criteria are met, government changes to _______) and so on and so forth

Tribalism -- elections; small, contained empire of medium-sized cities; public parks and no military --> City-state Democracy -- Elections; Vast empire of large cities; medium military with conquests; laissez faire (no support for trade unions, conservative economy) --> Imperialistic Republic

Here's another possible tree:

Tribalism -- Some elections; public works, more controlled economy, somewhat small empire --> Monarchistic Commune -- Some elections, controlled economy, public works, lots of healthcare, lots of education, lots of union support --> Socialist Republic

I included only three "stages" for the sake of simplicity's sake in making the tree. In the real game, one could have many stages. Essentially though, to qualify as a change in government, one must maintain certain criteria for a certain number of turns and then there will be a little pop-up saying "Our people all agree, we have become a Dictatorship!" or something to that extent.

Elections: Basically, this could be called voting, referendums, etc. If you are about to go to war, make a drastic change in any of the sliders, or sign a trade embargo what have you, a pop-up will appear asking if you would like to have a vote for this. You can choose yes or no. Then, depending on what factions are dominant at the time (could be random, could be depending on neighboring/frequently trading countries) a vote is held to see if the people approve of your plan. If they approve, then you can proceed and the people will be get slightly happier. If they disapprove only a little bit, then you can continue but they will be disgruntled, if there is overwhelming opposition and you continue to do the action anyway, the computer will play for 5 turns and try to restore things the way they were previously.
Every now and then, a random election will be held. In this election, the people take a vote to see if they are pleased with what you have done since the previous election. Ways to hurt your standing include if you have drastically damaged the economy, drastically hurt international approval rating, used forced labor (we should have the option to do either one, no matter the gov.) etc.

CivFanatics has the most unorganised Civ4 Ideas List ever!

Who on earth would want to wade through all this crap?

1. Industry. National prosperity is a function of the ability of a people to convert raw materials into consumable goods. Let us build industrial improvements that will allow us to input raw materials (mined or traded for) and output goods that can be consumed or traded. This would create markets, industries and economies and would greatly enhance the non-military aspects of the game. Some countries would be rich in raw materials but if they don't invest in industrial capacity they'll get left behind. Others (i.e. Hong Kong) could be poor in raw materials but wealthy because they invested in factories and found markets for their goods. The point is that it's really not the raw materials that make a nation wealthy so much as what they do with them. You could add additional layers of complexity based on this such as trade embargos (increases prices), free trade agreements (reduces prices). etc. etc.

1 Hexes are beautiful! I think you can even bend them into a spherical world with a little geometric aptitude.

2. Navigable rivers

3. Add the concept of Money! (deficit spending and money creation). Have a budget shortfall? Borrow it but watch as your future treasury gets devoured by interest payments. Print money and watch your short term economy take off but careful, your prices will inflate, people become unhappy and you can no longer afford the resources that get pumped into your factories. Next thing you know your in a depression! I've got hundreds of ideas on how to add this in.

4. More in depth, year over year stats to track your progress/failure: GDP, Trade Balance, PCI, Current Account, Income Disparity, Undemployemnt, Interest Rates, Inflation, etc. etc.

One clarification from earlier: Democracy is a government of referendum where the majority rules. The Athenians were the last to have it. We are gravitating that way in the U.S. which I would argue is bad. Republic is a government whereby lected officials make the decisions and are limited by law.

This thread, as unorganized as it seems, has a few good ideas that keep popping up. Although I'm re-iterating, for anyone who's listening, these are some of the most popular ideas that are coming up:
1) Improved combat system that allows for specialists, combined arms, guerrilla tactics, and and overall deeper strategy
2) Terrain naming, such as naming rivers and mountain ranges
3) Improved diplomacy that allows for greater depth of interaction between friends, such as selling units
4) More civs
5) More civs on map
6) The idea I am seeing most that I also largely support is the concept of civil wars, where one civ breaks off from another
7) Barbarians in more modern ages
8) Lowered corruption, espionage costs
9) More great leaders, like religious or business leaders
10)Choosing religion as one would a government
11)The ability to choose from more than one leaderhead when you select a civ
12)A more user-friendly, in-depth editor
13)Bridges and canals
14)Re-working "culture-flipping" and possibly adding immigration
15)Flavour units, city graphics
16)Multi-figure units
These ideas, by this point, are nothing new. I think, however, that they represent the most frequent and best ideas posted on this thread. Hopefully this will organize the thread a bit better and capture the attention of the game's developers.

Great Leaders

Great Leaders should have a lifespan. Assuming these geniuses arrive at age 20 and live to 120, they should disappear after 100 years. A warning before they disappear would be nice.

Great leaders ought to be capturable and ransomable.

A captured MGL should cause a significant morale loss (if morale rules are implemented). If not ransomed, then after a peace treaty has been signed, the MGL could be used to build any of the capturing civ's available military unit, or to perform one espionage function.

A captured SGL, after peace is signed, could be used as a standard SGL, but at 1/3 the ability (1/3 of Wonder cost is added for example), or to gain a free tech. The US got a lot of Rocket Scientists form Germany after WWII, which significantly boosted our knowledge.

A MGL or army created by a MGL could exert a zone of influence in enemy territory. The influence would be tile the MGL is in in any case, and the nine surrounding tiles except if enemy troops are in or adjacent to that tile. Within this boundary, all units may move freely, taking advantage of roads or rails.

--

Construction Equipment. If more tasks are added to workers (as I suggested in a previous post) then cities could produce construction equipment. Paired with a worker, any worker action would be completed in one turn.

--

Major Game Flaw – Has anyone else ever noticed that the French actually fight wars?

I would like to see Poland as a new civilization. They had been, for a brief period of time, biggest country in the Europe - from Baltic to the Black Sea - and they stopped Ottoman Turk advance at Wien. They also had Copernicus, Shopin etc... so I believe they deserve to "participate" more than many that are already in.

More kinds of maps:
true spherical (East links with West), torroidal (North links South, East with West).

The possibility for civs to start on diferent Worlds and to meet up in space. :cool:

more conquests (scenarios). :) But that's obvious, isn't it?

mfG mitsho

Originally posted by Aphex_Twin
The possibility for civs to start on diferent Worlds and to meet up in space. :cool:

That is very important!!! Much like in Civ II: Test of Time :cooool:

One thing I will never understand is why they eliminated the Civ2-style Air Force :crazyeye:

I have got an idea.

Couldn't there be Dark ages for each civ?
Like in 1910-1940(I am not a bit certain about the eyars), the time of the great depression ,America would suffer from a high corruption, many unhappy people and citie's population dropping due to the drop of food and shield production.

Germany would suffer in the time after the first world war.

Russia, after the bolcheviks got power and so on.

That is too arbitrary. The purpose of Civ is to create your Own, alternate history.

Yeah, but there are golden ages. So, why not adding dark ages? (every civ has its ups and downs). And having more than one golden age/dark age would be good too, not? (thinking of 2 each per game?).

In addition to that, this would also allow a more logical leader system. Make them change whenever a dark age/golden age starts or ends. I know that leads to a problem with the pictures (in diplo screen).

solution, take only one picture per each leader. (not moods) --> a civ would have 9 (1 start, 4 ga/da, 4 (inbeetween times) leaders, ok, that's too much. (36 pictures per civ, lacking of leader names for many civs) So why not let some leader having the same graphic?

The game is probably going to be 3D, right? how many big games released now are 2D? and how many will there be in 2005?

Civ 4 should have
smooth zooming and camera rotation that you can control whenever you want.
things can actually stand higher when ontop of a mountain.
the world will actually be a 3D sphere.

Lots of ideas...poorly-formed statements:

1. 3 government "tracts" where the actual government type changes with each age of advancement...
So, the tracts are despotic, parliamentary, and communal (e.g.).

Government "tract" - Ancient - Medieval - Industrial - Modern
Despotic - Tyrant - Monarch - Fascist - Religious Icon
Parliamentary - City Democracy - Republic - Democracy - Internat'l Democracy(?)
Communal - Tribal - Feudalism - Communism - Collective

Govt.s with names similar to Civ3 names should be similar to their Civ3 counterparts. As you progress up each "chain", the govts. should get better, so Collective is better than Communism is better than Feudalism is better than Tribal, for example. Different chains are hard to compare, so Communism vs. Democracy is hard, for example. To change within a chain should be a very brief "anarchy" -- like one turn and only for shield production or something. To change chains should be difficult -- one turn per two cities or another pretty painful (fixed) cost. Starting government chain determined by civilization.

Each government chain would be very good at something and bad at other things. Parliamentary should be very good at science and culture, but struggle with corruption, separatist nations, offensive wars, etc. Despotic are very low corruption at home but bad distance penalties early on, with good military skills -- probably the worst at the beginning and the best at the endgame, in my particular view. Communal civilizations should do well on local stuff but lack a cohesive strategy (not sure how to implement, exactly). I somehow view low equal corruption but wars of conquest very hard, localized workgroups, etc.

2. Tie corruption/happiness/food/culture together

Growth shouldn't depend exclusively on enough food to grow. People have to want to be a part of your civilization and to grow. Plus, unhappy people should grow slower.

I'd like to see unrest more obvious, a bit harder to solve, and more problematic. Once unrest begins, that city should be much more likely to revolt -- join another civ or start its own new civilization with neighboring cities. This should be something that can be seen coming, but not necessarily prevented (e.g. American "Revolutionary War" vs. American "Civil War") through strength of arms. Corruption could/would tie into this, too -- the more corrupt a place, the more likely it is to secede.....

Again, though, this must be clear and visible. Founding cities halfway across the globe too early should make them highly likely to be a problem that's easier to let go of than to solve -- at least in the short-term. Try to encourage world-spanning empires to not occur until late in the game.

3. More diplomacy options

Don't force everything into a one-size/fits-all 20 turn deal. Allow some variations in length. I have no problem with continuing to put everything in terms of present gold pieces for value, as long as it's done well. 1 gpt for 100 turns is much less valuable than 50 gpt for 2 turns, for example.

If/when a deal is broken, allow the breaker to "pay reparations" to the one who lost the deal -- some kind of interest system wherein the longer you wait, the more you have to pay. Have somebody owing reparations not be given any kind of reasonable per-turn deals.

That's all I have right now. But I like bold/creative/big leaps forward as the Civ-series grows/changes/develops.

Arathorn

Civ 4 should have
smooth zooming and camera rotation that you can control whenever you want.

Why? To completely ruin the experience? For a useless feature that adds nothing to gameplay but adds a ton of development time/cost. LOTS of games have pretty, fancy 3D engines. Some of them even deserve them. But the Civ-series has been (and should continue to be, IMO) about gameplay and thinking, not fancy gadgets.

Arathorn

No, but it's needed to go with the time. Be modern, in other case, no NEW player will buy it! BUt I don't think it has to have a camera rotation, thats useless. But it's perhaps needed if a city 'hides' behind a mountain and you can't see it! Or a other solution.

I think, a graphic like the coming 'Rome - Total War' would be totally fine and enough!

mfG mitsho

Hi fellow civers!

Yes, I am aware that there is another "official civ 4 idea" thread in action. But, it's too crowded and i really like my ideas, so i want to post them here.

Before i begin with some of my ideas, I'd like to say that i have not read all of the posts regarding civ 4 ideas.

I have tons more, but here are some that currently come to mind:

1) Immigration: Immigration is a BIG factor in civilizations. Just take a look at, say, America - if it weren't for it's large amounts of immigration, it would never be as powerful and influential as it now it. Different people coming in contribute to the innovations, etc. of civilizations and nations. If your people are happy, and you have a government that is appealing to people, other people from other civs will immigrate to you. Your population increases, theirs decreases. Of course, you can set you policies not to allow them in, and it also largely depends on the other civ. YOu get the point.

2) Introduce the media: the media plays a crucial role in our society! TeeVee, Internet, Telecommunication! Applications: I'm not too sure. FOr one, you could propagate propaganda to other civs, and maybe they will become loyal to you. Or do it to your own people, lie to them about wars, but in a democracy/republic, in wars for instance, there effects could be increased war weariness too, as a risk. I don't know. i just think it's all a big thing, and civ should implement it somehow.

3) Viruses: you have diseases from jungles and marshland, why not have viruses? like SARS. the effects: some citizens may die, others will be unhappy (or both :) ). YOu need to stop it before it spreads. maybe hospitals will do the thing. i don't know.

4) Terrorism: now, this one has to be in civ 4 somehow. YOu have barbarisms, i know, but I've never seen ancient-style barbarians with axes running around recently. have you. modern-age barbarians: terrorists. maybe they could have a different barbarian style for every different age. HOwever, the terrorists would work differently then the barbarians. For one, they don't have a physical "hut" and other things, and you start them up for different reasons...maybe even have cyber-terrorism...

5) Other leaders: you have the military leader, and they just added the scientific to conquests, why not have others, such as cultural or religious? they should all be capable or rushing wonders, but have another alternative effect.

6) i know this one sounds lame, maybe it is: environmental tourism....on second thought, maybe it's a bad idea. No, it is a bad idea.

7) civil wars!: not all civs and nations started out in the beginning. For example, America came to be when it parted from England...you can have them when they are too far, or isolated from the other cities, or your people are unhappy, something like that.

8) Protectorates: you know, like Guam or something. sometimes, you don't want to destroy a city, or run it, you get the jist. the details, i am not sure.

9) the internet and globalization: very important. it must be somehow implemented late in the modern age. how, i am not sure, but these days it a big thing.

10) satellites: i heard they have them in conquests, but, i think, only to reveal the map. they should have many other operations: for example, for a turn, they should allow you to, say, eliminate fog of war in any location on the entire map.

11) highways and superhighways: as for land transportation: first, you have roads, them railroads? does it stop there? why should it? i'm not about the details.

12) economics: there is not much of this in civ. people don't realize what an effect this has on civilizations and nation. I'd like to see concepts of tax levels, investments, business cycles, markets, (un)employment...

13): maybe, maybe, have bridges: you need some tech first, and you can only do it across ONE COAST square, and it should be more complex than a simple workers' action...

14) maybe have national parks: i dont know...

15) you should have the ability to trade units. think about real life. it is often that countries give weapons to other nations. however, there should be a tech requirement.

16) you should be able to loan money, but have interest on it.

17) maybe have the ability to transport food from city to city, i don't know, maybe it will make it too easy...

18) Oil rigs, it's an idea...

19) wind affecting movement of galleys? probably a bad idea...

20) better interface: for exam, if i wanted a certain tech, it is damn inconvenient for me to go and ask each other civ to see if they have it. instead, the advisor should tell right away...

21) the future is cool, but i always thought it's better to have a more developed present and past. but maybe just a little into the future, like cloning could increase population, or nanotechnology, which can do something else…

...

22) black market? Drugs?

23) the international space station?

24) different kinds of government. and by this, i don't mean republic, communism...but city-states, empire, and, later on, nationalism.

25) why shouldn’t you or AI be able to surrender. for example: france...

26) more city improvements: theaters, zoos(?), museums?

27) maybe when you conquer cities, you can hand them over to the UN for example. have the UN play a bigger role.

28) you have mountains, but don't you find it unrealistic that a warrior can trek grassland as easily as, say, mount Everest?! have special mountains, that only planes, helicopters, and special unites can go.

29) forest fires...

30) underground tunnels? like in japan, or the one between England and France?

31) farms...?

32) how your recourses deplete should depend on how much you use them, instead of them depleting randomly

33) resources should have other than military applications: just think today - the us, for example, uses middle eastern gas for not just military, but for us, citizens, who need to drive, heat our homes, etc...later, upon researching certain techs, you could eliminate this need (THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT AMERICA SHOULD DO!!!).

34) have power lines or something. and shouldn't power plants be outside the city? you should be able to build a plant, somehow, outside the city, and connect it with power lines. there is a chance of meltdown, and there should be a limit, maybe two per city.

35) just for prettiness, when you have multiple unites on a tile, have it so that they are all seen, but each is smaller

36) more govs, like theocracy for instance, or oligopoly, and more conquests!

37) INTRODUCE ISRAEL AS ANOTHER CIV: a must. Leader: Ben gurion, or king david/solomon. Attributes: not sure, maybe scientific and religious. UU?: maybe the macabee?



Well, that’s it, for now at least.

Thoughts?

Real market economy, private capital, social classes, burguesy, nobility, peasants, proletariat, etc.

In the current state of things everything is communal.

Okay, I've checked most all of this thread, and have not found the ideas which I have been trying to explain as of yet. This is unfortunate, and I hope to rectify this, and see other people use it! Here it goes again!

The idea I am putting forth for a new version of Civilization would be provinces. This idea would allow a means to add internal diplomacy, civil wars, a new slant on the uses of seperate governments,and a means to change corruption and balance the game, as well as simply make things simpler.

The provincial system I have thought of is not that complicated of a thought. in the real world, nations are seperated into provinces, prefectures, etc., which allow better management, and more local government. this is not really well shown in Civ 3,

The province system would seperate cities into groups of somewhere between 2/3 and 5/6. [Haven't decided on minimum and maximum numbers] the first group would be led by your capital city, and this 'province' would be the center of the nation you create. After the first three or four cities, the new cities made would seperate into a new province, which would, while under your control, interact with your capital area, and make known the area's cities needs, and wants. Each of these could have a provincial capital, which would be the fulcrum of this unit, and slightly lower corruption in the province, with no effect on other provinces, and could only be built[ not automatic] once a province has three or more cities. As more provinces are created, each one could have seperate tallies of culture and economic totals, which, while still added to your entirety, are also local to each province, so that some [like your capital] could have large amounts of culture, while smaller, newer ones may not. The balance between provinces could allow new intranational politics, as the different needs of the provinces are spoken out, and diferent provinces even possibly disagree on issues like military strength, government, scientific research, and focus of production, and so on, and cause new types of problems for the player. this system would allow for civil wars, if one high culture province a ways from your capital, for instance, feels wronged to the point of revolution, factors like the relations with other nearby provinces, strength of the central government, and relation of provinces to the capital could be the deciding factors on which provinces defect, and which stay. This would also allow new bends on international politics, as different provinces may suggest different courses of action, and the ones you take woul affect national opinion of your rule in each seperate province.

I have more thoughts on it, but please tell me what you think of this? I would like to know, alright? See you later with more!

a lot of people, such as myself, want to see israel as a new civ. that would be great! i think they had it in civ I or II, as the hebrew. sadly, i'm afraid they won't due to recent political correctness.

Here's my idea. I find it absurd that Modern Ages civs still have a bunch of spearmen and archers roaming the world. So why not force a player, upon the discovery of an upgrade tech, to either upgrade its units or disband them ?
This will reflect the cost of keeping an up-to-date army, will still allow tech-retarded civs to build military units, and bring more realistic fights without altering the combat model.

I like how Ant509y put the idea of provinces - it would incorporate several previous ideas and could really make the civil wars work.. plus if they had the animated video advisors from Civ2 back again why not incorporate a random 3D face-maker system and give each provincial leader a unique persona? (although I don't know how viable a direct pitch shift on an audio sample would do in a game or if instead there would need to be several alternate recordings of each quote) it could also work well in terms of shifting surplus food and resources - provinces could have internal trading but can disrupt it if particular leaders don't get along, and on a variation of the civ2 city-based unit support unit support could be specific to the province - so you as supreme ruler would need to mediate arguments to avoid treason during wars (examples such as if one province has low miilitary might but high culture so a militant neighbouring province might feel less inclined to support them if attacked - perhaps increasing their units' support costs when they are in the other province's territorial boundary, or another example being one province not supporting another in densive battle when asked, but needing their surplus food so if you pay the cost of the food from the royal coffers to be able to redistribute it to the needy province)

on another note regarding some people's ideas on introducing religion, methinks it could work provided you don't use 'defined' religions - as in don't use Christianity/Islam/Buddhism instead relate them to the generic techs so things like Monotheism/Polytheism

and I've done it before I'll do it again - methinks a text file with all suggestions neatly organised by topic (ok so this one'll be longer than GeneRally but I can still do it I have free time now) - provided people will start reading it before posting rather than repeating ideas

The number of units stacked on one square should be limited. The number could vary with the kind of terrain, and cities can have a differend maximum. Having twenty units or so in a city is not really realistic and should even pose problemds for the defender in stead of extra strenght.

Armoured units in cities should have their defence halved or at least lowered, because that defence-factor is based on using their armor in open battle. Compare this to the defence bonus of a pikeman against mounted units, but the other way around.

I think this one has been suggested earlier: allow units attacking or defending together to combine their strenght. Ideally a stack of difrerend units would have a bonus over a stack of identical units. This is to reflect the advantage of 'combined arms' warfare. Practically speaking, this means plotting the whole assault on any square (or hex) and then executing. Otherwise you cannot include artillery-support and a multi-sided attack. A good example is the way battles are resolved in the 'World at War' series. Maybe I am making the game to military, but the fighting would be more realistic.

Civ2 CTP-style combat. Or better, Heroes-style combat !

3D 3D 3D 3D

I like most of the suggestions submited so far, especialy on those about the Cannal and selling Units to under developed civilizations. But the one thing I'd like to see taken away in civ 4 is researching Future tech. I mean what the hell is that good for anyway??? But that doesnt mean we should replace it with some kind of future technology that we dont have here right now, because then it gets too impersonal. The good thing about Civilization is that its identifiable and personable. Do we realy want to go back to the days of Alpha-Centurai?? We know when you research Fussion you get the Bomb but when you research "Super ultra lubricant nanotechology ++4" do you realy know what the hell that means, much less what the hell it gives you.
I think with the Future Tech thing (if kept in civ 4) should be something useful. Like every time you research a future tech it adds like a point to your military's striength or economy or somthing. Or researching a Future tech could do away with one coruption point or add to your bombing acuracy. What ever it is it should remain RELEVANT to the game and the technology today. It would be nice to recearch something like Cloning but if only for increased food production or for sheep but thats all. It would be kind of dumb to have a bunch of cloned Aztec super soldiers running around hacking stuff...its bad enough we gotta deal with their Jag warriors!

thank you, Mad Danny, for your words. ^_^;

Also, your thoughts about support of units, and the means by which provinces would support-or not- each other are very much what I intended for it! The provincial system would also make communication with rival nations more interesting, and, as an interesting spin on the current 'culture flip', potentially, if a rival nation bordering your own is powerful enough, has enough culture, and has an administration that follows more closely what it desires for itself than you do, it may defect, and join to become a province of that nation.

Internal trading could open up large new areas, and, as stated before, incorporate other good ideas. But for now, I'll limit my intent with that to things like the trade of food and resources, so that, for instance, an area with a famine could be given relief by cities with large amounts of excess food stores, for trade units, however, or production aid, or some other such thing. Also, a province that is connected to some other province could control whether trade goes or not, and the provinces which control resources could have influence on the cost of exporting it, and it may not always be totally under your control, though concessions can be made to help change this. Also, provinces can do the same when it comes to trading other nations.

Changes in anything you do, to things like taxes or scientific research or luxuries could cause different areas different reactions, so if luxeries are decreased, some provinces could be upset, but others may be glad that scientific research that they need is being done, and the same with choices of tech research, seeming favortism/neglect when it comes to infrastructure, amount of military power, and government changes.

Speaking of govenrments, as I stated in my first post on this here, I said it could allow a new means for governments. Here's what I mean. I'll give examples using some existing, and some wished-for governments.

Despotism: You have absolute control, and your capital province is where all power lays. The other provinces you make have more and more corruption, and also less and less loyalty, especially since they have no power whatsoever, and no real influence. When you have provinces fully made outside of your own province, there is a good chance they may rebel if their needs are not met, as they would have little tolerence, except, only, if you use sheer force and military from your capital to contain any discontent.

City-states: Each province has a high level of internal control, almost autonomous, and your capital is, truly, only the place of congregation of a council of these states. Each province's seperate needs are their main priority, not the needs of any other province, and even if oyu declare war on an enemy, only if they are attacked will they join without reservation, and you would have to convince them [maybe through money or administrative changes, like alterations in research or tax %] to fight with you against your enemy. Same thing goes with trade, esecially if it's someone the nation believes is a threat. in fact, if their demands are not satiated or controlled, they may use their units for their own purposes, i.e., taking them off to fight a way themselves, with you losing control of their units, or something. They could easily depart the union made in this sort of city-state council, however unless things become too bad, they will not leave the union due to the fact that it benefits them too much, than being alone without this sort of union, unless you do too much to make it any longer worthwhile.

Direct Democracy: This one works for small nations, and is a forum of the populous. This means that anything that upsets too many of the citizens will not be allowed. Though there is less corruption than despotism. In fact, in city-state government, though each province is controlled by you, each one can choose it's own government, either [early on] despotism or direct democracy, or maybe theocracy.
later, please respond!!

thank you, Mad Danny, for your words. ^_^;

Also, your thoughts about support of units, and the means by which provinces would support-or not- each other are very much what I intended for it! The provincial system would also make communication with rival nations more interesting, and, as an interesting spin on the current 'culture flip', potentially, if a rival nation bordering your own is powerful enough, has enough culture, and has an administration that follows more closely what it desires for itself than you do, it may defect, and join to become a province of that nation.

Internal trading could open up large new areas, and, as stated before, incorporate other good ideas. But for now, I'll limit my intent with that to things like the trade of food and resources, so that, for instance, an area with a famine could be given relief by cities with large amounts of excess food stores, for trade units, however, or production aid, or some other such thing. Also, a province that is connected to some other province could control whether trade goes or not, and the provinces which control resources could have influence on the cost of exporting it, and it may not always be totally under your control, though concessions can be made to help change this. Also, provinces can do the same when it comes to trading other nations.

Changes in anything you do, to things like taxes or scientific research or luxuries could cause different areas different reactions, so if luxeries are decreased, some provinces could be upset, but others may be glad that scientific research that they need is being done, and the same with choices of tech research, seeming favortism/neglect when it comes to infrastructure, amount of military power, and government changes.

Speaking of govenrments, as I stated in my first post on this here, I said it could allow a new means for governments. Here's what I mean. I'll give examples using some existing, and some wished-for governments.

Despotism: You have absolute control, and your capital province is where all power lays. The other provinces you make have more and more corruption, and also less and less loyalty, especially since they have no power whatsoever, and no real influence. When you have provinces fully made outside of your own province, there is a good chance they may rebel if their needs are not met, as they would have little tolerence, except, only, if you use sheer force and military from your capital to contain any discontent.

City-states: Each province has a high level of internal control, almost autonomous, and your capital is, truly, only the place of congregation of a council of these states. Each province's seperate needs are their main priority, not the needs of any other province, and even if oyu declare war on an enemy, only if they are attacked will they join without reservation, and you would have to convince them [maybe through money or administrative changes, like alterations in research or tax %] to fight with you against your enemy. Same thing goes with trade, esecially if it's someone the nation believes is a threat. in fact, if their demands are not satiated or controlled, they may use their units for their own purposes, i.e., taking them off to fight a way themselves, with you losing control of their units, or something. They could easily depart the union made in this sort of city-state council, however unless things become too bad, they will not leave the union due to the fact that it benefits them too much, than being alone without this sort of union, unless you do too much to make it any longer worthwhile.

Direct Democracy: This one works for small nations, and is a forum of the populous. This means that anything that upsets too many of the citizens will not be allowed. Though there is less corruption than despotism. In fact, in city-state government, though each province is controlled by you, each one can choose it's own government, either [early on] despotism or direct democracy, or maybe theocracy.
later, please respond!!

There should be a limit on the number of cities affected by one luxury.

For example, maybe a single wine would only affect up to 15 cities.
If you wanted to affect more cities, you would need access to a second wine.
Want to affect more than 30 cities you would need access to a third wine, etc.

I think this makes a little more sense, without adding too much extra complication. It also gives value to keeping a second luxury of the same kind rather than trading it.

If this rule change were made, one would also have to be allowed to trade for that second or third wine.

Please note that there was nothing magic about the number 15; perhaps 10 or 20 would be better. Perhaps the number should depend on the size and type of map. The choice of cities to be affected could be in distance order from the capital or by some other simple system.

Howard Mahler

I really like the idea of provinces. It would allow for a whole bunch of new options to be opened.

As for your idea about governments, I think that there should be 3 main categories for government type, such as the following:

They would be:
Absolute----------------Representative---------------Direct Democracy

Absolute means no one will oppose your rule in Congress. Representative means each province has representation based on their size, so if you concentrate on the more populated provinces you can sway the reps. Direct Democracy is where you have an internal approval rating (viewable by pressing F11 perhaps). If you want to perform an action that would require a vote (such as war, major economic change, etc.) you must convince 51% of the population. Absolute has very little chance of rebellion as long as you have lots of troops, Direct Democracy has little chance as long as you keep the people happy, and Representative is in between.

Then, you would have three economic types. THey would be:

Laissez Faire-----(basically current day capitalism)-----Socialist

Laissez Faire would allow for greater commerce, but would suffer from unhappiness. The middle one would be normal, and Socialism would allow for increased production, decreased commerce and harder for people to become unhappy or happy (just content)

Food should be provincial.

Fortification.

When there is more than 1 unit on a tile I'd like to have an option for "specialised fortify", meaning I use a movement point to prepare my troops for defense. In real combat a general positions his troops in such a way that suits him best and gives the highest chance of surviving/winning the battle. In Civ3 the defender is chosen from the units by the computer; usually the unit with the highest chance to win the battle, no matter how long the odds are. I'd like to have the option as defender to determine who defends first and who won't defend at all. If a tank appears I'd rather have a conscript warrior defend than my elite longbow.

This might be unbalancing since the AI will also be able to easily check which unit has the highest chance of winning the battle, but it will probably not sacrifice obsolete units, but try to 'win' the battle by using the unit with the highest chance of winning. The newly introduced feature in C3C; the attacking unit decides who he/she attacks; can be a counterbalance to this 'choose your defender' principle. Of course only a few, specialised units like "commando's"/"navy seals"/"whatever" should have that ability.

And if this is too extreme, limitations are easily included. For instance a red-lined unit can't be appointed, or you can only use this in multiplayer. Or some units (like units with higher defense than offense) only have this ability.

Thank you for your reply to my province idea, Mr. Cackle. I appreciate anything at all about it, I really like the idea, and hope it becomes popular enough with those here to be added in some form! Anyway, in response to your thoughts.

I had not really thought much about your means on implementing governments, in other words, with the continuum of absolute to representative to direct democracy. However, they are good ones. My thoughts were along the lines of keeping the type of gvoernment 'system' as we still have, except by elaborating upon it using the provinces. For instance, in direct democracy, my plan was for every change of policy made, if enough citizens are discontent, each province chooses how it votes based solely on population numbers. While in despotism, the amount of unhappy people really has no true effect on rebellion or not, and though they cannot force you not to... in despotism, using that example alone, they will tell you, as I have shown before, what they request, and if enough people are unhappy, and if they become tired of your 'oppression' [VERY easy in old-style despotism] a revolution will happen. Direct democracy would have the provinces stop you if too many [say, 20%] of the people disagree with the change, or something like that. Nothing magic about 20%, though, either.

there's another small bit on the government portion. This province system could also incorporate a form of commerce system type, which makes some changes on commercial levels based upon which one is chosen. Though please elaborate more on it, Mr. Cackle, and I also hope others will begin conversing about the province idea also, and find ways to enrich it even more, since my ideas alone will not make it perfect. ^_^

Thanks, all!

I really like Ant509y idea about provinces (I was just about to submit nearly identical idea). Along with that, bring back a military unit’s city (or province) of origin. A unit fighting in its own province might get bonus.

Rift between provinces would occur when overall city improvement types differ in provinces. For example cities in one province have a higher ratio of libraries and universities per city than another province (indicating different cultural values); and also if a province is forced to produce more military units than the others.

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Bring back the Statue of Liberty wonder. It could reduce the amount of time or number of resisting citizens of a “liberated” city. It could also make one oppressed and unhappy citizen in each city content.

How about an Amusement park wonder like Coney Island or Disneyland? I would make citizens happy and bring in trade.

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I also like the idea of a Polish civ. They had an awesome cavalry. Maybe a 7.4.3 cavalry unit or 6.3.3 blitzing unit.

How about a pacific Islander civ like Samoans?

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I’d like see a history of advisors advice. I could go back and see when and who made what alliance, stated a war or a wonder, etc.

It would be nice to see some sort of graphic on a city to indicate the ratio of happy and unhappy citizens.

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I really liked the movies and histories/significance of technical achievements. Ok, so I skipped most the movies after seeing them once or twice and didn’t read all the history. I still think it’s a great idea.

Workers cannot travel outside border to try to walk to a distant city.

Rally point options.
Do not send unit to rally point if it is the only defensive unit.
If it is a settler or worker too.

Rally points by type of unit. I want my tanks here, my artillery here and my workers here.

i meant to say, the only defensive unit in the city it was built.

I like the idea of provinces. I do think it should be included in a separate package (i.e. you can still play the old fashioned way)

1. Barbarians must be more dangerous. They usually rise up during age of despotism and steal gold which does little impact. They can raze cities or capture several cities and build up a warmongering empire. (e.g. Huns)Of course they maynot build culture so they may lose their cities to other cultures.

2.Trading military units seems unrealistic for me. But an advanced civ can sell military epuipment, say muskets, to a backward civ to allow it produce a musketman.

***3.Several units should have combat bonus vs. other units. e.g. Traditional combat bonus of pikemen vs. mounted units. Also some units must fight better in different terrains. An armor in city or in jungle cannot do much but infantry may prove better.:tank: :ripper:

4.Still in modern times barbarians with warriors or galleys exist.These must be changed. Guerilla and pirates seem more challenging.

***5.I think there must be flank attacks and even attacking from backwards which will reduce defense ability of defenders. So when players advance into enemy terrýtory they should be more careful to protect their flanks and form a front. If a front is splitted into two then defeated may be enveloped from flanks and surrounded. Also to apply this principle, movement rate on railroads must be decreased. :spank:

6.I have never seen AI using intensive bombarding to reduce a well defended city to capture it. Also I wonder whether AI upgrades its units. AI must be improved to use military units.

.........
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.
Conquer a city with fish and get bonus food and trade.
........
Khan Quest that was really funny.LOL


1.A civilization may enter a golden age why not a dark age??For examle if a civ loses a certain number of battles or cities or it remains backswards for a long time it may enter a dark age, losing points for production and commerce. :sleep:

2.Under MMP, allied units may occupy same square.:beer:

How about a unique battle system. You have an option, when fighting against an enemy unit, by be the general of that unit. Then you would command that army, and if you win or lose, based of tactics like Risk, your army advances and kills or dies. After the battle, you then go back to managing the whole empire.

Originally posted by Favorius
1.A civilization may enter a golden age why not a dark age??For examle if a civ loses a certain number of battles or cities or it remains backswards for a long time it may enter a dark age, losing points for production and commerce. :sleep:

2.Under MMP, allied units may occupy same square.:beer:

That would be like addind insult to injury. It would also make it much more dificult for civs to recover, thus making the game more predictible.

But I do like your option 2. :goodjob:

Originally posted by LeroyJr


How about instead of a mass flip to you of a town they instituted immigration. If the citizens of one civilization are very unhappy they can ask to immigrate to your civilization. And vice/versa. A strong culture and economy would result in immigration from other civs. "A group of oppressed people from Boston would like to immigrate to Marsailles" You then have a choice of taking them or turning them away. If you take them Boston would drop a point in population and Marsailles would gain a point in population. Have a bad civ and watch your people leave for better ones. Have a good one and watch the people flock to you. Perhaps you could limit it to bordering countries. Refuges from your neighbors at war would flood you as war weariness and oppression set in. How about the immigrants carry their traits into your civilization. If you get immigrants from an agricultural society and put them to work on a dessert square you get the same advantage that an agricultural society would get. Have your Viking immigrants build your boats in your coastal city and gain the Seafaring trait for that unit. Build a worker unit with your American immigrants and get an industrious worker and so on. Work your propoganda into scientific civs and watch your science move up as you turn them into scientists.

Would take a lot of work but would certainly add an element to the culture flip idea.


This is a great idea!!! I was just thinking something like this would be good. In world history, I don' t know how often entire cities have "culture flipped," whereas immigration is real, and has played a major part in making some countries powerful (for example, the USA). This would add a great dimension of realism and variety to the game.

How about bringing back Civ2 zones of control?

A few more ideas popped into my head:

1) On the install menu, have the possibility to select "512 cities" or "(whatever the other cit limit should be)" Not sure if it's possible, but I think it should be an option if it is possible

2) Have all ships up until late-industrial-modern age ships have to refuel if they have been X amount of turns at sea or ocean. Refueling can be touch and go, just go into one of your port cities and then exit and you're refueled. If you have not refueled and you no longer have any turns left, each turn your ship loses 1 HP until it finally dies.

3) DEFINITELY get rid of Mech Infantry. I got rid of it and added a Half Track for Ind. Age and an APC for modern age plus a G.I. as a modern infantry type unit and I find it much more enjoyable because since when did any nation DRAFT mechanized infantry?

One more suggestion for provinces. A city must ratify an agreement to form a province. The ratification must be “built” over one turn, but has no shield cost. A rioting city or one with resistors can not join a province. A city must have culture to join a province. All cities need not ratify on the same turn.

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Civilization Characteristic Specific Techs (CCST)

CCSTs would be automatically granted to a civ whose characteristics match those of the tech. CCSTs are always dead-end techs. They may researched by other civs at somewhat of a high cost. The AI could trade them, would regard the CCSTs of there own characteristic as very valuble (for selling only). There would be one or two per age.

As an example an Industrious civ after researching Industrialization would automatically get the Assembly-line tech.

Some CCSTs may apply to two characteristics.

Here are some ideas:

Industrious
Apprenticeship city produces +1 shield
Assembly-line Factories shield output increases 10%
Work Ethic ?
Self-sufficiency ?
Tooling ?

Expansionist
Outfitting ?
Expeditionism Settlers move 2
Prospecting % to reveal strategic resource early (though not be usable)

Militaristic
Drills ?
Warrior Philosophy Settlers have defense of 1. Only one may defend so stacking has no advantage.
Athletic & Skill Contests (Olympics) ?
War Games % chance unit is fortified after final attack or move

Commercial
Speculation ?
Credit Earn some intrest earlier in the game
Insurance ?
Advertising ?
Accounting ?

Agricultural
Terracing Described in an earlier post
Preservation (salting/smoking/canning) starvation slower
Refridgeration ?
? Build on a swamp
? Ship food granary to granary

Scientific
Dewey decimal Increase libraries research
Universal Education “ “ Universities “ “
Weights & measures ?
Metric system ?
Geology Same as prospecting

Religious
Pilgrimage ?
Centralized Religion Less rivalry between provinces
Fanaticism ?

Sea Faring
Seamanship (cross training) ?
Damage Control A ship fortified anywhere repairs. Repaired one turn in any city.
? All transports can carry an addition worker

-Change the government system! There are no complete governments, but you can choose from three types and then define with a lot of regulations. The ones that are proposed above f. e. and perhaps something like this:
-centralized ---- foederalistic

foederalistic has more corruption, but happier people, for example. (and other things)

There has to be - according to government - a revolution/a voting/ or something else to change these regulations.

mfG mitsho

Thanks for the continued suggestions about provinces, really! I especially liked Khan Quest's ideas about them. They help solve the implementation problem that I was nbot sure about! So, as stated by him:

Provinces should have differing 'values' based on the types of improvements [such as, # of scientific, or religious, or trade, or agricultural impovements/wonders in that provine] and # of military units being made there [or lack thereof].

Military units would be given a new version of the old system of city support costs, only now focused on provinces. However, while their location is now set to the province, the support cost should still be paid as it currently is, since it would then represent not a 'federal' support cost, but, while doing the same thing, represent the loss of incrome from the provinces, which gives the same effect as the current system. This would help when it comes to things such as civil wars, wars between city-state governments and other nations, minor conflicts between provinces [ in which you would no longer control the units from those provinces] and, for instance, if you were in city-state government form ( I guess I really support the addition of this gov, to showcase to the fullest the nature of provinces. ^_^;) then you could not take units from their own province unless the province allows it.

The 'ratification' of a province is a great idea, Khan Quest! I very much liked that. As you said, each city would have to ratify' joining the province, and the cities would need culture to join. However, to add to this idea, you would also need a 'provincial capital' improvement to create a province in the first place. This should not be an expensive item, possibly 50-75 shields max in cost, to make it easier to be built early, and give it the effect of decreasing corruption a bit [maybe 10%] for that province alone. This would give even more incentive to built it. Once built, the provincial city would offer membership to the nearby cities, which could then build 'ratification' improvements, which would cost 0 shields [as you stated] to join this city to the province, however they would also need a road to the provincial capital to even be considered, as well as culture already within it. Also, if there are two nearby provincial capitals, both would offer membership [as both would like power] so complications would arise. I am not sure exactly how these complications could be implemented yet, nor what could be done to make ratification a non-sure thing, so I'll leave that open for someone else to make suggestions for, so that this could be refined all the more! For a well refined idea supported by many people hopefully has a better chance to be added to Civ 4 than not!

One of the thing which I have thought of. The change in government would never ever go without resistence to the change, and if you change governments you would have some who would not like it, and sometimes even civil war. Government change isnt an easy thing, and that should be shown as well. Of course, if you change from Despotism to, say, City-State, not many people would be upset, but some [say, those weak ones who depend on the strong central government to survive] might be... well, perturbed, to say the least.

Also, I am under the impression that this provincial plan would have to be made almost to the core of gameplay, as it would add a large amount of internal intrigue to the game, so I am not sure if it would be optional. If it is possible, then hey, everyone can get what they want, but since the plan is to make Civ 4 [Hopefully] greatly improved, it may not be possible to make it optional. That's just my hunch.

Well, that's all for now! Please respond to this, as always, and keep giving more ideas on it! I'd like to see this implemented in some form, so let's keep refining it! And do tell me what you think of my current refinements? Thanks, later!

You should be able to claim lands even if there's no cities around. A good way would be to do like in Colonization : if one of your units was the first to walk on that tile, then, it belongs to you.

If there's a "hole" belonging to no one inside your territory, then it automatically belongs to you. Of course, if there's a "foreign" city in that hole, nothing changes.

You should be able to plant outposts like in Call to Power : just click on the map where you want the outpost to be. The outposts could be built only on your territory of course. As it is now, It's too dangerous and costs too much turns to send your little vulnerable worker to the border of your territory simply to build an outpost...I have other ideas about how to make the development of cities more realistic. Generally speaking, the size of the city should grow not only because of food but also because of job opportunities. there's a simple way to do so... maybe when I'll have more times I'll show you how it could work very easily. Of course, depending on your government/era, people could move easily or harder to another city.

Hello friends. Hopefully not a repeat, but there just isn't time to read 400+ posts.

Anyways, I think that the way wonders are constructed should be changed. It seems a little bit silly that several countries can be one turn from completing something, say the Pyramids, and then have to change them into something else b/c another civiliation completes it first. How, exactly, would you convert 99% of the pyramids into a Great Library? Or whatever.

Anyways, what I would propose is that the any civilization that comes in second, third, fourth or whatever gets 50%, 33%, 25%, of the bonus usage of the wonder. Hand in hand with this is the idea that you cannot change construction of a wonder to another item once you have started. This would also have the effect of weakening the exploit of starting to build a wonder you never intend to complete so that you can switch over to the wonder you really want when the technology becomes available.

.02 submitted

In CIV2 I believe you lost 1/2 your shields already used toward building if you changed production category.

This could be a pain for the player, but I thought it made some sense.

As I recall the categories were city improvements, units, and wonders.
I wouldn't mind seeing this rule returned for CIV4, perhaps with the addition that each wonder could be treated as its own category.

I would not mind if there were no more great wonders, but just small wonders that every civilization could build. Pehaps the first civilization to build a small wonder would get more culture from it, either one or two more per turn.

Howard Mahler

1 - MF units already included in the game

2 - the ability to name wars. so when your watching how cities were created or captured after the game you'll see this:

1939 a.d. - World War II begins between Germany and France
1939 a.d. - Italy enters World War II against France
1939 a.d. - England enters the war against Germany and Italy
1941 a.d. - America enters World War II against Germany, Italy, and Japan

i dont know it just seems like a neat idea

3 - A liberation war. example:

Let's say Germany is conquering English cities, but you, being America, don't want German expansion. You could make a pact with England to enter the war with an intent of liberating there cities and returning them to England once the war ends. Democratic governments would do this more often and have less war weariness, while comminist and fascist nations would never take part in this. Germany would not be able to make peace with America, but not England, it would have to be a joint treaty.

4 - re-worked railroad system

5 - the ability to divide your nation up into sections (e.g. north, south, east, west, etc.)

Civ4 automate ideas
a little more automated, close up battles

Workers Autoplant Forest, Settlers Autosettle when created, Military automatically move to cities according to user defined rules.

I know we are a small country with little or no important or influential history to speak of, but id love to be able to play as Australia in the game!

Alpha Centaury-style borders. No longer that embarrasing 1 square left off one island.

turns are no longer representing years, but the duration between two years. e.g. the first turn representing the years 4000 - 3950 B.C. And at the end, the Historographie is made with some years out of them. :)
Sounds complicated? It's just a optical correcture.

mfG mitsho

Morale!!! winning battles should increase and losing decrease.

like in the 100 years war when france finally started winning and gaining support from the army.

it could increase hit points or attack points

a morale point bar in the unit screen

1) Leaders that actualy speak. Vocals should be added to communications. I would love to hear Montezuma say "Give us salt peter or be DESTROYED!"

2) More FX. There are video chess games that have a visual function civ should use. Whenever a move is made to take a piece, ie: knight vrs pawn. A video plays the actual combat round. That would be a cool function in civ 4. Although it should be optional since watching each fight would be time consuming.

3) 3rd party peace negotiations. nuff said.

4) A better military screen function. It is way too time consuming to distribute and update the garrison of each and every city. There should be a central command function. For example, If I wanted to send 2 modern armors to each city, I'd go to central command and make it so. Or, if I wanted to narrow down the garrison of each citty to 2 mech infantries, then I'd do so through central command. All extras military units would then return to the CCP. Central command post to await further orders.

5) A function in the civedit that would allow us to download our own music. And also a function that would pick specific music to play at particular times. Ages, war, peace ect.

6) Extra units not used by any civ that could be used for custom built scenarios. Why eliminate a paratrooper and rename it a mercenary used by the x civ only when there are extra units in the civedit we could access?

7) FEAR! As it stand, the AI does not know the meaning of the word. Somehow, someway it should be incorporated.

8) Alliances that are available through choice. Not locked but for a set time. Just like a MPP but with 3 or more civs.

Haven't read all the posts to date but I would llike to see some terrain modification capabilities (ie Teraforming).
The hillsides of many hills & mountains around the world have been terraced for cultivation. Deserts could be turned to grasslands, plains could be forested to prevent global warming.. islands could be joined by tunnels & bridges, coastal areas and swamps "polderized" like the Dutch lowlands..."Nether"-lands"

I would like a command to allow workers to build roads & irrigate... mines are useless in corrupt zones but farmland still has to be improved. Present hot keys "auto" activities could be improved.

Movement of units should be progressive to allow for paved roads and eg. 6 tiles rather than 3 for roads..

Hope I haven't repeated former posts...

Strategic resource ownership
Put a significance on the number of resources owned by a civ. There should be a difference between one and ten coal mines/resources, same with others. You can sell one resource to more than one civ, like it is done by oil producing countries. There should be much less significance put on resources as an indispensible item, more as a tool to greatness, so if you have no iron and coal, you can still build railroads, but very slowly.


Building requirements
You should have to build more basic buildings as the city grows. For example, name a million city with one temple, one marketplace and one library. Say each temple can make 3 citizens happy, each cathedral 8 citizens, same logic for other improvements. So in a city of size six with one temple three citizens would not reap the benefits of the temple. Naturally, these improvements would per force be cheaper to build. This could be managed by the computer, by recommending the building of another temple.


Corruption distribution
Corruption is based on city size not distance from the capital. Each additional citizen is 'more corrupt' thereby reducing the effect of large cities. Overall, corruption should not be catastrophic on distant towns. Up to size three, there should be no corruption in any city even in despotism (though shield and food penalties would still apply)


Information presentation
Information should be more readily available from the middle/industrial ages onwards and should be presented in an easily digestable form. On one (probably large screen), detail the tech, military (whatever is known) city etc stati of all known civs for easy comparison and diplomacy.


Harbour functionality
Ability to ship units from harbour to harbour or harbour to/from random map location. The number of turns would be dependant on distance and quality of shipping available. It could even be possible to be able to build a ferry unit that only requires upkeep when used that would fulfil the role. This could be ideal if a worker needed to work on a piece of land that is only reachable by ship (or air) and keeping a transport for that purpose would be dumb.


Multiple terrain improvements
Each terrain could be improved on several times, e.g. first build mines, then light industry, then heavy industry etc. Similar with irrigation.


Cultural borders
The ability to expand national borders by having unit in a square outside the current borders. While we are on about culture, it should have less effect on the game e.g. borders, top five cities should be based on stuff other than culture, like military, wealth etc.

IMHO all the above are relatively easily implemented and the AI should not be a problem. These would not affect gameplay too much, but would make it more enjoyable.


Aversion to all out war
As the industrial age is nearing the end, nations would be against running all over other nations and conquering them (most nations). More modern wars should have an emphasis on control rather than land gain.

This idea sounds fairly complex though would make the game more balanced. This could be implemented by having ridiculous levels of resistance in conquered cities, not gaining 'direct control' of a city straight away (not sure how) and only occupying the city so that when I give it back, I can boss the other civ around, i.e. it would be a given that most cities would be given back at peace time for significant gains.

That's all for the mo' what d'yall think?

Greg

Greg:
Well expressed.

I used to be a builder.. temples, churches, libraries etc..

Civ 3 rewards agression and treachery with a high score... Getting a cultural victory occurs with a low point count; low cultural production allow a much higher score for those of us who like to get into the HOF... by the end of the game I have only a few research centres but no temples, churches, nor coloseums.
Even factories are not important except in a few places.

I would like to see that a peaceful, well planned empire can get as high a score as achievable by the Ghengis and Sadam types.

Ok, here are some of my ideas. Some of them have already been mentioned, and I've worked upon them.

Immigration

If you build certain Wonders like the Pyramids or the Sistine Chapel, if you have lots of culture, if you have a better government, are richer, etc. then, along with city flipping(immigration would be a mild version of city flipping), you could attract immigrants in the form of labourers in your cities. This could happen when a foreign city near your borders gains a population point, and then you would gain a population point as well.

Another idea, we could reintroduce(IIRC its been in a previous civ game) the Statue of Liberty wonder that would attract more immigrants from bordering civs(you know, that 'bring me your huddled masses' stuff fits perfectly).

For example, you're America and you have a border with the Babylonians. If you have a greater cultural value than Babylon, or if you could build the Statue of Liberty wonder, then when one of Babylon's border cities, let's say Lagash, gains a population point, then the nearest city or maybe your capital gains a population point as well. This commensalistic relationship then profits your cities while not harming Lagash, or Babylon as a whole. Or maybe, they just come directly from their cities, and they lose population points, while you gain.

Also, there are refugees that could come seeking refuge in your nation in times of war. You could limit the amount of people coming in and they could either go back when the war is over, or they could choose to stay.


Tourism

Although tourism is already implemented in the game, I'd like to see it develop more.

You have some really old Great Wonders, and they become famous world-wide. People, or tourists, come to see them and this generates income for treasury.

There could be a new city improvement, like a Tourist Department or Hotels or Customs Office or something of the sort, that would allow tourists from other civs to come into the cities which have the great wonders. Like, you know the population roster in your city screen? Well, there could also be a 'Tourist Roster' that could tell you what nationalities the tourists are and how many tourists there are. Or instead of that, there could be a tourist advisor and the tourist advisor screen could be modelled in a fashion like the domestic advisor's, so that there would be the list of cities that have the tourist improvement and the nationalities and amount of tourists in each city. There would also be certain amounts of gold from each tourist or groups of tourists, depending on the situation of the tourist's civ. And this gold would come from the tourists themselves and not the civ's own treasury. Just imagine having a continuous drain on your treasury just because your people want to go see the Pyramids in Trondheim!

Let's use the city of Boston for example.

So you go to Boston's display screen, or you look for Boston in the tourist advisor screen and you would be able to see the tourist icons with the appropriate colours of the tourists' nationalities.

Perhaps you see a group of French tourists, and let's say that France has tons and tons of gold. That would mean that the French tourists would have a lot of gold to spend, and therefore we profit from the large amounts of gold that the tourists would spend, (let's say that the max amount of gold a tourist can spend is 25(?)gold per turn and the min in 1) which would be about 15-25 gold per turn. Then you see some English tourists, and England is relatively poor. The English tourists would then spend about 1-5 goldgold per turn because of their civ's financial situation. You would then get a small stream of gold from tourism, each group of tourists from different civs giving different amounts of gold each turn. Of course, the amount of gold per turn for each group of tourists would keep changing and some civs won't even have any tourists to your nation.

Of course, there would also be negative aspects to tourism. There would be the terrorist that would be disguised as a tourist. And when the terrorist attacks, the suspects would be any civs that have tourists in your nation at the time. Almost like a spy if you will. This could then become a spy mission, and you could do this yourself. There would then be an option to refuse entrance to tourists of certain untrustworthy civs that are 'cautious', 'annoyed', or 'furious' towards you. If you yourself choose to do this, then there is of course a chance that you could be caught, and gain a black mark on your reputation. And of course, like other spy missions, this would cost gold.

For example, you just had a big trade disagreement with India and Gandhi went from 'gracious' to 'furious'. Well, you see a decline in Indian tourists, but a few turns later, a bomb explodes the library in Washington. You're on friendly terms with everyone that has tourists except for India. Guess the nationality of the terrorist. You got it, Indian. So, it leaves a black mark on Gandhi's reputation when this is revealed.

But if it turns out that you're not sure if Gandhi actually did it, and you have no actual proof that Gandhi did it(or he actually didn't do it), he doesn't get any black marks, and Washington is left being deprived of it's library.

Terrorists could also be able to somehow damage wonders, either by negating their effect for a certain amount of turns or something like that.


UN meetings

Somehow, we could include meetings with the whole UN thing. When the UN is built, sessions could be held for solving problems, like 'China and Japan are at war. Should we stop them?' or 'The new World Bank needs funding for poorer nations for the next 25 years. How much gold/turn should each rich nation deposit?' etc. Then there would be a whole list of options about how to solve the problem. Kinda like the United Planets in Galactic Civilizations, for those of you who've played it before. Then the voting could happen at longer intervals, so there are more meetings before someone gets to win the election.


Original minor tribes

In real life, nations like Canada, the US, and Brazil have many original inhabitants, or native peoples, which live on the land, but don't exactly completely control it. Why not put this in Civ? When you first inhabit an area, there are minor tribes which live there. You control the land, but they still live on it. They are like small towns which just are there and they can occasionally produce workers or population points for nearby cities. As long as you set aside small plots of land for their own use(about 4-9 tiles which will be left undeveloped, like reserves if you will), they are happy. If you treat them badly, then your reputation is marked.


Introduction of resources

In the beginning, certain resources, mainly plant and animal, are only found on certain continents/islands/whatever, and not on others. A real life example would be the introductions of horses to the Americas(I think). When the Europeans brought horses to the Americas, they became adapted to the environment and populated the land. The way these resources could be introduced are by trade, or when you colonize on another continent/island/whatever which doesn't have the resource. The resource would then start to spread and pop up all around the place.


Ok now I have some editor ideas

Culture groups

The only culture groups available are Asian, American, European, Mediterranean, and Mid Eastern. We should be able to make new culture groups, like African, or Mesopotamian. The ability to make new culture groups could also allow us to make different graphics for different civs, if we wished to. For example, we could make different temples for the Zulu, Arabs, and Babylonians, who would otherwise have the same graphics under Mid Eastern. We could assign each a different culture group(African, Mideastern, and Mesopotamian) and have more flavour in the game.


Map Making/Modding

Some small things that could be useful:

- A move selection option (don't you just hate it when you place something really big on the map that you don't want to change, like a whole land mass with positioned resources, only to find out that it needs to be moved more to where ever?)

- A cut and paste option (for when you want to transfer a part of one map to another)

- Delete all of _____ resources and delete all of _____ resources in selected area

- More colours to pick from for the different civs (there are enough selections to pick from so that each civ has a different colour, but some look so much the same)

How about more than one UU for each civ?(See the list in my thread for examples)

I'd follow in the tradition of Alpha Centauri, and add Economic systems to diversifify things abit more, that way, you'd could have Traditional Theocracies, Capitalistic Democracies or Socialist Tyrannys

I'd also give the Civ leaders more personality, and make them act more like real-world leaders would. I'd make the leaders of countries like the US unfriendly or even hostile toward countries with a Tyranny as their government, and the same would be true of other Civs like Spain(Absolute Monarchies guard there power zealiously, and would be hostile towards a country which switched to Democracy). That way, government and economic choices have a much greater impact on the game at large.

And I think the premese of a future Age is interesting.

I loved Alpha Centuari as a game, so Im alittle bias, and I remember alittle game that came out a few years back called Empire Earth, which, besides the riducliously large amounts of resources(Its a Real Time Strategy Game) which you had to send your workers off to collect to build anything, featured every Age from Prehistoric Times(Think goofy Caveman warfare) all the way past Modern Times into the Sci-Fi Digital and Nano Ages.

Some of you way disagree, but I find the idea of seeing where our world will head in the distant future fascinating to say the least.

If it appeared in Civilization, the Future Age would begin after a majority the Modern Age's techs were researched. This would replace the "Future Techs" you can get for extra points toward your final score, and would extend the game from 2050 to 3000 AD.

As for practical things that could be added:

Underwater Cities: Yes(Puts those useless Ocean Squares to good use, and are only capturable by Submarines

Space Colonies: No, I think that this would make things alittle to complicated, but I'm not vehemately against it.

An Antartican civilization: Due to Future Man's ability to control the weather, or to build structures able to withstand incredible extremes in temperature and house a large population, Antartica finally gets settled. This greatly helps overpopulated countries like China and India, as much of their people leave to start new lives in this newly accessable land. Within a century, Antartica is large enough, and civilized enough, to be recognized as a nation, however, with the current treaties in place marking Antartica as international territory, the people of Antartica must first prove themselves against a few countries that wish for Antartica to remain as it was in a war.

Future Units like Laser Tanks, Laser Infantry, and Laser Armed-Naval units would appear, along with Humanoid Armors or Mechs as they are popularly called.

Mechs would probably upgrade from tanks on a side note

This new Age would be availible for people who like their Civilization games long and drawn out. I would include the option for the player to set his or her final age in that light

bring some more randomness into the game:

add dark ages (according to golden ages, the corruption rises)
volcanoes, diseases, starving populations (as a sort of disease), natur catastophics
some civs will start later into the game (e.g. when 3 players entered the middle ages or other 'random not predictable' events)
global warming has a higher impact (like it was set in CTP)
...

give every civilization more than one leader! traits will change with leaders. Best number per civ would be 3, but this can change. The example of France:

leader one: Charlemagne (Carl the Great?): traits are feudalistic and religous. (feudalistic: provinces work better)
leader two: Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc?) [we need some women): traits are populistic and industrial. (populistic makes two content citizens happy and one unhappy content per city)
leader three: Louis XIV: traits are religous and commercial
leader four: Napoleon: traits are industrial and social. (social lowers the criminalicy rate.



And of course, if you read that above, criminality should be inclueded in some way. the bigger the city, the higher the criminalicy.

mfG mitsho

all unist sholed be able to retreat, faster units with a greater chance to acaly retreat.

spears shold not beat tanks!

Originally posted by Manverulin
Original minor tribes

In real life, nations like Canada, the US, and Brazil have many original inhabitants, or native peoples, which live on the land, but don't exactly completely control it. Why not put this in Civ? When you first inhabit an area, there are minor tribes which live there. You control the land, but they still live on it. They are like small towns which just are there and they can occasionally produce workers or population points for nearby cities. As long as you set aside small plots of land for their own use(about 4-9 tiles which will be left undeveloped, like reserves if you will), they are happy. If you treat them badly, then your reputation is marked.
[/B]
I like this idea of original minor tribes. This could be used to improve the barbarian concept.

For example, it is 4000 BC and you build your first city. several turns later you discover that there are 5 Magyar encampments near your city. They are mostly peacefull; but occasionally one of their warriors will sneak in and attempt to capture a worker or destroy improvements. So you must be vigilant. You could send troops to destroy their encampments; but unlike present barbarians, they would just move a little further away and rebuild. You decide to leave them alone. You can after all trade with them for furs, game, bead work, etc.

A turn or two later, as you build your third city, you discover that you have built on their sacred burial grounds. The Magyar attack. After several turns of war you push them far enough west that they are no longer a threat; except for harrasing you border out posts. You decide to make peace and set aside an area as a reservation.

If in the future you maintain good relations with them, they will eventually become good citizens of your Civ. If not they will be a continuing headache. As time passes the magyars will perhaps meet and interact with other Civs just as they do with yours. They will trade technology and make treaties. Perhaps even making an alliance with a major Civ against you as certain North American tribes did with the French against the British Colonies (French & Indian wars). Contact with your Civ or others would allow the barbarian tribes to upgrade their weapons technology; especially if freindly Civs could supply them with arms. There are other possibilities: native uprisings or raids into other Major Civs territory causing diplomacy problems; for example.

The whole point to my story is that by making the barbarian tribes into mini-Civs they are able to grow and interact with your Civilization. They become people not just cannon fodder for your units to gain combat experience.

Originally posted by Ozymandius
Greg:
Well expressed.

I used to be a builder.. temples, churches, libraries etc..

Civ 3 rewards agression and treachery with a high score... Getting a cultural victory occurs with a low point count; low cultural production allow a much higher score for those of us who like to get into the HOF... by the end of the game I have only a few research centres but no temples, churches, nor coloseums.
Even factories are not important except in a few places.

I would like to see that a peaceful, well planned empire can get as high a score as achievable by the Ghengis and Sadam types.

Thanks Ozymandius, that was my first post in over a year (gasp!) so I didn't think I'd remember all. Anyway for my latest brainstorm:

Attack delay
When a military unit attacks a foreign city, it has to be in the foreign land at the start of the turn to be able to attack. This is more of a balancing act, to stop human players placing 20 cavalry two squares outside the enemy city still on home turf, declaring war then running over anything and everything in one turn.
This potential 'rule' could make the 'human AI' :) more complex than the real AI as each attack would have to be co-ordinated with armies to be comitted to foreign lands early.

My 2cents...

Here's an idea for a form of economic imperialism of the type the United States has been accused of:
The ability to recieve resources you already own in trades. The purpose? Let's say you already have rubber, but you buy rubber from the Zulus just so they can't trade it with anybody else. An expensive, but underhand strategy that can deny your rivals resources.
On the subject of economic imperialsim, how about a wonder that lets you play Swiss Banker? Other civs could "invest" money with you that earns interest. Half the interest would go to them, and half to you! This would really help in the creation of a financial/diplomatic empire! For example, here's the formula:
1) You build the wonder
2) Shaka contacts you and "invests" 1000 gold in your bank
3) The interest is 50 gold per turn.
4) Shaka gets 25 gold per turn, and you get 25 gpt from the interest ( plus you keep the 1000 gold he "invested").
5) Dosen't sound too complicated, does it?

Like many others, I would like to see more diverse diplomacy options. The ability to mediate peace. Like, you could get both of the other civs in the diplomacy screen at once and say "Hey Aztecs, if you end the war, I'll give you Iron and 1000 gold, and Egypt, if you agree to this, I'll give you 2000 gold and Invention. how about it you two?"

I dunno, maybe that wouldn't work, but some other, ANY other way to mediate peace between two other civs would be fun.

Higher degrees of peace treaties. You could have your basic 20 turn peace like we have now, but you could also have the option make a 50 or more turn UNBREAKABLE peace treaty, which would also include MPP and ROP. Something akin to what the US and the UK currently have in real life.

Along those lines, do something about AI attitude. It is very very easy to make enemies, and very hard to make friends. I'd like to see the option to make friends, real friends, not just "we will refrain from killing each other for 20 turns" friends.

Stack Bombard = yes please.

Also, like how you can zoom to cities in disorder, I'd like to be able to cycle through cities producing Wealth.

I have another idea: How about terrain that changes over time? I mean, we alrady have terrain changing due to pollution, but we should have stuff like shrinking lakes, and changing elevations.

Here are some examples:
-Terrain change due to pollution (already in the game)
-Shrinking lakes due to either global warming or some other reason (real like example could be the Aral Sea)
-Rising and decending sea levels due to pollution/global warming/whatever
-Rising and decending land elevations due to tectonics, like hills to mountains, vice versa and some other stuff (of course in real life, stuff like this isn't really noticeable, but hey, it's Civ)
-Jungles, forests, and marshes 'grow' (so like if there is a group off the stuff around, or you replant it, it can slowly expand, like in real like, where animals, people and wind spread the seeds around, then it slowly grows)
-Other stuff that the Firaxians can easily come up with :)

first of all I would like to see following civs: ISRAEL!, Poland, Yugoslavia, Scotland, Ireland, Vietnam, Assyrian,Ukrainian.
second is city improvments: tv, pc.
Third: Wonders: Internet, Hollywood, Olympic games, All religions city.
moreover, i think that military leaders can be born out of sea battles as well, and escadra - an army of ships is a good idea as well!
another thing is it makes sense that if say I play Romans , after conqering at list one of the persian cities I wiil be able to produce Immortals in that same city! it's only logical! how else Alexander gained Elephants?
Carthagen'S U-unit can not be Nubians! first, because they were horseman! not pikeman! second they betrayed the the Hannibal during the last battle & Carthagen was destroyed! i suggest Elephant archers + fire trirems + super catapults wich made carthagen famous!
thats all for now, maybe later I"ll come up with something else!

another thing is: I think that armies of marines should not lose it's ability to do marine assault!
moreover, i think that scouts, their upgrades, privatires are too damn week! why the scout has 0 defence? the privateeres were the horror of the seas!
also another civ to consider: Goth! with their Huskarls! what do you think?

The taking of an enemy capitol city should have more effect.

In CIV3 taking a capitol has no more effect on average than taking an otherwise similar city that is not the capitol.
I think in CIV2 the effect of taking a capitol was a little too much, but closer to reasonable than CIV3.

Howard Mahler

Currently when a city is conquered no accumulated culture is destroyed.

Historically, wars and the conquest of cities were one way that cultural achievements were destroyed. After a particularly devasting war not only could structures such as temples or libraries be destoyed, but the cultural memory could also be destroyed.

Perhaps some portion (perhaps 1/4 or 1/3) of the accumulated culture of a city should be eliminated when it is conquered. A larger portion would be destroyed when a city is razed.

On the other hand, in CIV3 it is kind of strange that whenever a city is conquered the library is destroyed. It would make more sense for the library to sometimes survive just as do marketplaces.

How would the culture then work for captured libraries? They could lose any millenium bonuses. Either they would stop producing culture for anyone, or perhaps they would continue to produce culture for their builder until assimilated over time; when the owner of the city has a majority of the citizens in the city, the culture from the library begins to flow to him rather than the builder of the library.

I would assume other nonreligious structures would be treated as libraries.
Temples and Cathedrals might have to be treated differently, but might be treated the same as libraries. Historically, conquered religious structures were often rededicated to the religion of the conquerer.

Howard Mahler

When starvation would currently lead to the death of a citizen of a civilization (still in the game) other than the current owner of that city, there should be a chance (perhaps 1/2) that instead of dying the citizen will instead leave its current city and emigrate to a city owned by its civilization. (If the civilization is not in the game, the emigration could be to another civilization picked at random.)

When such a citizen either dies or emigrates it should make the other civilization feel less friendly towards the owner of the city (by perhaps one point per citizen.)

Howard Mahler

There should be certain improvements that represent each industry that you can build and thus trade finished goods for. Different goods would have different qualities. For example if you have 4 textile mills, then you get 4 "textiles" every so many turns to trade or use as a luxury in your cities. To keep a balance, after so many turns (5 maybe) one textile would be exhausted and you would have to make more. Another example would be a gun factory. Each gun factory makes 1 pile of guns every X turns. 1 pile of guns can arm X units. So, if you want to arm 20 infantry and each pile arms 4 infantry, you would need 5 gun factories. There would be tons of different industries for each age, for example in the Ancient Age you could have pot-makers, or swordsmiths, or cloth dyers/makers (as in the case of the Phoenicians). You get the picture!

Then, however many industries you have would determine your employment rate. In addition, if you trade your finished goods a lot then your industry gains in economic power. Having powerful industry would mean more income for the civ, and if you had, say, a super powerful steel industry and you were trading a lot of your steel to another civ. then eventually you could start to invest in foreign industries and ultimately control them. This way, you would have economic power over another civ, plus get money. Of course, this would have downsides because if it got out of hand civilizations could react violently to this investment (nationalist movements and the like) and then you run the risk of having your investments destroyed. Certain governments would be more or less able to invest/be invested in.

To simplify things, you could contact some equivalent to the governor which would automatically import/export your needed/excess goods to whomever had an excess/needed goods. However, if you really wanted to pull off some devilish economic imperialistic scheme or needed to up the anty for weapons then you could manually change things around.

Combat:
1) If repetition is a good thing, I think I'll say this as much as I can, we NEED combat bonuses v. certain units. It just makes everything more realistic (since when is a machine gunner as powerful against infantry as he is against a tank?)

2) The side at which you attack an enemy should be important. This gives mobile units such as cavalry, tanks, and paratroopers a great advantage because they can attack from behind. Also, fortified units should not be penalized if they are attacked on a flank.

Diplomacy:
1) A greater element of fear and friendship should be implemented. I have never had a civ give into my demands even if I am 20x as powerful as them! Also, I think it would be interesting if nations were able to make joint planning in the case of wars like I attack Trondheim whilst you go for Reykjavik and such.

What about talking leaderheads with actors instead of animations (which off course can be turned off)

City View should be deleted to save work (it has been redundant since Civ1)

I also think the Civs should be even more different than in CIv3.
They should build different stuff and units - more like for example Age of Mythology or Settlers IV. I think still all civs are too similar.

Making the civs more different than they already are would make it very difficult to maintain game balance.

It might make for a more realistic and interesting simulation, but would probably make for an inferior competitive game.

Howard Mahler


[i]

I also think the Civs should be even more different than in CIv3.
They should build different stuff and units - more like for example Age of Mythology or Settlers IV. I think still all civs are too similar. [/B]

The basis of the Civilization series is the relationship between successful cultures and history... social darwinism... some civs have the seeds of their own destruction in their makeup... others bear the seeds of greatness.

There must be some basis in historical reality

WHAT IF... I had been Caesar and had slept in on the morn of the Ides of March..
Cortes had been beaten by the Aztecs?

Civ guys have done a wonderful job so far... IMO there is no need to stray too far from their franchise.

Originally posted by Howard Mahler
Making the civs more different than they already are would make it very difficult to maintain game balance.


Greater variation in the civs is a good idea, even if some of the variation is simply flavour type units eg different names and graphics for a spearman, that otherwise has the same essential characteristics. Certainly with Civ 4 not expected until 2006, there is plenty of time to ensure game balance. This would add a lot of interest and replayability to the game.

Optional MPP
You don't have to declare war but you take a rep. hit so you don't get dragged into stupid wars. The rep. hit should be heavy like no one will sign Diplomatic agreements for a while. However the AI should also have this option also.

A lot of my cities are pretty much like any other, except for the occasional wonder. How about a way of making cities unique? Cities could build specialized city improvements (SCI), which are dependant upon nearby resources. SCIs should be cheap enough and offer enough benefit to be built, but not enough to unbalance the game.

As an example, a city with horses within its radius could build stables. With stables, all horse units (horsemen, knights, calvary, etc) could be built at a discount. Maybe 3/4 the original cost. Cities on another continent may have to pay 1 1/4 the cost because horses must be imported.

There should be no upkeep cost for an SCI. The tile with the resource must be worked by a citizen in the city for the benefit. (Thus only one of two cities with a shared resource tile could benefit at a time). They could make one unhappy citizen content as they are gainfully employed.

Strategic – Units built are ¼ cheaper. Those with two requirements and two SCIs are 1/3 cheaper (calvary’s horses and saltpeter)
Horses - Stables as described above
Iron - Smelting plant.
Saltpeter - Alchemist shop.
Rubber - processing plant
Oil - refinery
Aluminum - ?
Coal - Quarry
Uranium - Centrifuge

Maybe a coal quarry could offer some other benefit, as ironclads are the only unit requiring coal.

Luxury – One extra shield of production and/or trade and/or food, depending upon the type’s bonuses, unaffected by corruption.
Incense - Kiln
Silks - Textile mill
Furs - Furrier
Wines - Winery
Spices - Spice mill
Gems - Lapidary
Dyes - Processing plant
(Did I miss one)

Bonus resources – One extra shield or trade or food, depending upon the type’s bonuses, unaffected by corruption.
Gold - Gold refinery
Wheat - Flour mill
Cattle - Dairy
Whales - Whale processing plant
Fish - Fishery
Game - ?
Tobacco - ?
(DidI miss any here?)

For the coal quarry it should increase production by 25 or maybe 50%
Aluminum could produce a hanger witch makes planes cheaper I also think aluminum should appear with flight and all planes need it for game a hunters lodge for game would be good choices for these one Khan quest

also 3 mov units should be able to retreat against 2 move units like Riders retreat from Knights

This sounds like a promising idea, since it is based on a single resource, luxury, etc.

While we are at it, get rid of the small wonder the Iron Works.
It is very rare (on a huge map) that one has both iron and coal within the hexes of a single city, making the Iron Works so rare a possibility so as to add very little to the game. I would guess Iron Works is a possibility in maybe 10% of the games that I play.

Howard Mahler

Agree on that iron works... I've had the opportunity to build it only twice in two years... a couple of times the resources were in a location were corruption was too high to build it... The concept would be great if the resources were in your own territory...

The game does not recognize the improvements in efficiency of transport...
with only roads connecting your resource there should be a re