I was responding in another thread about the hated "trade reputation bug", and it got me thinking of a potential easy solution that ought to be considered in Civ4: the credit report.

You as an individual or as a business have a credit report. This credit report contains valuable information about your ability and past history of paying off debts. Negative credit information, such as bankrupticies, greatly reduce (if not eliminate) your ability to get additional credit. After 7-10 years, the negative credit information is required by law to fall off your credit history. Why not institute a similiar scheme within Civilization? Since it takes 7-10 years for a negative credit item to fall off one's own individual or business credit report, the game designers could institute a similiar schedule in Civ 4 based on the number of turns since the negative event. For example, if we utilitize the 7-10 year period used in the U.S. as it corresponds to human interaction and consider the fact that most humans live for 80 years in the U.S., then we get about 6 to 8 periods in a lifespan (excluding ages 0-18 when a human is a minor and can not get credit) where an individual could have entirely new credit information. If we incorporate that idea into the game, it would mean that roughly ever 50-75 turns, negative credit information would pass off your "credit report" and would not be considered by potential trading partners.

Does it currently stay forever? Ick. Also, are all rep hits equal? Using ROP to attack an ally and razing a town, do they affect your rep in equal ways and to an equal degree?

Parliament, with parties and voting, much like Galactic Civilizations. If your party is in power, you get some kind of bonus.

Originally posted by Dr. Broom
Religion would be a good addition...jews may hate muslims or something like that.

What the ****?!

Where did you get the idea that "Jews" hate Muslims? I'm a little offended by this, and for one would like an explination.

Yeah.

Some people aren't very bright...

Originally posted by Dr. Broom
Religion would be a good addition Christians might be nicer toward each other than toward heathens and jews while jews may hate muslims or something like that. Basically culture groups need to be much more defined in whatever way possible.


Not to focus on the negative of your post Dr. Broom, as you did have some good ideas in there. But, focusing on the negative ;), Jews don't hate Muslims. Christians don't hate Jews.

Be careful not to stretch exceptions and turn them into the general rule. Some Muslims hate both Christians and Jews, but these people don't speak for all muslims. Rather, they are considered radical elements within the Muslim faith, you're bin Ladens if you will. Nevertheless, there will always be some people within every faith, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Insert faith here, that will hate another faith. For example, there will always be some Chrsitians who hate Jews, some Jews that hate Muslims, and Muslims that just hate everyone. Why? I think of it as the collective human nature. But, they are by all means a minority, and I know that my fellow Jewish friends don't hate anyone, nor have they ever, nor have any of my christian friends hated anyone. Furthermore, I don't have any Muslim friends that hate anyone either. My point? The exception becoming the general rule. You can thank the distortion of mass media for that.

In The West Wing, there was a fairly good comparison done:

The people in the Arab world that hate all Jews and all Christians, are the same people in the West that hate all Arabs and all Jews: one example being the KKK. Just like identifying all western people with the KKK makes no sence, identifying all Arab people with Al Qaeda makes no sence.

arretium,
Every religion/country/culture has its rednecks.

wlievens,
I wish CJ's boss were really president . . .

It'd be cool :-)

Not sure if anyone else had ideas like this (I didn't read the 51 pages), but here goes:

1. Civil Wars - If you have civil disorder in a city more than twice in the same Era, each additional turn of civil disorder there is a 50% chance that your civ will be devided in half with war declared instantly. You can only have one civil war for each Era.

2. More Techs - The tech tree is just too short. I hate seeing tanks in 1650, it's just too weird. The conquests from C3C have very good ideas for new techs. Ideally the Ancient ages should end at around 400AD, Middle Ages should end around 1700, and modern times should start around 1950.

3. Civ Names - Should change by Era. This could be elaborated, for example once England reached the Industrial Era it could choose to become either America or the United Kingdom.

4. Expanding - Is quite flawed. Don't you hate playing on some maps (especially the Earth maps) and seeing some multicolored patch where all the civs have tiny cities all intermixed. You should only be able to build a new city like 5 tiles away from your border.
If you expand overseas your first city would have to be on the coast.

5. Improved Graphics - This is a given and I'm sure it will already be included but I think a large jump needs to be made here. Should go to a 3D rendered/polygonal type of thing, but it doesn't have to be complete 3D, and probably still tile-based. Another thing that would be cool is during battles, the camera could zoom into the tile, and you would actually see the full armies fighting. For example, lets say its between 2 swordsmen, these swordsmen actually represent like a division of swordsmen. The game would then show a scence of a battle between 2 armies of swordsmen, on whatever terrain.

6. Military - There needs to be a change here. Especially with cavalry and knights. These units werent the main units in those times. There should be a defensive and an offensive Gunpowder infantry unit. Like Musketmen and Fusilier or something.

Hm. Here's my take:

1. Civil Wars - If you have civil disorder in a city more than twice in the same Era, each additional turn of civil disorder there is a 50% chance that your civ will be devided in half with war declared instantly. You can only have one civil war for each Era.
One city causing a massive civil war seems a little harsh. You'd wind up with a civil war just about any time you captured an enemy city. If half of your cities were in disorder, though, this could be reasonable.

2. More Techs - The tech tree is just too short. I hate seeing tanks in 1650, it's just too weird. The conquests from C3C have very good ideas for new techs. Ideally the Ancient ages should end at around 400AD, Middle Ages should end around 1700, and modern times should start around 1950.
You have a point. Civ 2 had a much richer tech tree with many more options. It would be nice to see some more substance in Civ IV.

3. Civ Names - Should change by Era. This could be elaborated, for example once England reached the Industrial Era it could choose to become either America or the United Kingdom.
Maybe. It just might not be worth it, though, to be bothered about it.

4. Expanding - Is quite flawed. Don't you hate playing on some maps (especially the Earth maps) and seeing some multicolored patch where all the civs have tiny cities all intermixed. You should only be able to build a new city like 5 tiles away from your border.
If you expand overseas your first city would have to be on the coast.
Might be too much of a hamper on colonization. The biggest problem with expansion is, in my opinion, the existance of massive empires in 1500 BC. Settling new land should not begin in earnest until later into the Ancient Era.

5. Improved Graphics - This is a given and I'm sure it will already be included but I think a large jump needs to be made here. Should go to a 3D rendered/polygonal type of thing, but it doesn't have to be complete 3D, and probably still tile-based. Another thing that would be cool is during battles, the camera could zoom into the tile, and you would actually see the full armies fighting. For example, lets say its between 2 swordsmen, these swordsmen actually represent like a division of swordsmen. The game would then show a scence of a battle between 2 armies of swordsmen, on whatever terrain.
Good LORD no. Considering Civ 3's already massive appetite for memory, 3D graphics would make the game unplayable. Besides, since units are confined to a square tile-based world, they only need to be animated in eight directions. Civ isn't an RTS; 3D graphics would just be a waste on resources. As for movies, I care more about getting Wonder Movies back first. Battle animations can come later.

6. Military - There needs to be a change here. Especially with cavalry and knights. These units werent the main units in those times. There should be a defensive and an offensive Gunpowder infantry unit. Like Musketmen and Fusilier or something.
Civ 3 has three basic unit types: infantry (defense), cavalry (attack), and artillery (bombard). In Civ 2, I could combine armies of phalanxes with legions and crusaders, or have alpine troops accompany artillery, armor, and marines, and I could get unique contributions out of each unit type. The Civ 3 unit tree certainly could use some filling out.

Originally posted by FrenchElvisl
Not sure if anyone else had ideas like this (I didn't read the 51 pages), but here goes:

1. Civil Wars - If you have civil disorder in a city more than twice in the same Era, each additional turn of civil disorder there is a 50% chance that your civ will be devided in half with war declared instantly. You can only have one civil war for each Era.

Civil Wars, yes, but dividing your whole civ in half just cause one city goes into disorder too much? No way! It'd be better if only cities that were in disorder would revolt. Perhaps having nearby cities revolting would decrease happiness in your other cities, so rebellions would nowball out of control if you don't take care of them right away.

2. More Techs - The tech tree is just too short. I hate seeing tanks in 1650, it's just too weird. The conquests from C3C have very good ideas for new techs. Ideally the Ancient ages should end at around 400AD, Middle Ages should end around 1700, and modern times should start around 1950.

Agreed. In particular, more optional techs and more choices.

3. Civ Names - Should change by Era. This could be elaborated, for example once England reached the Industrial Era it could choose to become either America or the United Kingdom.

What if you got the option to change your name whenever you changed governments? For example, if you were the "Kingdom of XXX" under Monarchy and you had a revolution and switched to Republic, a pop-up would appear asking you to name your civ, with the default choice being "Republic of XXX." You could simply click Okay/hit Return to accept that, or, if you wanted, you could delete that name and type something new. In other words, the interface would be the same as when you found a new city and the pop-up box contains a suggested name.

4. Expanding - Is quite flawed. Don't you hate playing on some maps (especially the Earth maps) and seeing some multicolored patch where all the civs have tiny cities all intermixed. You should only be able to build a new city like 5 tiles away from your border.
If you expand overseas your first city would have to be on the coast.

Honestly, no, I don't hate that at all. Never bothered me in the slightest. I completely disagree with this idea - why limit choices? The current game already has incentive to keep cities connected by roads/harbors to let you trade resources - that's enough, don't make it mandatory!

5. Improved Graphics - This is a given and I'm sure it will already be included but I think a large jump needs to be made here. Should go to a 3D rendered/polygonal type of thing, but it doesn't have to be complete 3D, and probably still tile-based. Another thing that would be cool is during battles, the camera could zoom into the tile, and you would actually see the full armies fighting. For example, lets say its between 2 swordsmen, these swordsmen actually represent like a division of swordsmen. The game would then show a scence of a battle between 2 armies of swordsmen, on whatever terrain.

Like nmcul said, Good Lord No! Turns already take long enough, it's be horrible to have to watch a little movie every time there was a battle. You may say, "yeah, but there'd be an option to turn it off," but I don't want the developers wasting all their time coding this sort of eye-candy, I want better AI, etc.

6. Military - There needs to be a change here. Especially with cavalry and knights. These units werent the main units in those times...
Agreed, there needs to be a change. I'm not a big fan of the "this unit is for defense, that unit is for attack" philosophy used in Civ 3. There should be basic, cheap units in each era that are slow-moving and reasonable at both attack and defense, then other more expensive units that have specialized advantages in higher movement rates, attack values, defense values, or special abilities. Cavalry and Knights shouldn't be the bulk of your attacking force as they are now, they should be units that you use to supplement your main force in situations where you need some extra mobility.

...There should be a defensive and an offensive Gunpowder infantry unit. Like Musketmen and Fusilier or something.
I'd rather see infantry units (in all eras) that are more balanced defensively/offensively. Musketmen shouldn't have the same attack as ancient-era archers, they should be 3.4.1 or better yet 4.4.1, likewise Riflemen 5.6.1 or 6.6.1. If there were also specialized attack or defend gunpowder units, that'd be fine, but keep the basic, cheap units more balanced and get away from the philosophy that foot units defend while mounted units attack.

Originally posted by nmcul
...The biggest problem with expansion is, in my opinion, the existance of massive empires in 1500 BC. Settling new land should not begin in earnest until later into the Ancient Era.

The thing about all three Civ games that's always been strange to me is the extent to which the world is uninhabited at the beginning of the game. Other than a few scattered barbarians, there's nobody living between you and the next civ that might start hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Civ3 is the best so far, with barbarians that actually come from villages, but I think that one good way to hamper initial, early growth of massive empires would be to increase the barbarian presence early in the game. If there were a lot more barbarian villages (a lot more barbarians in general) and the human and AI civs didn't have such advantages over them (great combat bonuses vs. barbs at many difficulty levels) then it's be harder to send off waves of settlers to form vast empires right away. On the flip side, the barbarian agression level would have to be toned down (somewhat) so that they didn't immediately overrun fledgeling civs.

Non-hostile but non-friendly barbarian tribes

One way to look at this is that there are currently two types of non-civ people: (1) friendly tribes in goody huts, and (2) hostile barbarians that send out waves of warriors and eventually horsemen to pillage your tiles and attack your units and cities. In Civ 4, there should be a third group in the middle: non-friendly, non-hostile barbarian villages, who don't send out units to mess with you, but who do defend themselves if you move units into their territory. These wouldn't be a threat to you the same way hostile barbs or other civs are, but they would slow down early expansion since you'd have to conquer them before building new cities. Historically, the ancient Romans had to conquer plenty of nearby minor tribes, like Etruscans and Samnites, before they started bumping up against the competing civilizations in the region, like the Greeks and Carthaginians.

It's be even more interesting if you could have limited diplomatic negotiations with these non-friendly, non-hostile barbarians. Trade and diplomatic agreements wouldn't appear, those would require contact with real civs, but maybe you could give them a gift of gold and they would then act like a friendly tribe, giving you a local map, teaching you a tech, or maybe even joining you. Or you could bribe them to be hostile to a neighboring civ, and then they'd start acting like regular old hostile barbarians with respect to that civ, sending out units to pillage and attack it. What I'm envisioning is something like this: these tribes don't have a place on the diplomacy screen, but you can click on them and choose "Contact Etruscan Warrior" in which case a pop-up window appears that says "What gifts do you offer the Etruscan tribe?" and you can give them gold or perhaps an extra luxury if you have one, after which the tribe becomes more friendly to you and more hostile to your enemies, to a degree that depends on the generosity of your gift. If this was implemented, then you'd have a choice when trying to expand your empire: attack the villages that so far haven't done you any harm, but stand in your way, or try to bribe them generously enough that they join your empire. Options that appeal to both warmongers and builder-types alike, what's not to love :love: ?

I think the current method of finding out what resources your opponents have is unrealistic. At the moment you just press Ctrl-Shift-M to reveal all sources of resources on your known world map. Sure if a civ has given you their territory map and the resource is already discovered then maybe it should appear on the map. But in most cases resources only appear after a certain tech has been researched and therefore you should not have any knowledge of where they are located. It would be good to have some sort of espionage interface to allow you to say, "uncover America's source of aluminium". Or it could be done more generally - just "Show the locations of all America's strategic resources". This should probably be done at a gold cost like the current espionage missions. Just an idea....

This is what i want:

A Galactic Civilization Metaverse equivalent program. We upload our games to a firaxis server, the firaxis team will adjust any exploit and as such to improve the ai. This way the ai does not have to cheat it's way in higher levels unless we're playing on something like Sid which would be ok in my book; and the intelligence of the AI would improve greatly from this.

Originally posted by DaHaRRyOnE
This is what i want:

A Galactic Civilization Metaverse equivalent program. We upload our games to a firaxis server, the firaxis team will adjust any exploit and as such to improve the ai. This way the ai does not have to cheat it's way in higher levels unless we're playing on something like Sid which would be ok in my book; and the intelligence of the AI would improve greatly from this.

Please explain that?

Hi to all,

This is my first time to this site. I must say you guys are increadible. Over the last couple of days I have read pages upon pages of threads concerning each persons new wish list to be added or modified in the latest release of this immortal game.

I am please to see new fresh ideas that revolutionize the game play some are even interesting and need further debate. I also have several ideas that I like to see implemented in the latest release of Civ and I will be posting them in a short while (some may be rehash form previous threads).

Last item I would like to add is that I haven't played a single game of CIV 3 because I cant get enough of the classic CIV 2 MGE:cool:

My one comment, the real point of me playing Civ II was to build a huge empire, taking over and perfecting the continent and eventually, of course, the world, something that the insane corruption of Civ III makes impossible now. I like Civ III, but I always play cheating with corruption lowered and number of optimal cities cranked up. I didn't play this game for a year after I bought it because of this issue until I discovered you could change it in the editor, and it is just less fun without doing so.

Originally posted by wlievens


Please explain that?

erm...... from my understanding of it he's meaning when you play games, if you notice something that the AI does which is silly you upload it to this one main server which Fraxis will host. They'll then look at what the AI is doing and ajust the AI accordingly to improve it and post a patch so that it would be fixed in all machines. Kind of like Acceptance Testing when you're building a computer program, you give it to the user they notice something thats not right, they tell you, you update the code and give it back fixed.

Probably wrong but thats what I thought they meant.

Originally posted by wlievens


Please explain that?


Hmmm, I don't know how to explain it better but I will try.

We each play a game of single player Civilization. After we finish a game whether we win or lose, we will be presented with an option to upload the game to a firaxis server. What would be uploaded is the score, the player's login, and the game itself. The firaxis server then analyzes to make sure that the game was *legitmately* played without using cheats, hacks, and etc. Only players that use *legitamate* game rules(legitamate meaning no purchase discount and etc) will be elgible for game submission. THe server will then post the scores, difficulty level that it was played, and the result of it like win through domination or losing the game through UN Election. The score that is posted will be ranked among other players as a way for single players to compete with one another in single player mode. This feature can also be added to multiplayer to as a way to rank online civ players.

When the game is uploaded and analyzed, the server would look at how the game was won, was it through a specific *exploit*? Was it because the AI was stupid? You can update the AI's tactics and intelligents by using tactics that were used by top civ players in the next update. Imagine playing on diety with AI using the tactics and strats that SirPleb and others used? Never seen the AI use armies or use the artillery like you should? Now it does through these patches and uploads. Never seen the AI use diplomacy and extoration the *right* way? Now it can be learned. The AI can be updated and *effectively* use these tactics the way that top players uses them. This way the AI can be improved on higher difficulty levels and does not have to cheat . At lower levels, the developers don't have to give bonuses to the player, it can just effectively *dumb* the AI by not allow them to use certain tactics. Every game that's being uploaded, helps improve the game in the next patch.

That's awesome.

FLEXIBILITY!

I miss a lot the possibility to could switch on and off things you like or not like in the game. For example could I like to switch off wonders or at least certain wonders that I feel make the game unbalanced. I now these have always been an integrated part of the game but still they may tip the gamebalance too much. Same goes to certain buldings and units.

Things can be edited in the editor, but I am talking about checkbox options before the game.

Export, Import and Electricity

I don't know if these themes were already discussed, but let's advance. An issue of civ3 that embarass me is about international trade. From Ancient Age to Modern Age, all countries just trade commodities such as horses, iron or oil. No benefits from industrialization or digital techs are achieved by exporting countries. It's a big mistake, because the industrial revolution and the late information revolution caused a tremendous boost into international trade. The tech leading countries could produce more expensive products on a larger scale at lower costs. I would be very pleased if these concepts could be brought to the game.

Another issue regards to the electricity tech. It's well knowed the huge benefit of this tech to our lives and to business activities. But, in the game, the benefits of this tech are so tiny, just an improvement on irrigation. I wonder if this matter could be better dealed in the next version.

Thanks a lot, think-tanks.

Klaus.

I posted this a while back on the forums, but I thought I would repost it here, where it belongs, and people will actually read it...

I think that traits, and UU were a good idea in Civ 3, they add a unique aspect to each civ, which stops the game becoming monotonous (sp?), but in Civ 4 I think they could change it in some ways to reflect playing styles, and starting locations.

For instance, in Civ 3 PTW Mongols get Horse Archers, which can move over mountains like grassland, but surely a civ located nowhere near mountains would find little or no use in this trait. I think it would be quite cool if the stats for your unique unit reflected your playing style, and start location.

Possable influences I can think of off the top of my head:
[list=1]
Class: This would depend on what quantity of class your civ has most of, attack footers, defensive footers, aircraft, boats... etc., and would affect the base stats of the units
Attack and defence values: These would be based on the ratio of attacks or defences your civ has done, and, along with the movement, would have to average more than a 'standard' unit of their time. They would be affected by the class of the unit.
Movement: This would again be based on how much movement your units had done over time (probably based on land discovered and map size), and would be affected by class.
Resource usage: This would be determined on the resources you had at your disposal, but less resources would mean a worse unit.
Cheap movement over certain terrain: If your land in made up primaraly of mountains, the unit should naturally get cheaper movement over mountains, likewise with grasslands, if a unit has this it would naturaly degrade the A/D/M slightly.
[/list=1]
I can see that animating these units could be a trouble, but they could be represented by a unit of the correct class of the period with a civ-coloured star.

As far as the UUs being worked out it could be based on golden ages, if another factor could be used to trigger them (first leader?) and the UU could be generated at the start, or in the middle of the golden age, it would then be the best unit of it's class available with stats generated as above.

This method, I feel, would bring a unique UU (unique, unique unit ) to each game, for each civ.

As for traits...

Traits could be based on how many of each type of building (barracks = militerisic, temple = religeous... etc.) a civ has in it's civilisation, and one extra trait could be granted at the end of each age (perhaps with a random at the start), this would mean your civ would gain personality as it progressed, although this would probably require more traits, each having a lesser effect.

The thing that made me mad about Civ 3 is, you couldn't buy a resource if you already had it. I'd like to have that option, so I can create a monopoly, also to prevent someone else from buying it themselves. Unit trading would also be something I'd like to see make a return. Also, how about a deal you could make with a civ, saying they couldn't research or build certain things... IE, nuclear weapons! You could do these things in AC, couldn't you?

Originally posted by sausnebb
Also...
the ability to besiege enemy cities! this will starve both citizens and troops. this will also ruin the soldiers MORAL, which makes them weaker in combat.

I'd like to build on the seiging theory:

I think soldiers maybe could use food or at least starve when the city does. That way you could drain the soldiers in addition to the city.

Also, I think that it should be impossible for a citizen to harvest from a square with an enemy soldier in the next square. That way, you could starve the city whithout needing to pillage everywhere, and I think it's unlikely that the citizens would dare to go harvest with enemies so close at hand (maybe you could force them to do it, with the risk of the citizen getting killed?)

Don't know if anyone's suggested a "Political Great Leader" that could help you move from one government to another with NO anarchy. Or: use him to force a civ you're at war with to accept peace terms. Perhaps a 1 in 10 chance to get a PGL if you're the first to learn a new government type. Or: add these abilities to the MGL.
How about a UGL: "Unique Great Leader" who could appear just once per game and do anything the other kinds of leaders do.

Bring back something like engineers of civ2. Workers with 2 movement points, and increased abilities, like terraforming, converting tundra to desert, desert to plains, plains to grassland, and the reverse of all those. Mountains and hills (and plateaus?) can't be changed.

Civ 3 has ocean, sea, and coastal water tiles, as well as fresh water (lake) tiles. I would add beach tiles to this list, which would be water tiles that are right next to land. These would have a special purpose, as described below.

Let engineers walk out on beaches to build bridges & rail bridges, which are effectively limited to spanning two-tile water gaps, since they can only be on beaches. But wait there's more.

Allow engineers to perform landfill of beach squares, where the filled land becomes tundra or desert, and adjacent water squares become beaches, effectively raising surrounding sea beds.

The opposite of landfill would be harbor & lake digging, or converting land to beach, which could breath new life into landlocked cities, and can be used to build canals. Single-tile islands could not be sunk, or if sinking them was allowed, the engineer would be lost. Likewise, any other units on a tile when it is sunk are lost. Perhaps you could have a dialog to warn that units will be lost, then delay sinking, cancel, or continue.

Along the lines of landmarks and naming, you could select a group of tiles (ctrl-click or click & drag to select multiple tiles) and name them. You could group your canal squares and name them "Panama Canal". Or a long road could be named "Highway". A given tile could belong to any number of groups.

Then, you could sell rights of passage to other nations, allowing them to tread only on specific named groups.

Edit: Also, add consequences for treading on others' territory without a RoP. Make the offending units subject to bribe or destruction without declaration of war. Better yet, simply disallow troop movement onto foreign soil without RoP or declaration of war. Strong nations can always threaten weaker nations into giving them RoP to specified tile sets. The restriction might apply only to military units (not settlers, workers, explorers, etc.).

Maybe this is going to sound ludicrus (sp?) But what I'd like to see in the next installment is the more personal affect... Maybe there could be a mode of the game or an accessible feature that would allow for treaty meetings, social events, sexual liasons etc... By the latter I mean... maybe Cleopatra can invite Caesar to Egypt and there have the ability to kill him or hold Rome captive... This could also add an element of the regicide gametype available in AoE and things like that. I'd also like an upclose view of the cities especially when it is a civ's last city... I'd like to see the "last stand." This might make the memory reqs so very high, but hey we'll all buy new systems to compensate the difference, right guys?


This would add a new layer to the game... even the strongest empire could be decapitated if that civ hadnt taken the time to take care of its leader.

Maybe also there can be more witty banter... I hate when I see the same comebacks turn after term. The characters need at least 100% more lines and responses...


Other than that, I love the game as it is.

:egypt:

I would appreciate some form of CIVIL WAR, which would differ from cultural flip, but be more like overthows/barbarian takeovers in civ 2. most modern nations have experienced this by way of political upheaval, revolution, or attempted secession. part of your country would split from the capital, and the palyer would have to take it back.

already beat to the civil war idea, oh well. anyway Panzer General and Allied General has the function of "entrenchment" for fortified units, i.e. the unit's defense bonus became stronger the longer it was fortified in the same spot. sort of a "digging in" concept. just an idea.

The Civlopaedia needs a hotkey to bring it up. I suggest F12 as its not in use.

Also, the Civlopedia should be more versatile, and should have links to say, sort the unit lists either alphabetically OR by unit type (eg - ground units, artillery, defensive units, naval units) OR by unit strength (eg - by attack rating lowest to highest).

an idea i saw in Rise of Nations: attrition

when your units are crossing foreign territory they should lose some of their strength. This prevents you and the AI to walk the entire game through another's civ territory

-pond

pond: "an idea i saw in Rise of Nations: attrition"

good idea. what about "supply wagons" in that case?

And please, add option to let "Wicked RNG mode" off.

Originally posted by Civizen
Edit: Also, add consequences for treading on others' territory without a RoP. Make the offending units subject to bribe or destruction without declaration of war. Better yet, simply disallow troop movement onto foreign soil without RoP or declaration of war. Strong nations can always threaten weaker nations into giving them RoP to specified tile sets. The restriction might apply only to military units (not settlers, workers, explorers, etc.).


Units in enemy cultural territory should be vulnerable to defection, just like culturally weak border cities. They are eating the local food, meeting the local girls, far from home, etc. Units that are more advanced than the host culture's would have a bonus to resist because they look down on the backwards local military. There could be a bribery option to encourage defections.

There should also be limited ROP (as you say) and one sided ROP, which are insulting and therefore only accepted in extreme cases. Also of course the 20 turn lifespan of all treaties needs to be adjustable.

Originally posted by mihoshi
And please, add option to let "Wicked RNG mode" off.

:lol: we've all been there

while we're on the subject of being in someone elses teritory, how about allowing your units to implement a scorched earth policy. Ok ok, I know you can pillage improvements but why not something which would destroy the square similar in a way to pollution is now. When the Romans sacked Carthage they sowed salt into the ground so that nothing could grow back so why not have something similar here. I'm not talking about changing the square forever so its just a null square, but why not change it so that nothing can grow on it unless you send your workers to clear up the damage.

That's an evil idea, but not a bad one.

William the Conqueror (aka William the Bastard) did that in Northumbria too. Very bad.

I'd like to see an increased importance on getting more than 1 resource. Currently, 1 resource supplies your entire empire, so getting other sources is rarely useful (except for trade, of which they prolly already have that resource anyway).

THIS is what I propose.

DO NOT limit the amount of units that can be made by resource tile, but limit the number of CITIES that can produce the unit that uses that resource!! That way, someone with more resources, actually HAS an advantage strategically!

You could say... for every oil you own, 2(or whatever number is deemed appropriate) cities at a time can make units that require oil. You could choose any cities you want, but you can only a max of two(or whatever the max is) per resource.

Under this model, someone with more oil(or whatever), could upgrade/produce/build faster than someone with not as much (all the while, neither is limited to a max number of units, just rate of production). This makes perfect sense! It would encourage real resource competition, and it creates a whole new level of possible diplomatic options.

Originally posted by klaus
pond: "an idea i saw in Rise of Nations: attrition"

good idea. what about "supply wagons" in that case?

or possibly supply lines. again in panzer general territory conquered counted as supply lines, and units in a bubble (no supply line connection) drained of supplies until they could no longer defend or fight. civ4 units could have two bars; one for strength/hp and one for supplies. groovy idea indeed [pimp]

Originally posted by Grav
I'd like to see an increased importance on getting more than 1 resource. Currently, 1 resource supplies your entire empire, so getting other sources is rarely useful (except for trade, of which they prolly already have that resource anyway).

THIS is what I propose.

DO NOT limit the amount of units that can be made by resource tile, but limit the number of CITIES that can produce the unit that uses that resource!! That way, someone with more resources, actually HAS an advantage strategically!

You could say... for every oil you own, 2(or whatever number is deemed appropriate) cities at a time can make units that require oil. You could choose any cities you want, but you can only a max of two(or whatever the max is) per resource.

Under this model, someone with more oil(or whatever), could upgrade/produce/build faster than someone with not as much (all the while, neither is limited to a max number of units, just rate of production). This makes perfect sense! It would encourage real resource competition, and it creates a whole new level of possible diplomatic options.


Not a ad idea, but i'd still prefer just having the resources in units. XXXX barrels of oil, YYYYY horses, ...

Originally posted by wlievens
... i'd still prefer just having the resources in units. XXXX barrels of oil, YYYYY horses, ...

That sounds good. That way you'd have some resource areas better than others, but you wouldn't know how good they are until you developed them. Your Saudi oil field could be better than your Texas oil field.
Oil should be available offshore too. To connect to it you'd have to build an offshore platform in a city close by, like the mines built in the Age of Discovery scenario.

How about making the Abomb available and having ICBMs and tactical nukes have a larger effect on the structures built within the city.


While I'm on the subject of nuking and bombing people... I think you should be able to raze a city that has a wonder in it and have the wonder remain... After all, the Oracle of Delphi, the Pyramids, the Aztec civ creations have survived years of bloody war and having been tossed from hand to hand.

I really would love the characters in the game (Cleo,Liz, Al, Cat etc to evolve as the game goes on... especially if they have been war boggled or wealithily expanding for a while.

i think nations should have a religious part of the tech tree and break off into other religions
eg: catholic breaks off into protestant, or you could stay catholic

also you should have religious leaders who can start a crusade which rallys units from your cities

finally nations of the same reliogion should be nicer to eachother and maybe rally against another nation/

It should be possible to control how quickly or slowly time passes in the game. I prefer playing in the early periods to the later. I'm always disappointed that the Bronze age ends so soon.

Name of Feature: Deeper modelling of laborers & specialists

What this feature should do in the game:

First, let's take into account that each city produces 3 types of resources: food, shields & gold by working a tile with a laborer. Those will be refered as 'basic resources'.

Then, there are 3 other types of resources: research, happiness and culture which are a transformation of a basic resource (gold can go to research or happiness), produced by a luxury (happiness) or by a building (culture) where there's no tile directly involved. Those will be refered as 'advanced resources'

Currently there are generic laborers which produce certain amounts of each basic resource based on tile potential and the improvements on it.
The idea is to have 3 types of basic laborers:
a) food laborers: produce a large amount of food and a small amount of shields.
b) shield laborers: produce a large amount of shield and a small amount of gold.
c) gold laborers: produce a large amount of gold and a small amount of food.
Each amount will be modified by the tile potential and the improvements on it, as it's now.

And also have 3 types of advanced laborers (availables with some appropiate tech advance), those who can only produce a small amount of gold; but in replace of producing food and shields, they can produce one type of the advanced resources:
a) research laborers: produce a large amount of research.
b) happiness laborers: produce a large amount of happiness.
c) cultural laborers: produce a large amount of happiness.
Each amount will be modified by the tile potential and the improvements on it, but maybe an special type of improvement (available with the same tech advance required to actually have the advanced laborer) will be required to have the advanced laborer working the tile.
An example of this was given in another thread by sourboy, a worker can give a tile a 'national park' improvement and can only be worked by an advanced laborer of the cultural type named 'forest guard'.

Let's now go into specialists, those who produce one or more types of resources (be they basic or advanced) by their own instead of having to work a tile.
So there'll be six types of basic specialists, those who produce only one type of resource: food specialists, shield specialists (currently civil engineers? i haven't played Conquests yet), gold specialists (currently taxmen), research specialists (currently scientists), happiness specialists (currently entertainers), cultural specialists.
But also 15 types of level 1-advanced specialists (producing two types of resources): fs, fg, fr, fh, fc, gr, gh, gc, rh, rc, hc.
12 types of level 2-advanced specialists (producing three types of resources): fsg, fsr, fsh, fsc, fgr, fgh, fgc, frh, frc, grh, grc, rhc.
8 types of level 3-advanced specialists (producing four types of resources): fsgr, fsgh, fsrh, fsrc, fgrh, fgrc, frhc, grhc.
3 types of level 4-advanced specialists (producing five types of resources: fsgrh, fshrc, fgrhc.
And the level 5-advanced specialist (producing all types of resources): fsgrhc.
Of course, the higher the level of the specialist the higher the era of the tech advance required to have it. Maybe this will lead to expand the current eras to 6 in order to fit the number. Basic specialists are availables in era 1, level 1-advanced specialists in era 2 and so on till level 5-advanced specialists in era 6.

A final note is that some appropiate tech advances may increase the laborers or specialists productivity.

How would this feature work:
This feature will indeed increase micromanagement, but will help to enhance the modelling of the economic system. Allowing to have specialized cities to enhance the production of a needed resource in each part of the empire.

Gameplay:
Those cities close to tiles which produce only a small amount of food (like mountains or jungles) can have a few food laborers and a lot of shield labores to turn it into a shield-specialized city. The same goes for the other options and have a food-specialized city that grows fast to allow expansion and have a gold-specialized city that allows the empire to pay the bills.

To avoid exploitation there should be a turn-delay on changing a laborer from a tile to another (also proposed by sourboy in the same another thread) and on changing a resource to another (food-laborer to shield-laborer, for example). The higher the difference, the higher the delay.

The AI can use this feature just as the human does to maximize an specific city production according to a goal. By just asigning a flag to each tile to represent it dominant resource and have it read by the AI. This shouldn't put a pressure on system resources, because it's just extra information per tile... maybe a couple of nanoseconds more to process and a couple of bytes more to store.

Keep civilized

David

Name of Feature: Food sharing & national granary

What this feature should do in the game:
Each city connected to the trade network will share it's food with the empire. Those not connected must survive on their own.
This may lead to change the current concept of city growth by food-box filling to another based on tile potential, city location and migration.

How would this feature work:
The exact amount of food required to feed the population of each city will be delivered by the national granary. Any excess should be used for an extended concept of military maintenance, having every unit to be feed in addition to be paid in gold.

Gameplay:
As military units will now require food, pillage will be more important.
First it will allow the attacking military unit doing the pillage to reduce the extra food produced by the defending empire's national granary and therefore reducing the number of military units available to it. Also, it'll feed the attacking military for a number of turns based on the tile food-potential improvements included (military should eat the same as civilians, if tile food-potential is 6... the unit will be feed for 3 turns).
Second, the empire leader may choose to starve civilians in order to feed their military which in turn may increase unhappiness produced by war-weariness. If a military unit isn't feed by national granary's ration or by enemy's sacked fields, it may make a check of hunting in wilderness (this means tiles not used by any city, even if they are cultural influenced)... if it doesn't pass it, the unit dies.

This will eliminate the current exploitation of huge armies and will make units more valuable. And make warmongering harder, except for militaristic civs which may get some bonuses on this area (higher chance of passing hunting in wilderness check or so)

Keep civilized

David

I think there should be MUCH more units
eg- in civ 2 there were knights and crusaders
crusaders have more attack and less def than knights(5,1,2) but knights are more well rounded(4,2,2)

-Attrition sounds like a great idea too, and supply wagons

Zoom in
i wan't to get closer to the action

Like the science and tax bar, there should be a law enforcement bar that would significantly reduce waste and corruption. If the bar were too high the people would be unhappy. (How would you like it if there were a cop with a M16 on every street corner. It would eliminate crime, but it would still suck).

Like the science and tax bar, there should be a law enforcement bar that would significantly reduce waste and corruption. If the bar were too high the people would be unhappy. (How would you like it if there were a cop with a M16 on every street corner. It would eliminate crime, but it would still suck).

sorry. I thought my computer didn't take submit the reply the first time.

Originally posted by Do_Sa_Nim
Like the science and tax bar, there should be a law enforcement bar that would significantly reduce waste and corruption. If the bar were too high the people would be unhappy. (How would you like it if there were a cop with a M16 on every street corner. It would eliminate crime, but it would still suck).

You mean it would eliminate unsanctioned crime. If unchecked govt were the answer to corruption, despotism would be the least corrupt and democracy the most. In fact the continuum you're asking for already exists in the form of govts, the more advanced govts are less corrupt but have other prices. On the other hand, your idea might work for introducing some flexibility and variety into the choice of govts. Japan and America are both republics, but Japan has a far less restricted govt and police force and thus a lot less crime (although legal corruption is enormous and expensive), but also less personal freedom.

One thing I've always thought would be really cool to have is the threat of City-seperation to become their own Civilization.

So something like if a city, or group of close cities, were unhappy for hundred of years then they would hold a referendum for independence or maybe an independence war!

It would take a good deal of extra work, but it would be really neat. Plus theres plenty of civs that could break off from others, such as a bunch of English cities could break off and become Canadian or Australian. Also it would be great for scenarios.

Tax collectors, corruption and general unhappiness would all add to likelyhood of independence movements, as would foreigners.

I see what a4phantom is saying. But I think its stupid how a city on the very edge of your empire can't do jack becuase of the immense corruption and waste. There would be corruption, but not enought to make the city useless. If you remember civ2 a courthouse cut corruption and waste by half. If a courthouse did that in civ3 i wouldn't be saying anything.

In all these discussions I have seen many good ideas, some that just arent workable, and some that would make the game too complicated (supply routes are once example). Here is a short list of what I would like to see:

1. No more unlimited RR movement.

2. Extend the Game far enough into the future to allow the construction of Spaceship with more appropriate tech. The idea that we could build such a Spaceship with current tech is silly, never mind the fact we have no where to send it to at the present time. I have always thought this has ruined the "Modern Era". No far future stuff in the core game though. This does not work well with a "One Planet" civ development game. Thats what GalCiv is for.

3. Make Future Tech worth researching. Provide extra food, production, etc. with future tech, Also, Greatly increase the score you get for researching each future tech.

4. Model Horses correctly. I dont ever want to "Lose my horses" because the city where I found them was captured. This would make Horses a unique resource and make "selling them" a decision that carries much more weight as you can take them away.

5. Model resource depletion differently. Make each unit/improvement build use a small amount of a resource (say 0.2% for each sword) for example. The rate of usage can be slowed by researching certain techs. Certain techs can also make new sources appear. Each resource would have a certain percentage tagged to it when discovered.

Originally posted by Do_Sa_Nim
I see what a4phantom is saying. But I think its stupid how a city on the very edge of your empire can't do jack becuase of the immense corruption and waste. There would be corruption, but not enought to make the city useless. If you remember civ2 a courthouse cut corruption and waste by half. If a courthouse did that in civ3 i wouldn't be saying anything.

I agree with you on that, if you are willing to adopt the right govt, build all available improvements, keep the people happy, station troops, and generally pay a very high price, it is not fair that cities beyond a certain number are uselessly corrupt. This is particularly silly after the inventions of railroad, nationalism, and radio, when distance ceases to really affect communication and influence. I have not yet played Conquests into the industrial era, can anyone evaluate the effectiveness of police citizens on reining in corruption in far out cities when you're over the OCN?

I think that the AI should be expanded to a point that truly resembles interaction between nations. I want to be able to attack units that have been within my borders for a long time, without declaring war on the AI. I want the AI to not simply trudge through my territory just because there's a tiny bit of land I haven't yet colonized, to my north. I want to be able to "claim" borders beyond a cultural influence; (Much like parts of the "New World" were claimed by various explorers for their nations.)

There's so much more I could say, but I'm sure most of it has already been said... I am just wanting to sum up my desire for a more developed AI, and a more realistic way to interact with other nations.

With Railroads, food should be distributed nationally.

Good call Templar. It annoys me immencely when 2 cities side by side are both poducing odd food with max popoulation and keep starving and repopulating! Just share some food and no more starving citizens! Either that or allow terraforming (as per CivII).

well, A4phantom, police have been next to useless in my games. I would rather have another farmer and make the city grow so I can at least get some unit support. It converts one wasted shield into production, and one corruption into commerce.

Sorry if something like this has been posted. I havn't read all 54 pages.

I would like there to be some expanded espionage. One I would really like is an assination. Not one on Cleopatra of the Egytions, but lets say someone high in their government. Then this would create anarchy in that country for a couple of turns. This sort of espionage would be the perfect forerunner to an epic war.
Also in Civ2 you could plant nuclear bombs and posion a city's water supply. I think that would be cool for Civ4.
I dont know if this idea is good, but mabye you could buy off another civ's spy and use him as a double agent (for much easier espionage). This could be too complicated though.

I've been reading alot of these ideas and I think some of them are awesome. I have an idea for a new resource system. What if all the refined resources in civ 3 (ie Wines, Silks, Iron etc) had to be taken from their raw form (ie grapes, silk farm/silk worms, raw iron etc) and converted to something useful. This could be done at different city improvments like a vineyard for wine, silkfarm for silk, smelter for iron and the only way you could take advantage of these refined resources is to have control of the raw form and convert it at the city square. To go even further into this, maybe you could only produce X amount of the resource every turn, and to produce more per turn you would need to research certain technologies on an entirely different tech tree which would be a sort of "Productivity Tech Tree" where you could research techs to have faster workers, Citizens that "work" squares more efficiently making the squares worth more shields/food/commerce, and maybe something like researching different building materials. Say you researched Steel, then that could open up new city improvements OR make some of your current improvements cost less shields. I was also thinking of a "military tech tree" where you could research techs that would improve units attack/defense/speed and so on. I think this would make the game way more realistic since most nations in our world make their military stand out, ie some nations emphasize stealth over strength and visa versa. This would also help in the sense that the guerilla in civ 3 is so weak. Most nations armies are based on guerrila warfare, but that doesn't mean that if a regiment of tanks and a group of guerillas fought each other that the guerillas would have just as good as a chance as the tanks do, they might even have a better chance considering the terrain and whether or not they are fighting on their native soil. I think those features should be implemented in the game. And what about a religious slider? I was thinking something like a pentagram with a different religion at each corner, and you can move a slider around the middle of the pentagram closer or more far away from each religion. This could change national corruption, military efficiency, military unit costs and so on. This feature could also be done for governments, say for a triangle you could have communism, fascism, and capitalism at each corner. This would be an interesting feature since it wouldn't force you to take an affirmative stance on government or religion. It would allow your nation to "sit on the fence" as they say. Another idea for governments would be that some governments are more aggressive to others. For example, lets say you had a fascist Al and you are a democracy. It should be harder for you to trade with the fascist Al. If you were also fascist, the Al should be more lenient when trading. Well, those are my ideas. Give some feedback if you wish.

Originally posted by Do_Sa_Nim
well, A4phantom, police have been next to useless in my games. I would rather have another farmer and make the city grow so I can at least get some unit support. It converts one wasted shield into production, and one corruption into commerce.

Thanks, that is indeed pretty useless. Can that be altered (say doubled) in the editor? Also, does anyone see a problem with code of laws enabling policemen instead of nationalism? I know that's about an era and a half but it makes historical and logical sense and i don't see how it would unbalance the game in any way (especially since they appear to be pretty ineffective). It would also be nice to have a tool for controlling waste and corruption early on, and when one extra shield is significantly more meaningful because defensive units cost 20 shields instead of 90 or so.

calinator,

If you also think that the guerilla unit needs work, hop over to http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=75130&perpage=20&display=&pagenumber=5 , the guerilla thread. We are trying to make the guerilla a useful unit that enhances military/political options instead of a misnamed unit that's made mostly redundant by infantry and riflemen.

Bring back the "Ode to Joy" for the victory screens! It's corny, but I miss it from Civ 1.

Originally posted by Zandrew
Don't know if anyone's suggested a "Political Great Leader" that could help you move from one government to another with NO anarchy. Or: use him to force a civ you're at war with to accept peace terms. Perhaps a 1 in 10 chance to get a PGL if you're the first to learn a new government type. Or: add these abilities to the MGL.
How about a UGL: "Unique Great Leader" who could appear just once per game and do anything the other kinds of leaders do.

I did, here:

link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=69291&perpage=20&display=&pagenumber=35)

other ways to use this Political Great Leader could be to reduce corruption in the city where the leader is present (or for 20 turns if the leader is consumed), or by the city getting +1 on food/shield/commerce on each worked tile.

There is a lot of potential for a leader unit like that.

Wow - 55 pages and still counting. A 'brief' summary listing the suggestions raised would be nice (it would still be a very very long document, but at least I would be to see if some of what I'm going to suggest has already been raised)

My suggestions are largely toward finding a non-OCN method of curbing ICS - however I believe they are interesting real-world mechanics in themselves.

1) The Economics of Success (idea from a recent thread discussing OCN)
Given that in Free market Economies at least , from what I understand (and I am by no means educated in any of the mechanics of economics so I trust any economists out there will correct me), the potential of unlimited growth is a requirement to the succesful running of that economy, hence the regular bulletins 'the Economy has grown 10 points!', hand in hand with this growth grows the expectations of a nation for living standards to increase.

At the moment a city of 20 citizens requires X quantity of luxuries (not resource luxuries you understand, the actual spend of commerce) - regardless of the cities/nations income. This means that while the nation is poor (experiencing poor growth or even a slump) the city requires a large percentage of its income to keep them happy. However, if for some reason the nation experiences unprecedented ecenomic growth and wealth, the citizens still require the same quantity X of luxuries to keep them happy - which may in relative terms mean everyone is given a free loaf of bread by the state when the state could in fact afford to put Gold plating on each and every citizens motor cars and have change left over.

Obviously this could hardly happen irl - the leader would be out on his backside toot-sweet. Addressing this inequity in Civ can perhaps be seen as a pretty sure-fire way to help curb the extreme power large economies a non-OCN model would experience?

This principle need not only apply to democracies/republics - look what happened to the French aristocracy when they got too greedy, and the shockwaves it sent round Europe afterwards

One mechanic could simply be raising the number of 'commerce coins' required to change the mood of a citizen according to the economic success a nation is experiencing. Of necessity the amount of happiness generated by luxury resources would have to be muted somewhat (I personally believe this should happen anyway, most of the time my Empire runs on a 0% luxury rate after I have trade contact with all required nations - this doesn't feel right to me). This 'raising the luxury bar' is already experienced in war-time, but there is no significant penalty for rampant peacetime economic success.

2) Resistors, the Black Market and Terrorism, towards making aggressive ICS harder
First of all a disclaimer - recent years means that trying to discuss this topic is naturally going to be highly contentious, I shall be making all attempts to avoid offending anyones sensitivities, however merely discussing this issue in the context of a game some may find offensive.

Resistance and Resistors. At the moment a resistor is a barely perceptible nuisance to the occupying state, which can quickly be resolved by dumping a load of military units on their doorstep. From my point of view this is absurd - irl this approach can be seen throughout history to merely generate more sympathy towards the resistors cause, and imo doing so should actually give you more resistors, not less. I for one should my relatively peaceful corner of the world be overrun would be more disposed to a resistors point of view if all I saw were my occupiers tanks/soldiers marching up and down every day.

One mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist. This is a well known truism - not of my creation. A penalty for having a large number of resistors should be a percentage chance for each resistor (accumulating with each other) of a 'terrorist' act being committed. The destruction of one of the cities ameneties (banks, libraries, marketplaces) would reflect this, and would be very irritating at least - perhaps even the loss of some citizens. An even smaller chance could be used to reflect that resistors do not necessarily restrict their operations to their home town and frequently take their cause to the occupiers home towns.

As for the Black Market - terrorism/resistance is known to operate (by necessity) on the Black Market. This could be reflected simply by resistors not only having no contribution to the cities pot of commerce and production, but actually heavily increasing the corruption of their town.

Having resistors that do all this will naturally make aggressive ICS more difficult - but not if you can still dump 20 Cavalry in their town and they suddenly become happy campers. Military police has a role - to help prevent the violent/civil disobedient acts of said resistors (a simple overall reduction in percentage chance of terrorist acts in that town per unit) - but more is less in the long run, as I have stated irl you merely generate ever increasing sympathy for the resistance by doing this - and the heavier handed you are, the number of resistors should increase (a simple percentage chance accumulating per military unit of generating a new resistor per turn).

How resistors should ever become 'assimilated' I've not got any really good answers for (perhaps because it is something that Governments/occupiers still have trouble with today), although *very* long periods of (relatively) peaceful occupation seems to have worked (I don't believe my own kin ever managed to forcibly eject the Romans, or the Normans).

3) It's not only terrorists that use the Black Market
Simply put - unhappy people, whether they are balanced by happies or not - should increase corruption. This is towards my goal of finding a better alternative to OCN for a corruption model. Frankly this idea makes complete sense irl terms to me, and would naturally make large empires who's base corruption (without OCN) relies on distance, more corrupt. The further from the capitol, the more corruption is experienced, the less happy people are, therefore feeding back into more corruption. As long as the excessive (to my view) simplicity of keeping your population happy by trading for all the 'resource luxuries' is reduced, this should present an interesting cycle of corruption in outlying towns that is hard to break.

4) Corruption leads to break-away nations (Independance etc.)
One of the most fun, but frankly unbalanced and not quite real-life (for me) parts of Civ1/2 was that taking an enemies capitol could split a nation in two. Additionally many people want to know where the role from real-life of nations forming from colonies (most noteably all of the Americas) could be squeezed into Civ.

I am pretty sure this idea has been posited before, and it's simply that corruption should feed into a pot generating sympathy for rebellion/independance amongst groups of the more outlying towns and cities. This, I think, is probably one of the most hard-to-implement ideas as it involves a more heuristic approach than any other of the suggestions I have made, from a programmatic point of view, as all the others are pretty much 'new lever' ideas. The pot is simple enough, but how do you define a group of cities that are likely to break away? This is preferable to single city break aways, as although one city would be very irritating it wouldn't be hard to capture (although there would be all the problems of resistor sentiment, much worse if the earlier idea is used). Multiple cities independance would be a catastrophic event to any empire, and goes a long way to helping reduce the need for OCN being used to limit ICS.


5) Use the Diminishing Returns Principal of Commerce division from Alpha Centauri
I loved this principal, it was a non-arbitrary mechanic that made sense in its own context. Basically it meant that assigning 100% science (or tax, or luxuries) didnt mean you got 100% of the non-corrupt commerce being thrown on the pot - a mechanic that reflects the fact throwing an ever increasing quantity of money at a problem is not necessarily going to help in direct proportion to the quantitative increase. Made buckets of sense, was appropriate in a real-life context. There was quite a lot of other stuff from SMAC I loved too as a side note, e.g. I would love to see the more complex socio-economic model being brought into Civ somehow.



Well, I've rambled on for quite some time it seems. Like most people I have a desire to see Civ reflect more and more real life problems/aspects, through playing the game we find some tiny insights into why and how things around us are as they are. Some may say the suggestions may be adding too much complexity for other peoples liking, but I have yet to hear anyone crying out for Civ to be made simpler for themselves.

edit: some formatting corrections

Also, does anyone see a problem with code of laws enabling policemen instead of nationalism? I know that's about an era and a half but it makes historical and logical sense

Sorry but it doesn't make historical sense - until pretty much into the 19th century (1800 and something) Civil obedience was a side-role of the military institutions.

One especially unrealistic feature of Civ3 is that civilizations either keep getting bigger and bigger, over hundreds if not thousands of years, or get smaller and smaller until finally being wiped out.

Historically, the complete wipeout of civilizations happens, but is quite rare. And the phenomenon of ever-expanding civilizations is rarer still. Rome started as a city, became a vast empire, crumbled, and re-emerged (in a sense) with modern Italy. England started as a collection of small kingdoms, conquered Wales and parts of France, lost its French possessions, expanded into parts of Ireland, gained Scotland, expanded massively throughout the world, then contracted even more spectacularly into modern Britain--a country which, while not as powerful as it was in 1850, remains a very significant country.

Civ3 simply can't handle these kinds of developments. If you were playing England in Civ3, you might expand and contract by small margins a bit at first, then burst into a massive empire. But if you then lost that empire, your civilization would be counted as a complete failure by the game's end--even though, as I say, the UK remains an important world power and a major diplomatic and cultural force.

I have mentioned in earlier posts the need for some mechanism to take account of colonisation and decolonisation. Similarly, the discovery of Nationalism should have a much greater effect in Civ4. In Civ3, all it really does is enable Riflemen. In reality, nationalist sentiments undid the British, Austro-Hungarian, French, Ottoman and other empires. When Nationalism is discovered in Civ4, culturally weak civs or ethnically diverse civs should feel the strain. They should even, in some cases, lose territories to newly-emerging nations. Most importantly, the effect of such losses on the civ's score and chances of winning the game should not necessarily be negative. It should depend on how the civ diplomatically manages the emergence of new nations. Returning to the UK example, the Commonwealth (ie its former colonial possessions) is, on balance, a great asset for Britain today. Commonwealth countries tend to be friendly with the UK (with some exceptions) and receptive to UK cultural exports.

In Civ3, all trade is controlled by diplomatic relations between leaders. Spontaneous trade between peoples apparently does not occur. I doubt whether this was ever the case, historically speaking, but it certainly is not the case in the modern era.

Trading resources between civs is a really fun element in Civ3, and I don't want to throw it out entirely simply for the sake of historical accuracy. But it is a truly bizarre spectacle to have Abraham Lincoln approaching Queen Elizabeth in 1956 asking whether she would like to trade furs. Especially when both governments are Democratic (given the capitalist overtones of Democracy in Civ3).

It seems to me that leaders (at least in monarchies and later forms of govt) should instead negotiate trade agreements with other civs. Simple agreements would simply lower or remove prohibitive tariffs, thus enabling access to the foreign market in respect of particular goods. More advanced trade deals could lower or remove tariffs across the board (free trade pacts) or provide incentives and protections for foreign investors (bilateral investment treaties).

It may be desirable to exclude Strategic Resources from these agreements. Indeed, for Strategic Resources my objection to leader-based trade diminishes. States have a clear interest in controlling trade in oil, uranium, etc. To have Lincoln and Elizabeth haggling over such resources is quite reasonable.

Civmad:

Perhaps Nationalism should increase the chance of what I outlined in Point 4 of my post (2 above yours) occuring :D

You're right ofc about the fact that Civ cannot hope at the moment to realistically reflect all aspects of the massively intricate dance of world politics throughout the ages, however having seen it's it's evolution from humble beginnings back in 1990 I truly hope that through the work of all Civfanatics since its inception my (not yet existant) grandchildren will have the opportunity to direct a nations history under their command in a manner which will blow all our current minds away!

Originally posted by Drakken
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.

Hexes are nice, continous is better... but Civ isn't meant to be a wargame. The war should be just a part of it... as important as any other part. The player should be able to choose which part will be the more valuable to his/her empire.

Also, please stop trying to make Civ 'more realistic'. Games aren't meant to be such thing as 'realistic', they are meant to be 'fun'.
Of course, when you have a 'simulation' game like Civ (which is an empire-building simulator) you want it to model the reality the more accuratedly possible. So in turn you want it to be 'deeper modelled' rather than 'more realistic'.
Some may think that is a matter of semantics, but i think it's a matter of right-use of the language.

Sorry, again... I hope the moderators don't take any actions on me

Keep civilized

David

Various people looking for more complex resource/shield/commerce development models

Mmmmm Colonization had a lovely set up for the various elements extracted in raw form from the land, manufactured in to goods and distributed/sold. Track it down if you have never played it (theres a windows friendly version on various abandonware sites, I don't think you can still buy it).

I'm very much in agreement that something along those lines should be introduced/developed anyway - the strategic/luxury resources introduced in Civ3 looks as if the developers are sniffing in that direction too.

Originally posted by Drakken

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.


I guess I'm in the minority here, but I'd rather not see a change to hexes. Yes, I understand that being able to move diagonally bothers some people since you can move much further (by a factor of 1.4, roughly) if you go corner-to-corner rather than face-to-face. But hexes have their problems. For one thing, there's only 6 possibly directions you can move in rather than 8. For another, I like the fact that squares (or diamonds) let you use the cardinal directions: N, S, E, W, and NE, SE, NW, SW. You lose this with hexes. And having those as the possible moves works very nicely with the numeric keypad on keyboards, while having six moves would require something a little less intuitive.

If hexes were arranged so that E and W were aligned with faces of the hexes, then to go straight N or S, you'd have to zig-zag, which to me would be even more annoying than the diagonal moves with the current system. What's more, the NW, NE, SW, and SE faces of the hexes wouldn't really be directly in those directions, since each face of a hex is 60 degrees different (instead of 90 for a square, or 45 counting diagonals). So if one face was due W, the next face clockwise wouldn't be straight NW, it would be somewhere between NW and N, and the next would be between N and NE, with, as I said, no way to go straight N.

I've played plenty of wargames (and RPGs) where hexes were used, and I think they're great for local maps, where movement relative to other units is most important and it doesn't really matter which way north is. But for the world-spanning map of Civ, I'd rather have N, S, E, and W be clear. Civ isn't strictly a wargame: battles are stategic, not tactical.

Any movement system with discrete locations (as opposed to a continuous map with no hexes OR squares) is going to have its limitations. I'm not blindly opposed to hexes, I just think its kind of silly how much some people think that a square-based movement system is the worst part of Civ. I think it's served the game well for three different releases, and while switching in the 4th to hexes instead might improve a few aspects, I think it would detract just as much as it helped. I say that Civ 4 should either do away with tiles altogether and go continous, or, better yet, stick with the simple, intuitive,perfectly adequate system that's currently used. For what it's worth, my wife liked Civ 1's system best, where the squares were arranged so that N,S,E,and W were staright and NE, SE, etc were diagonal. She complained that the Civ 2/3 system, with N,S, etc being the diagonals, made it harder to see where you were going without actaully changing the mechanics at all. She's what I'd call a casual player, and I just bring her opinion up to point out that what appeals to a casual player can be very different from what appeals to a hardcore gamer. Personally I like Civ 3 the best so far, but Civ 1 had a much broader appeal, and I hope Civ 4 doesn't keep moving in a direction catering to serious gamers only and ignoring the casual player.

I say that Civ 4 should either do away with tiles altogether and go continous, or, better yet, stick with the simple, intuitive,perfectly adequate system that's currently used.

Couldn't agree more. My personal preference would be to see Civ do away with tiles altoegether, however that raises real headaches for implementation programmatically speaking, and doubtless without significant investment in development would open up the door to god knows how many exploits. In the meantime square/diamond tiles is really the only order of the day that can be practically handled.

Three Words:
More Easter Eggs

probably already stated, but if not I think that there should be a better way to add/remove buildings and resources and stuff like that to maps.
Currently you can add a building or something like that to a map, but when you make a new map you must re-create the uint, or atleast re-enter it into the game. Same with other things you can add/remove
My idea is just to have one window in the editor where there are lists of all possible buildings. Then when making a map you just select all the buildings you want to have available. There would still be the staple buildings, units, etc. as the default but i think that having all units ever used available in all maps would be nice.
The other part of this is that the game shuld come with more buldings, units, resources, etc. than are default. Since people have come up with so many different mods they should take suggestions and add this as possible options in the above mentioned list. This would amke it much easier to customize maps because you would not have to go out and find or make pictures for everything, some would already be there.

my 2 cents

I know I'm just rehashing other people but put me in favor of ...

-- Relimiting (a la Civ 2) science/luxury/tax sliders based on gov't.

-- Culture groups coming complete with flavor units.

-- Partisans!

-- Civil wars!

-- Internal factions that give bonuses/penalties and must be managed (a la Tropico).

-- Private sector production/economy.

-- An advisor that lets me know who has what to trade w/o talking to each civ.

-- Brokering peace/war/deals between other civs.

-- Civs picking wonders based more on culture group/religion.

-- Deeper attitude bonuses/penalties based on culture/religion.

-- Scripting!

-- Half-dozen good scenarios at launch.

And, I didn't see this above; it's my personal pet peeve:

** Upgrade berserks to marines, not guerillas!!! I hate losing amphibious assault for 1/2 an era.**

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/article/0,12543,599827-2,00.html

an interesting on building mag tubes (SMAC) and bridging ocean squares.

Idea: Any unit can retreat.

My reasoning: If I attack your pikemen with my swordsmen and things don't go well for my swordsmen, they'd like to retreat. What are your pikemen going to do to stop them? If they break ranks to pursue me, they give up their advantage, which is their tightly formed defensive formation. Pursuing a retreating foe is an inherently offensive action, something pikemen, at 1.3.1, aren't good at. They'd be foolish to try, since once they weren't in their defensive positions anymore, my swordsmen could change their mind about retreating.

How it would work: A faster unit should always have a chance to retreat from a slower one, as in Civ 3 (although I'd also let somebody with 3 MP retreat from someone with only 2). In addition, units that are the same speed or slower than their opponent have some chance to retreat. That chance would depend on a number of factors. One would be whether they were defending something worthwhile (a unit would be less likely to retreat if it was in a city or guarding workers, settlers, artillery, etc). Another factor would be whether it could reach safety (a unit would be more likely to successfully retreat if it could retreat to a city or a square with other friendly troops). But most of all, a unit would be more likely to retreat if its defense strength exceeded the attack strength of the enemy (regardless of which units were the orginal attacker and defender). Using my example above, swordsmen (3.2.1) would get a decent chance to retreat from pikemen (1.3.1) because in order to pursue the retreating swordsmen, the pikemen essentially have to attack them, and when the swordsmen turn around to defend themselves, the pikemen's attack of 1 isn't as good as the swordsmen's defense of 2. Most of the time, the pikemen would choose not to pursue, and count themselves victorious for having beaten off the swordsmen. By this logic, swordsmen would have a much lower (maybe even zero) chance to retreat from other swordsmen, since the advantage would go to the pursuer rather than the retreater.

Perhaps the way it could be implemented is that when a unit is down to 1 HP and wants to retreat, it must first survive one more round of combat, and in that round, the potential retreater is defending and the other unit attacking (regardless of who originally attacked). If the retreater loses, they lose their last HP and are destroyed, but if they win, the retreat is succesful (and the other unit is wounded- or not?). High-attack/low-defense units that are very likely to lose that final round as the defender would choose not to try to retreat. (Many of the high-attack/low-defense units are mounted units with more than 1 MP, so they'd be able to retreat from foot-units anyway.)

One benefit: A number of people who post here have suggested that infantry (of all ages, not just industrial) have been historically used for both attack and defense. If my spearmen/pikemen/musketmen/riflemen/infantry could retreat from my opponent's unit of the same kind (and they could, using the scheme outlined above) then I'd be more likely to consider using them offensively, even though they have weaker stats on offense.

Another benefit: Some people complain about the one-on-one combat model in Civ3 (and 1 & 2) and suggest changing it for Civ 4. If more units could retreat instead of be destroyed, it would allow numerical superiority to be more like the advantage it is in real life. Currently, a stack of infantry is likely to lose many of its units when attacking enemy infantry: even if the attacker's stack outnumbers the defender's greatly. The defender still has the advantage in each one-on-one combat no matter how many attackers show up, and can usually wipe out many attacking units before going down. With retreat possible for the attacking infantry, however, the attacker, once victorious, would still have many/most units (although many of those would be redlined). As long as these weren't counter-attacked right away and had some time to heal up, the end result would be that bringing superior numbers to the fight allowed victory with fewer casualties.

In effect, potential retreat for all units would make combat between stacks a little like combat using an army, except that, for armies, the attacking unit always retreats without being destroyed, to be replaced by the next unit in the army, whereas with individual units, retreat would only happen sometimes. Stacking three units together and attacking a solitary defender (one at a time) would therefore not give quite as much an advantage as using a three unit army, but it would give [IB]some[/B] amount of advantage. As it stands, unless they're in an army, multiple attackers don't cooperate at all, but if they could sometimes retreat, that would allow some level of cooperation, and all without discarding the one-on-one combat model that has been in Civ since the good ole' days of Civ 1.

How about putting civ 2 free with civ 4??

When I bought CivIII, it came with a free CivII disk. I don't know how or why, because I wasn't the one who bought it.

My ideas:

1. (This has probably been mentioned already) Modify the AI engine so that the AI has an actual reason to go to war with you, not just those sneak attacks that really piss you off. The AI should declare war 'intelligently'. To start off, certain things will trigger degrading of AI's attitude towards you. In turn, this will be the only factor that determines war declaration. When the AI's attitude gets bad enough, this will cause them to reason with you diplomatically to stop doing whatever you are doing to get their attitude so low, may this be breaking numerous treaties with the AI, entering their territory, etc. If something goes wrong in those diplomatic talks (more responses and requests will need to be added to the diplomacy screen), the AI will have an 'actual' reason to go to war with you. The reasons for war need to reflect real life.

Take some real life examples... The recent Iraq war was started because we thought Iraq was holding WMD. In CivIV this could be applied where if a civ has broken alot of deals and is holding alot of WMD, the AI's attitude will degrade eventually leading to war declaration.

2. War needs to advance as it did in real life. In Ancient times basically all the way up until the American Revolution, The opposing armies would just line up and charge at each other. War tactics need to progressively advance as time pushes forward.

3. Naval warfare. Self explanatory. The Navy is the most important part of the US Military. In CivIII, naval warfare is pourly represented. Also as above, naval warfare need to become more advanced as time presses on. Yeah, early on ships would just line up and shoot until the other was sunk, but in the more advanced ages, after missiles are developed, ships need to be able to attack at range. A ship can launch an anti-surface weapon from 500+ miles, and according to Civ that would mean that a ship could attack (land or sub-surface) from 5 squares away (if each square is supposed to represent 100 square miles).

Well those are my ideas for now.

i realize this is out of format.... and for that i appologize...sum im sure have been mentioned...again i appologize....but i must get my say in to make myself feel better and i dont have time to fully write out all these ideas....i also think most will understand wut im saying here....


1- The military system needs to be fixxed, the whole idea that everytime you fight one unit or the other is completely wiped out is absurd...i dont think its wrong that it happens upon occassion but in reality most of the time there is a winner and a loser with the loser retreating and both sides hurt...
2- the province idea was amazing...i dont think ive heard a better idea of how to organize things than that thus far...it would add so many dynamics to the game and the same time make many of the current ones make more since if it was properly incorporated
3- diplomacy wise...I really must have multilateral negotiations...if there is one thing i hate its when i make a mpp with two nations and they go to war the next turn....its so stupid....i think you should be able to negotiate with as many nations as you like at once... this would add a dimension to the game that is sorely needed....for example how much easier would it not be to have a real world war with 2 or 3 *distinct* sides going at it in a normal game? and trade embargoes would make more sense
4- the trade system has got to be changed....there must be defined trade routes and such which can then be privateered, cut off, or undermined....history is littered with wars that were over trade routes....and changes in the course of the world that resulted from blocked ones (for example the discovery of America)
5-rebellions and civil wars must be put back in...there must be a separation of the two though....rebellions are for provinces or cities who want to break away and form their own nation or join another....civil wars are for changes in gov or reforms in society (i.e.- you didnt spend enough on luxuries so your citizens revolted because of thier low standard of living)
6-i was never around for civ 1...too young at the time to play....but the idea of interesting little tidbits and popups like sewspaper clippings sounds good...i already derive great joy from having my cities celebrate we love the king day and such ...so that would be even more interesting and fun
7-the naval game must be revamped...it just stinks...dont ask me how to do it...just needs to be done
8-the whole air system at the moment must be reworked...who ever heard of a lone bomber bombing a city....its a stupid thought...its not how they're used...actually all military units are used in tandem with eachother....so i suppose you should be able to time units to attack into different areas at the same time and the same hex at the same time...i guess land wise that would mean putting unit directions...so you could flank, attack the rear...and so on
8-production scales...in general most things do not take years to build when being built by the state and such...they take less time like training a civil war era infantry unit would have taken a minimum of a month and max of 6 (prolly not the exact numbers but you get the point)
9-is it not true that a city can build multiple things at once...YES IT IS! that also annoys me about the game...why cant you use your shields in a split up fashion at least (actually i dont like shields i think it should just be a number which can be done in decimals) to produce multiple things? like it makes no sense at all to not be able to produce a rifleman and a temple all at the same time...
10-im in awe that atari has the guts to bring in religion...i honestly didnt think the company had it in em (to be fair i didnt think any company did) but now that they have they need to do a good job with it....it influenced and still influences the world in alot of ways....a good example of modern times is the iraq situation....the sunni's dont like the shiites and the americans are infidels and so on and so forth....
11-military units should be given automatic names according to their city of creation (ie-the 1st and 2nd New Orleans Regiments) and then upon making a veteran type status the user should be given the oppertunity to give them a nickname (ie-our 1st New Orleans Regiment now becomes the New Orleans Tigers)
12-governments must be reworked...the bottom line is that with the current system one gov will always be better than the others and therefor the comp will gravitate to it automatically...there needs to be that check and balance type thing...communism is absolute but your people tend to be unhappy so you better be able to back up your harsh rule with an iron fist or they may revolt and break away (real world example-USSR)...democracy is good until your people realize they can vote thier way into the treasuryand pay themselves....republics are good..as long as the other provincial reps are on your side and wut you want is in thier best interest....the original american model is awsome except that pesky congress keeps getting in your way or helps you if more provinces would like the idea....fuedalism is great..till you wanna pass a reform or tax sumbody...theocracies are great until your people change religions or get annoyed by having to go to the temples everyday
13-railroads should not defy the laws of physics....enough said....
14-im thinking that nukes need to be beefed up sum.... i just dont think thier power is shown to its full extent..furthermore i think the pc needs to be more sparing when using them....when a war gets bad it shouldnt immediately resort to them...i mean it just doesnt work that way....
15-nukes need to find a way into spy and terroism missions....think how easy it would actually be to sneak a nuke into a city and then detonate it....its a scary thought but thats my real fear these days....
16-culture specific unit lines if not civ specific....
17-the way certain units work should be rethought...the basic attacker, defender, bombarder process is not a good one... combined arms must be taken into consideration...when you assault that one hex you're not just assaulting that musketman but also that cav and the artillery and the other 2 musket units along with the 2 pikes there....also unit strengths should be used but units should get flagged as certain types....for example...in the medieval ages....you would have a hvy cav, lt cav, hvy inf, lt inf, militia, each with its own advantages and capabilities against certain things...actually napoleonic europe is the best example...
18-diplomatic annexation.....again the point is made...
19-economics needs to take a much greater role in this....its not an all up thing...nations rise and fall on thier economies....revolts are triggered on thier downturns...incredible works on thier rises...
20-i also agree that pollution needs to be fixxed sumhow....not sure hows best...
21-i have always thought it wierd that when you conquer a city it is automatically part of your nation then...why cant it be given back at the end of a war unless you demand it in return for peace...essentially automatic annexation doesnt make since to me....annexation was always deliberate.. you could even tie it in with the provinces...annexing whole provinces or districts...
22-should fuedalism not be able to be undermined through dealing with the individual lords? it was a trademark of the medieval ages that nobles could change sides whenever they wanted because they had thier own armies...
23-i always thought the civ money scale was wierd...this is just sumthing that is me...but i have always wanted real dollar amounts...that are realistic according the economics of your country....
24-should international issues not be a subject of your citizens contentedness...or even national issues...do you allow abortion?...what are your environmental rules?...do you allow slavery? (if so which race and this should also be a larger issue as well through some method or another)... should your nation interfere in the so and so's and john doe's war? and so forth
25-the UN has to be fixxed into a realistic entity not just sum stupid wonder that means nothing except a diplo victory with like the top 3 nations and progressively a civ can demand a veto right with the rest just having votes on various issues....like to send UN troops...and if you want to send UN troops and its approved then you can temporarily make some of your troops UN and use them in a police action however that may be....
26-international media....ever since the moveable type printing press the media has a had a huge role in the politics and feelings of peoples...this needs to be implemented sumhow in such a way you can interact with it...like in particularly bad situations you can keep the press out of things by blocking them out or only allowing them to see good things....all the way to bribing them or controlling them totally in an autocracy....
27-is it not true you can have irrigation and a mine in the same area?....'nough said

thanks for your toleration of my long winded and out of format post :)

Originally posted by homeyg
My ideas:

1. (This has probably been mentioned already) Modify the AI engine so that the AI has an actual reason to go to war with you, not just those sneak attacks that really piss you off. The AI should declare war 'intelligently'. To start off, certain things will trigger degrading of AI's attitude towards you. In turn, this will be the only factor that determines war declaration. When the AI's attitude gets bad enough, this will cause them to reason with you diplomatically to stop doing whatever you are doing to get their attitude so low, may this be breaking numerous treaties with the AI, entering their territory, etc. If something goes wrong in those diplomatic talks (more responses and requests will need to be added to the diplomacy screen), the AI will have an 'actual' reason to go to war with you. The reasons for war need to reflect real life.

Take some real life examples... The recent Iraq war was started because we thought Iraq was holding WMD. In CivIV this could be applied where if a civ has broken alot of deals and is holding alot of WMD, the AI's attitude will degrade eventually leading to war declaration.

You're joking of course. The recent Iraq war was started because of domestic politics and military/political and economic strategies that make little sense to anyone aside from "our" leaders. Like all wars it came down to "our" leaders feeling that the war could be won and that the profit would be worth the risks and costs - just like in Civ. Perhaps the AI (particularly Persian) needs to be a little better at evaluating those risks and benefits, but to force AIs to act honorably and rationally when our leaders in real life do neither . . .

How about having some city improvements being graphically placed outside the city, where possible/accurate according to the terrain?

This would add realism into the game, and also provide some sort of city sprawl.

They would have to be protected by a terrain improvement, like a fort or guard tower. If left unprotected, an enemy could occupy that tile and weaken the city in some way, depending on the type of improvement. To increase the protection of the improvement, units can also be placed there, of course.

Tile resourses could be refined and distributed throughout the empire from these buildings/improvements.

Been trying to read back over this long list of suggestions since making mine. A popular choice seems to be making Nukes more powerful - I can only assume people mean in terms of damaging enemy military units - I personally find the thought of 2 hits by nukes turning a cities lush Grasslands irretrievably into Desert tiles enough of a deterrent that I have never got involved in MAD warfare, something I cannot say happened in Civ 1/2 (it was just too tempting to knock out heavy fortifications that way). Nuke warfare was always based largely not on the fact that you could destroy the enemies military, but on the promise of not leaving much for the military to defend.

Can I make a suggestion that 'Civ4 Ideas' gets a board of it's own? Would make it a heck of a lot easier to discuss and read :)

great idea!!!
pm Thunderfall about it :-)

I've made a post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84323) on Site Feedback about it :D

I have an idea:
A spending system on barracks:
a conscription system and how many money will you spend at material and training
so you could have a mass army with bad equipped men
or a small ultra strong army
and the population points will go down on how many humans are being conscripted.
and to choose between a standing army or none (in medieval times a standing army was almost non -existant)
this would give a unique edge to gameplay

My most important ideas:

I putted a lot of work in these 2 sites. Please read them

re-trade:
http://www2.vhl.tudelft.nl/~emile/civilization/trade_idea.html
(everybody loves this idea)

new unit movement model:
http://www2.vhl.tudelft.nl/~emile/civilization/unit_movement_model.html

Think abot TFT users who have to play at a fixed resolution (interpolation gives bad results). Extra zoom level would be good



some other ideas

- More fousssed on people. In the current game scientists are useless (even if you mod the game)

- Food trade, so cities at bad food locations but good trade locations can be big too.

- Make it more dynamical. Would the number 1 civ suddenly fell into decay? Is it possible for a civ which start in 140 AD to become #1 after 1500 years? No. It is just an annoying flaw in Civ3.
Currently the strong civs become stronger and the weak civs weaker. (Except at the end of course). do something about it.


colonies

colonies are great. But they need:
- harbor function, so they can also act as an oversea trade-post. Very cool
- They got absorbed when the borders of a rival civ gots them. That is not fun. They need their own cultural border of radius 0.
However I think that they can, just like cities, flip to the other civ by cultural influence
- If colonies would have a harbor function by default than you can build colonies on seas and ocean squares to collect lux+strat-resources (eg oysters, oil) there the harbor connects them to the trade-network.




- I am surprised to see that combat units do not have ethnicity there workers DO have ethnicity.

- A real taxbar. Not the fake distribution of money to science, treasurem hapiness



For civ4 they should introduce much more city-micromanagement and less cities.

You can play with limited cities there settler building is disabled.
A way to get new cities should be
- succesful colonies can flip into cities
- conquest of enemy cities.

I have been playing with mods in which you just have 1 or 2 cities and it is lots of fun.
It was the first time I really felt like ceasar when I played with rome.



Some pros:
- No stress. With vanilla I always had the feeling: "oh great spot, quick, a settler, wow another great spot, another settler, quick quick before the AI gets there"
"help, an empty spot in my terretory, quick, a city only the prevent the AI from buliding a city"
- Good for the landscape
- No annoying AI cities in your terretory
- No inflation. in other words: if you just have a few cities then they are all very valuable. If you have 40 cities you don't really care about 1 more or less

a combination of civ3, simcity 4, red alert and the sims. All that in an internet game. Make our own civilization where every gameplayer has its own role. Like mayors, leaders, generals, individuals who has a choice to become a leader, general or mayor. Communities will arise and fall.

A submarine and an airplane, should be able to occupy the same square, reguardless of who owns them. The same goes for many other cases. (Sub-surface/surface warships, land units/air units, etc). Also, allied units should be able to occupy the same square, reguardless of what they are.

The new concept I hope Civ4 will incorporate is the city-states concept.

Usually in history, a civilization does not build cities on its own. The growth of an empire is usually through the conquest of neighboring city states.

I want Civ4 to have several hundred different city states. The player has to either conquer the state or acquire it through marriage (through popular vote in democracy, and through senate resolution in republic only when nationalism is available).

When the culture in a city is really low, the city can become independent if the citizens are not happy. The city will become a city state in which the player cannot control. All of the units produced by this city will rebel against the player. This will create a mini civil war. This concept will force the player to be more careful about his culture and the sad citizens.

In response to Jorg's idea, I think that would be really cool where everyone had their own place, making it even more realistic. There are probably other problems, but how would you solve this situation: the civilization has begun a war and is deciding where to deploy its units but, alas, the Secretary of Defence is no where to be seen, for s/he happens to be on vacation in Jamaica.

(*) The science tree/model really needs a huge overhaul.

I also think it is ridiculous to trade science. Science can't be traded. It is better if you would gradually acquire the sciences of other civs if you have diplomatic/trade/war contact with them.

eg: after trading luxery goods over 20 turns you would get a random science from the other civ

A more indepth post from me:
You should be left in the dark about how you could walk through the science tree.

It could work this way. You got scientists/priests working on something. You cant decide what and they just come up with something.
For other sciences you could get them by
(1) having intensive trading contact with other civs
(2) from your neighbours (only if the borders are adjacent)
(3) Stealing. Sending some MarcoPolo guy out.

Example:
Every science has its own science-beakers. So you got science-beakers for gunpowder, for bronze-working etc.
The chinese got gunpowder so by having intensive trading contact with them you should get science-beakers for gunpowder.
If your border is adjacent to the chinese you should also get beakers for it.
Universities and libraries and temples could multiply the beakers.
So you can get gunpowder without doing research

Notice that when YOUR scientist are doing research the beaker story dont hold. They just pop up with something. Again: unies and libraries could help them.



It should be possible to LOSE sciences.
eg by not havong enough people in cities, lack of libraries, l