C3C is out, and there've been several threads (on both Poly and CFC) on what should be in Civ4. Just so the forum isn't spammed with ideas, here's an official thread to post all of your ideas. When you post, use the following criteria:

Remember, try to keep discussion to a minimum.

Name of Feature: This should be something generic, such as, "Canals".

What this feature should do in the game: Write several paragraphs on what this feature should do. To use the canals example, you might say, "allow ships to pass over land".

How would this feature work: List how the inner workings of this feature should be. For the canals example, it would be something like, "canals can only be built on tiles with coast on both sides, or coast on one side, and a city on the other".

Gameplay: How will this affect gameplay, and the all important comment - How will the game prevent this feature from being an exploit. In other words, balance. For example, you don't want canals crossing every single tile on the continent. It also goes deeper -


AI - How does it affect the AI, and how will they use it?
Processor Power - Will this take up a lot of memory, CPU time, etc.? If so, it might not be very possible.
Complexity - Is this feature easy to grasp, or is there a lot involved? If there is a lot involved, is it optional? (i.e., logistics).
Programming Complexity - Will this be easy, or hard to program? If it's something hard, or too complex, then it might not make it into the game.
Multiplayer - If this feature is to be in the multiplayer realm, what changes would need to be made? For example, expansionist civs can't pop free cities in MP elimination mode in C3C.
Exploits - Is this feature exploitive, and can it be an exploit? How would you prevent the player from exploiting this feature where the AI can't? Does it reveal information to the player before they should be able to acquire such knowledge? (i.e., revealing the map before mapmaking).
Player Decisions - What are the reasons for and against using this feature in gameplay? To use an example - terrain improvements. You can either mine (+1 shield), or irragate (+1 food). If possible, will this feature force the player to make game choices? This includes direct and indirect affects of this feature.
Affects - How does this affect other features of the game? Does it hinder the gameplay of other areas of the game? How would it hurt/enhance any ideas already posted in this thread?



Another important thing to remember: Each new civ series brough along some new (and very major) feature to the game.

Civ2 - Scenario Editor, Map Editor, Custom Map Sizes (I'd like to see this one back), Diplomacy features.

Civ3 - Culture (points, borders, etc.), Great Leaders, more editor features, new victory conditions.

Try to think of something that could be a new (and major) feature of Civ4.

Old Civ4 Ideas Thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37172)

Multiplayer-

MORE THAN 8.

Enough said.

A more robust combat system that can take multiple units and combined arms within a stack into account. If you have 10 tanks going up against a single infantry unit, each tank shouldn't have to individually fight the infantry one by one, they should simply be able to swarm the poor guy and get it the battle over with.

Similarly, if the stack of units you are attacking with includes quick, blitz-type units along with strong, brute-force units, aircraft and artillery, your stack as a whole should inherently be stronger...a "whole being greater than the sum of it's parts" type of philosophy.

Stack Bombard

Airplanes move just like any other unit
You can trade units to other nations for a certain amount of time (or loan them).

and the one I want the most:

Having more extensive commercial sliders.. For you can set your science to say 94% and have 6% going to your treasury.

I've got some rather cosmetic ideas for Civ4. (Not following the prescribed format because these ideas don't actually have that much to do with gameplay...)

--Wonder and Improvement names tailored to culture groups--

By this I mean to correct the slightly uncomfortable feeling I get when I, for example, build a "Statue of Zeus" when playing as the Incas.

One might go so far as to suggest entirely *different* wonders and/or improvements for different culture groups, but I am not necessarily suggesting that. I think it would be a fine game if all civs could build basically identical improvements (as they already can of course) but if the improvements had different names and appearances in different culture groups.

--The ability to name features on the world map--

Perhaps it sounds silly, but I think it would be really neat. If there was some way to label features or areas on the map... that would just be tons of fun, at least for me--and surely I'm not the only one... :)

--Soundtrack tailored to cultural groups--

Doesn't it feel funny to hear a European medieval theme while playing as Korea for example?

Anyway, as to less cosmetic ideas, I was thinking it would be better if each civ had a unique unit for each era. This would require creativity, of course--how do you assign the Inca a modern UU for example?--but I think it would be interesting and fun enough to be worth it.

And I was thinking it would be good to have Great Leader types associated with each Civ trait. Military leaders are associated with the Militaristic trait, and Scientific leaders with the Scientific trait. So why not have Commercial, Agricultural and Religious leaders, as well as Admirals and Pioneers or something?

A Commercial leader maybe has a chance to pop up when a city reaches a certain gold-to-population ratio, or when commercial techs are researched, or something. He can hurry Commercial wonders or instigate a Commercial Age, when all cities bring in some percentage more in tax or something like that.

Agricultural leaders increase agricultural surplus in all cities by some percentage, or hurry agricultural wonders... Pop up conditions? Agriultural techs maybe?

Admirals would be just like military Great Leaders, building armadas instead of armies.

Religious leaders, I'm not sure--Pop up conditions I am really not sure about, and effects, I'm thinking just maybe either a great religious reformation (+1 content and/or happy face in each city for 20 years) or hurry religious wonders? (There's not that many religious wonders though. Perhaps some arguments can be made to include certain later wonders in this group, like the UN, or maybe new wonders can be designed?)

Pioneers I'm really not sure. I envision some kind of uber-scout, but that would only be useful in early stages of the game. (Though if the Pioneer can move from land to water and back, and move over ocean, then it would be very useful up to the invention of Navigation at least...) But perhaps Pioneers can have different kinds of use in the industrial and modern ages. One weird idea would be that Pioneers can found cities *inside* other Civ's borders? (This would be similar to how American "Pioneers" helped build settlements right in the center of "Indian country"...) And/Or maybe Pioneers would have something to do with building spaceships to go to Alpha Centauri?

Anyway, I'll leave it to others to discuss merits and demerits to these ideas...

I'd like to see canals and bridges.

Hi there this is the first time I've posted anything, but here is one or two of many thoughts I have had on possible Civ 4 additions.
Rivers are a resource that never run dry in civ 3 and lower. I think that each city, canal and irrigated field takes a certain amount of water from the river. The amount of water that is supplied may depend on the length and type of terrain that feeds the river. So when populataions of cites become large this can become a limiting factor. If you are also able to build a Dam across river and prevent water from following to another Civ maybe allowing your Civ to exert a certain amount of influence over them maybe even to start a war.
Also aquaducts for a city cost the same amount of sheilds if it is one square away from a river or 2+ more away. If think workers should bulid them be they canal as has been mentioned, or a aquaduct that can be destoryed by attackers. A cities population can be maintain if irrigation or roads are destroyed as long as the surrounding resources allow. But the aquaduct or canal once destroyed and the water suppy is cut off from a river the cities population reduces to 6 on the next turn. This will make home land defence more of a challenge than it is at the moment.
These ideas need more refined but I've typed enough.

Cheers

We definitely need canals, but like Chieftess said, having extreme limits to keep them from being an exploit.

A UU from ea. era would be nice. But you should be able to research something that allows you to build a bridge over costal squares, or you could build an underground tunnel or something. So you don't have to wait for Caravels and Galleons to transport units.

I really liked Civ 2 -- Test of Time, where you could go and colonize Alpha Centauri or have like 3 different worlds and ways to get to them. That was a good idea and I'd like to see that in another civ... anyway

Finally, AI that isn't still as dumb as a post when you reach Demigod, Deity, and Sid levels but still gets all its bonuses, that is the real problem with the Civ games. We should get the Civs to act like they really did. The Iroquois would be more friendly and giving. But Firaxis and Atari did a very, very poor job of doing that.

A)I would like more options in diplomacy.Example:Players who could have the possibility to interfear on ending the war of two other civilizations.In other words diplomacy between three civ(like in multiplayer).Also units might be a part of the trade(buy-sell),like tecn.
B)Airplanes & helicopters sould have a movement on their own,like all other units or something like that.And certain naval units sould have a transport capacity.
C)Victory condition Moovies(like the one in space race).After so many hours of game it is nice to see an ending video,makes you realise that you won!
D)Maybe a variety of weather conditions that take place during the game-ages.

I think that they are enought for the time.
And...please do not release CIV4 soon!We just got C3C :D

Cultural Great Leaders.

This idea has been dicussed before, but the thread is now closed (Conquests Requests, Fixes and Changes forum) so here's a summary of that discussion:

A culture flip of a rival's city has a chance to produce a Cultural Great Leader. Other possible triggers include a certain percentage of cities in WLTKD, when your Civ builds a wonder matching one of your traits, etc... I prefer the first one since Culutral Great Leaders are revolutionaries, born out of resistance to oppression.

What would they do?
1) Rush a culture flip of a rival city. A flip caused by a Cultural Great Leader cannot produce another Cultural Great Leader.
2) Increase Civ-wide culture production for 20 turns.
3) Build a Holy or Crusading army
4) If the crusading army wins a battle, a "Holy Pilgramige" small wonder can be built, providing culture and acting as an instant tourist attraction (instead of waiting 1000 years)
5) Rush build certain religious or artistic wonders.

Names can be religious leaders, philosophers, artists, and anyone that has had a profound effect on the philosophy or way of thinking of a civilization.

Gameplay: Cultural conquest can now be as important as military conquest. A combination of the two could be devastating if done right.
Rush flipping a city is balanced by the possibility of it flipping back. If you get greedy and decide to flip a core city, size 20, then chances are you aren't going to keep it for long, but it could provide a strong foothold in a military campaign. Plus getting the leader in there will be difficult without an ROP or armed escort.

AI- don't know.
Processor Power - no different than Scientific GLs
Complexity - I think it is intuitive, though it does add another level of Great Leaders.
Programming Complexity - Easy. Uses mostly existing features.
Multiplayer- Improves the dynamic to take it away from total warmongering.
Exploits- It's powerful, but limited. I think it would work.
Player Decisions- Allows some agressiveness for peaceful builders, who are usually on the defensive.
Affects- No major ill affects. I think it really improves depth of play.

Although this isn't the only change I want, this is the thing I want to see that I don't think anyone else will post. I hate the way the navy works in the civ series. As time progresses, all units except the navy get significantly expanded range (ie. railroads and airports). I think that in the industrial age, there should be a new city improvement for coastal cities that works exactly like an airport, but is for ships instead. This would allow a ship to be strategicaly relocated without having to send it on a 10 or 20 year cruise. And just like an airplane the ship would have to start its turn in the departure city, and it would not be able to move out of the arival city untill the next turn.

I second the stack bombard mentioned above.

I also think that RoP needs a bit of re-thinking. For example, why not be able to sign naval RoP only, instead of permitting every unit free access to every corner of your land?

I've often wondered why not have a shunned civ to represent traditional enemies. That is, Carthage will always have a poor attitude towards Rome, France will always have one toward England, The Dutch and Spain... everyone toward the US...

Hmm. Following that principle, we'd have to put Canada in the game as a civ, just so everyone has someone to be nice to.


Later!

--The Clown to the Left

i'll elaborate on my CTP 2 thread.
1. more techs, governments and units
I don't know about the rest of y'all, but i can't stand how your empire's evolution stops basically at the modern age. i want future techs like nanotechnology, undersea terraforming, cloning, fusion, anti-matter prodution and so on. Future governments could include virtual democracy or technocracy like in CTP. I agree with the stacking ideas above, but i think as time progresses from the end of the modern age, better combined arms tactics and countermeasures should be introduced. Satellites for example, if u learn how to build them, why can't u launch them to see the whole world, and why can't your enemy destroy them? Also, terrorist would be a great modern day barbarian. random attacks in your cities due to economic, political or militaristic circumstances in the game would put an interesting twist on things.
2. increased balance and greater detail between scientific, political, economic and militaristic factors.
we all know what type of government you have, how much money, and how big your army is influences other countries in the real world, so why not make it more realistic. additional resources like marijuana could be included to introduce the black market into global economy, which influences neighboring countries, like the u.s. and canada. also, more detail with embargoes so u can pick what to give a country and what not to give.

The ability to trade units with other civs. Like giving aid or asking for aid against opposing forces with friendly people's mercenaries. This was in Civ2 and for some reason not in Civ3.

Also more civs.. way more.

1. Summary Diplomacy Screen. It would include columns for each rival civ with a list of techs, resources, luxuries, GP, cities, and workers that are available for trade. It would also list The resources, luxuries, and techs that the civ needs from the player. Each column would have the leader head at the top. The player could scroll left and right if there were more rival civs than columns available on screen. Double clicking the leader head would start regular negotiations.

2. Room for more civs on the civ selection screen.

3. "CivScript", a basic scripting language that would let tinkerers make advanced rule adjustments for scenarios. Every facet of the game should be turned into an object that could be manipulated by amateur programmers to make truly unique and custom gaming experiences.

-r

OK, lets really blue sky it.

How bout each city is its own sim-city? You get to lay it out and build it. Generic site plans available for the urban plan deprived. Don't like sim-city?, ok insert Rome, or Zeus, or the Egyptian building game. Micromanagers can go nuts! place every temple, every building of any kind that can be constructed, in advance and let it grow "organically" over time, once complete, it affects the city and the civilization. Lots more zoom levels so you can go from street corners to a view from high, high above one or more of your continents. And the cities can grow together. The word for world is city. You don't have to build roads, they grow organically between cities with something to trade. Interstates might take some direction. But what the game is about is cities and their boarder growth that makes your civilization.

Watch the inhabitants march around, use the parks and stadiums, trafic on roads learn the automobile and watch the modle T evolve to the VW bug. You don't even have to win the game to have a good time.

Changing of the Universal Suffrage wonder.

I think that it should be a "small wonder", assuming that they still keep the concept of small wonders in Civ 4, which I think they will. In real life, there is more than just one country that has granted universal suffrage, and granting it first didn't prevent any other country from granting it. Not going to say that the United States was the first country to grant universal suffrage, but still- we have it and that's all that matters. Its the same for any other country, it doesn't matter how long it took to give people freedom of self determination (ie a republic), just that they have it, and that it is never taken away.

It should be a small wonder, and having it makes all other democracies and republics that do not have it get discontent and more unhappy people. That would be realistic, and it would still mean you'd have a good reason to get it before anyone else, or at least to be not so far behind in getting it.

War for democracies and republics.

I am not advocating a return to Civ 2's way of having a council randomly say "no you can't declare war" or forcing you to end the war.

I am saying this: think of any war in world history. Almost never are both sides democracies or republics. Dictatorships, fascist states, communist states, and monarchies, there have been many times when they have declared war on each other and on republics (and democracies, but I don't think there are any TRUE democracies in the world, because in a true democracy anyone can propose a law, and everyone can vote on it, whereas we use a republic, where we elect people do do that for us. Democracies only worked in ancient one-city countries), but when has a democratic state declared war on another democratic state?

Its pretty rare.

There should be some rule making it more difficult to for a republic/democracy to declare war on another republic/democracy, at least by making extra war weariness or something.

Change in the way war weariness works.

They should make it such that you do not have increased war weariness from losing battles IN your borders, especially defensive battles. In real life, it seems to DECREASE war weariness, actually. Think of how enraged America became after Pearl Harbor was bombed, do you think that that had increased our war weariness? Hardly. Big losses on the home front should reduce war weariness, as the people rally up for their common defense.

On the other hand, losses in foreign countries, especally ones overseas, should produce a lot of war weariness. When America took big losses in Vietnam, it spawned a huge level of protests. But when we were defeating the Nazis in Germany, people were thrilled in America and strongly supported the war.

In short, I think war weariness should be like this: Heavily reduced by winning OR losing battles on your home territory, somewhat reduced by winning battles in other countries- Increased by losing battles in other countries. And increasing at an accellerating rate the more units that are lost, relative to the total number of units you have. And increasing faster the further away the troops are from your home country.

maybe an ability to build on marshes and mountins, but with resrtictiions, like only 1 food, 1 shield, and 1 commrence in the city square, and not be able to grow above size 3. this allows you to create cities, that altough not birng that productive, will have a defense bonus (in the case of mountins), and also, sometimes, every part of a city is perfect except for the city square itself, this also helps contolling canal city placement and choke points. this can become a problem if players try building cities exclusivly on mountins to get the 100% defensive bonus, but the 3 pop. limit should be a good be a good balence. this hould be relitivly easy to program, and any space taken up by the new limits should be replaced by the space freed up from the code previpusly not allowing city placememnt, the AI who always has sucked at placement will probably not change it's aproach.

also, like in age of mythology, god powers would be cool, maybe each civ would have it's own power, like the americans could have manifest destiny, allowing half price settlers, and the romans could have rennisance, where every building that is producing at least one culture produces 1 more. this could be triggered by a player at any time they chose, or whenn they enter a golden age i prefer the first one because the AI would probably do a pretty pathetic job at deciding when to trigger it. this would be a nice way to balence out civs, like a civ that right now is really strong may get a weak goled age, and a curently weak civ would have a great golden age. and people who don't like to play as the civ they represent (i.e. an american who hates playing as the americans) this could balence everything out

@ybbor

I love your idea about Age of Mythology. That'd be great. They should make an xpak for Civ4 thats like AoM. That'd be awesome.

* Peacekeepers. Enableing units to gain experience without going to war.
Weather.
* The random occurance of wet, and drought times increasing/decreasing production of food and population- can add a small effect to the overall game.
* Doldrums and the trade winds effect movment +/- of sailed ships.
Somemore ideas outside the usual I've seen posted.

Originally posted by shirleyrocks
A more robust combat system that can take multiple units and combined arms within a stack into account. If you have 10 tanks going up against a single infantry unit, each tank shouldn't have to individually fight the infantry one by one, they should simply be able to swarm the poor guy and get it the battle over with.

Similarly, if the stack of units you are attacking with includes quick, blitz-type units along with strong, brute-force units, aircraft and artillery, your stack as a whole should inherently be stronger...a "whole being greater than the sum of it's parts" type of philosophy.

Oooh yes ! Definitely ! Like the combat system of CTP2... And i'd add, long-distance units shoudl get wiped out by close-combat ones, UNLESS they're protected themselves by close-combat units, in that case they would be really strong... Heck, I loved the CTP2 combat system. It rocked.

More oblique ideas.
* Civ's that don't play to their traits either lose or have their trait ability lowered later in the game.
Explaination if a Civ is militeristic and relgious, and doesn't play towards its militeristic trait but more towards a commercial trait, it will lose some of its advantage as a militeristic civ and gain some advatage towards being commercial.
As in my previous thoughts subtle intricies (sp) to the game to add some variation to the game play.

Cheers

And go the Wallabies

high scores that can be grouped by level, I hate that regent quick conquest that knocks the emperor high scores down

combat or eliminate the corruption problem somehow, I can understand the need for some balancer to stop the human running away from the AI completely but the current method is not good, one way could a little distance corruption (not 90+%) but escalating costs, ie the 1st temple costs 60 gold, the 2nd 65 gold, the 3rd 70 gold etc etc, same with units

also like the navy ROP thing suggested above

People seem to think the next volume of the series should be just more of the same. I think the concept has become stale. There are other games out there that have many interesting ideas.

More specifically the game has to be dynamic - meaning: non linear ! Going from point A to B to C in a boringly predictable fashion. That's what we got with Civ III - and that's what I was refering to as *stale*.

So what would be dynamic ? MOO3 had a very interesting idea - before it was dumped when the project was hacked that is - simulating social groups/factions inside each civilization. These groups would have agendas and exert pressures on the player - from within. This was barely sketched in the Civ series with the Senate vote in democracies/republic governments. I would expend this feature considerably. When the first specialization occurs in a society it divides grossly into 3 main groups: the warriors, the farmers and the priests. The event system in EUII tried this as well but it was clumsy.

What else... The ability for the player to change the game from within - and please nothing that requires to have 5 years of C++ to do it ! No I'm thinking rather of having an "edict law" function that would change variables and the way they interact with each other.

Regarding the technological development - this too has to be much less linear. Civilizations are products of their members' interaction with their environment. Therefore a different environment means different priorities which in turn mean different technologies to solve the problems encountered. That's why the wheel was never implemented in America before the Europeans came. So making the technological choices available dependant on the environment would be animprovement on what exist at the moment.

Other secondary ideas:

- minor powers/civ - so expand on the goody hut thingy;

- and RPG aspect with characters (generals/ministers/scientists/ etc) each with their stats - and acting as independant agents;

- flexible cultural groups (but I think this has been implemented in C3C);

- add religion to the mix.

- diplomacy need to be enhanced - see Star Empires 4 and EUII if you need inspiration

----------


Well that's it for now.


G.

SCIENCE:I want the Scientific Advisor to tell me list me nations that have techs I can buy and nations that I can sell tech to. It's so slow to go through all the civs and see who has the latest tech.

MILITARY: Units should be able to fortify even after moving.
-Possibity of bribing enemy or barbarian units.


SUPPLY: Cities can help out a poorer city by sending excess grain.
-Luxury should be sold by amounts.

Have a special interactive feature between Firaxis games; for example, something that happens in Pirates! will affect your current Civ game.

what I'd like-

the ability to make things quicker by combining the recources of surrounding cities eg. If I'm building a battleship, using one city eg. Glasgow to build it will take 10 turns but if I group that construction with another city eg. Edinburgh then it will be completed it 6 turns.

Just think of it as the hull and weaponry is being made in Glasgow but all the computer components are being made in Edinburgh then transported to the ship, saves Glasgow having to take more time to make it.

sorry, jthought of a second idea.

the ability to build (and then sell) units to other Civ's. Everyone's been doing it for years (Russia and America during the Cold War) you're Spain and a little civ like....... erm.... say Korea doesn't have the tech or the recourses to build Artillery but they do have a border with someone you don't like (Japan) so you sell them the units for whatever (this might have been suggested so sorry)

It'd work just in the diplomacy screen. A new menu called "Units" and its like Luxuries except instead of for 20 turns it could be like.... 10 units of "tanks" or something and you can set what cities you want to do it in. You build them then they give you money if not then they call you a swindler and your rep goes down.

This'll be a nightmare to program, real hard to implement and take up a fair amount of computer power, but having a revolvable, zoomable sphere would look soooo good. I downloaded a free one from

http://www.3d-world-map.net-software-download.com/

Check it out and just imagine your civilisation marching across the land.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=56037

I posted this a while ago, and it explains some of my grievances/wants. Take a look, if you would.

The mathematics can be programed quite easily using fibonnacci algorithms. And this would be the half of the game thats still missing.

Editor Requirements
This requires an "Economical Improvement" Flag for buildings in the editor, programing that Improvement to have a stock name, editable possibly. The resource requirement choice box already exists in the Civ3 Editor, keep it in the Fourth but have it as a selection box. The "Economical Improvement" flag would just make the requirement city-radius specific. Also a "Produces Resource" selection box would be required. (The Economical flag has to already exist, otherwise the Smith's Trading Co. Wonder wouldn't do what it does, right?)

Introduction
Have a separate stock for each economicly related city improvement (i.e. Marketplace, Bank). The Stock Markets in each city would be one stock in unity, an example of your modern day NASDAQ, but each additional Stock Market in each city would strengthen it in price and stability. The Smith's Trading Co. Small Wonder would then become a civ related Small Wonder such as NYSE, AMEX, or NIKEI (a civ-specific Exchange); Strengthened(as in Weath & Growth) by the direct effect of the all Stock Market Improvements. The Individual Stock Markets in each city is strengthen by the collective strengths of the businesses in the relevant city (Explained below), and the population size & unemployment rate.
Multiple Exchanges for specific civs could become a civ specific strength or weakness. Civ's Exchange(s) in relation to each other would denote relative currency value and nothing more. A Candaian dollar doesn't always equal a German Mark, but it can be worth more & less. This has a direct effect on Gold when exchanged in diplomacy with other civs and importation & exportation.

Businesses & Stock
When a cartain technology that is researched, the ownership of resources is changed slightly. Each resource on the map changes to a ownership of a certain type, depending on government type. Democracy allows for a Capitalistic economy allowing for more wealth gaining, but more volatility. Communism would lead to a Marxist type economy, all businesses & corporations being owned by the state, and only directly affected by outside stock effects. One type has many stocks that are unstable, but few uberwealthy to strengthen the general economy, the other has mostly stable stocks but near to no wealthy ones.

Resources are under control of the city that is the closest, and is owned by the relevant business created by the improvement that is now available in that city's production window. Markets & Banks would basically be modern Wal-Marts & First National Banks; Airports & Harbours would become you Airline & Cargo companies, with their strengths coming from their city's population (everybody borrows & has money; businessmen travel & imports have to come somehow, right?). These are hard coded, and are the basis of your economic stability. Once an Economical Improvement is built the relevant stock is opened at a price & begins to fluctuate over time.

There are additional "Economical Improvements" that are available at there own relative technologies, which have already been suggested. Such as the Steel Mill, which takes Coal & Iron to produce Steel and allowing for Battleships & possibly an improvement; or the Refinery, which takes Oil and makes Gasoline, Lubricant and Chemicals. These have been explained and would be VERY useful in this way, along with their original purpose. And the mind can always come up with another one.

Also Science Improvements could become businesses that only consume resources to produce more science funding. And there effective pricing would be based on how much Science funding there is altogether, and the relevance of the Tech being researched to that Scientific Business. (Like Pharmecutical Business when researching Modern Medicine). Also allows for more relevant Techs to have a purpose.

Now each "Economical Improvement" that is built is a business and acts as one. They employ your population, and contribute to your unemployment rate & GNP (It has a Purpose Now!!!). Its price is affected by these two variables and can grow and prosper, or splatter like a marshmallow under a falling brick. How you govern has a direct effect, such as War Weariness & the additional Economic Legislation (How good your businesses, Exchange(s) & Index are doing). Which your action on raising tariff rates, taxes & the Interest Rate (all of which deposit into your treasury), along with your governing your importation and exportation.

Importation & Exportation
Civs could combine strengths for wealth by signing "Economic Pact" Treaties, agreeing to lower Tariffs on the partner civ to a certain level. "Tariffs" would contribute directly to your treasury and be hard-coded into the game as a part of the Tariff/National Interest slider choice much in the same way as the Tax\Science\Culture slider.

Lower the Tariffs and your Interest has to go higher, because of the increase of importation causes more jobs & more spending, thus more wealth, thus more borrowing, thus more wealth. When Tariffs are raised importation becomes expensive and more reliance is give to domestic business and loans aren't so hot right now & need to be encouraged. All much the same way as real life.

Your Importers would be first your Marketplaces which import luxuries & Foods, then the individual businesses that exist in your cities that are producers of refined reources, like that Steel Mill. The selections for these would be hard coded into the City Screen or the Right-Click window. You can choose your importer in a window for that importer that shows a listing, displaying the Exporters of the required resource, civ owner, and price. You can also choose to stop importation, and turn that importer "OFF" and pay a lower upkeep (gotta maintain it, sry).

Your exports generate wealth for the individual business that owns each resource you have in your control. You can divert exportation by right-click on a resource on a window appearing listing what business require it and at what price they'll buy it at or stop it all together. Your own businesses requiring that resource won't have the Tariff and will be lower priced, or course. Be careful not to change it alot because each time you do, your exporter under-bids the current supplier to that business (If there is one). You can turn off, and thus stop exportation of that resource

(Embargos have suddenly taken a more interesting approach).

I've read about the contracting of Units to other countries and this can have a direct effect on the selling civ in this manner. Each citiy's Production Window could become a business with a stock and their wealth is derived from the production. When Units are sold to foreign markets, the Contract is the decider of the growth; Domesticaly, it would be your government's military unit upkeep. Production of Improvements just adds to the population wealth and effects the Marketplace and Bank improvements.

Also, I wanted to think of the possibility of a cargo ships being built and designated for trade routes between harbors. I've posted about this before, jus' not sure where, but this really gives subs a REALLY good use. I'd use this as a way to create a cargo business with a harbour and then that cargo company owning each Trade Route connected to that city with cargo ships .

Auto-Govern
Your Economic Advisor would also be the one how could control the Imports & Exports based on your requirements, which is choosable in a drop-down window in that Advisor's Screen or the individual City Screen, but only if you choose not to directly control it. These would be Export(Wealth Effect), Import (Cultural Effect), War Economy (Which tries to be self-sufficient), and Growth (A combination of the Three). This would probabliy work best as a copy of the Tax/Science/Culture sliders

The Major Additional Screen
The final addition would be the Stock Listing screen where you can take your treasury and invest, buy low sell high. The added effect is that if you own the majority of a business' shares you control it (Import & Export) and get a dividend from any shares you hold (related to its Weath & Growth), even if its physically in another civ. The Buy/Sell drop box would be much the same as a Bid/Ask screen on a Level II system. Make money and control, only reason for this screen. This screen is where most of the coding would be.

:D <=== You doin it right?

The one thing that makes this work is the movement of stocks is directly linked to every civ's population in total & their relative wealth level. A Third world civ could hardly stand up to a economic beast. Since the Exchanges decide the currency ratios, it is possible to export something for cheaper than domestically selling it. Importation from a choice of multiple suppliers generates competition & simulates real life, while contributing to population happiness and culture value. Embargos would have a direct effect on related business, and could also be resource specific (No Uranium for You!!) Distances between Suppliers & Consumers effect the pricing and create some remarkably realistic situations. Also being able to own Cargo companies can lessen this effect. A state of War between you and a Civ would "freeze" assets that you control that is physically in that Civ.


Application

Economic War, Economic Opportunity and Economic Deception. Quick Funding for a impromptu war or the slow takeover of a belligerent. Control of your interests while staying peaceful. Endgame would become much more involved, and quite possibly never-ending. Also allows for a whole new way to use espionage & smuggling.

The Editor would allow for great expansion on this idea with jus' those editor abilities listed. Someone can find a use for a "Children's Charity Organization" improvement cominations, or a use for an Internet Common Market that imports everything cheaper.

The prices stated for in the Importation/Exportation windows for each business are not acutally exchanged, but effect the relevant business' wealth & growth. If you were buying supplies for the cheapest price and selling your product for the highest I'd say your growing, but how long have you done it? Their wealth is decided by the city's population & national unemployment rate and is reflected as a price & stable price range, this increasing is Growth and is reflected as the price climbing stably but if it stays increasing is up to you.

This ability, in its entirety, would become available in stages. The marketplaces & banking would come first, during the Ancient Age, and resources would be treated the usual way. Importing & Exporting would come second, during the Middle Ages (research Merchantilism), with resources coming under business control and help prepare them for the next step. During the Industrial Ages, Economics could be researched, changeing the businesses to stocks (they publish there own, when you build your Exchange(s)) and begin the Economic Revolution. Then in the Modern Times, tech & research business could be available at choice Techs, so as to diversify the choices and create more competition & volatiliy.

Features:

(1) A new engine that could support detailed diplomacy.

(2) UN Council, similar to SMACx, where global decision-making policies are decided.

(3) Damns: A civ could damn rivers that inturn would deny freshwater to an civs down river and increase food production to surrounding tiles.

To expound on the idea of labeling areas of the map:

Have both pre-made and user-defined landmarks, ala SMAC.

Later governments could declare them to be national parks or landmarks. These would give a commerce and cultural bonus.

It would make some interesting choices early in the game. Do I settle this forest area now, or wait til democracy (or whatever) and declare it a park?

A re-worked rail system that limits the ability to move across the world on one turn. Maybe base movement *6

For example
Knights have 2 movement points without roads/rails
6 points with roads
12 points with rails

Originally posted by stratego
MILITARY: Units should be able to fortify even after moving.

That eliminates the point of frotifying, the point of fortifying is if a unit has nothing to do, it can use it's energy to give it a devfensive bnonus. if you could fortify after mpving, you could have everyone be fortified every turn, and then there would be no point to fortifying, as every unit would always be fortified

One thing I would love to see is the inclusion of more realistic terrian. Maybe moving water or grass swaying in the wind? How bout some wil life or more detail? The units need to look like a mass group of soilders. Not one person! These are my suggestions.

Originally posted by The_Inforcer
One thing I would love to see is the inclusion of more realistic terrian. Maybe moving water or grass swaying in the wind? How bout some wil life or more detail? The units need to look like a mass group of soilders. Not one person! These are my suggestions.

Animated terrain!? Great idea. White horses on the oceans, Flowing rivers, fields of corn. Great thinking.

Some other ideas -

Terrain

Just to repeat an elsewhere stated idea to have rivers that can be navigated by specified ships, perhaps with only a single capacity transport. Only infantry (ie spearmen, archers, workers, marines) can cross rivers with no improvements, cavalry and armoured units cross at naturally occuring fording points, everything else requires a bridge.

The introduction of plateaus. They'd a nice cosmetic improvement to the map. Also, it'd be a great oppurtunity to implement the idea of minus 1 movement rates for terrain - so it would effectively take 2 turns to move 1 space up the side of a plateau, and the same to get back down.

Improvements

Colonial Headquarters. Established on a one per continent basis, that act similarly to a palace with reduced effects - basically a cross between a palace and a courthouse.

Modern Olympic Games. Once it is built, any progress on the Olympic Games being built by another civ is zeroed and restarts. You maintain control of the Olympics much like some sort of Golden Era of culture and commerce. However, when another civilization builds the Olympics, this Golden Era is transferred to them. You may not rebuild the Olympics until every other civ has built them, and then the oppurtunity to 'host' the games comes to you again.

I'm still learning Civ3, but spent a substantial ammount of time conquering the first two. At this point, because of the change in air units I'm not quite sure how this would be implemented without returning some of the control taken from the air units.

However, with both air and sea units, I would spend a substantial amount of time on 'patrols' where a given unit would take a standard route each turn (which actually varied some since I was doing it by hand anyway) to see if there were any units out there. This would be like a moving 'sentry' deal where the unit would 'wake' whenever it saw an enemy unit (where you could decide to pursue or return for more support).

eg, fighters in coastal cities would patrol the seaboard to ensure that any approaching ships would be spotted (and usually attacked) before reaching shore.
eg2, submarines would patrol "narrows" (places where there are only 2-5 sea squares between continents/archipegeo-arms)

So, it would have to work where you set a toggle to begin the patrol and then moved the unit accordingly, ending the toggle in the same square as it began in. Note that it would be a great help to fighters on aircraft carriers if the patrols were relative to the starting position rather than an absolute map position!

=========================

While abuses of the Freight Unit were rampant (oh, instant WoW!), I miss the ability to set up trade routes to transfer food. Now that the food requirement for settlers(workers) is abolished, it is not so necessary, but it is totally not unreasonable. I'm ~fairly~ certain that NYC gets some of their food from the Midwest, California, and Mexico!

=========================

oops... there's more, but I got "stuck" reading Bamspeedy's Beyond Sid and it's well past time to go....

M@

Here's another:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60353

It's in regards to another trait.

Originally posted by sealman
A re-worked rail system that limits the ability to move across the world on one turn. Maybe base movement *6

For example
Knights have 2 movement points without roads/rails
6 points with roads
12 points with rails

Rail should be limited, but base movement shouldn't affect it. A knight can't travel faster by rail by running in its carriage.

Base rail movement should be 12 and when units travel by rail but haven't reached destination they should have a little train beside them. In addition, to make rails still better than road, even if a unit has travelled, say, the 12 squares max, it still has all of its movement points.

Government 'slider'

Similar to the 'science slider', I'd like to see a slider or series of sliders take the place of limited government choices. One example would be an 'economic slider' where at one end would be socialism and the other capitalism. One would give a gold bonus to all cities and the other a shield bonus. Another slider could be a 'liberty slider', democracy vs dictatorship. One end could give more stability and the other more happiness. This would allow custom governments, and hypothetical situations such as a democratic socialism. Change history!

A safeguard against spending one turn in socialism and the next in capitalism and back and so on, would be to allow only small increments per turn.

This would not be hard to grasp or implement, imho. The AI would still have to make situational judgements as it does now on governmental decisions and taxation.

Another interrelated feature could be faction anger (i.e. anger the communists, and please the capitalists, or vice verse). Grallon was getting at this 'faction' aspect which i think would be excellent. Also, refer to a great game called 'Tropico' for an excellent model of internal politics. It had the following factions: capitalists, communists, intellectuals, religious, militarists, and enviromentalists. You could never please everyone in that game and had to pick a few to focus on while trying to stamp out the others. Sorry to digress, but if anyone could think of a way to implement this, please fly with it.

One thing to look for in a new feature is the ability to macromanage/micromanage. If the only way to properly utilise it is to tweak every city or click dozens of units every turn, it will probably detract from most people's fun. Something to keep in mind.

I have that game (Tropico) and I like your idea about the sliders, for it really allows the player to be individual and creative with his/her nation.

I think the AI needs to get reworked so that it goes after real cities in war instead of going for the fringe tundra towns. No stratigic thinking on the AI's part.

I always laugh with a friend of mine that the AI is going after Minot, North Dakota again. She said she must visit that place sometime just to see if it is such a great strategical city.

My point is that the AI will always go after the weakest link when it starts a war. If Canada attacked the USA they would go after Minot, North Dakota first, then maybe Butte, Montana and if everything goes well maybe Rochester, NY. Meanwhile when I got my turn I would beeline for Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Calgary. Gut their entire production ability by taking out their production centers. AI does not think strategic like that, just thinks about the best chance it has to win.

My favorite move was when I was about even with India in one game. Gahndi declared war on me and this time decided to forgo Minot to make a march to maybe Tallahasee, Florida or something. Marched 40 Cavalry units three tiles deep into my northern border. Needless to say their was a ton of dead horses soon after. Forever to be known as Gahndi's peacefull march to the sea for salt.

Also the AI needs to learn how to focus its forces better. Often those forces that took out Minot, Butte and Rochester could have combined forces to take out Detroit and/or Boston and hurt my production centers. Instead they randomly attack with no focus on non key centers.

Terrain and resources

This is a complete overhaul of the entire terrain/worker/resource/trade system!

All terrain should start out as 'wild', and be transformed by workers to 'tamed' or 'settled' land tiles. This would enable a ton of realistic and very playable features in many areas of the game.

-Wild terrain should provide meager food and production, and be represented by hunter-gatherer-type tiles like forest game, bison, wheat, berries, fish, stone etc. When worked on, however, these traits disappear and are replaced with the tamed tile type, like farms, orchards, vineyards, mines, livestock pastures and so on, which all provide must higher yields. Some wild terrain will remain useful in its natural state right up until modern age, and some wild terrain should be kept natural in the interest of the nation (national parks) and world (rainforest). Too much abuse of the environment should cause unhappiness and foreign reputation loss in the modern age.

-All units should require logistical support, and wild terrain should be able to provide units (in small enough quantities, such as in ancient times) with their base food value. This helps nomadic armies to be able to cross large distances without cities backing them up, and stops armies crossing mountains and deserts for a while.

-Luxury and bonus resources should be found in specific geographic locations (even more specific than in Civ3), but should be able to be copied to cities that are in the same climate range as the resource was found in. As time goes on the benefit derived from them should improve. So, coffee may be found only in the space of an eight-by-eight tile area in the temperate zone, but by the modern age all civs with cities within that zone should be producing and selling it. Focus on one resource should preclude the production of other possible resource production in a city.

-You should be able to choose how much you want to exploit the land. Say, three levels - 1st is long term sustainable with low yield, second is short-term or current-level sustainable with medium yield, and 3rd will eventually cause the loss of the bonus resource in wild terrain and pollution in tamed terrain, but with very high yield. (Do you maintain a small population and low development from the bison/moa/auroch/giant sloth, or do you develop fast in the hope of a future better replacement when it disappears?) The second and third settings should be tech-dependant, of course.

-You should need certain amounts of goods to build improvements and units. One iron source is not enough to supply all of the Persia's Immortals. The more you have, the less its worth. This also ties in the the exploitation of the land - you can, in a clinch, overwork your quarries, mines and oil fields, but the more they yield, the more it costs and faster it is exhausted. Techs shoud allow the ability to determine the amount remaining in any given site.

And just to add about the coffee, the more civs are producing something, the less you get from doing the same. That would encourage civs to diversify.

Another couple of ideas:

-The wealth and income per turn of a country should depend on the AVERAGE income generation of all your cities, as well as the amount of luxury and strategic resources your civ is getting from within its borders or by trade. This would allow small civs to remain wealthy and powerful vs big backward civs (who still have the greatest potential).

-The growth of cities should depend on the TOTAL amount of food produced or traded for by the civ, as well as the amount of gold produced in the city relative to its population. If the city is producing a lot of gold, the civ's surplus food goes to expanding that city over the others.

I will always write this in these types of threads:

Bring back the in game cheat menu.

Originally posted by Clown2TheLeft

I've often wondered why not have a shunned civ to represent traditional enemies. That is, Carthage will always have a poor attitude towards Rome, France will always have one toward England, The Dutch and Spain... everyone toward the US...

Hmm. Following that principle, we'd have to put Canada in the game as a civ, just so everyone has someone to be nice to.


Later!

--The Clown to the Left [/B]


Adding Canada would be a great idea!

The in game cheat menu would be useful for modding, because I cant figure out debug mode. I know how to turn it on and add units, but thats about it... :o

Wild terrain should provide meager food and production, and be represented by hunter-gatherer-type tiles like forest game, bison, wheat, berries, fish, stone etc. When worked on, however, these traits disappear and are replaced with the tamed tile type, like farms, orchards, vineyards, mines, livestock pastures and so on, which all provide must higher yields. Some wild terrain will remain useful in its natural state right up until modern age, and some wild terrain should be kept natural in the interest of the nation (national parks) and world (rainforest). Too much abuse of the environment should cause unhappiness and foreign reputation loss in the modern age.


i like that idea but it would have to take a very small amount of turns or it would take a really long time to get most of the tiles "tamed"

i like the idea of the national parks and rainforest though

I think a great addition would instead of playing as a faction, how about playing as a religion? You would have to start small with a leader(preferably), convert people, through war(crusade) or just word of mouth, spread, gain power, have power over factions that have a sponsored religion or a majority to do what you want.

It could be somewhat offensive, but not really. You could choose if you want to have a hierarchy for the leaders, like the Papacy, or you could choose to be polytheistic, monotheistic, or whatever. You would fight splits in the religion and division of your followers, and you would choose new leaders who can convert people, and thwart the wishes other religions.

Different religions came at different times, so we would have to make it so they start at the same time , but in preset scenarios you could have the religion starting at its actual time, with other religions forming and you have to compete with new foes every few hundred years.

I think this would be great, a nice bit of variety.

Originally posted by Syterion
I think a great addition would instead of playing as a faction, how about playing as a religion? You would have to start small with a leader(preferably), convert people, through war(crusade) or just word of mouth, spread, gain power, have power over factions that have a sponsored religion or a majority to do what you want.

It could be somewhat offensive, but not really. You could choose if you want to have a hierarchy for the leaders, like the Papacy, or you could choose to be polytheistic, monotheistic, or whatever. You would fight splits in the religion and division of your followers, and you would choose new leaders who can convert people, and thwart the wishes other religions.

Different religions came at different times, so we would have to make it so they start at the same time , but in preset scenarios you could have the religion starting at its actual time, with other religions forming and you have to compete with new foes every few hundred years.

I think this would be great, a nice bit of variety.
that seems like a whole new game. the purpose of civ is to start, build & devolp an empire, not a religon. That seems like it's gone from bieng a political/militarical/economic game to a religous game where everything centers around religon. where in the current civ everything you did usually inmproved one thing, and eliminated potential for another, it seems like your idea is to have everything focus on one point. it makes an interesting game, probably fun to play, but it should be it's own game, not take over civ

[note: no offense intended to anyone]

I posted this here at Civ Fanatics awhile ago in some misc thread. I think it is a good idea and I sort of went into and some possibilities a bit more and thought it would be worth adding to this thread:




I'd like to see:

The ability to give units to another civ.

In other words, you should be able to just give units to another civ if you want to help them out or something (IE, you don't have to ask for anything in return).

But you should also be able to setup deals with other civs, like, "I will give you these units if you give me..." X total gold, or X gold a turn.

It would also be nice to be able to loan units to other civs.

Such as, "I will give you these units for X turns if you give..." X total gold, X gold a turn, or etc (for resources, luxeries, etc). Also perhaps a feature that you can loan units for the period at which a civ is at war with another (IE, "I will loan you these units for the period you are at war with the Zulu"). But also other features to the loan like, at the end of the period, you can renew the loan, or the loan simply ends. Also if the civ who you loan to loses any of the units (like in battle; or if like a human, disbands them, lol), you could set like a stipulation like "For every unit not returned, you will ____", which could be like a total gold payment, or gold per turn. This way if you loan out like 20 mech infantry and 30 modern armors to say Germany to fight China, and you only get 18 mechs and 10 moderns back at the end of the loan period, and you want 100 gold for each one not returned, then at the end of the loan period the civ should pay you 2200 gold.

Also maybe like an ability under loaning units to be like "under your flag", or "under the flag" of the civ you loan to.

In other words, if you loaned like 4 modern armors to a civ "under your flag", it would be sort of like a "peace keeping" force that the civ you loan to controls. And doing this, it might affect your attitude with the other civs. Like, if the civ you loan it to (say Persia) is at war with like Egypt, and England is "good friends" with Egypt, then England would become not so happy with you (but it shouldn't get down to war because your not actually controlling your units). But if France for example is "good friends" with Persia, then France should then become "happier" with you because your helping their "friend". Overall, doing this should have a positive effect all around the world, because it would sort of be like a small "UN peace keeping force". It should make other civs on your side or not involved more willing to trade resources with you, loan/give you units, pay higher gold amounts for things, etc.

The other option, "under the flag" of the civ you loan to, should work the same, except... it shouldn't affect the attitudes of any of the civs. In other words, nobody should become "happier" or "madder" at you for doing this. The only thing that should possibly happen due to this is that perhaps your own citizens become slightly discontent that part of their nation's military isn't "under their flag".

Just some thoughts and ideas I would like to see in some upcoming version/patch of Civ...

I like where you are going with this 'barron' :D
OK, lets really blue sky it.

How bout each city is its own sim-city? You get to lay it out and build it. Generic site plans available for the urban plan deprived. Don't like sim-city?, ok insert Rome, or Zeus, or the Egyptian building game. Micromanagers can go nuts! place every temple, every building of any kind that can be constructed, in advance and let it grow "organically" over time, once complete, it affects the city and the civilization. Lots more zoom levels so you can go from street corners to a view from high, high above one or more of your continents. And the cities can grow together. The word for world is city. You don't have to build roads, they grow organically between cities with something to trade. Interstates might take some direction. But what the game is about is cities and their boarder growth that makes your civilization.

Watch the inhabitants march around, use the parks and stadiums, trafic on roads learn the automobile and watch the modle T evolve to the VW bug. You don't even have to win the game to have a good time.
In addition to barron's awesome idea, I would like to see
[list=1]
The ability to trade arms/weapons between civs for either other units, gold, resources, whatever. This has been mentioned before and I think it's a GREEEAAAT idea. If I remember correctly we had that option in Civ II. Should've kept it!
Hills and other terrain's art should be made to reflect the terrain that surrounds it ... for example it bothers me to see lush green grasslands turn into deserts instantaneously from one tile to another ... or grassy hills in the middle of a region of tundra ... the map generation needs to be improved upon, in my humble opinion! :worship:
As mentioned earlier ... it would be nice to see air units move like all the other units, and I would really like to see missiles travel the distance to their targets!
Lastly, for now :D, I'd like to see the ability to build colonies and take advantage of bonus resources including whales and fish by the possiblility of a fishing colony of some sort. Also being able to build harbors and airstrips in colonies for the purpose of connectivity.[/list=1]
Questions and/or Feedback is appreciated! :hmm:

I would like 2 see civs having the chance to gain naval leaders so they can create powerful fleets.

being able 2 move food between cities would be useful, e.g if one city is starving and another has a huge surplus it wud be useful 2 be able 2 giv the surplus to the starving city.

bringin in off shore oil (e.g the North Sea) which can be utilised by building an oil rig on that square.

lastly id like 2 see cruise missiles being loaded on 2 destroyers or AEGIS cruisers. this wud make them much more useful.

thats all i can think of for now!!

3D terrain but keeping the units/buildings/etc. as 2D sprites like in Rise Of Nations (the buildings are 2D I'm pretty sure) and Railroad Tycoon 2 to save processor overhead.also here is my idea for revised combat mixing a few ideas and adding several of my own.

Rather than having a unit attack another unit, the right-click menu for an enemy unit has an 'attack' option whereby you select any adjacent units for combat and it switches to a 3D real-time battle of the units over the terrain (note 3D terrain idea) where things like pikemen or archer units are really groups of five or so men (maybe 5 men with each having 1, 2 or 3 HP based on the squad experience so a battle might wound men but leave a full recoverable squad, or kill men so that the squad has less attack) and tanks really being 3 tanks with 10 HP each - all non-organic units having fixed armour values but still being able to upgrade attack and defence stats. The battle then plays out with all attacking units and all units in attacked square. This allows for such tactics as pincer or surrounding movements so if a group of enemy units hold a mountain fortress against one front they get a high defence but if attacked from multiple fronts lose a lot of defence. that also means the defender can opt for further adjacent units to support the defenders. Thus a battle takes place over a maximum 5x5 space according to the main map for some epic battles that not only take into account the terrain type, but also the adjacent terrain types regarding strategic effects. if battling in a city this means the fight happens between the buildings and through neighbouring farmlands so you can see civilian casualties and building destruction as they happen. Another, more detailed example would be a fortress manned by 3 musketeer units being attacked by two medieval infantry units, two archery units, one cavalry until and a catapult travelling via road. Thus there would be 15 musketmen defending from the battlements (or bunker in modern age) and having clear shots on the roadway, being charged by 5 horsemen (who hit-and-run so attack then retreat again) followed by 10 medieval infantry who can't attack at range so need to raid the fort directly but whose defence is marked against the defenders' offence similar to in a Role-Playing Game giving them chances to evade being shot, meanwhile 10 archers stand back on their original space bombarding the fort alongside the catapult, with the arrows damaging the musketeers and the catapult damaging the fortifications as well (fortresses and buildings would have a limited number of hit points as well so sappers would make a viable sabotage unit if escorted by riflemen).

Based on this perhaps a military ambulance unit which can heal units in the field between battles.

Surprisingly such a grand idea would not require so much extra processing power - the game switches to the 3D battle but for the rest of the game all it needs to store is the number of men in each squad and their HP and the squad experience - so basically like stacked units recorded simultaneously. Although if the units and buildings were 3D, and battles were done in cinematic camera angles rather than static overhead.. messy but possible

The idea is based a little on Advance Wars and would also mean battles aren't automatic 'kill one unit or the other' but might drag on a bit sometimes like if there are so many units in battle and each side brings reinforcements.

I also second the idea of railroad movement being limited to 12 - although offer a variation in railroad movement being 8 from steam power, but then 10 with electricity, and 12 with one of the more advanced engineering-based techs like manufacturing, of course electric trains would need a level 2 railroad (powered rails) so building a road up would go:
1.) road (standard 3x movement)
2.) railroad (8 moves with steam train)
3.) powered rail (allows 10 moves with electric trains, and 12 with upgraded trains)

I would also like to see farms brought back - level 2 irrigation, but with some differences. Aside from the food point bonus for cities with supermarkets, make it possible to farm lands not within city radii, with each farmed (not just irrigated) tile providing one food for that continent (as opposed to city radius farms providing 2 food) so resource-base cities need not starve and starving cities can import aid - how this would work is cities with supermarkets would take the extra food in the order of the city getting least food per turn (hence preference given to starving cities) and for equal cities the food alternates per turn. Of course those cities would need to be connected to the farms by a railroad network or rail-to airport network or rail-to-harbour through other cities.

The SimCity idea is similar to one I had recently, but instead make it more a matter of placing buildings manually so making all wonders visible would be easier, maybe zone areas to automatic housing and such (or residential (population cap), commercial (commerce bonus) and industrial (shield production) like in SimCity) and only build main roads manually thus making it possible to allocate spaces for certain buildings or demolish houses to make way for them and based on residential zoning houses might be simple homes or if there is less space allocated for them then they will be replaced by larger apartments and eventually really big housing buildings(each square being 10x10 building spaces perhaps?). Mayhaps also eventually if the buildings could be built outwards into the city radius (just the 3x3 radius though - not the full 5x5 minus corners) so a really major metropolis could be constructed but it could mean replacing farmland with residential and commerce buildings and having to rely on outlying farmland imports. It would also mean military units in the city would automatically be defending all 9 squares if the city were attacked so if any neighbouring fortress were attacked they could take direct reinforcements from the city.

Relating to the cross-country farming idea maybe mines that aren't in city radii could generate 1 wealth per turn rather than shields in cities (kind of like wealth - perhaps implement a 2:1 conversion so a terrain with no shields normally couldn't provide enough mining resources for it but a bonus resource mountain that produces 3 shields normally once mined could provide 2 gold then (from the 4 shields). This ability would need a certain tech though. It would also be nice if after a tech like chemistry (or maybe a more advanced counterpart) it would be possible in the right-click menu to be able to see exactly how many turns a strategic resource will last so one could plan ahead.

Visible bridges would be nice and would also relate to the 3D battle concepts when fighting across rivers.

Finally in negotiations I would like to see options like trading land - so you could maybe ask a neighbouring civ to give you a few adjacent squares if they own the land but it only affects your city radius (would need access to a larger mini-map then though) in exchange for some units and some money or such. This would be extremely useful in strong or fixed alliances when one player might lose several valuable city squares due to the timing of their ally's culture expansion.

I haven't seen one of these for a while !
Anyway please be gentle.


Civilization 4 Features

Tribes
There are no distinct tribes
The people and architecture adopt the look of their initial climate and their advances
Names are based on an initial language selection
Head of state represented on map until republic/democracy, consequences for death
More optional advances
Barbarians are one city tribes which may turn into players if left alone (nomads?)
Tribe type bonus when a number of optional bonuses of that type are researched

Example
Tribe becomes agricultural when 3? optional agricultural advances are researched. Advances must be researched, not traded.

Resources
Many more strategic resources tied to troop types and city improvements
Special square resources require optional advances, cow requires husbandry etc.
Build bonus for a city, for a particular construction, if the resource is in the city radius
Many more resources, but limits on how many cities may build using a resource
Resources available, for a price, by sending “trader” to enemy city, only war can stop it

Cities
All the population of the city have a role (they are all specialists)
Certain buildings permit the appointment of specialists
Cities can/must build multiple things at once by assigning workers
Only so many builders can work on a project at the same time
The buildings themselves don’t give a bonus, the specialists do
Military units use population points
Buildings must be placed on a city grid, cost/space dependant on terrain type
(3x3? 4x4? squares within main squares permit this)
Housing must be built for population increase, or an immigrant is created
Unhappiness may also create migrants, who may leave the city
migrants have a mind of their own
migrants may join an enemy city, found a new city, or revolt as a militia troop type

Military
Combat still on main window
Units built into armies of multiple figures.
(3x3? 4x4? squares within main squares permit this)
Military units must be under the control of a leader/general
The better the leader/general and military research, the further away they can be 0-3?
Better generals may therefore outflank weaker generals
Unit may be forced to retreat by combat results
If a unit is forced out of the control of a general it flees back to its home city
Cities may defended by militia/conscripts (citizens)
Weapons and tactics are researched, not troop types
Missile troops provide fire support but have weak melee
Tactics research allows formation control, mixed type units
Troop facing matters. Flank and rear attacks are more effective
Scouts, Raiders and Militia type troops do not need generals, but cannot capture cities
Non-Army Raiders may only be set to harass based from a target square not roam freely
Scouts, Raiders and Militia may be attached to armies/generals
Militia may operate only within a short distance of cities, or castles/fortresses
Regular troop types only allowed in clear terrain, hill, or on a road square
Special troop types are available based on availability of resources and research

Example
Celtic Warrior requires : Dye (Woad) and iron resources; two handed fighting and sword advances, temple and barracks in city, and 1 population point and northern start.

Other
More landmarks
Places of natural beauty generating tourism in later ages, if they are not mined etc.
Battlefields marked with memorials
Great wonders visible on main map
Hills may be forested, jungle, tundra, or desert as well as being hills.
Generally speaking, there will be fewer cities requiring more management.
Rivers and bridges more significant for combat and borders.
More small wonders based on resource combinations.
Great wonders benefits cannot be pre-determined.

Example
You build a “Great Temple” and get a partially random, temple type, great wonder from that age, that is affected by tribe type bonus (if any), location and resources, and that has not already been built. Same for Monuments and Exploration wonders. Later ages introduce Industrial, Social and Educational great wonders.

A new idea I came up with for automating of workers.

We seem to come up with all these different commands for automating workers. Instead of using commands, we should have a dialog for customizing the automation and allow us to control certain levels.

First, we select automate from a menu or something when a worker is selected. Then a dialog pops up and asks what we automate. For example, only build roads, don't change existing improvements, clean pollution, etc. These would be checkboxes. We could also have drop downs that determine certain types of priority when one thing needs to be done before another. Also, we could have drop down menus for types of improvement working. For example, we could have "build roads" but we could also have "Priority to build roads connecting cities" and "build roads to existing improvements. We could create a method by which we automate the workers so that the higher level players don't have to manual work as many workers any more.

To enhance it further, we could have defaults like city governor defaults so that you can simply automate a worker without having to go through the dialog unless you want to. And finally, options to set all workers to the default settings or to stop all automation on all workers in order to reset those orders.

As a side note about governors, city governors need to know when the player wants scientists, entertainers, or tax collectors as specialists rather than picking them at random for each city. It would also be nice if the computer could somehow calculate when a WLTK day triggered by entertainers and would produce more commerce/food/shields than without and help you trigger such days.

I would like to see more animated battle scenes. Like the one guy was saying where you could choose to watch 3D or not. Maybe where you could command your forces as part of the attacking unit. Obviously this would add a whole new element to the game where you can take command of the attack or seige of a city personally. Aim and fire with your tank/whatever in a 3D scene.

Would certainly add to the flight options if you could take the controls of your bomber and fly over the city and let your bombs go over what you want to destroy. Getting shot down certainly would be interesting.

On another note the ability to create propoganda needs the Tech of television added. You can create propoganda via Radio, television, newspapers, pamplets and the Internet when the techs are available. You should have the option of spreading propoganda to each one of the civs including your own. You choose how much money you want to spend and on which medium. On your own civ war weariness will go down, on another it will go up. Spend a lot or a little your choice depending on your finances. Spend enough and the city will flip to you.

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

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

I'd like to see some complexity added to the most destructive aspect of the game, nuclear weapons. Instead of instantly advancing from non-nuclear to tactical nukes with immense destrcutive power, a nation would pass through several stages of nuclear potency.

The nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles would be built as separate units. One or more nuclear weapons would then be "loaded" onto a delivery vehicle for use. After the Manhattan Project, nations would only have the ability to build simple fission weapons. These would only attack the square which they were dropped into and would have less destructive effects than the nukes in Civ III. Further progress would come as a nation made its way up the tech tree, either by adding abilities to the current tech tree or adding a whole new branch to the modern era tree which can only be accessed after the Manhattan Project. Advancing further along the tech path would give a nation access to more powerful fission weaponry and eventually fission-fusion weaponry which has the destructive power of the nukes in Civ III. Nations could also pursue technologies to build dirty bombs, spreading super-pollution, or neutron bombs which would destroy population but not improvements.

Delivery vehicles for these weapons would come via the current tech tree. Initially, the nukes could only be loaded onto bombers, with their limited range and potential to be intercepted. Rocketry, space flight, and satellites would allow longer range missiles up to the unlimited range ICBM. The smart weapons tech might allow for multiple re-entry vehicles, allowing multiple small yield strikes over a range of squares from one missile.

Warheads as seperate units would allow for more diplomatic options. Many people have asked for the option to trade units. Diplomacy would also allow a nation to destroy its own nuclear warhead units in exchange for cash, techs, or the other nation destroying its warheads. Nuclear blackmail! :D Nations would also be able to offer "monitoring" where other nations would know the number and location of all its nuclear weapons for a number of turns.

A nation could choose to keep its nuclear capabilities a secret, or it could announce its level of sophistication with a test-blast where a warhead is detonated inside its own territory. This would worsen the attitude of other nations, but raise the estimation of their military strength.

Finally, a nation with nuclear capabilities could employ the "Dr. Strangelove" option. If a city is about to fall, a warhead in that city would be detonated destroying improvements and creating pollution based on the size of the nuke. :nuke:

as a continuation on religious/cultral great leaders how about this:

What kind of Cultral/religious leader is either based on

1) Government (will explain later)

or

2) Tech Tree/religion (will explain later as well)
---------

For the government...Say you have a monarcy. Monarcys often made religious crusades based on whatever religion the king/queen was. Such as Richard the Lionheart being a deep catholic made crusades against the arabs. Queen Isabella of the spainards made crusades against the moors (african isloms) and wanted to explor new land (thus granting marco polo the resources to explore trade routes to asia, even if he found central america) beacuse she was deeply catholic and thought it was gods will for her to spread the catholic religion. Similarily, Anarchic governments will produce revolutionists while dictorial governments (this includes communism and fuedlism but not fascism or monarcs beacuse the upper powers are usually loved) However if a dictatore spawns a revolutionist, the revoltionist makes people happy but tries to thrown down the government and change it. If anarcy spawns it then the revolutionist tries to change it. For governments where the rulers are loved or voted in...revolustionsts also come to mind. They could want to stop tyranny in other countrys like hitler wanted to do to russia and how america wants to stop the iraq communism. Revolutionists should beable to make armys but should also do somthing with gurellias...prehaps having a whole new line of guerllia units beacuse thats usually how rebels fight...with guerrila tactics.

2) You gain religious leaders based on the religion you chose. The religions will be like governments and will come at differant times. Such as paganism (or whatever its called) comming in the first age but having conthalasism (or other christian relgions) come during the second age. You can also have more then one religion and gain the benefits of those religions BUT you have to take another tech called "religious freedome" which will only be offered to certin, non-dictoral, non-monarch governments. Religious freedome makes religious leaders even harder to obtain and allows you to have only one type of religious leader per religion.

Now catholic relgions will have crusaders. These crusaders will have the ablity to summon crusader knights (depending on the order such as templar, hospitlar ect) from EVERY catholic city. This means that some units stationed in a city join these crusader-leader and some are made out of the population. However these knights can only be used to take out non-catholic citys.

I cant really think of more religions but...Hindu, Buddah and those other asian religions (dont comment on if I spelled wrong or made bad reference, I am almost sure I did) will spawn more diplomatic people. I cant think of anything at the momment but feel free to add on to this!

Also see my thread about this.

Tactical Combat

Absolutely. The chance of weaker unit winning a more powerful unit shouldn't be just random but to be affected by the players tactical skills. Think about MOO2. (haven't played MOO3 so I don't know if this applies to it too)

"Science stealing" (after combat)

After your inferior riflemen have won a combat against enemy infantry as your troops armed with those inferior garands find those superior StG44s. You shoud gain some science points towards the tech that allows those superior weapons.

Population as armies

This is a bit complicated but I try to explain the best way I can. First of all the city polulation should be measured in thousands or millions instead of "citizens" I mean that every citizen should have its tiny effect on the city production. Then when you "build" an unit the population should decrease according to the "strenght" of the unit, in other words according to the manpower of the unit.

Conscription

Related to the previous idea the conscription should be a number of men in each city (the percentage is set as "draft rate") trained as soldiers. The recruits could be armed cheaper because you had to build only the weapons. Also the coscripts would be cheaper to upkeep than the regular army men.

Upgrading

The previous ideas stated that each unit was a goup of men and that the wapons would be kind of separate unit. This would allow more flexible upgrading system and stealing enemy weaponry to upgrade your owm units would be possible. Also stocking weapons would be possible. The cities would have separate production points: for the improvements and for the weapons. The soldiers would come from the concription.

Buying and designing units

MOO2 again. Wouldn't it be nice to design your own army to fit in your personal tactical combat style? And you could also buy some neat designs from some companies (like U.S.A.F. from Boeing, Grumman and Mc Donnel Douglas) Oh, and you could also buy the weapons from some manufacturers to get your own production lines to produce something else instead.

Communism?

The civ economy is a bit weird because the government controls every factory and crop. Sounds a bit like communism? The people (or the corporations) should be able to decide what to build for themselfs and the state could buy the stuff it needs from them. Of course this would be different in some governments like despotism and communism.

Relatively minor adjustments, but here goes:

- all sub detection at a one-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses more than half it's movement allowance in the preceding turn.
- all sub detection at two-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses it's entire movement allowance the preceding turn.
- all sub detection not covered by the above is at 20% chance for each of your subs/destroyers within detection range during the turn.
- if an enemy sub is fortified for the entire preceding turn the 20% detection chance lowers to 5%.

Of course, the fact that the AI can "see" all subs would nullify this, so perhaps a rule that the AI cannot attack a sub without first having legimately detected it would help balance it out.

Also, Great Naval Leaders - produced the same way as GMLs, when an elite naval unit has a victory out of x chances, the naval unit has a GNL "flag". It then ups the attack and defense ratings for all naval units within two squares of it. If disbanded, it produces quadruple the number of shields that would normally result from disbanding that type of unit toward whatever the city (coastal of course) happens to be building except for GWs.

Quote by IglooDude
- all sub detection at a one-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses more than half it's movement allowance in the preceding turn.
- all sub detection at two-square distance would be automatic only when the sub uses it's entire movement allowance the preceding turn.
- all sub detection not covered by the above is at 20% chance for each of your subs/destroyers within detection range during the turn.
- if an enemy sub is fortified for the entire preceding turn the 20% detection chance lowers to 5%.
____________________________
-If an enemy sub is fortified for the entire preceding turn, your ships can pass right over the square it occupies and detection chance remains 5%.

how about eachciv gets a specific wonder, like the americans could have the statue of liberty, increasing the likihood of immigrants bieng assimilated, and the British could have big ben ummmmm, producing a lot of culture, and the french could have the eiffle tower, giving the benifits of the clossus.... and so on

Some ideas from me and probably a lot of "hear, hear" in support of ideas from others I've already seen in this thread:

Naming terrain features

I'd love to name mountain ranges, rivers, deserts, seas, lakes. One way this could work is the first Civ to see the new land feature (probably by means of a scout) should get to name it. It can then only be renamed if a differemt Civ's border engulfs it.

"Get offa ma land!"

I tend to decide from an early stage how much land I want before ending my 3000-or-so year war with every other nearby Civ. The land is usually a continent, after which I'm content I've established a large enough land mass to fund a decent military machine. However the AI has no respect for my domination of a continent and will sneak settlers into the smallest gaps between my recently conquered cities. I would like the option of hailing the galley or settler and saying "Ahem, the mighty army of moi is in the process of taking this land mass, please do not establish a city here unless you are ready to be annihilated by my hordes." It would also be cool to be able to say to neutral or friendly Civs that crossing a certain mountain range, river, geographical feature would be considered entry into our "land" whether our cultural border reaches that far or not. In a sense a diplomatic warning to avoid future conflict. Cautious AI Civs will then retreat until their attitude changes.

Future technology

Speaks for itself. Futuristic techs and units. How about long range biological warfare? Such as an area toxin that destroys wildlife and plants so cattle resources for example are destroyed and grassland turns into plains, or makes the land produce less food for several years/turns.

Terrorism / Guerillas

They're everywhere these days but so hard to deal with. Maybe if you take a city breakaway factions (partisans?) will run to the hills and be a long term menace making raids and taking out specific targets in your cities in revenge. Look at Israel / Palestine or former USSR countries. It's nothing like Civ 2 where you could take a city and kill all the partisans straight afterwards. Terrorists, or resisting oppressed minority groups could hassle you for decades, having stealth abilities. If you make incomplete counter-attacks or public attacks when your city has not assimilated the other culture then more people would take the place of their dead brethren. The solutions could be some sort of counter intelligence tech, use of spy units in the hills and cities, anti-terrorist improvements (like New Scotland Yard or America's new Homeland Security initiative).

Advisors and Wonders

Bring back the movie advisors from Civ2. Long live the king! They rocked. Likewise the wonder movies, they made it all so worthwhile with some poignant music and a great piece of footage. Now I get a crappy picture after all that hard work.

Diplomacy

I'm sure others have been more specific but I'd like simple options such as:
(when threatened and scared) "We would be happy to give you a gift but we're really poor, please come back in 20 turns and we'll try to make it up to you."
(when threatened and not scared) "You have got to be joking, leave now before I whoop your ass."
(when you're playing the Vikings or a suitably Conan-esque race and you threaten another Civ) "Give me gold or I will crush you, see you driven before me, and hear the lamentation of your women!"
(when you're playing the Vikings or a suitably Conan-esque race and have taken heavy losses) "I'll be back"

Protectorates, provinces, dominions

I don't understand exactly what these are but the British Empire had a lot of them. How about something whereby when you conquer a city that's really far from your capital you have the option to make it a protectorate giving the people more freedom and more of their own culture with fewer of your own units needed to keep order. This lowers corruption, raises happiness despite the distance from the capital as you have a consul in situ. The drawback is that over a long period of time the city is more and more likely to revert to its original culture.

Refugees

As others have mentioned. People fleeing war or strife/starvation arrive in your city placing a short term financial and food burden on your economy before being assimilated.

Culture by stealth

You can't take their cities by force, and they're too far away for your borders to influence them to culture-flip. What do you do? Send them McDonalds, Disney, Coke, episodes of Friends and a barrage of $100m Hollywood action movies. Watch the government of that Civ struggle to maintain the original cultural values, ban their populace from speaking an American hybrid of their own language, and insist people don't drink in the street and watch porn. While the city remains under their control you gain a small amount of revenue from all the merchandise you flog them.

That's my lot. I hope I haven't offended anyone. Not intended. :)

New worker action:

build Golf Course. Every bloody country in the world is going it so why can't we:

Food: +0
Shields: +0
Commerce: +6

Available with new technology, 'Globalisation' - offshoot from internet.

The player can tell the game where they want their settlers to settle (like the production line...) and they would in the order you specify as the settlers are built. Once a settler was headed for a location, there would be (like in Age of Empires & Age of Mythology, etc) be a little marker saying that someone is going to settle there. The AI cannot send a settler within a five square radius of the spot, or a ship with a settler on it. They cannot blockade it or 'steal' it with a noncombat unit. They have to send a warrior or something to destroy it. But, the settler has to either be able to get there in five turns, OR the square must be less than six squares from your nearest border. ;)

Something else, the you cannot build cities if they will immediately border on another player's border and the if it won't have a full nine squares (this doesn't matter if the squares it's missing are in your territory, ex. a city is already using them. :D

Another way to make that fair without doing the above is to double corruption if the city is directly bordering another civ. :D

Those would be a good solution because I too hate it when the AI comes right up next to me and builds a city either on a spot I want to build, or extremely close to my border. The worst thing about it is that there's NOTHING you can do about it short of declaring war... :cry:

I would like:

1. The races to have more unique units

2. Have the diffrent race types have a discount on small and great wonders that are atributed to their type.

3. Have the races have Diffrent tech trees, or some unique techs.

4. Have races that are better in early years then some that are beeter in later years.

5. Multiplayer to be faster.

6. Have better unit control. But that has been mentioned.

7. AUTO RECON

8. Emergency message for hostle units entering culture borders

9. a usuable airforce.

10. Carriers able to hold more units.

11. Helicopters able to go farther. 15 squares at least.

12. Ability to load c5 aircraft with paratoopers and drop them anywhere on the map.

I'd have to agree... we need much better control over the air units... I'd like to see like what we had in Civ 2 by means of control. I'd like to be able to actually move my planes, and then bombard...

I think that the most fundamentle feature that I want Civ 4 to have is a really accessible way for players to mod aspects of the game.

Civ 3 Conquests finally provided this for Civ 3 (in the form of the editor include w/ the expansion pack) but it took years, with various patches putting the editor half-way there. There are still some things which could be done for Civ 2 that can't be done as nicely in Civ 3.

in short: MODABILITY!!!!

make a more realistic civ random generator, cuz there is no way in hell a spearman can beat a bulletproof tank :S

Here's a new Idea for CIV4!

In Civ III, designers tried to curb the warmongering path by addition of corruption.
As warmongers extends their empires, they meet increasing difficulties with corruption in the city they conquered.

We, as humans, however know that a single empire stretching over great distances have a natural tendency to break loose into parts. Here's my ideas.

-Create the possibility for all civilizations to have a civil war and break apart (Roman Empire collapse, Secession war, USA freed from England, Liberia spun out of USA). This possibility should be calculated every turn for every city as the culture flip possibility.
But its formula should be different and linked to many parameters:

Rise the possibility of civil war:
- Maximal number of civilizations in game is not reached, either due to previous obliteration or closed position in the start of the game.
- Size of the empire to split.
- Low Overall culture of the empire of the city to split.
- Local culture (city level) of the city to split.
- Proximity to a city that has just rebelled against the Empire versus distance to nearest command building (palace, FP, etc).
- Presence of foreign citizens of destroyed nations in the city.
- Make people unhappy in the whole empire if people are starved intentionally (if loss of people while still having food producing possible in any free tile of the city), be they national or foreign, to prevent ethnic cleansing (well, depending on goverment status naturally; facist people don't apply).
- Civil disorders in the city.
- High Tax level (Yes, make people demanding a minimal luxury level with any government, make them unhappy if you won't give them that: you're free to rise taxes (=treasury+science) to 100% but them they're likelier to revolt).
- City founded by a dead civ.
- "despotic" type of governement.

Lower the possibility of civil war:
- Low taxe level (= high luxury level)
- Proximity to the command building (Palace FP)
- You founded the city.
- By having some telecom tech (writing, telephone, radio and such) that will lower the risk (the fastest the words spreads, the farther they can go).
- High culture.
- "We love the ..." in the city.
- Democratic kind of Government.

The effects:

The new civilization (it can be a revived one) will take the city "as it is". With all of the units contained therein, all of the units in its cultural boundaries at that time, all of the buildings even cultural one (this can be changed as civil war are never bloodfree) and ALL OF THE CULTURE POINTS OF THAT CITY!!!! The Empire will keep the global culture already generated (as usual in case of loss of the city) but the city will have equal culture for the Empire as its new civilization.

As an example of the last point:
England founded Boston far from London.
Boston generated 5 cp per turn for a total of 110 cp when civil war was declared.
Boston now generate 5 cp per turn to America. England still have the 110 cp provided by Boston in their overall culture.
At the fist turn after breakaway, the city of Boston is equally cultured to England (110 cp) and to America (110 cp) with the 5cp per turn gradually increasing the gap.

If city was founded by the Empire, change half the Empire citizen into new civilization citizen. If city was founded by an extinct Civ that is revived, no change (provided there is at least one citizen of the revived civ).


As an bonus idea to this:

Give the unit a nationality (like workers and settlers), with added rule that units will never attack their mother country (they can defend though), make unit nationality depending on producing city population (if 1 citizen is American and 9 english, make that 10% possibility to create an English unit with american nationality).

Add possibility to trade any unit (they retain their nationality).

Yes, I know, that seems another kind of culture flip, but I wondered how American could be starting in 4000 BC...


Now that I had spitted my venom, let the flamings start!!!

Expectively,
Dragon.Jade

Feature: terrorism

What it does: Allows the distruction of improvements and population and damage to garrison units (much like bombardment now).

How it would work: Once land is covered by cultural borders the barbarian cheifdom takes no further part in the game. Also once 2 civs enter a new age you get the uprisings. Terrorism would extend these features from the Industrial age onward.

When the industrial age is reached by 2 civs, instead of an uprising the barbs produce "invisible" units which behave like invisible artillery.

When a civ builds the Intelligence Agency it will act as an embassy to the Barbarian Chiefdom. It will be possible to pay the barbs to attack another civ on your behalf. It could also be possible to stipulate whether attacks should be weighted towards culture, commercial or military interests.

It should also be possible to discover which civs are sponsoring terrorism through espionage.

When the UN is built it should be possible to table a resolution against a civ that has been found to sponsor terrorism. Sanctions could be simulated with a mass trade embargo against the civ, or military intervention could be simulated with a mass military alliance against the civ. A vote would be required and a choice would be made as to whether the vote would be for sanctions or military intervention. It would be more likely that a civ would vote in favour of Sanctions, but it would require a majority to succeed, in which case ALL civs would instigate the embargo. If a militaristic vote is called then all the civs that vote for it would be tied into a MA even if it is a minority.

I know this is probably not a politically correct idea, but I think it would be a good addition to the game. You could always turn it off in the game setup if you didn't want it.

Culturally Different Looking Units

It should make the Asian units look Asian, European look European, etc. It could even go longer and make some units specific for that civilization.


Another idea is to make each civ's units completely different in stats. So that each unit is Unique.

Name of Feature: Combat Bonus Flag(Unit Type vs Unit Type)

What this feature should do in the game: It should make it possible to add your own flags to a unit in the editor. Example; a flag that makes the unit a specific type (that exists now), i.e. Mounted, and "Speared". Then you could make "Speared"-units have a combat bonus against "Mounted"-units.

How would this feature work: As I described above, it can make some units better or worse against other types of units.

Gameplay: It will create the need of versatility. Instead of only using Knights as offensive force in the Middle Ages, you will need to bring Pikemen for defense, Longbowmen, Infantry (of the age), etc. Same holds true for the Industrial age, where tank destroyers can be good against tanks, etc...


AI - The AI will be needed to be programmed to understand this, and take it into consideration when they prepare and wage war.
Processor Power - Not much more then without it.
Complexity - It makes the game a little more complex, but not much. It won't even be needed by the player to use the functionality. At least not on the lower levels.
Programming Complexity - It won't be harder then the terrain bonuses.
Exploits - Only if the AI is too poorly programmed will this be exploitable.
Player Decisions - To combat a civ with a lot of knights, build Pikemen, etc. Opens up versability. Easier to combat the lack of resources. Tactical game play.

With apologies to the moderator but this is how I posted on www.gamesfaqs.com who suggested I put it here for someone at Firaxis who might actually get to read it:

I wrote to Firaxis asking this:

1. Unique Small Wonders

I like the idea of unique units and wonder why can’t each civ have a unique structure which brings a benefit to the civilisation. Some civs are outbalanced, notable the English, Americans, Russians as their unique units are pretty useless to most players and their civ-traits aren’t the best. The unique small wonders are like regular small wonders in that they can be destroyed if the city is captured and it is possible to rebuild them should they be destroyed. Each small wonder should be worth 3 culture points unless specified. I have thought of small wonders for many of the civs:

English – Houses of Parliament. Gives the 1 turn of anarchy in government switching that is granted to religious civs. Made available with Feudalism.
American – Mount Rushmore. Instantly bequeaths 1 great leader to the Americans but this is a one time benefit only. If Rushmore is destroyed, it can be rebuilt for the cultural value only. Made available with Construction.
German – Beer Hall/Oktoberfest. Makes 1 unhappy person content across the same continent. Made available with Banking
French – Eiffel Tower. Provides an extra 10 gold per turn. Made available with Steel
Russian – Winter Palace/Kremlin. Acts as another Forbidden Palace. Made available with Military Tradition
Aztec – Quetzecopel’s Altar. Gives 6 culture points per turn. Made available with Mysticism.
Iroquois – Pipe of Peace. Calculated cost of peace treaties is now halved. Made available with Monarchy.
Romans – The Leaning Tower. Provides extra 10 gold per turn. Made available with Construction
Egyptians – The Sphinx. Increases tax revenues of city by 50%. Made available with Masonry.
Chinese – Confucius’s Academy. Reduces corruption on same continent by 25%. Made available with Code of Laws
Japanese – Tea Ceremony. 4 unhappy citizens made content in city. Made available with Chivalry
Babylonians – Ishtar Gate. Increases defence of all walls on same continent by 10%. Made available with Masonry
Greeks – Socrates’ Forum. Provides 1 free advance upon completion. Made available with Philosophy.
Indians – Taj Mahal. Provides extra 10 gold per turn. Made available with Monarchy.
Mongols – Pyramid of Tamerlane. Increases attack factor of Keshik by 1. Made available with Chivalry
Celts – Druid Temple. Gives 6 culture points per turn. Made available with Mysticism.
Ottomans – Silk Route. Any traded luxury item (bought or sold) will generate +2 gold per term each. Made available with currency.
Scandinavians – Hall of Heroes. Acts in conjunction with the Heroic epic. If the Heroic Epic doesn’t exist, Hall of Heroes will provide the same benefit as the Heroic Epic. If/When it is built, the Hall of Heroes will reduce the chance of a great leader appearing to 1/8. Made available with Feudalism.
Zulu – Xhosa Migration. A worker used to build a colony isn’t lost. Made available with Iron Working.
Spanish – The Treasure Fleet. All ships that have transport capacity have that capacity increased by one. Made available by Navigation.
Arabs – Jihad. Increases the attack factor of the Ansar Warrior by 1. Made available with Chivalry.
Koreans – Silhak. Corruption reduced 25% throughout cities on same continent. Made available with Education.
Persians – Satrap Academy. Acts as second Forbidden Palace. Made available with Code of Laws.

Comments, suggestions, hatemail welcomed.

Worker automated control improvement.

-Add additional controls to stress food or production and give city size for automated workers.

-Add half techs to give units plus 1 to offense or defense or both. This might be better techniques or this might come with certain techs like iron working gives the base unit but construction gives +1.

-A more indepth government system like in SMAC, where you get to define your politics, economy, and society with different options becoming available w/ different techs or events.

-Event scripting. (With that, lots more random events)

Well, I happen to think that Civ3 is pretty damn good and I really don’t want major changes……or too many major changes....but there are a number of small things I would like see…..

Luxuries and Resources: You can only use a resource in Civ if you city is connected by a road or harbor. Your whole Civ benefits if just one city is connect to a luxury item. This should be made consistent with how resources work.

Ability to trade military units is a good idea.

Stack bombers is a good idea

Naval Leader so you can stack ships is a good idea.

Canals are a good idea (limited length)

Need to do something about Frigates being able to sink Nuclear Subs. Or Knights being able to kill Armor units. MAYBE something like this….it might be possible for knights to DISABLE an armor unit (the tank gets damaged) and the crew gets out and becomes a rifle or infantry unit.

Being able to build a bridge over one or two ocean squares.

Marines can move one sea square (like they are really making an amphibious landing)

SEAL units…can move 2 or 3 sea squares…and ability to parachute drop…stealth landing ability.

Negotiations: This needs the most fixing. This is where the main focus of Civ4 should be. Need more “intelligence” and emotions in negotiations. I don’t think my advisor should be able to tell me if they are going to be insulted or whatever by my proposal. It should be a “surprise”. Then I have to deal with the consequences. If I do insult them, they may leave the table. They may declare war right there. I may have to make a much bigger offer to appease them. More detail options in negotiations (like the duration of a deal).

More detailed Spy missions.

That’s all for now….

I'm on the path with expanded diplomacy, and in-depth goverment system.

Instead of running a Civ, you should be able to be your own Civ, and let the Civ develop by your choices and events in the game. You discover concepts, then build a "temple" or the "High Alter of Laddy", whatever you decide to call it.

Much more organic...

Civil war is a great idea. Nations should be able to develop after the start, the idea of expanding and contacting empires.

Little odds and ends ---

Number of kills per unit, per civ, like Civ2. Diplomacy screen shows all leaderheads

In-depth demographics, your culture, others you capture, economic breakdowns with Espionage or its equivolent ofr other civs to see what they are producing, what thier output is...

--- Laddy

-Design of own military units like in SMAC. (Of course, you'd have default units for ease)

-Minor powers & an EU2 style diplomacy options (vassals, royal marigies, advanced trade agreements, annexation, etc...)

Ok, I haven't read through it all :) But:

I dislike the map system in Civ3. I would love to smash the tile-system (perhaps the round-system too) into the bin. But I don't think this is possible withouth killing the game :) therefore:
- (perhaps) unsymmetrical tiles.
but sure this:
- new procedure of creating a map:
(0. the unsymmetrical tiles are created)
1. the landmasses are specified.
2. a relief is laid over the map (each tile gets a 'personal' height (scale, from -4 (underwater) to 0 (sea level) to 12 (Himalaya))
2.5. the 3D engine makes the map don't look tile-ish (smooth the borders... :))
3. create climata (can be not selected if wished: divides the map into these climata (each tile gets it): (polar), subpolar, intermediate (what's the english term?), subtropical, tropical)
4. fauna: every climata has own tile types, which are now distributed over the climata (eg: desert, oasis, savanna in subtropical)
5. ressources: are distributed over the map (some climata-specific)
6. values: each tile gets his foor/shield/commerce-numbers calculated by height, tile-type, climata, ressources, fresh-water acces, etc. AND is then randomly changed a bit (to keep the map unique!

There aren't many other things to complain about, perhaps a more realistic government stile (with feudalism for example giving the city control to the city-lords), more civs (Switzerland :)), more diplomatic, more realistic fight system. 3D-graphic. :)

mfG mitsho

How about global warming creates receding water levels? I know water tiles can turn into land tiles in Civ3 but its a bug and not widespread. I say if global warming gets really out of hand they add a tile to some, most, or all shorelines.

major and minor rivers

maybe you could bridge the minor ones upon learning construction and the major ones with a industrial tech like Suspension Bridges

Originally posted by ArbitraryGuy
-A more indepth government system like in SMAC, where you get to define your politics, economy, and society with different options becoming available w/ different techs or events.

-Event scripting. (With that, lots more random events)

For me and the others who dont know...whats SMAC and what was the government like. However by the sound of it...I do like the idea.

finally found the thread i started a couple of months ago

lots of great ideas here

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62365

why not have multi figure units?

i like the other ideas posted too

Being a huge C3C fan :goodjob: I just hope there are some badly needed improvements (AI and so...), but let's see it.......

It comes in a DVD!

Not much better graphics. Just like Heroes of Migth & Magic 4!
(those moving things are so cool :) )

~40 CIVs. No need to get Leaders heads better (to save graphics)

Better and more logical AI (just meaning here that this should be a ex-libris of CIV4...), including in Negotiations.

More Great Leaders:
- Religious (special: allow insta-government change)
- Cultural (special: boost cultural production & increase chance of Cultural conversions)
All 4 ones should rush city improv and small wonders...

Very Powerfull editor (another ex-libris!)
Bigger map sizes available (it will run in Pentium 5/6...)

Other ways to fight corruption!

More techs, faster to research. (detail, detail...)

And last but not least: attention to detail!!! Specially in Civilopedia.

Oh and PLEAAAAAASE: a much lower random combat!
Make that randow numbers less random!!!

Originally posted by ljofa
With apologies to the moderator but this is how I posted on www.gamesfaqs.com who suggested I put it here for someone at Firaxis who might actually get to read it:

I wrote to Firaxis asking this:

1. Unique Small Wonders

I like the idea of unique units and wonder why can’t each civ have a unique structure which brings a benefit to the civilisation. Some civs are outbalanced, notable the English, Americans, Russians as their unique units are pretty useless to most players and their civ-traits aren’t the best. The unique small wonders are like regular small wonders in that they can be destroyed if the city is captured and it is possible to rebuild them should they be destroyed. Each small wonder should be worth 3 culture points unless specified. I have thought of small wonders for many of the civs:

English – Houses of Parliament. Gives the 1 turn of anarchy in government switching that is granted to religious civs. Made available with Feudalism.
American – Mount Rushmore. Instantly bequeaths 1 great leader to the Americans but this is a one time benefit only. If Rushmore is destroyed, it can be rebuilt for the cultural value only. Made available with Construction.
(...)

Comments, suggestions, hatemail welcomed.
It's Cool
Port (you forgot us!...)could have Henry Navigation School, just like in AoD scenario. It could give +1 movement to ships, or up-to-date boat every 10 turns...

Keep the graphics simple. Clear, crisp, and easier on computer hardware. 3D polygons or whatever are not necessary.

More Civs.

Change some Leaderheads:

Bring back Napoleon and send Joan of Arc packing. The reality is that most of the influential people in terms of empiring building back in the day were men -- that's not a knock on women, that's just reality.

For America, you may not agree with his politics, but having FDR makes more sense to me than Lincoln -- the man almost had a small empire of his own with a 12+ year presidency (he also has a great image to caricature -- and leave the cigarette with holder there, we know smoking is bad, a computer game doesn't need to teach us).

More Scenarios: Conquests was great. Love to see a WWII in Europe with locked alliances between Germany/Italy/Vichy France(?) and US/England/Free France, etc.

Wonders: Don't overdo them. I think there are enough already. They're Wonders -- they are suppose to be rare. Moreover, a lot of things like the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Brandenburg Gate, etc. don't really have the "feel" of being Wonders. I think we've already hit saturation in terms of marginal Wonders.

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1
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Civil Wars should make a comeback. This would counter the poor expansion minded (go to locations that make no sense -inevitably will return in a new version) AI. This could be a HUGE balancing force in the game.

If a civ is too big (either player or AI) and the civ is allowed to fall to a certain extreme level of unhappiness, there should be a penalty in excess of loss of production. Civil war would solve this. It could also shake up the middle game in a way that would make it more fun.

Civil wars should vary in size... not just a split down the middle - perhaps a combination of culture and war could redefine the new borders. The newly created civ would have to have an alternative known form of govt. This would be helpful for early game CW's because the off shoot would be weakened by Anarchy.

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2
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United Nations refinement...

This could be expanded to all eras in terms of a Wonder feature for existing Wonders.

Early age UN Wonders
* Have votes based on one vote for one civ.
- Respect culture boundaries - Yes/No
- Total Number of units allowed - number picked by wonder owning civ... voted yes or no... violaters can't trade with compliant civs.

Later age UN Wonders
Expand options to include among others (two part votes):
* Have votes based on population and number of civs
- Restrict individual units (Nukes, tanks, BB's, whatever): Wonder owner chooses unit... vote by pop yes/no. Wonder owner chooses number of units to restrict build... chooses 4 options for vote (example a=0 b=3 c=7 d=14)... vote based on one civ one vote. Violaters could get peace keeping troops placed in country.

- Restrict types of govt's... violaters could get peace keeping troops and reduction in commerce.

I am sure there are other options that could be added - these are just of the top of my head.


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3
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One amphibious unit per era. This will prevent the sea wall defense that players can use on smaller continents/islands.



And a special request!

Please have all the developers PLAY one game each before release. Most of the most glaring errors were noticed by players in thier first game. This is also why many gave so much grief in the early days of release (and now with Conquests)- it was more about, "They missed THAT?!?"

Change the russian leader, God I wanna smack her face,(don't you just hate that little smiling russian scum?)

sorry i didnt mean for that to come out rascist, i just dislike that elephant.

I wouldn't mind seeing a pop-up for battles. Nothing fancy, but about maybe a third of the time I can't see one unit or another's HP bar. It would be nice to see that during the fight. Maybe something like Dungeon siege, where you can pan and scan the camera.

I like the naming areas idea. that would be cool. In civ2 I wished for national borders, and we got that via culture. But this could still be improved upon, say if a unit was occupying an unowned tile, and it could influence several tiles around it.

Of course, I may be regurgitating stuff already said. I haven't been keeping up with this thread.

Originally posted by Mobilize
The ability to trade units with other civs. Like giving aid or asking for aid against opposing forces with friendly people's mercenaries. This was in Civ2 and for some reason not in Civ3.

Also more civs.. way more.


Really agrees in this one, but the opnent country of the one you support should be angry at you, since its a great trigger for war that you support their oponents with arms...

Originally posted by Mobilize
The ability to trade units with other civs. Like giving aid or asking for aid against opposing forces with friendly people's mercenaries. This was in Civ2 and for some reason not in Civ3.

Also more civs.. way more.


Really agrees in this one, but the opnent country of the one you support should be angry at you, since its a great trigger for war that you support their oponents with arms...

I have a great idea!!!!!!

When your civ-empire falls (your last city is taken) The remains of your army in the field should not just pass away, but the conqueror should be able to choose if he wantet to place a new government over the captured cities, or parts of them! Then the remains of the old army will become the new governments army in a kind of vasal or vichy state. If the conqueror chooses to keep the whole conquerred nation as a part of his own empire, or large parts of it, there should be a great risk that this army converted to resistance fighters, and the one ruling the conquered country before should be in charge of them, trying to get their old powers back. He could survive even without cities if he was supported by a third nation with arms and gold, but this should seriously harm the third countries relations to the conqeror civ!



NB! Firaxis! Hire me and civ 4 will be a classic to survive the test of time!:hammer: :sniper:

And I really want this game to be even more complex, and filled with even more units, improvments, techs, time periods, everyting! And for those of us that dont know where the save button is, you can make some small conquests or quickgames ;)

Originally posted by Masquerouge


Oooh yes ! Definitely ! Like the combat system of CTP2... And i'd add, long-distance units shoudl get wiped out by close-combat ones, UNLESS they're protected themselves by close-combat units, in that case they would be really strong... Heck, I loved the CTP2 combat system. It rocked.

I agree the combat system must be improved, and it will be, but I dont wish the days of ctp2 back! Its nicer as it is where all battles are solved on the main map, and not in a kind of special chess system or something!, and by the way, I really like that you use one and one unit to fight down others. It makes it more realistic, because it forces you to use combined arms (artillery, air, mounted units etc)! I dont want a game where you can tile 12 tanks, and then go arround concuerring everything, the armies in Civ3 are strong enough! Great numbers are never enough to win battles or wars, you have to be smart as well (example the winter war Rusiia vs Finland)! The way its made now also adds the importance of keeping a frontal line...

What will be more important in civ 4 is to add attack and defence bonuses for certain units vs others, for instance anti panzer infantry great vs tanks, but weak vs ordinary infantry!

It should also have a great negative impact on armies to be isolated from transport routes from home, for instance if they are surrounded by the enemy, as the germans where at Stalingrad in the end! This forced them to surrender at last, with a large army!!!!

A more logical vicotry. IN modern times, you shouldn't just to get your country growing and growing and growing. (for example Iraq didn't became a new state of the USA... :)) bad example...

and more civ traits. If we want more civs, we have to get more traits. We've now (in opponent pairs):
Expansionistic <-> seafaring
Agricultural <-> [f.e nomadic]
commercial <-> [f.e monumentalistic]
religous <-> [f.e. perhaps 'entertainistic']
militaristic <-> [f.e. isolationistic]
scientific <->[f.e. a deceiving nation (bad name)]
industrial <-> [f.e cultural]

Then we would have 14 traits. But of course, some of them are bad and would drop out. Explanation
nomadic: Mountains (higher lying regions which produce less food) are giving more food; same by no-good-food-climata
monumentalistic: wonders are a bit cheaper; building rushes cost less
entertainistic: have no idea. just needed an opponent for religous :)
isolatistic: inside the own borders, you get a higher defensive bonus; defensive buildings cost less and are better, (-> no one can conquer you), BUT you're army is worse outside your country (-> no good conquering other nations)
a deceiving nation: Instead of researching their own, they have a greater chance to succed in stealing techs, etc ,also cheaper.
cultural: other cities are more likely to jump over to you, etc.

mfG mitsho

Its a lot of talk about improving the AI skills in battle, and thats exstremly important of course, but what about the AI skills with their workers? When I conquer an AI player I have seen that he builds an awfull lot og irrigation, but not so much mining as I do, to improve production! The AIs production capacity is incredible small, I would never survive in civ using my workers like that!

Name of Feature: Commercial "Culture"

What this feature should do in the game:

A commercial like affect similar to culture (like how American corporations (Coke, or McDonalds as examples)) have a presence globally.
This might be accomplished by creating corporations via wonder (or an economic type leader created by being one of the better economic powers, or having one of the best inudstrial capacities) which then bring income. Perhaps a fraction of a cities gold, although maybe the corp has a cost (to reflect costs). This might depend on cultural influence, your governments (yours and others), geographic location, etc. Example: Playing a Democratic nation, you will have a better effect (and be better effected), as opposed to a Communist or possibly Fascist nation. Also, civ traits might contribute to this. (IE Industrial/Commercial America under Democracy would greatly affect a yyy/Commercial Democratic Greece with less economic and industrial capacity)

It might not even drain the other economy, but represent the citizens spending the money they do have. Little connection to taxrate probably. (Saved money, money for mowing lawns doesn't get taxed, etc)



How would this feature work: See above

Gameplay:

AI - How does it affect the AI, and how will they use it?
Maybe they move to a less capitalist so society if you're gaining from it, or might move the other way if they're raking in the cash. This would also affect how they wage war, logically.

Processor Power - I don't think so, probably not a lot more complex then culture... with commercial 'outlets' appearing in cities a few or one at a time.
Complexity - believe so
Programming Complexity - Not something simple enough to put in expansion I'm afraid, but with the culture foundation layed, the job will probably be easier
Multiplayer - Dunno here
Exploits - With appropriate countermeasures, such as government changes or improving thier own economy and industrial complex, they should be able to handle it well.
Player Decisions - Two possibilities in this realm: 1, it's like culture and no one directly starts it, but by improving your cities through commercial and/or indusrial buildings it is affected.

2. Perhaps they can go against this route, making the Communist government stand out more from the Fascist government. Possib having a global adverse affect by the player trying to forment world revolution or something.
Affects - It'd offer more possibilities, without dragging the game to a halt, and not being something choice intensive... like culture.
[/list]

Some system that allows you to conquer nations by forcing surrender, so that remaining cities get automatically transferred to you without having to conquer them, in return for eventual freedom in a locked alliance and forced tribute (kind of like Alpha Centauri). So much of history is about conquered people trying to get independance, I would like to see that implemented in the game.

I think there should be a reputation system. Where everyone that was in contact with each other could see each others reputation... I think it would work well on a rating system. For example: You double click to trade with Zululand. Your foreign advisor could tell you something like, "Zululand has a reputation of 35." (On a scale of 0 - 100) Or, "Zululand has a bad reputation". Ratings could go like this.

85-100: Awesome reputation... Treat them great, they bring the world joy.

65-84: Very good reputation... Treat them nice, maybe help them every and then.

55-64: Good reputation, treat them with respect

45-54: Normal reputation, They have done neither good or bad.

35-44: Bad reputation, be careful when dealing with them.

15-34: Very bad reputation, if you break a right of passage agreement, nobody will care. If you nuke them, nobody will care. But, you can expect them to try to destroy you.

0-14: Terrible reputation, to get a reputation this bad, you have to betray almost every other civilization on the map. If you nuke these people, everyone will be happy.

And, if you put a spy in their capital, you could use the spy to see the last few things that civlization did to gain their current reputation.

BIGGER DOES NOT MEAN BETTER. In Civ3 the biggest civ is the most productive. They really need to find ways around this. Also, you should be able to send excessive food from some cities to cities that dont have enough. THis would lead to more specialization within your civ. Some cities would focus on producing food while some cities would be highly industrialized. It would also be nice if there were multiple versions of city improvements. You could have the option to build factories if you want the city to focus on shield production or if your city is more agriculturally focused you could build a granary system that would effect food output instead of shield production.

Here's mine

1) Bring back the Sioux! Also could add the Cherokee and Apache. If we can have multiple Civs from Mesopotamia why not more from the Americas.
2) Make Sargon the great leader of Sumeria. There is actual proof of him.
3) Naval leaders or Naval Academy
4) Increase the number of possible Civs to 48 (yes I know some want 64 but can even most 2GHz machines with 1GB of memory handle that many?)
5) Flavor specific units, ie Japan has their on set, America their own, etc…
6) Give us the ability in the editor to add more ages
7) Add a future age and place in some of the SMAC technologies!
8) Bring back the Civ2 style space race! Just because you launch does not mean you make it to Alpha Centari
9) How about adding space stations, moon bases, for small wonders that give some added bonus and Mars base and Solor system exploration for great wonders in a future age.
10) Start the Game at 6000 BC and let it run through 2200 AD. 2050 is only 47 years away.

Name of Feature: The ability to transfer military units to other civs.

You should be able to sell or donate military units to other civs. Transfers of advanced weaponry (those units you've only had for a short while) should only be made to close allies, whereas less advanced weapons could be transferred to anyone. There should also be a scale that rates the relative value of the units. (for instance, an aircraft carrier should be MUCH more valuable than an infantry unit).

Name of Feature: being able to mediate between two civs.

By this, I mean that you should be able to get two other warring civs to sign a peace treaty. You should be able to include
"sweeteners" in the deal (gold, resources, units, techs). The receptivity of the warring civs to you should depend on your influence with them (eg: if you're sending them a resource, gold, etc), your power relative to them, and the number of your units located close to them. The number of units close to them is important because it's a measure of the likelihood and success of a military intervention by you. In real life, having a carrier battle group has usaully meant that countries are a lot more receptive to the demands of great powers.

Name of Feature: Bridges and Canals.
Perhaps these should be made incredibly expensive (~1000 Gold/square) and have a cap on their maximum size (for example, bridges should only be able to span 3 squares of ocean, and canals should cut through only 2 squares of land). Bridges would link land masses separated by water, and canals would link two bodies of water separated by a land mass. Having them as great wonders wouldn't be realistic because this would entail having only one bridge/canal on a map. Having them as minor wonders would result in their destruction upon capture, which rarely happens in reality - even if it is destryed, the invader rapidy tries to rebuild the structure (this is especially true for bridges). These are the reasons why paying for them seems attractive. The cost, however, should be enormous to preclude players from building several of these structures.

I don't know if anyone suggested this because I haven't read back but wouldn't it be nice if on each unit that is fortified you tell him exactly how many turns after you fortify him he should wake up?

Here is when it becomes useful:

You are close to building the Great Lighthouse and you are just circling around your continent with a galley and you fortify the galley on a place where you know you can go further so you fortify it and tell it to wake up when you build the Great Lighthouse which is 10 turns away. When you build it, it wakes up and you proceed.

Very useful IMO.

I don't agree with smilitary trade, i mean wha would stop you from paying 1000 gpt taking all their military and then conquering them?

Civilizations sprining up part way into the game. Through various possible means.

A collection of Barbarian villages after a period of time

If I'm playing, let's say the Swiss (which I'd like to see also), and I have a collection of colonies and cities on (using world map) Australia. There's a chance, especially when they are underveloped culutrally/infrastructure, they might rebel. This could be tied into what government I am, and civil disorder. The cities I have keep thier names while the colonies (ala Civ 3) adopt a few of my names, and a few of thier names. Colonies/cities near these of another civ or two may also rebel with them (to form the same civ) So perhaps Rome is created by Rebellion, and my four colonies, and three cities on West Australia form Rome, with two cities from Portugal joining them as well. While my Northern and Eastern presence continues to exist. I suggest that some would stay loyal as all of North America did not rebel when the American War for Independence occured.

To go further
The Rebellion might start, and I may be at war with them, so I can try to reclaim it. Nations I'm at war with, or who have various negative attitudes for me for various reasons, may enter on the sides of the Rebels.

I DO NOT want this to inhibit me playing the Americans, or (let's say India, as they once were ruled by Britain). I'm not suggesting each civ have a potential rebel. Perhaps a relationship of liklihood to rebel out of X civ's cities. (IE Korea less likely to rebel from Spain or Inca, but very likely to rebel from India).

Also a why not have a defeat mode where the civ collapses on itself (a loss condition) bankrupcy, hatred of the people (1792 style) or something of that jazz

Originally posted by saintly_saint
I don't agree with smilitary trade, i mean wha would stop you from paying 1000 gpt taking all their military and then conquering them?
As I see it the obvious answers would be:
1) They do not give you all of their military.
2) Military units would revert to the mother country if you declare war on it.

I like the idea of trading military units/mercenaries.

The one thing I would love to see in Civ 4: A dynamic multiplayer universe!

One way of doing this would be to have each server be a solar system of Earth-like worlds with hundreds, maybe thousands, of players to each solar system. The planet sizes would range from Earth-size to Jupiter-size to meet demand and tailor it to your own personal tastes (ie. if you want to play against a lot of nations going for a lot of land you would choose a Jupiter size world.)

Another way of creating a Civ 4 dynamic multiplayer universe would be to have each server be a planet with player created regions much like the webgame NationStates. These regions can either choose to be like the modern European Union with a strong alliance or to be like Medieval Europe with wars constantly going on between the nations in the region.

In order to make your nation a bit more distinctive you will get to choose your nation's name and to create a customized leaderhead in a manner similar to the character creation systems seen in MMORPG games. You will also be able to choose your traits from the civ list and your military speciality which will offer benefits but also penalities to your nation's military, ie. if you choose to specialize in armor production the tanks you produce will be stronger and faster than normal tanks but as a downside your air units might not be as strong as the standard air units.

That would be awesome! :)

i would like to see the day of the king more like in civ 2 than in civ 3

giving only a production bonus is not that much worth in my opinion but getting benefits from a better government is much more effective, and iirc if you have dotk in democracy citysize raised every turn - that was great :)

edit: oh i also forgot to increase the spy ability. its kind of boring when you are able to use spys and can't convert enemys cities cause of whatever .... i never managed to get a city by spying missions , and imho nearly everything else is useless (except steal plans sometimes)

It seems that most people don't like the idea of a future age in Civ; but I do. How about THE CONQUEST OF MARS? In which, at the end of 2050 AD, each remaining nation capable of space flight send out a colony ship to Mars. Sounds like SMaC, I know ;) (I like SMAC). I would like to be the first to build a city at the base of Olympus Monts. :) Each would establish a colony and proceed to attempt to terraform the planet.
The colonies would, of course, receive periodic supply ships from earth to help in this effort. So, one strategy might be to intercept an oponent Civs supplies. A trip to the asteriod belt for resources might also be made. These would require researching fuel refining methods (isolating hydrogen & oxigen).

I'll throw out a few ideas here...

(1) ALL non-optional techs need to be researched in order to launch the space ship. In my opinion, this is a flaw with the current game, and means that we don't get to see such things as Integrated Defence and Radar Artillery.

(2) Future Tech. I agree it's a "love it or hate it" type of thing, but realistically, the technology tree on Civ III falls short of the technology that would actually be required to get to Alpha Centauri within a reasonable timespan. At the very least, the Modern Age needs to be extended to include, for example, exotic materials (eg. nanotubes), Space-based manufacturing, and of course Fusion.

(3) Modular AI. Although Soren has done a great job with the AI in Civ III, he is but one programmer, and there are many of us who feel the AI is lacking in some respects. There are obvious shortfalls, such as the AI trying to build settlers in size 1 cities, the ineffective use of offensive artillery, and the fixation with defending every city during a war, even if there is no chance of them being attacked, at the expense of those cities under siege.

My proposal. Assuming C++, create the AI as an interface (pur virtual methods), and allow this interface to be downloaded. Obviously the Firaxis AI would be supplied as a concrete class (COM object or DLL?), but the interface would allow a user-defined AI to be plugged in instead. Even better would be to set up the Firaxis AI in terms of vitual methods so that it can be subclassed, allowing specific parts of the AI to be replaced without having to rewrite all of it.

Great Wonders:

Stonehenge or Astral (Mayan) Calendar, Agricultural, Available with Mathematics – Allows for timing optimal planting and harvesting. Irrigated tiles get one extra food. Expires with railroad.

Parthenon, Religious, Architecture; New dead-end tech following construction – All new buildings in a city are architecturally brilliant. Either all new buildings are ½ price (or reduced) or some number of buildings are maintenance free (Historical Society funded).

Great (Panama) Canal, Industrious/Expansionist, Available with Steel – Buildable only in a city which as at least two coastal tiles within the maximum city radius. Four tiles may have the canal. One canal tile must adjacent to at least one other. The host city can have a canal on its tile if adjacent to one of the others. All civs, ROP or not, must ask permission each turn to use it. Foreign ships cannot move in the canal without permission. If part of the canal ends up in foreign territory the host city civ is prompted to ask permission but may pass at risk of consequence. Foreign ships cannot end their movement in the city. The canal can be pillaged. Repair each tile at 1/8 original cost. Adds trade to any tile without a river (as if a river were present).

Sliced Bread – Just kidding.

Small Wonders:

Space Shuttle, Satellites – can be used to reveal a 5-tile diameter area anywhere in the word each turn.

Historical Museum – Offers bonus trade and reduced corruption in the host city

Techs:

Terracing, agricultural, (middle ages somewhere), dead-end tech – hills and mountains can be terraced to produce one extra food.

Commodities:

Akin to luxuries and strategic resources, these may be traded to increase trade between two civs. The supplier gets a +2 bonus, the consumer +1. Examples may include tobacco (Change the current tobacco to corn), cotton, olives, chemicals, semi-precious stones (coastal and inland), fruit or nut groves in forests, lost if chopped down. Some of these should be “discovered” by tech advancement.

Weather and Natural Disasters:

Weather includes rain and snow, sandstorms and gales. Both reduce movement on unimproved terrain, foreign and domestic alike, rain and sandstorms by one point and snow by two. Snow allows +20% defensive bonus and rain and sandstorms +10%. Gales slow wind powered craft by one.

Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and lightening. All make one person unhappy within a city radius, two if units are injured. This is reduced to one unhappy if units are injured after scientific method. Volcanoes randomly “pillage” one of the eight adjacent tiles. Earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes pillage a square and/or do one point of damage to troops and/or kill a worker and/or reduce population in a city by one. If Lightening strikes a forest there is a chance it will burn. Burnt forest will produce only one shield. It will heal in 5 turns or can be reseeded in two. Civil defense negates these affects.

Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, rain or snow provide a chance that a tile would have increased food output or reveal minerals for a bonus shield for five years.

Terrain:

Put some forest on hills and mountains, but hills and mountains can not be seeded.

Break desert into desert and sand dunes. Sand dunes would have oases and oil, and like swamp cannot be built upon (except on an oasis). Sand dunes can be worked into desert. Some desert squares could contain a food bonus like a shield bonus in grasslands. Think of the rich California desert that grows anything with water.

City Improvements:

Fix coliseums. They could make a percentage of the population happy, rather then a fixed number.

Launch Pad, Satellites – Allows satellites to be built. Satellites reveal a 5-tile radius anywhere on the map.

Auto upgrade:

Ancient troops gotta go. Either auto-upgrade units or they should be increasingly likely to lose to advanced troops.
Auto-upgrade – units two (or maybe three) upgrades behind are automatically upgraded at the cost on one hit point. At the discovery of gunpowder a regular spearman is upgraded automatically to a conscript pikeman. At the discovery of Nationalism a conscript pikeman is upgraded to a reserve (1 HP) musketman. A reserve can not be auto-upgraded and is lost.

Or, Troops two tech levels advanced are twice as likely victorious; Thrice advanced, thrice as victorious.

Units:

Fix cruise missiles. Make them cheaper or more effective.

Balloons, new tech: Advanced Experimentation, late middle ages – Balloons are recon craft that reveal a nine-tile square. They move 4 in three directions (those East OR those West) and one in others, due to prevailing winds. The can only move 1 over mountains and have % chance of being lost ending a turn over water.

Spy plane, rocketry – recon craft have long range (say, 15) and reveal a 3-tile radius strip across the entire traversed path.

Pirates and for-hire guerillas (FHG. Yeah OK, I couldn’t think of a better name) Pirates are great. The Privateer is historically accurate, but why limit piracy to one era? Ships from all era could be pirates. They could cost the same but have reduced fire power and defense. Units like swordsmen, guerillas, etc, would be FHGs. They too would cost the same but have reduced attack and defense. The units would be upgradable. The first time a civ is attacked, they’ll have no idea who the sponsoring state is. With each subsequencent attack, the victim is increasingly likely to identify the sponsor, with a 100% chance after five attacks. This is reset every five turns of no attacks. If a pirate or FHG is “seen” on the same tile as other troops or entering/exiting a city, they are forever known to the observing civ as to which state is sponsoring them. This is negated with an upgrade. Espionage can help reveal and misdirect the identity of the sponsoring civ. Consider also a higher maintenance cost.

The American UU sucks. How about a SEAL unit? The SEAL (12(6), 6, 2(6)) would ignore terrain for movement and could move and end turns on coastal tiles and lakes. They could have a move of 2 on land and 6 on coastal tiles and lakes. They could attack and be attacked by ships. They could have stealth (see below).

Other:

Stealth – Certain military units, especially UU units could have certain levels of stealth. Stealth gives a chance of undetectably by foreign civs. The turn after an attack, offensive or defensive, stealthy units are visible, and have reduced stealth until exiting foreign territory. Radar sites greatly increase the chance of detection.

Partial maps. I’d like to trade partial maps. Perhaps a selection of maps from other civs would pop-up on a menu, or select from a list by civs, explored land, explored ocean, etc.

Troop morale independent of the civilian populace. Whoever has a significantly higher stack of units get a bonus. Conscripts & lower (see auto-upgrade) may refuse to attack unless within one tile of veteran or elite troops. One veteran unit can influence one conscript; One Elite can influence two conscripts. An army can influence all nearby conscripts. Similarly, veteran and below troops wounded to one HP may refuse to attack. Victories offer an attack and defense bonus the following turn. Loss or lack of supply lines influence morale (except for paratroopers).

how about a feature to do spy work for a civ, you could ask someone to perform a "investigate city" that costs that person 100 gold, but you pay 150 gold to them, and you both see the results, that way, if you're at war with someone, and you only have an embassie, while the other civ has one, but is not at war so it's still working, you can still do your work (for a higher price) this could however lead torevealing that you have a spy in someone's capital. how about if a spy gets caught on a commisioned mission, you have a 50% chance of the commisiner bieng revealed (less of the spying civ is a commie)

This is a little offtopic but do we really want a Civ4?

Personally as most would agree C3C is probably the best version of Civ yet. If a Civ4 was released it would need to truly revolutinise Civ. Civ3 was already critised by many as being a Civ2 clone.

I would like to see an Alpha Centauri sequel, though with a more inspiring name than Alpha Centauri 2 hopefully. Alpha Centauri though maybe not as balanced as Civ3 did have have factions with very strong personalities and is a more enjoyed game than Civ3 for some people. The creativity and brilliance of the tech tree was brilliant in Alpha Centauri. Is this possible? I realise there was some conflict between Firaxis and the Civ franchise around the time Alpha Centauri was released. Does Firaxis have the rights to produce an Alpha Centauri sequel? I think it would be fun to play an Alpha Centauri sequel before a Civ4, you can get a little Civ'd out :)

If Civ4 was made, I'd want to see wonder movies return though they should be forcibly turned off in multiplayer. Even just adding the Civ2 ones again would be cool.

Originally posted by Dr. Yoshi
The one thing I would love to see in Civ 4: A dynamic multiplayer universe!

One way of doing this would be to have each server be a solar system of Earth-like worlds with hundreds, maybe thousands, of players to each solar system. The planet sizes would range from Earth-size to Jupiter-size to meet demand and tailor it to your own personal tastes (ie. if you want to play against a lot of nations going for a lot of land you would choose a Jupiter size world.)

Another way of creating a Civ 4 dynamic multiplayer universe would be to have each server be a planet with player created regions much like the webgame NationStates. These regions can either choose to be like the modern European Union with a strong alliance or to be like Medieval Europe with wars constantly going on between the nations in the region.

In order to make your nation a bit more distinctive you will get to choose your nation's name and to create a customized leaderhead in a manner similar to the character creation systems seen in MMORPG games. You will also be able to choose your traits from the civ list and your military speciality which will offer benefits but also penalities to your nation's military, ie. if you choose to specialize in armor production the tanks you produce will be stronger and faster than normal tanks but as a downside your air units might not be as strong as the standard air units.

That would be awesome! :)

LOVE the idea... but would be impossible... what they should do is put Civ4 into a game engine something like Starfleet Command 3, I love the dynamic multiplayer universe theory... ;)

A few changes/additions I would like to see in Civ4:

1. Increase max city limit above 512.
2. Canals and bridges.
3. No fewer than 45 civilizations.
4. More natural disasters.
5. More (better) future techs.
6. Stackpiling of resources, etc.
7. Manhattan Project changed to small wonder so every civ that wants nukes has to build it.
8. Totally rework corruption.
9. Ability for RoP agreements for land and/or sea.
10. Stop the AI "expand as fast as you can race" and prevent AI civs from settling 50 tiles away from their closest city just to be next to the player's civ. (This is horrible in C3C)
11. Add more resources, luxuries, units, and city improvments.
12. Rework diplomacy.
13. Make the AI a lot smarter without giving them bonuses and hindering the player.

What I would like to see in Civ4:

1. Either I didn't catch it or for some reason no one mentioned it, we definitely need combat bonuses towards different types of units. For example, a pikeman has an advantage when defending against a Knight than if he was defending against a medieval infantry, or a TOW infantry is better at fighting a Tank than a Guerilla, etc. Plus, armies would get the combined bonus of all the units included. THis will mean that you could either diversify the units in your armies (i.e. having a Knight, a Pikeman, and a Medieval Infantry in an army) or shape an army to a specific role (like just Med. Infantry for Pikeman killing, or Knights for Med. Infantry killing, etc.)

2. I like the idea of immigration as opposed to a culture flip of a city. I think that a culture flip should only happen in the most extreme circumstances when you completely culturally overpower a rival civ and the civ has a certain number of units as Military Police there. Also, accepting a city that flips to you should have an extremely negative effect on the civ that previously owned the city (it is, after all, how the war between Greece and Persia started)

3. I think the change that would really define Civ4 as a true sequel (and not just a clone) would be if one abolished the civ stucture all together. Someone talked about this earlier in the thread, and I would like to add onto it. I think that there should be no civilizations to choose, just leaderheads, then you make up a name for your civilization and a name for your leader and such. Everyone's buildings and cities and look the same (thatched roof) but depending on what you do and where you are, your civ takes on a different look. How would the style of civ be determined? Well, it would be a combination of:

A) Climate: If you are in a climate with lots of rivers and plenty of food, then your people lean more towards an agricultural life, if you are in a harsh, cold environment up in a land with lots of mountains and forests, then you are an industrious people, if you face many barbarians in your early years, then you become more militaristic, if you are an island people or have many colonies and cities overseas, then you are seafaring, etc.

B) What techs you research/Improvements you build: If some of the first technologies you research are Construction, Engineering, and you tend to build more architectural buildings (colliseum, cathedral) you can pursue more in-depth techs as a result of your civ's fascination with architecture like "The Arch" or "Skyscrapers". If you tend to research more scientific things like Scientific Method, Philosophy, etc. and focus on building libraries, universities, and research labs, then you can research offshoot techs like "Material Classification" or even "Alchemy"!

C) What kind of religion is dominant in your civ: This is decided by the religions of the civs you trade with and interact with the most. But the creation of a religion is decided by the various Great Wonders of the religion like the Temple of Artemis or possibly the Parthenon is the center for the Greek Gods/Goddesses religion, perhaps have Jerusalem be the center for the Judeo-Christian faith, Mecca be the center for the Islamic faith. A civ can only have one Religion-starting Great Wonder and once that Great Wonder is built, the civilization can never leave that religion unless they have a revolution. Religion plays a part in what civs think of you (Islamic civs like Islamic civs, Bhuddists like other Bhuddists, Christians like other Christians, etc.) as well as resistance and propaganda (I'm sure the Iraqis would not be resisting as much to an occupying force if, say, Syria had invaded)

D) Lastly, how conservative/liberal you are: This would be determined by how religious you are (build more temples to the dominant religion and you get more conservative) how many troops you have, how frequently you use them/if you do use them, how many of them you use (garrisoning units in a city to keep them out of civil disorder counts as using them) determines how liberal/conservative you are, plus there would be a slider that would determine how much of your income you should spend on things like Welfare, Social Security, plus a seperate slider on how much regulation of the economy you have, from 100% (communism) to 0% (laissez faire ala 1890s US). So, the government type would be determined by a combination of all those factors, you could be liberal but have complete control of the economy (socialism) or be conservative and have no control of the economy (Republicanism?)

Things like the Unique Unit would be determined by what resources you have close by/ what type of culture you have (to prevent someone from never using their unique unit due to a bad start location

4. Definitely add in a Future Age. This age should allow underwater cities, cities on the Moon and possibly on mars, and of course a whole bunch of new units (like mechs)

5. Rivers should act like roads until you get steam power, in which case they act like Railroads (which should give 8 movement for all units, not instantaneous or a multiple of base movement). Certain ships can go on the rivers, like the Curragh, the Ironclad, and possibly add a new unit in the Ind./Modern Era like some sort of fast attack ship that can go in rivers/coast and sea

6. Possibly have the option to build parts to a ship then assemble it in a far off city. For example, I want to build a battleship in a city on the other end of my civ. I build all the parts to it, which then creates a unit (like Battleship Parts) that has no A/D and is immobile, must be transported by Railroad or by Plane. I send it to the far-off city and for like 50 shields the pieces are put together there.

7. New Units:
-G.I.: Get rid of the Mech Infantry and replace with a Half-Track in the Industrial Era and in the Modern Era have an APC. Half-Track and APC should have minimal A/D but lots of movement, can transport units. GI should basically have stats of Mech Infantry only 1 movement

- Commando: Give him all sorts of cool special abilities, but have him be very hard to build.

- Cargo Plane/C-130: For heavy transportation of stuff

- Sniper: Stealthy/Stealth Attack, has high Attack rating, very low defense rating

Basically, improve the combat of the Modern Age

Edit>> Whew! That was one looong post!:eek:

Name of Feature: Pre-Targeted Nukes

What it does and how it works: On nukes, there should be an option to "pre-target" them to a specific city or square, in the event that a nuke was fired from the civ this nuke is aimed at, then this nuke would automatically launch as a response, regardless if you are at war.

In addition, it should also have a 1-turn wait delay before a nuke hits its target, so one knows its in the air, but has no idea where it launched, though a box should come up saying that this civ has launched a nuke in a specific direction (North, Southwest, etc.). That way, one dosent really nkow where the nuke will hit. also a popup should come when the nuke hits its objective. Also, a city should say if it has a nuke pre-targeted on it in zoom or an icon. that can also be a spy option to find all nukes in one's territory kind of like war plans theft.

Gameplay: This would create the nuclear standoff like the cold war, as one would not dare launch in fear of special reprisals. I also cant really think of any potential exploits in this, save if tyou consider the whole idea an exploit for ALL civs itself.

Here is my idea, have fun with it.

I would like to keep the free movement on railroads, first of all to keep the management simple, but also because it can be used in some improvements.

Production:

This needs the most work. When a city produces 55 shields and you want to build a modern armor, it takes 3 turns, and then you have 0 shields in stock. I would really like to keep the 45 wasted shields in the production stock, so you don’t have to micromanage what every city is building. Or even better: When you have some cities connected by railroads, you should be able to select an output city. Then when you want to produce units you just select "unit production", and then all the shields are send to your output city, where you might collect let’s say 710 shields. You can then select units for those shields e.g. 5 modern and 1 mech. would definitely decrease micromanagement.

Also when hurrying production, it shouldn’t cost double to buy a unit/improvement from scratch, especially when you just buy a warrior and changes production and buy the rest at normal cost.

Bridges and canals: - But only for two squares. Should take forever/cost a fortune

Combat: I really like the combat system, but a unit two ages prior to another unit should always loose. – Some naval units should carry missiles.

UN: like SMAC, and with pollution- and nuclear control. After the UN has been build territory claims should be available. (besides the cultural borders)

Statistics: All kinds of statistics e.g. number of different lost units, number of different killed units (like civ 2)

Movies: Like civ 2 play a small movie when you have achieved something special.

Useable future techs: I would prefer tech like SMAC, but less could also do. Like every second future tech increase your modern armors attack value by 1 and so on.

Info on rep damage: When ever an act causes rep damage, you should be informed.

Obsolete, obsolete units: Why can I still build warrior, when Modern Armor is available??? You have to scroll through al those obsolete units to get down to the improvements.

Civil war: Let’s get that back as well, perhaps with the option to support the rebels in another civ. (or maybe terrorism)

Offshore oil tiles:

Odds stats: Before attacking a unit, it should be possible to press a key e.g. “O”, and press the key for the direction for your attack, and a stat-screen showing your odds should appear.

Better trade for coast cities: 90% of all major cities founded before 1900 are placed on a coast line or a river bank. The main reason for this is trade. This should also be reflected in civ 4. (maybe with the possibility for 2 naval units to make a naval blockade, canceling the extra trade, luxury and resources)

There's a few things I'd like to see, I hope these haven't been posted before (I did check).

First I'd like to see empires crumble and die as time progresses and smaller countries emerge to be the new empires, perhaps your Civ could start out as one of the guerilla or barbarian groups to form what will be your country (by gaining independence from an already existing empire).

I'd also like to see more alliances that make sense, I don't think England would exactly make an alliance with India during the Dark Ages.

Perhaps these alliances could take a stab at conquest? It's been done before but it would be a lot cooler if a few countries banded together to take over an area only to be repelled by a different league.

A Big Brother Government like the one in 1984, that would make my day.

More leader options when you choose a country, different players want different things when they choose a country. Take Russia for example, some may want to play as the old Czarist regime and others may want the Soviet Union, it all depends.

I also don't think that a country should have to wait for a government style by developing it. If one country comes up with Democracy then the concept should go throughout the world, the scientists and the government at the time shouldn't put an effort toward discovering something that will later overthrow them.

That's it from me, I hope I can think of some more stuff, thanks for hanging in there.

Two basic gameplay structures that, if changed the right way, could make the game both more realistic and fun:

1) The limitation on the number of civilizations: the way the game is currently structured, the number of civs can never increase during the game; except for civil disorder, which is usually more of a nuisance than anything else, there is no meaningful simulation of internal strife/revolts/political instability/civil wars/etc, which have been just as large a part of history, if not more so, than wars of conquest. The idea of culture should be refined and expanded to include the possibility of some cities breaking off and forming independent regimes- "minor civs," so to speak. Otherwise it is much too easy to carry on endless wars of expansion with very little in the way of consequences...

2) A more realistic population model: Basically, Civ portrays all societies as 100% urban, and food supply as the sole determinant for population growth. Immigration has already been mentioned as one concept for improving this area, but keep in mind that overall population growth is most often simply a function of the birth rate vs. the mortality rate: the hospital improvement, for example, is intended to simulate the effects of modern medicine in decreasing the death rate, but does so in a very clumsy way. Also, the whole equation of "more population = more productivity" needs to be modified, as someone mentioned earlier. Most of the world should appear as populated from the very first turn, but the productivity of cities should be based on other factors such as the centralization of your govt., the amount of trade in the region, your percentage of urban vs. rural population, and so forth.

Terrain Bonuses, and Negatives per Unit, when Defending AND Attacking

I would like it to specify, per unit, the defense bonus and attack bonus in a specific terrain, if there is a specific bonus for the unit in that specific terrain. I.e. a jaguar warrior could get an attack and defense bonus in jungle tiles. That is when the unit is attacked in a Jungle tile, and attacks from or to a jungle tile.

This could also work in the reverse, so that Tanks might get Negative "bonuses" in cities. etc...

Feature - Spherical World

What it does - makes the world spherical, instead of pipe-style.

How it would work - switch the tile shape to hexagonal system, map the tiles onto a sphere.

Gameplay:
This really opens up the world. You have to watch every direction. Yet this wouldn't be possible with the hexagonal system, which opens up a whole new game, without ruining the Civ-feel. You have to watch six directions instead of eight, which makes it somewhat simpler.

A spherical world is more realistic.

A spherical world makes the world a much smaller place - you no longer need to half-circumnavigate the world to get from Canada to Scandanavia. simply cross the north pole.

P.S. This idea may have been said, but it really should be considered. The difficulties implementing it would be very well worth the added enjoyment.

I think too that the population should be more real. I say that the size of the population should depend on the size and food-producing ability of the ruled tiles, instead today's "head-system", where the first head is 10.000, the second is 20.000 people, irrespective to the terrain type where they live. I also support the idea of getting rid the cities as the only place for population. Population should live on the land, and the population's density should depend on the fertility of that land mass (and the techs of food production, of course).

My other suggestion that the production should be dependent not only from the terrain type, but from the population too. The number of the population would determine how much "shield" do you produce, and then you could decide what would you use your shields for. If you want food for your people, you must spend some shields (workforce) to produce food. If you want to produce military units, you spend some shields to produce these. If you want to do some commerce, you spend shields to produce goods (according to your resources). As you build a factory, your shield investment in military units or goods would give you better results; as you get chemistry, or genetic engineering, or whatever, your shield investment for agriculture will do so.

And: we need civil wars and states becoming independent; more civs in the same time; consistent expansion (instead of settling right into your face).

new playing modi:
instead of the classic epic game, you can also chose from some play styles:
- with a small/middle/great starting empire in the Ancient age
- with a small/middle/great starting empire in the Middle-age
- with a small/middle/great starting empire in the Industrial Age
- with a small/middle/great starting empire in thte Modern Age

--> allows quick games for gamer that do not want to play throguh the ancient age for example. Or:
- There was just a civil war in a country, you are the leader of the old/new state and .... in the Ancient age/middle age/industrial age/ modern age.

...

Originally posted by The Head
I would like to keep the free movement on railroads, first of all to keep the management simple, but also because it can be used in some improvements.

I agree - each turn in Civ represents one year, or some multiple thereof. Limiting railroad movement to 8 squares, for instance, would be akin to suggesting that a train can move only 8 squares in a year! Having free railroad movement is much more realistic. :)

Would also love to see some complex diplomacy options worked out, along the lines of games like Europa Universalis. Things like occupying a country with your military, and scaring them into submission, or just general military occupation ala current day Iraq. This would basically be at a high upkeep cost for the time you are occupying the country and the random loss of military units. This leads me into my next point of that war should not be so quick like it is in the current system. Seems like I see so and so declared war on so and so every couple turns. It should be a slow build up with lots of counter-diplomacy and negotiating going on. Then be expensive and destructive to both nations that engage in it, in terms of both social standards and economic standards.

Would also love to see just plain more military units with distinct features all the way down the lines. (Cataphracts, green berets, snipers, spec ops, greater variety of missles and basllistics). Go ahead and toss alot of random events in there too, both military and non-military. (Bombings, terrorism, economy, special events)

P.S. - work something out with missles also. They should be "fired"from a distance, and not just moved along the ground like the current system includes.

Going with what someone said earlier, and taking it further

Editor abilities to allow only certains civs to buld Wonder/Improvement xyz, and the same thing with governments. (Like how I can set that All non-American civs can build the Jet Fighter, while Americans build F-15)

I'm NOT Suggesting Unique Wonders, simply allowing only certain civilzations to build the Pyramids (IE, Egyptians, Mayans, others). You probably could have other wonders with the same affect for the other group(s) of civs. Thier special function may or may not continue if captured by a civ that couldn't build them, but culture would still be produced as would tourism.



With the government limitation I mean the following:
Also not allowing America to go to a Monarchy, Feudalist, or Communist... possibly not Fascist either. However, with the more limited government choice, maybe they get three civ traits to balance it out (IE: Indust, Commercial, Expansionist). So it wouldn't become unbalanced. Civs with more government choices would have less traits, and vice versa.

I think that'd be really neat, and if not implemented fully in the epic game... it'd be GREAT for scenario and mod design!

The governments one would probably be more important for scenarios where you might not neccesarily want to 'lock' governments, but basically limit them to one or two. Thus avoiding the extra work of making Government Y's tech a era none, non-tradeable tech... and then assigning 32 civs the appropriate tech. Besides, in a WW2 scenario... it's kinda wierd to see England turn Fascist or Communist on you, or Russia to revert to Feudalism or Monarchy.

how bout in the editor you could select Barbarian Unit basic/Ancient, Barbarian Unit basic/middle ages, etc.

that way in DyP i wouldnt be sending jeeps and Air Cavalry to eliminate a barbarian half-threat.

I think an important feature is that Civ 4 should use the same sort of graphics it used in Civ 3. I mean, I'd hate to think that all of the people that have worked so long and so hard to make hundreds upon hundreds of units as well as other graphics for Civ 3 are now going to have to do it all over again for Civ 4...

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
I think an important feature is that Civ 4 should use the same sort of graphics it used in Civ 3. I mean, I'd hate to think that all of the people that have worked so long and so hard to make hundreds upon hundreds of units as well as other graphics for Civ 3 are now going to have to do it all over again for Civ 4... I hope it's a better format, less tedious to do units for, and with a possibility for better quality.

If they do them in 2D, let them be 16 million colors, not 256.

And if they do them in 3D, I don't have to do the Renders, and storyboards, and pallettes and all knows what. I just do the animation, saves the file, exports it to the games format, and use it in game.

I'm sure one of the greatest and most important changes for Civ IV will be more culturespesific and unique Civs! It will be 4 or 5 culturegroups, perhaps with their own technologies, buildings, and units, I think this is more important then more Civs! More Civs can allways be added in expansions, Civ IV must give something extraordinary new to the gameplay. More UU's and other unique stuff will be in, I garantee you ;)

Feature:Realistic Population

I dont know if this has been said before but the groth rate in civ3 is crap I mean in some third world countries in the cites the people are starving and they babies still keep on coming .I mean for example:
City one has 10,000 it has a chance to get to 100,000 people in one turn...... i mean it is true in the real world and also lot's of cities dont have aqueducts or hospitals and they still keep on growing

Originally posted by FranciscoHernan
i mean it is true in the real world and also lot's of cities dont have aqueducts or hospitals and they still keep on growing Yeah, but they are dying, and won't be able to work much if they are sick a lot. Or are not fed enough.

In Civ3 a population point is another effective group that can actually work and produce something.

Sorry to discuss in this thread.

I have more:

I was thinking the other day that it would be cool to allow old governments to come back. For example, if one were to take over France and another country were to take from the conqueror they should have the option to allow an independent French government. Wars of liberation essentially, not just building an empire.

And well organized civil wars would be cool to.:tank:

Make settlers cost significantly more shields in order to slow down the early growth.

On most Civ3 maps the only viable stategies are variants of racing to fill up the map ASAP.

Get rid of culture flips or signifcantly alter them.

I am one of those gamers who does not appreciate very low probability chances of very significant game changing events when playing computer games. (For example, no volcanoes errupting.)

On most maps a hex corresponds to lets us say 200 miles. One viable strategy is to station your army in the next hex, 200 miles away from the city that has been taken from another civ., so that your army will not be totally destoyed if there is a culture flip.

Civilians (rebels) in a medium size city somehow totally destroy a large stack of modern armor, if there is a culture flip.

One example of a more sensible outcome is that if there is a culture flip, there is a small chance that each military unit in the city will defect. (Chances would be independent for each unit.) Those that don't defect are not destroyed, but relocated to the closest available space. Just an example. In general try to avoid arbitrary all or nothing large events.

P.S. The introduction of culture was an excellent idea.

Not new ideas:

Allow larger maps.

Allow more civilizations.

Have more resources.

Have more city improvements for later in the game.
For example TV and/or Radio Stations could affect happiness and/or corruption.
(The later improvements still seem to be geared towards building the spaceship, which many of us do not find much fun after the nth time.)

Have a much better diplomatic system.

Improve the trading system.

Revise the manner in which the AI decides how much a luxury is worth.

The AI always assuming your luxury is worth less than its own, does not have the right feel. This is also true with respect to research results. I am content with the AI having an advantage in one area, being able to build faster.

The AI always counting up how many happy faces each side will get also does not have the right feel. There may be player opponents who would do this, but not all of them would do this all the time.

Many players might instead reason, you are getting about twice as many
happy faces as I am, so maybe I will charge 150% as much as I would charge if things were equal.

I would be content with some civilizations using the current algorithm, if others used some other algorihtm.

Parse the research tree into smaller units. More total advances, each of which on average produces less benefit and costs less. (Minimums and maximum turns revised correspondingly.)

Allow more playing time in the ancient era, as per one of the Conquests.

Add the post-modern era to the research tree.

Add more useful wonders to the modern era.

Return to allowing extra research to carry over. It does not add to the enjoyment of the game to have to fiddle with the slider for science percent solely in order to make sure you do not waste anything.

Substantially revise the corruption algorithm.

Possible ideas:
Somewhere in the corruption algorithm use the log function, so that corruption does not grow to 95% as quickly.

Reduce the maximum corruption percentage.

Have the advance of radio reduce corruption. (Could also apply to telegraph and/or telephone.) The idea being that with radio government leaders can stay in touch much more easily with distant cities. Technological advances in communication and speed of travel have made a given distance from the capital much less of a problem on average in later eras than in earlier eras.

More unit abilities, such as:
Loot: a chance that killing/capturing an enemy unit will give you a bonus in gold.
Ambush: Certain units are invisible on certain terrains; ambushers get a 2x combat bonus against enemies who unsuspectingly move into the tile where an ambush has been set up. Would allow for greater guerilla tactics.
Ignore enemy defensive bonus from terrain, walls, etc: Possible siege towers or attack helicopters?

Religion: This is complicated, but I think, along with your type of government, you could choose your religion as well. Like governments, different religions have different strengths and weaknesses. Here's an example:
Judaism: Settlers only cost one population, scientific
improvements 10% cheaper. Slaves require
support in gold.
I believe, with your choice of traits, governments, and religions, you could really customize your civ a great deal. Perhaps with a high culture, you could "convert" neighbors and steal from their population one citizen at a time. "conversions" may also be a way to spawn a great religious leader, a unit I think is really missing from the game. Ah...listen to me go on. Hope you're listening, Firaxis!

First off, sorry to post twice in one night...more ideas came to me. Secondly, some of these ideas have been expressed before, so I'll try to keep it short as possible.
1) Enhanced diplomacy/espionage:
- bribe barbarian villages to attack rivals or stop attacking you
- assasinate enemy great, scientific, or religious leaders
- bribe rival leaders to defect: high culture, and some gold would
be required: scientific leaders would be more likely to defect to
scientific civs, religious leaders to religious civs etc. I think the
aspect of individual men being able to lead a civ to glory or ruin
with their wheelings and dealings is something missing from
the game.
- Mutual non-agression pacts
- demilitarization: as part of peace negotiations, demand your
enemy surrender some of his military over
- Resource stealing: Steal resources that are renewable, like
horses of silks. Obviously, you can't "steal" iron or something
that must be dug out of the ground.
- Horses can appear once a civ has contacted another civ with
horses
2) Bring back the fundamentalist government
3) Revolutions can occur in unhappy, corrupt, and far-away cities.
1/3 of the units in that city defect, 1/3 are destroyed, and 1/3
escape to nearest city. The rebels form a new civilization of
whatever culture group the city was (possibly as one of the
civs not playing) This fledling civ starts off with double culture,
the same techs as the civ they broke from, and in a golden
age to actually give it a chance.
4) Rights and civil liberties: certain advances will trigger
unhappiness over civil liberties. Rights may include:
- Abolishment: no more slavery, makes the growing number of
abolishonists happy (triggered by industrialization?)
- Land ownership: creates happiness and avoides social strife,
but takes 1 food, 1 shield, and 1 commerce from city square
Certain governments require certain liberties. for example,
democracy automatically abolishes slavery, as communism
automatically forbids land ownership. All these changes would
allow for even further customization of your civ, and tyrants
would have very unruly populations
5) Natural wonders: special tiles, like "Mt. Fuji" or "Victoria Falls"
that give moderate bonuses.
6) Pollution patrol: Workers remain in fortified posistion until
pollution pops up, then they automatically go to clean it up.
After pollution is cleaned, they return to fortified posistion
7) Artificial synthesis of rubber, silks, dyes in modern era. Perhaps
a "synthesis plant" improvement that gives those resources to
a city where it's built.
8) Resistors or unhappy citizens may turn into guerilla units (more
modern barbarians?) that harass you.
9) Immigration: High culture, more civil liberties, and a more
representative government causes rival's citizen's to join your
neighboring cities one citizen at a time. "immigrants" are not
immediately productive citizens, however an "immigration
office" improvement will assimilate them more quickly (wonder:
Statue of Liberty; immigration office in every city)
10) Modern infantry, early atomic unit, attack choppers, and units
with both attack/defense and bombard (such as
crossbowmen, bombardiers etc.).
Overall, I think many of these would improve the game. As it stands, the most powerful are those gifted with the strongest traits or best land. Some of these changes might make the game more dependent on cunning, social manipulation, and shrewd diplomacy. Sorry for the length of this post, by the way.

Some ideas I am sure somebody has proposed but I can not be sure they are posted:

- Fishing fleets: coastal cities can build fishing units that can be sent to exploit fisheries. This should be done in three ways of explotation, Ecological, the amount of fish obtained is low (one) but the resource will be there, Industrial, you get two of food, but there is a chance that the resource will go away or that it will start giving just one, and if it is not left for recovery it wil die out, and the third is plainly plunder, the resource will dissapeared in a matter of turns, but you get for example four of food.

- Giving independence back: if you have one city that belonged to a civ that was destroyed, and the population of this city is still in its majority of that civ, it will be nice if you could give them their independence back, and of course they will be very very polite with you.

- Helping your friends, it is necessary to defend your allies to be able to station troops in their cities to protect them from enemies. It could be done in two ways, one it will be that you force them to accept those defensive troops or else, in this way they will be not very happy (there could be even a resistance group), and the second way is that they ask you for help and protection, and not only they will be thankful, but also they ca not go to war against you till all their wars are over.

- Free market economy, another AI "player" should play, that will be the merchants, they will buy all you want to sell them depending on demand and supply for the price, and also you can buy all they have to sell depending on the supply-demand, to get the merchandise you should have one (at least) harbor. That wil be more realistic, it could be the case as it have happened historically that you are at war with a civ, and indirectly you are selling them resources. That allows also blockades, if your enemies block your ports, you can no longer get resources. Of course the old way still goes on, and if you have terrestrial connection with someone that wants to sell resources to you it works.

- Resources will be much realistic if they were produced as units (for example each mine of iron produces two of iron) and transported to the places were you have the factories that require iron. The model will be the one of Colonization, that I find much better and more realistic.

Pacts
We should be able to form pacts, a deeper form of alliance where your allied civ is considered almost as important as yours.
In a pact you should be able to to move your units on the same tile as your pact-member, being able to defend his cities and units. You cannot declare war against your pact-member, not even through MPP. All civs your pact member declares war against, you will also be in war against. Your nations are bound to eachother, until the Pact is broken. It cannot be broken within a certain time limet, like 20 turns, after that it's renewed, or ongoing until one of the civs leave the pact. If the other civ do not agree upon the other civs departure out of the pact, there wil be a Rep-Hit. A small one.
You cannot sign any form of agreement against your pact Civ, like a trading embargo. In fact, resources could be shared and used by all civs in the pact, without trading.

If you conquer a city that was a former city of one of your pact members, it will automatically become the pactmembers city once again, or this could be a choice. But if you don't give the city back to the other civ, he will like you less.

And as I said earlier, pact members should be able to have their units on the same tiles, and in eachothers cities.

I'd like to see the ability to pop up a text box and enter database (SQL) - like commands. Something along these lines:

select all cities on this continent where temple=false and size>3 then insert into build queue "temple"

another example:

if city=coastal and size<=6 and growth=0 then insert into build queue "walls"

The whole idea is outlandish and would require some substantial programming to implement. It's just that when you're building a nice empire and trying to micro 50-100 cities on a huge map it can all get a little tedious.

Personally, I'd love the game to ship with a programmer's interface (DLL's or C header files) so fools like me could dream about writing bolt-ons for the game and real programmers :scan: might actually be able to offer useful enhancements. Anything from better 'bot players to a spreadsheet-like diplomacy screen.

The idea is too utopian and "out there", hackers could crash your computer with rogue code and also, there would be the problem of a standardised game (for GOTM or other competitions). Maybe you could choose to load custom modules at the start, using an ini file or something and modules could be vouchsafed by civfanatic members.

Of course this won't ever happen but still, I dream the dreamer's dream (whatever that is when it's at home :rolleyes: )

Originally posted by Howard Mahler
Get rid of culture flips or signifcantly alter them.

(...)

Civilians (rebels) in a medium size city somehow totally destroy a large stack of modern armor, if there is a culture flip.

One example of a more sensible outcome is that if there is a culture flip, there is a small chance that each military unit in the city will defect. (Chances would be independent for each unit.) Those that don't defect are not destroyed, but relocated to the closest available space. Just an example. In general try to avoid arbitrary all or nothing large events.

P.S. The introduction of culture was an excellent idea.

I think a small change can make culture flip better: the cultural influence should cause resistance. And resistance, instead of disposing the entire city, should kill units, turn by turn. And then if you don't reinforce the defensive units, when the number os units is less than the city size, then the city can be disposed.

Originally posted by Gingerbread Man
Feature - Spherical World

What it does - makes the world spherical, instead of pipe-style.

How it would work - switch the tile shape to hexagonal system, map the tiles onto a sphere.



A spherical world is one of the more revolutionary ideas that have been proposed (I see a lot of minor tweaks on this list). But why not take it one step further and lose the grid altogether. Organically placing cities, mines, irrigation (each with their own range of influence) and drawing roads along easy terrain or through military chokepoints would add a new creativity to gameplay. Difficult to program, surely, but I've seen a sperical game before ("Dominion" or something like that came as a demo with another game - it was a real time game played on a spherical world with amazing zoom capabilities.)

Terrain Naming

This is simply the ability to name different parts of the terrain such as continents, oceans, mountain ranges, rivers, etc. I propose it to work like the naming of cities, where it's automatic with the option of renaming, when under palyer control.

This would of course have no effect on gameplay but yet be beneficial to one's enjoyment by emmersion into the world created. I also propose the ability to toggle these names on and off so as not to crowd the map for those who don't like it.

The only challenge in programming is to have the map generator recognize the break between terrain formations.

change in combat system! one proposal:

every unit can be build in three types:
-scout type: These cost little to nothing (no population)
-garrison type: These cost more, get a radius to attack enemy units randomly, which are travelling through your city land. cost 1/2 a population (means: if you build 2 of them, your population will sink 1), only have a attack value in your empire
-army type: These cost the same as garrison, have a greater chance of creating a leader, and probably are better in attack, cost 1 population.

-> Whenever a scout unit is attacked by a army, the scout will lose. but when a scout and a scout are fighting, it can go either way.
-> Everythin is possible: A sword warrior as garrison, a hoplite as a scout, ... although it won't make much sense.
-> the idea is to stop with 'having units' into having a army (as one of a country)

Of course, this is for land units... :) I haven't thought about sea/air...
mfG mitsho

Originally posted by Mad Danny
Relating to the cross-country farming idea maybe mines that aren't in city radii could generate 1 wealth per turn rather than shields in cities (kind of like wealth - perhaps implement a 2:1 conversion so a terrain with no shields normally couldn't provide enough mining resources for it but a bonus resource mountain that produces 3 shields normally once mined could provide 2 gold then (from the 4 shields). This ability would need a certain tech though. It would also be nice if after a tech like chemistry (or maybe a more advanced counterpart) it would be possible in the right-click menu to be able to see exactly how many turns a strategic resource will last so one could plan ahead.


Hi!

Hope that you understand my lousy english

I would like to have HUGE cities in Civ4 (well...some of them...not all). I mean New York is a really huge city...much bigger than Stockholm for example. I would like to see some cities expand so the city can use more mines, irrigations...and therefore grow even more and more and more :)

I like the cross-country farming idea
What if you can connect a mine for example (if its close enough) to your city just like you connect a resource to you land (colony) and add an extra production square to your city!?
If you have a huge city that is close to a small one...then the cities could merge to one.

sincerely
miwi :king:

I would like helicopters to be able to rebase to carriers. I also would like to see the miltary advisor screen split up so that units are classified by type (eg. land, air, and sea). I would also like to know how many units I lost in a war.

3D World (like Railroad Tycoon 3 or Black & White) where you can zoom in and out and change your viewing angle to your liking totally immersing the player in the world.

A True Spherical World (like the old Populous game) rather than the current cylindrical map. The flat-earth map is SO early 90s.

Algorythms to generate ever-increasingly powerful generic future techs and units so the we can play forever! They can have generic names and icons but each generation will still get better and better so the game never stagnates at 2200 ad.

What about a feature blind research:
The tech-tree has got more techs to research, but you cannot chose which one you want to research. There are only 3,4 regions to research.
for example:
warrior code, the wheel belong to military
alphabet, ceremonial burial to scientific
bronce working, pottery to economy, etc
Now, you chose to research military and have a fifty-fifty chance to get wc, but you could also get wheel. By scientific it may be more probable to get ceremonial burial, ...

Just an idea, don't know if this would be good, but it's just a idea!

mfG mitsho

I think Civ 4 should expand upon the trade system as the existing system is too simplistic and it depends too much upon political negotiations to be really lucrative (whatever you earn through foreign trade is always small change compared to what is generated domestically). It just seems that trade is a fairly unimportant add-on unless you want a strategic resource (in which case most players would just take it by force). The following is just a suggestion about how trade routes could be implemented (I apologise if it’s a bit confusing but the idea is a little complicated – I think you all will get the gist of what I mean anyway).
I suggest that trade should be divided into three spheres.
The first type of trade would simply be domestic trade and this would be represented by the amount of commerce generated by an individual tile in a city radius (this is already done in civ 3).
The second type of trade would represent high level negotiations between national governments for important strategic resources and valuable luxuries (basically the existing Civ 3 trade negotiation system) – and this area of trade should be enhanced by adding in loads of extra luxuries and strategic resources (over 30 of each type would be more like it).
The third type of trade would be private trade between merchants and entrepreneurs (and this could represent NUMEROUS types of raw materials and manufactured goods that the cities would export) and this kind of trade should take place between nations irrespective of diplomatic negotiations (unless the nations are at war or one of the nations is the target of a blockade or trade embargo). As new techs are researched then new goods can be traded and old trades are rendered obsolete (therefore trade would not remain static). Each individual trade between entrepreneurs shouldn’t yield much gold (because it would represent government taxation of a private enterprise), but collectively, the numerous trades should amount to a large sum (and improvements in transport could make the trade routes yield more maybe).
For trade to take place, cities need to be connected by visible (and disruptable) trade routes. Visible trade routes could be implemented in all kinds of ways – I was thinking maybe an initial trade route could consist of up to 4 tiles of road or sea squares; afterwards the trade route would need to be extended by either a friendly city (a city you own or a city you have a right of passage with), a military unit that you own, a colony, or a trading post (a new kind of tile improvement – it would simply extend trade routes).
By including trade routes, ships become far more important as you need them to establish and maintain trade overseas and trade becomes more interesting because it could potentially yield a lot of gold (especially with two different kinds of foriegn trade). Trade routes would also add a whole new tactical element, as you would be required to protect your trade routes as well as your territory. Trade would also encourage players to consider maintaining peaceful relations with some civs as it would yield gold for them. Maybe trade routes could also help win victory points by yielding a victory point per trade route per turn (this would represent international economic influence).

Originally posted by The Head
UN: like SMAC, and with pollution- and nuclear control. After the UN has been build territory claims should be available. (besides the cultural borders)


I really like your idea, but by the time most players even get to be able to build the UN, then there is just about nowhere else to settle @ all...

Another suggestion I propose is to allow cities to simultaneously construct city improvements and to train soldiers. City improvements would be constructed using the production shield system in civ 3 and units would be trained by the city based upon a separate production value that would be based upon the city’s population size (the pool of people that the city would draw upon to train) and the value would be enhanced by buildings such as barracks, civil defence (better training facilities), and granaries and hospitals (healthier population to draw upon).
This would allow civ 4 to include a lot more buildings without detracting from the cities capacity to produce military units. However, cities could be restricted in both the number of military units they can produce and the number of buildings they can construct.
Units could be limited in that a city can only produce two military units per head of population (this could vary from government to government) e.g. a size 3 city could support 6 military units – if you want that city to produce more military units it has to grow first. Secondly you could limit the type of units that a city can produce by making cities require specialist buildings to build specialist units e.g. you need a tank factory to produce tanks. The result of this will mean that players will be forced to produce a variety of units instead of mass-producing the best units. This also allows the option of having small wonders to produce really specialist units e.g. only one city can produce an SAS/Delta Force type unit and it requires a small wonder.
City improvements could be limited by introducing a rule that cities can’t build any more city improvements than the infrastructure of the city can sustain. I suggest that cities shouldn’t be allowed so many city improvements that their combined maintenance cost (in gold) is in excess of the amount of revenue produced in trade and that many city improvements should be restricted to cities and / or metropolises. By doing this, the player is forced to specialise his/her cities rather than building numerous uber cities.

I would like to see some sort of camera rotation implemented, and I would also like to be able to zoom in on the units during battles and such. I'm not sure if this could be done with the current engine, or if they are planning on trying a different one for civ4.

On a side note, I think one of the best things that could be done to improve civ would be graphics enhancement.

Ok... well, my (almost) endless 'Well of Ideas' is just about dried up. Civ 4 would be a very interesting game indeed if all of the ideas I have seen here were implemented (and were currently possible)... well, what the Civ 4 designers need to make Civ 4 a sequel and not a copy, clone, replica, etc. is a new engine... more of a dynamic universe... even in single player games.

They could have a normal civ 3 map during normal game play, and a dynamic battle map (3D, armies are veried in #'s by HP, etc.) during battles... the player could either choose to simulate a battle (not play it out) or play it themselves, controlling each person within a unit. If anybody can understand that...

One idea stemming from the idea of nationality would be to introduce the idea of economic migration. If one civilisation has a higher standard of living than another (i.e. more luxuries!), and the two civilisations have the means to trade then perhaps citizens might move from the poor civ to the rich one. The freedom of movement could be based on a number of factors, including the government types of the two civs (more military police reduce the emmigration rate?).

A second idea would be to introduce terrorism. I know this is a touchy subject, but many countries have suffered from this IRL, and it is a fact of life. So, perhaps if a city has citizens from another civ and relations are bad between the civs, or if a city has changed hands one or more times and there is 'dual culture' to that city, terrorists might occasionally destroy population, improvements or damage military. Furthermore you could have a 'fund terrorists' espionage action so that 'rogue states' could increase the chance of these free bombards. What is more this would allow dead civs to continue causing their conquorer grief!

These two features might interact quite well.

A spherical world is one of the more revolutionary ideas that have been proposed (I see a lot of minor tweaks on this list). But why not take it one step further and lose the grid altogether. Organically placing cities, mines, irrigation (each with their own range of influence) and drawing roads along easy terrain or through military chokepoints would add a new creativity to gameplay. Difficult to program, surely, but I've seen a sperical game before ("Dominion" or something like that came as a demo with another game - it was a real time game played on a spherical world with amazing zoom capabilities.)

yeah and Magic Carpet did it and Populous 3 (spherical world) - note though that these are all real-time games.. so regarding the tile-free idea; organic placing of buildings has been demonstrated in RTS games like Metal Fatigue - notice how you can never tell just how much empty space you need around edges so building tight cities in mountainous terrain is almost impossible. And with no tiles how can you tell how far each unit moves in a turn based game? true a game like Warhammer does it with measuring tape but then with computers we suffer the inevitable "oh my worker was within 3 pixels of my garrison it's not fair he gets captured!" and "how can he attack two of my units simultaneously when they're almost a unit's-width away from each other!"

a couple more ideas from me:
fishing boats (tech level 1 can only traverse coastline, tech level 2 can traverse sea, never able to traverse ocean - must always remain closer to continents/shallower waters) - generate an extra food in a city radius square - only one fishing boat can affect each square (they can unit stack but still only have single effect) food bonus only provided to cities with harbours and markets (must have both to provide bonus) - so fortifying fishing boats effectively makes them fish farms until moved or captured (non-combat units like workers and settlers)
on that note what about making scout units more capable by adding a hunter/gatherer bonus - they act like the fishing boats but on land, although the city doesn't require anything special for the bonuses, and they only give the food bonus on fertile uncultivated land (so non-irrigated and road-free plains/forest/jungle/etc. but not mountains or desert (infertile))

a dynamic battle map (3D, armies are veried in #'s by HP, etc.) during battles... the player could either choose to simulate a battle (not play it out) or play it themselves, controlling each person within a unit

like my earlier idea :D, but how would the player-controlled battle work? you couldn't play RTS-style because it's not civ then so much as Myth or AOE, and remember since PTW gave us buggy multiplayer and C3C fixed it we don't want to go losing our sociable hotseat games now :)

Yes, I suppose that that idea would knock out ALL turn based multiplayer games (unless it was sim. turns). But it'd still be pretty cool... :)

This has been mentioned I think,

A single screen on which you can see all potential trades of resources with all other countries.
(Currently you can see what countries have luxuries you do not have,
but not what they do not have. Also iron, horses, etc. are not shown.)

A single screen on which you can see all potential trades of research with all other countries.

Howard Mahler

Either:

1. A single keystroke so that one can find out the mimimum amount of money one would have to add to a deal so that the AI would accept.
(Example I want luxury A in exchange for luxury B plus money.
How many gold pieces is the minimum the AI would accept?
How many gold pieces per turn is the minimum the AI would accept?)

Similarly, a single keystroke so that one can find out the maximum amount of money the AI would be willing to add to a deal.
(Example I will sell a research advance in exchange for money.
How many gold pieces is the maximum the AI would give?
How many gold pieces per turn is the maximum the AI would give?)

The game effect would be to save the player a lot of wasted time and effort currently required to determine these amounts.


2. Change the trading algorithm.

Howard Mahler

{I didn't see this sticky thread until after I had entered my ideas in the "Civ IV Wishlist" thread, so I'll be posting several of my original ideas from over there over here ... with expanded thoughts. I apologize to anyone who already read these in the other thread for the boredom that will probably ensue.}

Name of Feature: spontaneous eruption of civs.

What this feature should do in the game: Allow barbarians and current civs a percentage chance based on specific scenarios to blossom into a new civ. All successful civilizations were either originally some other civ's "barbarian" neighbors or sprung wholly formed from the head of another established civ (so to speak). We've immortalized a certain few because they were the most successful in reality, but if Civ is about rewriting history, why not give the Goths and Blackfoots (feet?) a chance to rule?.

Also, large civs with oppressive tendencies might have a percentage chance of splitting up into two civs in a rebellion, revolutionary war, or civil war type transition. This could happen to any civ, whether computer or human controlled.

How would this feature work: Barbarians that attack en masse ("raging" contingents of 20 or so horsemen) that destroy all units in a majority of a civ's cities should have a percentage chance of overwhelming that civ and producing an entirely new -- fully functioning -- civ of their own, instead of just depleting the treasury as they do now. Alternately, barbarian encampments that were left alone long enough to produce rampaging hoards have a chance of producing civs (whether they overwhelm anyone or not). And/or, barbarians that crop up alone on discrete landmasses should have a fairly high percentage chance of transitioning.

As far as the split civ concept, the game would have to be made internally more complicated before this could really work (at least without seeming terribly random). The game would have to be updated to include an assessment of factors such as unrest based on inadequate culture (as compared to known culture in the world as a whole), unsatisfying government type (whatever that is), religious oppression, etc. Distance factors might have an additional twist of potentially transitioning a close knit contingent of cities that are stable and self-supporting but far away from the capitol (instead of just producing corruption). Contact with other civs and widespread knowledge of other -- even past and dead -- cultures would influence the percentage chance of splitting (think of it as citizens becoming restless as they mythologize another civ -- a kind of "grass is greener" effect).

Gameplay: I think it will make gameplay more interesting, dynamic, and a tad more realistic. It's not as if all the civs that we currently immortalize (in reality) as successful all started together in 4000 b.c. Obviously, the percentage chance of producing a new civ should fall as the ages pass, but even in reality we had a successful civ declare its own official start in 1776 -- extremely late by historical standards. Newly transitioned civs should have some sort of averaging applied to their tech and military so that they possess a blend of abilities and units -- both type and number -- with the idea that they won't crop up as a helpless victims just waiting to be picked off (maybe influenced by the techs and units of their immediate neighbors). It doesn't seem to me that military might was the usual deciding factor in ancient successful civs, but more like dominance of culture (an overwhelming hoard of barbarians doesn't necessary make a new civ unless they also possess the internal potential to stabilize their destructive tendencies and self-govern).

AI: How will the AI use it? Ineffectively, I would guess -- unless the strategic "ability" of the AI is drastically updated.

Processor Power: The barbarian creation and running of new civs won't take up too much more power than the computer already uses to move into the next turn. The real potential for bogging down in this comes from the complexity that is introduced into the game to make the split-civ feature function in a way that allows human and computer players to evaluate their civ's potential for splitting. In other words, it would have to be cosiderably more complex than the diplomacy between states is currently, only addressing (many) internally adjustable factors within a civ.

Complexity: The concept should be easy enough to grasp, but the split-civ concept could be terribly frustrating for the micromanagers among us. I think to simplify it a tad, the factors affecting the potential for a split civ should affect the civ as a whole (and therefore be addressed from one central place). Game gods forbid we should have to flick from one city screen to another -- over and over -- to constantly, minutely adjust a half-dozen new sliders. Blech!

Programming Complexity: Not my area. Ask a programmer.

Multiplayer: I've never played mulitplayer, but if multiplayer means there are no computer controlled civs, that could be a problem. If there are computer controlled civs in muliplayer, shouldn't change anything (except possibly the number of civs to contend with).

Exploits: I don't see a potential for exploits. I tend not to look for exploits and therefore don't find them. Someone with a more devious mind than my own will have to evaluate this one.

Player Decisions: This will certainly affect player decisions in the split-civ scenario. It would also affect player decisions as regards how quickly they get out into the world, expand, and destroy barbarians. Continual control would be difficult since non-annexed land continually sprouts new barbarians, and that would mean more vigilance. Also, weaker barbarian forces don't really have to be taken seriously now; on the non-"rampaging" settings, I find I can afford to wait until a babarian unit wanders close by, then I abolish it and ignore the encampment until the next one pops up. But personally, this would make me rethink allowing encampments to exist for a moment longer than it takes me to discover that they're there. I also think the split-civ concept is potentially a great way of purposely unsettling the game when a civ gets so large as to cover an entire continent and comfortably controls all the surrounding land (nothing like a little internal strife to ruin your digestion). This game needs one really big Sword of Damocles for the conquering, expansionistic types (which includes me).

Affects: Keeps leaders from resting easy. Potential for shaking up a game that gets monotonous with easy expansion. Provides for a stimulating amount of frustration for those of us who already have too much frustration ("What!? Now what?!! The Sasanians? Artax- who? Where the *bleep* did they come from?"). Causes the game to more truly reflect the historical rise (and fall) of civilizations. I'm sure there's a potential for bad effects, but I honestly can't think of what those are (other than increasing overall complexity).

This one may be controversial, but I would like to see all automation eliminated. Now before anyone stops reading here, let me explain that what I mean by automation is having the AI make any decisions. I'm perfectly fine with setting up specific scripted actions, when certain events take place.

Brad Wardell (the designer of galactiv civ) made the comment that micromanagement should be treated as an interface problem, and not an AI one, and I agree completely.

Instead of having automated workers, why not let us "draw" on the map were we want to put all our roads, irrigations, mines, etc. and then have the workers automatically perform those actions, based on a priority we set out. We could also setup rules like "If any pollution appears within 3 squares, make that your top priority". The key is to keep all decision making in the player's hands.

Similarly, multiple, savable build queues along with options to automatically insert new items to the beginning/end of the build queues for a group of selected cities would elimanate the need for governers.

For the Civilopedia in Civilization IV, I would recommend the following basic principle:

All information displayed in the Civilopedia that can be modified in the editor, should be generated at run-time from the scenario file.

This approach has several advantages:[list=1] No more discrepancies between Civilopedia information and how the game behaves;
No need to manually synchronise the same information in two places;
Significantly reduced effort from game developers and scenario developers to make and maintain a civilopedia;
Game and scenario developers can focus solely on the description without worrying about numbers, cross references, et cetera, which is tedious work and subject to late game changes, alterations in patches, etc.
It is a one-time investment in relatively simple technology that yields benefits every time the game properties are updated.[/list=1]Information that is presently manually added to the civilopedia that should be made dynamic includes:[list=1] Building requirements. (e.g. "A Factory is required to build a Manufacturing Plant.")
Various checkboxes in the editor. (e.g. "A city must have a river within its <radius> to build a Hydro Plant.", wonders becoming tourist attractions, civilization traits associated with wonders giving golden age, and many more)
Numerical info in the editor (e.g. "A [Manufacturing Plant] increases <shield production> in its city by 50%", creation of happy faces, etc)
Information from pick lists (e.g. unit abilities, corruption level per government type, etc.)
Tables in the civilopedia (e.g. bonusses when resources are worked on within a city)[/list=1]Of course this does not suggest that all information from the editor should be in the civilopedia, but missing information that could be added is:[list=1] When a tech renders a wonder obsolete. Now only the wonder says which tech makes it obsolete.
When a cost of limit depends on the game, give the accurate cost given the game status (e.g. palace cost being dependant on number of cities, culture limit dependant on map size)[/list=1]

Giving the curragh/galley a scout unit everytime which can go on land with normal sight and make on step into the land, then automatically go back on the boat (which stays at the place). Or, in my addition to my army-model, giving curraghs or similar early naval units with the carrying capacity of scout units.

Another suggestion I would like to make is regarding corruption and resistance. The current system of resistance is OK but the system could be made more interesting and influential. The corruption system is just annoying and many players really hate it (what’s the point in expanding your empire to a far off continent when you know that all of the cities will be so riddled with corruption and waste that they will be useless and there is no point developing their infrastructure because it makes almost no difference unless you build a FP). So to enhance both of these concepts I propose the following ideas:

Corruption:

At the start of the game corruption is high, which will limit the size of empires (although courthouse, FPs, better governments etc will still reduce corruption) but corruption will gradually decrease over time as better communications are developed (which will be achieved by researching techs such as Literature, Code of Laws, Printing Press, Radio, Computers, Steam Engine, Motorized Transportation etc etc) therefore later on corruption becomes a marginal feature and distant cities will become more productive, however large empires will face different challenges that will limit their growth, which will be determined by the following:

City Loyalty:

All cities will have an additional entry that will represent the loyalty of that cities population to your government and empire and it will be expressed as a percentage. Cities with improvements such as courthouses, police stations, palaces, temples etc and happy populations, large garrisons, nearby to the capital etc etc will have a high loyalty to your empire and will be prepared to defend your regime. However mistreated populations (unhappy citizens, resistors, captured cities, starvation, forced rush of improvements, and drafted populations) will be less loyal to your regime and will seek to undermine or break away from your regime and they will challenge your empire in many different ways; of which here are some suggestions as to how they could make your occupation more difficult:

1) Disloyal cities will be more corrupt as they will seek to avoid paying taxes and they will work slowly and apathetically (corruption and waste will be higher in a city with low loyalty).
2) Disloyal cities will be unhappier with your rule and will be more likely to go into civil unrest (more unhappy faces in disloyal cities).
3) Captured cities with strong loyalties to their original owners will resist their conquerors with both urban resistors (existing civ 3 resistance) and they will raise militia groups from the surrounding countryside to fight your nation's troops (civ 2 type resistance).
4) Captured cities will seek to break away from your empire and join their mother countries (like in civ 3 but have cities staying disloyal for very very long periods of time).
5) Unhappy, disloyal cities may raise barbarian armies of peasants or break away from your empire and become a barbarian city.
6) Disloyal cities may commit acts of sabotage against a citie's infrastructure (cities don’t have to be in unrest or resistance – disloyalty would be a constant ongoing symptom that would be very hard to cure).
7) Disloyal cities will produce military units that are apathetic and uninterested in the preservation of your empire and therefore disloyal cities will produce military units more slowly and any units produced will be conscripts (even if the city possesses a barracks) because the units will not be highly motivated and they will be likely to desert.
8) Disloyal cities will use mass communication to appeal to the world about your mistreatment of their people and therefore this will have a negative impact upon your relations with other civs (civil rights issues).

I envisage a situation where the game would start with very high levels of corruption but relatively less serious disloyalty and as the game progresses; corruption is reduced significantly by improved communications but city disloyalty becomes worse because the improved communications would also allow more organised resistance against your regime and more solidarity against your misdeeds. Therefore in the early game you can mistreat your citizens without the fear of reprisals – but later on it becomes very important to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the citizens that reside in your occupied territories – therefore you face different problems at different times and they will require different solutions.

In addition to this above. this helps also to a new revolutionary system, etc. Loyality could be a trait or depend on governments (fascistic and communistic governments are loyal, republic and feudalistic not, and monarchies and democracys somewhere in the middle... )
mfG mitsho

Governments and the economy:

Civ needs some sort of economy. This would go along with the liberal/conservative slider i mentioned before. The more liberal you make your government, the less the economy can sway and the more conservative you make your civ, then the more the economy is able to sway. These apply to Republic and Democracy, as for Despotism, Fascism and Communism the economy cannot sway at all, Monarchy and Fuedalism can sway a little bit. How does an economy boom or stagnate? It is a combination of treasury (run a deficit and your economy goes to the dump), your GDP (finally a use for that thing that pops up when you press F11) and how openly you trade with other civs.

A boom in the economy will increase the overall mood a little bit, but increase science and commerce. If the economy lags, then the people will get sadder, production will slow and corruption will increase. Every once in a while an equivalent to a "plague" will arise and could be called something like a "stock market crash" or something to that extent, and would be an instant lag in the economy.

The range at which an economy can rise and fall is rather small until you get banking, and the range will increase even more once you get Economics and The Corporation.

This gives much more stability and appeal to governments such as Communism because they can rely on a steady economy that won't fail them. However, the risk takers who choose a conservative Democracy can either be extremely rewarded or find themselves in an eternal depression.

on to my second idea: I propose that there be various public services that one can invest in. These would range from public health to education, union support to civil safety (police, courts, firemen), all the way to business relief (not sure of the proper name for it, but it is basically something to help bankrupt companies). Under Communism, the cost to invest in the various areas is drastically reduced, to reflect the fact that the state has complete control of the economy, so thus has an easier time giving public services. Of course, communism could not get "business relief" because they have no businesses! Each slider has a certain effect on your civilization, for exampe public education would increase science and slightly boost commerce, union support would increase production, civil safety would slightly decrease corruption and make the people happier.

This system of investing in the various services would also tie in to the idea of having some sort of Congress, Parliament, Meeting of Feudal Lords, etc. in that the various "factions" within the congress would want various amounts of money to be spent in various places.

Although this may seem like it leans a bit towards Communism, it is mainly because in civ3 communism is very under-rated and SERIOUSLY needs a boost. Most would either choose Fascism, Democracy, or Republic instead of communism, plus I feel that this economy thing would allow for it to be risky to have a free market, which is true in the world (look at Africa and how quickly it depressed) and should be in civ.

More Ideas Still...
1) I really like Buckets' idea about terrain naming. You could name a clump of six or more mountains into a mountain range, or name six or more tiles of desert as a desert. This has no function but looking cool, and maybe serving as a point of reference. The Civ that owns the area should be able to name it.
2) I think they should have police actions, for example going to England and saying "Make peace with India or else!"
3) Possibly as a trait of militaristic or a wonder, something that preserves more infastructure in captured cities. I can't tell you how skeptical I am when I conquer a huge city and all that's left is a marketplace or harbor.
4) A wonder or small wonder that allows you to produce two things at once in the same city.
5) I like the idea going around of a spherical world. maybe you could chose at the "world size/age" screen whether you want a spherical or flat map
6) Nova's idea of unchecked barbarian villages being turned into new civs is good.
7) Barbarians in more modern ages, like guerrilas or terrorists
8) I hate the Byzantine UU. I almost never use naval units early on. To make the unit better, and more historically accurate, how about letting it be able to defend inside of coastal cities like it was a foot unit?
9) More African and SE Asain civs would be nice
10) Discussing Military affairs with allies, such as: "please attack Corinth within ten turns".
11) Greatly decreased espionage costs, slightly decreased corruption
12) Units with both combat and bombard values

Addable and/or Editable Traits

If Civ4 is going to use traits, similar to the system in Civ3, they should be editable in the Editor. And even addable, in some way. Like a new trait that is a merge between 2 traits.

I also think that if the civs are going to have 2 traits like the Civ3 system, one of the traits should be dominant, so that a civ that is Scientific/Industrial, is more Scientific then it is Industrial. And a civ that is Industrial/Scientific is more Industrial then it is Scientific.

1. real earth map

2. contain all features of CIV3, don't want to wait expansion pack to provide the features the original should have (like multiplayer)

3. real modern military situation. no more battleships in modern times, missles rule!!! aegis & sub are too weak in the CIV3.

how about splitting the the research tree, one part is like the current one, but the other has only non trade able techs.
furthermore make your "research strenght" in the later dependant on something like # of cities or population
techs in this tree could require techs from the first one as prequesits and vice versa.
also should only be optional techs, area depending on "normal" scientific area.
each civ should have one of these at the start of a game.
the content should consist of some of the more abstract technologies like governments, philosophy,
as they would be non trade able they could also be used to allow culture(group) specific techs/govs/etc.

little example:
lets say you found your first city, and have the either despotism (later you'd get feudalism), shamanism (later you'd get theocracy), tribal council (later you'd get monarchy)
and can start researching
despotism: "slavery" +25% production, +2 unhappy citizens
shamanism: "medical ritual" +1 food in center city square
tribal council: "campfire stories" +1 content in every city
no requirement: "riddles" +1 research for every 5 population
riddles: "philosophy" +1 research for every specialist used



PS: 2d is enough, computer power should be used to speed up game/make ai less stupid - just my 2cent

IMMIGRATION

I think civs with lots of unhappy/unemployed citizens should randomly lose population points to richer/growing civs (unless the former civ is communist, that is). That would be a good way to emulate younger countries such as Canada, Brazil, America, Argentina or even what happens today with emmigration of africans to France and Britain, for example (this feature could work to emulate war refugees as well).

Oh, and one more thing: NO MORE JEANNE D'ARC, for heaven's sake!!!

Cheers,

Mad Hab

This one may be controversial, but I would like to see all automation eliminated. Now before anyone stops reading here, let me explain that what I mean by automation is having the AI make any decisions. I'm perfectly fine with setting up specific scripted actions, when certain events take place.

Instead of having automated workers, why not let us "draw" on the map were we want to put all our roads, irrigations, mines, etc. and then have the workers automatically perform those actions, based on a priority we set out. We could also setup rules like "If any pollution appears within 3 squares, make that your top priority". The key is to keep all decision making in the player's hands.

Similarly, multiple, savable build queues along with options to automatically insert new items to the beginning/end of the build queues for a group of selected cities would elimanate the need for governers.

I like these - and the revised automation could really work - just draw blueprints, eg:
roads as dotted lines, clearing jungles or forest as a red X
irrigation as a blue circle, mines as a black circles
railway as black dots along the roadway, etc.
and worker automation could be just prioritising agriculture (irrigation & farms), trade (roads & railroads) and production (mines) and setting the pollution override radius.. that should cover most issues alongside the 'road to ->' for resources and such 'partial automations' (must also remember when prioritising worker actions to include the 'this worker/ all on continent/ all workers option)

saving production queues would be most helpful (temple then 2 defense units then library then notify me for changing then)
but not doing away with governors - one of the best features of governers is not having to worry about city happiness because they automatically allocate entertainers and change production:food ratio to prevent starvation - this is extremely useful for people who want to play more militaristic without having to keep checking moods against troop numbers, or expansionists who just get sick of spending every turn tweaking every city..

I think the immigration idea several people have elaborated could be good - maybe make it a NPC unit of 'huddled masses' equivalent to one population point :p
maybe then when a city is under particularly heavy bombardment you could get refugees trying to escape in the opposite direction (to other friendly cities at first, or others if they don't like what their home civ is up to or if they're too unhappy), and if they get captured by another civ they count as slaves or such until assimilated (slaves being a possible saleable luxury by low-tech governments or POWs for democracy and republic). Alternate techs like Radio and Television that people have mentioned could reduce the chances of people trying to leave because they can be misled by the media

Another idea taken from SMAC and the MOO series:

Divide the techs into different categories- Militaristic, Social, Economic, etc.
Then allow the player to set percentages of total research funding into each category.

Historically, a nation didn't research single-mindedly, they have broad research areas.
Gameplay-wise, this gives more control to the player, which is always, ALWAYS a good thing, and it allows for more customization and randomization of games. If you aren't sure what the opponent is invested in research wise, it makes for more varied games.

I also like the idea of allowing multiple things to be built in a city.
Historically accurate again, and allows for more choices. Again a very good thing.

In Civ2 I believe cities with too many unhappy citizens would have their names show up in red in the list of cities.
This made it much easier to see which ones would go into civil disorder.

This feature seems to be missing in Civ3 (F1) and should be brought back.

Howard Mahler

P.S. It would not hurt if when you set the governor to control happiness it did not produce somewhat inferior results compared to doing it manually. (Doing it manually usually results in an extra gp per city compared to automatic.)

there are a few things id like to see improved upon..

1. i think that cities should be more than one tile, as in small cities start out as one time, but larger ones are like 4, it jsut goes to add for reaslism, and also bigger cities consume more space and recources. Kind of like in sim city where small shacks in one square evolve into big plaza's worth 4

2. a real earth map with acurate sizes, rome should not take up 1/10th of italy

3. the units should all be multi figured, better realism.

4. lets have an age past modern! and also something to come before classical/ancient, like archaic

5. how about a civ editor like in the sims, u can build up how an opponent looks, what uu's they have, even design them with like pics, like long sword short sword, kilt or sarong, instead of pcx this and flc that

6. more meshes between terrian, like desert hills, plains hills, tundra hills, glacers, like in ctp

7. i think every civ should have a religion, most of this worlds wars were due to it, it might make things interesting, liek part of cultural value

Graphic interface
1. One more grade with the Zoom.
2. The cities doesn't change of look when conquered, except the color
obviously, but when growing after, the new parts added look like the
conqueror's cities.
3. Still more diversitity in the units and the human races, for example when
one take wokers prisoner.

I'd like to see more small wonders, perhaps with 2 resources required to build, like Iron Works.

There have been some great ideas and improvement suggestions for Civ 4 on this forum such as more complex trade and diplomacy, religion, biggest should not always be the most productive, more adjustable forms of governments and so on. These are all obvious improvements that everybody would like to see in the next civ.

Well, here are few of my ideas:

Map. Instead of tiles, there should be hexes. Hexes are so much better in all ways than square tiles. Of course with tiles you have eight adjacent tiles and with hexes you have only six adjacent hexes, but besides that, hexes are more flexible and realistic way to form a map.

Slavery. Civ 4 should have slavery implemented somehow.

Exploration. Military units shouldn't be able to explore unexplored land. Instead there should be explorer units (something like scouts or explorers of civ3). Or even better if exploration would be abstract. You pay some gold to an 'explorer' and in return he would go out in the wild and bring you a map of the explored land...or not. Trade and growth of population would also reveal parts of the map. Isn't it a bit ridiculous that military units wonder in jungles, tundra and desert unharmed without supply for hundreds of years. Which brings me to my next subject.

Supply / readiness. Military units need supply to function properly. In order to be in supply, a unit for example should be connected to a city via road. Perhaps in out of supply the unit would lose some of its hit points or combat strength. This sounds like a wargame, not empire building game, but making war really is expensive and hard. Not as easy as in previous civs.

Upkeep. Civs should need money to upkeep their roads, (irrigation, mines)...

Infrastructure. As in CtpII or something similar. Forget workers.

Wonders and traits. Wonders of the world and racial traits should have less impact on the game.

That's it for now.

Oh. Why call it a civ 4 or civ IV when it could just be called cIV =).

I also have some suggestions about adding more depth to military strategy. Civ 3’s combat system is good but I tend to find that the easiest way to conquer cities is to mass produce loads of the fastest, most powerful attackers of any particular time period and I tend to ignore the other units apart from for city defence. I am hoping that civ 4 will force the player to produce a large variety of units – this can be done by making units require specific buildings before a city can produce them (I’ve already posted this suggestion earlier in the thread) and by giving units combat bonuses depending on what units they are fighting and the type of terrain they are fighting in; here are some suggestions for combat bonuses:

1) Infantry units (from both the industrial ages and modern ages) should get attack and defence bonuses if they are fighting in any kind of difficult terrain – this would include mountains, swamps, jungles, forests, ruins, and cities – because all of these terrains offer an abundance of cover that infantry could exploit far more effectively than tanks and therefore they should get additional benefits when fighting in this terrain.
2) Fast units such as tanks, knights, horsemen, cavalry should get combat bonuses when fighting on flat open terrain such as plains and grassland because this kind of terrain offers these units the maximum opportunity to exploit their speed against other units.
3) Archers and Longbowmen should receive defence bonuses when they are fighting on hills, mountains, fortresses, and cities because their elevated positions allow them to see approaching troops more clearly and to maximise the range of their weapons Nb: Longbowmen should be a specifically English unit and every other civ should use crossbows. 2nd Nb: Archers and Longbowmen should both have higher defence values.
4) Units such as spearmen and pikemen should receive combat bonuses against mounted units.
5) Mounted units should get a combat bonus against archers, longbowmen, and musketmen as they can close the distance on these ranged units faster than any attacking foot units.
6) Archers, Longbowmen, and musketmen should get a combat bonus against hand to hand foot units because they have plenty of time to fire upon units to reduce their numbers and weaken their morale before the enemy can retaliate.

The above are just suggestions for numerous different combat bonuses – the aim of the bonuses would be to stop any single type of unit dominating any particular age because all units will have different strengths and weaknesses that will vary according to terrain types and the opposition.

Another suggestion to discourage the mass production of the best attackers would be to increase their support cost, which would also be more realistic e.g. Knights were rewarded for their services with tracts of land whereas pikemen were raised from the peasantry and were expected to fight as part of their feudal duties to the land owners and they were not rewarded for their contribution in any campaigns. Another example would be tanks and infantry – It is a lot more expensive and time consuming to build tanks when compared against supplying the wargear needed to arm infantry. Both tank crews and infantry will require uniforms, boots, training, ammo, food, and a host of other things; but tanks also require spare parts, regular maintenance, and fuel, which would make them more costly to maintain.

Another suggestion to add depth to the combat system would be to add the concepts of supply lines and morale.

Morale:

In RL battles have been won and lost according to the morale and motivation of the troops, so I suggest that in addition to a health bar units should have a moral rating which would reflect the mood of the troops. Morale for any particular unit could be 1 of 5 classifications, which could be:

1) Excellent: Only elite units would be able to achieve excellent morale and while their morale remains excellent they would benefit from significant bonuses to their attack and defence.
2) Good: Only Veteran and Elite units would be able to achieve good morale and while their morale is good, units would receive a small bonus to their attack and defence.
3) Steady: All Regular and Conscript units would start off with steady morale and this would be the best status that they could achieve (of course if the unit is promoted to Veteran or Elite then morale could exceed steady). Steady units receive no combat bonuses or penalties.
4) Low: If things are going badly for a unit their morale may deteriorate to low, in which case they receive a small penalty to their attack and defence (troops are less motivated and more likely to run away in battle).
5) Awful: If things are going terribly for a unit then it’s morale may deteriorate to Awful. Units with awful morale will not be reliable in battle as they will be likely to run away so they will have a large penalty to attack and defence and in addition, the units health bar will decrease each turn that the unit has awful morale because troops will start deserting.

Unit morale could fluctuate due to a variety of factors. Morale could improve when a unit is at full health, is in home territory, captures an enemy city, defeats enemy units, loses a friendly city (desire for vengeance), is fortified in a city/fortress etc. Morale could deteriorate if a unit spends a long time in enemy territory, loses a lot of nearby friendly units, if the nation is suffering from war weariness, if the unit takes damage, if the unit is nearby another friendly unit with poor morale etc. By adding in unit morale this would create a new tactical facet to the game and it would become necessary to be more careful with how you deploy your forces.

Supply Lines:

In RL as armies advance it becomes necessary to extend their supply lines, which creates all kinds of logistical headaches for military strategists – supply lines are also a weak point in an army that can be exploited. So with this in mind I suggest that as units move into enemy territory, they should leave behind them visible supply lines that enemy units can move onto and disrupt. If a unit’s supply lines are disrupted them it should receive a combat penalty or a morale penalty.

Originally posted by Gatlin
Another idea taken from SMAC and the MOO series:

Divide the techs into different categories- Militaristic, Social, Economic, etc.
Then allow the player to set percentages of total research funding into each category.

Historically, a nation didn't research single-mindedly, they have broad research areas.
Gameplay-wise, this gives more control to the player, which is always, ALWAYS a good thing, and it allows for more customization and randomization of games. If you aren't sure what the opponent is invested in research wise, it makes for more varied games.

I also like the idea of allowing multiple things to be built in a city.
Historically accurate again, and allows for more choices. Again a very good thing.

Moderator, forgive me. I have no idea how to break down the following to fit your Post#1 format.

In addition to the above -- which are great ideas -- completely scrap the tech tree concept as it currently stands (or at least make it invisible). It's utterly ridiculous that you should be able to look ahead 500 or 2000 years to map out your progress.

Most of the advisor screens make sense in that you are dealing with current information that should be accessible to your average leader with reasonably good advisors ... and then you get to the Science Advisor screen. F1-F5 put you in touch with your realm, F6 makes you (scientifically) omniscient. To beat a dead horse: The King who's asking his Science Advisor how to get from here to Construction (2 steps and 1000 years away!!) can then say "Oh, by the way, remind me what's the shortest path to Miniaturizaton." Bad, bad schism there.

In addition to the "fog of war" there should be a "fog of science" that would let you look ahead very narrowly when you're concentrating on a certain discipline (such as weapons or religion or government). Of course, by now we all have the tree memorized so just making it invisible wouldn't really accomplish anything. Seems to me there's a potential for big change here, but sadly, it's big enough that I don't even know where to begin with suggestions on improvement. I'll think about it.

While we're discussing omniscience, make the spaceship screen inaccessible until the Apollo Program is built (or at least take out the civs/status list so that we can't check out the spaceship in 3550 b.c. to see who else shares our world).

Hmm, also, dispense with the Histograph -- at least until embassies have been established; the information in that screen should only reflect the civs we know about (and/or have embassies with).

I'd like to see the Advisors from Civ2 come back. There was a certain charm in Civ2 Advisors. While the Gameplay of Civ3 is indeed excellent in all aspects, and the interface allows much more detail in play, That would be all I would change. Keep most of Civ3 and its expansions, but switch back to Civ2's advisors. Oh, and bring back Elvis.

Here’s some suggestions for infrastructure developments. I would like Civ 4 to represent developments in agriculture, transport, and fishing more accurately.

Agriculture:

Agriculture improved massively throughout history so that modern farming techniques are VASTLY more productive than ancient farming techniques. So I think that there should be 4 levels of irrigation (each time you irrigate a tile it produces 1 more food).

1) The first level of irrigation would represent ancient farming techniques and civs would start the game being able to irrigate tiles to this level.
2) The second level of irrigation would be available with a tech such as feudalism and would represent developments in farming tools, crop rotation, and the strip farming system.
3) The third level of irrigation would be available with a tech such as refrigeration and it would represent developments such as commercialised farming, refrigerated transport, and vastly better farming equipment and practices e.g. early tractors and high farming.
4) The fourth level of irrigation would be available with a tech such as pesticides and it would represent all the developments that have taken place in modern times such as combine harvesters, pesticides and fungicides, large-scale greenhouses, large-scale mechanised commercialised farming etc

This means that your cities would receive a food boost in the middle ages, in the industrial ages, and the modern ages so it would be more historically accurate and there would be small towns in ancient times and vast metropolises in modern times.

Similarly, improvements in naval travel should improve the volumes of food produced from coastal, sea, and ocean squares because fishermen would travel further out to sea to catch fish and fishing techniques have improved so food produced from these tiles should increase after the discoveries of navigation and refrigeration. Military ships should get a lot faster as you research techs too (there was a suggestion earlier in the thread about ‘airlifting’ ships from one city to another that sounded good).

Transport:

Transport should also develop from roads to railways to motorways and each time the tile is upgraded it should produce more bonuses to trade and shield production and should increase the speed at which a unit can travel along a tile.
Nb: Neither railways nor motorways should allow infinite movement. Simlarly airlifts shouldn’t be infinite either – but the distance of airlifts should increase as you discover more techs

If I can build a rocket and go to the moon, I wish I could distribute food across my cities. So when a city is short on food it takes from a larger pool. Maybe this is a new technology called 'Distribution Infrastructure' or whatever.

Makes no sense to have Advanced Flight but you can't even drop a payload of bread to a starving city.

I feel that Communism should be a lot like it is in Civ3, but I would add Disabling of temples, Cathedrals, Stock Markets, Adam Smith's Trading company to reflect the actuality of this system.
Also, Fascist players should have the option of enslaving all citizens not of their nationality when they capture a city and move of some of their own into it.

It would be good it units that use projectiles as weapons would have some sort of advantage over melee warriors.

Maybe things like hired armies that you buy and when you are done using them you just give them back. They should cost some money every round.

I would really like more that one leader for a civ.
I am not a shovinist or anything but it just doesn't feel right taking over the world in brutal war with some "princess Catherine" I wanna atke control of some bada$$-m0therfycker like Stalin or Lenin.
Maybe leaders could change over time because it feels strange that I control Xerxes in 1983.
But then again who is the leader of Persia nowadays.
Just like the Americans didn't even excist until the 19'th century.

Civ specific unit graphics would be awesome, like workers would look different for everyone and they would evelvo over the time.
It is strange having some long bearded, robe wearing yahoo digging roads in the nineteenth century. I know they change in the industrial age but atleast give us some robots or something if we were to go past "Modern age" as someone before me preposed.

More understandable charts, just some plain old lines would work.

A spy sattelite would be a good wonder in a later part of the game. You could have full view of the world without the fog of war.

That's it for now.

Originally posted by Mad Danny

I also second the idea of railroad movement being limited to 12 - although offer a variation in railroad movement being 8 from steam power, but then 10 with electricity, and 12 with one of the more advanced engineering-based techs like manufacturing, of course electric trains would need a level 2 railroad (powered rails) so building a road up would go:
1.) road (standard 3x movement)
2.) railroad (8 moves with steam train)
3.) powered rail (allows 10 moves with electric trains, and 12 with upgraded trains)


but loading / unloading train should deduct from movement.

In Civ3 on a huge map (and maybe others) at the beginning of the game one has to set research to the minimum and take 40 turns to get a result.
At some point as your civ. increases this changes and the player can actually
make a useful decision as to the appropriate level of research.


Having a single right strategy is not good for a strategic game. This should be changed.

Howard Mahler

In Civ2, when you conquered a city, you get to a take scientific advance.

I think this made some sense, but it should be a percent chance, with the chance lower on larger maps.

Howard Mahler

The power of some wonders varies based on the size of map and the type of map (Pangea, archipelago.)

For example the Lighthouse is potentially much more useful on a huge archipelago map than on a small Pangea map. Hoover's Dam is potentially more useful on a huge pangea map than a small archipelago map. The same is true of most wonders that effect your cities on a single continent.

It would be helpful if the cost of these and similar wonders depended somewhat on the size and type of map.

Howard Mahler

Things I don't care about:

Better Graphics
Multiplayer
Scenarios

Howard Mahler

Win proof

This is only a multiplayer improvement.

The players who have just played a game should be able to prove that they have won or lost, and every body else should be able to check if he/her is right.

This could be done very easely by having a database store the data or by simply sending an e-mail to those who want it.

This will make it posible for others to make clans, clanwars, stats, ladders and best of all tournemts, and that would expand the community much, and make the mp players play much longer.

SLOW DOWN folks! Though it's concept is far-reaching in time and space, Civilization will always be a computer game, and is therefore restricted in what it can allow and offer. Let's focus on what the game does well, and talk about ways of accentuating those attributes.

I, for one, have always liked Civilization for its modularity and organic tinge, akin to legos or even gardening. I like to make up new civs and I even name geological formations and important battle cites. So civ-specific units have always rubbed me the wrong way; if i make my own civ, why can't I go through some wizard to create my own units? Just set att/def/mov limits per era and tech, and assign values to special abilities, and I'll make something that corresponds to my particular situation. MOO already has this application, and I like it.

DrMADD --

I knew I was forgetting something! Yes, I think that temples and cathedrals and Smith's Trading Company should definitely be nullified under Communism, making it harder to keep the people happy.

Although, if those were taken out and we kept the current stats for communism, then NO ONE, not even I would choose communism, because that would make it worse than despotism!

The major weakness in Civ 3 are IMHO the Diplomatic and Combat AI routines. I think these need tweaking in Civ 4

1: A more robust and realistic Diplomancy Function with less random and irrational actions by the AI Civs, especially the latter.

An example would be a warning that an action you are about to undertake, or are doing, will lead to War, like building up massive Stacks just outside their borders, or attacking a third Civ even though they have no treatys with it.

I am not fond of having to constantly Ass Kiss the AI Civs with Gold and great Tech Gifts or deals so they don`t launch Kamikaze attacks against me, especially when we are more or less equal in Military and Research, IMO a bad design feature in Civ3 1.29.

2: A more realistic Combat system with Ancient units VS Modern units, right now you get too many groaners when that AI Spearmen kills 2 or more Veteran Tanks in a row.:rolleyes:

The ability to "buy" or "rent" Mercenary units, a nice design featue that many other Civ type games offer.

The ability to "bribe" an AI unit in your terriority during War, this and the above offer the player interesting " decision points" in how to use his Gold.

In general a more expanded Tech Tree and PLEASE, less build time for the Key early city growth enhancements like Grainaries.

For the 10,000th. request, please stop the AI Civs from trying to build Cities on every available location, especially within your area of influence. AC seems to have gotten this right.

Last; please extend the Game End time out to at least 3000AD.

Civ 4 should seperate economics and politics

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

I like the econ slider idea for economic systems:

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

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

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

Lets dispense with the unique units and some of the other chrome that doesn't work very well (commercial, agricultural, industrious, whatever, and the costly artwork of leaders with four sets of clothing and at least as many expressions, and go back to Civ I, the real Civilization game, and start over, and make it better.

Randomize technology again, let there be more outcomes than we have now, don't make the tank and modern armor the uber units that defeat the world. Lets have some tension throughout the whole game. Being ahead in tech is nice, but what if the black death hits? They started down this route with Volcanos, I saw one kill off Constantinople last night, and that pretty much was that for the Byzantines (sorry Xen) as all their neighbors, including me, decided on piece. A piece of of our neighbor who lost her most productive city and a lot of her military in one mountain belch.

They need the redesign to keep us on our toes, intermittantly reinforced (get that rat to click for one more turn with a piece of food every 10 or 50 or 1000 clicks.) The is no one winning strategy for paper, sizzors, rock. We need some strategic choices like that that will work out right some of the time.

Whats wrong with Civ 3 in all its iterations, even SID, although I haven't tried it, and doubt I would do very well if I did, is that the good players can climb out of the deepest hole giving all that stuff to the AIs creates, and then beat them to death with it. The AIs aren't smart, or maybe they are too predictable. Maybe not all human players, but the good ones can get to a position where they are just going through the motions to get to one of the victory conditions, we aren't really threatened once we get our cities up and running.

So the redesign is easy, just challenge us all the way through the game. With different challenges, please, so we don't find them predictable and develop perfect plans that work. Perfect plans that don't alway work are great. I don't care if you have to sink continents to do it. If we can't lose, it isn't fun. But we have to win sometimes. How about a big asteroid that will destroy all life on earth, and you have to have space flight and a bunch of other techs to keep it from striking? As one of a hundred challenges, not every game has. If you spend all your reseach on space, AIDS will get you. Let there be strategic choices, and consequences, good and bad for the ones taken that mean you didn't take some other. You shouldn't be able to reseach everything!

Originally posted by Mad Danny
I also second the idea of railroad movement being limited to 12 - although offer a variation in railroad movement being 8 from steam power, but then 10 with electricity, and 12 with one of the more advanced engineering-based techs like manufacturing, of course electric trains would need a level 2 railroad (powered rails) so building a road up would go:
1.) road (standard 3x movement)
2.) railroad (8 moves with steam train)
3.) powered rail (allows 10 moves with electric trains, and 12 with upgraded trains.
A lot of people have a problem with the "infinite movement" of the trains, but it's an illusion. The seemingly infinite movement of railroads reflects the turn-based limitations of the game. The shortest amount of time to pass in a turn is a year, so it is entirely feasible that a unit expends zero movement points to get from one end of a continent to the other, then disembarks and goes on to spend its normal points. It's like a real-world battalion being shipped by rail from Ft. Stewart, GA to Ft. Lewis, WA in a year. It could be done with months to spare.

Tweak the random number generator!!!!! bring back the firepower system in civ2 so that a spearman cant waste a modern armor or mech inf

I may have been too hasty on dropping UUs, Instead, make them avaliable to everyone, if you research it. Same with agricultural, seafaring, militaristic, industrious, etc. Research them, obviously you can't afford to research them all, and don't allow trading. Another option would be to allow research to improve a single statistic on a regular unit. Want Immortals? research improved offense for swordsmen. Want Legions? Research improved defense for Swordsmen. Want 4-3-1 units? Research both. You may want something else more, but then, again give us options. More options is good. Just like Ironclads are now researched for and not automatic. Maybe mil trad shouldn't give cavalry, just the opportunity to research up to plus 4 offense and plus 2 defense for horsemen.

You may need to take out goodie huts and expansionist civilizations if it unbalances the research driven approch to Civ 4. I never much understood how some of the technologies were known by little barbarian villages, but not by other civilizations. Getting workers (slaves) and gold make a lot more sense to me.

A feature better representing population

Each era the city size = a different number of people. IE Size one in Ancient times might be 50 to 100 people.

When you capture a city of another era, the size is adjusted to fit the population. To make this have little to no affect on production, each age should result in an increase of "pop head" production, and the size number adjusted to represent population.

The actual production of a city shifting to a new era won't change as the number of pop heads will be reduced to reflect population, and the increase in production will fit the downshift of heads. Of course, Food consumption will stay the same (and consumption the same) to reflect more productivity and more consumption per head. The reason why I'd increase productivity is the higher population per head. Leaving actual technological advances (Industrialization) to still be reflected.

This makes more sense to me as a city of 10,000 people in 4,000 BC is big. Plus, by increasing productivity (and adjusting for size) when era transistion occurs allows for this to work out.

I also would like to choose between a male or female leaderhead. Having the leaderhead of Cleopatra when I play the Egyptians, or Catherine when I play the Russians is very annoying.

The additions I would like to see in Civ IV would be additions that enhance the playability and additions that add to the strategic options and flavour of the game. I am not in favour af additions that simply provide randomised luck to the game eg volcanoes.

First, some of the changes that enhanced playability in Civ III over Civ II was the ability to set up build queues and defaults to make the same unit again etc You could put your build plan into the game rather than have to track it externally, an dhave your strategic vision continually interrupted with "I have just finished my temple in nowhere important, what do I build now?" questions at the start of every move.

Civ IV should extend this concept further so that city micromangement can be predetermined, and programmed into both individual worker actions, and predetermination of city tile working over a series of tuns.

eg Worker actions - you should be able to set up a job queue (graphically) so that you could say make a worker:
- move to tile X
- then road
- then mine
- then move to tile Y
etc
Worker actions should be performed after all non-preprogramed actions, so if you need to interrupt (due to barb activity say) you can.

eg Tile managment - this is to enable the automated settler factory as an example. You would specify the priorities for tiles to be worked by the city population up to the maximum 20 tiles (city centre always worked) for each and every turn up to whatever number of advance turns you like, and with a repeat function available.

If you specify less than the current city pop, then the excess reverts to the current system of tile selection.
If you specify more than the current pop level then the higher priorities are worked first.

This would enable the full power of micro management without the need to manaually make changes to each city every turn, and therefore greatly enhance playability without sacrificing power.

Second, the strength of the AI is a major issue, and one that I am sure is not nearly as easy to fix as many in these forums would like to believe. I suspect the best approach is to consider what are the AIs key failings and what can be done to improve these in an incremental approach.

Some of the AIs weaknesses appear to me to be:
a) Poor use of worker turns.
ie 1) before a city has expanded, the AI only considers the immediiate surrounding squares to work on, and works the most powerful. Instead, the foresight that the city will expand after so many turns should be applied to the worker for a more strategic set of turns evolved.
ie 2) the AI looks to work the most powerful square first in isolation as to how to get there and which square it may wish to work next. A more powerful sequence would be available if it considered the most powerful sequence, instead of the most powerful individual square
b) Combat
ie 1) Failure to concentrate force sufficient to wage a successful offence.
ie 2) Unit selection based on unit id rather than most appropriate unit for the job.

etc

I am sure others can add to the list, and the list of ways to improve the AI that are realistic to program.

More later...

1. mines

new ability: "place minefield"
have some units capable of mining terrain. the mine should be invisible to others (until some of their units got blown to pieces), have no nationality, be capable of killing/wounding most enemies.

new ability: "clear minefield"
for the couterpart units - capable of removing mines, they should not be able to see minefields in neighbouring tiles, and have some risk involved in removing them. (like losing a hitpoint or two if you have bad luck)

tiles with minefields should not be workable by towns, so can't just place them all over your terretory like roads or fortresses (given you have enough manpower)

mines would allow players to increase the security of their borders without stationing additional units.
this could also be useful to prevent the AI from running through your territory all the time.

1b) the same kind of system for naval combat.


2. bombardement to ranged units

just like it's currently used in the dyp mod, allow ranged units (archer, musketman, etc.) to choose to bombard an enemy with something less than their attack value instead of attacking them personally.

it simulates ability to attack from distance and could help to increase unit diversity.


--
i also like the idea of limiting the railroad movement, because it would get people to use other modes of transportation more often. (maybe i'll ship my units across that sea instead of going waaaay round, or should i airlift them to get there faster)

i don't think it would harm the "realism" or be illogical as your first units could certainly _walk_ around the earth in 40 years (if they move at least 1000 meters an hour, 3 hours a day)

A lot of people have a problem with the "infinite movement" of the trains, but it's an illusion. The seemingly infinite movement of railroads reflects the turn-based limitations of the game. The shortest amount of time to pass in a turn is a year, so it is entirely feasible that a unit expends zero movement points to get from one end of a continent to the other, then disembarks and goes on to spend its normal points. It's like a real-world battalion being shipped by rail from Ft. Stewart, GA to Ft. Lewis, WA in a year. It could be done with months to spare.

yes but the two points I'd make regarding the matter are:
1. on large continents it takes longer to transfer a unit between cities in an aircraft than by train - which just seems silly (unless it takes several months to load and unload aeroplanes and only a few minutes for trains)
2. it's bad enough waiting for AI to take their turns when you're in the last fifth of the game and you can see everything and everyone moves dozens of units per turn - and it can be rather irritating to see the AI whizzing it's units around the railroad trying to expend all it's movement points

one other possible solution though could be to make railway stations with worker units like outposts and airfields and such (includes all cities as having railway stations)- then units moving normally would only get the normal road bonus and units on a station or city square would have a 'railway' hotkey to pick a station to get transferred to - then travelling between cities works pretty much the same as airlifts and you need to set up temporary stations on some combat fronts. (like someone said maybe limit airlift distance by tech perhaps then limit railway travel similarly - going from steam to electric to maglev or something)

although granted this idea doesn't account for the shield production bonus of railroads so if anyone has ideas how to adapt it..

Ohh ... The possibilities ...

1) Better Graphics (I am thinking 3D where you are able to move all aroud, and check out a battle or something from all angles)
2) More realistic mountains - I don't like the way they just randomly jut out from the overly flat grassland, etc. They should be better incorporated into the overall landscape. ALso, grassland, etc shouldn't be so flat, it should be slightly curvy, more realistic
3) More Civ's (I'm not saying this just because I want Canada to be a civ, I think some important Civs have been overlooked, like some African nations, and South America, and Australia)
4) More UU's. There should be multiple uu's for every civ, to increase the amount of decisions that must be made when choosing the civ in the first place. The mainstream units shouldn't be decreased, however.
5) Random events. Little things that may be annoying, or a reward, such as landslides that take out part of the countryside, perhaps even a part of your nation rebelling, and seperating, creating their own civilization. Reward ideas may be you discover a hidden horde of treasure which give you a bunch of money, or your Scientists make an amazing discovery, which gives you bonus production, or something (A nasty one: epidemics. SARS maybe?)
6) More realism. Modern Armor fighting spearmen just is not realistic, or fair. Giving Moderm Armor a new ability, say having the ability to "run" over other, walking units maybe? New combat abilities may not be the key, I'm not quite sure on this one, I will have to ponder the Enigma.

7) Being able to be a citizen in one of your cities. This would be very neat, i think. It would add a whole other dimension to the game, and let you get a first hand perspective on how you are governing.
8) More "Conquests" definitely (They may re-name them, thus the quotation marks). In personal opinion, more war scenarios should be included, such as the War of 1812, WW1/2, the Russo-Japanese War(s), Persian Gulf war(s), etc.
9) BETTER MULTIPLAYER!!! The current multiplayer is not very good, it tends to stall a lot, and I find myself spending up to a minute waiting for friends. Also, the game runs much more poorly.

I do seriously think that 1) would greately improve gameplay, and make the game much, much more fun. Civilization has a lot of potential, I was Civ4 to be the best of the Lot.

Mr Cackle

I also believe it would be a good idea to differentiate between Constitutional and Absolute Monarchy. Have War weariness and pesky old Parliament ruining the King's unchecked mayhem, while lessening the corruption/capitol distance ratio like a republic.
I will be able to play Conquest this week, and I figure I'm either going to stick with Monarchy, my favorite, or Feudalism.

"The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.- Walter Bagehot

The Duties of any ruler are to rule his people wisely, and wear upon his person the best traits his nation possesses and flaunt as few of their shortcomings as humanly possible. This is not within the abilities of a hireling.-Myse

We can now queue city production. For Civ 4, I'd like to see a queue for worker actions. It would be great to tell my workers to clear pollution first, then go back to building railroads if there is no pollution, automatically.

I'd like to see Combat Engineers. An upgrade of the worker. Probably better defense then attack.

Also, adding more African and North American civs... plus an Asian one or two, have even larger world maps to play on. Even if this sacrafices on graphics to be playable.

Bring back "Superhighways"

Add a new type of resource "Economic" which gives a slight boost to your nation for each one you have up to X. Sugar and Tobacco or great examples, especially in history.

Horse "breeding" - If a cid has been trading to get horses, they should after a while... or have a good chance of getting... a horse resource near a city or cities. That way they can simply "Import, Raise, and breed" horses.

Originally posted by Troy0628
Democracy (has not existed since ancient Greece)


What are you talking about? Democracy still exists.

Its a question of definition. What is Democracy? But this is off topic. Pm him, he will wxplain you better than I can.

There is now a huge amount of ideas here. But I have the feeling, that many think too small-edged. Civ4 shouldn't be a expansion (upgrade for workers, etc... ). IT SHOULD BE A ENTIRE NWE GAME!

mfG mitsho

"one other possible solution though could be to make railway stations with worker units like outposts and airfields and such (includes all cities as having railway stations"


That's a great idea. Keep the existing rail roads, but in order to take advantage, a unit must 'enter' the rail system at a city or a rail station. Therefore airports aren't faster, but they are more convenient (no railnetwork is required).

An alternative would be to create actual train units: transports limited to rails. They would enjoy the unlimited movement, however your units would be limited by how many trains you actually have.


I'd also like to see the return of the Civ2 spy. Sabotaging units, planting nukes... these underhanded tactics are sorely missed! In diplomacy you can accuse players of 'harbouring terrorists', perhaps another level of mutual protection pact would kick in ONLY from terrorist incidents.

I'd also like the ability to trade multiple resources. If I have 5 iron, why not sell 4 to someone who can then resell them to someone else?

Originally posted by saintly_saint
Change the russian leader, God I wanna smack her face,(don't you just hate that little smiling russian scum?)

I agree russia should have Lenin. But if it is having a fare amount of females/males then each civ should have an option female/male leaderhead

Why only one leader? say about 3 to ech civ? (balancing females and males) ant for the AI there's a random. Perhaps make it therefore that each leader stands for some traits. Communistic Russia is different of caristic russia!

mfG mitsho

What about a turn-base similar to Axis-Allies whereby you have to declare all your combat moves before any attacks are played out?

A thing of most importance:

Last units should have stats like 60/50/6 for Battleship or 80/50/3 for modern armour!

This would allow multiple UUs for any CIV and many more combos for new MOD units to be entered.
Besides, i would strenghen the Tank Vs the Spear, if correctly done.

This is a must!

What about some form of tax avoidance and corresponding uphappiness when you raise taxes too high too long depending on your type of government?

What about some form of happiness when tax rates are low?

Some new terrain improvements:
1)Highway: Build in modern age to put +1 commerce on square. Same movement as roads. May want to build on squares where you can't get the shield bonus from railroads. Also, I think it would be cool to see the looping, intersecting concrete freeways surrounding your cities.
2)Bring back the farms from Civ2 or do something to alter the irrigation graphic in more modern times. I hate being in the modern age and having the irrigated squares looking like chicken-scratches
3)Possible terrace farming advance to bring irrigation to hills
4)How about little fences around cows and game, purely for looks?
5)Refrigeration, or some kind of improvement/advance in Industrial times that reflects the boom in food production technology
6)Bridges that can span 1 square of water. Big commerce bonus on bridged squares. Maybe bridges could collapse until the discovery of replaceable parts (or something)
7)Canals!

Democracy, as it existed in Ancient Greece, no longer exists. What we have now is no true democracy, but closer to the Republic. Every Democracy that has ever been died of self-inflicted wounds. Democracies in their pure form are too prone to acts of mass chaos, as a government where literally anyone can veto a law of have a hand therein, and this slows down the legal system in practice. No wonder the Romans took them over.

I don't know if this has been addressed anywhere before... but if we use our imaginations a little, it's quite possible for a regiment of spearment to defeat a batallion of tanks (not LIKELY mind you...)

Certainly there are no modern units of spearmen, so it's hard to pull a genuine analogy, but think of modern wars where tanks were defeated by ambushs of local guerillas. Perhaps that's how a unit of spearmen could defeat a tank. A tank doesn't have to be destroyed, just disabled (jammed tracks, falling into a pit). If I was armed with a spear and figthing a tank, I know that I'd be more likely to use the spear to set traps than to try to pierce the armour!

Hell, Drs. Henry Jones Junior and Senior defeated a tank with a horse, a rock and a pen!

i would really, really, really like to see a wargame-esque battle thing. like, if your unit has three hp, u get three "divisions" to move around. or something like that. i'm really getting tired of losing to an enemy and not being able to tell why.

i'd like a better government system more similar to alpha centauri's.

here's an interesting idea: detachments. say u have a regular legionary and want need to hold the square ur on but also need to secure a mountain one square away. u divide the legionary and send part of it off. each detachment has 1+ hp and the legionary loses that much. so if u send a 1 hp detachment, the regular legion becomes a conscript.

and firepower from civ2 should return.

Regrouping – Two wounded units of the same type (e.g., both Calvary) and any skill level could regroup to form a single, fully healed veteran unit. The regrouping counts as an attack. Both units must be on the same tile. The move for the new unit will be the worse of the two original units.
--
Below are three more ideas that are related. Former paragraphs may refer to ideas in later paragraphs.

Multiple city improvements (CI) – Build a second or third Cathedral to placate more of the population!

Each subsequent CI would cost the same as the first and require upkeep cost as the first, but would only be half as effective as the previous, rounding down. For example, improvement X provides 4 culture and makes 2 citizens happy. A 2nd X would add 2 culture and 1 happy; A 3rd X, 1 culture, for a total of 7 culture and 3 happy. A 4th X could be built, but would provide no benefit.
--
Some CIs could optionally be built outside of the main city tile, and some would be required to.

If the city that built the CI is razed, the CI remains. If the CI is within the radii of two cities (of the same civ) upkeep and benefits could be transferred for 1/8 the cost of building the CI.

Upkeep could be abandoned. The CI would lose, say “10 shields” of its value for each turn abandoned. This could be repaired by workers (and tax money). The loss of shields would have diminished affect of the CI usefulness, being useless at 50% or less of its original cost. A CI obtained by a culture flip could be used by the capturing civ, if they have the tech level. They may elect to pay maintenance in either case or abandon it.

The CI could be pillaged for a number of shields at 10x the attack value of the pillager/bombarder.
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I suggested earlier adding commodities that could be traded to other civs. I’d like to expand on that a little more. First of all, the current trade between civs and the current trade generated by resources, luxuries and bonus items, and working the tile remain unchanged as this reflects trade within the civ.

The trade values of bonus item or commodity could be traded to other civs increasing trade between the civs. For example lets say a gold deposit generates 4 trade on a worked tile. Those four trade, whether that tile is worked by the host city or not, could also be traded with another civ that doesn’t have gold, increasing trade for both civs. These items could be retraded to other civs, if desired, through the middleman civ. This would also allow going around a trade embargo if one is in place.

I’d like to chime in on limiting RR range. The argument that it is reasonable for one troop to hop aboard a train to get to the other side of the continent in a year, is unreasonable. There’s more to it than that. It’s entire companies that have to moved including all their equipment and the logistics involved, including paperwork and authorizations. Unlimited movement could return with the discovery of highway systems.

I’d like to propose even more infrastructure development. Besides the addition to super highway lines connecting cities, how about aqueducts built on top of tiles, power lines and communication lines. As part of the build of an aqua duct, a city also get two free “pipes” that must be connected to a freshwater source such as a river or a lake. Aquifers could also appear with the discovery of construction or perhaps with a later tech discovery. Workers could build additional pipes, say to another city or a redundant path to hedge against pillaging. If a water source lays entirely within a foreign border it may be traded for.

A water source capacity would be limited. A one-tile lake could support a population of 30. Each river tile could support a population of five. Loss of water would mean a population decline.

Power and factories. Power plants (PP) could be built without factories for a moderate increase in production. A single PP would provide power to a local factory, the city and one other city. Cities could be connected by a power grid, built by workers. Two grid lines come with the price of a PP. Neighboring civs could be on the same power grid, with electricity as a commodity to be traded. A PP built inside the main city make one citizen unhappy. A factory and PP on the same tile is a little more efficient. The Hoover Dam Wonder would have to be modified.

A Hydro- plant must be built on a tile with a river, and cannot be built on the main city tile. The tile with the plant would flood, and would be considered a “lake” tile. The tile could contain road or R/R, with appropriate trade bonuses, and a food bonus for R/R. If pillaged or abandoned to the point of destruction, the down river tile will flood for 5 years (selling is OK).

Likewise Nuke plants must be built next to water tiles. Destruction means melt-down.

Communications (Telephony, Radio, TV, etc.) – Communication Electronics (CE) would be relatively cheap to build. CE would reduce corruption in democratic and republican govs, and reduce the chance of a city being bought by a spy. Cities could be connected as a worker action with communication lines. Trade for connected cities increases in proportion to both the number of cities connected and the percentage of the civ’s connected cities.

A later tech would allow Repeater Stations to built in coastal cities for trans-continental connectivity.

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Pillagers would choose from a right-click activated pop-up menu to pillage, CI, Highway / R/R / road & improvement, grid lines or communication lines. The menu would allow selection of a preferred pillage sequence.

First of all, I would like to say that I didn't read all of the previous posts. I was scared by its amount. Therefore, I apologize if somebody already posted something similar to my propositions.
Second of all, one could say that these ideas are more suitable for Civ 3.5 rather then for Civ 4. That might be truth, but I still like my ideas, so here they are:

1. I like that game feature who allow strategic resource to deplete. I think it's realistic, and to add to realism, I believe that each resource should have different amount on each location. As soon as you connect that resource by means of road or colony with some of your cities, its exploitations begins, and adds some amount of that resource per turn in some sort of resource pool. When you start to produce i.e. swordsmen, you start to spend resource from that pool. Once your resource pool is empty, you can't produce anything that requires that resource. When you buy some resource, needless to say, you buy exact amount of it and store it in the resource pool.

2. On the other hand, I dislike very much mines on grasslands or plains. So I think that it should be replaced with, say, villages. Maybe even with same characteristics (adds 1 shield and so on). Obviously, this needs more elaborations.

3. As for Civilization strengths, I am surprised that "Artistic" is not already included, and I propose it strongly. Of course, it would further include whole range of city improvements like theaters, operas, museums, galleries and so on. Maybe, somehow, Artistic Leaders could appear after some event.

4. Finally, I don't believe that assimilation is as mandatory as it is in Civ, no matter how some nation is small in population or insignificant in culture. It's more matter of their satisfaction with their position in new empire than matter of national consciousness. So I propose that Civ incorporate national uprisings as a form of civil disorder.

That's it for now. I hope that at least one, or part of one idea, will be as appealing to people in Firaxis as it was to me.

How about some separation of governments and economic systems? Not sure how it would work, but I only know that it should since a communist government is not the same as crappy economic system anymore.

Originally posted by Mad Danny


yes but the two points I'd make regarding the matter are:
1. on large continents it takes longer to transfer a unit between cities in an aircraft than by train - which just seems silly (unless it takes several months to load and unload aeroplanes and only a few minutes for trains)
2. it's bad enough waiting for AI to take their turns when you're in the last fifth of the game and you can see everything and everyone moves dozens of units per turn - and it can be rather irritating to see the AI whizzing it's units around the railroad trying to expend all it's movement points

one other possible solution though could be to make railway stations with worker units like outposts and airfields and such (includes all cities as having railway stations)- then units moving normally would only get the normal road bonus and units on a station or city square would have a 'railway' hotkey to pick a station to get transferred to - then travelling between cities works pretty much the same as airlifts and you need to set up temporary stations on some combat fronts. (like someone said maybe limit airlift distance by tech perhaps then limit railway travel similarly - going from steam to electric to maglev or something)

although granted this idea doesn't account for the shield production bonus of railroads so if anyone has ideas how to adapt it..

Totally agree, well maybe not totally, but pretty close to it anyways!

Also, airports should be able to fly out stuff according to the size of the city it is in, it shouldn't be limited to only one airlift per turn. If you know anything about airlift you know that the amount of stuff the airport can handle depends on the size of the airport.

Railroad bonus should only be used when using a railway i.e. operate railways just like airports are operated. Current railroads should turn into freeways with movement based on(which would be built like railroads are now) movement which could be twice the movement of roads.

Railroads now would only need to connect cities instead of covering every square.

Problem solved! :goodjob:

Originally posted by Winston
I also have some suggestions about adding more depth to military strategy. Civ 3’s combat system is good but I tend to find that the easiest way to conquer cities is to mass produce loads of the fastest, most powerful attackers of any particular time period and I tend to ignore the other units apart from for city defence. I am hoping that civ 4 will force the player to produce a large variety of units – this can be done by making units require specific buildings before a city can produce them (I’ve already posted this suggestion earlier in the thread) and by giving units combat bonuses depending on what units they are fighting and the type of terrain they are fighting in; here are some suggestions for combat bonuses:


We don't want Civ to become a militiristic game despite the fact of how military has shaped history and continues to do so. The type of units one produces is depended on the chosen Civ and the Civ's neighbors. There are not enough variety of units for every unit to have pluses and minuses against every other unit.

Let Age of Empires stay Age of Empires and let Civ stay Civ. :love:

Originally posted by Winston
Another suggestion I propose is to allow cities to simultaneously construct city improvements and to train soldiers. City improvements would be constructed using the production shield system in civ 3 and units would be trained by the city based upon a separate production value that would be based upon the city’s population size (the pool of people that the city would draw upon to train) and the value would be enhanced by buildings such as barracks, civil defence (better training facilities), and granaries and hospitals (healthier population to draw upon).
This would allow civ 4 to include a lot more buildings without detracting from the cities capacity to produce military units. However, cities could be restricted in both the number of military units they can produce and the number of buildings they can construct.
Units could be limited in that a city can only produce two military units per head of population (this could vary from government to government) e.g. a size 3 city could support 6 military units – if you want that city to produce more military units it has to grow first. Secondly you could limit the type of units that a city can produce by making cities require specialist buildings to build specialist units e.g. you need a tank factory to produce tanks. The result of this will mean that players will be forced to produce a variety of units instead of mass-producing the best units. This also allows the option of having small wonders to produce really specialist units e.g. only one city can produce an SAS/Delta Force type unit and it requires a small wonder.
City improvements could be limited by introducing a rule that cities can’t build any more city improvements than the infrastructure of the city can sustain. I suggest that cities shouldn’t be allowed so many city improvements that their combined maintenance cost (in gold) is in excess of the amount of revenue produced in trade and that many city improvements should be restricted to cities and / or metropolises. By doing this, the player is forced to specialise his/her cities rather than building numerous uber cities.

Galatic Civilizations makes a great go at your first idea. They have two separate build queues. One is the regular build queue and then there is a second build queue and for the second one you pay out of your cash to have it built almost as if you were contracting that building project out. The faster you want the unit built the more the contractor asks for.

Specialist buildings won't work because there are already a huge number of buildings you already have to build especially as you progress to the modern times. To build a tank building just so you can build tanks just adds a layer on top of the need to do the research. Unless.... these buildings are one of kind or two or three of a kind depending on the size of your civ. Which would mean these tank buildings would have to be able to build more than one tank every few turns. Otherwise the upkeep on all of these buildings is going to drive your Civ into ruins economically.

I love your idea about limiting the number of buildings a city can build based on the amount of gold the city produces. I wonder how this play out?

Originally posted by Howard Mahler
Make settlers cost significantly more shields in order to slow down the early growth.

On most Civ3 maps the only viable stategies are variants of racing to fill up the map ASAP.

TRUE DAT! I hate the mad land ruSH!

Originally posted by Mobilize
The ability to trade units with other civs. Like giving aid or asking for aid against opposing forces with friendly people's mercenaries. This was in Civ2 and for some reason not in Civ3.

Also more civs.. way more. Originally posted by Philips beard



Really agrees in this one, but the opnent country of the one you support should be angry at you, since its a great trigger for war that you support their oponents with arms...

Isn't this already a feature or am I thinking of SMAC?

Originally posted by Philips beard
I have a great idea!!!!!!

When your civ-empire falls (your last city is taken) The remains of your army in the field should not just pass away, but the conqueror should be able to choose if he wantet to place a new government over the captured cities, or parts of them! Then the remains of the old army will become the new governments army in a kind of vasal or vichy state. If the conqueror chooses to keep the whole conquerred nation as a part of his own empire, or large parts of it, there should be a great risk that this army converted to resistance fighters, and the one ruling the conquered country before should be in charge of them, trying to get their old powers back. He could survive even without cities if he was supported by a third nation with arms and gold, but this should seriously harm the third countries relations to the conqeror civ!

You have quite a few posts and you know what this just doesn't make any sense.:crazyeye:

Usually any Civ that is about to be exterminated has such an inferior army that resistance would be futile! :borg:

Originally posted by cgannon64
How about global warming creates receding water levels? I know water tiles can turn into land tiles in Civ3 but its a bug and not widespread. I say if global warming gets really out of hand they add a tile to some, most, or all shorelines.

Water levels rise due to global warming because the ice at the poles start to melt.

Originally posted by Craterus22
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Civil Wars should make a comeback. This would counter the poor expansion minded (go to locations that make no sense -inevitably will return in a new version) AI. This could be a HUGE balancing force in the game.

If a civ is too big (either player or AI) and the civ is allowed to fall to a certain extreme level of unhappiness, there should be a penalty in excess of loss of production. Civil war would solve this. It could also shake up the middle game in a way that would make it more fun.

Civil wars should vary in size... not just a split down the middle - perhaps a combination of culture and war could redefine the new borders. The newly created civ would have to have an alternative known form of govt. This would be helpful for early game CW's because the off shoot would be weakened by Anarchy.


In the good old days of Civ 1 civil wars were triggered when you captured an enemy capital. Definitely a missed featured.

I think that it would be cool to be able to name places on the map, like mountain ranges, river, oceans etc.
I cant really think of any strategic value to this, but it would be cool to think in your mind, "I'll send my troops of the English Mountains and attack over the Blue Valley River!" It might also help to know at which parts of the map u were planning on attacking or mining etc. Kinda like in SIMCITY 4

HERE IS A SCREENSHOT FROM SIMCITY 4 OF WHAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT FOR CIV4:

http://www.eagames.com/official/sc4/rushhour/us/screenshot/screen_pops/euro_build.jsp

On huge arcipelego maps, the unlimited distance of airlift is extremely powerful. Given one can build airports with flight, in the late industrial age prior to "modern times", this capability is gross!

Airlift should have limited range, with perhaps the range increasing with some advance researched in modern times.

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

Howard Mahler

On huge arcipelego maps (on which I like to play), in ancient times and to a lesser extent the middle ages, it is very, very risky to try to build a wonder.

First at a high difficulty level you are almost guarenteed to be behind in research and be slower at building anyway. On this type of map, you are unlikely to have made contact with many other civilizations before the middle ages, so in most cases you have no idea who is building a wonder or when they started.

On this type of a map, it is very rare to have a leader this early in the game, so that is not much of an option to build a wonder.

Thus playing against the computer, unless I am already doing so well that the game is virtually already won, I do not even try to build an ancient wonder and very rarely try to build a wonder in the middle ages.

On this type of a map, building the ancient and middle age wonders are usually not a good option for the player.

It would be good if this did not also occur in Civ4.

Howard Mahler

P.S. These ancient and middle age wonders still have an impact. Some computer civs will benefit from building them. Other computer civs will waste shields by being beaten out on building a wonder. Also, occassionally early on, the human can conquer a city in which a wonder was built by the computer. Hopefully later on, the human can conquer those wonders which still grant a benefit.