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 gol