civ 4 forums CIV6 wishlist

A mechanism I'd like to see in Civ6 (if it ever happens!) is a true obsolescence of military units. Someone in another thread (and you must forgive me - I've forgotten where the post is) suggested that once a player/AI researches a tech which gives an upgrade to a particular unit or class of units then the player/AI should have their units upgraded automatically. I would change this to give the player the choice to upgrade or disband.

And also, I would like to see some mechanism by which units that face an opposing unit which is two upgrades ahead automatically have their victory odds reduced to 0.01%, regardless of relative strength. To make this "realistic" it may be desirable only to impose this once the more advanced unit is from the Industrial Age onwards. Combined with stripping the ability of pre-Industrial units to collaterally damage Industrial/Modern units this would remove the frankly ridiculous (to my mind) situation of a bunch of trebs and knights counter-attacking and defeating a stack of Tanks/Infantry/Artillery. Comparing the weapons systems we can see that knights and trebs would be splattered all over the battlefield before getting remotely close enough to actually damage the more modern units. The 0.01% victory chance would reflect the relatively few occasions in history where units using massively outdated weaponry defeated modern units i.e. Redcoats defeated by Impis at Isandlhwana in 1879.

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If units automatically upgraded for free the player would deliberately build loads of the lowest-hammer-cost units possible before beelining through the military upgrade techs as fast as they could.

If the upgrades were forced and cost money you would have to be careful to make sure you had the cash in the bank before completing the research to avoid auto-disband. That might be an awkward thing to happen if you were in the middle of a war at the time

The combat mechanics in Civ 4 already strongly favour more advanced troops, nearly as much as you said. When you consider that a unit with double the strength of its opponent has say a 99% chance of victory, and the two era upgrades you suggest will make for a x3 or x4 strength increase, that's pretty slim chances for the old guys.

Or are you saying terrain defense multipliers and so on should become invalid for old units? Or that the hit points system should be removed (e.g. now 10 spearmen can realistically defeat a tank .... should it be 30, or 300, or not even an infinite amount of spearmen?) I think most people thought hit points were a good addition when they were introduced.

Not saying "true obsolesence" is a bad idea, but it would have to be thought through.

Kid R said:

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If units automatically upgraded for free the player would deliberately build loads of the lowest-hammer-cost units possible before beelining through the military upgrade techs as fast as they could.

If the upgrades were forced and cost money you would have to be careful to make sure you had the cash in the bank before completing the research to avoid auto-disband. That might be an awkward thing to happen if you were in the middle of a war at the time

The combat mechanics in Civ 4 already strongly favour more advanced troops, nearly as much as you said. When you consider that a unit with double the strength of its opponent has say a 99% chance of victory, and the two era upgrades you suggest will make for a x3 or x4 strength increase, that's pretty slim chances for the old guys.

Or are you saying terrain defense multipliers and so on should become invalid for old units? Or that the hit points system should be removed (e.g. now 10 spearmen can realistically defeat a tank .... should it be 30, or 300, or not even an infinite amount of spearmen?) I think most people thought hit points were a good addition when they were introduced.

Not saying "true obsolesence" is a bad idea, but it would have to be thought through.

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I suppose what I'm really getting at is twofold. Firstly, following the introduction of new technologies civilizations upgrade. They always have. Yet, in Civ so far we have absurd situations where an AI (and its pretty much always an AI) will go to war with a mix of units including SAM, Longbows, Cavalry and Catapults. I think the choice of upgrade or disband reflects the nature of humanity's relationship to military technology. There may be gameplay issues. These could perhaps be mitigated by imposing the upgrade/disband option 10 turns after the upgrade becomes available. During the 10 turns a player can slowly upgrade turn by turn before being faced with a final choice.

Secondly, I get frustrated seeing a bunch of ancient era units defeat industrial/modern units. For instance, in my current game (Noble, Huge, Marathon) I've been forced into a war for oil with HC and Saladin (vassal/master). I successfully took the necessary resource from HC, but as he is a vassal of Saladin I needed to damage Saladin sufficiently to force a peace. To this end I took one of his cities with my early industrial army, against his medieval/renaissance/early industrial army. I garrisoned the city with five infantry and moved on, at which point his counter-attack developed. This was led by ancient/medieval Siege in waves, which was obvious destroyed in droves by my infantry. However, my infantry suffered so much collateral damage that the follow up (waves of Macemen + 1 or 2 Grenadiers) was able to destroy 4 out of my 5 infantry. I held the city by the skin of my teeth having destroyed perhaps 30 of Saladin's units (I lost count after a while). There were even some War Elephants in the mix. Just what would disciplined, massed, modern breech loading rifle-fire do to War Elephants?!?!

Now, what would have happened in reality? I contend that 99 times out of 100, or 999 times out of 1,000 Saladin's forces would simply have refused to engage mine once they realised the probable outcome. How to reflect this reality in civ is what I'm mean when I suggest that pre-industrial units should a) be unable to do collateral damage industrial/modern units (they just wouldn't be able to get close enough), and b) have their victory chance dramatically reduced regardless of strength (they would run away). That they would have any chance of victory at all would reflect those very few occasions, e.g. Little Big Horn, Isandlhwana, where civs who were dramatically outclassed technically did manage to gain a victory.

or you could invest in machine guns.

I really hate when people basically say 'your not playing right' to counter an argument but the scenario you mentioned is EXACTLY what machine guns are designed for. And your clearly at a level to have them available.

they suffer no collateral damage and with a bit of first strike 2 or 3 machine guns can hold of almost unlimited numbers of anything below riflemen.

I guess what i am trying to say is that in this situation civ4 is pretty well done and should not be modified simply and for no other reason than you dont feel like building units in a strategically sound manor.

having said that.
I agree that upgrades could/should be handled differently. automatic upgrades over time for example or simply an AI tweek which puts a little more priority on upgrading or replacing troops to a reasonable degree.

wolfblue said:

or you could invest in machine guns.

I really hate when people basically say 'your not playing right' to counter an argument but the scenario you mentioned is EXACTLY what machine guns are designed for. And your clearly at a level to have them available.

they suffer no collateral damage and with a bit of first strike 2 or 3 machine guns can hold of almost unlimited numbers of anything below riflemen.

I guess what i am trying to say is that in this situation civ4 is pretty well done and should not be modified simply and for no other reason than you dont feel like building units in a strategically sound manor.

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I did have MGs - they were defending the city with access to the oil, which was the reason for the war in the first place.

In my view this doesn't detract from my arguments about the effectiveness of pre-industrial units against superior technology where, by the nature of the pre-industrial weaponry, units using it wouldn't be able to approach close enough to even use their weapons. The example I gave was merely one I happened to be involved with at present.

You are right that MGs don't suffer the collateral. But Tanks/Modern Armour do. That's even more ridiculous. A modern MBT has a range of kilometers with its gun, and yet a trebuchet (range - max 3/400 yards) can approach close enough to do damage?! I have seen this many times.

Finally, of course, this is a Civ6 wish-list. It isn't about changing Civ4 combat rules.

During the transition to gunpowder you will find yourself fighting the Battle of Rorke's Drift or something very like it. That's the way it goes.

I want limited stacks, the types/size of units should dictate how many can be stacked together.
1upt is appropriate for a tactical game, not a strategic game. Civ is a strategic game.

Keep hexes, ditch the terrain conforming to the hex sides.
Introduce unit morale.

I don't care if it's a difficult problem to make the AI work well. That is not my problem; for $50 I expect the AI to work well. Having bought Civ 5 I feel I might as well have flushed the cash down the toilet.

What I expected was a more refined, more fun, more challenging, prettier version of Civ 4. With more civs, more unit types, more complex tech tree, more future units, more more more.
That's what I wish for out of Civ 6. And I want my money back. Civ 5 will never be fixed. If that is the direction Fireaxis is heading, then I will never buy another Fireaxis game.

Right now I'm playing the Total Realism mod for Civ 4. Highly recommended.

MeatUnit2 said:

During the transition to gunpowder you will find yourself fighting the Battle of Rorke's Drift or something very like it. That's the way it goes.

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1 Redcoat against 15 Impis I can possibly see, however the same thing writ large involving 21st Army Group vs 2,000 year old tech (maybe giant catapults should have been one of Hitler's wonder weapons!)....?

Agree with the rest of your points, tho'. In particular about receiving a finished, working product for the money we hand over.

oldskald said:

A mechanism I'd like to see in Civ6 (if it ever happens!) is a true obsolescence of military units. Someone in another thread (and you must forgive me - I've forgotten where the post is) suggested that once a player/AI researches a tech which gives an upgrade to a particular unit or class of units then the player/AI should have their units upgraded automatically. I would change this to give the player the choice to upgrade or disband.

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I had some thoughts along these lines. Aesthetically, it annoys me to no end to have to keep obsolete units. I can't afford to upgrade everything and if I delete too many it screws with my power ratio too badly. In Civ4, that practically guarantees that Monty or Shaka is going to come knocking. It's one thing if they're providing happy faces under HR but otherwise it's just a nuisance to have to have so many.

So give the player a choice to upgrade or disband, say N turns after a unit goes obsolete. Make the AI subject to the same constraint (modulo bonuses for difficulty). Everyone should end up with fewer units and those they have will have more current weaponry.

And also, I would like to see some mechanism by which units that face an opposing unit which is two upgrades ahead automatically have their victory odds reduced to 0.01%, regardless of relative strength.

The 0.01% victory chance would reflect the relatively few occasions in history where units using massively outdated weaponry defeated modern units i.e. Redcoats defeated by Impis at Isandlhwana in 1879.

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Oddly enough, I just abandoned a game where Shaka, who was about 6-8 techs behind everyone else, managed to vassalize 3 other AIs, including Vicky (though she didn't have Redcoats yet).

The problem, of course, is the perpetual tradeoff between realism and playability. Sure, the real life Zulus prevailed at Isandlwana, but only by having massive numerical superiority. And they certainly didn't win the war. There are very few cases in history where a tech lead didn't ultimately translate into victory.

That said, I think that, by bringing tactics onto a strategic-level map, Civ5 stretches the playability-over-realism thing past the breaking point. Longbows firing over three hexes against infantry that can't fire back? Traffic jams of units? Come on. I think the only way you're going to get a good balance here is to conduct battles on a separate tactical map, and nobody seems to be enthusiastic about that idea.

oldskald said:

1 Redcoat against 15 Impis I can possibly see, however the same thing writ large involving 21st Army Group vs 2,000 year old tech (maybe giant catapults should have been one of Hitler's wonder weapons!)....?

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Machine guns at the Battle of Hastings?
This is why the game needs morale as a factor. Archers attacking armored vehicles?
I think they might refuse to do it.
The idea that twenty archers could somehow destroy an armored division is silly. They would merely provide a target rich environment for the tanks.
I'm not sure how you would implement "obsolescence" into the game, but it does need to be there.

Lots of techno love here! Superior weapons don't guarantee battle success. Motivated and organized guerillas will always stand a chance against anything. Every one of them still has the most effective weapon of all, a brain. Well the most effective weapon apart from nukes anyway.

hexes
emphasis on AI in all areas (no cheat/advantages AI)

no 1upt - this is only good for Panzer General level wargames, not Civ level. Stupid decision.
Maybe develop a seperate Civ unit-level battle game that can be linked in (units and terrain imported, results exported back to Civ6), but isn't part of the Civ game itself, just for the fun of it! Maybe licence from a company who have already succeeded in this sort of game since Firaxis seem to struggle to implement new things.

citystates but developing from barbarian cities and later in the game and done more sensibly.

I also want a version where you don't know what science you will discover next. This makes a more uncontrolled and exciting and different experience.

Make it truly scalable like they were claiming this time last year. I really got the impression Civ 5 was being designed to run (strategic view only of course) on any platform right down to mobile phones. What a gullible idiot I am!

Kid R said:

Lots of techno love here! Superior weapons don't guarantee battle success. Motivated and organized guerillas will always stand a chance against anything. Every one of them still has the most effective weapon of all, a brain. Well the most effective weapon apart from nukes anyway.

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Sure, guerillas with roughly comparable weaponry can defeat stronger forces, but most often on a "civilian morale" level rather than in tactical engagements. I don't want to get into the military philosophy behind this, but if we look at e.g. Vietnam, the US won every notable engagement but lost the war due to other factors (basically what War Weariness models but on a much more sophisticated level). However, I'll accept that a VC guerilla with an AK was a credible threat. Now, substitute his AK for a spear and see how far his brain gets him (apart from as far away from the battle as possible!).

Got to say, I see merit in a morale system if it could be made to work. Although I worry that the AI wouldn't be able to cope which is why I'd prefer some mechanism that forces the AI to upgrade.

Another feature which I would like to see investigated is some form of random tech spread along trade routes/open borders. I can see potential gameplay issues, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't be considered.

The thing that makes Civ stale for me is the tech tree. Once you've played the game, and studied it, you know what comes next. And you go into every future game gunning for what you know in advance about the future techs. I would really, really like a game that keeps it fresh every time I play, so that every game presents its own research surprises. Further, techs presently occur as discrete packages, sort of a step function. I would like to see in some future version of Civ, a research tree that occurs as a continuous function, and is somewhat city dependent. Perhaps an advisor popup says, "Sire, in the city of Ur we could change our farming practice to yield more food, with a slightly elevated risk of flooding. Shall we proceed?" And, "Sire, a metallurgist has developed a new way to quench steel. It makes our weapons and implements harder but more likely to break. Shall we use this new quench or stick with the old one?" And a variety of responses are available to the player, each with its own branched outcome. This could merge into a SMAC style unit customization function. I'm not sure this would be Civ any more. Not sure there should be another Civ.

I like the idea of separate campaign map and tactical map.

vhhawk said:

I like the idea of separate campaign map and tactical map.

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Glad there's at least one other person who feels this way.

One thought I had was that the tactical map could be something optional on a battle-by-battle basis. When you try to move into a hex with enemy units (or they try to enter one of yours), you could get a popup that asks whether you want to do sort of a "quick" battle where you fight a la Civ4 or a full-scale battle where you actually deploy units on a tactical map that's generated on the fly based on the surrounding terrain.

You could also set a sticky option at the start so you wouldn't be asked each time.

Either way, I like hexes better than squares.

How about a turn-based RPG-style battle, lol. That would be fun. xD

I like the idea of separate tactical/campaign maps too. The tactical map could be much higher resolution hexes and 1UP, and the campaign map just the same as Civ 4 now, except hexes. Everybody would be happy!!!

One design issue I can see is the initial deployment of troops when you decide to start a "detailed" battle in the tactical map, if you hadn't been deploying each one precisely during the build-up.

duckstab said:

One thought I had was that the tactical map could be something optional on a battle-by-battle basis. When you try to move into a hex with enemy units (or they try to enter one of yours), you could get a popup that asks whether you want to do sort of a "quick" battle where you fight a la Civ4 or a full-scale battle where you actually deploy units on a tactical map that's generated on the fly based on the surrounding terrain.

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I think this would be a great idea, if you could make it work. But I wonder if there's a problem that any good player who wants to get a really good result playing the game would feel compelled to use the full tactical map for all but the most trivial battles because of the near certainty that they could plan the battle a lot better than the AI would? So in practice, even if it was theoretically optional, in practice it wouldn't be for most players. (In much the same way that in Civ4 you can optionally automate workers or automate city production etc. but, apart from very occasionally in the very late game, basically noone ever does). Is there any way round that?

Kid R said:

One design issue I can see is the initial deployment of troops when you decide to start a "detailed" battle in the tactical map, if you hadn't been deploying each one precisely during the build-up.

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The way I'd see it working is maybe the defender would deploy first, then the attacker. The map would be sized appropriately to the sizes of the respective stacks, and you'd initially have to deploy your units near one designated edge of the map.

It'd be interesting to think how the tactical map would be generated. Say I'm attacking from a flat land forest tile across a river to a hill tile. It'd be pretty boring if we just had a bunch of forest on my side, a river straight down the middle, and then nothing but hills on the other.

What I'd rather see is a gradual transition such that most of the terrain on my end of the tactical map would be wooded with maybe a few clearings or other features thrown in. The river could have twists and turns, islands, or marsh tiles, and then mostly hills on the other side. There might be a few hills on this side of the river and trees on the other. I could even see neighboring hexes having an influence so, for example, if they were between two mountain tiles the tactical map might have some impassible tiles on their side that would form one or more chokepoints.

MeatUnit2 said:

I'm not sure how you would implement "obsolescence" into the game, but it does need to be there.

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Well, I guess one way is: Think about real life. Say you had a warrior in real life and you'd discovered gunpowder. Chances are, if you didn't pay to re-equip the warrior regiment with guns, the warrior regiment would quickly get pretty unhappy. So maybe the civ analogy is that, if you don't upgrade units, those units eventually start becoming unhappy (lose morale?). Maybe the people start resigning, you can't recruit and the unit eventually disappears. That's actually not so dissimilar to what someone said about forcing a time for units to disappear after some time if you don't upgrade!

For added effect, maybe if you don't upgrade some units that are in active service, the units that you have upgraded eventually become unhappy in sympathy too.

One other point on this topic. If another civ has vastly superior military tech, shouldn't you be able to pay them to use their technology to equip and train your units (if they're willing to)?