Pinstar's Giant List of Suggestions

Pinstar

Ringtailed Regent
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Messages
270
Location
Upstate NY
Introduction:
I just want to start by saying that I love this game. I think the team at Firaxis did an excellent job with this concept and that this game has some real potential. That being said, it is still a beta and there are many things that are flawed about it. Rather than rant about it, I have come up with an extensive list of detailed constructive suggestions to fix some of the game’s shortcomings.

Teal Deer Version:

Make producing culture and gold equally viable with production/food/science.
Allow civs to enact meritocracy and closed borders without giving up the ability to run a ‘real’ civic.
Roll the 20 hour war timer back to 10, but make the spoils of victory more limited so the losing civ isn’t completely crippled.
Make it clearer who will receive a victory medal in combat.
Give a compelling benefit to players holding each ministry as individuals, in addition to their ability to benefit their civ.
Allow civs to vote on a new civic without having to vote to repeal the old one. The new will replace the old, if the vote passes.
Allow players to more easily find 4000 BC games. Games will start frozen for a short while at 4000 BC to give more people a chance to start on equal footing.
Allow players to form invite-only civs for few civ bucks. This invite only civ will have more control over which players join it, but will otherwise not enjoy any unfair gameplay advantages over normal civs.

Detailed Version:
(Warning, very very long)


Spoiler :
Culture:
Remove the ability to buy and sell great people. When you reach the culture threshold and earn a new great person, the type of great person earned would be determined by the composition of your workers at that time.

For example, if you had 4 workers, 3 who were working food and 1 working culture. You’d have a ¾ chance of getting a great prophet and a ¼ chance of getting an artist.

With reliance on culture as the sole means of getting great people, the price of culture should begin to rival that of food, science and production. Thus going out of your way to MAKE culture would be economically competitive with the other resources.

A skilled/active player could manipulate their worker composition in a way to choose their great person each time they reach the culture threshold. This is intentional.

When a culture puzzle is completed, the player with the highest number of points earned in that puzzle will get an extra culture bonus. This will tie into a new contest, “Most puzzle MVPs” that will be added to the mix. This would not grant fame points or promotions in the same way that getting MVP on a tech does.

The culture costs to earn great people might need to be adjusted to account for the lack of buyable great people.


Gold:
Limit the number of trades you can do within the market with a new resource ‘commerce’. Every time you buy or sell one of the primary resources (food, culture, production, science) you use up one point of commerce per 100 units bought/sold. When you are out of commerce, you may no longer buy or sell primary resources.

Buying and selling military units and commodities would not require or consume commerce. Commerce itself could not be bought or sold on the market.

The main way to earn commerce is to have a worker employed as a merchant when you hit the harvest button. Each merchant would give you +1 commerce per harvest, in addition to the gold they naturally earn you. So if you had 5 merchants and hit the harvest button, you’d earn 5 commerce in addition to the gold from the 5 workers. You would always earn exactly 1 commerce per merchant, regardless of how productive the merchant was. A two-population merchant house would generate two commerce per harvest.
Additionally, the caravan game would reward you with 1 commerce each time you win it, in addition to the gold.

Players beginning a new game would start out with a large pool of commerce (~100), allowing them to play the market and get themselves on their feet without having to invest in merchants early on. However, this will quickly dry up, forcing players to decide on self-producing resources, or investing in merchants.

Un-used commerce that you have stockpiled will gradually increase your personal % bonus to gold. This bonus will stack with the bonus granted by unused great generals and gold wonder/civic/era bonuses. A player who goes out of their way to run lots of merchants and stockpile lots of commerce points would have such a high gold % bonus that the gold produced by their merchants would be competitive with producing the other resources.

Commerce cannot be gained through trickle income. However, unused commerce’s bonus to gold will affect gold trickle income.


Production:
Add a new building “Monuments”
Monuments would come decently early in the tech tree (Maybe Construction). Building a monument would cost a significant amount of hammers (Maybe 3000 – 5000ish) but would not need to be upgraded.

When placed, a monument would confer the same happiness benefit to adjacent houses as forests or water. This would allow players with a surplus of hammers to give extra happiness boosts to their workers. With an extra source of demand for hammers, the price of production would remain strong, even into the late game, well after everyone has built and upgraded their normal buildings and recruited their military. More specifically, it makes “military vs Domestic spending” a strategic choice that players must make. A classic guns vs. butter dilemma.

Monuments would return half their original cost in hammers if moved/recycled.

A monument would be a construction medal, rewarding the first player to build one in a civ.

A new contest would appear in the contest rotation “Most Monuments owned” to encourage players who go monument-heavy to continue to invest in them in hopes of claiming this contest reward when it comes up. This contest would not appear until at least one civ in the game has discovered construction.


Food:
No changes are needed to food. It is a balanced and strong resource IMHO.
The only possible exception would be to split the ‘civilized the barbarians’ food bonus in proportion to all the members of a civ who participated in the battle, in proportion to the % of forces they provided. This would not apply to foreign civs who contribute troops.

Science:
Preserve tech maze moves until players actually complete a maze, even if another player finishes the tech they were working on. Preserve overflow science for the person finishing a tech.

Civics

Introduce several civic slots.
The normal civic that nations can adopt would be their ‘primary’ civic.
A new, secondary slot would be the ‘inactive’ slot. Civics that specifically exist to boot out inactive players use up this slot.
Another new slot ‘borders’ would exist to control a civ’s foreign policy regarding their borders.

Thus a civ could have one primary civic, one inactive civic and one borders civic enacted all at the same time.

New Civic: Tribalism.
Tribalism gives no bonuses or penalties to any resource types and confers no special abilities. All civs start the game with Tribalism already enacted.

Civs no longer have to vote to repeal a civic. They merely vote on a new civic. If that vote passes, the new civic replaces the old. Civs that have adopted a new civic that wish to ‘revoke’ it and return to a neutral civic can vote to re-adopt tribalism.

Meritocracy will now be available immediately and not require any technology before it is available. Meritocracy fills the ‘inactive’ civic slot

New Civic: Hereditary Rule
Players are not kicked out of a civ due to inactivity. All Civs begin the game with this enacted. Occupies the ‘inactive’ civic slot.

The “Closed Borders” civic now belongs to the ‘borders’ civic slot. It no longer requires masonry. However, a civ must have a minimum of 5 members before closed borders can be proposed or voted on. A civ that drops below 5 people will instantly revert to open borders.
.
New Civic: Open Borders
Civs start with this enacted by default. Allows new players to join the civ. Belongs to the ‘borders’ civic slot

New Civic: Serfdom
Available at feudalism. Players inactive for more than 24 hours will be booted from the civ. Belongs to the ‘inactive’ civic slot

Any civic that boosts gold by 25% will also grant 1 extra commerce per harvest. Any civic that penalizes gold by 25% will reduce the commerce earned per harvest by 1 (minimum 0). A 50% gold boost will generate 2 extra commerce/harvest.

Ministries

The interior minister

If the current era grants a bonus, the interior minister enjoys double that bonus. If the current era gives a penalty, the interior minister is not affected by it. This benefit is in addition to the current harvest-donating one they already have.

The financial minister

The finance minister of a civ will naturally earn 1 extra commerce per harvest for themselves, (even if they have 0 merchants and/or a commerce penalty). Every time the finance minister completes the caravan game, another member of the civ will earn 1 free commerce (in much the same way the interior minister gives extra harvests to other players).

Defense Minister

Can propose invasions even if they are not king/queen/prince/princess.

Science Minister
No changes

Culture Minister

The cultural minister of a civ may choose which great person they receive when they earn enough culture points, rather than leaving it to chance. The cultural minister requires 20% fewer culture points before producing a great person.

Political Minister

Cannot drop below ‘duke’ rank within a civ.

Eras

Eras that give bonuses to gold will also give bonus commerce at the rate of 1/harvest per 25% bonus. Era gold penalties will do likewise to commerce. Reducing commerce earned by 1/harvest per 25% penalty (minimum 0)

War

Change the combat time from 20 hours back to 10, come on guys, that’s just silly.
To reduce the effectiveness of combat, introduce a new concept. “The war council”

When you enter combat against another civ (offensively or defensively) in addition to committing your troops, you can now vote. You vote for what you want to gain from the war, if your civ wins
.
The options are as follows:

Domination: Victory in the war grants no material gains, but will cause an era domination victory if the enemy civ is of sufficient size. This option will not be available if you are fighting a civ that is too small.

Raid the Labs: You will instantly learn all techs the enemy civ knows that you do not. In addition, the enemy civ loses all their currently accumulated science. This science is evenly distributed among all members of the winning civ.

Loot and Pillage: You will take all of the civ’s gold reserves, distributed evenly among all members of the winning civ.

Carmen Sandiego Gambit: Steals all of the civ’s current wonders.

Only one of these four choices can be picked, meaning the victor can only gain the benefits of one per successful combat. The whole purpose of the war council is to make war remain meaningful to the winning civ, but not be outright crippling to the defeated civ. It also makes for more dynamic strategy, both in gameplay and in politics. A civ that is really good at war will still get a healthy amount of era victories (domination and otherwise), but won’t be able to get EVERY era victory like they can now.


Neither civ will know which victory type the other is planning until after the combat is fully resolved. Only players who contribute troops to a battle can vote on a victory type. A victory type must be chosen during the 10 hour build-up period. Once combat begins proper, no player may alter their vote for that combat. A leader board on the combat screen will show which player has the most votes (and how many votes they have) as well as which victory type is currently leading.

When you vote for an option, you get a number of ‘votes’ equal to the base strength of all your troops. The weather and your troops’ stances do not affect this. For example, a single knight would grant an attacking player 4 votes, but a defending player only 2 votes. Troops afflicted by the secret weapon/call to arms wonder events would not have their voting power reduced.

The combat option that gets the most votes within the civ will be the type of victory your civ obtains, should it actually win the battle. A player who does not vote for any victory types will abstain their votes. If no players in civ vote for any victory types, a Loot and Pillage victory type will be chosen as default.

In addition, the player who has the most total votes at the time the battle begins will earn the victory medal, should their civ win the battle. It does not matter who added their troops first or last during the build-up period, or who takes losses or retreats during the battle. All that matters is who had the most troop votes the moment the battle begins, (IE the 10 hour countdown timer finishes). Troops added after the battle begins will contribute their strength as normal, but will not count for voting purposes.

The current defense minister does not get any additional votes in the war council. However, in the unlikely event of a tie, the defense minister’s vote will determine the victory type. If two or more players are tied for most number of forces. The winner of the victory medal will be randomly chosen among them.



Wonders:

Any wonders granting a gold bonus will also grant one extra commerce per harvest as well.

The golden age wonder event will double current commerce, up to a maximum. This is in addition to its gold-doubling effect.

The Industrial Revolution wonder event removed.
The Renaissance wonder event changed to “Upgrades all buildings by one level”. This will apply to all buildings that are smaller than ginormus, including the palace and guard towers.

All players who contribute a great person to a wonder will gain 1 fame when it is completed. Who earns the promotion is still randomly determined. People contributing more than one great person will not receive more than 1 fame from the wonder, but will still enjoy an increased chance that they’ll get the promotion.

New Wonder: The UN
Available with Mass Media

Allows your civ to vote on a world wide civic. Once enacted, this civic would apply to all players in the game, including other civs and independent nations. The effects of this civic would be cumulative with a civ’s existing primary civic. Only primary civics could be proposed for the world civic (The inactive civics and borders civics couldn’t be chosen). If the UN wonder is ever lost, the world civic remains in place until the new owners vote on a replacement civic, should they choose to. Only members of the civ that owns the UN can vote on the world wide civic.

The revolution wonder event is changed. It will now cost exactly 1 Prophet, 1 Scientist, 1 Builder, 1 Artist, and 2 great generals, regardless of the size of the civ building it. When completed, each player who contributed a great person will become the minister of that type. (Great Prophet= Political, Great Artist=Cultural, Great General= Military or finance minister, Great Scientist=Science Minister and Great Builder= Interior Minister). If a contributor is already a member of a ministry they earned, they are promoted to king.
Of the two great generals, which contributor gets the finance and which one gets the defense ministry will be randomly determined.

Contests
All contests will have a base 1 hour long duration. The auction style contests, will retain the current ‘reset to 1 minute’ rule in the event of a last-second bid war, but will otherwise start out with a 1 hour duration.

All players who tie in a contest will receive the +1 fame point. However, only the first player to achieve the tied score will get the promotion within their civ.

The same contest will not happen twice in a row.

Civbucks

Players can buy additional units of commerce for civ bucks.

In addition to having the ability to form normal civs at the beginning of a game, allow players to pay some civ bucks to form a civ.

A player creating a new civ with civ bucks enjoys the following benefits:

They will get to choose their civ from a pool of all the unpicked civs.
The player buying the civ will be instantly made king and head of all 6 ministries. Other people can later claim these positions through normal gameplay.
The new civ starts off with the ‘closed borders’ civic already in place, preventing other players from publically joining the civ. The founder of the civ can send facebook invites to other players to join their civ. This is the only way for other people to join the pay-civ. (Unless it opens borders). Joining a pay civ does not cost civ bucks. Only the original creator of the pay-civ can send out invites, even if someone later replaces them as king/queen.

The pay civ does NOT enjoy any special numerical bonuses to resources or fame generation. Player recruitment aside, it plays by the same rules as normal civs.

The actual cost to form a pay-civ will be small. Suggested 1 civ buck for every 5 players in the civ, maximum 25 players. You would define the max players of your civ when you purchased it.

A player would be able to start a pay-civ even when conditions/player totals wouldn’t suggest a new normal civ opening up. The game would generate additional normal civ slots to ensure that the people not joining a pay civ would have plenty of choices to pick from. A maximum of 50% of the civ slots in a single game could be pay-civs.

Game types selection

Give players the following filters when choosing a new game to join

Sort by date, default earliest
Sort by # of friends
Sort by game #

4000 BC time freeze

When a brand new game is generated at 4000 BC, have time be frozen within the game for X hours.

During this time, players can:
Join the game
Form Civs
Join Civs
Leave Civs (with no penalty waiting period at all no matter how many times you do it)
Place/move/upgrade buildings
Change worker jobs. (Players will be able to see the productivity of their workers as they move their initial layout around, though they won’t actually get any resources until the game begins proper)
Build military units (with production only)
Propose civics (kings/queens only)
Vote on civics
Use in-game chat
Invite facebook friends to join the game.

During this time, players may not:
Buy or sell anything on the market
Play any mini-games
Propose or vote to attack another civ
Use Great people
Earn or use harvests
Pop resource bubbles (none will appear)
Win contests (none will start)
Receive trickle income

When the time freeze ends, all of the restrictions will be lifted and the game will begin as normal. If people build a ginormus structure with their starting resources, they will be awarded with the construction medal and one fame point.

If more than one player on the same civ builds a ginormus structure during the time freeze, each player will receive the medal, and fame. Who becomes the interior minister and gets a promotion will be randomly determined from among all who receive the medal in the civ.

A game in a 4000 BC time freeze will be noted accordingly so joining players will know the game is still in a frozen state before they decide to join. The harvest timer will be replaced by a thaw countdown timer until the game begins proper.

If a full 200 people join the game before the timer expires, the game will begin immediately.
 
I like the game too and i agree with all of your recommendations except for the very first one.

I dont think its a problem that different resources are valued differently, after all its the supply and demand mechanism that determines the value of resources. I like this method.
 
Love all of these suggestions, especially monuments and the commerce idea. Finally, a use for merchants.
 
I like the game too and i agree with all of your recommendations except for the very first one.

I dont think its a problem that different resources are valued differently, after all its the supply and demand mechanism that determines the value of resources. I like this method.

The problem is, that right now there is that running artists and/or merchants is a strictly inferior decision.

If food is selling at 500 gold/100 and I have 5 workers each with a 20 productivity, what am I going to make them?

5 farmers = 100 food = 500 gold
5 merchants = 100 gold = 100 gold.

Farmers are 5X better in this case than merchants.


This takes away from some of the strategic elements to the game. If all 5 resources were valuable in their own way, you would see a much wider variety of strategies to exploit them. With only 3 real viable resources, merchants and artists are all but ignored except for contests.
 
To clarify one of your points:
Give players the following filters when choosing a new game to join

Sort by date, default earliest
Sort by # of friends
Sort by game #

If a player knows that he wants to join game #XXX for whatever reason, and there is room in that game, then the interface should allow him to do so.

Also, for combat, I think the current award for winning combat is reasonable, but would be better if the winner received half of the loser's wonders, rounded down. This would give some incentive to civs other than the strongest to build wonders, since they wouldn't automatically lose the wonder 10 hours after building it.

Your commerce idea has merits, but I don't think that it should apply to trading commodities. These exist specifically so that players can play the market. If I were restricted in the number or transactions that I could perform, then I would likely be obliged to apply them all to resources, so as to meet my nation's needs. Sure, the argument could be made that a well-planned nation won't be short of anything, but I think it's more reasonable to allow a specialized economy.

Finally, would it be advantageous to force all games to end at 2500 AD, regardless of era? I know that games now have a "quit" feature, so maybe this is unnecessary.
 
The fact is that it is not written in stone that gold should be worth less than food. It depends on the perception of its scarceness. If people were really seriously considering the value of its current stock to achieve economic victory, prices would probably be a lot lower. In the game I play right now I was able to sell my way to victory and buy back again fairly early in the game (30k mark which I contributed 15k to) while another civ was building up very slowly to the mark. They had 28k at that moment and I wondered why the hell they wouldnt just sell 300 food to get accross. This would not have happened if prices werent that high.
 
To clarify one of your points:


If a player knows that he wants to join game #XXX for whatever reason, and there is room in that game, then the interface should allow him to do so.

Also, for combat, I think the current award for winning combat is reasonable, but would be better if the winner received half of the loser's wonders, rounded down. This would give some incentive to civs other than the strongest to build wonders, since they wouldn't automatically lose the wonder 10 hours after building it.

Your commerce idea has merits, but I don't think that it should apply to trading commodities. These exist specifically so that players can play the market. If I were restricted in the number or transactions that I could perform, then I would likely be obliged to apply them all to resources, so as to meet my nation's needs. Sure, the argument could be made that a well-planned nation won't be short of anything, but I think it's more reasonable to allow a specialized economy.

Finally, would it be advantageous to force all games to end at 2500 AD, regardless of era? I know that games now have a "quit" feature, so maybe this is unnecessary.


My suggestion specifically says that military unit and commodity purchases would not require nor consume any commerce. I agree that people want to play the market with commodities, and they shouldn't give up their commerce in order to do so.

I think the ability to quit a game takes care of the 'endless game' problem.

I address the wonder problem in my war council suggestion. Yes you still get all the wonders, but only if you vote to go that route. Stealing wonders is only 1 of 4 choices and you have to give up getting gold, science and a domination victory in order to get your wonders.
 
Actually, I see a major problem with being able to plunder another civ's accumulated science and/or gold. I'd imagine it's already very frustrating being part of a non-leading civ. Now you propose adding to that the possibility that every strong civ is going to come by twice a day and help themselves to all your accumulated gold/science?

Currently, as long as a civ doesn't build any wonders, they lose nothing by being attacked. I think that it's important that this remains the case.
 
The fact is that it is not written in stone that gold should be worth less than food. It depends on the perception of its scarceness. If people were really seriously considering the value of its current stock to achieve economic victory, prices would probably be a lot lower. In the game I play right now I was able to sell my way to victory and buy back again fairly early in the game (30k mark which I contributed 15k to) while another civ was building up very slowly to the mark. They had 28k at that moment and I wondered why the hell they wouldnt just sell 300 food to get accross. This would not have happened if prices werent that high.

I think it's also as a result of under producing.. in my games the casual players seem to not specialize, leading to always need more food/production/tech. If there was a surplus of food, prices go down, etc.

Also, economic victories past 300k seems difficult to do without coordination previously -- in my first game I had 160k out of 300k needed for an economic victory, in a 20 player civ. And then I got 300k out of the 500k. The next one was at 800k. However, the updated Golden Age might change this a little bit. (Of course, I used food in the first game, and hammers in the second game to get the money, so still doesn't help the merchants)
 
Actually, I see a major problem with being able to plunder another civ's accumulated science and/or gold. I'd imagine it's already very frustrating being part of a non-leading civ. Now you propose adding to that the possibility that every strong civ is going to come by twice a day and help themselves to all your accumulated gold/science?

Currently, as long as a civ doesn't build any wonders, they lose nothing by being attacked. I think that it's important that this remains the case.

I generally agree with this statement, although I'm sort of torn on the issue of gold. I think accumulated science should be left alone, and only completed techs could be gained by an invader. Perhaps, half of the civ's accumulated gold would be a more suitable reward.

Any gold reward will probably lead to bigger civs attacking smaller civs more often, which is not really desirable. OTOH, it might prod the smaller civ players into joining a single civ for mutual protection. In that case, an exception to the "timeout" for changing civs would need to be worked out. Maybe an option to vote for a "merger" where two civs completely combine into one. (Only possible if they don't break the max player limit) I think it would be even better if inter-civ diplomatic agreements could be made (defense pacts, "trade" agreements, etc.), but I don't it would be feasible. We're having a hard enough coordinating players within a civ; it would be chaos trying to maintain diplomacy with all the other civs. Maybe it would be possible if there were a Foreign Minister who had complete control over that (no endless votes).
 
Introduction:
I just want to start by saying that I love this game. I think the team at Firaxis did an excellent job with this concept and that this game has some real potential. That being said, it is still a beta and there are many things that are flawed about it. Rather than rant about it, I have come up with an extensive list of detailed constructive suggestions to fix some of the game’s shortcomings.

[

Very nice, Pinstar!

I see some of my own ideas and those of several others on the forum in there. The great thing is that they are fleshed out in a way that they haven't been before. Perhaps if we do the devs' thinking for them, they will actually make some real changes instead of tweaking timer values and maze bonus numbers.
 
I do hope the devs read and take note of all these suggestions as it seems on this forum and on the 2K forum they don't respond to anything and just carry on doing whatever they want regardless!
 
Another suggestion to add in: "Are you sure?" when joining or leaving a civ. I have to wait four hours to join my civ again because I accidentally hit LEAVE when I meant to open up the civ for a dowry...
 
Love the ideas!

It would promote some balance to what you're doing...early game there is absolutely no reason or purpose to have artists, scientists or merchants. Now there is a purpose with your ideas. And never in the game as it stands now is there a purpose to have merchants or artists except for the random contests. Which you can switch for 5 seconds, get your number on the board, then switch back. At the very least, if you're going for one of these contests, you should be forced to stay on that type of production til the timer runs out OR be stuck there waiting til the final minute to switch 2 houses to artists/merchants.

This game has A LOT of promise but it has fundamentally flawed. You can go all out in the beginning to basically sell yourself out and just go for the gold, once you get to a middle point you have such a big advantage of gold you can play and manipulate the markets to your choosing. Or you can stock up like 100 different great people and do the same thing late game. This should not be allowed or be a viable strategy. It's way too easy to exploit whichever way you wanna do it. How hard is it to get basically all of the economic medals/victories if you can sell yourself out to the 25k medal by 1AD, buy up a bunch of great people at that point, then sell them all for 30-40k each in the latter stages. Major balancing issue there. Like your idea to eliminate the ability to buy great people for that reason. I do agree it would need some tweaking on culture points to get one if you eliminate buying them on the market though.

Closed borders/Meritocracy should absolutely be available near the beginning stages. Once you get to about 1000BC if you started near 4000BC you already can see people who have stopped caring or aren't doing anything. I want people in my civ who participate so I, and the group, can get stuff done. Also there should be a civic or whatever that your civ can be invite only and randoms cannot jump in. Would give a bonus to people who luckily get into same game the ability to play just with each other on same team.

One thing you did not touch on....the tutorial. It should be revamped and made so new people actually have an understanding of what's going on. Every game I've been in now someone has mentioned how horrible the tutorial is. Make the tutorial what it's intended for, for people to understand what the heck they're supposed to do. We're not all veterans of other civ games and the developers should take that into account.
 
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