For those of us who are greedy...

happycamper said:

I beg to differ, I personally think highway/interstates would be much better than rail. Historically rail served its purpose during the 1800's - early 1900's, but around 1950 ish when the interstate system was built, many more people began to travel much easier and faster, hence highways were an upgrade to rail.

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Rail also gives a production bonus. So while your troops and workers do move faster, it really represents the impact of rail on industry. A lot of shipping is still done by rail.

Also the U.S. drives and uses the interstate more than any other nation. Many countries, like most of Europe, still travel by train. But I could definitely see a modern rail upgrade, like maglev.

Fun facts, the US government funds an unprofitable and inefficient rail system because it would be even more unprofitable and inefficient to have the same type of shipping done on trucks on the highway

So yeah, even here in America rail is kind of a big deal

I'm not saying that rail isn't important. In game though, we really should have something past rail, maybe for the highway upgrade, the game integrates both rail (to keep the production bonuses) and highways (to move troops/people faster). Just because we upgrade in game doesn't mean we have to leave it completely behind.

joncnunn said:

Meanwhile, even a change to local happiness in isolation does nothing about the primary problem of if you start tall with intention of building all the national wonders, even after you have sufficent happiness there's a very strong disincentive to build another city. (A newly built city would slow down remaining national wonders too much by having too low production to easily build them and needing cash rushed; but no such issues with conquering since you just puppet it.)

It would in fact be much easier to fit within Civ V's existing framework a complete overhaul of the national wonder mechanic than replacing global happiness.

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BNW's domestic trade routes will essentially void this argument; sending 9 (or 18!) for 30 turns to a brand new city will help get basic infrastructure up in no time. Overhauling the National Wonder mechanic would make small/tall empires lose the only leg up they have currently aside from SPs (and I strongly get the sense that SPs will be more available to wide empires in BNW).

JFD said:

Personally, I'm torn. I've yet to feel compelled to just play a game of Civ V not aiming for victory, as opposed to in Civ IV where I could just play and not even think about the end of the game or how I would win.

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This is one of the central arguments to moving on to Civ 6 - immersion. Civ 5 is first and foremost designed for strategic/min-max players (and the basic design elements of the game that reinforce this aren't about to change) - Civ 6 should make an effort to balance this with more historical immersion.

Adding more victory types would be nice as well.

Calouste said:

No flaws in Civ4?
[...]
- The slider

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While I agree with your list, I gotta say I actually really miss the slider. Although I understand the reasons for removing it, it helped create immersion (the feeling like you were actually managing an empire) and if balanced correctly it could create more important decision-making (ie, incentivize not keeping the slider at max science all the time). The Civ 5 model is based essentially around opportunity cost; I wouldn't mind if Civ 6 incorporated more types of decisions such as trade-offs. Again, immersion - irl there aren't magically appearing resources, allocating limited resources will give the sense of more realistic management.

happycamper said:

I beg to differ, I personally think highway/interstates would be much better than rail. Historically rail served its purpose during the 1800's - early 1900's, but around 1950 ish when the interstate system was built, many more people began to travel much easier and faster, hence highways were an upgrade to rail.

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Yeah, and that sort of passenger travel is about to be replaced by regional rail sometime soon. And the US still moves a vast majority of goods by rail. Highways aren't a good upgrade over railways because:

1. They aren't an upgrade over railways in the first place.
2. They get replaced by better rail after like, 70 years.
3. Massive continental spanning highway systems are purely an American fascination.

Arachnofiend said:

Fun facts, the US government funds an unprofitable and inefficient rail system because it would be even more unprofitable and inefficient to have the same type of shipping done on trucks on the highway

So yeah, even here in America rail is kind of a big deal

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The govt funds unprofitable passenger rail; not freight. Shipping freight via rail is profitable for the rail companies.

The introduction of highways did result in routes that were unprofitable even for freight being cut; but its pretty much bottomed out.

From the time man first crawled out of the slime till the 19th Century, man's speed was limited to the speed of a horse. Railroads are far better than a Highway or Interstate system. No army on the planet used a highway or interstate as as its main mode of transportation. If it wasn't by air, sea or their own feet it was by train.

Seek said:

This is one of the central arguments to moving on to Civ 6 - immersion. Civ 5 is first and foremost designed for strategic/min-max players (and the basic design elements of the game that reinforce this aren't about to change) - Civ 6 should make an effort to balance this with more historical immersion.

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That's a very interesting notion. I would go even a bit further and say "more role-playing, less strategy". People got upset about the "acts as a human trying to win"-AI in vanilla, so why not go in the other direction and reintroduce more popular elements of ways past, like the council of civ2, the newspaper frontpages, reinvent the random events system as obstacles coming up because of your past decisions. That would sound fun, but would it be Civ anymore?

Maybe if they want to go there, let a test balloon fly. Alpha Centauri was popular, so create a game set in the future (within the xcom franchise f.e. to avoid copyright issues) with such system. Or within Colonization. If it works, go revolutionize civ

Tsar NicholasII said:

From the time man first crawled out of the slime till the 19th Century, man's speed was limited to the speed of a horse. Railroads are far better than a Highway or Interstate system. No army on the planet used a highway or interstate as as its main mode of transportation. If it wasn't by air, sea or their own feet it was by train.

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To be fair, upon the breakout of the Great War, the French taxied their way to the front line.

Menzies said:

To be fair, upon the breakout of the Great War, the French taxied their way to the front line.

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As an emergency they did, don't forget that the Germans were transporting troops from the East to the Western Front and vice versa within a few days thanks to railroads

mitsho said:

That's a very interesting notion. I would go even a bit further and say "more role-playing, less strategy". People got upset about the "acts as a human trying to win"-AI in vanilla, so why not go in the other direction and reintroduce more popular elements of ways past, like the council of civ2, the newspaper frontpages, reinvent the random events system as obstacles coming up because of your past decisions. That would sound fun, but would it be Civ anymore?

Maybe if they want to go there, let a test balloon fly. Alpha Centauri was popular, so create a game set in the future (within the xcom franchise f.e. to avoid copyright issues) with such system. Or within Colonization. If it works, go revolutionize civ

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I had more modest aims in mind when I posted that - I'm not really much of a role-player, but I do miss the immersion of earlier Civ games. It feels lacking in this aspect to me - maybe it's just that I've played the game 2000+ hours but even when the game was released it didn't have that epic "Civilization" feeling of feeling like it's the actual world you're playing.

Some things I would like for immersion would be less linear mechanics (for example, monument, amphitheater, opera house might as well be called culturebuilding1, culturebuilding2 and culturebuilding3, and until BNW is released, no mechanics change through the eras), less cartoony map graphics with smaller scale (Civ 5's maps feel quite dead), more need for city specialization, and added minor flavor enhancers (ie, random events that don't kill your game, something like the slider so there are trade-offs, animated tiles, etc.). I also hope the next iteration is a little darker too, with revolts, slavery, etc.

Tsar NicholasII said:

As an emergency they did, don't forget that the Germans were transporting troops from the East to the Western Front and vice versa within a few days thanks to railroads

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He did provide an example of an army using roads as primary transport, The First Battle of the Marne. Highways have been important in suppling armies throughout the 20th century, I.e. the Red Ball Express. An army is only as good as its supply line, in fact I would argue that higher quality roads and vehicles were amongst the important factors in the evolution of warfare from static to mobile.

Tsar NicholasII said:

As an emergency they did, don't forget that the Germans were transporting troops from the East to the Western Front and vice versa within a few days thanks to railroads

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Pardon me, but I think you're a bit biased talking about the German's troop moving capabilities, trying to make the loss seem more understandable eh?

I am counting on that there will be a few DLC releases after BNW.

Perhaps One Triple Civ + Scenario pack release; "Ancient Empires" Sumeria, Hittites & Phoenicia and Two Double Civ + Scenario pack releases; "Native Americans" Mississippi/Muskogee & Inuit (these two if Sioux are added in BNW) and finally "Central Asia" with Timurid & Kushan or Mughal. Though Kongo and Israel would be much deserving additions as well.

That would make total of fifty playable civilizations for CiV.

SPOnG: Is Brave New World the final expansion to come for Civ V, or is there more to come in the future?

Ed Beach: With Brave New World, we’ve been able to take a detailed second pass back through all the periods represented in Civ V, so we do look at it as a pretty comprehensive Civ V experience. But we’ve got plenty of ideas to keep enhancing it, so if time and interest allows, Civ V could see some future additions.

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Seek said:

I had more modest aims in mind when I posted that - I'm not really much of a role-player, but I do miss the immersion of earlier Civ games. It feels lacking in this aspect to me - maybe it's just that I've played the game 2000+ hours but even when the game was released it didn't have that epic "Civilization" feeling of feeling like it's the actual world you're playing.

Some things I would like for immersion would be less linear mechanics (for example, monument, amphitheater, opera house might as well be called culturebuilding1, culturebuilding2 and culturebuilding3, and until BNW is released, no mechanics change through the eras), less cartoony map graphics with smaller scale (Civ 5's maps feel quite dead), more need for city specialization, and added minor flavor enhancers (ie, random events that don't kill your game, something like the slider so there are trade-offs, animated tiles, etc.). I also hope the next iteration is a little darker too, with revolts, slavery, etc.

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Yes, something like this. I would set two goals for my civ game: 1) Get the feel of immersion (whether it's building a great Roman Empire, being the underdog, building a maritime trading civ or being horse nomads, there needs to be a narrative for each game), 2) Keep the # of decision thrown at the player roughly equal throughout the game (or at least don't make it grow exponentially like in civ5). Late Game is the real problem of civ in my mind since a) it often doesn't matter that much and b) there's just so much basic tasks that it can get boring. I don't finish my games nearly often enough for my taste. Point number two basically boils down to 'eliminate useless micromanaging", I know.

Marathoner said:

He did provide an example of an army using roads as primary transport, The First Battle of the Marne. Highways have been important in suppling armies throughout the 20th century, I.e. the Red Ball Express. An army is only as good as its supply line, in fact I would argue that higher quality roads and vehicles were amongst the important factors in the evolution of warfare from static to mobile.

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The taxis weren't the primary transport, only 6,000 of reserve troops used them. There was around 1 million French troops in the battle that used the railroads to get there. The taxis were used as a propaganda tool after the battle which made them seem like they were more significant.

Menzies said:

Pardon me, but I think you're a bit biased talking about the German's troop moving capabilities, trying to make the loss seem more understandable eh?

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How is it biased to talk about their troop moving capabilities? The way I stated it makes it seem like victory should have been assured.

Tsar NicholasII said:

How is it biased to talk about their troop moving capabilities? The way I stated it makes it seem like victory should have been assured.

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It's got to do with your alias.

I would hope they start their design for Civ VI (2015), but in the mean time a Winter (December), Spring (April), and Summer (August) DLC with 2 Civs and a scenario before a March 2015 release of Civ VI.

Calouste said:

It's got to do with your alias.

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Oh, well for the record I don't have any biased for the Tsarist system, in fact probably the opposite. I chose him for my alias because I have an obscure sense of humor.