Civilization 6: Ideas

This is from another thread but also comes here.
The idea is get great roleplay with 6 victory routes that are related.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=531606

Hello everyone

I'd like to share an idea that can add strategic depth to the military management of the game. The zone of control of a military unit in civ 5 is a progressive idea, but I think it is incomplete and should be improved by adding extra features.

In civ the battle dynamics is based on the strength of the unit and the topography, that's ok. But the key point in a battle has always been keeping the frontline intact and preventing the infiltration of the enemy behind that line, why? because if enemy breaks the line this cuts the logistic support. My point is, this fact can be applied to the game by improving the idea of zone of control.

That is, if a unit is surrounded by enemy units, in other words if there are enemy units between the frontline unit and the nearest friendly city, it should get a damage point per turn even the enemy units do not attack (just like a citadel does).

This is an abstract idea, it might be improved. For example the negative effects of to be surrounded on a unit might be reduced after the discovery of flight technology etc.

daft said:

Going back to CIV1 and CIV2, the idea of multiple tribes per one color. This'd make it possible to bring in several more nations into the game. Just ensure that common ancestry tribes would be grouped in the same color and nations who were historically enemies\allies wouldn't be put in the same group to allow players to recreate history a bit.
Eq.
Light/Sky Blue- FRANCE, FRANKS(holy roman empire) and Gauls (or Normans)
Blue- GREECE, BYZANTIUM, MACEDONIA
Red- Rome, Italy, Venice,
something like that.
To ensure historical and cultural importance and achievements the first tribe in it's color group would get 3 Great Leaders, 3 Unique units, 3 Great people, 3 unique buildings, 3 own small wonders(Rome for example- Forum Romanum, Circus Maximus and Hadrian's Wall) while the last tribe would only get one of each.

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I have to disagree. My biggest complaints with civ is that it is bound by Earth history, when the world you're playing is clearly not Earth, I don't know if this will happen, but a complete dissolution of civ from Earth history would be nice. The customizable religion is a nice step in that direction.

phaethon16 said:

I think that the most interesting ideas that you propose are to create an era before the game really starts, where you're focused on becoming more than just a tribe, and the idea that cities gradually improve the surrounding tiles, rather than having workers. For the no workers idea, I think that some improvements could theoretically work that way, such as farms, mines, and other tile improvements like that. That might actually be more realistic. On the other hand, things like roads, forts, and possible improvements like the canal should be built by workers because that's how those things are historically built. Rome was able to incorporate the far flung regions of its empire so well because it had a mobile workforce. So, I think the idea of having cities build some improvements could actually work and be really interesting, but we should still have workers for roads and such. Also, maybe if workers were only for roads, roads and their like should be more important.

As for your idea to have a pre-civilization era, I don't that would work so well, because it would have the possibility to create a huge imbalance in development. If some civs didn't manage to make it to the civilization stage at the same time as others, that would create a huge imbalance as to how they would progress. As it is, some civs somehow manage to fall behind massively, not building cities, not discovering tech, and having weak cultures and militaries. If some got started later, this gap would only widen. I like the idea, because it would add a sense of realism to the game, but I'm not sure how it would work in actuality.

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It can make for some very interesting gameplay, for instance, creating a civilization that is not based on cities. The Mongols did it, and as far as I know they were the only ones to do it, but that's just how Earth worked out. Who's to say there couldn't be a planet where 90% of the people are nomadic, moving around, staying for a few years to collect resources then move to another place. There would just need to be some balancing so that a nation that chooses or lets itself fall behind could still find a way to get back into the game through an alternative path from what everyone else took.

phaethon16 said:

I think that ethnicity should be initially based upon civilization, but it would become slightly more complex later on in the game. I see no true place for race in the game, not because it could potentially be controversial but because I don't see any game-play elements that it would tie into. As for language, I think that spreading your language could be a by-product of spreading your culture, and that if you can get a different ethnic group to learn your language, it would over time make them more agreeable to your rule and more susceptible to your cultural influence. Lastly, the only tie in to religion that ethnicity should have is that once you convert a majority of one ethnicity to a religion, that religion would be able spread more easily among others of that ethnicity.

As a broad overview, ethnicity would originally be tied to civilization, with each starting civ and CS getting their own ethnicity. As the game progresses though, random third ethnic groups that don't correspond to a cs or civ would spring up and become a part of your empire if you expanded into their land. Also, if your empire doesn't produce culture, you could end up with breakaway ethnic groups because your empire lacks a central cultural identity. I think ethnicity could be a new way that cultural influence is shown, as well as be a mechanic that deals more with empire building and civil order. It seems strange to me that it hasn't been included before, considering how many empires and nations have been bolstered or brought down by ethnic factors (Austria, Russia, America, etc.)

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Perhaps in addition to that, new cultures could be created as combinations of different cultures. In addition, if there is a part of the game where you're trying to unify your nation from city-states into a civilization, warfare between the city-states can break up your culture as the conquered city-states will hate you and do their best to be as different from you as possible requiring you to reunite your culture. Friendly relationships should over time make the border a nice transition from one culture to another, and if there was enough time, turn your two cultures into one.

Quick idea, the idea of having groups who are part of your nation, but you don't have complete control over them. It would allow for feudalism to be a part of monarchy. If you had a lot of vassals, then you would essentially be a feudal monarchy. If you created a federal government, then your cities would be more in charge of the day-to-day managing of your cities. The puppet-states are nice in civ 5, but they could be a lot more, especially if you could have more than like 20 cities in the entire world by the end of the game. In addition, maybe add the option for two nations to join together, especially if they are friendly, in an alliance, have the same culture, same religion, and same government?

i would like an expansion of open borders. my idea is, you are a big power and a lesser power might ask for development aid? either a CS or smaller civ even. if you have open borders, they can approach you, or you can offer them, 'open border economic aid' which basically allows you workers to go in and instead of giving them the worker, your worker can construct any improvement on an unimproved resource or tile. but not replace an improvement. this might be useful to help an ally beef up its forces if you expect either yourself or them to be attacked by an enemy. they would spend less time building workers maybe and more building units.
its rather mercenary actually. i have a defensive pact with a weak civ this game and on his other border is a civ about same size; and i need him to slow down the attack i see coming while i build some more units...

I want wide to be good again. I don't have a problem with CiV heavily favoring tall strategies per se, but I want a change of pace from that with CiVI.

I want them to keep 1UPT, or very limited stacking.

Other than that, I want to be surprised !

I think that there should be a wider range of missiles, both nuclear and non-nuclear. I would also like to launch Gas Attacks, as well as use Cyber Attacks to attack your enemies. Israeli, Mexican, and Swiss empires would also be interesting.

EgonSpengler said:

I don't care for the idea of cities springing up all on their own. The silly, god-like power of the player to direct the development of her civilization is the foundation of the game. There's almost nothing organic in this game. I'd even like more power to, for example, direct the expansion of my city borders, besides just spending gold to grab hexes instantaneously.

EDIT: Two follow-up thoughts. First, self-spawning cities could certainly be a "random event" if that option were in the game. Second, while I wouldn't want cities in my nation to magically appear all by themselves, new City States appearing as history moves along could be kind of cool.

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Are yo on Civ V? Civ IV and earlier don't have self-spawning cities, except Barbarians and AI Civs.

Hi, long time lurker here on the forum, but have been thinking about what i want for evolution in the Civ series..

1. Terrain
My biggest wish is an improvement in terrain structure. I'm tired of "Mountains, Hills, Plains, Grass, Desert, Tundra And Snow". I'd like a system thats more flowing and not that sharp edges between the tiles.

For example if the tile is not a specific "type" but instead consists of a number of options like:

Altitude: Would describe the altitude of this tile, a much higher altitude from the tile next to it would make it inaccessible from that tile, and so on. This would define areas where you can sneak up on other units and they cant reach you, as well as make a unit trapped, lots of opportunities for fun stuff Would also make mountains and hills more realistic as they would be accessible (maybe up to a certain altitude) unless it is too steep!

Ground: Would define what types of resources can be found here. Rock could imply ore or stone. Soil that things could be growing here. Snow or Sand other examples.

Growth: Will define what is growing there now, trees, plants, nothing, whatever the options are.

Game: Will define what types of animals live there (resources)

If all of these have a scale each maybe 1-10, there would be a huge number of possibly different tiles. Now i understand that there cant be a graphic for each and everyone, but say altitude 1-3 would look the same but have slightly different stats, 4-6 would look the same but with other stats and so on.

This would lead to a more real map and a deeper strategical value of the map.

2. Borders
The option to claim land as "mine" even though you have not expanded there yet, but to show what you mean. This would help when someone settles where you like and you have already shown that you want that part, makes this a more specific act of intrusion than "Youre settling to close to me"

3. City States, Barbarians and Civs
I dont like the part where some start as a citystate, because you treat them differently than other civs even when they're the same size as you. Thats why i want all civs an barbarians and city states to start the same, and then evolve differently, and i believe that civs, barbarians as well as citystates could offer small quests to improve relations.

Read this from earlier in the thread from "Rekrut" that touches something similar:

Idea 1. Start of game and ethnicity:
There should be an initial phase before the actual gameplay of today kicks in.
I would appreciate if the game started with a certain part of the map visible to the player (a single hex + 3 hex radius) and the player would chose the initial start hex. This would be the "camp" (like today's barbarian camps) and not a city yet. You do not start with a settler.
The same could happen to all other tribes, i.e. every AI-controllod tribe starts in a camp. Imagine there would be plenty of them (e.g. roughly every 6 or 8 hexes there is a camp) and each of them would have an ethnicity (with the camps close to each other being grouped into the same ethnicity, such as Slavic or Germanic or Chinese). Then depending on the quality of the location and some other factors, these camps would develop into:
- cities (initially as city states, without the option to build settlers, however the best of the best city states could start building settlers and start new cities, i.e. they would become actual AI opponent civilizations as we know them today)
- barbarian camps (aggressive, producing only military units, as they are today)
- nomadic tribes that would just pack their camp and go somewhere else to find a better spot and start a new camp or just continue nomadism
- not devlop, i.e. stay being a neutral or friendly camp

The human players would need to grow the initial camp into a city (becoming a city state) and then after some time be able to build own settlers. However as the surrounding area is full of other camps, cities (CS) or even already first civilizations, city building would be only one of many means of expansion. It could also be conquest or diplomacy or culture. By the means of these, human players and AI civilizations would in fact start creating unions of tribes that eventually could grow into a NATION, that would be self-conscious (collecting the friendly tribal camps and the nomads into a nation).

People from the tribes around could migrate to the cities as well, sometimes adding to ethnical diversity (and causing ethnic issues in the future).

If you let them, they grow to city states or even civilizations, if not, they are the human mass that contribute to your civilization.

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4. Politics
Able to make civ/citystates vassal or different levels of that. For votes and resources.
You have your own court/governament where vassals and great people are (doesn't have to be graphic). These can help sway emissaries the way you want. And gives out bonuses towards political discussions as well as their court sway my emissaries. could also differ from what type of court i assemble, lots of military may give me a military bonus but may also get me into more wars.
Maybe one should be able to send your great people here as an option to influence certain areas?

5. Disease
Troops unused to certain types of terrain can get disease, "malaria" or "height sickness" which effects them.
Cities can get plague or similar which means you have to quarantine it. If troops pass through area they may carry disease further.

6. Resources
Some resources such as animals or incense or whatever should be clearly visible but there are resources that arent (IRL) visible as you send a scout passing by. So sort of an expedition could be sent to see what kind of resources could be found nearby.

7. Religion
Be able to decide to "adopt" a religion and continue on that instead of just having to do your own thing. You could work as a sect in the beginning and then evolve into a schism of that religion. (like Sunni/Shia or Catholic/Protestantic). Sometimes i cant make the effort of rushing to start a religion and so misses the whole part, would be fun to be able to jump onto another. Ofcourse you would have to have that first religion in your cities and so on.

8. More Tiles
I'd like more tiles, and cities to occupy several tiles to make it more real when we have one unit per tile!


Also liked these from "Tyrantis123" earlier in the thread:

-Possible for Civilizations to go totally bankrupt and turn into multiple city states
-Possible for Civilizations to get conquered by warfare and other means
-Possible for a city to flip back to its owner if inadequate military forces are in the city during a revolt after capture (your military units also take damage in the city during a revolt!)
-Possible for Civilizations to irreversibly destroy the world they live in at any era
-Possible for Civilizations to go backwards in technology (before scientific theory is invented, after scientific theory it should always be forwards)
-Possible for every improvement and tile type in the game to have a impact on the battlefield (for example, deserts would give penalties to knights and swordsmen in armor, and mines would add a 5% increase in defense on hills)
-Possible for cities to shrink from not only starvation but plagues with poor sanitation levels. (yes add sanitation as a factor to the game)
-Possible for every city to be razed even if it is a capital city and all wonders are destructible during a siege

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Being able to trade tiles, capture tiles not just cities, and make peace treaties over tiles.

having towns and villages

and making your own civ!

1. Allow Ruins a low chance to contain evidence of 'Ancient Aliens' which provides bonus

2. Cassus Belli system so that all Wars list the reason they started (in part so that newer players can learn what they did to provoke the AI into a DoW)

3. A limited orbital layer or mechanic that appears once you research Satellites.

4. An increased chance to Steal Technology matched with an increased chance of being caught/killed for every Era past the Renaissance.

5. Allow Privateers and any 'Stealth Land Unit' or 'Stealth Sea Unit' to plunder Trade Routes with a chance to be caught/killed for doing so.

6. Expensive or vulnerable Canals that can span no more than 2-3 Tiles used to connect Oceans.

7. Pay Gold to portage Ships from City to City in a short range like re-basing Aircraft.

8. Ability to lie to an AI that someone is 'Plotting Against Them' to encourage a War without outright paying for one.

9. Slightly customizable Civs.

10. Throne Room/Leader Cosmetic Customization/National and World Wonder Movies.

I think we should get a complete overhaul of the city system. I could see it getting totally changed, with few elements remaining as they were. For example, you can still found cities with settler units, but the cities they found wouldn't be able to produce everything immediately. It's unrealistic that just because a city has high production that it can churn out endless amounts of soldiers, even if it has a low population. Cities should be allowed to fail, just like some early settlements did. Their starting options would be restricted, but as the city grows in size, it can produce more and different things.

Additionally, I think that the old system of production could be replaced with a new production system with multiple production spots. This would allow a more multitasking approach to production. The way this keeps from being able to build up cities too much is twofold: for one, each city would have to build multiples of the same building because if you have a large city, lets face it, one workshop or forge isn't enough. The second reason is that in addition to buildings and units, cities can also build/research technology and new techniques. This sounds more horrible than it is. An example is that your capital city, let's say Paris, has researched iron working. They can now smelt iron. Marseille, another city of yours close by, can't smelt iron quite yet, but if Paris is well connected to Marseille with trade routes, roads, or cultural connections, Marseille can research iron working substantially more quickly. This creates a need for infrastructure within your civ, as well as making it so that some cities are more advanced and forward looking than others. It means that far away colonies and cities become backwaters without efforts to integrate them into societal. Lastly, in addition to researching technology, you can research techniques. Techniques are similar to social policies, but perhaps more practical and less ideological. An example would be that after reaching a point in the tech tree, a city could research and develop a specific literature style like romanticism. Some of these would be generic, like once you've researched iron working cities can develop iron-tipped plows which boosts agricultural development, but others would be cultural phenomena, like literature styles, which would have to spread through culture. I admittedly haven't developed this part of my idea yet, so maybe more to come at a later date.

The last part of this system is that unlike in previous versions where worker units created infrastructure and citizens provided production, I think the two could be combined. There would be no worker unit; there would only be citizens working from inside your cities. Assigning a citizen to a tile would give you the option of what you wanted the citizen to do on that tile. If it was a grassland tile, you could assign it to farm it, and over a certain period of turns, a farm would organically appear on the tile. The longer a citizen worked on the tile, the more productive the tile would be. Buildings inside cities wouldn't need production any more. Instead, they would require laborers which you would assign to construction, and the correct resources. For example, you could have one citizen working a forest tile for lumber, and another in the citizen constructing a theater. Building roads would require citizens to be assigned to the task as well, and roads would require somewhat regular maintenance. Last thing, since buildings would no longer require hammers since hammers wouldn't exist, it would cost a certain amount of money per turn to hire laborers to construct your buildings. Wonders would cost more money, more resources, and would take up multiple productions spots.

I best things i like from different games

civ2: The council because it was great. Maybe make it a little more helpfull. and
civ3: Borders... right of passage is just a ok. But you can enter different territorys and its up to you to enforce it. Because even though america dosent have a right of passage with syria or pakistan they still go into their borders.
Bombardment damage. When you fully remove the tile improvements by artillary or bombers or ships the tile is left with cratters that need to be removed by a worker. I like this because when i go to war i destroy the entire country.
Also i liked how resources work in civ3.
The editor i like how its outside of the game so i can't cheat.

civ4: Vassals. Religion and government and corporations.

civ5: City states. Polynesia

also scrape the 1 unit per tile thing. That is all

Am I the only one who likes the 1 unit per tile rule? Also, we need to bring back being able to see how many people are living in your cities. It's a small thing, but I liked knowing when a city hits a million people.

Overall I think the game is just fine. Sure the AI could be better, it always can but it works, sort of.

Some suggestions.
Scouts should have their own upgrade path. Scout > Dragon (light cavalry) > reconnaissance aircraft > drone. And they should be able to enter other divs territory but just as with CS they will demand them to leave and it could escalate to war.

Once you discover satellites you get to see the whole map today, that is great. You should however then also be able to focus on certain areas of the map to see what moves there. If you have satellites you should be able to see if your close neighbor have a lot of troops hidden somewhere.

There should be a way to fake military strength as well as to hide it. Perhaps your spies could have options to spread deceptive information. If you dont want to be attacked, send a spy to a warmonger and give him false information on how strong your military strength is. Or if you want to be attacked, have them tell that warmonger how weak you currently is and how they would be received as liberators if they just crossed the borders...
At the same time, if the civ have a spy in your capital they will have a chance of finding out what is true or what is not true.

Causis beli. If I go to war to defend or liberate a CS it should really raise my standing around the world, not lower it. And other civs should be more understanding if I go to war to retake my previously lost territory.
And religious and ideological wars must be a thing in the game.

Barbarians/rebels should be a bigger thing. Perhaps there should be more types. Like sea barbarians or pirates who only spawn from something that is similar to CS (without that much territory), a pirates nest. It will take some effort to take them out but you can also bribe them to - or demand (if you are powerful enough) them to not attack your trade routes. You should also be able to bribe them to attack other civs trade routes.
And converting the barbarians to your religion make them your ally.

More diplomacy.

Ability to allow time periods take longer time to complete but without slowing down the building time of buildings and units.

A city should be able to produce military and civilian units at the same time as they produce buildings. Perhaps even several units and building at the same time once the city have grown to a certain size. A city with a population of 20m should be able to produce more then one aircraft every 4th year without having to buy them.
This would of course mean the unit spamming AI will spam even more units, I am looking at you Shaka.

Cities placed along side rivers that flows to an ocean should have access to that ocean with cargo ships.

More national wonders.

Tile improvements should speed up depending on what era you are in. Improving a jungle does not take that long time in the industrial age with the machines they can use.

Ability to block trade routes going to your cities.

Civs trade routes could reach further if going through another civs city first that is on the trade routs way. That city would need a market place and a caravansary/harbor first.

It would open up some really nice options and for some cool strategies to try and dominate the world trade. If you control a city on a one hex landmass between two oceans (like Panama- or the Suez channel) you more or less can control the world trade on the sea. Will also make other civs more interested in capturing that city. Not so sure the west or the east for that matter would have been that interested in the holy land if it was not money to be earned from controlling the Levant.

Honestly, I'd be content if they took BNW, revamped Intrigue, Trade Routes and Social Policies a la Beyond Earth, and added revolutions and corporations. They'd better keep Venice as a civ.

I'd actually really, really like it if Ideologies (Freedom, Order, Autocracy) were structured the way Affinities are in Beyond Earth, and put in a quest system.