I really wish the game had more of the following varieties...

CIV 5 added some pretty cool concepts, but still is not perfect. I hope the following get added or at least get highlighted in CIV 5.

WORKER VARIETIES (e.g., slaves, indentured servants, educated workers, child workers): Each one of these impact tile yields, and can also impact your approval rating and overall well-being. For instance, child workers can grant you an immediate production boost, but damage your reputation in later eras and hurt your overall science haul in later eras (as the children were not learning in school, and sorta grow up as dummies).


MORE SPECIALTY CITIES: It seems like every single CIV game is the same; your powerful capital has the most yields of EVERYTHING and every new city after that just gets worse and worse in terms of 'bang for your buck.' I think that some cities should exist for different reasons. For instance, landlocked poor cities surrounded by grasslands wont produce much in terms of production, but they have excess food that gets sent immediately to your industrial cities. I know this sorta exists with trade, but not with much impact. Imagine switching a city's specialization, granting you more options. For instance, switching a city to 'naval-focus' will grant you +30% naval production, but also -30% troop production. Maybe these last for an entire era before you can change it again?


MORE CIV DIVERSITY IN GAMEPLAY TERMS: Every CIV has the basic gameplay mechanics, with sprinklings to make them diverse. I would like to see nomadic CIVS (Huns, Mongols) play like nomads. In short, more CIVs should be like Venice (with its game-changing 'no founding of cities' mechanics) and less like drab America.


MORE ROOM TO FIGHT: My biggest beef, as the game leaves no room to fight and have advanced tactics. I think each hexagon tile should be split into about 6 smaller sections for troops. That would enable cavalry to maneuver and reduce the need for archers ALL THE TIME.


FOR EVERY BENEFICIAL LONG-TERM NEW/UNIQUE IDEA, THERE SHOULD BE MORE UPRISINGS/CIVIL WAR: Societies that stay traditional, stay stagnant. But for every large-scale good, there is usually immediate chaos. I think the game should play with this idea, and enable the player to stay traditional for the sake of peace, or embrace powerful new ideas with temporary civil wars. Let's not forget that to craft a real-life civilization usually means having to deal with keeping those under you subdued, and usually you're fighting your own people more often then fighting your neighbors.

I'm sure there are more varieties that need to be had. What are yours?

I really noticed that I don't think fans want another varaition of Civ but something more complicated.

I'm curious to see if Civ 6 will go down the path of another re-imagine of the boardgame (which is what I see Civ as) of they are going to completely give something brand new.

Regarding "more civ diversity in gameplay terms": On the other end of the spectrum there are people saying that they are too straitjacketed by the civ they choose, that with some civs especially there's only one victory condition possible.

Just goes to show that you can't please everybody. I think it's fine as it is.

You can get specialty cities, in fact you'll be more or less forced to have them if you have a mediocre starting position. Then you will run that city next to a mountain as your science city, that city on a river with a lot of food will be the one for your guilds, the one with three gold will be your money city, because your capital won't be able to grow enough to do all of that.

I really like the idea of specialty cities or more to the point, the ability of one city to give what it has in abundance to another city. Trade routes don't do this since they only ADD more of something.

It would be interesting, strategic and realistic if a city founded near a ton of wheat/grass could be placed on avoid growth and send all of its food to a city with a ton of hills/low food/high hammer/high gold land.

You could create powerhouse hammer cities that starve to death if you lose the food city. Extremely realistic. If the US lost its bread basket mid west farm land, all the productive, high population, high industry cities would begin starving.

They kind of portray this in Pandora: First Contact, but honestly I found the game quite unappealing. Maybe if you tried it you might find what you are looking for, it's all dependant on taste anyhows.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

I really noticed that I don't think fans want another varaition of Civ but something more complicated.

I'm curious to see if Civ 6 will go down the path of another re-imagine of the boardgame (which is what I see Civ as) of they are going to completely give something brand new.

Click to expand...

Hmmmm, this is : actually hard to argue with.
For its day ; Civ 1 was : actually a pretty deep game. Easily one of deepest TBS, of the time. So the partisan issue is : does Civ stick to being a variation on the original early 90's game, the "board game" style, or : do they pack on depth and complexity , and , try for being one of the deepest strategy games , relative to ,where they were in the 90's?

I feel that that Civ 6 could get away with being "complicated" as long as it doesn't go overboard (such as Paradox complicated)

What I feel that Civ 6 could add is..

A "Papal" feature that one religion becomes the World Religion and has a "Pope" that gains benefits...

A "Casus Belli" which would manage how wars are waged and would add a deep espionage game.

A "Royal or Diplomatic Marriage" option where civs could "marry into each other for X number of turns" and even have claims like they do in EU but without going overboard... This marriage would prevent civs from going to war with each other.

So in other words... most of the stuff present in EU but simplified so they are EASIER to get hang of and add more variations to what can be done during peace time.. so far... as much as they've tried.. Civ 5 still has the "just more turn.. just more turn" where it's literally just a click-fest.. even if you have to switch/choose a new route.. most of it is pretty much the same.

CraigMak said:

I really like the idea of specialty cities or more to the point, the ability of one city to give what it has in abundance to another city. Trade routes don't do this since they only ADD more of something.

It would be interesting, strategic and realistic if a city founded near a ton of wheat/grass could be placed on avoid growth and send all of its food to a city with a ton of hills/low food/high hammer/high gold land.

You could create powerhouse hammer cities that starve to death if you lose the food city. Extremely realistic. If the US lost its bread basket mid west farm land, all the productive, high population, high industry cities would begin starving.

Click to expand...

I'm reminded of Cities XL, where you can indeed do just that, sending oil, food, and water from cities that have them to ones that don't.

But...it makes Civ more complicated than I'd like. I'd play Cities XL for that. Internal trade routes are fine because they don't take anything away from the originating city, they just give it to the destination city, which simplifies things. Unrealistic, sure, but it does have an opportunity cost, which is that you could have sent the caravan to another civ instead for gold and science.

I'm sure that a lot of players, myself included, were hesitant to use internal trade routes at first because they thought it would take stuff away from the city of origin.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

I feel that that Civ 6 could get away with being "complicated" as long as it doesn't go overboard (such as Paradox complicated)

What I feel that Civ 6 could add is..

A "Papal" feature that one religion becomes the World Religion and has a "Pope" that gains benefits...

A "Casus Belli" which would manage how wars are waged and would add a deep espionage game.

A "Royal or Diplomatic Marriage" option where civs could "marry into each other for X number of turns" and even have claims like they do in EU but without going overboard... This marriage would prevent civs from going to war with each other.

So in other words... most of the stuff present in EU but simplified so they are EASIER to get hang of and add more variations to what can be done during peace time.. so far... as much as they've tried.. Civ 5 still has the "just more turn.. just more turn" where it's literally just a click-fest.. even if you have to switch/choose a new route.. most of it is pretty much the same.

Click to expand...

I also think there should be more kinds of war, for instance, a trade war. England had a TON of these (through the East India Company), and the end result was NOT the conquest of land, but forcing countries to trade with you at rates that were beneficial to the attacker. Certain objectives, such as blockading a few cities, can cause the war to be won. Since the AI is very cheap on Deity in regard to trade, this could be a way to gain beneficial trade through aggression.

I think an interesting avenue to explore would be to forego different civ "uniques" altogether; in favor of attributes you gain organically because of the different terrain, situations you find yourself in, choices you make. For example, maybe you'll find yourself picking up different "horse" units and cultures because you spawn on a plains area, instead of because you rolled as the Mongols. Maybe you'd gain different naval attributes because of your early ship building and exploring. I think we've already seen a bit of that type of customization with the Pantheons, for example.

It might be really really hard to balance though, and it might not even end up being very fun. I think it would be cool to test out though, and the "realism" people would love it.

I've been thinking of a system of Bonuses and Abilities.

So for example if you start the game with say Austria, you're unique ability would allow you to be able to do something that only Austria can (in this case, say Diplomatic Marriage).

Bonuses or Traits could change depending on who you have as a leader (and this could go hand in hand with the whole Dynasty/Royal Marriage I mentioned before) and you could have Maria Theresa who is say Expansionist and Cultural, where you could get a 10% bonus to all culture and 10% when building new settlers and reduced unhappiness from cities. And when she "dies" you could have her child take throne and have new set of traits.

I always thought it was dumb that a leader survives for like 4,000 years. How about a succession of leaders? You start out with one leader, then as you go through different eras you choose a successor. Maybe give your successors different personalities, like +2% growth, or science, or attack strength, or production, or gold, or whatever.

Civ has always had a strong historical component to the civs, so I don't see the above really happening in Civ6. Successors would be interesting but it would be hard to find enough names for some civs, and the investment in the leader screens is not going to be worth it. CivRev had a similar idea btw, where a civ would get a different additional bonus at the start of every age.

I could see Sammy's idea of an organically developing civ happen in a sci-fi/fantasy version of Civ5. We haven't had a new stand alone game that uses the Civ5 engine yet, like Alpha Centauri or Civ4 Colonization, so maybe that might still happen.

lithium97 said:

I always thought it was dumb that a leader survives for like 4,000 years. How about a succession of leaders? You start out with one leader, then as you go through different eras you choose a successor. Maybe give your successors different personalities, like +2% growth, or science, or attack strength, or production, or gold, or whatever.

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Have you ever played AGE OF MYTHOLOGY? In that game, there are 4 eras. At the beginning of each one, you select between two different Gods. Each choice brings a new leader with new abilities. I think CIV 6 needs this. For example, when you play as England, when you enter the RENAISSANCE, you can choose between ELIZABETH or lets say JAMES I. Perhaps Elizabeth gives you better naval or defense abilities (i.e., Spanish armada defense) and James gives you faith bonuses (i.e., King James bible-dude). Then, when you enter Industrial, the choice changes yet again.

El Caballerion said:

Have you ever played AGE OF MYTHOLOGY? In that game, there are 4 eras. At the beginning of each one, you select between two different Gods. Each choice brings a new leader with new abilities. I think CIV 6 needs this. For example, when you play as England, when you enter the RENAISSANCE, you can choose between ELIZABETH or lets say JAMES I. Perhaps Elizabeth gives you better naval or defense abilities (i.e., Spanish armada defense) and James gives you faith bonuses (i.e., King James bible-dude). Then, when you enter Industrial, the choice changes yet again.

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This would work for a game with a narrow range of a timeline (like the Renaissance or Age of Exploration) where we have plenty of documented rulers. But who would you suggest be the 2 options for, say, America during the Ancient Era? They didn't exist as a country until the 18th century. Or who would you suggest as the 2 options for the Aztecs in the Atomic Era? Likewise, most civilizations would have a hard time supplying 2 leaders per Era for the entire game. China and Egypt are the only 2 that I can think of that would be able to do it.

Or we could just choose any leader from any era.

shaglio said:

This would work for a game with a narrow range of a timeline (like the Renaissance or Age of Exploration) where we have plenty of documented rulers. But who would you suggest be the 2 options for, say, America during the Ancient Era? They didn't exist as a country until the 18th century. Or who would you suggest as the 2 options for the Aztecs in the Atomic Era? Likewise, most civilizations would have a hard time supplying 2 leaders per Era for the entire game. China and Egypt are the only 2 that I can think of that would be able to do it.

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Hmmm... maybe it works chronologically instead of specific by era? For example using USA, Washington/Adams were our first two presidents, so during Ancient Era, they would be your 2 choices. For Classical, Jefferson/Jackson, and so on?

shaglio said:

This would work for a game with a narrow range of a timeline (like the Renaissance or Age of Exploration) where we have plenty of documented rulers. But who would you suggest be the 2 options for, say, America during the Ancient Era? They didn't exist as a country until the 18th century. Or who would you suggest as the 2 options for the Aztecs in the Atomic Era? Likewise, most civilizations would have a hard time supplying 2 leaders per Era for the entire game. China and Egypt are the only 2 that I can think of that would be able to do it.

Click to expand...

yep, that's a problem. but you already need to suspend disbelief with the current system because Washington, Elizabeth etc didn't exist in 4,000 BC, and they then surving the entire game without aging. Like characters on Lost or something.