Canuckster
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2013
- Messages
- 9
I am a veteran civ player (been playing since the original civilization) and Ive never previously posted on any boards. Having recently played Brave New World (which is a fantastic game), I feel compelled to offer my suggested improvements/additions to what could make this game the best civilization game ever designed. By the way, the elimination of the spaghetti road network is one of the biggest reason Ive enjoyed Civ 5 above previous incarnations.
[A] Suggested Additions
Combat
Base and Port Improvements: Allow one base and one port to be built by a civilization in each of the city states. These improvements would allow units to be upgraded outside a civs territory at any base/port that was built by that civ (add flag/color to indicate which civ has built it). Pillaging another civs base or port would be considered an act of war.
Two-Unit Stacking Ability: Provide the Great General with a second special ability that allows it to add a two-unit stacking ability to a land unit. This would allow the unit with the gained ability to stack with another like unit to double its hit points. This would consume the Great General and the unit with this ability would be allowed to stack/unstack at any time. This would also allow for Great Generals to have an alternative ability to building citadels.
City States
New City States: Add production and scientific city-states. This should help re-balance the victory conditions to foster scientific victory.
Annexing City States: City states get temporarily annexed if a civ reaches a certain amount of influence point with them (lasts for 30 turns?). This would apply to all civs except maybe Greece and Venice. The city state border color or flag gets changed to reflect the civilization that has annexed it. The city state would act as they do now (i.e. production, buildings, etc. do not get added to the civ as they do with annexed cities of competing civs). The added benefit is that the controlling civ would be allowed to upgrade their units in the CS territory and be guaranteed their votes in the world congress for 30 turns.
Diplomacy
Alliances: Allow alliances between civilizations that lasts a minimum of 30 turns but only get cancelled when one of the civs bails out after the 30 turn minimum. Alliances would default to open borders and defensive agreements increasing tourism between civ by an additional 25% due to the alliance (on top of the 25% already received from open borders). Once ideologies are adopted, civs can only ally with other civs of the same ideology. Voting intent between allied civs would be revealed.
Culture
Sunken Ship Sites & Exploration Sub Units: Add sunken ship sites throughout the sea some period after archeology. Build exploration sub units to explore the sunken ships for treasure or artifacts.
Auction House Building: Add an auction house building that allows the storage of artifacts for trading, selling or later use. Storing great works doesnt generate culture or tourism. An alternative would be to allow the civ to receive gold as a third choice when unearthing an artifact (in addition to placing it in a museum or building a landmark).
World Congress
Top Three Cities: Add resolution to compensate the top three best cities when in effect (reminiscent of top 5 cities menu screen in older civ games). Similar to world games or world fair. Top cities would be based on numerous factor such as population, wonders, etc.
Wonders
Civilization-Wonder Production Bonus: Tie one wonder production bonus to each civilization if there is enough to go around. It would be a nice themed addition if say France had a production bonus when building the Eiffel tower wonder or the Mayans had a production bonus when building the Chicken Pizza wonder or the Canadians had a production bonus in building the CN tower wait a minute there is no Canadian civilization.
Civilizations
New Civs: Add another 7 or 9 civilizations. The existing civs (Indonesia, Venetian, etc.) add a lot of versatility to the game. With the special abilities provided by civilization such as the Mongolians, Indonesian and Venetian, it would be interesting to see what other creative civs Firaxis can come up with.
Perhaps add a Canadian civilization.
Artificial Intelligence
Combat AI: Increase combat AI! This cannot be emphasized enough. At least apply the extra strategic capabilities of the AI in the later levels to levels such as Prince and King so there is an option for no cheats but increased AI capability (i.e. Prince Expert )
Scenarios
Future Age: Add scenario for future tech age that would be accessible if you win science victory.
Suggested Improvements:
Interface
Tech Tree: indicate if wonder has been built and by which civ when moussed over in tech tree menu.
Resource Management/Trading: Allow resources trading menu that indicates how many of each types of resources each civilization owns and which ones they have accessed to via city states.
City Menu: Highlight the perimeter of city hexes (i.e. green) that are being worked on by a citizen. This would be extremely helpful in quickly scanning each city to make ensure optimal use of city hexes. You currently have to stare at it for a bit to scan through and see which hex is worked on, as they do not stand out easily, and analyze if it fits with current strategy; with 5+ cities this can cause serious eye strain. Simple add which could make for great impact on city management.
Notifications: Combine some of the remaining explosion of individual pop up notifications all relating to a common activity (i.e. when discovering city state mid-way through the game, you get 6+ notifications indicating that each civ is pledging to protect the CS, or when a peace treaty has ended with a civilization that has a lot of CS same thing. This could be neatly combined into one notification as has been done to streamline notifications in other instances.
Public Opinion: Provide more information as to why exactly are your citizens dissidents (or other forms of opinions) which cause some quantity of unhappiness. Numbers would be helpful.
Roads/Railroads: Prevent traffic circles from being created when building a road to connect to an existing roadway (i.e. three way connections).
Map/Scrolling: Allow 360 degree scrolling and mini map to also align with center of current screen. This may already been built in but may have not played with the menu options enough recently to see if it exists.
City Culture: The city border growth indicator should indicate when a city has reached its maximum border expansion.
The above suggestions would address several needs such as improving chances of winning a scientific victory for BNW and the need to upgrade units outside a civs territory. This makes it challenging to beat out a strong civilization when you do not have a base whereby to upgrade obsolete units after they have travelled so many miles only to arrive at their destination equipped with obsolete weapons. If these were incorporated through DLCs to eventually make the game into a Civ 5 complete, Civ 5 would become one hell of a strategy game!
[A] Suggested Additions
Combat
Base and Port Improvements: Allow one base and one port to be built by a civilization in each of the city states. These improvements would allow units to be upgraded outside a civs territory at any base/port that was built by that civ (add flag/color to indicate which civ has built it). Pillaging another civs base or port would be considered an act of war.
Two-Unit Stacking Ability: Provide the Great General with a second special ability that allows it to add a two-unit stacking ability to a land unit. This would allow the unit with the gained ability to stack with another like unit to double its hit points. This would consume the Great General and the unit with this ability would be allowed to stack/unstack at any time. This would also allow for Great Generals to have an alternative ability to building citadels.
City States
New City States: Add production and scientific city-states. This should help re-balance the victory conditions to foster scientific victory.
Annexing City States: City states get temporarily annexed if a civ reaches a certain amount of influence point with them (lasts for 30 turns?). This would apply to all civs except maybe Greece and Venice. The city state border color or flag gets changed to reflect the civilization that has annexed it. The city state would act as they do now (i.e. production, buildings, etc. do not get added to the civ as they do with annexed cities of competing civs). The added benefit is that the controlling civ would be allowed to upgrade their units in the CS territory and be guaranteed their votes in the world congress for 30 turns.
Diplomacy
Alliances: Allow alliances between civilizations that lasts a minimum of 30 turns but only get cancelled when one of the civs bails out after the 30 turn minimum. Alliances would default to open borders and defensive agreements increasing tourism between civ by an additional 25% due to the alliance (on top of the 25% already received from open borders). Once ideologies are adopted, civs can only ally with other civs of the same ideology. Voting intent between allied civs would be revealed.
Culture
Sunken Ship Sites & Exploration Sub Units: Add sunken ship sites throughout the sea some period after archeology. Build exploration sub units to explore the sunken ships for treasure or artifacts.
Auction House Building: Add an auction house building that allows the storage of artifacts for trading, selling or later use. Storing great works doesnt generate culture or tourism. An alternative would be to allow the civ to receive gold as a third choice when unearthing an artifact (in addition to placing it in a museum or building a landmark).
World Congress
Top Three Cities: Add resolution to compensate the top three best cities when in effect (reminiscent of top 5 cities menu screen in older civ games). Similar to world games or world fair. Top cities would be based on numerous factor such as population, wonders, etc.
Wonders
Civilization-Wonder Production Bonus: Tie one wonder production bonus to each civilization if there is enough to go around. It would be a nice themed addition if say France had a production bonus when building the Eiffel tower wonder or the Mayans had a production bonus when building the Chicken Pizza wonder or the Canadians had a production bonus in building the CN tower wait a minute there is no Canadian civilization.
Civilizations
New Civs: Add another 7 or 9 civilizations. The existing civs (Indonesia, Venetian, etc.) add a lot of versatility to the game. With the special abilities provided by civilization such as the Mongolians, Indonesian and Venetian, it would be interesting to see what other creative civs Firaxis can come up with.
Perhaps add a Canadian civilization.
Artificial Intelligence
Combat AI: Increase combat AI! This cannot be emphasized enough. At least apply the extra strategic capabilities of the AI in the later levels to levels such as Prince and King so there is an option for no cheats but increased AI capability (i.e. Prince Expert )
Scenarios
Future Age: Add scenario for future tech age that would be accessible if you win science victory.
Suggested Improvements:
Interface
Tech Tree: indicate if wonder has been built and by which civ when moussed over in tech tree menu.
Resource Management/Trading: Allow resources trading menu that indicates how many of each types of resources each civilization owns and which ones they have accessed to via city states.
City Menu: Highlight the perimeter of city hexes (i.e. green) that are being worked on by a citizen. This would be extremely helpful in quickly scanning each city to make ensure optimal use of city hexes. You currently have to stare at it for a bit to scan through and see which hex is worked on, as they do not stand out easily, and analyze if it fits with current strategy; with 5+ cities this can cause serious eye strain. Simple add which could make for great impact on city management.
Notifications: Combine some of the remaining explosion of individual pop up notifications all relating to a common activity (i.e. when discovering city state mid-way through the game, you get 6+ notifications indicating that each civ is pledging to protect the CS, or when a peace treaty has ended with a civilization that has a lot of CS same thing. This could be neatly combined into one notification as has been done to streamline notifications in other instances.
Public Opinion: Provide more information as to why exactly are your citizens dissidents (or other forms of opinions) which cause some quantity of unhappiness. Numbers would be helpful.
Roads/Railroads: Prevent traffic circles from being created when building a road to connect to an existing roadway (i.e. three way connections).
Map/Scrolling: Allow 360 degree scrolling and mini map to also align with center of current screen. This may already been built in but may have not played with the menu options enough recently to see if it exists.
City Culture: The city border growth indicator should indicate when a city has reached its maximum border expansion.
The above suggestions would address several needs such as improving chances of winning a scientific victory for BNW and the need to upgrade units outside a civs territory. This makes it challenging to beat out a strong civilization when you do not have a base whereby to upgrade obsolete units after they have travelled so many miles only to arrive at their destination equipped with obsolete weapons. If these were incorporated through DLCs to eventually make the game into a Civ 5 complete, Civ 5 would become one hell of a strategy game!
