team play versus individual play (fame point system)
Most players want to play as a team/civ, but that's not the ultimate goal of the game.
Very true. For a player to play as part of a team, stockpiling GP's for personal benefit is simply counter-intuitive and very individualistic.
A good example is building wonders. They require a lot of GPs and you risk to lose the wonder in no time because of a rebuild.
When you build a wonder you should have at least 12-24 hours the benefit of it.
I agree with the wonders issue here - being able to "build a better version of a wonder" should not be a part of the game. Once it's built, it's wonderous and unique. It can be replicated or even made bigger, more elegantly, etc..., but the original was the source of the inspiration in the first place - hence it being a wonder. Taking a wonder through combat makes the war process more strategic rather than "who can I get a quick kill from to advance an era" and holds true to the spirit of the Civ game.
The second half of the tech tree really needs to be redesigned.
Actually in the current situation, it's best the game is over when the first half of the tech tree is finished.
Rather than redesigning the tech tree itself, changing the mechanics of citizen production seems to make more sense. Techs like Literacy and University should provide the civ that researches them with a small civ-wide boost to science production, and each city that has a bonus building should get a boost for having the building rather than using GP's to generate a bonus. Currency and Banking would produce a gold boost, and so on. This would provide a cumulative benefit like that of the GP's currently by incentivizing players to build these buildings - but not at the absolutely cheap costs that are there now. Costs should double with each level of improvement so that a Ginormus Bank would cost 5000 Prod rather than 2000 Prod. (500+1000+1500+2000).
These changes in game mechanics would play towards different strategies as well. A builder strategy would have lots of buildings, but sacrifice military strength in the early game to get these building benefits earlier but result in a stronger late-game. A culture strategy would allow faster generation of GP's and wonder creation, but would sacrifice in some other areas as well. A financial strategy would be a gold boon but again, sacrificing other areas.
As it stands now, a player who is on for a number of hours a day needs only watch the market and can buy their way through just about everything. There is no other real strategy involved in order to win as a player -OR- as a civ. In fact, CivBucks have zero intrinsic value once the concept and time investment of playing the market is realized by general players. IMHO, until the market issue is corrected and the game rebalanced, the winner is the one who can best manipulate the market and spend the most time playing the game.
