REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS (updated every week)

Based on political, economical and ecological concepts and on historical facts, here are some ideas to turn CIV into a more attractive and realistic game.

NEW SHIELD/FOOD OUTPUT SYSTEM
Shields essentially represent raw materials, that's why forests yield more shields (wood) than a grassland and that's why mountains yield more shields (stone, minerals) than plains.

Originally Posted by eddie_verdde.
However, the classical concept of shield output ignores the fact that different communities explore different resources depending on their environments and on their needs...in other words, different civilizations came across with different solutions to the same problems.
Maybe egyptians lacked wood, because they lived in desert areas...but they were able to build things using other materials, such as clay (houses) or reeds (small boats). So, by classical standards (i.e. previous CIV games) a floodplain would be poor in "shields" but for egyptians, floodplains were as rich in "shields" as a forest for romans.

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originally Posted by sir_schwick.
What if non-essential techs could increase the output of various terrain types? If you lived in a desert, you would research 'mud bricks'(avaliable with Pottery), which woudl increase shield output per desert tile. If you had lots of forests around, you could research 'lumberjacking' to get a shield bonus from them. That way you chose what to research based on need.

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This would turn the game even more realistic and would present the civers with an interesting and flourishing tech tree...each civ would find a specific path to reach the same goals, depending on the resources available and terrain types.

This would emphasize even more the idiosyncrasies of each civilization and culture just as it happened in the real world.

What was said for shields can be also applied to food.


INTERNAL TRADE
cities with excess of food could be allowed to transfer some of its surplus to other friendly cities. Why have a city starving and a city with plenty of food but with its growth limited by absence of aqueduct or hospital?



SLAVERY
Although in CIV3 you can capture enemy workers and use them to improve your terrain, I don't think we can consider that as slavery since you still have to support those workers as you do with other units.

Maybe it would be a good idea to introduce the concept of slavery in CIV4. Having slaves across your empire would free some of your citizens of labour, which would lead to increased happiness. Nevertheless this could lead to unpleasant unemployment levels...oh, and watch out with Spartacus!

Examples:
Egypt - during centuries the hebrew slaves were the major workforce in Egypt
Roman Empire - err...there were slaves all over the empire
Age of Discoveries - slaves in Brazil, slaves in Europe. slaves in North America



CIVIL WAR
civil war would be an excellent new concept to Civilzation IV. It would especially be interesting a war for independence caused by cities in different continents.
Civil wars could break out if for example a civilization insists in keeping a monarchic type of government eventhough other types of government are available. Cities with opposite influences would constitute the different factions of the conflict.
NOTE: Civil war is very different from civil disorder...


DIFFERENT TERRAIN TYPES, DIFFERENT FARMING
Unlike what happens in previous CIV games, you just can’t clear out a piece of jungle and cultivate the land for eternity. Farming depends mostly on the type of soil. Jungle or rain-forests soils are very sensitive to the changes introduced by INTENSIVE farming and will be able to support large farms for only a couple of years. After that the soil becomes exhausted and the land dries permanently.

It is believed that many meso-american kingdoms disappeared due to the consequences of the overuse of jungles for farming.

Furthermore, the complete clearance of jungle areas as you see in CIV would have a tremendous impact on global ecology.

Therefore, farming in equatorial regions should be different from farming in other regions. The food yields from jungle squares should be lower than other squares, since horticulture (a “lesser” type of agriculture) is the major way of obtaining food in jungle human communities.


LESS ACCURACY OF MAPS
Cartography as we know it today wasn’t developed until 19th century. Before that, maps were very inaccurate, with lots of imprecision in land features, distances, etc. which is normal, since there were no apropriate instruments to measure distances, heights, etc. correctly.

So, I find weird when I trade maps with a civilization in another continent during the Middle Ages, and I immediately know exactly how far it is, and all the details of its territory.

I also dislike the fact that by approximately 1350 AD I already know the geography of the entire world.

Maybe the game would be more interesting and challenging if the world map would be known in detail only in the modern age.

Nevertheless, through diplomacy or spying, civs could become aware of some important features of foreign lands, such as valuable resources, or location of important cities. Through diplomacy we could choose to trade important locations, instead of just trading the whole territory or world map.



DIPLOMACY ISSUES:

POLITICAL BORDERS
I suggest a new diplomatic action: Establishment of borders. Through this option, 2 allied countries could permanently redefine its borders regardless of cultural expansion. The treaty would be broken during war, and cultural borders would prevail over "political borders" in such times.

For instance: Rome and Germany define a “political border” along river Danube, (Romans south of the Danube, Germans to the North).However, some territory to south of the river is under German cultural influence. If war is declared between Rome and Germany, the population of that territory chooses to support Germany due to cultural similarities and Rome will loose control of that territory.


TRADE OF UNITS
civilizations should be allowed to trade units during negotiations, especially artillery units such as catapults, trebuchets, cannons, etc. Infantry or cavalry units should be regarded as mercenaries, with increased possibility of deserting.



ECOLOGIC ISSUES IN NEGOTIATIONS
it's imensely frustrating when you do your best to keep your territory free of pollution to prevent global warming and you see that other civs do nothing about it.

Ecology could serve as an argument to declare war on "dirty" civs or as a token during diplomatic negotiations (eg: reduce your pollution by 50% and i'll give you 20 gold per turn)


ARMISTICE (by rhialto)
This is a very nice suggestion. Civilizations could make treaties to disband certain units or to not build them for a given period as a garantee of mutual non-agression. One civilization (eg: the winner of a war) could force another (the defeated) to disband certain units in exchange for peace.




UNITS ISSUES:

UNIT MOVEMENT
with exception of artillery, most units are able to cross every single square of the landscape...what about geographical barriers? physical borders such as impassable mountains (eg: the Pirenees, the Everest, etc.) or lethal deserts (Sahara, Gobi)... you just can't cross a cavalry army along a mountain full of snow!!

There should be more of these geographic features that itselves constitute an obstacle to armies...


UNIT MOVEMENT 2
maybe the number of moves of ships should be increased in order to be accurate with real world...especially in the Ancient Times. In the previous civ games, they move so slow that sometimes it 's not worthy to build a fleet and carry a large number of units to other continent or from a point to another....this discourages invasion of other continents and surprising landfalls far from the war fronts.

Travelling by sea is not only a way of crossing continents but also a faster way of travelling, probably faster than what is suggested by the proportion of 3:1 observed in the number of moves of sea units and land units. I believe this is true especially in the anciente times.


UNIT MOVEMENT 3
I don't like the idea of a ship being able to make landfall everywhere we want to...in real world there are coastal areas impassable to ships, and unless you are unloading alpinists you just can't make landfall near a cliff!!!

I hope that in CIV4 some coastal squares are not available for unloading ships...this would be important specially in scenarios such as the Mediterraneum Sea, or those with more detailed maps...



SURVIVAL OF UNITS IN HOSTILE LANDS
units shouldn't be able to survive for more than a limited number of turns when they are CROSSING big deserts or tundra for instance (similarly to triremes navigating in ocean squares)....and if they do they should receive hit points penalties for that.

imagine if Caesar decided to cross the Sahara with his legions...



MERCENARIES
what if civilizations could recruit barbarian troops as mercenaries?

i think that slavery should be something like this...

When you caputre a city you'll be asked do you want to ,raze it ,just take it or enslave parth of it. Meaning that you'll get much slaves (half of the population maybe) Slaves would not just be slow workers but non-citizen-right -owning work force that would be shared between all your cities.

Slave would improve food and shield production, but not appear in the city screen as faces. Slaves would last about 10-15 turns when would need to get more.

yes I agree with you...increased shield and food production...maybe each civilization could also get slaves from defeated armies and not just from conquered cities...by the way, under a democracy, slavery shouldn't be allowed...

I think the map part would be difficult to implement. I like the rest.
I really like the move ment suggestions. One of the reasons I like to play Rhye's mod so much is that it limits units travel over mountains. A ship movement should definately be increased by a factor of three at least. Failing that ground units should move much much more slowly in the Ancient and Middle Ages.
As to the landing sites, just remember how much coastline tiles tend to represent, a place to put units ashore can usually be found if one looks hard enough.

I think that, rather than make the whole game slower, it would be better to at the least increase movement rates by 3 (or possibly even 5). Now, before people complain that this is 'unbalancing', consider this easy fix. First make sea squares cost 2 MP, and ocean squares cost 3 MP (might also be possible to make ocean 'impassable' to wheeled units, then make ancient units wheeled! So, anyways, what this means is that ancient units will be an excellent means of moving units-and fighting naval battles-along the coast, but not much good for finding new continents. Naval vessels from the early Middle Ages, OTOH, would ignore the cost of Sea squares, making them better at defending straits, and moving units between close land masses!
By the Late Middle Ages (i.e. Navigation), naval vessels ignore the movement cost of ocean-leading to the grand age of Sail and Exploration! Ironclads, OTOH, are a 'step backward'-having a high movement allowance, but having to pay the full movement cost of oceans (and possibly sea) making them a good coastal 'monitor', whilst extending the usefulness of sailing ships. The naval vessels of the late industrial and modern ages would treat all terrain as roads, thus giving them a huge boost over their sailing counterparts!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

P.S: everything I have just described, of course, can be done in C3:Conquests!

kayak I thaught of that that's why I emphasized that the existence of cliffs would be more apropriate in highly detailed scenario maps such as "Mediterraneum Sea" than in world maps.

About the maps: I don't know how hard could it be to implement my idea...instead of getting a detailed map (with every single hill and moutain represented), the player would get a more "incomplete" map, which would encourage exploration rather than getting the map through diplomacy...by the way, this reminds me, what's that Explorer unit about anyway? when I'm able to produce Explorers I already know 90% of the world map...and the other 10% is mostly water...

@Aussie_Lurker, I like those Ideas. Have you read through Rhye's thread? it's huge I know, but his group spent a long time on ocean movement. They created sea lanes and then increased the chances that a non-ocean going ship would just sink if it ended in the wrong square.

@eddie_verdde, Ah I get it. I thought you wanted a distorted map, like you see in the books. This came as a result of the way cartogrphy was done at the time. A more "sketchy" map is a good idea.