Sqwerlpunk
Chieftain
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2010
- Messages
- 22
So, this isn't ideas I think are "likely", merely my opinion of what would be "ideal" changes along with the information we already have (so if ciV actually had them, it'd be pretty awesome to me). Anyway,
1. Change of scale - Yeah, the Civ series isn't based on realism for scale, but still, with the changes to the map (hexes) and the one unit per hex rule, it seems pretty logical to me to make everything in Civ larger. A hex would represent "less" land, units can move farther than 1 hex a turn, cities could possibly end up taking up more than one hex at their peaks of development. Not as likely, but something I'd like to see, is time move slower per turn, especially in the beginning of a game. I'd like to see a "game" of Civ be more defined by playing through an "Age", rather than going from whatever B.C. to landing in AC in the year 3000 A.D.
2. Change of movement/action - With the new unit/hex idea coming in, this one seemed like a no-brainer to me, although I haven't seen it anywhere else... Simultaneous movement/actions. When giving orders to "move" or "attack" or any other such thing, the unit would not immediately go off to do that, but instead would simply receive the order and wait (possible displaying simple graphical representation of current order on the map, like an arrow to move, red arrow to attack, ect.). You run through all units, giving them all orders for the turn, then "activate" all those orders.
Why would you make this change, you ask? A few reasons.
3. This has absolutely no backing of any information released for Civ, and I may be alone in saying this, but I think the way previous Civ titles handled increasing "difficulty" was ********. Giving the AI cheats to make up for it's stupidity, and forcing the player to use ridiculous (and often needlessly precise) builds to beat the game on the highest settings (with a healthy dose of sheer luck) isn't a recipe for fun in my opinion. I'm of the mind the computer should be on an even slate with me in terms of unit power, economy, production, ect., and difficulty should just affect how smart, conniving, backstabbing and brutal they are. Easy computers would be dull, easy to sway and negotiate with, not too good at tactics and such (though they should still expand their land base as fast or nearly as fast as the player, it's silly how much land you can soak up on the easier levels in Civ while the computer has a thumb up it's... well, you get the point) while a very hard difficulty setting would result in stubborn computers likely to turn on you, make wars, get other computers to war with you, ect. Being on a hard difficulty shouldn't mean i have to pad the computers pockets ridiculously with gifts to make them see a good deal, either, that's just ******** fake difficulty to make things worse on the player (computer to computer reactions seemed no different, to me at least). If I offer a very war centered civ a join war declaration against a lesser opponent, it should weight it as a very attractive option, even if it hates me (hard computers would make a nice little backstab here, near the end of the war while my units are abroad, eh?).
Well, there's my 2 cents (more like a dollar, that was a lot longer than I expected it to be). I've had other ideas about things I'd like to see in Civ, but those are probably a little too extreme and radical to wish for, haha. I think about game concepts and design too much at times...
1. Change of scale - Yeah, the Civ series isn't based on realism for scale, but still, with the changes to the map (hexes) and the one unit per hex rule, it seems pretty logical to me to make everything in Civ larger. A hex would represent "less" land, units can move farther than 1 hex a turn, cities could possibly end up taking up more than one hex at their peaks of development. Not as likely, but something I'd like to see, is time move slower per turn, especially in the beginning of a game. I'd like to see a "game" of Civ be more defined by playing through an "Age", rather than going from whatever B.C. to landing in AC in the year 3000 A.D.
2. Change of movement/action - With the new unit/hex idea coming in, this one seemed like a no-brainer to me, although I haven't seen it anywhere else... Simultaneous movement/actions. When giving orders to "move" or "attack" or any other such thing, the unit would not immediately go off to do that, but instead would simply receive the order and wait (possible displaying simple graphical representation of current order on the map, like an arrow to move, red arrow to attack, ect.). You run through all units, giving them all orders for the turn, then "activate" all those orders.
Why would you make this change, you ask? A few reasons.
2a. It makes moving with a unit/hex much, much easier, you can look at the final product and adjust as needed to make sure the units you need to move get there as efficiently as possible, making "bottleneck" or moves blocked by other units that haven't moved yet/already moved and wasn't a good move.
2b. It makes more sense from a realism point, in some ways. Although a "turn" represented a number of years, and as such could be explained away with independent moves, it bothered me I could hold decisions on some units until the outcomes of other units actions were done, such as committing a unit to a fight, depending on a unit already in the fight achieving a desired result from an attack, or putting workers into situations at the beginning of the turn would have been silly and suicidal, but at the end were safe positions, because of other moves. Just something I personally disliked, there's probably a lot of people that would disagree with me there, and say they loved that (I know I personally used it to my advantage, even not liking it, haha).
2c. And finally, it would make much more sense from a gameplay viewpoint. Stacks of Doom were hilariously strange in just being a series of one on one battles, with numbers holding no meaning in terms of affecting how the battles played out, I often feel like a careless commander who throws his troops at his enemies piecemeal, slowly wearing down their numbers through sheer attrition and a massive loss of manpower (if units are evenly matched, of course). Assume 3 units in a stack being attacked by 10 units in a stack, but the 10 are all slightly inferior units in the matchup. In a real life encounter, the 10 units could conceivably bury the 3 units in sheer numbers, completely offsetting their inferior stats (e.g., Stalingrad), but in previous Civ titles it was a likely outcome for the 3 units to be perfectly able to take on the 10 in one on one matchups with minimal losses and win the engagement handily, which also made units become obsolete at a terrifying rate. If you implemented simultaneous moves, you could have up to 6 units attack a single unit at the same time, using their numbers advantage to actually affect the number of losses you may take (losses spread evenly, possibly reduced for numbers, instead of a certain number of units just dying, and the rest taking slight losses in comparison). This would ALSO add in a strategic element to the geography and unit placement/movement, something Civ has lacked seriously in 3 and 4 beyond "hill = bonus defense", ect. If a unit is in a place where it's hard/impossible to surround them, that'd be a great place to be if you're expecting to be attacked. And you could add bonuses to attacking from multiple angles (pincer attacks, rear attacks, ect.,) meaning battles would have a tactical feel beyond being a meatgrinder/number calculator, you could even have different bonuses for different angles of different attacks (highest being from two opposite directions, ect., very noticeable with modern combat/any gun based combat).
3. This has absolutely no backing of any information released for Civ, and I may be alone in saying this, but I think the way previous Civ titles handled increasing "difficulty" was ********. Giving the AI cheats to make up for it's stupidity, and forcing the player to use ridiculous (and often needlessly precise) builds to beat the game on the highest settings (with a healthy dose of sheer luck) isn't a recipe for fun in my opinion. I'm of the mind the computer should be on an even slate with me in terms of unit power, economy, production, ect., and difficulty should just affect how smart, conniving, backstabbing and brutal they are. Easy computers would be dull, easy to sway and negotiate with, not too good at tactics and such (though they should still expand their land base as fast or nearly as fast as the player, it's silly how much land you can soak up on the easier levels in Civ while the computer has a thumb up it's... well, you get the point) while a very hard difficulty setting would result in stubborn computers likely to turn on you, make wars, get other computers to war with you, ect. Being on a hard difficulty shouldn't mean i have to pad the computers pockets ridiculously with gifts to make them see a good deal, either, that's just ******** fake difficulty to make things worse on the player (computer to computer reactions seemed no different, to me at least). If I offer a very war centered civ a join war declaration against a lesser opponent, it should weight it as a very attractive option, even if it hates me (hard computers would make a nice little backstab here, near the end of the war while my units are abroad, eh?).
Well, there's my 2 cents (more like a dollar, that was a lot longer than I expected it to be). I've had other ideas about things I'd like to see in Civ, but those are probably a little too extreme and radical to wish for, haha. I think about game concepts and design too much at times...
