zulu9812
The Newbie Nightmare
AI Triggering
-------------------------
Just about every scenario editor for other games has this, and I'm sure you'll agree it's just about essential for scenarios. In fact, if you don't want to spend a hell of a lot of time coding it, why not just include a facility for incorporating slc script (e.g. Call To Power 2). That's simple to use, and CTP modders have done some wonderful things.
Ability to define size of tiles
------------------------------------
This would mean that you could make munits any size you wanted and not have to limit their size/formation in order to fit it into a standardized stile size. Note that I DONT mean that tile sizes vary between each other in-game, or that a tile would change to accomodate a larger unit; just that you can pre-determine universal tile size in the editor.
Terrain - mountain ranges
------------------------------------
The current graphics for hill and mountain ranges look a bit silly - a series of bumps on the map. If mountain or hill tiles ar enext to each other, they should intertwine/interlock. Not to become one hill or mountain, but there should definitely be a continuation of sorts. And the whole map should rise up as well, like in SMAC.
Rivers as supply routes
-------------------------------------
For a long, long time before the industrial revolution rivers, not roads, where the primary inudstrial and supply conduit. So in-game, if a river flows from a city to a resource( but no road to that resource) the city should count as connected to that resource.
Multiple factors governing city growth
------------------------------------------------
At the moment, cities grow if there's excess food (also if they have aquaduct/hospital, but that's secondary), and shrink if there's not enough food. It should be more complicated than that. If your civ as a whole as a high literacy rate, overall population growth should be lower - simply because that's the model born out in RL (Scotland, for example, will apparently lower it's population by 258,000 over the next 20 years because people are having less children, and we are a well developed industrial, educated society). It just seems that at a certain development point, the population should stabilise and stop churning out babies, especially if they know that they're aren't the resources to support them. You could also factor in other things. For example, the Carthaginians sacrificed children - ostensibily to the gods, but practically speaking as meand of population control. Modern-day China has a strict 1-child-per-family policy.
Food transfer between cities
---------------------------------------
If a city is unable to grow past a certain city size, all the extra food it's producing is wasted. Instead, food should be able to be transferred to other cities that do need more food (and transferred by road, river, harbour or airport). Just a simple export food slider on the city screen, and this would enable empires to manage resources so much better.
Supply lines
----------------------------------------
All troops should have to be connected to their home territory by some way - i.e. travelling along a road, along a coastline, etc - or suffer a stat penalty of some sort. Or perhaps have -1 health for being so far away from home, -2 for being even further, that sort if thing. Additonally, you could have it defined by eras, e.g.
Ancient Age - unit counts as supplied if on tile with irrigation or road back to a friendly city, or on a coastal tile if Map Making is discovered
Middle Age - same as Ancient Age, although gunpowder weapons must always be on a road or coastal tile to count as supplied
Industrial Age - as above, but once flight is discovered any unit on any tile counts as supplied if within, say, 8 tiles of a friendly city or airbase
Modern Age - as above, but you could have a tech which, once discovered, eliminates suplly line penalties altogether. Or failing, that, workers be able to build a forward supply base (e.g. in the same way as building an airbase), and that forward supply base counts a city for the purpose of supplies.
Ancient age supply should be much more difficult. Supply in the ancient age was so bad that large armies were impossible. The lack of a good supply chain is partially what made Alexander the Great turn away from conquering the rest of asia. A good supply chain is what enabled Napoleon to conquer much of Europe, but when the supply chain failed in Russia, he failed.
You could disrupt supply lines by pillaging roaded and irrigated tiles, destroying Airbases and Forward Supply Bases.
Finally, you could have a unit flag which meant that a unit was immune to supply loss. That would let a player field 'Invationary Expiditions'; 'Special Ops.'; 'Exploratory Forces'; 'Spy/Recon. Missions'; 'Beach Landing Forces', that sort of thing.
Terrain-specific combat bonuses
---------------------------------------------
In a similar manner to the PTW editor allowing you to let a unit ignore movement costs for specific terrain, I would love to be able to give troops fighting in a certain terrain a combat bonus. For example, you could give the guerilla unit a combat bonus so that when it's attacking from a jungle tile to any other tile, or any other tile to a jungle tile (i.e. the bonus applies if the attacker or the defender are on the specified terrain), it adds 50% to attack and defence. Another example would be tanks versus infantry when assaulting a city. The infantry (8/10/1) has the Specialist-Urban ability and the tank (16/8/2) doesn't. On any other terrain, the infantry's stats don't change, but when attacking or defending a city his stats change to 12/15/1 - after all, tanks are vulnerable in built-up urban areas.
Weapon type Vs Armour type bonuses
---------------------------------------------------
You could designate a unit as an anti-tank unit, so that it doubles it's attacks versus any unit with a Tank flag, but halves it's attack versus any other unit. So, compare a Jagdpanzer tank destroyer versus a Sherman tank. Both have stats 16/8/2. the tank-destroyer gets an attack of 32 versus the Sherman, but only an attack of 8 versus infantry. One of the major shortcomings of the Jagdpanzer was that it lacked a machine gun to deal with infantry.
Increase the effect of nuclear weapons
---------------------------------------------------
Whilst a nuke doesn'y have to destroy a city (the model of 50% damage all round is fine for me) the after-effect should be more severe:
- a bigger down wind spread of pollution
- several additional levels of pollution radiating from the impact
- need for specialist units to be created to "clean up" the contamination
- that "clean up" time much longer
- units not in vehicles to suffer heavy losses just entering the contanimated zones, even annihilation.
- effects on what can grown / graze on land should be widespread
(i.e. can't irrigate, plant forest, etc.)
Different types of WMDs
---------------------------------
I'd like to see chemical and biological weapons in game - a bombard attack that only affected units and populations, but not city or tile improvements is fine. Obviously, using such weapons carry a heavy diplomatic price. Speaking of diplomacy...
A MUCH better Diplomacy system
-------------------------------------------
More diplomatic ageements, e.g.:
- Non-Aggression pact - the civs in question won't attack each, no matter what (i.e. regardless, of MPPs).
- 1-way Right of Passage - one civ can go into the other civ's territory, but they can't go in yours.
- Pollution pact - both civs agree to keep pollution at a pre-determined level
- Scientific pact - both civs share scientifc research
- Exclusive trade pact - one civ agrees to sell a particular resource to another civ and no-one else
- 'Attack this Civ' treaty - Civ A gets Civ B to declare war on Civ C without Civ A having to declare war on Civ C.
- 'Make peace with X' - Civ A is at war with Civ B. Civ C persuades Civ A to actively try to make peace with Civ B.
The United Nations should be vastly different, in fact it should be a lot like the Planetary Council from SMAC. Possible UN resolutions could be:
- No attacks against fellow UN members
- Eject Civ X from the UN
- Pollution/Scientific pacts with all UN membrs (see above)
- Trade embargo against a on-UN member
- Exlclusive trade agreement between UN members (and thus no trade with non-UN members
By trade, I mean material trade, not treaty negotiations.
Basically, UN members should be immune to any punitive action from the UN as a body, until they are booted out of the UN.
Ability to add Eras!
----------------------------
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
Need I say more?
Also, there was my Conquest XP Creation wishlist, which has a lot of valuable comments that would equally be valid for Civ4. Rather than duplicate it here, here's the link to that thread - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53518&highlight=Wishlistp
-------------------------
Just about every scenario editor for other games has this, and I'm sure you'll agree it's just about essential for scenarios. In fact, if you don't want to spend a hell of a lot of time coding it, why not just include a facility for incorporating slc script (e.g. Call To Power 2). That's simple to use, and CTP modders have done some wonderful things.
Ability to define size of tiles
------------------------------------
This would mean that you could make munits any size you wanted and not have to limit their size/formation in order to fit it into a standardized stile size. Note that I DONT mean that tile sizes vary between each other in-game, or that a tile would change to accomodate a larger unit; just that you can pre-determine universal tile size in the editor.
Terrain - mountain ranges
------------------------------------
The current graphics for hill and mountain ranges look a bit silly - a series of bumps on the map. If mountain or hill tiles ar enext to each other, they should intertwine/interlock. Not to become one hill or mountain, but there should definitely be a continuation of sorts. And the whole map should rise up as well, like in SMAC.
Rivers as supply routes
-------------------------------------
For a long, long time before the industrial revolution rivers, not roads, where the primary inudstrial and supply conduit. So in-game, if a river flows from a city to a resource( but no road to that resource) the city should count as connected to that resource.
Multiple factors governing city growth
------------------------------------------------
At the moment, cities grow if there's excess food (also if they have aquaduct/hospital, but that's secondary), and shrink if there's not enough food. It should be more complicated than that. If your civ as a whole as a high literacy rate, overall population growth should be lower - simply because that's the model born out in RL (Scotland, for example, will apparently lower it's population by 258,000 over the next 20 years because people are having less children, and we are a well developed industrial, educated society). It just seems that at a certain development point, the population should stabilise and stop churning out babies, especially if they know that they're aren't the resources to support them. You could also factor in other things. For example, the Carthaginians sacrificed children - ostensibily to the gods, but practically speaking as meand of population control. Modern-day China has a strict 1-child-per-family policy.
Food transfer between cities
---------------------------------------
If a city is unable to grow past a certain city size, all the extra food it's producing is wasted. Instead, food should be able to be transferred to other cities that do need more food (and transferred by road, river, harbour or airport). Just a simple export food slider on the city screen, and this would enable empires to manage resources so much better.
Supply lines
----------------------------------------
All troops should have to be connected to their home territory by some way - i.e. travelling along a road, along a coastline, etc - or suffer a stat penalty of some sort. Or perhaps have -1 health for being so far away from home, -2 for being even further, that sort if thing. Additonally, you could have it defined by eras, e.g.
Ancient Age - unit counts as supplied if on tile with irrigation or road back to a friendly city, or on a coastal tile if Map Making is discovered
Middle Age - same as Ancient Age, although gunpowder weapons must always be on a road or coastal tile to count as supplied
Industrial Age - as above, but once flight is discovered any unit on any tile counts as supplied if within, say, 8 tiles of a friendly city or airbase
Modern Age - as above, but you could have a tech which, once discovered, eliminates suplly line penalties altogether. Or failing, that, workers be able to build a forward supply base (e.g. in the same way as building an airbase), and that forward supply base counts a city for the purpose of supplies.
Ancient age supply should be much more difficult. Supply in the ancient age was so bad that large armies were impossible. The lack of a good supply chain is partially what made Alexander the Great turn away from conquering the rest of asia. A good supply chain is what enabled Napoleon to conquer much of Europe, but when the supply chain failed in Russia, he failed.
You could disrupt supply lines by pillaging roaded and irrigated tiles, destroying Airbases and Forward Supply Bases.
Finally, you could have a unit flag which meant that a unit was immune to supply loss. That would let a player field 'Invationary Expiditions'; 'Special Ops.'; 'Exploratory Forces'; 'Spy/Recon. Missions'; 'Beach Landing Forces', that sort of thing.
Terrain-specific combat bonuses
---------------------------------------------
In a similar manner to the PTW editor allowing you to let a unit ignore movement costs for specific terrain, I would love to be able to give troops fighting in a certain terrain a combat bonus. For example, you could give the guerilla unit a combat bonus so that when it's attacking from a jungle tile to any other tile, or any other tile to a jungle tile (i.e. the bonus applies if the attacker or the defender are on the specified terrain), it adds 50% to attack and defence. Another example would be tanks versus infantry when assaulting a city. The infantry (8/10/1) has the Specialist-Urban ability and the tank (16/8/2) doesn't. On any other terrain, the infantry's stats don't change, but when attacking or defending a city his stats change to 12/15/1 - after all, tanks are vulnerable in built-up urban areas.
Weapon type Vs Armour type bonuses
---------------------------------------------------
You could designate a unit as an anti-tank unit, so that it doubles it's attacks versus any unit with a Tank flag, but halves it's attack versus any other unit. So, compare a Jagdpanzer tank destroyer versus a Sherman tank. Both have stats 16/8/2. the tank-destroyer gets an attack of 32 versus the Sherman, but only an attack of 8 versus infantry. One of the major shortcomings of the Jagdpanzer was that it lacked a machine gun to deal with infantry.
Increase the effect of nuclear weapons
---------------------------------------------------
Whilst a nuke doesn'y have to destroy a city (the model of 50% damage all round is fine for me) the after-effect should be more severe:
- a bigger down wind spread of pollution
- several additional levels of pollution radiating from the impact
- need for specialist units to be created to "clean up" the contamination
- that "clean up" time much longer
- units not in vehicles to suffer heavy losses just entering the contanimated zones, even annihilation.
- effects on what can grown / graze on land should be widespread
(i.e. can't irrigate, plant forest, etc.)
Different types of WMDs
---------------------------------
I'd like to see chemical and biological weapons in game - a bombard attack that only affected units and populations, but not city or tile improvements is fine. Obviously, using such weapons carry a heavy diplomatic price. Speaking of diplomacy...
A MUCH better Diplomacy system
-------------------------------------------
More diplomatic ageements, e.g.:
- Non-Aggression pact - the civs in question won't attack each, no matter what (i.e. regardless, of MPPs).
- 1-way Right of Passage - one civ can go into the other civ's territory, but they can't go in yours.
- Pollution pact - both civs agree to keep pollution at a pre-determined level
- Scientific pact - both civs share scientifc research
- Exclusive trade pact - one civ agrees to sell a particular resource to another civ and no-one else
- 'Attack this Civ' treaty - Civ A gets Civ B to declare war on Civ C without Civ A having to declare war on Civ C.
- 'Make peace with X' - Civ A is at war with Civ B. Civ C persuades Civ A to actively try to make peace with Civ B.
The United Nations should be vastly different, in fact it should be a lot like the Planetary Council from SMAC. Possible UN resolutions could be:
- No attacks against fellow UN members
- Eject Civ X from the UN
- Pollution/Scientific pacts with all UN membrs (see above)
- Trade embargo against a on-UN member
- Exlclusive trade agreement between UN members (and thus no trade with non-UN members
By trade, I mean material trade, not treaty negotiations.
Basically, UN members should be immune to any punitive action from the UN as a body, until they are booted out of the UN.
Ability to add Eras!
----------------------------
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
ability to add eras!
Need I say more?
Also, there was my Conquest XP Creation wishlist, which has a lot of valuable comments that would equally be valid for Civ4. Rather than duplicate it here, here's the link to that thread - http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53518&highlight=Wishlistp
