Ideas so game-changing, they'll have to wait for Civ 6

You start zoomed in, in one portion of the game. It plays like civ.

You learn how to build provinces. These provinces are AI-run, but you tell them what to do. This splitting into provinces keeps your empire maintenance costs down.

As you gain technologies, you gain better meta-management of these provinces.

As the eras progress, more and more such layers of abstraction occur. The game supports "zooming out", and resources that are useful on later stages of the game are rarer (and larger).

The entire world is actually mapped on a 1 hex = 1 km scale, with about 1/6 of a billion tiles total (160,000,000), or a 12,000 x 12,000 map (roughly), with a 2,000 x 2,000 zoom-out for the provinces era, and a 300 x 300 global tactical map for the modern era.
 
I'd like to see real-time combat...essentially take 2 parts Civilization and 1 part Age of Empires. They probably wouldn't be able to pull it off, but I certainly think it would be possible. ;)
 
Dark Ages. Every civilization has a dark time. The ones that survived become great civilizations and the ones that fail perish.
 
I would like to see the game interface develop over time.
In ancient times: you can tell your troops to go do something and they report back later on the result, research happens without much input from you, you suggest rather then control.
As you move through the ages: more options become available for controlling and directing your civ, you get more control over the economy, your research is more directed, feedback from units is eventually instantaneous, etc.

As a more achievable suggestion: I would like to see each turn start with a sitrep that allows issues to be addressed in as much or as little detail as you desire, drill down into those that interest you and delegate the handling of those that do not. In short, exactly the way a leader would get briefed and then govern through a cabinet of ministers and advisors.
 
Dark Ages. Every civilization has a dark time. The ones that survived become great civilizations and the ones that fail perish.

They were going to use Dark Ages in Civ 3 but they decided against them because they were considered not fun at all. They went with Golden Ages instead.

Still, it might be nice to see Dark Ages if done correctly.

I'd like to see the Maps get better and better as your technology improves. Sort of like "There be Sea Serpents here" kind of thing. At first they'd look like they were on hides or papyrus and quite rough and inexact. After the discovery of paper and the printing press they'd look quite polished and become more and more accurate.

Maybe something like these:


 
When you zoom into your city, you will see citizens walking around, working and socializing. For example, if you zoom down on your marketplace, you will see people trading there, and so on...
 
No tiles...

you place a city where you want and the size of plains, forest, mountains can vary, the size of a ressource (and the quantity it gives) can vary too...

Nothing prevents you from placing a city half on plains, half on hills....

Units move a certain distance per turn and you may have 1,03 turn of movement betwenn two cities.
You draw yourself roads and RR. (more exactly, you select a beginning and an end of the road and the worker do it himself the quickest way, not the straightest...)

The BFC of the city will be a ZOI (Zone of Influence). Imagine a circle around the city that gradually expand. it will expand faster on plains and slower on hills, forest...so it isn't always a circle (à la CiV)

After Square tile, hexagonal tile, the no-tile is the next step!!!
 
Yeah, I'd like to see a real revolution — or coup d'état — sometimes. Good idea.

Yeah, I'll second that one.

Also I'd like to see something along the lines of splitting off :- A warlike civ takes over a more pacifist type civ, over time the more pacifist former civ's cities get hacked off and split off to form a new civ or more likely vice-versa. Just an idea, but it could be interesting!
 
I'm sure this idea isn't original to me, but I would like a full-fledged Civilization editor. Not where you edit Civilization itself, but the cultures. The editor would let you create, say, the French civilization -- and indeed, the pre-packaged civilizations in the game would have been made using this editor. Apart from being available in the game directly, those pre-packaged civilizations could serve as great templates for players who don't want to create a civilization from scratch.

There would also be a generator that assembles civilizations automatically, by choosing from the myriad of settings. These civilizations would have randomly-generated names as well. It's not hard to make random generators that string together syllables to form new names, I've created such generators myself using a simple javascript.

An idea such as this would lend itself great to ad blurbs. "Play against any of ten thousand opponents" etc. Plus, us who like logic can play games on the normal, randomly generated worlds totally unlike Earth with cultures _also_ totally unlike Earth's. And us who like to tweak the game can assemble our culture not unlike one can assemble characters in The Sims.

I don't give a hoot about leaders of civilizations. They don't mean anything to me, other than reminding me the game is detached from reality. I don't particularly want to play as Napoleon locked in an ancient, epic battle against Washington... I want to play as, say, Bruba of the Hronga Nation trying to conquer the continent of Suria. And I want to choose what my race looks like (to a superficial degree, i.e. human races), what clothes and armor they wear, what weapons they use at different points in time, I want to pursue alternate-reality techs to a limited degree, what building template my culture uses, what my particular gameplay benefits will be, and so on and so on.

An idea such as this, which I'm convinced has been proposed by others before me, would _really_ take the game to the next level!
 
Well, I want civ6 to be a cart racing game. How is that for a radical change? You pick your big headed leader and get to race around tracks from locales all throughout history!
 
I'd like to see a complete overhaul of the Tech Tree and the process of Research.

1. Why is Mining a prerequisite for Masonry? The available technological options should depend on your resources, not because of some "order" set by the Tech Tree! If there is Stone or Marble nearby, researching Masonry should be an option! If there aren't any fish, Fishing isn't an option! (same goes for Horseback Riding)

2. Why does it seem necessary to research Gunpowder if you want to win? There should be more than one path to "advance" technology. For instance, while you could invent firearms, why not make take medieval weaponry to the next level? How about ignoring airplanes and sticking with dirigibles? BICYCLE WARFARE??? :D

3. Why does the government have to research all technologies? In real life, ordinary people invent most technologies! It'd be plain stupid to say that governments are responsible for technologies such as The Wheel, Fishing, Music, and Aesthetics! I think that although you do research technologies as usual, Great People automatically give you a free tech, regardless of what you do with them.
 
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