Let's play a game. You must make Civ5 more fun (through either balance, or adding new stuff, or some other means) by making very small changes. Here are the rules:
1) The change made must be small and very do-able. No "Add in religion!". A good rule of thumb is stick to stuff easily changed by a mod.
2) The change should be something Firaxis would want to consider, so make sure your change is within the design goals. For example, I want to scream "TAKE OUT PUPPETS!", but it's obviously something they want to keep and tweak.
3) Stick to a short list. 5 or less changes.
4) No snarking, saying "install Civ4 instead", or anything else along those lines. I'm putting this on here to keep myself in line as well.
Here's my list. It concentrates on trying to take away that feeling of constantly clicking "end turn", and attempts to make wars with the AI harder:
- Lower production cost of units and buildings by about 25%. (Keep the gold cost the same).
- Increase the beakers required per tech. Make the increase larger with later techs. Something like 10% for Ancient, 20% for Classical, and so on.
- Give a bonus combat % for the AI. 20% for Deity, 15% for Immortal, 10% for Emperor, and so on. Compensate this by lowering their bonus unit production speed. This (along with my first suggestion) should allow more difficult wars without causing a carpet of doom.
- Make iron appear in half the normal amount, but twice as often. So instead of 2 piles of 6 iron, there would be 4 piles of 3 iron.
- Nerf what AIs will pay for luxuries to about half. 10 gold per turn per luxury is too large of a bonus, and turns a lot of the games into grabbing as many luxuries as possible. Increase the amount the AI will pay depending on the era it's in, so an AI will pay 5 gold in Ancient, 6 in Classical, 7 in Medieval, 8 in Ren, 9 in Industrial, and 10 in Modern.
I'm purposely not touching anything to do with maintenance / ICS / policies in my suggestions. I'm saving that for a rant soon enough.
1) The change made must be small and very do-able. No "Add in religion!". A good rule of thumb is stick to stuff easily changed by a mod.
2) The change should be something Firaxis would want to consider, so make sure your change is within the design goals. For example, I want to scream "TAKE OUT PUPPETS!", but it's obviously something they want to keep and tweak.
3) Stick to a short list. 5 or less changes.
4) No snarking, saying "install Civ4 instead", or anything else along those lines. I'm putting this on here to keep myself in line as well.
Here's my list. It concentrates on trying to take away that feeling of constantly clicking "end turn", and attempts to make wars with the AI harder:
- Lower production cost of units and buildings by about 25%. (Keep the gold cost the same).
- Increase the beakers required per tech. Make the increase larger with later techs. Something like 10% for Ancient, 20% for Classical, and so on.
- Give a bonus combat % for the AI. 20% for Deity, 15% for Immortal, 10% for Emperor, and so on. Compensate this by lowering their bonus unit production speed. This (along with my first suggestion) should allow more difficult wars without causing a carpet of doom.
- Make iron appear in half the normal amount, but twice as often. So instead of 2 piles of 6 iron, there would be 4 piles of 3 iron.
- Nerf what AIs will pay for luxuries to about half. 10 gold per turn per luxury is too large of a bonus, and turns a lot of the games into grabbing as many luxuries as possible. Increase the amount the AI will pay depending on the era it's in, so an AI will pay 5 gold in Ancient, 6 in Classical, 7 in Medieval, 8 in Ren, 9 in Industrial, and 10 in Modern.
I'm purposely not touching anything to do with maintenance / ICS / policies in my suggestions. I'm saving that for a rant soon enough.