My Updated List of Civ Suggestions

[sen803]

I think the developers have done a fantastic job with the recent patches and I am looking forward to playing the New Frontier Pass!

Below is an updated version of my own list of recommendations for the game. I posted a version of this about a year ago, but I’ve updated and added some thoughts based on the recent patches.

Again, I do not claim that all of these ideas are original; they are just a collection of things I have thought while playing the game and read.





Regarding New Civ Content:


· There are a few civs that have not been included in the Civ franchise partially because of a lack of a clear leader for that civ. Given what a nice job the developers did with city-states, I think one option would be to develop playable city-state federations. Examples that could fit this bill would be Switzerland, Italy, and the UAE, to name a few. The way I would suggest that they work is that there be a limited number of potential cities you can found in a city state federation. For example, if playing as Switzerland, you could have Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich, Lucerne, and Bern—5 potential cities (just as an example). City-state federations would have the total number of cities that you could found capped (but more than one, as that was rather limiting in Civ 5 as Venice). Rather than a leader, the Civ would just be a flag (think the Napoleonic Europe scenario in Civ3). Rather than a leader bonus, each city-state federation would just be the Suzerain bonuses of those cities, and each city would have a unique bonus. The capital city and order of cities founded would be random, and each city would have a unique Suzerain bonus. As cities are founded, you acquire each individual city’s Suzerain bonus—for example Geneva would have its science bonus, Lausanne could have some Lake adjacency bonus, Lucerne could have a mountain adjacency bonus (or earlier ski resorts) etc. There could still be a unique improvement/unique building for the city-state federation, but there would not be a leader bonus, and the Civ’s bonus would be the individual Suzerain bonuses. However, if the city-state federation lost the city due to loyalty, it would become a free city-state rather than a free city. I personally would prefer a setup similar to this rather than what was done with Venice in Civ 5, as in Civ 6 there are more bonuses to settling different terrain types, and you really need to settle at least three cities. Also, I don’t think that just assimilating the city-states (as was Austria’s bonus in Civ 5) in Civ 6 is as desirable, as often the individual Suzerain bonuses are quite strong. Italy could also be represented as a city-state federation (with a few more cities, for example Venice, Milan, Turin, Bologna, Florence, Naples, Palermo, Bari), or there could be different city-state federations for Venice and Tuscany.

· I think it would be great to have the Pueblos of the American Southwest as a civilization! However, I’m sure that would have its logistical limitations. One alternative would be to have Mesa Verde or one of the other now uninhabited Pueblo cities be a city state. They could produce pottery which increases the housing from Granary and provides amenities.

· I think that the list of actual city states in Civ5 was more congruent with actual city-states than the list in Civ6—where a lot of capitals of countries which have not made it into Civ. Where is Singapore? Where is Monaco? Also if Italy does not make it into Civ6 (which would be disappointing) then there really needs to be catch-up of the Italian city states, which were actual city states.

· While every player has his or her list of wonders that he or she would like to see added to the Civilization franchise, I do think that it would be interesting to see the Empire State Building added to Civ 6. I realize that there are already enough NYC wonders in the game, but it is one of the most iconic skyscrapers.

· I think Hollywood should make it back into the Civ franchise. I think the degree to which Hollywood has partially framed the current world, regarding what a cultural victory would look like, cannot be underestimated.

· Other wonders I would like to see added include the Ponte du Garde aqueduct, given the engineering emphasis of Civ 6, and the Dome of the Rock, to provide more Middle Eastern representation.

· I personally think that the Great People are one of the strongest additions to Civ 6—they are really very well done. However, I was a bit disappointed that expansions didn’t add any more great people, and only modified the bonuses of some. I think it would be nice to see some additional Great People, so that the exact Great People that you get in each game is less predictable. It would be nice to have some Great Engineers who could rush districts, rather than wonders.

· With the de-stacking of cities in Civ 6, this lead to the late game playing out very differently from other versions of Civ. Since there are not as many tiles to work for production and food, these need to come from alternate sources. I think the production is at least partially improved by the implementation of the power plants and power system in gathering storm, although I think that could be further improved. However, there really is not a great substitute for the lack of using tiles to generate food The farming adjacency bonuses only provide so much food, and I rarely find myself with a city with a population above 27; I also very rarely have any specialists in my cities. I think that there need to be some ways to bring food into key cities other than domestic trade routes, which only provide a limited amount of food and take away from international routes. I think one potential way would be that if two cities were connected by a railroad or by airports, that you could dedicate a tile in one city to actually provide the food to a different city. Another way would be to have increased food bonuses for buildings like the food market and the seaport etc.

· I also think it would be interesting to have the ability to move portable/plantable resources around the map. Humans have moved resources around the world quite a bit, from to the introduction of horses by Europeans to the Americas to the global movement of coffee production etc. I think once you have certain resources that are improved, for example cattle, then you could have the option to produce or buy a rancher, which you could then use to transport cattle to another location and try to introduce cattle onto a tile elsewhere that doesn’t currently have a resource on it. The moving resources would have a certain failure rate, including if you try to move it onto a tile where there’s a currently unrevealed resource. Similar options could be there for wheat, horses, bananas, coffee, cotton, so that if one are of the map is empty but relatively resource scarce, you have the opportunity to try to buff that location up a bit with some bonus or luxury resources.

· It would be interesting to see disease and have it interface with the disaster system in gathering storm. For example, a flood could lead to an epidemic, which could be mitigated or travel with trade routes depending on the Civ’s policies/buildings etc. It would be nice to see a medical district with an apothecary, hospital, and medical research building, or some similar escalation, as well as have great healers. I would also like to see pollution as a result of city growth and burning carbon, which could be mitigated by medical buildings as well as mass transit systems and other city center buildings. Although the developers have been clearly most interested in creating buildings which can be visualized in the districts etc, I think some additional city center buildings could be created without the need for artistic representation—such as a mass transit system, recycling centers etc.

· The legal system has been conspicuously absent in Civ 6. I think it would be nice to at least have courthouses in Civ 6, which could interface with the governments. For example you could need to have a certain number of courthouses (or some legal currency) in order to get the major and minor bonuses of each government. I also think it would be nice if each government had an increase in the number of minor bonuses for each level (i.e. level 2 governments had two minor bonuses etc.).

· I think that the developers could think about one more naval DLC in the future. I think they have done a great job of making Civ6 one of the most naval-focused iterations of the franchise. However, I have a bit of a problem with the embarkation being so easy. I think builders should only be able to embark onto the tiles that are part of a given city’s borders. I also think that the Civ3 version of requiring transport ships to allow land units to travel on the sea is more realistic—it seems a bit odd when swordsmen just embark and start traveling on the coast.

 

[sen803]

Regarding Classic Civ Content:


I do think that the developers should bring back some of the classic civ content. After all, the developers not only have to consider actual history, but at this point they have to consider the history of the civilization franchise!



· There are a few classic Civ wonders that are also currently missing. Given that the Globe theatre has been included in each iteration of Civ, I do think that it should make an appearance in Civ 6. I would also love to see how the art department would depict the Globe.

· The Sistine Chapel has also been included as a wonder in every iteration of Civ. I understand why it hasn’t been included in Civ 6 given that it isn’t really magnificent from the exterior, and the wonders have all included a very nice artistic representation. However, I do wonder if there is a way to also include the Sistine Chapel as a wonder, and not simply as a work of art. Although St. Peter’s and the Sistine Chapel are not one entity, it might be interesting to have St. Peter’s as a wonder, which produces three great works that are the Sistine Chapel/the Last Judgment/and Pieta (in addition to another trait, such as great works of art produce great artist points).

· Some other classic civ wonders that are missing are the statue of Zeus and one of the great Dams. Given all of the engineering projects and wonders in Civ 6, I am surprised that neither the Hoover Dam nor the Three Gorges Dam have made in into the game yet.

· Given the Copernicus featured so prominently in multiple versions of Civ, I am surprised that he is not included as a great scientist. Although observatories have been a bit overemphasized in prior versions of Civ, it might be nice to have a modern observatory as an improvement for mountains, or maybe for Volcanoes? It could add to the science yields of Volcano eruptions.

· I think Magellan the great person should just increase movement for all naval units by 1 point. Most of the changes to great admirals last year were fantastic! However, I typically have all of the naval luxuries, so I don’t find that bonus to be particularly useful.

· I am surprised that Civ6 has not found a way to include longbowmen, which is historically been important in the Civ franchise. I was somewhat expecting Eleanor to have a unique unit for the English and for the French (a longbowman and some sort of crusader, respectively). I think Eleanor is a great addition to the game, but the reality is that her unique ability doesn’t really come into effect until the industrial era, at the earliest, as the number of great works is comparatively small earlier. I think it would be nice if she would receive her own set of units as England and France, which would decrease loyalty in surrounding cities when they won a battle—similar to the decrease in religion when a religious unit is killed. Granted longbowmen don’t fit perfectly with when Eleanor was Queen, but it is close enough. I think a unique unit for Eleanor and then a decrease in the strength of her current ability would be better for balance and timing of her strength.

 

[sen803]

Suggestions for a few additional balance changes to GS content:



· Overall I think that the pace of the tech and culture tree is improved after the patches that came out post-GS, but I think it could still be optimized a bit further. I still seem to fly through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance re tech tree, and I also tend to go fairly quickly through the Industrial and Atomic ages in culture. One solution to this would be to use the eras as a framework for the cost of technologies and civics and apply a modifier to increase the cost of researching techs/civics in future eras. This is similar to how great people in more advanced eras have a modifier whereby they cost more points than they do if recruited in the same era of the game. Another possibility would be to decrease the science yields per citizen with progressive eras, which would force players to spend more time building campuses and campus buildings, rather than just having a large population.

· I think that the recent patches have improved the World Congress, but it still needs a little reworking.

o I think there should be diplomatic consequences for voting for a proposal that significantly hurts a specific civ (for example voting against a military emergency when one of my allies capitals was captured should have negatively impacted my relationship with the ally).

o I think that the benefits of emergencies are still significantly underpowered (compared to R/F where they were actually pretty good)—I’ll go to war for a large sum of gold or another significant reward, but not for 100 diplomatic favor. This is particularly true in the late game when I am often generating that much in a few turns. Also, I think that the benefits of emergencies should be scaled by era.

o I also think that the World’s Fair and the Nobel Prize bonuses are a bit weak. I have little incentive to allocate the production of cities to these projects the benefits are rather meager, and I just passively accrue the points from great people etc.

· The grievance system is a great addition and an interesting concept. However, the grievances as they are currently implemented decay a bit too fast particularly regarding religion. Historically, grievances from wars tend to decay over a few generations, but religious grievances may last for centuries. The current grievance system in Civ6 has the opposite emphasis.

· Railroads still remain underpowered. Their carbon emissions are high, and their movement reduction and increase in gold for trade routes is comparatively low. There have been whole threads on how to fix railroads, but something really needs to be modified here.

· Also, creating railroads is very tedious. It would be nice if there was a way to automatically tell a military engineer to create a railroad to a certain city. Having to create it tile by tile is not enjoyable.

· I am not sure why Machu Picchu is a late classical wonder when it really should be a late Medieval era wonder, similar to Cichen Itza.

· I think that there should be an era score for building the first ski resort. Also, I think that they need a little bit of rebalancing. I think similar to how the Cahokia mounds only provide bonuses based on the number you have in a given city, likewise you should only get an amenity from the first ski lodge in that city. As it stands, it is too easy to completely mitigate unhappiness in the atomic era by simply building ski resorts everywhere.

· The storms and droughts have been better adjusted with some of the patches. However, I have noticed that droughts and hurricanes still tend to recur in the same location. Also, I think that tornadoes are a bit overpowered—it might make sense to just have Tornados last a single turn and then disappear. Given how important Mountains and continental divides are to gathering storm, I think it would be interesting to include earthquakes as another natural disaster.

· Matthias is better balanced after the adjustments, but I still think that it would be more historically accurate if some of his city-state benefits only apply to city-states following the same religion as Hungary, since so much of that alliance was also religious about curtailing the Ottomans/Islam etc.

· The Dam district is really a great addition to the game, and the hydroelectric plant is a much more realistic version than in prior versions of Civ. However, overall I think the district is a bit underpowered, especially since the flood tiles can have high yields. It would be nice if some of the housing or amenity benefits of a Dam would scale by era or city population, and I think that the hydroelectric plant should provide some of the similar benefits as plants in the industrial zone (some small amount of additional production as well as Great Engineer points).

· I think that lumbar mills on jungle are a bit overpowered, and should have a lower tile yield compared to woods. I would say + 2 for woods and + 1 for jungle.

 

[sen803]

Suggestions for other balance changes:


· I would like to see a mechanism where players could choose in the advanced state menu a key city-state to be included in the map. Certain city-states are vital to certain maps/civilizations (i.e. Auckland for an archipelago map, Nazca if playing as Mali etc.). It might be nice to even be able to pick one city-state that would be included per type.

· I think it would be nice if natural wonders would scale by era. Personally, I only settle by natural wonders in the ancient and classical eras, since most natural wonders only have mediocre yields compared to some other tile improvements in later eras.

· It would be really nice when culture bombing an adjacent civilization to get the option of using the culture bomb or not. Sometimes there are great locations for a specific district, but you don’t necessarily want the diplomatic ramifications of culture bombing an adjacent civilization (which seem to last for many turns).

· I think that the pasture remains a bit underpowered and should receive an additional production either in the Classical or Middle Ages.

· I think it would be nice if settling next to coast and a river gave a total of four housing. The number of world capitals that would fall under this type of classification cannot be underestimated.

· I think the cultural output of Ferris Wheels is quite generous.

· I’m not sure I understand the rationale for having shipyards only produce production for unimproved tiles. If anything, I would say the other way around—that improved tiles should get the bonus.

· I think commercial hubs would be stronger if they had adjacency bonuses for luxury resources.

· Some artifacts still arise from the wrong era. I’ve seen artifacts from the Industrial era of a civ—which got conquered in the Classical era.

· I think that the changes made to the industrial zone with recent patches were excellent. However, two additional changes that I would make are having factories provide housing and getting adjacency bonuses from green power plants (solar, wind, geothermal).

· I think that the cost of recruiting great people one era ahead of your present era is appropriate, but the subsequent increase to those two eras ahead of where you currently are is a bit steep, or should decrease when the era changes. I’ve found that it’s easy to get all the great scientists of an era, but then if you end up two ears ahead on scientists, sometimes it takes an entire era to catch up.

· I think St. Basil’s Cathedral should have some type of tundra requirement.

· I’ve noticed that the AI could be improved is if they actually used the great people that they collect. I’ve often found that great people who aren’t expended in the corresponding district (i.e. Colaeus and Great Admirals), the AI puts them on explore but do not actually use them.

· I think it would be nice if forts could be built earlier. I would put them as an improvement that comes in the late middle-ages (probably with Castles), but then scale their defensive bonus with certain advances (i.e. Siege tactics, steel).

· I think it would be nice if military engineers had a bit easier time building roads. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that a road on a flat tile is the same cost as a mountain tunnel.

· I think it would be nice if the start biases of each Civ were listed in Civilopedia.

· It would be nice if a spy could steal a great work from the Palace, in addition to the art museums etc. I think units should also be able to steal great works (both relics and works of art) when pillaging a tile.

· I think that the technologies that are boosted by barbarian establishments should be limited to the Middle Ages. I received a boost to nuclear fusion from clearing an encampment as Assyria, but even as other players I have received boosts to industrial and modern technologies from finding a random unclaimed goody hut on an island.

· I think the aerodrome district is very underpowered and I rarely build more than two. I think it would be nice to have an international airport as a third building in the district, which provides additional trade routes and increases tourism. It would also be nice if the airport adds food to a city.

· I think that the Eagle Warrior should be a replacement for the Swordsman rather than the Warrior.

· Also, it would be very nice if the great artists would start in the Middle Ages. At the very least, Giotto could be the first artist.

· The great artists are a lot of fun! However, they need some reworking by era. Titian really isn’t industrial, Monet and Van Gogh are def not Atomic, Cassatt was not information era etc—there are several who appear in the wrong era. I think they should move the artists to their corresponding appropriate era and then move some newer artists into the mix. I’m not sure why Picasso, Matisse, Dali etc aren’t in the game as Modern artists. Some others like Hopper or Jackson Pollock, Georgia O’Keffe, Frida Khalo could fit Atomic/Information era roles. Information era may be tricky given copyright, but there is some significant reworking that could be done here.