Sorry in advance, for this is one monster post
What I would do if I was designing Civ 6
Three General goals :
I. Make it a strategic Civ building game again and design every aspect of the game accordingly (get rid of the tactical warfare system of ciV).
II. Make the game more realistic.
III. Immersive historical feel is a must, so let’s get rid of the cartoonish look of the game (No more looking at Alexander the Great and getting the impression I’m watching a Walt Disney movie)
Specifics aspects to achieve the desired goals
1. Civilization management
1.1. Implement historically acurate or plausible government form.
1.1.1. According to government form, why not implement political parties and elections (maybe overkill, I know
)
1.2. Implement a policy management interface where one can manage…
1.2.1. Economic policies (i.e. from left to right)
1.2.2. Interventionism policies (i.e. from isolationist to interventionist)
1.2.3. Industrial policies
1.2.4. Social policies
1.2.5. Cultural policies
1.2.6. Others…
Each position on each policy scale should give specific bonus and penalities. Some limitations and interaction modifiers, according to government form / political party in power, should be implemented
1.3. Implement a Civilization/empire stability score (i.e. from -3 to 3, ala EU3)
1.3.1. Changing government form or policies costs stability points
1.3.2. Declaring war for no reason costs stability points
1.3.3. Being at war for too long costs stability points
1.3.4. Loosing wars should also cost stability points
1.3.5. Years of peace and tranquility should give back stability points
What It means is that you can’t just change gov. form and policies just before declaring war.
1.4. Bring back cultural influence.
1.4.1. Each city should radiate culture, to a certain extent (ala cIV).
1.5. Bring back city health
1.6. Implement a City revolt risk % (based on a local happiness score).
1.6.1. Revolt risk could be influenced by empire global stability, buildings, military presence in city, cultural composition, policies, health
1.6.2. Cities could revolt, becoming independent or joining a neighbouring civ (according to military or cultural pressure)
1.7. Make emigration possible: bad policies, unhappiness, unhealthiness could bring people to move elsewhere if life seems better there.
1.8. Implement population monitoring: global population and military manpower. Military manpower limits recruitment of armies; it is an important resource for warmonger; global population pays taxes, contributes to science, to unhealthiness and to unhappiness.
1.9. Distance from capital. Modifier to revolt risk. I would also implement a distance to nearest city for units. Depending on tech, units can't wander too far from home. It always annoyed me that my scout could discover an entire continent (half the planet) during the first hundreds of year. With such a limitation, maybe map trading would be a little bit interesting.
2. No more tactical warfare
2.1. No more ranged attack from 2 tiles away
2.2. No more 2 or more tiles movement for walking units.
2.3. In Civ VI, you manage armies, not regiments (ok, maybe hordes for ancient ages
). I would give an army 5 composition slots. When recruiting a military unit (army), you can choose its composition according to discovered techs. Exemple : I have only discovered archery, which mean I can recruit an army made of warrior and archers. Filling all 5 slots would cost more of course, ($ and manpower) but would be stronger than an army made of only 2 regiments.
2.4. Merging small armies is possible
2.5. Heavy stacking penalty modifiers
2.6. Armies suffer losses, not regiment
2.7. Promotions to military units refer to specific abilities. The archer unit has the “ranged attack” ability. So if I have an archer regiment in my army, I would have one ranged attack opportunity on the opposing army.
2.8. Armies have both offensive and defensive strength; they have HP’s of course. Strenght is tied with HPs
2.9. Once a tech is discovered and a new unit is available, you can bring back your army home and upgrade it, add regiments.
2.10. Combat arms bonus : important bonus when fighting with an army composed of different types of regiment (i.e. warriors + archers).
2.11. Cities also have one army composition slot. I wouldn’t let armies end turn in a city.
3. Ressources
3.1. Ressources are limited but you can make reserve. From time to time, new deposits can be discovered (good idea from the OP). When out of a resource- dependent unit, the unit stays in play until it’s eliminated.
3.2. Give resources more significant properties
4. Improvements: I believe this aspect of the game could be abstracted. Even though I’ve been used to manage workers for 15 years now, I feel they are not actually needed. A right click on a tile should bring up its specificities as well as its improvements options.
4.1. I would bring back suburbs as a possible improvement. With specific prerequisites, bonus and penalties of course.
5. I like they idea of random events (I would put it optional). Natural disaster destroying improvement, plagues reducing HP of an army, cultural border incident between two neighbour… anything
6. Espionage: should be back in one way or another, probably in an abstracted way. I didn’t think this one through but I know it’s missing
7. Tech : A not utterly stupid techtree would be nice. I could sum it up in two words: logic and options. Techs should be logically tied to one another and to units and buildings they unlock. The techtree should offer paths that are not necessary for mainstream-linear teching but that give significant advantage for different style of play. Kind of like specialty branches.
8. Religion should be back. I wouldn’t give them specific attributes, to avoid creating friction and useless debate. But religion should be there as a cultural properties. We could make up new religion but I think it wouldn’t be as interesting immersion-wise.
9. Graphic: I would go for a totally different, more sober approach. No cartoonish video, no messages talking to me like I’m five years old. Paradox makes beautiful maps. They wouldn’t fit for a civ game, but they have the style i’m looking for. I would also probably play with counters instead of animated units. I want to feel I’m in there, managing a civilization, not just playing another video game.
10. Diplomacy: What can I say... I want diplomacy options, trade partners, friends, enemies and others that just don't care about me.