The "What Would You Do With Civ 6?" Thread
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KrikkitTwo
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Well...
increasing numbers of cities would lead to less loyalty in ALL cities.
And Loyalty should be semi-global... ie some things would allow you to increase loyalty in one city at the expense of loyalty in all other cities (preferential treatment)
I think that Rebellions should really be the Only cost of poor loyalty.... disloyal citizens shouldn't produce less, they should just produce more rebels.
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.
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.
Wait, cultural influence is...GONE?
We definitely have to bring back espionage.
As for the graphics...no more 3-D! They're completely useless except to lag your computer and take up space. Paradox makes very good graphics, and it would do civ well. Counters would probably be taking it too far, a lot of people would get bored just looking at them. I think the old Civ3 style 2-D units are just perfect. Check out Wyrmshadow's unit creation works on this forum and say that it doesn't look good.
We definitely have to bring back espionage.
As for the graphics...no more 3-D! They're completely useless except to lag your computer and take up space. Paradox makes very good graphics, and it would do civ well. Counters would probably be taking it too far, a lot of people would get bored just looking at them. I think the old Civ3 style 2-D units are just perfect. Check out Wyrmshadow's unit creation works on this forum and say that it doesn't look good.
Eye candy is of course not the most important part of the game, but aesthetics are still important. Civ5 looks good. Far better graphically than Civ4 (which I know you had some complaints about in this regards). You can use strategic view (which is completely 2D with counters) if you have too many lag issues, so I see no need to remove a nice part of the game.
Pretty much the same as I used to want for Civ 5.
Overall philosophy:
Exponential improvement in capacity, with exponential improvement in cost. (Libraries double your research; universities double it again; research labs double it again. Units at the end of an era being generally about four times as strong as those at the end of the previous, all though the game. Workers you need to upgrade all through the game. Tile improvement upgrades through the game which you have to put energy into to stay competitive. One size six city being many times more useful than six size-one cities, with the objective of breaking ICS.)
Multiple ways to win. Multiple approaches necessary to win. Multiple dimensions of challenge, all of which can be dealt with, and a perpetually shifting landscape of priorities as to which are most urgent and what set of tools you have to deal with them over time.
Mechanics that categorically break early warrior rushes, early horseman rushes, and so on. (Civ is not Risk. If you can win by focusing nearly entirely on military, it's not Civ.)
Micromanagement. Lots of it. (Civ is not an empire management game. Civ is a game that manages an empire by managing cities.)
Specific things in:
Separate attack, defence, movement and hit points per unit.
No limits to how many units can stack per tile. (Winning by tactics is for small games. Grand strategy is logistics. Stacks of Doom are not inherently a problem, though they need tweaking.)
No unit promotions. (If you want to make a unit better, for any value of better, have a better unit it upgrades to. If you want experience gained in battle to matter, have it add directly to Warlord/Great General points.)
A couple of hundred mainstream techs, and a hundred or so more additional offshoot optional techs.
Big maps. Games that take a long time. (I am primarily a Civ III player, and my current major Civ III game is 186 hours and counting.) If you want a quick game of an evening, play One City Challenge; if you want a quick game of an evening in which you can conquer the world, that's what Civ Rev is for.
Civ 1/2-type air units, without the fuel limitations.
The ability to bribe cities/units as in Civ 1/2.
Trade that requires you to move physical caravans, as in Civ 1/2, but also involves agreements as in Civ III and later. (The ability to steal these caravans.)
Terraforming. By the end of the game every square should be upgradable and upgraded to maximum utility.
Corruption, waste and health as separately varying problems needing to be separately addressed, with mechanisms for ultimately defeating all of them but only if you build very intensely and very carefully.
Culture as in Civ III, with the addition that it can convert units from other cultures.
Corporations that work like religion does in Civ IV.
Religion that works similarly except person by person rather than city by city.
Great People functionality somewhere in the Civ IV/Civ V range.
A range of indirect attack units similar to CtP.
Production overruns allowing a late-game city to make a horde of early-game units in one turn.
Underwater (maybe also underground?), orbital, and possibly stratosphere map layers.
Transparent diplomacy, like Civ IV or even more so, based both on global reputation and on trust with specific civs.
Different levels of open borders (none; scouts; settlers + one defender; all) which can be asymmetric.
Things I am happy to keep from Civ V:
Research pacts, though making them directly targetable at specific techs would be better, than having to force them by blocking other techs.
City-states.
The simplified strategic view.
Thing I would like to modify extensively from Civ V:
Some combination of social policies, civics and fixed governments.
What I envision here is policies which you a) accrue over time like SPs, b) can have access to incompatible ones at the same time, c) can always change between unlike SPs, but that become harder to change between (and possibly would require you to go through intermediate steps if they were a complete drastic reversal) and d) need you to acquire a certain set (possibly plus certain techs) to be able to move into more advanced fixed governments.
Things I would agree to have in an expansion pack, but would rather have in the core game:
A detailed set of numerous future techs, involving building a presence in the space layer, so that when you build a starship, you have done a plausible degree of industrial preparation and off-world presence. Cities that are essentially space stations. (Tholish's Future Mod of Civ IV is in the direction I most like here.)
Likewise, a detailed set of a few dozen pre-Ancient techs to allow starting from earlier. (There are a couple of Civ IV Mods that do this in ways I like; Cavemen2Cosmos, for example, and Quot Capita)
Selectable start and finish eras.
Things I want in separate expansion packs which I will not buy, if they must exist at all:
Multiplayer, because it's a different game. (Tell me when you last won a multiplayer game by spaceship or culture, or as an OCC.)
Unique units, unique buildings, or leader traits. (Any unit worth having should show up on an offshoot tech. If the Vikings get an inland desert start, longships are no use to them, so they should not get them if what the player wants is camel warriors.)
Anything based on a notion of "realism" that forces the game to conform to actual history, or that impairs the gameplay.
Resource-hogging graphics, multimedia, video, audio of any sort. (Voyager 2 is still running on a 16k computer. If you can't run it on a 286 it's a hog.)
Random events.
Overall philosophy:
Exponential improvement in capacity, with exponential improvement in cost. (Libraries double your research; universities double it again; research labs double it again. Units at the end of an era being generally about four times as strong as those at the end of the previous, all though the game. Workers you need to upgrade all through the game. Tile improvement upgrades through the game which you have to put energy into to stay competitive. One size six city being many times more useful than six size-one cities, with the objective of breaking ICS.)
Multiple ways to win. Multiple approaches necessary to win. Multiple dimensions of challenge, all of which can be dealt with, and a perpetually shifting landscape of priorities as to which are most urgent and what set of tools you have to deal with them over time.
Mechanics that categorically break early warrior rushes, early horseman rushes, and so on. (Civ is not Risk. If you can win by focusing nearly entirely on military, it's not Civ.)
Micromanagement. Lots of it. (Civ is not an empire management game. Civ is a game that manages an empire by managing cities.)
Specific things in:
Separate attack, defence, movement and hit points per unit.
No limits to how many units can stack per tile. (Winning by tactics is for small games. Grand strategy is logistics. Stacks of Doom are not inherently a problem, though they need tweaking.)
No unit promotions. (If you want to make a unit better, for any value of better, have a better unit it upgrades to. If you want experience gained in battle to matter, have it add directly to Warlord/Great General points.)
A couple of hundred mainstream techs, and a hundred or so more additional offshoot optional techs.
Big maps. Games that take a long time. (I am primarily a Civ III player, and my current major Civ III game is 186 hours and counting.) If you want a quick game of an evening, play One City Challenge; if you want a quick game of an evening in which you can conquer the world, that's what Civ Rev is for.
Civ 1/2-type air units, without the fuel limitations.
The ability to bribe cities/units as in Civ 1/2.
Trade that requires you to move physical caravans, as in Civ 1/2, but also involves agreements as in Civ III and later. (The ability to steal these caravans.)
Terraforming. By the end of the game every square should be upgradable and upgraded to maximum utility.
Corruption, waste and health as separately varying problems needing to be separately addressed, with mechanisms for ultimately defeating all of them but only if you build very intensely and very carefully.
Culture as in Civ III, with the addition that it can convert units from other cultures.
Corporations that work like religion does in Civ IV.
Religion that works similarly except person by person rather than city by city.
Great People functionality somewhere in the Civ IV/Civ V range.
A range of indirect attack units similar to CtP.
Production overruns allowing a late-game city to make a horde of early-game units in one turn.
Underwater (maybe also underground?), orbital, and possibly stratosphere map layers.
Transparent diplomacy, like Civ IV or even more so, based both on global reputation and on trust with specific civs.
Different levels of open borders (none; scouts; settlers + one defender; all) which can be asymmetric.
Things I am happy to keep from Civ V:
Research pacts, though making them directly targetable at specific techs would be better, than having to force them by blocking other techs.
City-states.
The simplified strategic view.
Thing I would like to modify extensively from Civ V:
Some combination of social policies, civics and fixed governments.
What I envision here is policies which you a) accrue over time like SPs, b) can have access to incompatible ones at the same time, c) can always change between unlike SPs, but that become harder to change between (and possibly would require you to go through intermediate steps if they were a complete drastic reversal) and d) need you to acquire a certain set (possibly plus certain techs) to be able to move into more advanced fixed governments.
Things I would agree to have in an expansion pack, but would rather have in the core game:
A detailed set of numerous future techs, involving building a presence in the space layer, so that when you build a starship, you have done a plausible degree of industrial preparation and off-world presence. Cities that are essentially space stations. (Tholish's Future Mod of Civ IV is in the direction I most like here.)
Likewise, a detailed set of a few dozen pre-Ancient techs to allow starting from earlier. (There are a couple of Civ IV Mods that do this in ways I like; Cavemen2Cosmos, for example, and Quot Capita)
Selectable start and finish eras.
Things I want in separate expansion packs which I will not buy, if they must exist at all:
Multiplayer, because it's a different game. (Tell me when you last won a multiplayer game by spaceship or culture, or as an OCC.)
Unique units, unique buildings, or leader traits. (Any unit worth having should show up on an offshoot tech. If the Vikings get an inland desert start, longships are no use to them, so they should not get them if what the player wants is camel warriors.)
Anything based on a notion of "realism" that forces the game to conform to actual history, or that impairs the gameplay.
Resource-hogging graphics, multimedia, video, audio of any sort. (Voyager 2 is still running on a 16k computer. If you can't run it on a 286 it's a hog.)
Random events.
Save_Ferris
Admiring Myself
I would add more wonders, first of all.
Also, I would bring religion back.
But here's some new ideas:
Technological city-states
Have Great Philosophers, which can increase happiness or help relationships with other countries
Make cities have a military focus, which gives extra experience to new units
Decrease happiness or strength in cities far away from the capital
Have workers build walls (like they would roads)
Sacrafice a worker for a work boat
Also, I would bring religion back.
But here's some new ideas:
Technological city-states
Have Great Philosophers, which can increase happiness or help relationships with other countries
Make cities have a military focus, which gives extra experience to new units
Decrease happiness or strength in cities far away from the capital
Have workers build walls (like they would roads)
Sacrafice a worker for a work boat
KrikkitTwo
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I Seriously disagree with this part... Civ should be an empire management game (just like it should be strategic and not tactical in military)
You can have micromanagement without necessitating it. Automation to accompany the micro is necessary, IMO, but having the options available to the player so they can fine tune their empire seems to be reasonable to me.
KrikkitTwo
Immortal
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Not really... micromanagement tends to mean it is necessary for best performance.
Some fine tuning is useful, but a lot should be kept out of the game.
In Civ5 and Civ 4, generally the city MM is not too bad (production overflow + proper granaries+queues, etc.)
1: Civilizations should have some way to have cold wars. Civilizations that are large and that both have powerful armies could go at it; citizens could be happy or unhappy and other countries would form alliances influenced by how the two countries compare.
2: terrorists/mercs should somehow be incorporated into the game. They would be treated as barbarians and funded by other countries.
3: There should be several different terrain types, and should be available on the setup menu. I personally miss sn00py's terrain, and the same terrain gets boring after awhile.
4: If we are allowing 5 unit stacking (im not saying its bad, i love the idea) city defense should be upped. maybe alot.
5: nuclear weapons should be able to vaporize entire cities (maybe cities with population under 5)
6: Bring back changing team colors
2: terrorists/mercs should somehow be incorporated into the game. They would be treated as barbarians and funded by other countries.
3: There should be several different terrain types, and should be available on the setup menu. I personally miss sn00py's terrain, and the same terrain gets boring after awhile.
4: If we are allowing 5 unit stacking (im not saying its bad, i love the idea) city defense should be upped. maybe alot.
5: nuclear weapons should be able to vaporize entire cities (maybe cities with population under 5)
6: Bring back changing team colors
yes civil wars!!!!!!!
Well, decent automation is required, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for micromanagement to gain better results, so long as the micromanagement is in an area strategically related, and to do with empire management (so no tactical combat micromanagement, for instance, but fine tuning city outputs is fine).
I have always wanted Civ to be open-ended beyond the present day, with significantly more internal challenge (my citizens demand things, like random event quests) and less emphasis on competitive winning (race the AI to a peaceful victory or conquer them)
Modifying the OP with some additions and changes...
Victory Conditions:
* None! I want to play in a sandbox mode where there is a constant variety of challenges and shifting goals, but winning a game of of civ after spending 40-100 hours falling in love with my civilization = game over = disappointing. I always go several more turns, but after that, there is never anything interesting to do and it devolves into monotonous administrative management. I have many ideas to fix this.
* more on how each victory condition transfers to an open-ended play style below
Cities:
1. Individual city loyalty meters (when low it will break away from empire, unhappiness lowers meter but troop presence stops rebellions).
2. Once in the future era cities may be built on water tiles. These work in the same way as land cities, but require more worker investment for improvements. Therefore they are only efficient after all land is used.
3. Produce their own flavor of most resources which are treated as individually separate resources. Instead of wine is wine and it's all the same and you only benefit from one... wine made in one city tastes different from wine made in another, and there is global demand for each source of wine. The same could be said for their local breed of horses or they way they process iron, etc.
Units:
1. Building units costs population (as well as hammers and strategic resources as they currently do).
2. Units can stand down and rejoin the population by merging into a city (like the way earlier civ settler units could add 1 pop to a city instead of founding a new city)
3. 1UPT is replaced by 1 "Army" per tile. An army functions like 1 unit, but is upgradeable by merging additional units into it, which are of a similar type. Each unit costs 1 population to build, and an army of units in a single tile can include up to 5 population worth of combat strength as a land unit, fighter unit, or air unit.
4. Depending what kind of unit you merge into an army, you add melee or ranged attack strength, and melee or ranged defense. This could include things like artillery (ranged strength) built into a foot soldier militia army (melee attack/defense strength) and another population worth of pikemen (adds mounted defense strength) with flexible options.
5. Armies need a supply line. The longer they spend outside friendly territory (which may include allies), they grow weaker (combat penalties). Pillaging enemy tiles restores their supplies. Supplier units (civilian non-combat type) may also be used to resupply armies in the field, and in later tech eras this may include airlifting supplies.
6. Armies of more than 1 population may be split into smaller forces, and recombined with other armies. The army display shows 5 population slots (moddable to more/fewer) how much of what benefit and type of attack is provided by that 1 unit of population, with drag and drop to split them for non-combat movement. Otherwise the army always attacks/defends as if it is 1 unit with combined stats.
Settlers:
1. Population growth does not stop when you build settlers
2. Like all units, building a settler costs 1 population (as well as hammers)
Placing Cities:
1. Strategic overlay mode from Civ4 built-in so you can easily see the maximum area of workable tiles for every city, and plan future city locations for minimal overlap
2. Tiles in neutral territory outside your borders may be worked but with reduced yield.
3. Cities qualify as being build on a rivers, lake, or coast if such tiles are found anywhere in the greater workable area of that city (up to 3 tiles away), not just 1 adjacent tile away
Workers:
1. More automation options: build improvements (generic, as-is), build roads (from Civ4), build farms (automatically builds farm in appropriate locations with fresh water ONLY), build trade posts/cottages (only automatically builds them on non-farm-ideal tiles, like the opposite of auto-build-farms), improve resources (only wanders around to special resource tiles to improve them)
2. A return of self-improving tiles over time like Civ4 cottages->town effect, but also for farms
3. Like other units, workers may rejoin a city
4. Workers cost no hammers, and instead cost 1 turn and 1 population. This unit is improving tiles around the city instead of producing yield.
5. Workers can stack more than 1UPT up to 5, like an army
Resources:
1. Resources are in limited amounts on the map, but with high limits (50-100, up from 2-6) and new deposits appear frequently
2. Some resources (biological ones) replenish each turn, but may migrate, die off, or spread out.
3. All resources are consumed as they are used, whether by units or buildings. When all of the supply of a resource node has been consumed, it disappears from the map, and becomes a significantly diminished tile (less useful than if it ever had a resource on it). A growth-over-time improvement may be constructed on a dead resource tile to restore it to a better yield over time.
4. All resources can be used by either a unit or a building. Biological resources are typically used to construct supply units (see units above) or city-growth-enhancing buildings. Other resources go to building army units (weapons) and city buildings that add hammers and/or money.
5. When resource-built units are destroyed, non-biological resources will lay on the battlefield. These act like normal resource nodes with only 1 or 2 supply of the resource (1 less than whatever the unit cost to build) and a worker can harvest it without necessarily constructing an upgrade
6. Later in the game some resources produce waste (such as uranium). This can be cleaned up, or dumped somewhere else (but other empires won't appreciate having you dump waste on their coal mines...)
7. Some late game resources can be created artificially through buildings and other resources (whales can make oil). or resources can be converted one to another (using corn to make ethanol, etc)
8. All resources come in flavors per city (see cities above) and can be traded as individual flavors
Empire Management:
1. New info screen for secrets which occurred between countries. If an empire poisoned the water of another empire's city, it would be recorded on the first empire's log for a certain period of time. However, any empire con potentially steal this info using the new espionage system, and hinder the relationship between the two countries.
2. Science sliders are back, with more categories. These include science, education, treasury, espionage, and entertainment (happiness). (I might think of other areas later.) However, the sliders now go by 1% instead of 10%.
3. High level mandates to all city governors, similar to individual city focus, but mass-applied across the civilization: all cities asked to build a library, all cities asked to focus on growth. The ability to setup some rules for how you want all cities to be managed, such as focus on growth to size 10, then switch to production until size 20, then switch to gold, as a normal rule, unless I go into an individual city and change it. Individual cities would gain a "empire strategic focus" separate from "default focus" which would make it follow this type of general rules that I defined in the empire management screen. "Default focus" would make it focus on itself as it currently does, and the other focuses would remain.
Events:
1. Random events occur all of the time, and are split into combat, diplomacy, map, and empire variants.
2. This includes quests requested (demanded!) by the citizens of your civilization, similar to Civ4, but more of them with more variety and popping much more frequently (at least one per tech era, preferably more).
Quests:
1. Completing a quest grants a reward similar to Civ4 quests, but again with more variety of possible rewards: population growth, happiness bonus, combat promotions, free units, new resource node revealed, free building, etc, and mods can add more
2. Failing to complete on time gives a penalty: people leave your civ, cities go into revolt, combat penalty, etc, and mods can add more
3. You may often have more than one quest/demand from your citizens at the same time, and they may be mutually exclusive, so that you have to choose which benefit you want from one vs. which penalty you'll have to suffer from failing the other
Espionage:
1. Works in the same way as in civ 4, but with more options, in order to actually have espionage wars. (cyber-warfare)
Tech:
1. Fully developed future era with new units, buildings, improvements, and abilities.
2. Ability to terraform in late game.
Future Tech (open-ended!)
3. The repeating "Future Tech N" concepts from all previous civ games replaced by either "Make your own future tech" in branches of: buildings/hammers, combat/army, happiness, money/trade/resources, health/growth/food.
4. Depending what your civ needs from its internal struggle in the future (quests/demands), you continue to have choices. These are partly selected, and partly random: you don't know what the future holds or exactly what your research will uncover.
For example you may get +1 happiness in all cities (Civ4 style), or you may learn a new building "Future Tech 3 Happy Building" (prompted to name it and select an icon from a library of icons) which gives +X (random number) happiness and costs Y (random number) hammers or uses ___ resource etc. You can trade this building pattern with another civ. Or you may learn "universal wireless internet" = all cities automatically have library, and libraries no longer cost maintenance.
Religion:
1. Back in the game, but each religion has unique bonuses and all religions are fictional.
Diplomacy:
1. All civs have a reputation progress bar with all other civs, and this is visible through my diplomatic advisor showing me hard numbers on a progress bar, with viable useful suggestions for how to improve my relations with each other civ
2. Trade increases rep
3. War against that civ drastically decreases rep for a very long time
4. Active war as an ally of that civ improves rep
5. War with or against allies of that civ has a similar but reduced effect, but depends on their relative rep with the other civ.
6. "The United States" or "European Union" kind of unions are possible to form through permanent alliances between multiple civs (Civ4 barely almost sort of allowed this, but once you became allies with 1 civ, which was extremely difficult, nobody else would ever EVER become a third member of your union)
7. Diplomacy has an impact on quests and other random events. Your citizens might demand that you raze an enemy city, or that you improve your reputation with another civilization by a certain amount.
8. The UN becomes an international treaty organization like in Civ4, but when one civ defies a resolution, all other members of the UN enforce the resolution and automatically declare war
Modern Problems:
1. Modern era into future era introduce current day problems into the game: pollution, global warming, population growth, etc.
What becomes of the old victory conditions:
Spaceship Victory:
1. Instead of winning=game over, this takes your civ into the realm of the galactic sci-fi future. I mainly focused on this one in my dreams, because this should not be game over. Colonizing another world starts a parallel game on a new randomly-generated map (map type selectable when you launch the spaceship, also based on a varying number of turns to reach that kind of planet)
2. The new planet you settle has its own variation of the same resources we have on earth, but cities (and planets) have their own flavor of every resource.
3. Alien worlds will bring you in contact with alien civilizations which start at a random tech level.
4. The temptation would be to use your space-faring tech to crush an ancient-era alien civ you find on another world, but your citizens, and diplomatic relations will punish you for that (or possibly ask you for it! or maybe you get both quests). You may also have social policies that forbid you from declaring war unless attacked first, etc.
5. After using up all of a particular resource on earth, you need to import more from an alien world.
6. The spaceship can be used as a transport ship to move any unit from one tile on the map to another in one turn
7. The goal of the spaceship play style is to continue colonizing many worlds and spread a large civilization across the galaxy. This is an open-ended sandbox game that you play for maybe an entire year until you get bored with it (which hopefully you never do because of open-ended tech advancement and ongoing quests/demands from inside your civ)
Diplomatic Victory:
1. The goal of this play style is to achieve a permanent alliance between all civs you ever encounter: The United States of Earth, through the spaceship playstyle, into the United Federation of Planets.
2. Richer diplomacy options help guide you to how to make friends effectively
3. Espionage can be used to increase your understanding of other civs wants/needs to find more effective ways to make them your ally, and/or convince them to accept alliances with their enemies, as you try to work for world peace
Cultural Victory:
1. city-flipping is back like in civ4
2. espionage includes a component of propaganda to improve your cultural influence on another civ's cities
3. large cultural influence will improve diplomatic relations, and one city culture-flipping may domino effect into annexing their entire civ as an ally
Conquest Victory:
1. After you conquer earth, you build the spaceship and conquer aliens the same way. not everyone has to play this like the pacifist hippie that I am
General Automation Improvements
1. A function to globally cancel all automation and pending commands. I'll reassign everything next turn. Late in a game on a huge map, especially with many planets, it becomes too easy to lose track of everything, and I've always wanted a method of global review over all my pending orders.
2. A mechanism to control the general guidelines as outlined above for AI city governers. Once I become the leader of a galactic civilization that spans 6 planets and hundreds of cities, I don't want to spend 8 hours per turn to apply a sweeping edict, like oh this "future tech 30" gave me a new building which is awesome and totally fits the latest quest/demand from my citizens, and I want to build that in every city. This should be possible with a single command that the city governor AI will follow, rather than manually editing the build queues in every city
3. I want these massive civ-wide edicts to be applied at various levels: every city in a region (some arbitrary province I defined within my civ), on a whole continent, every city on a planet, or all cities in my civ galaxy-wide.
4. Sophisticated search options to find a particular city that meets criteria: has a certain building, within X tiles of a certain resource, at a certain population, minimum production hammers, on a particular planet, etc. As many search criteria as can be defined in the search UI.
5. Ultimately it needs to be possible to manage any size of civilization in less than an hour per turn... then i would probably play only a single game of this over the course of 3 years until the next version was released
So that's my general idea of how it should work in my dreams. I still want to start in the ancient era to work up to that because it's the basis of history from 6k BC to present that makes me feel invested enough to WANT to take my civilization galactic and continue playing with it and nurturing it.
I realize this is far beyond realistic, but I'd like the next few civ games, expansions, or mods to do anything they can to approach my dream in little bits and pieces. Think about the spirit of the dream of an open-ended civ that faces internal challenges to remain happy and prosperous by its own citizens' definition of what that means, as in real life, as opposed to competitively winning the game of history. I wouldn't mind if every individual specific detail I mentioned above never happened. What I want is whatever can be done to achieve the spirit of that holistic picture.
Modifying the OP with some additions and changes...
Victory Conditions:
* None! I want to play in a sandbox mode where there is a constant variety of challenges and shifting goals, but winning a game of of civ after spending 40-100 hours falling in love with my civilization = game over = disappointing. I always go several more turns, but after that, there is never anything interesting to do and it devolves into monotonous administrative management. I have many ideas to fix this.
* more on how each victory condition transfers to an open-ended play style below
Cities:
1. Individual city loyalty meters (when low it will break away from empire, unhappiness lowers meter but troop presence stops rebellions).
2. Once in the future era cities may be built on water tiles. These work in the same way as land cities, but require more worker investment for improvements. Therefore they are only efficient after all land is used.
3. Produce their own flavor of most resources which are treated as individually separate resources. Instead of wine is wine and it's all the same and you only benefit from one... wine made in one city tastes different from wine made in another, and there is global demand for each source of wine. The same could be said for their local breed of horses or they way they process iron, etc.
Units:
1. Building units costs population (as well as hammers and strategic resources as they currently do).
2. Units can stand down and rejoin the population by merging into a city (like the way earlier civ settler units could add 1 pop to a city instead of founding a new city)
3. 1UPT is replaced by 1 "Army" per tile. An army functions like 1 unit, but is upgradeable by merging additional units into it, which are of a similar type. Each unit costs 1 population to build, and an army of units in a single tile can include up to 5 population worth of combat strength as a land unit, fighter unit, or air unit.
4. Depending what kind of unit you merge into an army, you add melee or ranged attack strength, and melee or ranged defense. This could include things like artillery (ranged strength) built into a foot soldier militia army (melee attack/defense strength) and another population worth of pikemen (adds mounted defense strength) with flexible options.
5. Armies need a supply line. The longer they spend outside friendly territory (which may include allies), they grow weaker (combat penalties). Pillaging enemy tiles restores their supplies. Supplier units (civilian non-combat type) may also be used to resupply armies in the field, and in later tech eras this may include airlifting supplies.
6. Armies of more than 1 population may be split into smaller forces, and recombined with other armies. The army display shows 5 population slots (moddable to more/fewer) how much of what benefit and type of attack is provided by that 1 unit of population, with drag and drop to split them for non-combat movement. Otherwise the army always attacks/defends as if it is 1 unit with combined stats.
Settlers:
1. Population growth does not stop when you build settlers
2. Like all units, building a settler costs 1 population (as well as hammers)
Placing Cities:
1. Strategic overlay mode from Civ4 built-in so you can easily see the maximum area of workable tiles for every city, and plan future city locations for minimal overlap
2. Tiles in neutral territory outside your borders may be worked but with reduced yield.
3. Cities qualify as being build on a rivers, lake, or coast if such tiles are found anywhere in the greater workable area of that city (up to 3 tiles away), not just 1 adjacent tile away
Workers:
1. More automation options: build improvements (generic, as-is), build roads (from Civ4), build farms (automatically builds farm in appropriate locations with fresh water ONLY), build trade posts/cottages (only automatically builds them on non-farm-ideal tiles, like the opposite of auto-build-farms), improve resources (only wanders around to special resource tiles to improve them)
2. A return of self-improving tiles over time like Civ4 cottages->town effect, but also for farms
3. Like other units, workers may rejoin a city
4. Workers cost no hammers, and instead cost 1 turn and 1 population. This unit is improving tiles around the city instead of producing yield.
5. Workers can stack more than 1UPT up to 5, like an army
Resources:
1. Resources are in limited amounts on the map, but with high limits (50-100, up from 2-6) and new deposits appear frequently
2. Some resources (biological ones) replenish each turn, but may migrate, die off, or spread out.
3. All resources are consumed as they are used, whether by units or buildings. When all of the supply of a resource node has been consumed, it disappears from the map, and becomes a significantly diminished tile (less useful than if it ever had a resource on it). A growth-over-time improvement may be constructed on a dead resource tile to restore it to a better yield over time.
4. All resources can be used by either a unit or a building. Biological resources are typically used to construct supply units (see units above) or city-growth-enhancing buildings. Other resources go to building army units (weapons) and city buildings that add hammers and/or money.
5. When resource-built units are destroyed, non-biological resources will lay on the battlefield. These act like normal resource nodes with only 1 or 2 supply of the resource (1 less than whatever the unit cost to build) and a worker can harvest it without necessarily constructing an upgrade
6. Later in the game some resources produce waste (such as uranium). This can be cleaned up, or dumped somewhere else (but other empires won't appreciate having you dump waste on their coal mines...)
7. Some late game resources can be created artificially through buildings and other resources (whales can make oil). or resources can be converted one to another (using corn to make ethanol, etc)
8. All resources come in flavors per city (see cities above) and can be traded as individual flavors
Empire Management:
1. New info screen for secrets which occurred between countries. If an empire poisoned the water of another empire's city, it would be recorded on the first empire's log for a certain period of time. However, any empire con potentially steal this info using the new espionage system, and hinder the relationship between the two countries.
2. Science sliders are back, with more categories. These include science, education, treasury, espionage, and entertainment (happiness). (I might think of other areas later.) However, the sliders now go by 1% instead of 10%.
3. High level mandates to all city governors, similar to individual city focus, but mass-applied across the civilization: all cities asked to build a library, all cities asked to focus on growth. The ability to setup some rules for how you want all cities to be managed, such as focus on growth to size 10, then switch to production until size 20, then switch to gold, as a normal rule, unless I go into an individual city and change it. Individual cities would gain a "empire strategic focus" separate from "default focus" which would make it follow this type of general rules that I defined in the empire management screen. "Default focus" would make it focus on itself as it currently does, and the other focuses would remain.
Events:
1. Random events occur all of the time, and are split into combat, diplomacy, map, and empire variants.
2. This includes quests requested (demanded!) by the citizens of your civilization, similar to Civ4, but more of them with more variety and popping much more frequently (at least one per tech era, preferably more).
Quests:
1. Completing a quest grants a reward similar to Civ4 quests, but again with more variety of possible rewards: population growth, happiness bonus, combat promotions, free units, new resource node revealed, free building, etc, and mods can add more
2. Failing to complete on time gives a penalty: people leave your civ, cities go into revolt, combat penalty, etc, and mods can add more
3. You may often have more than one quest/demand from your citizens at the same time, and they may be mutually exclusive, so that you have to choose which benefit you want from one vs. which penalty you'll have to suffer from failing the other
Espionage:
1. Works in the same way as in civ 4, but with more options, in order to actually have espionage wars. (cyber-warfare)
Tech:
1. Fully developed future era with new units, buildings, improvements, and abilities.
2. Ability to terraform in late game.
Future Tech (open-ended!)
3. The repeating "Future Tech N" concepts from all previous civ games replaced by either "Make your own future tech" in branches of: buildings/hammers, combat/army, happiness, money/trade/resources, health/growth/food.
4. Depending what your civ needs from its internal struggle in the future (quests/demands), you continue to have choices. These are partly selected, and partly random: you don't know what the future holds or exactly what your research will uncover.
For example you may get +1 happiness in all cities (Civ4 style), or you may learn a new building "Future Tech 3 Happy Building" (prompted to name it and select an icon from a library of icons) which gives +X (random number) happiness and costs Y (random number) hammers or uses ___ resource etc. You can trade this building pattern with another civ. Or you may learn "universal wireless internet" = all cities automatically have library, and libraries no longer cost maintenance.
Religion:
1. Back in the game, but each religion has unique bonuses and all religions are fictional.
Diplomacy:
1. All civs have a reputation progress bar with all other civs, and this is visible through my diplomatic advisor showing me hard numbers on a progress bar, with viable useful suggestions for how to improve my relations with each other civ
2. Trade increases rep
3. War against that civ drastically decreases rep for a very long time
4. Active war as an ally of that civ improves rep
5. War with or against allies of that civ has a similar but reduced effect, but depends on their relative rep with the other civ.
6. "The United States" or "European Union" kind of unions are possible to form through permanent alliances between multiple civs (Civ4 barely almost sort of allowed this, but once you became allies with 1 civ, which was extremely difficult, nobody else would ever EVER become a third member of your union)
7. Diplomacy has an impact on quests and other random events. Your citizens might demand that you raze an enemy city, or that you improve your reputation with another civilization by a certain amount.
8. The UN becomes an international treaty organization like in Civ4, but when one civ defies a resolution, all other members of the UN enforce the resolution and automatically declare war
Modern Problems:
1. Modern era into future era introduce current day problems into the game: pollution, global warming, population growth, etc.
What becomes of the old victory conditions:
Spaceship Victory:
1. Instead of winning=game over, this takes your civ into the realm of the galactic sci-fi future. I mainly focused on this one in my dreams, because this should not be game over. Colonizing another world starts a parallel game on a new randomly-generated map (map type selectable when you launch the spaceship, also based on a varying number of turns to reach that kind of planet)
2. The new planet you settle has its own variation of the same resources we have on earth, but cities (and planets) have their own flavor of every resource.
3. Alien worlds will bring you in contact with alien civilizations which start at a random tech level.
4. The temptation would be to use your space-faring tech to crush an ancient-era alien civ you find on another world, but your citizens, and diplomatic relations will punish you for that (or possibly ask you for it! or maybe you get both quests). You may also have social policies that forbid you from declaring war unless attacked first, etc.
5. After using up all of a particular resource on earth, you need to import more from an alien world.
6. The spaceship can be used as a transport ship to move any unit from one tile on the map to another in one turn
7. The goal of the spaceship play style is to continue colonizing many worlds and spread a large civilization across the galaxy. This is an open-ended sandbox game that you play for maybe an entire year until you get bored with it (which hopefully you never do because of open-ended tech advancement and ongoing quests/demands from inside your civ)
Diplomatic Victory:
1. The goal of this play style is to achieve a permanent alliance between all civs you ever encounter: The United States of Earth, through the spaceship playstyle, into the United Federation of Planets.
2. Richer diplomacy options help guide you to how to make friends effectively
3. Espionage can be used to increase your understanding of other civs wants/needs to find more effective ways to make them your ally, and/or convince them to accept alliances with their enemies, as you try to work for world peace
Cultural Victory:
1. city-flipping is back like in civ4
2. espionage includes a component of propaganda to improve your cultural influence on another civ's cities
3. large cultural influence will improve diplomatic relations, and one city culture-flipping may domino effect into annexing their entire civ as an ally
Conquest Victory:
1. After you conquer earth, you build the spaceship and conquer aliens the same way. not everyone has to play this like the pacifist hippie that I am
General Automation Improvements
1. A function to globally cancel all automation and pending commands. I'll reassign everything next turn. Late in a game on a huge map, especially with many planets, it becomes too easy to lose track of everything, and I've always wanted a method of global review over all my pending orders.
2. A mechanism to control the general guidelines as outlined above for AI city governers. Once I become the leader of a galactic civilization that spans 6 planets and hundreds of cities, I don't want to spend 8 hours per turn to apply a sweeping edict, like oh this "future tech 30" gave me a new building which is awesome and totally fits the latest quest/demand from my citizens, and I want to build that in every city. This should be possible with a single command that the city governor AI will follow, rather than manually editing the build queues in every city
3. I want these massive civ-wide edicts to be applied at various levels: every city in a region (some arbitrary province I defined within my civ), on a whole continent, every city on a planet, or all cities in my civ galaxy-wide.
4. Sophisticated search options to find a particular city that meets criteria: has a certain building, within X tiles of a certain resource, at a certain population, minimum production hammers, on a particular planet, etc. As many search criteria as can be defined in the search UI.
5. Ultimately it needs to be possible to manage any size of civilization in less than an hour per turn... then i would probably play only a single game of this over the course of 3 years until the next version was released
So that's my general idea of how it should work in my dreams. I still want to start in the ancient era to work up to that because it's the basis of history from 6k BC to present that makes me feel invested enough to WANT to take my civilization galactic and continue playing with it and nurturing it.
I realize this is far beyond realistic, but I'd like the next few civ games, expansions, or mods to do anything they can to approach my dream in little bits and pieces. Think about the spirit of the dream of an open-ended civ that faces internal challenges to remain happy and prosperous by its own citizens' definition of what that means, as in real life, as opposed to competitively winning the game of history. I wouldn't mind if every individual specific detail I mentioned above never happened. What I want is whatever can be done to achieve the spirit of that holistic picture.
Save_Ferris
Admiring Myself
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