What do we want in Civ 6?

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I wanna burst everybody's bubble... the article said Civ 4 had THREE expansion packs.. I only count Warlords and Beyond the Sword...

Ugh, Colonization IS NOT AN EP... jeez, seriously? Where does it say it's an expansion pack? People need to re-read the definition of "an expansion pack"..

Never mind what I said..

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

I expect only two features from CiVI. It has to be awesome and soon.

 

[joncnunn]

Civ II was a 2-D isometic game, very much in the style of Civ I (in this game SOD were basically impossible b/c if one unit in a stack was killed, the whole stack died with it).

More precisely AI SODs were impossible.

Human SODs were viable as the stack only died in tiles with neither cities nor forts and the AI built plenty of forts and left them empty for humans to use.

Also you could use the AIs road & rail network against them to conquer a lot of cities the same turn.

 

[PhilBowles]

I wanna burst everybody's bubble... the article said Civ 4 had THREE expansion packs.. I only count Warlords and Beyond the Sword...

Ugh, Colonization IS NOT AN EP... jeez, seriously? Where does it say it's an expansion pack? People need to re-read the definition of "an expansion pack"..

Never mind what I said..

That includes developers, I suspect - these days a lot of things are marketed as "standalone expansions" even when they add no content to the base game. Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai adds no content that can be used in the standard game's campaign as it features completely new factions and units that don't overlap with those of the main game, it has its own map (even though Japan hasn't changed shape appreciably in the 200 years between the two games' settings), its own set of historical battles; the only common link is that they share a main menu screen. Yet it's called an expansion rather than a separate game.

 

[woodshadows]

Improved siege. I want to win my battles in the field and then leisurely get to sit outside of a city while I press one button that invests the city with siege on a timer dependent upon the city strength of the city. No more cities that have no troops stationed inside being able to shoot out massively powerful projectiles two hexes away over mountains and hills and anything else. In the real world you'd beat the army in the field, surround the city, wait for it to starve/surrender, or storm it over time, except in the case of the opposing nation providing a relief army to fight you off.

 

[Syntax Error]

Improved siege. I want to win my battles in the field and then leisurely get to sit outside of a city while I press one button that invests the city with siege on a timer dependent upon the city strength of the city. No more cities that have no troops stationed inside being able to shoot out massively powerful projectiles two hexes away over mountains and hills and anything else. In the real world you'd beat the army in the field, surround the city, wait for it to starve/surrender, or storm it over time, except in the case of the opposing nation providing a relief army to fight you off.

About the starving part: How about if you manage to surround the city with your units (as in, every hex around a city will have your units), it begins to starve. Or when you cut off its trade route, but only during war time.

 

[iconocast]

in general?

keep going in the direction of civ v. but reduce the board game qualitys ( reduce not remove ) and add in more sim like features. u wouldnt be able to do that 10 year game with civ v like he did with civ 2.

 

[Genghis.Khan]

Or you could just pick up a Total War game since the strategic elements of these and Civ already converge (and the trend in recent entries in both series is towards mechanical simplification, forcing strategic decisions at the expense of larger numbers of options, and reducing micromanagement), and this would just do the same to the tactical ones.

Agreed. , Total War Combat System + Civ City Managment, etc... It would be the best game ever

 

[hobbsyoyo]

About the starving part: How about if you manage to surround the city with your units (as in, every hex around a city will have your units), it begins to starve. Or when you cut off its trade route, but only during war time.

It does this already. Occupied tiles can't be worked which leads to starvation. Maybe you mean they starve faster?

 

[The_Quasar]

Casus belli didn't exist, as a concept, until just before the beginning of the eighteenth century, so has only been a concept about 300 years...

IF it is to came to Civ VI, it needs to be an event, or similar that causes wars to change, perhaps when the player, or a civ, attains a certain technology, or Age. I would be against it if it was active before that, as it's so unrealistic in ancient times.

 

[PhilBowles]

in general?

keep going in the direction of civ v. but reduce the board game qualitys ( reduce not remove ) and add in more sim like features. u wouldnt be able to do that 10 year game with civ v like he did with civ 2.

I'm not sure how he managed that in Civ 2. It's not easy in any Civ game to keep enough people alive long enough for games to last much longer than the usual end date, at least if everyone's at war.

I'm not sure either what specifics people refer to by "board game qualities" (rather than the general feel of the game, but Civ has always had that feel), or why it's something people want removed. I appreciate that many people started Civ with III and IV, which departed from the "board game" feel of the original games and added levels of detail that were absent from the preceding games, but as a Civ 1 veteran the "board game feel" is both fundamental to the Civ experience and what has me playing more Civ V than any Civ game since II. To a large extent the point of having Civ on a computer to me is that you can play on a much bigger board, and with many more players, not that it should be a fundamentally different type of game.

Agreed. , Total War Combat System + Civ City Managment, etc... It would be the best game ever

It would be a Total War game...

And in fact Shogun 2's move away from Civ-style city management has generally improved the game, IMO. In past games you could - as in Civ - build anything you wanted in any settlement, limited only by gold (and in Medieval, by whether it was a castle or city). Shogun 2 features much less micromanagement, in its fewer 'types' of unhappiness (and the existence of a metsuke-type character who automatically prevents a city going into negative order however much you tax it), in global rather than city-specific tax management, in the fact that you only need money to upgrade a settlement (you don't need to focus it on growth for a certain length of time before the next level of upgrade is available - in fact this is the one simplification I don't much like), but most importantly you're forced to specialise your settlements because you can only build a very limited number of buildings in each. The developers say Rome 2 will continue this trend away from micromanagement - you'll now manage sets of provinces rather than individual provinces/settlements.

 

[Cristoval]

nerf ranged combat make it only reach the adjacent tile.

abolish the 1upt restriction. (This is an empire builder. no 1upt tactics)

Focus on making the game feel less like a board game.

Do not remove features, like religion and espionage then sell them in an expansion pack again.

 

[MarauderCH]

I'd like to see a Alpha Centauri tie in where you can import your science victory games into a new game and pick up with that Civ again. You'd start with your cultural choices, completed research, and possibly even religion. I don't know how well it would transfer since I've never played the original game...

 

[N0QUITTERSULTAN]

Civ V is great. The new combat systmen and the new tech tree is ok . Nerf the Gs and maybe make general normal again.

Diplomacy should be more suteable for MP. And exploiting CS should give more penality.

Civ5 is GREAT. Wonder what they will do in Civ 6!:=)<3

 

[magicianeer]

* Genuinely dangerous Barbarians/Renegades/Rebels.
* Hex Grid (I have wanted that since forever)
* Larger Tech tree with dead-end branches that give a handy bonus for the Civs who research the branch. Example branch: Botany -> Climatology -> Tree Farming (workers can plant orchard +1 food +1 hammer +1 happy). Another: ballooning -> airship (mid-Renaissance Zeppelin unit +6 sight, can cross mountains and oceans).
* Civilopedia with useful info (ie, "Bonus vs tanks" is bad, "+25% vs tanks" is good) and more historical/educational content.
* Separate attack/defense stats for units (then we would not need a separate range attack stat)
* Map and scenario editor as part of standard install.
* Clock visible on main map.
* Relax 1upt with an Army unit/group. Civ-rev has 3 similar units can merge into an army.

 

[The_Quasar]

I'd like to see a Alpha Centauri tie in where you can import your science victory games into a new game and pick up with that Civ again. You'd start with your cultural choices, completed research, and possibly even religion. I don't know how well it would transfer since I've never played the original game...

It would be even better to Alpha Centauri II before Civ VI...

However, I'm not sure that keeping science or anything else is a good idea... the whole premise of SMAC was that the crew fractionated and disagreed strongly with each other. They were therefore only good at one specialty each. To have one faction (the player) begin far in advance of the rest would seem to defeat the object of the game, unless they were destined to be on a downward spiral, until the others more or less caught up, which would, imho, not work well.

I understand the desirability of keeping tech researched in a previous game, which would, presumably be the scientific faction, but will you have a fully developed religious faction, fully equipped with GPs, Missionaries and Inquisitors to convert the others too? Perhaps the factions could be based on Great People... I still think that a level playing field would make a better beginning to the game.

That said, the tech level at the start should be roughly that of the modern era in vanilla Civ V, but with no infrastructure. If that was so, what would you have left to have carried over from Civ V, if all you brought with you were a few simple things and
a few followers? Your power in Civ V comes from cities and your military... neither of which you can carry over (strangely they wouldn't fit into the ship!).

Yes, as a long-time player of SMAC, I'd love to see a remake of Alpha Centauri, but I don't think carrying over a Civ V civ is either practical, or desirable.

 

[woodshadows]

providing an attrition penalty to units which have had their 'lines of supply' cut could be interesting.. perhaps too difficult for the ai to utilize effectively, but given their enormous impact on almost every battle throughout history it would be a nice addition to the strategic component of battles. maintaining a solid front would suddenly become important, just remove the nuclear-bomb-wielding cities which can lob out undefined projectiles over mountains and kill a troop of solidiers every turn and combat could become really fun and no longer so 'city-influenced and dependent'

 

[TravellingHat]

Firstly, I don't have G&K and have no intention of getting it unless it's cheap, so apologies if some of these have been implemented:

1) Environmental consequences: in Civ IV it was worth preserving forests, avoiding dirty power sources and not going nuke-happy, whereas now it seems irrelevant. You can buzz-saw every tree you find and burn it until the skies fill with smoke, and irradiate vast swathes of land - it really doesn't matter a jot.

2) Meaningful diplomacy: currently diplomacy seems biased towards hostility, particularly when for no apparent reason your "friends" denounce you, ruining your reputation. It's almost not worth declaring friendship, since your giving the AI a stick with which to beat you.

3) Choice of leaders: with different abilities for each civilisation.

4) Maps: option to immediately regenerate map without having to redo all settings (Nimoy's speeches get tired very fast!). Also, better map scripts (what's the obsession with deserts? why are mountain hardly ever in ranges?). This shouldn't be down to mods, and if the maps were better in the first place there'd be less incentive to regenerate them.

5) Tech over time: broader tech tree more closely tied-in with passage of time. Feels pretty shallow atm. On epic speed I've routinely seen the middle ages begin pre-BC.

6) Production: more options to improve production rather than having to rely on cash.

7) Bring back vassals and colonies: but have a means for them to abandon or even turn on you under certain cricumstances (e.g. you fail to protect them).

8) Trade routes: that can be raided/blockaded, and so need protecting in times of war.

9) Reduce the maintenance for roads/railways: in some games connecting your cities is simply financial suicide (early game).

10) Events: bring back events with consequences for research, finance, diplomacy etc.

 

[kxta]

I agree with everything TravellingHat said, but I already have my own list so I'll just dump it in here anyway

Most of my proposals are geared towards a more roleplay-happy empire building game rather than the“board game” concept. Some people like that, and perhaps they should make an updated CivRev for those folk. The flagship of the series though, ought to be something grand. I really apologize for the enormous wall of text to follow, but it's a concept I've put some thought into and I'd like to just toss it all out there, don't read if you don't want to

I) Expanded Diplomacy/Foreign Affairs. Civ V diplomacy was a big step forward but also a step back. It's less of a numbers game from IV, and adds cool features like Denunciations, however it lacks some of the depth and capability of IV. Specifically, I miss concepts such as capitulation, peaceful vassals, and the way resource trading work. Trades shouldn't be arbitrarily limited to certain turns, they should just remain active until either party feels like canceling it. I have some specific proposals for how it should all work.

The first type of diplomatic interactions you can conduct (other than war), is friendship declaration and“open trade”. Open trade permits basic commerce between civs (working pretty much as it does in IV), and allows for the diffusion of technologies(if one civ researches a tech that the other doesn't have, the lacking civ gets a boost in its research towards that technology). This would also permit non-combat units to move around in each others territory (incl. missionaries). It would also make spying easier between civs(there would be a percentage hit to counter-espionage). As a deterrent to opening your borders to just anyone however, the AI would exploit the opportunity to scout your territory and look for weaknesses in your defense and unit placement. So one would think twice before allowing right of passage(which is actually a better name for the idea...) with a much stronger Genghis Khan. Open borders is the same thing, but enables cross-border stationing of military units and their travel.

We should also be able to conduct larger scale diplomacy, spanning more than just two civs. I've longed for the ability to engineer a grand military coalition between like-minded civs. Basically you can sign an alliance with one civ, and then invite a third to“join a coalition”, which would bring that civ into alliance with both of you. Seems interesting no? It might not work out though if game-breaking super empires just go around gobbling up the map. I like the idea of robust alliances though. You get the idea.

II) The return of the Civics. I'd like to see a robust system of civics covering all aspects of the empire, switchable at will(with the anarchy penalty of course). You can unlock and change between systems of government, power structures, military policy, all sorts of stuff. Go look at Rise of Mankind for a good example. Later civics are not necessarily better ones, they just give you more flexibility, each has it's own benefits and drawbacks. This makes running a civ much more immersive and interesting than simply a bunch of cities and armies. You can build a truly unique society.

Speaking of that, social policies don't necessarily need to die(it was an interesting use for culture after all). Remember the various leader traits from Civ IV? Perhaps those instead can be converted to social policy trees that you assemble, much like G&K religions. Ever play a civ with a seafaring trait and then spawned far inland? Kind of silly. You are the leader after all, a guy at the computer, build your own traits to distinguish your rule, adapt to the situation.

III) Culture and influence. The way culture worked in Civ IV was great, for the most part. Tile flipping was a good way to stop some upstart loser AI from plonking a city in the midst of your growing cities to nab a resource, cause it would just flip over. Also, if he has a city that's closer to yours than his, why wouldn't your culture naturally take over?

IV) Keep the city states, add the City State Diplomacy mod into the main game. Nuff said.

V) Armies, stacks, and 1UPT. The move to tactical combat was a marked improvement for the series, but the strict implementation in Civ V is just broken. Stacks of doom were replaced with carpets of doom and traffic jams. It was fun, but also could become incredibly annoying. The designers also had to cripple production to make it work, otherwise the resulting big armies would make the traffic jam situations even worse. To fix, I'd like to borrow a concept from endless space and adapt it to Civ. For those unfamiliar with that game, you can put your ships (armies, in this case) into fleets, but they were limited in size by command points. Small, weak units used up less command points than larger more powerful ones, and as you worked your way up the tech tree, you could expand your CP per fleet allotment. I think a similar system could work for civ. Basic infantry units use few command points, light cavalry would use more, heavy damage dealing knights would use more, siege weapons would take a LOT, and so on. This system would nicely prevent stacks of doom without killing off the tactical combat we have now, and would also prevent traffic jams. Players would be encouraged not to build stacks unless necessary; there would be flanking bonuses for occupying adjacent hexes to enemy units(much like now), but you can do cool combined arms stuff too. Perhaps a system of collateral damage could be implemented when attacking one of these armies, where spillover damage would be inflicted on the other units in the army, that weren't actually taking part in the combat. I'd invite some discussion to hash out the details on this.

Another interesting idea, units that get promoted high enough gain special commander abilities when put in an army, and provide bonuses to all the units in that army. This would be good encouragement to hang on to valuable units and keep them safe.

VI) Ecology. This falls firmly into the“immersion” territory, and gives you something else to worry about. Different games(and not just in the civ series) have implemented this in different ways, with varying degrees of merit. Basically, pollution and environmental damage are a factor in the game. In the early game, the most damage you can do is chop down a bunch of trees, and you won't see any effect from this for a while. Just like in the real world, you need to develop that land to suit your needs, the consequences won't be felt until much later. Once the industrial era hits, depending on the buildings you put in cities, pollution can become a factor, eventually degrading the performance of tiles. You can try and clean it up, or just ignore it. At some point, you may start to slowly notice some changes. Grasslands start to turn towards plains, and desertification becomes a problem. Eventually, you have to research and apply advanced technology just to keep your tile yields up. The ice caps start to melt, and coastlines change. Cities built on the coast are at risk of being flooded and destroyed if they don't build the appropriate countermeasures. There are civics you can adopt to lessen your environmental impact, and you can pester the AI to adopt them(of course, they can do the same to you). If things start getting really bad, and more and more tiles get turned into deserts and swamps, it can even provoke wars as civs try to evacuate towards better land or punish highly polluting neighbors. But of course, you can fix the planet! There are a couple different ways to do that.

A resolution can be passed in the UN mandating the adoption of more responsible civics, that's one way.

The other is a massive world project, undertaken by any one civ, to completely and permanently solve the problem. I think Call to Power had something like this, I'm not sure. The civ that completes this project earns points towards the victory system...

VII) Mastery. If you've never played the popular Civ IV mod“Rise of Mankind”, you should do so. Not only is it a lot of fun, I pretty much stole this entire concept from there. Basically, all the individual victory conditions are eliminated, replaced by one, the mastery victory. All this does is calculate your performance in the various areas(domination, power, techs researched, launched a space ship, runs the UN, wonders built, cultural level, solved global warming, etc), adds it all up into a special score after all turns are done, and the civ with the highest wins. It forces you to play a balanced and adaptable game, but doesn't exclude the smaller civs from potentially winning as well by working hard to exceed in certain areas. You also don't get(IMHO unrealsitic) last minute rushes to arbitrary victory(“I need to get this spaceship into the air before that other guy gets the UN up and running or it's all over!”). Which brings me to...

VIII) United Nations. Every civ players favorite tool for world domination. Not too much different here, it's built, elections are held for a secretary general who tables resolutions, everyone votes, etc. The main difference is a lot more resolutions, and it's less binding than the fascist dictatorship it was in Civ IV. Participating in the UN process has diplomatic benefits, and defying it carries penalties. The UN can start wars to bring rogue civs into line, and end them too. It can reassign conquered cities, and mandate certain civics. It can also limit the use of nuclear weapons(but not ban completely, that would be no fun). It changes the flavor of the game from brute force and anarchy of nations into diplomatic guile and collective security. If wars are fought after the UN, they're usually big ones. To avoid pissing people off, the UN is optional when starting a game.

IX) Stability and revolution. One of the biggest forces of change in human history is rulers losing control over their empires. I think Civ VI should reflect this. Tightly couples and well connected empires are more stable than loosely connected ones with cities all over the place. Distant cities with few ties to the capital may start to flirt with the notion of independence. Unhappy cities may revolt in protest of incompetent leadership, and may ultimately result in civil war and independence if you don't deal with the issue. Certain civics, expanding and conquering like a madman, and significant minority populations in your empire can also cause unrest. You have to take care of your empire to ensure it remains yours, legitimacy isn't handed to you on a silver platter. As a rule of thumb, people don't like long protracted wars where scores of soldiers are sent into the slaughter(masterfully executed wars can give you some nice benefits, on the other hand), followers of religions other than the state mandated one(assuming you have such a thing) are also no good for business. It's pretty obvious stuff.

X) ICS. IMHO Civ IV nailed this. If your expansion outpaced your economy, you boned yourself. Large empires are advantageous, but you have to pace things and strike a balance. Needless to say global unhappiness dictating everything is the first thing out the door. A global happiness mechanic as an average of all city happiness weighed by population is a good modifier for some empire wide stuff, but it's not the holy grail it is in Civ V, where it exists solely to fulfill the Schaferite vision of tall empires. You shouldn't have to choose between wide and tall. If you play smart, you can have both.

I'll stop there I think. I've rambled long enough and I typed the entire thing on an iPad, which is a special form of torture

 

[PhilBowles]

I'd like to see a Alpha Centauri tie in where you can import your science victory games into a new game and pick up with that Civ again. You'd start with your cultural choices, completed research, and possibly even religion. I don't know how well it would transfer since I've never played the original game...

Not well; although Alpha Centauri (naturally) starts from the premise that people have colonised a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, and this is likewise where Civ comes to an end, the actual premise of Alpha Centauri makes it clear that it isn't a direct sequel to Civ, and the events that precipitate the AC storyline can't be replicated in a Civ game, as the one doesn't follow from the other. AC, for instance, takes place against a background where Earth has a single government and the spaceship is a collaborative multinational effort.

Civilopedia with useful info (ie, "Bonus vs tanks" is bad, "+25% vs tanks" is good) and more historical/educational content.

Definitely a vote for the latter here, although either I wasn't paying attention before or the entries for civs at least have been much expanded in their historical content in G&K compared with vanilla - there's a lot of detail on Songhai and Askia, for instance, where I only recall a couple of paragraphs before. The ever-dwindling informative content in the Civilopedia has soured me somewhat against incarnations of the game since Civ III - Civ II in particular had very detailed descriptions.

It's a nice touch that even minor elements like city-state names warrant elaboration in the Civ V ilopedia - even though the city-states themselves (especially in vanilla) are mostly duplicates of other CSes of the same type, they each have a named entry in the Civilopedia with some background. It would be nice to go a stage further and do the same for the Great People list (even further still, with entries for individual cities in civ city lists?)

providing an attrition penalty to units which have had their 'lines of supply' cut could be interesting.. perhaps too difficult for the ai to utilize effectively, but given their enormous impact on almost every battle throughout history it would be a nice addition to the strategic component of battles. maintaining a solid front would suddenly become important, just remove the nuclear-bomb-wielding cities which can lob out undefined projectiles over mountains and kill a troop of solidiers every turn and combat could become really fun and no longer so 'city-influenced and dependent'

That's an extremely good idea - yes, I'd love to see that included. It could take the place of a 'war weariness' penalty that a lot of people have clamoured for, as well as more accurately reflecting the effects of war - you can't overstretch or conquer too far or too fast without suffering attrition.

1) Environmental consequences: in Civ IV it was worth preserving forests, avoiding dirty power sources and not going nuke-happy, whereas now it seems irrelevant. You can buzz-saw every tree you find and burn it until the skies fill with smoke, and irradiate vast swathes of land - it really doesn't matter a jot.

2) Meaningful diplomacy: currently diplomacy seems biased towards hostility, particularly when for no apparent reason your "friends" denounce you, ruining your reputation. It's almost not worth declaring friendship, since your giving the AI a stick with which to beat you.

3) Choice of leaders: with different abilities for each civilisation.

4) Maps: option to immediately regenerate map without having to redo all settings (Nimoy's speeches get tired very fast!). Also, better map scripts (what's the obsession with deserts? why are mountain hardly ever in ranges?). This shouldn't be down to mods, and if the maps were better in the first place there'd be less incentive to regenerate them.

5) Tech over time: broader tech tree more closely tied-in with passage of time. Feels pretty shallow atm. On epic speed I've routinely seen the middle ages begin pre-BC.

6) Production: more options to improve production rather than having to rely on cash.

7) Bring back vassals and colonies: but have a means for them to abandon or even turn on you under certain cricumstances (e.g. you fail to protect them).

8) Trade routes: that can be raided/blockaded, and so need protecting in times of war.

9) Reduce the maintenance for roads/railways: in some games connecting your cities is simply financial suicide (early game).

10) Events: bring back events with consequences for research, finance, diplomacy etc.

G&K addressed 2 and to some extent 5, and 8 was I think always possible through the mechanism of destroying a road improvement or blockading a city with a harbour (which does indeed remove the trade route) - it certainly is post-G&K. 9 is by design a consideration of city placement (and if the best sites are too far apart, having them linked to a nearby city with a harbour achieves the same result less expensively than a road connection all the way to the capital). I'd like to see environmental consequences return; random events to some extent for flavour, but I'd rather not return to Civ IV's "get a lucky event and win the game" approach. I still see no appeal to extra leaders - a different leader with a different ability is just another civ in all but name and the fact that you get the same UU/UB, so it makes more sense simply to add extra civs.