2 Major faults in Civ System

johny smith

Deity
Joined
Mar 10, 2007
Messages
2,273
I have 2 things that have bugged ever since the beginning of the Civilization series. It does not looked like they have changed with Civilization 5.

1. Navigable Rivers--- Rivers were very important for movement of anything. Troops, Food, Ore, and anything. Not just something that creates a trade route.

I don't know how to state how important rivers were. They were much more important than roads in the beginning before the invention of the wheel and roads. River ships were very important in war situations. It is a primary missing unit to the game.

2. Resources Iron is dug out of the ground. So yes it is a strategic resource that must be attached to a place on the earth.

Rice or wheat on the other hand is not. It is the silliest concept in the game to me. So you people have Rice growing magically out of the grown on one plot of land and you never figure out how to plant it on other plots.:crazyeye:

Animals have the same case as crops. Now I know terrain should limit where animals and plant can be placed, but the economic system is flat out dumb.

This is a basic idea of civilization. I mean where do tomatoes come from now in the supermarket? Of course they all are traded from Mexico because they were blessed with the tomatoes. Oh and all cows come from India because the do not want to eat them.

People probably disagree with me. I just can not play another civilization game with the 2 missing and feel like it makes any sense. I suppose the game will make millions as always. Congratulations.
 
I can't find any harm in gameplay with navigable rivers, though.
 
Well...

1. In older Civs rivers could actually be used like roads, and in Civ 4 cities are automatically 'connected' if they are both on the same river, so there sort of is/has been a sort of mechanic for that. I do wish they would go back to having road movement on rivers.

2. Well, Civ does things the way it does for game balance. If they do what you're suggesting, everyone in the world would pretty much have horses and all the crops after a short period.
 
Navigable Rivers were in civ 1 and 2, where rivers functioned as roads. The thing with them is that they make sense for the earlier years, but not in modern times. In modern times rivers are more of an obstacle than an aid to travel.
 
I have 2 things that have bugged ever since the beginning of the Civilization series. It does not looked like they have changed with Civilization 5.

1. Navigable Rivers--- Rivers were very important for movement of anything. Troops, Food, Ore, and anything. Not just something that creates a trade route.

2. Resources Iron is dug out of the ground. So yes it is a strategic resource that must be attached to a place on the earth.

Rice or wheat on the other hand is not. It is the silliest concept in the game to me. So you people have Rice growing magically out of the grown on one plot of land and you never figure out how to plant it on other plots.

You're thinking too literally, where most of the concepts in Civ are more abstract.

The importance of rivers is emphasized thorough trade routes, connecting cities, and the crossing river penalty when attacking (face it there really haven't been many important river battles in history). Could they do a little more like with having units be able to move down a river faster then they could over land, sure (and I wish they would) but the importance of rivers has been represented.

As far as the resources go I think the locations of the food an animal resources on the map are just supposed to represent where they would occur naturally without human involvement. These plots would be where people could best utilize the land to grow that crop or herd the animal. The relocation of those resources is represented by generic "farms". Sure they could say "rice farm" "wheat farm" "sheep pasture" but that would be unnecessary for gameplay so they never bothered to put it in.
 
Having different types of farm as a graphic feature could be very cool. If a civ has access to rice, then it's farms look like rice farms, if it has access to wheat, wheat farms. Wheat may take precedence over rice if both are present. Not sure what farms with neither would look like.
 
Well...

2. Well, Civ does things the way it does for game balance. If they do what you're suggesting, everyone in the world would pretty much have horses and all the crops after a short period.

Would it not make more sense to have the animals and plants not the same as resources taken from the earth. I mean the principle factor to who produces them today is environment more than anything. My suggestion is that they should be replaced in a more similar system to colonization with some exceptions.

Basically a plot should or should not be able to produce certain animals or plants, and the player can choose to use the plot for only one of them. I mean what is a generic farm? The farm is producing some plant. What is a generic mine? It produces some ore. Balance should be achieved by controlling resources that are more significant.

In the modern world there is no one controlling rice production alone. Horses for example were very important, but that is why later other areas of the world produce them themselves. I would suggest the first civilization has an advantage with be first with learning how to use animal and plants. Then later through trade the advantage diminishes.

The best real example I think of to look at is silk. Silk was kept secret in China for the very reason of not having others produce it. But eventually the silk worm spread out of China. So anyway in short yes in the current economic system it does not work. Which is why I think it needs to be redone to take in account the amount of a resource produced on a plot. Which means yes resources have an amount that you must count.
 
i tend to think that every "farm" improvment is making all the food resources exists, such as rice, wheat

but the ones that have the resource icon are the best lands to grow that kind of resource and therefor it gives a food bonus to your civ, and you can even export since you are growin too much of that particular resource

well thats how i adapt my gameplay to realism
 
As bonafide11 said, gameplay is king, but yes, rivers and seas often take a backseat to land-based development and war. AFAIK, even the score in the Civ series is based on land coverage and not any water within your borders
 
Although I agree with your point #2, I think we're going to disagree about your definition of "major".
 
This wouldn't be to hard to implement in a situation like civ IV. Make all tiles yield nothing by default and have each resource created as a worker improvement once you have access to one. Cows could give 3 food 1 hammer, horses 3 hammers 2 commerce, sheep 3 food 2 commerce. Wheat could give 4 food, rice and corn could give, well, something else, my ideas for grains are not as good since they are all very similar. They could be almagated to grain and make the farm options to be more like grains\spices\sugars where you went from 4 food to 2 food 4 commerce (sugar) to 1 food 6 commerce (spices) Things not normally domesticated like Deer\Beaver\Elephants could be limited to the tile they spawn in and be finite trade resources but very valuable and provide a really good tile (like 4 food 2 hammers for deer or 0 food 2 hammers 8 commerce for fur). If you had a resource it would just be tradeable, and once you traded say, cows for wheat, you could always build wheat.

Then allow that stuff to be on hills and make mines a special one time per tile limited duration thing that produces rare resources and huge hammer and commerce yeailds. Once the mine drys up you need to do something else with the land.

You'd have to modify the RNG so you always get at least one resource.
 
I have 2 things that have bugged ever since the beginning of the Civilization series. It does not looked like they have changed with Civilization 5.

1. Navigable Rivers--- Rivers were very important for movement of anything. Troops, Food, Ore, and anything. Not just something that creates a trade route.

I don't know how to state how important rivers were. They were much more important than roads in the beginning before the invention of the wheel and roads. River ships were very important in war situations. It is a primary missing unit to the game.

2. Resources Iron is dug out of the ground. So yes it is a strategic resource that must be attached to a place on the earth.

Rice or wheat on the other hand is not. It is the silliest concept in the game to me. So you people have Rice growing magically out of the grown on one plot of land and you never figure out how to plant it on other plots.:crazyeye:

Animals have the same case as crops. Now I know terrain should limit where animals and plant can be placed, but the economic system is flat out dumb.

This is a basic idea of civilization. I mean where do tomatoes come from now in the supermarket? Of course they all are traded from Mexico because they were blessed with the tomatoes. Oh and all cows come from India because the do not want to eat them.

People probably disagree with me. I just can not play another civilization game with the 2 missing and feel like it makes any sense. I suppose the game will make millions as always. Congratulations.

I always thought that if rice or wheat was in a square/hex it was a representation of where it was most abundant and easy grown. As someone previously mentioned, where it occurred naturally on its own. So another grassland square/hex could support rice or wheat but the yields were not quite as good as the land was slightly inferior.
 
I always thought that if rice or wheat was in a square/hex it was a representation of where it was most abundant and easy grown. As someone previously mentioned, where it occurred naturally on its own. So another grassland square/hex could support rice or wheat but the yields were not quite as good as the land was slightly inferior.

Right, its the mix of a superior local climate/soil, combined with good natural strain. China would not have become civilized so early had rice not been native, nor Europe were it not for fertile crescent wheat, nor central America if not for corn.

I agree that its weird for crops and animals to be so "fixed" (eg potatoes had a huge impact in Europe despite being exotic), but its a useful gameplay simplification.
 
I don't know why Firaxis stick with the FHC tryptic ! It would enhance the economic model so greatly to add 2 or 3 yield types as shown in Civ4 : Col .

Let's say one grassland has horse then the yield output is 2 Food - 3 Hammer - 1 Commerce - 3 horses - 0 Ore - 0 Power . Note that the horse spot is a casual spot ie could have been rice or cotton.
 
I don't know why Firaxis stick with the FHC tryptic ! It would enhance the economic model so greatly to add 2 or 3 yield types as shown in Civ4 : Col .

Let's say one grassland has horse then the yield output is 2 Food - 3 Hammer - 1 Commerce - 3 horses - 0 Ore - 0 Power . Note that the horse spot is a casual spot ie could have been rice or cotton.

Civ likes to make the game complex for hardcore fans, but easy enough to play that anyone can pick it up and start a game. Colonization had too many icons and it was confusing for newcomers.
 
Top Bottom