7 ideas for Civ 7-Unit training, group alliances, shared military, and more

[BIshop8]

Well, Civ 7 has finally been announced. I'm sure everyone has their personal wishlist, wanted to include mine:

1. Revamped Unit Recruitment: You shouldn't have to use your production queue to build units. It has never made sense to me to have to choose between building a library and recruiting some early era melee unit. Why are those mutually exclusive? Personally, I think a cool idea would be to have unit recruitment something that happens a periodic number of turns that you can toggle on and off. The number of turns can vary depending on some resource like loyalty or something else. Every set number you get a basic melee unit, and then you can send the unit to a military encampment for "training", at which point they become a specialized unit.

2. Group Alliances: A common theme I've seen on other threads in other places is wanting to make diplomacy more interesting and wanting to make minor factions more dynamic. I've seen talks of civil wars and splitting factions and I think all of that is super cool (especially if governor's could "lead" revolutions and you had diplomacy options about fomenting/supporting revolutions in opposing countries). I think one of things Civ is lacking is the idea of group alliances. When you think about the world stage today, the major alliances aren't between two countries, it's between groups. NATO, the UN, African Union, EU, CSTO, etc. Each of these could have requirements for membership (3 cities on X continent, possess some resource, certain level of technological advancement etc...) and have some benefit/policy/make group decisions. maybe every member of the alliance can gain suzerain benefits or something. Vote on new members or to recognize new nations. improvements to trade and can vote to refuse trade to a certain nation. You can create new groups to rival other opposing groups, and be involved in multiple groups to make it layered and complex. The biggest thing is every alliance should have a cost to joining and a clear and constant benefit. That will force players to engage (otherwise this miss the cost) but be intentional about which alliances they participate in (otherwise you just join as many as you can and don't care about the consequences, cause there aren't any). Lots of cool options.

3. Shared Military: This goes along with the same theme as group alliances, but is so interesting I wanted to share separately. I feel like every group alliance should have a shared military that they can "deploy" if a member state gets into a war that not everyone in your alliance can join. Instead of declaring an all out group war, you can deploy the troops from this shared military to help your ally. This military is independent from any countries military, so you can still have your own personal army. It is operated by the computer (or by whatever nation started the alliance or something idk), it is upkept by member dues or something else, and lasts for a set number of turns. The composition of this army can be determined a number of different ways. It could be as simple as having some preset options based on size of the alliance and then you vote on which one, or you get some benefit for "donating" units for shared military service. Meant as an emergency situation to give alliances some teeth even when you're allied with peacable civs.

4. Bring back naval transports!!!!! I know this is probably the unpopular opinion, but invading somewhere across the water got so boring so quickly after that happened. You don't have to get rid of embarkment feature, just further restrict movement or something idk. Transports were interesting because it created strategic weakpoints that you had to deal with. Naval warfare has gone downhill because there is rarely a reason to have anything outside of naval bombard and submarine units.

5. More than just cities = less Cities: this kinda goes back to minor factions. but it would be cool if you had more options than just creating a city. I was playing a game where where there was a resource all the way across the map I needed that was unclaimed. I didn't want to send a settler all the way there. I really just needed a mine. What if we could build colonies, that were different from cities? what if we could establish regions that has one "city" but multiple townships that extend the border? and you could have governor effect the whole region. This is one thing I think Humankind did well, but could also be done a lot better, especially with Civ's district system. Build a region capital and then have a city center as a buildable district that culture bombs adjacent tiles. Each city center increases the number of possible districts, and feeds yields back into the region capital.

6. Distributed Defenses: This ties into the previous idea in a way. Late game combat can gettttttttt pretty boring. Because once you take a city center the whole city becomes yours, even if you don't really have good control of the territory. Too many times have a taken an encampment district without even getting it in my field of view. It's just too easy to focus on city centers. But what if you couldn't? What if every district was a tile you had to take? and I don't even mean necessarily that it had HP and you have to bombard it, I just mean that you actually have to possess territory with your troops before you claim that territory. That way, city centers are less rewarding because you haven't flipped all of the tiles to your territory, you don't have your in-territory combat bonuses yet, you haven't add the yields etc... I think it would also be cool if there were still some type of resistance mechanic where once you take a city, a number of resistance troops pop up (maybe equal to the number of districts but max of 5?) that you have to deal with. Something to force you to be more intentional about how you invade your neighbor. Focus combat less on city centers by distributing the defense and strategic importance out to other tiles. Encampments were a huge step in the right direction, but we can go farther.

7. Better/new utility units: Military Engineers should be able to build forts in enemy territory and should have more than just two charges. Otherwise they aren't m i l i t a r y engineers, they are just really bad builders. They aren't providing any utility to combat. Also, there should be some type of black flag/black ops type unit that can infiltrate stealthily and mess horsehocky up diplomatically. Like a combination of the spy/spec ops unit. someone who can sabotage carriers or do a false flag operation or steal a bomber or sabotage an aerodome district. The type of unit that makes me keep some of my units off of the front line in case someone is gonna show up at my back door to interfere with my bombers.


Honorable Mentions:
-Bring back customizable palace designs and city view from Civ3. Heck, don't just bring it back, make it better. Give us a 3d rendering. Let me fly around my capital with an aerial view. Let me sit on my throne and look at my empire.
-Let canals and bridges be two tiles long/wide. I know coding the tile restrictions can get difficult, but just say canals have to be on a flat tile adjacent to water and bridges have to be on a water tile adjacent to land. If someone wants to make a dumb canal that can't ever connect, that's on them.
-repeatable projects for us late-gamers who don't have anything else to produce. I know there are mods for this, but still
-group army movement.
-better AI, specifically for the type of units they make and where they move them during combat.
-Civil wars/revolutions. I know I mentioned this earlier but it was in reference to another idea. So I wanted to make sure this was on here
-would love to see them continue to develop the corporations/industries idea. That was a super neat concept.
-customizable end eras. similar to how you can choose your start era, you can also choose the last era that you are able to keep researching

 

[Naokaukodem]

1. Revamped Unit Recruitment: You shouldn't have to use your production queue to build units. It has never made sense to me to have to choose between building a library and recruiting some early era melee unit. Why are those mutually exclusive? Personally, I think a cool idea would be to have unit recruitment something that happens a periodic number of turns that you can toggle on and off. The number of turns can vary depending on some resource like loyalty or something else. Every set number you get a basic melee unit, and then you can send the unit to a military encampment for "training", at which point they become a specialized unit.

Sending units to precise spots would be incredibly tedious. Other than that, I kind of agree : we should have other means to get troops than brute production. History is full of wars, and the game should represent that. However, I think that using some kind of production should still be a thing. Either cheaper (gold) units, population points needed (but not alone, otherway it would be the one who spawns near rice or sugar that would have a major advantage), production loans (ally, city-State, tribal village, barbarians... or private societies inside your civ), or simply mercenaries like with Civ6 city-States, but cheaper, renewable and irreversible (the fact that another civ sending envoys when you already spent your money is unfair), and quantifiable (no need to hire the whole army).

 

[treadwin]

For me I would like to see a few more general paradigm improvements in the game, rather than just a tweaking of this and that.

TLDR; Get rid of the tedious width created by surrounding the core game in mini-games that have a much larger impact on the game than they should. Make the core game deeper and make all the game artifacts; units, luxuries, buildings resources, terrain, districts, etc., more nuanced, more customizable, and the game engine more responsive to them. Make the core game more complex and get rid of the complex fluff on the periphery. I want a religious building (a monastery), making a luxury (beer), in an industrial zone, but only if I am growing an optional bonus crop (barley) on a customizable fertile tile. However it also requires that I increase security, by garrisoning a military unit, or building a police station in the City centre. That sort of thing.

1. The world map, resources, luxuries, wonders and terrain needs a major uplift and starting positions need a major uplift. One of the biggest complaints that can be levelled at Civ6 is that the first 100 turns felt very similar no matter what CIV you were playing and who you were next to. You were also, depending on the Civ you were playing often unable to take advantage of your Civ's strengths, because of your location. It also seemed that your Civ got placed last and was wedged into the last spot available. As most Civilizations adapt to their location, perhaps it might be better if you chose your Civ to suit your location rather than the other way round. Maybe select your civ, and you get to select your leader after you start?

2. Also regarding the map, a lot of luxuries seemed very odd. Why can't I grow citrus on any piece of suitable soil with a suitable climate? Why only in their indigenous positions? And how come we can mine deeper and deeper iron deposits as our mining technology improves? And how come tanks don't require steel? Resources and luxuries need to have a far more complex and nuanced systems. Mineral luxuries like marble shouldn't be the same as "Spices". You need to be able to put wheat or cattle or sheep or citrus on any appropriate tile once you have discovered farming or livestock.

3. Once you start getting into the industrial age production needs to start being allocated between uses like Civ games in the past. The idea that only one Civilization can make toys and cosmetics, is too simplified for a modern game. This is a core aspect of the game. Happiness is way too simplified for such a core mechanic. You should be able to come by happiness equally through all the victory types, science, domination (military), religious, culture, and diplomacy. This way the victory types don't get imbalanced based on difficulty.

4. The same is true for warfare. It is still far too simplistic. We need to be able to customize the generic forces in the game. We need to be able to customize all the basic types with levels of training, size, and armor, taking various levels of time and materials to produce, with the stats to match. There is no need to add tactical battles, but the strategic game can get far deeper.

5. The scenario and map editor needs to be much better and easier to use. Fan scenarios are a huge part of the game. The fact that in Civ6 you could never create a floodplain to take a dam, in the editor, is a disgrace!

6. Diplomacy just needs to be scrapped and rewritten from scratch. Civilizations need to forget past transgressions much quicker. Right now Germany, USA, and Britain are allied against Russia. Less than 100 years ago Britain, Russia and the USA were allied against Germany. Japan has just resumed trade in oil with Russia, even though it has a treaty with the USA to station troops in Japan. The lasting animosity that goes on for thousands of years in Civ6 is totally unrealistic. Feeling between countries has to be much more fluid, and easier to influence.

7. The religious and ethnic make up of cities needs to be brought back and/or used in happiness and diplomacy. There should be a huge difference in diplomacy between losing your core ethnic territories, and losing a recently acquired territory. Also an overseas colony and colonial war shouldn't be create a thousand year war. France should care far more about losing Alsace to Germany, than Martinique to the locals, also based on Libya being full of oil!

8. Get rid of that Great works garbage. It has far too much affect on the game than in real life and is a simple mini-game that is tedious and boring, but you have to do it. A lot!

 

[Evie]

Scrap great works because it's a minigame, and any representation of the importance of art and culture, but add a detailed military customization minigame?

Hell no. This game isn't a war simulator, and culture and art are far more important to the growth of civilization than the precise choice of equipment for soldiers. The military system need tweaks, but detailed unit building is far beyond the scope of what's needed.

Agreed we need better editors.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Basically unit trainings should use Heroes of Might and Magic series model. where a player can recruit units instantly but with limited recruitable number per city per turn. this is where production pricing model should work. ... i.e. if Unit_A Price is A, and total production this turn is B. recruitable number of this unit will be A/B (A divides by B). (or maybe other models)

 

[Thunderclan]

5. More than just cities = less Cities: this kinda goes back to minor factions. but it would be cool if you had more options than just creating a city. I was playing a game where where there was a resource all the way across the map I needed that was unclaimed. I didn't want to send a settler all the way there. I really just needed a mine. What if we could build colonies, that were different from cities? what if we could establish regions that has one "city" but multiple townships that extend the border? and you could have governor effect the whole region. This is one thing I think Humankind did well, but could also be done a lot better, especially with Civ's district system. Build a region capital and then have a city center as a buildable district that culture bombs adjacent tiles. Each city center increases the number of possible districts, and feeds yields back into the region capital.

Personally I kind of like the idea that your civilization's capital is the only 'big' city that would have the vast variety of building choices that we are used to seeing. And then every other settlement you build is a smaller, more specialized place built for a specific purpose rather then just bringing territory/resources inside your borders. So for example, you find an area rich in mineral resources and build a mining town which has it's own variety of buildings to construct, some of which would be common across all specializations (the sort of stuff you would reasonably find in pretty much any town) but most of which would be unique to the mining town specialization, directed towards improving your ability to both acquire and use those resources in new ways as your technology develops. And at the same time would probably make wars a bit more interesting as well given how badly having your supplies of food or weapon-making resources cut off by an enemy invasion could affect your ability to respond.

2. Also regarding the map, a lot of luxuries seemed very odd. Why can't I grow citrus on any piece of suitable soil with a suitable climate? Why only in their indigenous positions? And how come we can mine deeper and deeper iron deposits as our mining technology improves? And how come tanks don't require steel? Resources and luxuries need to have a far more complex and nuanced systems. Mineral luxuries like marble shouldn't be the same as "Spices". You need to be able to put wheat or cattle or sheep or citrus on any appropriate tile once you have discovered farming or livestock.

You definitely should be able to have a worker or some sort of similar unit harvest plant or animal resources from a tile (not destroying the existing tile, more taking just enough seeds/animals to transplant somewhere else, likely with either a very long cooldown between such harvests or some other limitation to keep things from going totally out of control) that they could then bring back to one of your settlements to grow/raise there. Probably with some sort of number of turns that would need to pass before the new crop/livestock was grown and could be worked like normal. And of course with the reasonable limitations of climate on what can actually grow where, though that could likely be altered by the advance of technology as well with greenhouses and the like.

 

[treadwin]

Scrap great works because it's a minigame, and any representation of the importance of art and culture, but add a detailed military customization minigame?

Hell no. This game isn't a war simulator, and culture and art are far more important to the growth of civilization than the precise choice of equipment for soldiers. The military system need tweaks, but detailed unit building is far beyond the scope of what's needed.

Agreed we need better editors.

Well you say it isn't a "War Simulator" but you are going to spend a lot of your time fighting wars. The game pretty much forces you into war at any serious difficulty. If I am going to spend most of the game at war, it needs to be far more interesting.