TowerWizard
Warlord
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2008
- Messages
- 277
I have so many ideas, that I thought it would be better to start a new thread to post them all in, and then possibly distribute them to the correct threads afterwards. The ideas are not listed in any particular order. I always play on deity difficulty (immortal-BUG-switch-to-diety trick), with revolutions turned on.
1. Game options
1a) "No Events"
I was forced to restart my most recent game (earth 28 prefixed civs) and turn off events, since volcanoes erupted every-friggin-where. What is up? Sure, tectonics is a nice feature, but come on!
1b) "Great Commanders"
This option is OP. The AIs apparently does not use this option to the best effect, so you the player will own in every battle. The way I do battle is by a small expert task force led by one Great Commander. By now that guy has all possible promotions, making battles 100% successful. Why not enforce a level cap on the commander? The cap can be increased by techs all along the tech tree. Also, some of those promos should need to be unlocked by techs.
1c) "Divine Prophets"
This game option is also too powerful. You get so many benefits. You can choose which city to found the religion in, but, more importantly, you can choose NOT to found religions. With 26 religions in the game, and so many penalties from having multiple religions in a city, you sometimes want to be able to pick and choose. This is all well and good. The problem is that the option uses Great Prophets as the foundling units. Use missionaries! Every player (not just the first) gets one missionary in a rando city from the religion the tech would normally found without this game option. Give these missionaries 100% spread chance. The first city to get the religion becomes the holy city. If you don't want to found it, delete the missionary. Simple as that. Much more balanced.
1d) "Hero Units"
Not an option, but it should be. They are ridiculously powerful. Strength 12 during Ancient Era (Theseus) is way to much. Yes, the downside is that they cannot be upgraded. Be that as it may, this one unit combined with a Great Commander and a Healer is like having a Panzertank. It destroys everything in its wake. Movement 3, can attack multiple times, 90% withdrawal chance... Nerf them please! Hero units should have no more than 1 or 2 points of strength above the best other units in its era. Theseus have 6-7 higher strength than the contemporaries. Also, enforce a level cap based on tech levels, that increases during the game. This would prevent über units. Also, the AI does not seem to build any Hero units.
2. Religions
There are 26 religions in the game. Most of those religions come with a +10% research building, usually a monastery. Those +10%'s ramp up fast. My suggestion is the following. The state religion buildings work as normal. However, when constructing buildings belonging to non state religions, you suffer a -50% penalty to hammers, to represent the difficulty of minorities to get funding/workers to build these buildings. Also, all benefits from non state religion buildings get halved, to represent the lower impact these have on society. Certain civics could modify this behavior.
3. Wonders
I love the idea of cities only being able to construct a certain number of wonders, based on culture level. Brilliant! This forces the player to "devote to the arts", so to speak. It also forces him/her to found more cities to make room for more Wonders. However, Obsoleted wonders should not count, nor should the Culture Wonders. It is counter-intuitive to build a culture Wonder that allows you to produce Wonders faster, but at the same time prevents you from Building one of those Wonders in that City (by stealing a Wonder slot). Culture Wonders should be made unlimited. They are still heavily limited by the fact that they have such hard demands on resources/culture that no more nerfing is needed. By the way, the Industrious trait is too powerful I think. It should be nerfed to only provide +25% to Wonder Building. Also, Wonders could be tied to Native Cultures, meaning that you can only build the Pyramids if you have the African Native Culture, Stonehenge only if you have European Native Culture and so on and so forth. Would be more realistic and challenging.
4. Buildings
There are too many of them. They overpower you. They sap your will to live. The idea of founding a new City during ancient/medieval eras is a horrible one, not to mention founding one even later. Suggestion: Many of the buildings should only be needed to be built one time. As soon as one of your cities builds one of them, it immediately copies to other cities, and prevents them from be built multiple times. The logic is the same as with the logic behind the techs: as soon as someone somewhere in your civ knows about a new tech, everyone else also immediately knows about it. In other words, technology is global. Why not make certain buildings global too? This should be true for all of the no-brainer buildings that all cities need. Bark-gatherer, root tubers, cobbler... If a building can and should be built in all cities, then they should benefit from this change, and be copied to all cities upon completion. However, all those local buildings that depend on circumstances, should only be copied to those cities that share that same circumstance. The harbor building, for instance, should only be copied to other coastal cities, and a building demanding specific resources in the city vicinity should only be copied to other cities that also have that same resource. As a rule of thumb, all buildings that provides extra food, tools and/or gold, and that at the same time does not carry a (huge) detriment, should be copied. Ie Gold Mine (+1 Yuck, +6 Gold) should be copied, but not the Tin Mine (+2 Yuck, +1 Tool)
HOWEVER, as soon as a building have some sort of strategy behind it, and is not just a no-brainer, then these should work as normal. All military buildings should work like normal, ie should not be copied. Defense buildings should not be copied, as should not Science buildings, Religious buildings, Culture buildings and most buildings that carry a penalty, such as -gold, extra unhappyness, extra yuckyness and so on.
The effect of this change should be that you would be looking forward to founding new cities, and not being horrified at the prospect, as presently.
5. Resources
There are many buildings that produces resources, such as milk, tablets, shoes, raw meat, flour... However, you only ever need one city to produce one of these resources. Apart from the buildings themselves (and the option to trade with other civs), you have no real benefit of more than one of these buildings.
What it these resources could, in addition to their normal effects, add +1 to a new counter called a "resource bank". This would be a local thing, so that each city has its own "resource bank" based on how many resources it produces. Now, every unemployed citizen gets a commerce bonus equal to 10% of the value of the "resource bank". So, in a city producing 25 resources, every unemployed citizen would be worth 1 tool and 2.5 commerce.
6. Techs
I would LOVE to have to make hard choices at times during research. That certain techs prevent you from researching other techs. You can have powerful melee units, or powerful mounted units, but not both, for instance.
7. The sliders
The game presents you with a research slider and a gold slider, and later a culture slider and an espionage slider. This is all well and good. But! Why not have a hammer slider too? It would work like the other sliders, but not allow more than 50% commerce-to-hammer conversion, to avoid abuse. If you have 100 commerce and devote 20% commerce to gold, you get 20 gold (100% conversion rate), subject to modifiers. If you have 100 commerce and devote 20% of the commerce into hammers, you get 10 hammers (50% conversion rate), subject to modifiers. This would help some cities to catch up. It could also mean that warmongers could sacrifice tech advances in exchange of getting more units. For that matter, why not make a Food slider, too, also with a 50% conversion rate?
Here me on this. Exactly what is this "commerce" you get? Why do you get more of it along rivers, in cities and in gold mines? My guess is that those places produce valuable goods, that you sell to people to get them to produce what you need. You use the goods to pay someone to think, in order to increase tech pace. By the same token, you use the goods to hire someone to beautify your city, to increase culture output. Why can't you use the trade to hire someone to gather extra wood to build stuff, or hunt more game to be able to grow your cities faster?
Also, I would strongly suggest that you can choose, in the game, to tie those sliders to individual cities, and to stop them from being global. I have never understood why they are global. The hammers produced by a city is local, so why is not the commerce it generates local too? Makes no sense.
Also, I would suggest that you cannot devote more than 50% of the commerce to any one slider, until you have unlocked that advantage by techs. Five +10% slider unlocks per slider should be distributed along the tech tree.
Thus, if all these changes would be implemented, your first city would have to choose how to distribute its commerce among the four sliders of gold, research, food and hammers. Not an easy choice, now, is it? When you found or conquer a new city, it would be able to make an individual choice of how to distribute its own commerce. Now this is more like strategy, than the old "100% research whenever possible" mantra!
1. Game options
1a) "No Events"
I was forced to restart my most recent game (earth 28 prefixed civs) and turn off events, since volcanoes erupted every-friggin-where. What is up? Sure, tectonics is a nice feature, but come on!
1b) "Great Commanders"
This option is OP. The AIs apparently does not use this option to the best effect, so you the player will own in every battle. The way I do battle is by a small expert task force led by one Great Commander. By now that guy has all possible promotions, making battles 100% successful. Why not enforce a level cap on the commander? The cap can be increased by techs all along the tech tree. Also, some of those promos should need to be unlocked by techs.
1c) "Divine Prophets"
This game option is also too powerful. You get so many benefits. You can choose which city to found the religion in, but, more importantly, you can choose NOT to found religions. With 26 religions in the game, and so many penalties from having multiple religions in a city, you sometimes want to be able to pick and choose. This is all well and good. The problem is that the option uses Great Prophets as the foundling units. Use missionaries! Every player (not just the first) gets one missionary in a rando city from the religion the tech would normally found without this game option. Give these missionaries 100% spread chance. The first city to get the religion becomes the holy city. If you don't want to found it, delete the missionary. Simple as that. Much more balanced.
1d) "Hero Units"
Not an option, but it should be. They are ridiculously powerful. Strength 12 during Ancient Era (Theseus) is way to much. Yes, the downside is that they cannot be upgraded. Be that as it may, this one unit combined with a Great Commander and a Healer is like having a Panzertank. It destroys everything in its wake. Movement 3, can attack multiple times, 90% withdrawal chance... Nerf them please! Hero units should have no more than 1 or 2 points of strength above the best other units in its era. Theseus have 6-7 higher strength than the contemporaries. Also, enforce a level cap based on tech levels, that increases during the game. This would prevent über units. Also, the AI does not seem to build any Hero units.
2. Religions
There are 26 religions in the game. Most of those religions come with a +10% research building, usually a monastery. Those +10%'s ramp up fast. My suggestion is the following. The state religion buildings work as normal. However, when constructing buildings belonging to non state religions, you suffer a -50% penalty to hammers, to represent the difficulty of minorities to get funding/workers to build these buildings. Also, all benefits from non state religion buildings get halved, to represent the lower impact these have on society. Certain civics could modify this behavior.
3. Wonders
I love the idea of cities only being able to construct a certain number of wonders, based on culture level. Brilliant! This forces the player to "devote to the arts", so to speak. It also forces him/her to found more cities to make room for more Wonders. However, Obsoleted wonders should not count, nor should the Culture Wonders. It is counter-intuitive to build a culture Wonder that allows you to produce Wonders faster, but at the same time prevents you from Building one of those Wonders in that City (by stealing a Wonder slot). Culture Wonders should be made unlimited. They are still heavily limited by the fact that they have such hard demands on resources/culture that no more nerfing is needed. By the way, the Industrious trait is too powerful I think. It should be nerfed to only provide +25% to Wonder Building. Also, Wonders could be tied to Native Cultures, meaning that you can only build the Pyramids if you have the African Native Culture, Stonehenge only if you have European Native Culture and so on and so forth. Would be more realistic and challenging.
4. Buildings
There are too many of them. They overpower you. They sap your will to live. The idea of founding a new City during ancient/medieval eras is a horrible one, not to mention founding one even later. Suggestion: Many of the buildings should only be needed to be built one time. As soon as one of your cities builds one of them, it immediately copies to other cities, and prevents them from be built multiple times. The logic is the same as with the logic behind the techs: as soon as someone somewhere in your civ knows about a new tech, everyone else also immediately knows about it. In other words, technology is global. Why not make certain buildings global too? This should be true for all of the no-brainer buildings that all cities need. Bark-gatherer, root tubers, cobbler... If a building can and should be built in all cities, then they should benefit from this change, and be copied to all cities upon completion. However, all those local buildings that depend on circumstances, should only be copied to those cities that share that same circumstance. The harbor building, for instance, should only be copied to other coastal cities, and a building demanding specific resources in the city vicinity should only be copied to other cities that also have that same resource. As a rule of thumb, all buildings that provides extra food, tools and/or gold, and that at the same time does not carry a (huge) detriment, should be copied. Ie Gold Mine (+1 Yuck, +6 Gold) should be copied, but not the Tin Mine (+2 Yuck, +1 Tool)
HOWEVER, as soon as a building have some sort of strategy behind it, and is not just a no-brainer, then these should work as normal. All military buildings should work like normal, ie should not be copied. Defense buildings should not be copied, as should not Science buildings, Religious buildings, Culture buildings and most buildings that carry a penalty, such as -gold, extra unhappyness, extra yuckyness and so on.
The effect of this change should be that you would be looking forward to founding new cities, and not being horrified at the prospect, as presently.
5. Resources
There are many buildings that produces resources, such as milk, tablets, shoes, raw meat, flour... However, you only ever need one city to produce one of these resources. Apart from the buildings themselves (and the option to trade with other civs), you have no real benefit of more than one of these buildings.
What it these resources could, in addition to their normal effects, add +1 to a new counter called a "resource bank". This would be a local thing, so that each city has its own "resource bank" based on how many resources it produces. Now, every unemployed citizen gets a commerce bonus equal to 10% of the value of the "resource bank". So, in a city producing 25 resources, every unemployed citizen would be worth 1 tool and 2.5 commerce.
6. Techs
I would LOVE to have to make hard choices at times during research. That certain techs prevent you from researching other techs. You can have powerful melee units, or powerful mounted units, but not both, for instance.
7. The sliders
The game presents you with a research slider and a gold slider, and later a culture slider and an espionage slider. This is all well and good. But! Why not have a hammer slider too? It would work like the other sliders, but not allow more than 50% commerce-to-hammer conversion, to avoid abuse. If you have 100 commerce and devote 20% commerce to gold, you get 20 gold (100% conversion rate), subject to modifiers. If you have 100 commerce and devote 20% of the commerce into hammers, you get 10 hammers (50% conversion rate), subject to modifiers. This would help some cities to catch up. It could also mean that warmongers could sacrifice tech advances in exchange of getting more units. For that matter, why not make a Food slider, too, also with a 50% conversion rate?
Here me on this. Exactly what is this "commerce" you get? Why do you get more of it along rivers, in cities and in gold mines? My guess is that those places produce valuable goods, that you sell to people to get them to produce what you need. You use the goods to pay someone to think, in order to increase tech pace. By the same token, you use the goods to hire someone to beautify your city, to increase culture output. Why can't you use the trade to hire someone to gather extra wood to build stuff, or hunt more game to be able to grow your cities faster?
Also, I would strongly suggest that you can choose, in the game, to tie those sliders to individual cities, and to stop them from being global. I have never understood why they are global. The hammers produced by a city is local, so why is not the commerce it generates local too? Makes no sense.
Also, I would suggest that you cannot devote more than 50% of the commerce to any one slider, until you have unlocked that advantage by techs. Five +10% slider unlocks per slider should be distributed along the tech tree.
Thus, if all these changes would be implemented, your first city would have to choose how to distribute its commerce among the four sliders of gold, research, food and hammers. Not an easy choice, now, is it? When you found or conquer a new city, it would be able to make an individual choice of how to distribute its own commerce. Now this is more like strategy, than the old "100% research whenever possible" mantra!
