Changing how City Improvement Work

[loliologist]

I think one of my biggest frustrations with the civilization series is that the concepts behind City Improvements have changed little since the original civilization.

While other aspects of the game, such as unit promotions and great people, have been fleshed out over the series we see the same improvements time and time again and it just feels like a stagnant part of the franchise.

I think a way to mod city improvements over time rather than them stay static throughout the game would make game play far more interesting.

I've always found it weird that the temple, library or university I built hundreds of years ago gives the same benefits as the new ones I just built.

What I hope Civ 5 brings is a way to mod buildings.

There are a few ways this could be accomplished:

1. Make the city produce the mod in the production cue. I personally don't like this idea, because I feel it's too pedestrian.

2. Assign specialists in a city to upgrade the facilities.

- For example you could have a scientist specialist use its points towards making a "reference section" which would increase the tech output by 10% or have an artist use its points paint a mural in the library which would give it 4 additional culture

3. Have some method of discovering relics or artifacts which could be brought back to a city and be applied to a city improvement. (this is kind of an extension of the random events from civ 4) You could even image that great people could be consumed for a random upgrade, like a scientist could upgrade a university with a research lab for an additional tech bonus.

- For example you could find a holy relic of your religion which would give an additional happiness and culture to temple in one of your cities


These choices would let you customize your improvements for whatever play style you chose. I personally would like to see a combination of 2 and 3.

Anyhow that's my two cents, I guess I wonder if anyone else feels as strongly about the lack of detail in city improvements as I do.

 

[Woodreaux]

I like your second idea. Assigning specialists to upgrade buildings provides additional options for gameplay. Like choosing short-term gain (have the scientist start providing immediately) or shoot for the long-hall (put him upgrade duty for x number of turns to eventually provide greater returns).

However, Firaxis may limit specialists to one per city or remove them all together like they did w/ and possibly .

 

[snapple232]

Having each specialist work in a different section of the building or something is probably too complicated when you have dozens of cities, and dozens of buildings per city. But maybe moving the specialist interface onto a grid of the buildings in your city could be interesting, by that I mean a library might have 2 slots for scientists, or a theatre might have 3 slots for artists, and you just click and drag your various citizens into different buildings to adjust your city's output.

 

[andpe]

For the record, relics was implemented in the Charlemagne scenario of Civ4 BTS. I didn't find it all that well incorporated with the game but it adds to the feeling of a living and interesting world.
A bit like Colonization, where larger treasures are actual units that you have to bring to safety (ie. Europe).

I don't have a problem with ancient buildings still being in effect late in the game, but I always get tired of spending much time in the late game just to think of what buildings to build in all those cities of mine. The build queue helps some, but still.

 

[weekend_warrior]

I'd rather be able to build multiples of the same building. The problem in Civ4 with citys is I would run out of useful things to build for a citys particular specialization. So in Civ5 I'd like to build more then 1 of the same buidling, say a library for a tech city.