MantaRevan
Emperor
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2011
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If we want to put pressure on Firaxis to get Civ 6 to the point where Civ 5 was gameplay wise, I though it would be a good idea to come up with a list of bug fixes, mechanics additions, and other changes to the game that we'd like to see. I'm not counting new civs or leaders here, because those are a separate issue and not really related to the game as a whole. Firaxis has greater incentive to add new civs than to polish the game features, so that's what this post focuses on. If there's anything you'd like to see on the list that isn't on here, comment below and we can discuss. I'll update the post as we go along. Ideas suggested by other users are attributed in parentheses.
Civilization 6 Changes Wishlist
Game Pace
Soundtrack
Movement
Victory Conditions
Artificial Intelligence
User Interface
Unit Balance
Game Balance
Diplomacy
Tall and Wide Play
Power Creep and Civilization Balance
Quality of Life Improvements
Bugs and Miscellaneous
Anything I forgot? With all this text, I'm bound to have slighted quite a few people. Feel free to debate any of the points above, and to pose your own suggestions and modifications. What would you change to help improve Civilization 6?
Civilization 6 Changes Wishlist
Game Pace
- Unlink district
cost from
progress and put in place a scaling system similar to workers and settlers. Increasing
cost per district of the same type is one option, and it discourages placing the same district in every city.
[S} Rescale district repaircost. Districts should never cost wildly more to repair than to build in the first place (@gettingfat ).
[*]Change era scaling so that standard speed looks more similar to quick speed. The base game is a little slow.
[*]Reduce inspiration and eureka percentage so that it accommodates the player's play-style, rather than determining it. 30% is a spitball number here. This would also keep the game clock more tied to the real world, no more modern era in 1350 AD. China's bonus should still remain 10% above the standard amount. Alternatively, keep the existing boost percentages but make boosts more difficult to obtain across the board. (@nzcamel )
[*]Fill out the unit lines. Musketmen don't upgrade until Infantry right now, because Riflemen are missing. The same goes for Macemen/Longswordsmen and Trebuchets.
[*]Fill out the late game tech tree for something other than pure military. The late game tech tree is rather bare right now, and it could use some extra unlocks to make these techs more useful and less two-dimensional.
[*]Rework the way legacy bonuses scale so that they work more equally across eras. Something like doubling the bonuses they currently provide might help Legacy bonuses become a more serious part of the government-choice decision. This should make legacy bonuses non-negligible, and remove the overwhelming dominance of ancient governments from the legacy system (@Zigzagzigal).
[*]Great People shouldn't be removed from the pool based on the most advanced civilization's progress through the game. Use the average civ era system from Civ 5's WC to eliminate great people based on the average era that civs in the game are in. Tech/Civics runaways are common in upper difficulties, and there are still many GPs I have never seen before at because they always get deleted from the midgame pool by the runaway (@Arlequin).
Soundtrack
- Alter the DJ's algorithm so that the extra B-side tracks play more than once or twice per game in the ancient era. This would help Civ 6's musical variety without actually adding new music. Diplomacy themes should back off a little bit compared to ambient music.
- Increase road movement speed
per era. Civ 6's movement system is very punishing, and roads do very little to actually help your units move faster, especially compared to civ 5. For most of the game, your melee units will still only be moving 2 tiles, even when travelling exclusively on roads. An added .5
per road upgrade from the classical era onward might be a good idea.
- Increase road movement speed
- Add a Diplomatic Victory with the UN/AP/WC. This gives players more flexibility in pursuing victory paths, and the WC can make for some fun inter-player relations. I would suggest a combined approach from Civs 4 and 5, where only a few candidates are nominated for Secretary General elections, rewarding players who actually manage diplomacy with AIs, rather than letting them buy diplomatic victories from CSs, which should also play a role in elections.
- Ideology Overhaul. Bring back the ideological pressure system from Civ 5, so that the - relations modifier from different governments with another civ can actually be dealt with. This also makes
a worthwhile yield, rather than being rather weak, as it is now. A more fleshed out final 3 governments will help the late game feel more dynamic and impactful.
- Give GWAMs a secondary utility like they had in Civ 5 so that they become more valuable generally. This also gives players choice over how to expend their GPs, making them more fun and rewarding players who gave greater game sense. This should solve the issue of having great writers in particular sitting around long after players have run out of slots for great works of writing.
- Drastically scale back
costs for spaceport districts or projects so that a technological victory is consists of less waiting around for timers to complete. Domination is currently far and away more convenient than other victory conditions, such a change would remedy this.
- Fix the AI's weirdness about delegations and embassies. Computer players at pleased should always accept delegations. This should give players more of an opportunity to ally themselves with other civs.
- Lore UI fixes. Examples include @sukritact 's point about the "Ngao Mbeba," and Wats.
- General UI consistency fixes. No unit on the startup screen should have their description read "a unique land unit". All Uniques should have their effects listed so that players can understand what they do.
- Great Person UI fix. Mods already exist for this, but fitting all the GPs on one screen without horizontal scrolling does wonders for the game.
- Unique icons for Unique Districts. A mod also exists for this, but it should be included in the base game.
- Differentiated tech and civics tree icons like those from Civ 4 will give players more information at a glance. The icons added in the most recent patch are a huge step forward, but this small change would be even better. The icon for a farm on the 'Feudalism' tooltip instead of an undifferentiated star, for instance.
- The pillage tooltip should tell players what the pillage reward is for the tile their unit is currently on. All sorts of districts and tile improvements in Civ 6 have different yeilds, this is a conveniance that will prevent players from having to consult the civilopedia every time they want to pillage a new type of tile.
- The Civilopedia should be acessable from the main menu, as it has been in all previous civ games.
- Add additional fog of war options besides parchment. Civ 5's fog of war provides more clarity, and is easier on the eyes of colorblind players (@Aheadatime ).
- On the leader select screen, civs with multiple leaders could have a dropdown so that you can select betwean Gorgo and Pericles. Something similar to Civ 4's system would be welcome. This tidies up the menu a bit. (@Zigzagzigal)
- Nerf the overwhelming dominance of cavalry. For an explanation of this problem, take a look at some of FilthyRobot's "How Good are Each Civ" videos where he explains this issue. One or more possible suggestions include:
- Decrease the
bonus from the Chivalry and similar cards. Double
towards cavalry has been a major problem for Civ 6, even after selling exploits were patched.
- Reintroduce a cavalry
penalty against cities. This helps cav specialize towards antipersonnel combat, rather than being the all-purpose monsters that they are today.
- Remove cavalry combat bonuses from terrain. This allows melee units to function better as meatsheilds and defensive blocking units. That cav can dig in right now is unusual.
- Substantially increase the bonus that anti-cav units (spears, pikes, anti tank) have against cavalry. The current bonus is too small to make them a dedicated counter.
- Make military science no longer a dead-end tech. This would make acquiring pikemen less punishing.
- Buff Melee units through either increased
or decreased
. Right now they are almost strictly inferior to cavalry.
- Decrease the
- Increase the number of late game wonders. This goes hand in hand with filling out the tech tree. I suspect that we may see the return of the Statue of Liberty and Kremlin alongside advanced ideologies in an expansion.
- Lower the
cost of spies slightly, so that they aren't such risky investments, and give Catherine her spy for free at Castles, like Elizabeth got last game.
- Improve religion and Holy Site districts overall. Holy sites are the weakest districts in the game at present, and could be improved by adding non-
yields such as
,
, housing, amenities, or
to the district buildings. Firaxis did a good job fixing harbor districts, though holy sites need the same treatment. Religions need stronger bonuses to be worthwhile, and they need to spread more effectively through natural pressure and trade routes, like previous games. Diplomatic bonuses from shared religion could be made stronger to reward players for spreading and founding religions. Powerful reformation beliefs could also make a return. Holy sites still need to provide something for players who don't manage to land a religion. If you get beaten to a religion, holy sites are a wasted tile with a huge opportunity cost of early
(@Zigzagzigal).
- Buff wonders overall. Many wonders, such as the Hanging Gardens are just too weak to justify building. Some ways to help improve wonders include bringing back fail
or other yields so that they aren't such massively risky investments, or giving some lackluster wonders stronger benefits overall. The HG, for instance, should probably provide
points.
- International
s should have their base yields increased to the sender of a route, and should also provide a small amount of
to the recipient of the route. Internal
s should provide slightly less
and
. Internal trade routes are much stronger than international routes at the moment, and this is both historically inaccurate and squanders Egypt's ability.
- The requirement for all tiles used in a national park to be inside the same city should be removed. This makes no logical sense and makes it even more difficult than it already is to place national parks. Likewise, horizontal diamond formations should be just as valid as vertical diamond formations when placing national parks.
- Give great prophets some utility after all religions have been founded so that great prophet points are less of a crapshoot, and so that faith districts aren't dead weight for players that don't make it to a religion (@WillowBrook). Examples include building powerful shrines and temples, acting as a super-apostle, giving amenities, ect.
- Reduce diplomacy's dependency on the agenda system slightly. Agenda's should flavor a leader's playstyle and diplomatic goals, but not supplant realpolitik. Diplomacy + and - values from complying with agendas should help determine international relations, but previous modifiers such as sharing a religion or ideology, trade history, compliance or refusal or pleas/demands, use of nuclear weapons ect should be more important than they currently are.
- Diplomatic penalties from ceded cities should degrade over time, since the city's owner has given up a claim to them (@Victoria ).
- Until an ideological pressure system is added, diplomatic penalties from different governments should be reduced somewhat, since players have no control over governments of other civs (@Victoria ).
- The return of the Civ 4's convert religion and government diplomatic options would be a welcome addition to the game. This gives players gunning for religion victories more options besides unit spam, and gives players a way to play around the government system.
- Reintroduce the ability to bribe players into war against one another outside of the joint war system. This allows for more diplomatic flexibility, and makes less aggressive AIs like de Medici more threatening through the diplomatic game.
- Make tall play more competitive with rapid expansion. This could be done with the introduction of some modest percentage based bonuses, or by increasing the amount of
and
provided to a city per citizen from .7 to 1 and .3 to .5 respectively. Other options include policy cards that reward players who have fewer cities, or general penalties towards ICS. The introduction of a leader with an agenda opposite of Rome's could help in this regard.
- Giving players some sort of yield bonuses per district constructed in a city could encourage taller behavior. Being able to designate a particular yield for each city to increase on the districts would incentive specialization (i.e. a city locked into the commerce track would get an increased 5%
per non neighborhood district).
- Bring back
points from specialists to make large cities and specialist slots more viable (@Amrunril ).
- Make tall play more competitive with rapid expansion. This could be done with the introduction of some modest percentage based bonuses, or by increasing the amount of
- Address power creep by either reigning in newer civs (Poland, Australia, Macedon) so that their bonuses aren't so unbelievably powerful, or going back to help out civs that have been weak since launch.
- Norway direly needs help, and their UU could be made a lot better either a slight
increase to make the defense penalty less punishing, or the ability to purchase Berserkers independent of Theocracy. The Stave Church will get better when religion does, but until then it is virtually useless. Perhaps lower
cost, maintenance, or a
culture bonus would help this building out.
- The French Chateau needs to have fewer requirements on placement. Being near wonders, luxuries, and on river tiles is so incredibly specific that the Chateau is almost never worth a builder charge at the expense of putting something else on the tile in question. The Chateau should provide some small amount of housing or defense similar to a fort. The river requirement should be removed to make it less inflexible.
- India's Satyagraha ability should either provide more
per player, or be apply to all peaceful players, regardless of whether they have founded a religion or not. This would make Gandhi's
output more meaningful in the early game and give him an advantage towards actually landing a pantheon. It also makes this bonus more reliable and less dependent on the behavior of other players.
- Spain's mission improvement should provide
without having to be placed near a campus district. This improvement is too weak to justify building in most circumstances, and this would help make the improvement more competitive with the Ziggurat and similar improvements. The bonus
and
from Treasure Fleet intercontinental
should be increased above 1 each to justify actually using the ability and encourage players to settle other continents.
- Aztecs should have their bonuses swapped so that Jaguars gain
based on Aztec amenities, while all Aztec units can utilize slavery (@ShakaKhan ). Aztecs are currently the civ most dependent on game speed, improving drastically on slower speeds and larger maps. This change would help narrow the gap betwean marathon Aztecs and quick speed Aztecs. It also lets players take fuller advantage of the most fun of Montezuma's bonuses, which obsoletes very quickly on standard speed and quicker.
- Norway direly needs help, and their UU could be made a lot better either a slight
- Automatic unit scrolling should be set to 'off' by default. Often causes players to select the wrong unit and send units flying off into the distance.
- Return the Hall of Fame and some sort of replay system. It doesn't have to be as expansive as Civ 4's- just something. Completing games is somewhat underwhelming right now. Consider features like the Histiograph and defeated leader galleries from Civ 3, or on-screen text like Civ 4. A map timelapse is a no-brainer. I have little doubt that this feature will arrive in an expansion pack.
- Reintroduce the restart feature.
- The feature to remove a civ from the random pool at the custom game screen would be a welcome addition. (@The googles do nothing )
- Give players the option to toggle certain popups off to reduce visual clutter.
- Pressing 'C' should center the camera on the currently selected unit.
- English cites controlled by other civilizations that do not already contain archaeology museums should not be able to construct 6 slotted British Museums.
- Spawned rebels should be flagged as rebels and not barbarians, so that they focus on causing problems for the target civilization, rather than roaming the map and hurting neighboring players (@Speckthommy ).
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