Civ Add-on/Expansion Pack Ideas

[Beloyar]

Battleships and Aegis cruisers should be able to attack MULTIPLE TIMES after a certain tech is researched. This should include bombardment.

Submarines should be able to "bombard" other vessels with torpedos without engaging in close combat.

Also, there should be a small wonder (in a coastal city) for all civs that would increase naval units' movement by 2 tiles or more. Otherwise moving ships on huge maps is very slow.

I hope someone from Firaxis actually reads our posts.

 

[explodin dog]

1. make steal troop position last more than one turn (up cost maybe)
2. allow units (other than workers) to be traded between civs
3. LANDMINES!
4. SEAMINES!
5. more ships and vehicles
6. APC vehicle to transport units across the LAND
7. small wonder/treaty-type thing that allows you to see all of your allies' troops for the remainder of a war, he or she can also see YOUR troops.
8. allow friendlies to be on the same square as your troops/other units
9. more espionage missions (whatever happened to plant crop disease...)
10. more amphibious units (such as a tank that would start out in the water and somehow reach and move on land[i.e. that guy's crocodile tank unit mod thing])
ok...that's enough... i'm waiting for the editor patch.. it'll be sweet!

 

[explodin dog]

Originally posted by Jandor
I want a SMAC style government engineering thingy.
like:

Rule: Dictatorship, Republic, Democracy.
Economy: Capitilism, Corporatism, Syndicalism, Communism.
Labour: Payed, Forced, Robot.
Other: Primitive, Green, Industrial, Nationalist.

Im sure Firaxis can do better though

dude thats one helluva cool idea, i would surely love to see THAT.
to have the ability to mix and match. as the game is now, a democracy is always a capitalist economy with representation of the governed. the capitalist economy i think is represented by that trade bonus thingy. so we could say that the ruling style affects war weariness, the economy affects trade bonuses/maybe corruption, the labor type would just be how you hurry it, and the other things would just affect waste/unhappiness/other stuff? that's an excellent idea to mix and match! i'd choose a dictatorship with a capitalist economy! lol
just my two pennies, but these are some great ideas

 

[explodin dog]

Originally posted by pesoloco


what if there was a way to access the foreign advisor screen from a diplomatic meeting to see who the other country was allied with, at peace with, and at war with? that could help you decide if you want to make a mpp or right of passage agreement.

there is (sorta). just go to the foreign advisor screen before you sign rop or mpp, click on the leaderhead of the country you're considering the rop or mpp with, and the lines show what the leader has with other people. i don't do it, most people probably don't, but it can solve your problem.

 

[MadScot]

I've noticed a couple of people asking for science and entertainment slider scales that are in increments of less than 10%.

I presume this is because they don't like switching from 40% to 50% (say) and having the "turns to go" and effect on the treasury vary so much.

The problem is that with the way the game is structured, there is no practical way to give the player more control over the research level, say, without involving crippling micromanagement.

Consider the following hypothetical civ:

One city, 10 gold
Two cities each 8 gold
Four Cities, Five gold
Two cities 2 gold
Ten cities, one gold (corruption!)

So, total income of 10 + 8*2 + 5*4 + 2*2 + 1*10 = 60 gpt

Now, what happens if I set the slider to 50%? I sure won't get 30 gold, because the slider is applied to each city individually. So each city will contribute:

One city : 5
Two cities : 4
Four cities : 3
Two cities : 1
Ten cities : 1

There are no half-golds in the game, so the game rounds to the nearest amount of whole golds. Total gpt for science : 5 + 4*2 + 3*4 + 1*2 + 1*10 = 37gpt - over 60% !!!!!

OK, that's too much, so we set 40%. This time we get:

One city : 4
Two cities : 3
Four cities : 2
Two cities : 1
Ten cities : 0

Again the game rounds to the nearest amount of whole golds. Total gpt for science : 4 + 3*2 + 2*4 + 1*2 + 0*10 = 20gpt - less than 40% !!!!!


As long as:
a. the slider applies to each city independently; and
b. there are no partial golds; and
c. most cities generate relatively small amounts of gold (the effect is made worse by lots of 1,2 3 gpt cities)

then it will make no difference having 49%, 50% and 51%. If you do the case above for 49%, assuming the game will round sensibly, you'd get

One city : 5 gold
Two cities : 4 gold
Four cities : 2 gold
Two cities : 1 gold
Ten cities : no gold

Total this time : 25 gold - still only just over 40%. Those small cities rounding down will get you every time.

I personally don't want to have to manage the science in each city seperately, and I don't want to account for fractional gold. It's annoying, sure, to not be able to fine tune my research. But since my civ knows nothing about the topic before it starts to research it, I'm willing to let them be slightly non-optimal in uncovering the truth.

 

[explodin dog]

as for natural disasters and effects of the environment/pollution..
1. Erosion. this would require a tide/wind system though, and also what may happen when this occurs every once in a long while, maybe coast squares creep up inland, changing the tundra or the plains into water, even the possiblity of engulfing (hopefully not YOUR) cities, which can be prevented by a barrier improvement, also that MIGHT send the effect to the nearest coastal city (HOPEFULLY a different civ's city ).
2. the water related disasters would be like hurricanes tsunamis and such, tsunamis would be possibly trigger by other disasters (e.g. earthquakes across the ocean) and might not even hit the land, since they die out after going so far. storms at sea would prevent/hinder trade for as long as they are very bad.
3. land disasters, such as landslides maybe? landslides could happen if a hurricane gets near land (very near - causing heavy rainfall) and the disaster happens if there is a mountain or hill in the city radius maybe. also fires could occur, a fire station improvement maybe to protect a radius (cos fires could spread to trees and other vegetation). tornadoes could occur during thunderstorms, which also could be a miniature disasters, that meaning it has a VERY VERY VERY SMALL (next to zero) chance of causing a flood. floods could occur on flood plains (duh!), plains and grasslands (that are near water squares OR rivers), and cause improvements to not be able to be used/pop loss. volcanoes could erupt (idea - mountains containing GEM luxuries have greater chance of eruption - since gems are sometimes created by excessive heat). famine could be used too. just a food loss/shortage thing for so many turns.
some more small wonders, e.g. fbi academy that allows you to create new units; spies and guerrilas. guerrilas would be VERY fast moving low attack/defense pillagers who hit and run. these could be effective units when disrupting enemy trade routes! spies could be disguised in another civ's colours, and could join an enemy or friendly city and can disrupt production/cause famine/plant disease that lowers pop values, also they have no hit points, BUT they have conscript/regular/veteran/elite ratings, conscripts aren't as good when attempting to sabotage production, but vets are much better at it. this is what i would like to see maybe, hope firaxis considers ALL of our ideas!

 

[explodin dog]

i'm just full of ideas!!! heh, ok, i have a really neat idea. special equipment that can be "attached" to certain units, like maybe a sniper rifle (one round of combat won in surprise, nationality has chance of being found out or not being found out, like an on - off privateer. also, mortars to give to marines/infantry to bombard enemy units/improvements, or maybe a light anti tank weapon that makes foot soldiers EFFECTIVE versus tanks and other heavy armours. this would be a cool idea. also, maybe grenades which would work like bombard but make a VERY HIGH chance of destroying enemy improvements OR if used versus enemy units and the target has his friends in the adjacent squares a chance for splash damage from the explosion, causing a possible one hp loss. this concept can be used and an endless amount of mini-units can be attached to one unit.

 

[explodin dog]

Originally posted by Dirk Aurel


Maybe...

Don´t need 40+ cities,but would be ok,what annoys me most (concerning food) is the starvations in anarchy and that one surplus wheat that will keep starving the peeps,one can´t even stop the city from growing.Another posssibility that would combine your idea and mine;the Supermarket would even out the food surplus AND would give an extra two food FOR every tile in city radius,even to those who aren´t producing any,so we´d have all cities growing to size 20.(making use of all their tiles)Just imagine the use it would have building a town in tough country like hills and mountains.

As for navy,I agree,but doubt we will see an big change,a simple but totally stupid method of pretending to "harm" trade,would be that whenever a sub or other navy vessel sinks a transport, galleon etc. the player would get a certain amount of shields the load was worth in one of their cities EXTRA.

I don´t like this idea,even though it´s from me ,wish they had included something similar to the trade system of Colonization.

I never liked caravans in Civ 1&2,nerve racking those thingies. Colonization wasn´t though,somehow one didn´t mind ferrying the goods around...maybe because they had some value.

yea, with ya on the sinking ships/obtaining their cargo in shields.. tail fins are kinda hard to see on subs too, maybe the regular [not nuclear] subs could have hidden nationality, and could be used to attack enemy shipping. also, the privateer's civilopedia entry says it all... the privateers were given a percentage of the victim ship's cargo. this could be reflected in shield values.

 

[Traquenard-fx]

Originally posted by explodin dog


yea, with ya on the sinking ships/obtaining their cargo in shields.. tail fins are kinda hard to see on subs too, maybe the regular [not nuclear] subs could have hidden nationality, and could be used to attack enemy shipping. also, the privateer's civilopedia entry says it all... the privateers were given a percentage of the victim ship's cargo. this could be reflected in shield values.

Not a bad idea here...simply like the concept

 

[Jandor]

dude thats one helluva cool idea, i would surely love to see THAT.
to have the ability to mix and match. as the game is now, a democracy is always a capitalist economy with representation of the governed. the capitalist economy i think is represented by that trade bonus thingy. so we could say that the ruling style affects war weariness, the economy affects trade bonuses/maybe corruption, the labor type would just be how you hurry it, and the other things would just affect waste/unhappiness/other stuff? that's an excellent idea to mix and match! i'd choose a dictatorship with a capitalist economy! lol
just my two pennies, but these are some great ideas

if you choose some options it grays out others,

Id have Dicatatorship, Communism, Robot, Industrial

 

[Quentin]

Have more weapons of mass destruction. Nukes are just not enough.

 

[Jove]

Arrrr, where are the suicide bombers? Where are the drug traders? Why is there no upgrade for Privateers?

 

[Reboot]

First post! Allo~!

OMG. So many posts... but I think I've skimped through all, so there aren't repeated points here.

I must say that the current list looks good... I just hope they implement most of the ideas. I'm not keen about the game customisation, but I know it means a lot to other Civ Fans, so let's all hope they give users more power in customisation like what was done in Civ2. Many of the suggestions here can be dealt with if the editor works better...

Additional suggestions, most trivial since I'm love nice graphics:

- Once the first Civ gains the tech, it should be easier for other civs to research it, if they have diplomatic relations with that Civ. This should be implemented especially to ancient and maybe medieval techs.

- A lot more random events, such as one-time research ("Stroke of Genius") or production bonuses ("Industrial Boom"), natural disasters, diplomatic gains/losses ("Diplomatic Breakthrough", "Diplomatic Booboo"), etc.

- More evenly-distributed strategic-resources, or make it easier for player to trade resources with AI. (Not "My 3 luxuries and 1 aluminum for your 1 oil")

- Palace. I agree with the previous post regarding how you should PAY your palace upgrades (esp in Democracy/Republic?), and every Civ should have their own Palace structure. That Oriental palace does not look Chinese, Korean or Japanese; India doesn't even have anything Hindu; European palaces look utterly dull - what happened to Buckingham and Versailles? And then there's the "garden" aka "boring lawn" in the palace - I'm sure many civs have their own way of maintaining greenery. For example, its very likely a Japanese palace would have a Zen garden. And yet they replace every civ's garden concept with boring lawn. How dare they! (favourite CivIII rant)

- The post on ocean improvements and resources. Yes! Pearls, Oil, Coral (?)

- More civs with modern special units.

- Land Armies, Sea Armadas.

- Wonder movies. PLEASE.

- Allow war-weariness penalties to be affected by victories and defeats. The more defeats (loss of troops and cities), the greater and faster the war-weariness.

- Allow "Find..." feature to "Find Resources", as in "Find... Coal", or "Find... Uranium".

Actually. This might well be a lost cause. Firaxis might listen, but I doubt Infogrammes would... but a smart developer should capitalise on these ideas and come up with a real contender to Civ since the "orginals" can't do their job right.

 

[Revolutionairy]

There's too much to read so im sorry if this has been said before but what bout an Act of Union.

Like with the uk or austria-hungery

prehaps they would have too be cultrely next to each other and either mates with each other or one is scared of the other?

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Quentin
Have more weapons of mass destruction. Nukes are just not enough.

How about a Death Star, if massive outbreaks of smallpox, ebola virus, and Sarin nerve gas aren't enough?

 

[Sanguinarius]

Originally posted by Publius
Canals. How about a way to send a ship two or three tiles across an isthumus or into an inland sea? This was another good idea from the old thread before it turned into a pissing contest. Again, real life.

Or OUT of an inland sea. I just finished a game tonight which had this HUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE honkin' inland sea. I developed my navy, only to go exploring and find that it couldn't get out. I then had to develop ANOTHER navy on the OUTSIDE of the land mass (it was like, a huge atole or something). It was very annoying and time & resource consuming. The ability to construct canals would have come in handy.

 

[louiethelesbo]

Originally posted by explodin dog
i'm just full of ideas!!! heh, ok, i have a really neat idea. special equipment that can be "attached" to certain units, like maybe a sniper rifle (one round of combat won in surprise, nationality has chance of being found out or not being found out, like an on - off privateer. also, mortars to give to marines/infantry to bombard enemy units/improvements, or maybe a light anti tank weapon that makes foot soldiers EFFECTIVE versus tanks and other heavy armours. this would be a cool idea. also, maybe grenades which would work like bombard but make a VERY HIGH chance of destroying enemy improvements OR if used versus enemy units and the target has his friends in the adjacent squares a chance for splash damage from the explosion, causing a possible one hp loss. this concept can be used and an endless amount of mini-units can be attached to one unit.

I just don't like radical ideas...next the Chinese Civilization will have the ability to raise "cats" as a food source. While I admire your creativity, I am a basic type of guy..like Josef Stalin.

 

[Jove]

Maybe all the civs should be allowed to harvest cats as a food resource, or something maybe more general, like 'undesirable food', whatever that is for a particular civilization, for example let's say only one civilization likes to eat dogs. Their undesirable food would be something they didn't like, and perhaps not specified at all.
This idea has historical basis. The settlers at Jamestown, for example, weren't really adapted to life in the New World. They settled on an island in order to be able to defend themselves from the Native Americans. The water there was brackish, it didn't really flow and they ignorantly fouled it with their own waste. There was a severe drought, they were sick, and the friendly natives didn't have any spare food to trade. They weren't doing well at all, and the resulting food shortage led them to eat anything they could think of. This voracious lack of food standards might have caused arsenic poisoning among most of the population. Sure, CivIII represents starvation and disease with citizen deaths, but imagine the impression such a performance would make on the surrounding civilizations, especially if this was a first impression. It would probably be sort of repugnant, and hamper diplomatic relations, eg. 'native' civs would be much more likely to ally with each other than with the 'garbage eaters.'
I realize this is awfully specific. CivIII improvements wouldn't necessarily have to refer to specifically what the people like to eat to satisfy me. Whatever improvements were made would have a comparable depth to my specific suggestion.

 

[Jove]

In a similar vein, I'd like to see a variable weight assigned to what other civs think of you. More specifically, what other civs think of you would be comprised to some degree of what their individual units think of you, from the impressions you've made in their sight. March a great leader along their border, all of a sudden 5 pikemen, 3 workers, 3 horsemen, 2 archers, 6 knights, 3 swordsmen, and 2 spearmen think you're pretty cool, the rest haven't heard of you yet. Trade them saltpeter and their leader and government officials say nice things about you. The individual citizens mingle more than is currently represented. Say both civs are researching the same tech, they both get a small bonus because they're collaborating. I could see other, probably small, 'collaborative civ' bonuses and penalties. In gameplay terms, this would require more consistent strategies and a clearer 'civ personality'. Which equals more fun!

 

[Beloyar]

Cut the corruption rates!!!

In a huge democracy, on the edge of the country I have cities with 18 population, with courthouses, factories and coal plants. They produce about 50 shields but ALL are wasted except one! The huge modern city cannot build anything even in the modern age!!!

I don't understand this, can't I do anything to stop this waste and reduce the corruption?