[CiVI] Let the speculation begin!

[InaneObserver]

i just hope civ6 feels like managing an empire

civ5 felt like managing a city state

Huh, goes to show that the opening posts were right. I'd like the number of cities scaled way down, to make each city feel more unique and prevent deity dom games that take 20+ hours of slogging through.

 

[Aea]

I guess this is a wishlist thread? Here's my wishes.

Growing Cities
One of the few things BE does very right is the outpost system. You can't just plop down a settler and have an instant hard-hitting, hard-to-kill city. It just doesn't make sense how a bunch of civilians and a single military division can instantly found a city and repulse an entire army.

Navigable Rivers
Pretty self-explanatory, with an important historical tie-in. These should be 1+ tile wide and facilitate faster movement then roads. Minor rivers can remain as features between tiles.

Better Tall / Wide Balance
95% of the time the winning strategy is Tradition. Boo.

Better Policy Tree Balance
Extension of the last one but some of the trees are downright bad. I'm okay with situation trees but it seems like Tradition, Commerce Filler, Rationalism is just too downright good.

Moving Yields
I hate the whole internal trade route system. Many real-world empires had entire regions dedicated to growing grain and agriculture in general. Internal trade should depend on moving around food and production rather then just pulling a certain amount into existence. Better technologies could improve the conversion factor (but never above 100% IMHO).

Multiplayer
Having some damn stability would be nice. And maybe a few fixes (like the team order determining who gets a wonder if both finish same turn, barf).

 

[kaspergm]

For Civ 6, they MUST do one of two things, to improve the franchise:

Either spend most of their resources on improving the AI... the AI being the focal point of the new iteration, or

Spend most of the focus on making the game multiplayer friendly.

All other considerations are secondary. Everything depends on the AI, unless playing MP, which currently is not realistic due to the nature of the game.

I kind of agree. A lot of criticism of H5 centered on the 1UPT, and while I do love 1UPT, it's inarguable that the AI did excruciatingly bad in handling this system, which obviously kills a lot of joy for the very competitive players. When you at the same time have serious problems with multiplayer, effectively rendering PVP more or less defunct, obviously you're in deep ****.

Bottomline: I hope they keep 1UPT but makes an AI that's better at handling it. Functional multiplayer is desirable, obviously, but since I only play singleplayer that's not a crucial point for me personally.

 

[Raylen]

How do you feel about octagons?

Octagons don't fit together! You have to have squares in between them, like this:

As far as Civ 6 goes, I'd like more actual choices to make. For example, with workers, you may as well automate them, which wasn't really the case in Civ 4, for example. But then isn't this the way that all games are going nowadays...

 

[radster_X]

Anyone played the 4X Endless Legend? I've just started playing and I feel their combat system (although not perfect for Civ 5) is something that Firaxis should learn from, and perhaps take some inspiration from.

Basically when you initiate a war with a rival combat unit a separate combat overlay appears on the screen. A medium sized battlefield is drawn from which units cannot leave, (this battlefield is a 6-7 tile square/circle of area). The units then take their positions, you then first have the movement stage where you order units to move, (so you could for example move an archer to high ground, giving them an advantage).

After this you then choose what kind of action they perform, offensive manouver, defensive or hold ground. Then the battle plays out, but bear in mind you don't know where the AI is planning to send their units or orders for their units, and the fighting happens automatically. After the 1st round, there are 6 more rounds of this whole moving and ordering until there is a winner.

Interestingly though, this all takes place in 1 turn, thereby possibly saving time...in Civ this would mean we could have more time to enjoy UUs...

The system ain't perfect for Civ, and I may not have done an excellent job explaining it, but I think Firaxis could learn from this. Also they have "armies" but the max stack is only 4 and it has to be of the same type of unit if I remember correctly...Once combat starts though they all spread out.

 

[Big J Money]

I like the idea of:

"small stacks that allow strategic planning"

What I mean by this is, the stack composition you make slightly changes the overall effectiveness and role of the stack as its own "unit".

I wouldn't want it to be the classic stacks of "unit 1 fights until dead, then unit 2 fights until dead, etc, etc"

But more like you are building your own custom "unit" by which 3 (or whatever) smaller units you put together.

Maybe even an army/navy system where which units you place adjacent to each other also add benefits/roles.

This would be a more fun way (to me) to unlock abilities than leveling up; which is fun but depends on units living a very long time. I would go into more detail except it's pointless really since Firaxis has no reason to take feedback from forums when it comes to core design at this point

Edit: The nice thing about the army idea is that it forces a player to choose between 1) requiring stacks to be adjacent to each other to get powerful, army-specific abilities or 2) having stacks be in multiple locations to be more mobile and cover more ground. Splitting up armies might be good for chasing down fleeing units, like with your own cavalry unit for example.

 

[noto2]

I kind of agree. A lot of criticism of H5 centered on the 1UPT, and while I do love 1UPT, it's inarguable that the AI did excruciatingly bad in handling this system, which obviously kills a lot of joy for the very competitive players. When you at the same time have serious problems with multiplayer, effectively rendering PVP more or less defunct, obviously you're in deep ****.

Bottomline: I hope they keep 1UPT but makes an AI that's better at handling it. Functional multiplayer is desirable, obviously, but since I only play singleplayer that's not a crucial point for me personally.

I was a long-time holdout on Civ4. I didn't even start playing 5 until about two years ago, and I put in well over 1000 hours in 4. I do prefer 5's combat system to that of 4. Stack warfare was handled poorly, imo.

I'm not sure where Firaxis will go with the combat system. They could stick with 1UPT and simply improve it, but there are other ways to go. Why must combat take place on the strategic map? Many other games, such as Galactic Civ, Master of Orion, or even the Total War series have combat take place off the strategic map. In fact, now that I think of it... Star Wars Empire at War... really, Civ is the ONLY game I know of that has combat take place on the strategic map.

I think Galactic Civ does combat very well. The player builds ships and creates fleets, designing their ships to win, but when actual combat occurs they don't fly the ships around themselves, they simply get to watch the battle. They can then tweak their designs after watching their performance.
A similar system could work in Civ. The player could train units and put them together in "armies" or "fleets" or "air wings" and then combat would occur off the strategic map. The makeup of their army would affect the outcome of battle. For example, cavalry would do well against missile units, heavy infantry armed with spears would do well against cavalry, etc.

 

[meatpardle]

You mean cut to a different screen and watch a battle every time you want to attack a unit/hex?

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

It's not about stacks or tiles. Rethinking the combat mechanics means rethinking why you even issue "you attack you" orders in the first place. If Civ VI escapes that assumption, it can evade all the particular objections.

 

[crawf0rd]

I'd love proper colonization. That would entail making cities as valuable as they make them, because imagine in Civ 5 carpeting an entire continent with cities like Spain did in real life. You'd be at massive unhappiness! But imo you should be able to support having a number of resource colonies on other continents. Make the AI play accordingly, it is no fun to play on terra if it sits uninhabited until Darius discovers satellites.

I'd like civs to be even more unique. A mod I made gave civs a bonus based on their continent and era alongside their UA, which kinda blended the idea of Civ 4 traits with Civ 5 UAs. For the record, I prefer the UA system.

Don't overdo multiplayer. Civ will never be an esport, it just can't happen. Civ games take hours to complete, that's just how it is. Quick games like StarCraft or Dota work being tailored around multiplayer because the average person can spend 40 minutes on a game and hop off afterwards, but Civ doesn't have that accessibility. I hope Firaxis doesn't spend too much time making multiplayer features. That being said, they certainly need to make it functional unlike the mess that was Civ 5 multiplayer.

I wish promotions were more meaningful. As someone who rarely wars, I might see a triple promoted unit once a game, but that's it. I'd say make the system more diverse and with more often promotions -- if my civ is covered in jungle, I'd like to have an army adept at jungle combat without 4 buildings and a wonder.

Take features from Rhye's and fall of Civilization. That mod carefully replicated the real world masterfully. I've always shrugged at how civs last for 6000 years because the game just lasts that long. But wouldn't it be cool for your civ to morph as the world has, changing governments, names, colors, etc. while maintaining a culture? I guess it could take from the cultural revolution feature in CiV NIGHTS.

I'll edit anymore random thoughts in.

 

[kaspergm]

I was a long-time holdout on Civ4. I didn't even start playing 5 until about two years ago, and I put in well over 1000 hours in 4. I do prefer 5's combat system to that of 4. Stack warfare was handled poorly, imo.

I'm not sure where Firaxis will go with the combat system. They could stick with 1UPT and simply improve it, but there are other ways to go. Why must combat take place on the strategic map? Many other games, such as Galactic Civ, Master of Orion, or even the Total War series have combat take place off the strategic map. In fact, now that I think of it... Star Wars Empire at War... really, Civ is the ONLY game I know of that has combat take place on the strategic map.

Heroes of Might and Magic is another notable case of such a system. In my opinion, there is one major - and I emphasize major - reason why I don't want a HoMaM system introduced into Civ: If you handle combat on a separate map, this means that army size and composition is locked at the onset of combat. With little variation, this means that the person with the larger army inherently wins the combat. This makes sense in a HoMaM game, where you are always at war with your opponents, but this is a critical issue in a game like Civ, where you are at peace most of the game until war is declared. As central aspect of Civ is that you don't always need to outnumber you opponents in a specific strategic area, you just need enough forces to hold him off until reinforcements arrive.

Now I dont know the games you mention, and there might be solutions to above problem - like, you fight only 1 or maybe 2-3 rounds each turn, and then leave combat and can come back next round and bring in new troops etc., and that might work - I don't know if that's how any of the games you mention work? But otherwise I'd fear that much of the game's value would be lost on me with a combat-map system.

 

[meatpardle]

What I do miss from Civ 4 is the outposts (or whatever they were called) where you could plant a worker on a resource and claim it without needing it to be within your territory. A much more realistic depiction of the global hunt for resources. Maybe over time these could develop into cities (you could still settle cities the normal way) or gradually develop resistance to another civ claiming that land by planting a city next door, so if you've been mining gold for 1000 years on a site another civ settling a city nearby isn't suddenly going to cause your mining set-up to disband.

I much prefer 1UPT, defensive and offensive stacks just made war boring. It was a war of attrition rather than one of skill and preparation. Every unit the same, every enemy unit and city beaten the same way. Diversity is the key. If there is a defending city with limited access due to mountains then of course it should harder to get troops there than a city in the middle of open plains. One army, one tile makes everything too generic. If you are in a jungle-heavy setting and specialise your army towards that then an enemy turning up from a desert civ who is set up for that environment should struggle against you, not be able to exploit the one non-jungle tile next to the city and funnel a stack through there.

 

[Wojciech_R]

Octagons don't fit together! You have to have squares in between them, like this:

As far as Civ 6 goes, I'd like more actual choices to make. For example, with workers, you may as well automate them, which wasn't really the case in Civ 4, for example. But then isn't this the way that all games are going nowadays...

I just made fum about octagons - waaay to much work to make AI work with them (not to mention they do not stack together).

I had really sad thought this morning - CIV 5 was probably THE MOST accessible CIV for newcommers, the most streamlined one.
The true succession of CIV revolutions.

And as far as I know it is THE MOST SUCCESSFULL one.

Sure I think Firaxis could easily make CIV with the level of realism\complication which would put Paradox to shame - but who would play it?
I bet that they want to keep earning money - which means simple, shallow game (maybe even good one, but simple)

 

[Luckystrike77]

I just hope you can't exploit city states by early worker stealing, like in Civ5. This was the most game breaking thing to me, especially in multiplayer. Took so much away from the early game priority build. Bad for singleplayer too of course, since this possibility easely becomes too tempting, and the consequences are benefits over the AI and a less interesting decission making process in the early game.

I'd also like to see alot of focus on the empire management aspects of the game, and hopefully they aim for a bigger and more epic game then ever with loads of hard, long term decissions to make.

 

[MadDjinn]

I think Galactic Civ does combat very well. The player builds ships and creates fleets, designing their ships to win, but when actual combat occurs they don't fly the ships around themselves, they simply get to watch the battle. They can then tweak their designs after watching their performance.

I find that to be one of the bad things for GalCiv 3. It's too skewed to strategic side (which is also pretty thin), so there's nothing to do except make the ships pretty. And a lot of the time you're too zoomed out to see them anyways. Watching combat is a waste, because it's the game making decisions, not the player. It actually takes away strategic decisions wrt ship design because you can't even give the ships basic battle plans.

 

[Ninakoru]

Hehe, this is redundant, however here's my wish list:

They should make the game even simpler to reach even more audience, but at the same time give the option for expert/ and or tedious players to manage manually otherwise automated tasks. Much like how today we get an automatic tile management on cities, but we can manually handle it.

I absolutely love 1UPT and a hex-based map, the sad part is that these have been bundled with a stupid AI not up to the task.

Love the tall vs wide balance effort, but Tradition is so powerful that is near-always best option even if you go wide.

They should COMPLETELY redesign how science works. Science is king and reigns over everything else. Now science is tied with science progression in tech tree combined with growth, being growth already important for other benefits. Also how being ahead in tech is a huge advantage: wonders, planes... The higher the difficulty, more importance gets science over everything else.

They should also rework completely the world wonder race, now you can do any wonder if you get the tech, with some exceptions (prerequisites like terrain or having a policy).

Don't overdo multiplayer. Civ will never be an esport, it just can't happen.

On the contrary. Many of the traditional Civ players love to play against the AI, but from Business perspective is a fact that a strong MP reigns over everything else.

One thing I liked a lot about Endless Legend is how the game was first designed for multiplayer. Even at single player, you and the AIs both play simultaneously, and every aspect in the interface and the game flow is multiplayer friendly. This doesn't hinder the single player experience at all. All is matter of good game design.

 

[rschissler]

What I do miss from Civ 4 is the outposts (or whatever they were called) where you could plant a worker on a resource and claim it without needing it to be within your territory. A much more realistic depiction of the global hunt for resources. Maybe over time these could develop into cities (you could still settle cities the normal way) or gradually develop resistance to another civ claiming that land by planting a city next door, so if you've been mining gold for 1000 years on a site another civ settling a city nearby isn't suddenly going to cause your mining set-up to disband.

I much prefer 1UPT, defensive and offensive stacks just made war boring. It was a war of attrition rather than one of skill and preparation. Every unit the same, every enemy unit and city beaten the same way. Diversity is the key. If there is a defending city with limited access due to mountains then of course it should harder to get troops there than a city in the middle of open plains. One army, one tile makes everything too generic. If you are in a jungle-heavy setting and specialise your army towards that then an enemy turning up from a desert civ who is set up for that environment should struggle against you, not be able to exploit the one non-jungle tile next to the city and funnel a stack through there.

"Outpost" You're talking about a colony from Civ III. Civ IV didn't have this.

 

[kaspergm]

They should COMPLETELY redesign how science works. Science is king and reigns over everything else. Now science is tied with science progression in tech tree combined with growth, being growth already important for other benefits. Also how being ahead in tech is a huge advantage: wonders, planes... The higher the difficulty, more importance gets science over everything else.

They should also rework completely the world wonder race, now you can do any wonder if you get the tech, with some exceptions (prerequisites like terrain or having a policy).

I agree this is a major problem, and one that has always been in the series. I think one way to achieve this is to make the techtree (or tech web if they go in that direction) less linear and more layered. By this, I mean that there should be stubs of technologies that opens up for units (including unique units) or buildings (including wonders) but which are not prerequisits for advancing in the overall tech tree.

To give an example, one could imagine if you research Architecture, this would open up for a new technology called Vaulted Ceilings which would allow you to build the Cathedral buildings as well as the Notre Dame wonder. However, the Vaulted Ceilings technology is a dead-end, meaning that you don't need to research this technology if, say, someone else has already build the Notre Dame and you don't focus on religion.

Some technologies could also be "technology wonders" - i.e. at technology that can only be researched by one Civ who then has the monopoly on this technology in the game. One could have restrictions, for instance you can only research one of these technologies in each era, and you can only research it while you are in that specific era. Imagine for instance you are the first to research "Composite Bows" (allowing the regular unit Composite Bowman), then there could be a unique sub-tech called "Longbows" which would allow you to build the unique Longbowman unit. Only one civ can get this unit in a given game - however, one could have some techs tied with specific civs, for instance England could always have the option for the Longbows technology, similar to how Longbowman is a UU for England in Civ5.

The benefits of a tech system like outlined above would be that a player that is behind in technology can bypass many of these dead-end tech to catch up with the other players. On the other hand, the player who is ahead in technology doesn't get all the wonders as freebies, but have to stall by researching these side-tech in order to unlock the wonders, thus making it likely that others will catch up with him. It would also make it more possible to specialize in certain tech areas depending on your game style (science, growth, production, culture, religion, economy, land military, naval military, etc.) Of course there could still be wonders and units placed also in the general techs, giving still some advantages to being ahead.

 

[meatpardle]

"Outpost" You're talking about a colony from Civ III. Civ IV didn't have this.

Thanks dude, it's been so long since I played either I often get them confused.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I agree this is a major problem, and one that has always been in the series. I think one way to achieve this is to make the techtree (or tech web if they go in that direction) less linear and more layered. By this, I mean that there should be stubs of technologies that opens up for units (including unique units) or buildings (including wonders) but which are not prerequisits for advancing in the overall tech tree.

To give an example, one could imagine if you research Architecture, this would open up for a new technology called Vaulted Ceilings which would allow you to build the Cathedral buildings as well as the Notre Dame wonder. However, the Vaulted Ceilings technology is a dead-end, meaning that you don't need to research this technology if, say, someone else has already build the Notre Dame and you don't focus on religion.

Some technologies could also be "technology wonders" - i.e. at technology that can only be researched by one Civ who then has the monopoly on this technology in the game. One could have restrictions, for instance you can only research one of these technologies in each era, and you can only research it while you are in that specific era. Imagine for instance you are the first to research "Composite Bows" (allowing the regular unit Composite Bowman), then there could be a unique sub-tech called "Longbows" which would allow you to build the unique Longbowman unit. Only one civ can get this unit in a given game - however, one could have some techs tied with specific civs, for instance England could always have the option for the Longbows technology, similar to how Longbowman is a UU for England in Civ5.

The benefits of a tech system like outlined above would be that a player that is behind in technology can bypass many of these dead-end tech to catch up with the other players. On the other hand, the player who is ahead in technology doesn't get all the wonders as freebies, but have to stall by researching these side-tech in order to unlock the wonders, thus making it likely that others will catch up with him. It would also make it more possible to specialize in certain tech areas depending on your game style (science, growth, production, culture, religion, economy, land military, naval military, etc.) Of course there could still be wonders and units placed also in the general techs, giving still some advantages to being ahead.

I find that the way Civ 4 had the tech tree was pretty good, it had multiple paths, having dead ends is also pretty good idea. I know that Civ 3 had "Non-requirement" techs that were optional in order to advance to the next era, but you had to research ALL the techs in each era to advance, except the optional ones.